Podcast 445 – “Navigating the Ayahuasca Experience”

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Guest speakers: Meriana Dinkova & Shonagh Home

Meriana DinkovaPROGRAM NOTES:

In today’s podcast we get to listen in on a conversation between Shonagh Home and Meriana Dinkova. Meriana received her initial training in psychology studies at Vienna University and at the Free University in Berlin. And in 2003 she completed her MA in Counseling Psychology at the California Association of Integral Studies in San Francisco. In 2010 Meriana started two different monthly Meetups, which have been successfully running since: “Get Out Of Your Own Way- Conquering Self Sabotage” and “Sex Magic”– . She has also been a featured speaker at the Visionary Voices Salon in SF where she talked about Sex Magic and different uses of sexual energy to enhance awareness.

Meriana has developed a unique system of psychological and neo-shamanistic inner-space navigation tools for navigating non-ordinary states of consciousness and the Ayahuasca experience. Those tools are designed to maximize the experience and provide the opportunity for learning and healing, while safely navigating the inner landscapes, and avoiding common pitfalls. Learning how to use your consciousness in those ways can enrich your psychonaut toolkit and empower your inner shaman.

Meriana also organizes retreats to Peru, in which she combines her work with experienced shamans.

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Meriana Dinkova’s Web Site


“Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate” with Lorenzo

Posted in Ayahuasca, Death, Meriana Dinkova, Psychedelics, Shamanism, Shonagh Home.

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  1. WHY AN AYAHUASCA CEREMONY IN TIERRAMITICA IS DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER: NAVIGATING AND CONTROLLING THE AYAHUASCA EXPERIENCE FOR SPECIFIC BENEFITS.
    The Ayahuasca brew has become widely known and popular in the last 25 years and is currently being used by hundreds of thousands of people not only in its natural habitat, the Amazonia, but also globally. The brew is also the subject of intense scientific research and testing worldwide for its capacity to help heal addictions, depression and much more. Its properties and benefits, both proven and alleged are well documented, and the internet proliferates with all kinds of information about this “magic wand” that transforms people and facilitate an open heart, inspiration, connection with the divine and so much more. But do the multitudes that rush to try it get a real, long term benefit from ingesting it? Or is it just a psychotropic induced experience like any other, a spectacular trip?
    Ayahuasca possesses certain properties that no other psychotropic medicine drug or practice can emulate other than coincidentally, the most important of which are below:
    1. Ayahuasca is largely dosage irrelevant. Every drug is affected by the physical, mental and emotional condition of the user, affecting the intensity of the experience by a large margin. But with all other drugs, if you take triple the dosage you will receive a stronger effect. With Ayahuasca you may drink a thimbleful and go to kingdom come or drink five cups and have zero effect. You may drink one day and have a huge effect and drink the same brew the next day and have no effect. Even within the same ceremony a word or a thought can take all the effect away or hit you with a huge tsunami wave. This is because Ayahuasca connects directly to our subconscious, so depending on our state of being, our thoughts, emotions and our intention surrounding the ceremony there is a subconscious reaction and decision; if our subconscious is resistant to the potential outcome of the ceremony it can either produce a crushingly strong experience which leaves us with no capacity to pursue anything, a weak or inexistent experience or constant physical distractions, back and limb pains, diarrhea, constant need to urinate, spasms, terror and infinite other inventive methods. When, however, we find ourselves psyched and determined our subconscious bows out or cooperates and the experience is magical; just perfect. With Ayahuasca, the actual chemical reaction is subservient to our subconscious.
    2. Ayahuasca gives access to ALL of our memories. There are four kinds of memories that we cannot access at will:
    a. All memories of events or feelings that occurred before our brains developed our archiving system; The age varies, but for most humans very few memories, if any survive before the age of five or six. Earlier memories are sporadic and exist mostly due to repetition and discussion by family or friends. We just do not possess a reliable filing and memory organization system to retain them, so they mostly go to a huge junk file.
    b. All memories that we have taught and instructed ourselves to discard as junk; Things that are unimportant to us. Every waking moment, every second we are live recorders of everything. Video, sound, sensation, all are constantly recorded. On our daily 10 minute ride or walk we see and record every tree, every leaf, every face, absolutely everything yet retain the memory of a tiny percentage: that which calls our attention on the particular moment. Our minds constantly need to discard 99.9999% of information to ensure sufficient space available in our brains for processing.
    c. All memories that we have actively hidden from ourselves due to trauma. Intense fear, emotional pain, guilt, shame, disgrace cause inside us a decision to never revisit a memory again, and these are the kind of memories that psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts look for. Slowly, through years of counseling they try to create an atmosphere of trust to allow these memories to be coaxed out and processed, hopefully healing or ameliorating the trauma.
    d. All genetic memory of life since the beginning of the universe. The memory that allows us and every creature to know how to breathe, how to function. And the memories of everything before that. The quantity of genetic material on earth is finite. None of it gets destroyed, none escapes beyond the atmosphere and infinitesimal amounts get in. Genetic material is just constantly metamorphosing into new forms of life, which constantly feeds on and process itself. The big eat the small and the small eat everyone. It is an almost statistical certainty that every single human being has hosted cells from Jesus Christ and from most forms of life on our planet. The huge pool of engraved memory already present in us allows us to develop skills already mastered, such as breathing, digesting and walking.
    Ayahuasca has the gift to allow access to all of them. Imagine our memory banks as a giant football field. On this field, dunes and clouds of trillions of moving yellow Post It papers; some hidden under mountains of other nondescript Post Its, many randomly positioned and others intricately disguised. When we take Ayahuasca, we fly through this football field in every direction and little sticky papers of memories attach themselves to us; Some of them stay for a while and then float off to be replaced by others. Some stay throughout and allow relevant papers to stick as well, some are too heavy to carry and discarded, some manage to stick no matter what. Whatever is left is the actual true impact of the ceremony. Sometimes we experience the Big Bang, life through the body of a worm, a jaguar, a rock or a blade of grass. Sometimes what sticks is the memory of a loving moment when we say that we were never loved; Sometimes a memory of another life, of childhood events, of feelings, sometimes the memory of a discussion with God, the divine, sometimes an amazing insight.
    However, to make these often extravagant experiences into something more than an amazing trip and in order to get real answers to questions that are important for our happiness, our perceptions, our feelings and our direction, much more is needed beyond participating in a ceremony, exactly because anything that happens is subject to choices that are subconscious mind and not the conscious mind. This is why thousands of people ending up taking the brew again and again, mainly as a crutch, with few lasting benefits, little true and lasting change. People get to perceive and feel happiness, love, the divine, find inspiration and make sense of the world and then they need to drink again and again in order to retrieve this state of being. And this is in the rare cases where they do get something beyond an indescribable abstract feeling that has no relation to their everyday lives.
    In TierraMitica, following over ten years of intensive research, we teach people how to navigate the Ayahuasca experience by using specifically focused intentions customized for the individual combined with practices designed after exhaustive research to help focus and to override reactions from the subconscious body in order to find specific memories and get answers to specific questions; to help people come to a face to face discussion with their subconscious, their alter ego in a vibration of cooperation instead of the usual, constant internal struggle. We give people a set of precise instructions on how to deal with the ceremony with full explanations for the benefits of each one before they go to ceremony, and each ceremony serves as training where participants can try firsthand how their bodies and minds react to the instructions and how their experience changes accordingly and help them go deeper and get more significant, concrete results with each ceremony.
    The ceremonies are performed guided by traditional shipibo maestras and maestros in full respect to the traditions, under the moon and the stars in our mosquito free jungle paradise, but we also include at least two or three experienced guides to assist during the ceremonies for those who choose to go very deep, providing full guidance, care and protection. And of course we help after the ceremony with “as long as it takes” sharing sessions where we help you make sense of the symbology of the visions and body experiences.
    Navigating and controlling the direction of the Ayahuasca experience makes all the difference on whether one will achieve their objectives for taking the brew, and we provide clarity and an extensive methodology to use the Ayahuasca as a precise tool for healing and inspiration.

  2. Very useful information Keep it coming lorenzo. You never know what little frase will keep some one from a horrible trip or push some one into hell our spells are very important and every tool makes us more prepared for what we may find. Thanks again

  3. Hear hear, Lorenzo! Thank you so much for these wonderful archives of priceless knowledge. More of Mariana, please 🙂

    Fredrik- I would like to hear what you think of psychic energies seizing part mind. If someone has very low esteem because of something like damaged childhood mixed with long term alcohol (or debilitating drug) dependence, is there a way that their psychic energy is weakened enough that dark energy takes hold and cause the person to change dramatically? I don’t think they are completely unconscious of it, but they don’t have many other decisions to make besides what feels so right to them which usually comes out as abuse in some form. What’s your take on how dependence can be so detrimental?

  4. Frederick while Terence is a wonderful man . He wasn’t as strong as you think . He stopped talking shrooms after a bad trip. He kept yellin loss of all meaning loss of all meaning . This is a common happening when ego loss is involved . So to me he might have been good at taking a big game . Yet lost his shit when he got to the deeper layers than elf machines and dancing mice . As someone who has done a exorcism . It’s real and there are enegrys and beings that can really fuck people up . They usually invited it or made them selfs open to this being or energy . Every shaman sees them differently . Some might say enegry some might say thought . Others will say beings or deamons . Regardless it’s like saying all humans are one . Yet someone can still walk up and smack the shit outta you . Not believing doesn’t make things true . Also being afraid doesn’t help. 😉

  5. Lorenzo – thank you for surprising me again this week. Every weekend, I become curious and impatient, because I want to know what will happen in the psychedelic salon on Monday.

    Now this week, while I was fascinated with some of the stories of Meriana, I was also a bit skeptical. When Meriana started to talk about her friend being exorcised and an entity that possessed her friend and the painful ritual of exorcism, I don’t know what to think of that.
    I remember Terence McKenna in your podcast saying: empower yourself to say “bullshit!”. And I might do that here…. After all, the belief that an entity is possessing a person can be very dis-empowering to that person and I’m not sure we should just buy into that…. Of course I’m not saying its impossible, but my gut tells me to be careful. As soon as you believe that entities are possessing us humans, your imagination is set free to use that interpretation for all sorts of purposes, and I’m not sure that will be empowering or true to experience.

    I would like to know what you think about it.

    By the way my background is also psychology degree and medical anthropology.

    peace and love from Heidelberg, Germany
    Frederik

    [COMMENT by Lorenzo: I think that the opening line of my novel says it all: “Myths and legends only spare the nonbelievers.” . . . I’m a nonbeliever and thus am spared of worry about being possessed :-).]

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