The ayahuasca sessions: part two

Precipice ©Lotta Blokker

I drank ayahuasca for the second time last night at 7:15pm and for the third time at 8:15pm. She kicked my ass all the way to Timbuktu. It’s interesting how I made her do it, really—I came at her with too many questions, many of which were repetitive or didn’t actually matter, and so she bombarded me back. She made her point. From about 9:30 until 12:30am I was mercilessly ill but couldn’t throw up—lots of diarrhoea, lots of waddling around clinging onto my trash can in a mind-spinning stupor. It was horrible and wonderful. I did a lot of really hard work that really needed doing.

One of the things that got me stuck on the anxiety train was the fact that during the last session, Aya told me I would hear from B in July, and I was afraid to believe her. This is a strange self-limiting tendency I learnt from my mother's protectiveness over my happiness—her reluctance to let me get my hopes up too high. But is it worse to have to rebuild a dream once it's dashed or to dash it yourself in advance? I know the answer, but fear still haunts me, and I ask too many questions: How do you know he will, Aya? How can I be absolutely sure that your voice is not an illusion? Why should I believe you? Are you just a drug-induced fantasy? (Never ask that last one, she will prove you wrong, and she won't do it the easy way.)

In the same way that being sick away from home makes you want your own bed, the illness made me want my own city. I could smell London as clearly as if I were standing on Waterloo Bridge. I could hear the raindrops landing in the Thames. And the slugs and the moss and the must and the Buchanans’ roses and the Indian food in Brick Lane. I could feel my feet on the Regent’s Canal Towpath and smell the sun in the meadows at London Fields and the shawarma and spilled cider painting their fragrances all along Dalston High Street. And in and back out and around the waves of homesickness and nausea—revelations. It’s all about focus. The whole ordeal was an eight-hour living lesson in the art of focus.

Do you want to focus on the sick or the magic? Both are right here. Do you want to focus on the things you can’t change, or on the ones you can? And every time I’d ask her an irrelevant question she would smack me upside the psyche again and I would reel. I felt insane. I knew it would pass. This is what I meant when I told him I was going all the way down the rabbit hole of the crazy—my crazy, his crazy, our crazy. Even society’s collective crazy. All night she was telling me, he will come around. In his own time, not in yours. Accept that, embrace it, stop questioning it, and get on with your life. Otherwise you're only slowing things down.

The next morning, I woke up with a newfound understanding of my superpowers:

1. Breaking rules

2. De-weirding the weird

3. Radical expression

4. Recognising the divinity in things and places and people and singing it back to them

About breaking rules: I do things that you just “don’t do” and not only do I get away with those things but I make people happy in the process. Cases in point: I live without a homebase. I gallivant around the compound in my underwear. I perform naked in Central Park, at size 16. I fall in love with an actor and send him anti-fanmail from all over the world. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Layne Tisdel Martin and I am here to blow minds. Time to get on with it.

I wrote down some of the questions and answers we’d bandied around all night, for future reference. Here are some of the most interesting:

* Why am I drawn to people in positions of power? Because it’s an unfulfilled potential of your own. The real question is how can you embrace your own power?

* How can I embrace my power? Focus on it. Practise. Know yourself. Get better at doing what you do best.

* How can I practise saying exactly what I think without being an asshole? Um, practise! Soften when you do—stop worrying. Apologise whenever you get it wrong. Move on. Try again. Also, speak without expectation.

* How am I keeping myself from receiving the love and attention I want? By not focussing on the love and attention you already have access to. Don’t focus on what you don’t have.

* How can I release doubt? Focus on what you know and resonate with deeply, on what your heart knows beyond any shadow of a doubt. Focus on your heart-knowing. Surrender to it. Let it carry you.

* What are the specific, core issues causing me to be so anxious about B? Loneliness. Expectation. Fear that you’ll never connect with someone this deeply again. Go and talk to other people, meet them, enjoy them, connect with them. It will feed you.

* Will he really be in touch around July? Unless you beat your head up against the possibility so hard that you manage to shatter it from the other end of the space-time continuum.

* Should I write/speak to him at all until then? It doesn’t matter.

* How does he feel about me? He doesn’t know. He’s attracted, scared, intrigued, wary. It’s exactly what Daniel said in September of 2015: He’s only 99% sure you’re not crazy and has a thousand things fighting for his attention from every angle, so it just seems easier to leave it up to fate instead of reaching out. He’s very drawn to you but doesn’t know how to trust himself in that, because his left brain has a lot of really fearsome reasons why you might be a terrible idea. Also, any mistake he might make seems like a nightmare because the whole world would hear about it. Ultimately it is himself he's not trusting, it isn't you. And you can't do anything about that. So have patience. He’ll come around.

* What do I really want to do every day and how can I structure my time to allow me to do it? Priority numero uno: write the plays, write the book. Everything else can take a backseat for now.

* How can I cultivate stronger belief in myself (my intuition, my abilities, my value, my worth)? Focus on what empowers you: writing, connecting with others, taking care of your body, mind, and soul. Take some dance lessons already. Dancing is important.

* How can I publish my story with moral integrity? Protect him to the best of your ability and then leap. The rest is up to the Universe.

* How in/decipherable should I make the publication? More indecipherable than it currently is. As indecipherable as you can without compromising the story. Even if he needs to be shocked awake, it isn’t your responsibility to do it. Think everything all the way through and act from a place of only love.

* What am I not dealing with? Work on recognising and letting go of your ego. Release expectations. No one owes you anything. You owe yourself everything.

My bottom line? Do whatever you want and have fun doing it. It's really that simple. How do you want this story to proceed, given your options? Decide. Live it.