At the time this story occurred, I had been working at Rythmia Life Advancement Center in Guanacaste, Costa Rica for about six months. Before my arrival at Rythmia, I had lived in Los Angeles. I moved there in 2008 and was the sales manager at a charter yacht company in Marina del Rey, CA.

Finding my spiritual home

During that time, I was introduced to the Agape International Spiritual Center by a soon-to-be dear friend named Stacy. I met Stacy sitting on the stoop outside my apartment building. Stacy and I hit it off immediately. One day she said, “Hey, I'm going to this place called Agape. I think you'd really like it. Do you want to come?” I said yes and the minute I walked in the door something was activated within me. I found my spiritual teacher and spiritual home at Agape. I volunteered and worked extensively in the community and in the offices of Rev. Michael Bernard Beckwith, eventually becoming an Agape Licensed Spiritual Practitioner.

A practitioner is a spiritual psychologist. We use the traditional modalities of psychology with the underpinning of the spiritual principle that In back of and underneath everything is a Presence of Love and Intelligence that is constantly seeking its own fulfillment through each of us. Fundamentally, Life is for us because Life is for Life, and we are part of Life! So, we can earnestly say that Life is Good, independent of circumstances.

Dealing with addictions and their roots

Ten years after meeting Stacy on the stoop, she called me. She was working at Rythmia and living in Costa Rica! She invited me to come to Rythmia to help start a new project at the retreat center. I arrived at Rythmia in 2017. During my ten years of study and practice at Agape, I had healed from long-time compulsive behaviors that had included a lot of sex and drugs. After moving to LA and joining the Agape Beloved Community, I cleaned myself up from the addiction and compulsive behaviors. Whatever addictive behavior we are working through, getting cleaned up from the addiction is only part of the work. The messier part of recovery is addressing the root causes of the addictive behaviors. Addictive behaviors are like the floodwaters covering up all the stuff we don’t want to deal with. After the floodwaters of addiction recede, what's left is a lot of mud and muck and rebuilding that needs to be done. I had undergone huge expansions of consciousness at Agape. Yet, there was still a part of me that was absorbed with trying to fill a hole in the center of my being with external stuff. The hole in me was longing to be filled with self-love and self-acceptance, but I was looking for others to fill it with their acknowledgement or belonging. I was always “giving to get” and was very self-absorbed because I was constantly scanning my surroundings like a radar seeking the cues of acceptance and belonging from outside of me. The thing was, I didn’t realize that I was doing this.

Finally, after six months at Rythmia, I decided to try the plant medicine that was available there. I hadn’t wanted to before because I had worked so hard not to have to take anything outside of myself to feel good. Yet, I had seen so many miraculous results week in and week out at Rythmia, I thought, “Why not, maybe it’ll help.” I had no idea how profoundly healing and beautiful my experience would be.

Most plant medicine ceremonies are held in what's called a maloca. This is a large, covered deck, filled with mattresses, blankets, pillows, buckets, candles, sacred objects, musical instruments, musicians, ayahuasqueros (the keepers of the medicine – aka shamans but I am not a big fan of the word “shaman” because it has no etymological connection to the South American medicine tradition or native people. It stems from a Czarist Russian administrator’s description of the medicine healers from Siberia to describe their unorthodox behavior.)

Taking the medicine

I went in for the first night of the ceremony dressed in white and a little bit scared. As I entered the maloca, I chose my mattress and sat down. We were asked to observe the “noble silence” in preparation for the ceremony. There was an opening talk led by the Ceremonial Leader and then the call to line up to receive the medicine. At Rythmia there are three group intentions. The first intention, which was my intention that night, is: “Show me who I have become.” This intention is meant to focus us on seeing the things that we typically don't want to see, hear, think, feel, or know about ourselves. “Who I have become” is the complex of defense mechanisms and projected self that we develop to protect ourselves. The things we do to feel loved, to feel like we belong, to feel safe and to feel enough. I drank the medicine holding my intention in my heart, returned to my mattress, and waited. The first thing that happens when you drink ayahuasca is you begin to feel something in your body. I began to feel a little nauseous and to sweat, shake, and yawn. Soon the music was playing, and the ceremony was really getting underway. People were beginning to purge into their buckets. I noticed that as people purged, the ayahuasqueros would move throughout the maloca, assisting people by either giving them a blessing or a sort of energetic clearing and rubbing them down with this special lotion called Chandor.

I want a blessing too!

I didn't know much about it at the time, but I knew I wanted one of those blessings! I wanted a blessing because it meant that I had healed something. I was still looking outside myself to feel enough or satisfied with my efforts. As I continued to feel the effects of the medicine, I begin to see what are called pinta which are geometric shapes and colors, kaleidoscope designs and tribal patterns – basically really cool stuff! I could also see the ayahuasqueros moving among the participants, administering their blessings and healings. Every time a healer walked towards me, I thought they were coming to give me a blessing. But they'd just walk by and work on someone else. This happened all night.

Remember, all of this wanting and not getting was under the auspices of the intention: show me who I have become. I did not yet realize it but the medicine was showing me exactly who I had become. The coping mechanisms of feeling like I was enough through securing acknowledgement and external validation were being clearly shown to me. Also, my old narrative of feeling separate from people and life (not belonging) was being shown to me through my growing desire for the blessing. There was also resentment and self-judgment that came up when I didn’t get the blessing!

At the next ceremony, I went in with the same intention to see who I had become and with the added expectation that tonight, for sure, I will get my blessing! I drank the medicine, sat on my mattress and watched. The same process happened again and again. Something would happen in the maloca and the ayahuasqueros would move out into the group to give a blessing. It was so funny because it always seemed like they were walking towards me, but they would just walk right by. This continued until the third night. At this point, I was becoming resentful. I thought that the medicine wasn’t working, and I felt embarrassed for even wanting a blessing so badly in the first place. It played into my old story that life passes me by, FOMO, and generally feeling like a victim.

This is the beauty of the medicine! It's always reflecting and revealing back to us the areas within us that are seeking to be healed. The feelings that this experience of watching the healers pass me by and wanting a blessing, the feelings of resentment and embarrassment, the feeling of victimhood – these were the medicine reflecting back to me the areas within me that wanted to be brought to the light. The feeling of not being enough; this story of being excluded; the need for validation from outside to feel like I belonged. These were all being healed in these ceremonies.

Now I see! Your blessing is my blessing

I began to observe these feelings and in the observation of them, something in me shifted. A thought suddenly occurred – straight from the medicine – and it said: “Their blessing is your blessing.”

With this realization, I begin to celebrate! Suddenly, I wasn't waiting for a blessing to come to me. I could see the oneness in the room, and I KNEW I was a part of it and IT was EVERYTHING that I AM. I suddenly knew that if someone was healing, I was healing. If someone was getting a blessing, I was getting a blessing. If someone was being loved and cared for, I was being loved and cared for. A deep realization of the oneness of all of life filled me with joy! I began dancing on my mattress, rejoicing every time one of the healers passed me by as they went to give someone else a blessing. I felt like Oprah at an ayahuasca ceremony: “YOU get a blessing, and YOU get a blessing, and YOU get a blessing!”

As I was kneeling on my mattress with my eyes closed, dancing and swaying to the music, I was just feeling the blessings all around me. I opened my eyes and standing in front of me was one of the healers. He looked at me and said: “Brother, would you like a blessing?”

“YES! YES, I WOULD LIKE A BLESSING!”, I replied. I received the richest, most wonderful blessing and experienced a deep-seated sense of oneness. During the blessing, I realized that there's only One Good. If it's good for someone else, it's good for me. I learned that I can rejoice in other people's success. I can rejoice in other people's good fortune. I can rejoice in other people's happiness. Because there's only one happiness, only one good fortune, only one success. I really learned that if one succeeds, it means we all can succeed! A deep realization that life is not a zero-sum game where one person wins and therefore the other one loses.

This was one of my first experiences with ayahuasca and to this day, the lesson of oneness and universal Good is still unfolding. This lesson is still being learned. It's so easy to forget that there's only one good. It's so easy to feel slighted or offended. It's so easy to feel we didn’t get what we deserved or just to feel upset because someone else is getting the credit for the work that we’ve done. Or, when things aren’t going our way to feel somehow that good things are happening for other people but not for you or me. The lesson of oneness continues to be learned.

Navigating life with an awareness of oneness

In another ceremony, I was given a vision of many waterfalls lined up in this sort of half-moon shape. These waterfalls all flowed into one large river and, in the vision, that river was flowing over me. I was told that those waterfalls or headwaters were all of the intentions that I had set in each ceremony and that they were continuing to work and wash over me. The intentions that we set in a ceremony are always working. This is why we say that ceremony is only 50% of the work. The real work starts when we begin to integrate the insights and downloads that we received in ceremony into our everyday lives.

How do we navigate the game of life when it is played as if it were a zero-sum game? How do we move through life from the realization of oneness in a world where there are real winners and real losers? For me, the art of navigating life with the awareness of oneness is the art of denying what the five senses are telling me. Because the five senses are telling me that we are separate. The five senses are telling me that there are winners and losers. The five senses may be telling me that something's wrong, that there's a problem, or that the situation is hopeless.

The art of denying what the five senses are telling us is not a denial of “the facts” or sticking our heads into the sand. Rather, it is a complete acceptance of the present moment just as it is, whatever the circumstances. Why? Because even as we live in a win/lose world, we KNOW that there is only One Good and that Good is seeking to emerge. My job is to be open to receiving it in an unexpected way. It probably won’t come in the way that I expect it. So if I am feeling apart or separate, I have to do some work to remain open. I can’t remain open if I am mired down in the muck of the same old limited thinking that got me there in the first place.

Whatever we are experiencing in this moment is the effect of our previously held thoughts, beliefs, opinions, perspectives, and points of view. Therefore, the experiences, feelings and emotions of this moment are inevitable. It is only from a place of complete acceptance of the now moment and of ourselves, exactly where we are at, that we can begin to co-create our next experience with the creative medium. The next now moment will be the effect of our current thoughts and beliefs. This is where we get to become the alchemists of our lives and turn the heavy leaden feelings of separation into the golden light of Oneness.

Viewing the physical through spiritual eyes

There is a saying: “Be in the world but not of it”. The phrase has also been used in various spiritual teachings to convey the idea of detachment from material things and identification with a higher, more spiritual reality. Therefore, I can be in the world of a zero-sum game and at the same time I can be of the spiritual plane where there is no competition. I can choose to live in a world where everyone’s blessing is my blessing and where everyone’s win is my win and vice versa. As I cultivate the energy and awareness of oneness, more oneness shows up in my life.

It's like we must consciously say, “I am not in the matrix! I live and move and have my being in a realm where there is only abundance and oneness.” It is from this upper room view that I can say that all that is rightfully mine comes to me with ease and grace in a magical way. I don’t have to struggle or strive. I don't ever have to feel like I'm losing out. I can't ever lose because there’s only One Good and your good is my good and my good is your good!

Affirmation: Today, I have great expectations! I consciously open myself up to Spirit’s gentle guidance, knowing my soul’s progress is certain and the way has been made.