#345 Snippets of wisdom: How ayahuasca can help embrace your inner truth.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
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Agi Keramidas  0:02  
welcome to Personal Development mastery podcast. And this is another snippets of wisdom episode where I select my favourite most insightful moments from previous episodes. Today's snippet comes from my conversation with Michael Thornhill, who is a traditionally trained plant spirit healer. The snippet I chose from that conversation is about Michael describing a profound experience he had during his first Ayahuasca ceremony that gave him an inner knowing that prompted major changes. I hope it is as insightful for you as it was for me.

Michael Thornhill  0:46  
And then I, I had the same but much more powerful experience within the Ayahuasca ceremony that was something to describe, which is beyond words, which is a knowing it's not a knowing with the brain, it's not a knowing with the mind, it's a knowing with the entire being that is unwavering. That is impossible to be not true, because every cell in the being recognised as as the truth, and that I'd never had that experience before. I also in that moment, recognised and realised that due to the illness of my mother, as partial of that, and to what I didn't recognise as trauma, I didn't uncover that till later on. But for whatever reason, this lack this whole this void of unconditional love, that I wasn't, I wasn't aware of what unconditional love was, I could see that the love experience in my life was very much conditional. And I went back to the experience of being born in this lifetime. And experiencing the unconditional love of my family as I was, as I was kind of born, and then laid on my mother's chest. And the family for that moment, felt unconditional love and happiness. And then I also saw that very quickly, as kind of life takes hold, and having a family and all of the trauma that arises through being human, quite quickly tainted that. And that wasn't accessible to me. And it definitely wasn't accessible in my conscious memory. So I could see that the synthetic addictions that I was chasing was was I was actually looking for unconditional love. And simultaneously having the recognition that I am unconditional love, and that unconditional love is available to me that it's never left. So there in that moment, I realised that what I was looking for, was already here. So that, and that's not someone telling me that that's not a therapist saying, Well, you know, you're addicted to this, because of this, this and this go away and think about that this was a just an absolutely deep knowing experience. You know, and I've worked with therapists before and after I asked, and that's nothing against therapy. It's a very, very powerful practice. But this is just an experience that was taken straight to the core of that, and I had not, didn't have any spiritual inclination, didn't have any recognition of what this and it was just undeniable experience that once you see that, once you know that you can't go back. So and then simultaneously, in the next part, I had an experience where I found myself going out into the cosmos, and having communication contact with these different energetic beings that were showing me again, experientially showing me through feeling somatically very deep, like awakening of the cells of the body, every time that you drink, every time that you smoke, every time that you that you that you go and follow through these addictions, you are going away from your life path. This is not your life path, you're distracting away from your life path. And then I could see that the institutions that I would I, you know, grown up in, and that had believed and, you know, working in the rat race working in very capitalistic companies, and working all these different things, I could see that that was also a lie. And that wasn't that wasn't part of my truth, my truth, because it could be someone else's truth. That's not to say that it's right or wrong. But I could see for me that this was just an illusion, on top of illusion on top of lie on top of what might call mind control to try and get you to continue to turn that wheel of, of the capitalistic wheel in that way. And I could see this again, experientially, and bear in mind, I just started my own company and we were successful. We were making a lot of money. And and it was a good company. It was It wasn't there wasn't there wasn't necessarily bad. We were doing good things. We were doing good work. And then in that moment, I could see that that wasn't that wasn't what I was here to do. And I kind of came back down to earth purged. And then again, I knew I can't go back. I can't go back. I can't unknow what I've what's just awakened. So that was when I decided I did that I should go to India, because I need some time to integrate this. And, you know, through deep, deep processes and continued and, you know, not necessarily easy decisions continue to follow that awakening that seed of awakening. And it wasn't until, you know, many years later that I could really see what occurred in that Ayahuasca ceremony, or is actually really, really aligned in terms of what my life would be, because I never thought that I'd be here, owning a retreat centre, running a retreat centre, being married to my wife, and dedicating our life to helping others. That was not anything within my field of awareness. So when that arose to me, it was confusing. But there was something with inside me that, I would say, continued to fuel that fire. There was a curiosity there was that deep knowing there was something that was so true about that experience, that even though that there were so many thoughts, limiting beliefs, doubts and all those things, they were not enough to douse the fire of awakening. They were not enough to put that out. But there was a choice. At any point in that moment in time, I could have chose to ignore that, but that was not what I chose.

Agi Keramidas  6:31  
Thank you for tuning in. You can listen to the full conversation in Episode 266. The link is in the show notes. If you've enjoyed this episode, can you find one person that you think it would add value to and share it with them? I would really appreciate you. It helps grow the show and it also helps you add value to people you care about. Thank you so much. Until next time, stand out, don't fit in!