Next, she showed me my Father’s face (my actual human father in this lifetime). The second I saw his face, I was filled to the brim with gratitude towards him. So much grace. Anjuri, the human, sitting there on the mattress with her eyes closed, began whispering “Thank You Papa’, and kept thanking him over and over. I felt so grateful to be his daughter. So much love.
Pachamama let me delve into the gratitude and love for a long time. Then, I saw his face dissolve into tears, while a cracked egg appeared next to him. I was told that just like she had showed me earlier, he is a child of Mother Gaia as well and he too cries for his late (human) mother, he aches. He too has suffered from pain, anger, resentment, abandonment, unworthiness in context to his late human mother, for decades now. And the fact that he hasn’t yet met Mamma gives him no relief. “Had he met me, like you now have, he too would have no doubt, no pain in this regard“. He just doesn’t know/feel the simple truth of love and belonging to ME. He is my child. He just doesn’t remember it.
Anjuri began to sob, big tears. For my Dad. Mamma told me “cry it out, cry for him. Heal him. Cry”… “Good girl”
I cried for a few minutes, sob-whispering “Papa”… “Oh, Papa”. I think I was audibly crying out in the maloca. As I was crying, I was mourning his human mother’s passing too (she passed away suddenly, yet peacefully, in 2006) – for in my heart I knew that he hadn’t been able to cry it out for himself.
Suddenly she told me “okay, you can stop crying now. You have helped heal him.“
I said “Of Course!”
I stopped crying, and instantly returned to the state of bliss, devotion, love and gratitude I had been feeling for my father. I intermittently kept whispering “Thank you Mamma“. I kept thanking her. It was not voluntary. It was all just happening. I felt such a deep sense of healing. Oooof!
I knew it while it was happening, and I have known it since – THIS HAD BEEN THE BEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE (yet).
After this, it’s almost like a stage was set up, for people to appear on it, one by one, under the spotlight. I was shown the beautiful face of my ex-husband. I felt an ocean of love towards him. So much affection. No drama, no other emotion. Pure love.
She reminded Me of how much I had loved him, with my whole heart. And of HOW MUCH LOVE HE HAD GIVEN ME IN RETURN. I felt blissful. He stood there, expressionless. Maybe a bit of a smile.
Then suddenly his face dissolved into sobs and tears. He was wailing in pain, much the same way she had shown my father’s face in suffering. Same lesson about motherhood, belonging and abandonment. She urged me to cry for my ex-husband and heal him. I obeyed, no questions asked. Then after a few moments of Anjuri crying, that man on the stage dissolved into white light.
I felt like she took away most of my pain & the politics of our failed marriage, our divorce, resentment towards him, and any residual emotions towards the man. Clean Slate! Woah!
Chapter closed. Moving on.
Next, she showed me the face of the man who had molested me when I was six or seven or eight or nine or ten (frankly, my brain has blocked the memory & timing to such an extent that I simply cannot be sure of how old I was even today, but yes I was a young vulnerable child). This man was the drunkard, alcoholic, aimless, purposeless, parasite husband of this absolutely wonderful art teacher that I adored when I was a kid. She was the only person to see potential in me. She was a visionary in the sense that she HANDED ME OIL PAINTS WHEN I WAS TINY LITTLE GIRL – no one hands oil paints to a child. BUT SHE DID!!!
I had loved her so much, I was so in love with her son as well – he was my best friend.
My art teacher, her beautiful son, and the deeply unhappy alcoholic used to reside in a one small room, one bathroom, a kitchen, with a large open terrace – they were quite poor, and she was working her ass off to make ends meet, taking tuition classes for young kids, teaching art and language, working hard to become a teacher at my school; while her husband used to drink it all away! Poor jackass!
I found that house quite lovely up until that day, I suppose. I don’t remember the specifics, but one fine day, I was painting at the teacher’s house and I went looking for her around the house. The bits and pieces my brain has allowed me to access are mere vignettes of the memory – I was picked by this pervert and he shoved his tongue in my mouth, he smelled of beer or whiskey – I don’t know.
I honestly do not know how I got away, what happened next. My brain just hasn’t let me tap into that even after almost 3 decades. Anyway, the point is that I have carried immense intense hatred, repulsion, shame, confusion, disgust and guilt about it. It makes no sense why I should feel any shame or guilt, but I have. Of course, I never told anyone. I did not tell my parents. I think the time that this took place, I hadn’t even developed an adult’s vocabulary, I was so young, that I couldn’t even narrate/ relate what had happened to me – to an adult, not even my parents.
God, I really do not remember anything around this incident. Like maybe my brain has chopped off months of memory around it.
My survival and coping mechanisms had been so ironclad that I barely ever consciously thought about the incident as a kid growing up. I just know that I grew distant from the art teacher and her son, gradually. We did not remain friends.
But then, in adulthood, in my twenties, the memory began to haunt me again. Out of nowhere!
I remember being thrown violently back into that disgusting half-memory when I smelled whiskey or beer on my ex-husband’s breath, one random night. It was shocking! So revolting. Jesus Christ.
It has haunted me in another way, which wasn’t so obvious to me initially. I basically went from being a kid who used to enjoy painting, using knives and brushes on canvas, I just gradually stopped altogether. Also, honestly, I didn’t even think about painting much over the years. I simply had abandoned the brush and canvas with a detachment, no emotion.
Cut to – the second Ayahuasca ceremony – as I was saying – after my ex-husband had appeared and dissolved into white light on that stage behind my closed eyes, she showed me the face of the alcoholic husband of my beloved art teacher, who had molested me – he was standing there, tall but shrivelled, expressionless face stuck in time, maybe a bit of shame escaping his features.
Without skipping a beat, in microseconds, Mamma said “He did not know any better, my child. It had nothing to do with you anyway. This is Your Story, Your Life, NOT HIS. Let it go, forever.“
I said “Of Course!”
And just like that I got closure. In an instant. It was like there was no need to ever think about this and feel any familiar disgust and shame I had felt. This story was not important. Not anymore. Yes! Miraculous.
His face dissolved into white light and disappeared.
Next she showed me the faces of people, in quick succession, who had helped me get there – to ayahuasca – to the ceremonial space. People who had nudged me again and again to sign up because “I was ready”. I thanked these people one by one, sending them light and love.
Then she showed me 2 animals, dogs to be precise – one after another.
The first of them was an Indie (local Indian breed) who lived at the nearby beach, a beach I visited often for my morning walks. I called him “Chhotu” (little one) with love, as I do all street dogs. But at that moment in time, he was one of the very first Indie dogs I had befriended. We had grown into loyal buddies and would hang out next to each other once I was done with each morning walk at the beach. He was very loving, would relax entirely in my company, give me his paw, paw at me when I stopped massaging his body while he napped next to my leg. I adored the guy.
This dog is important in the grand scheme of my life because I had been afraid of dogs my whole life, at worst. I had been wary of them, at best. My younger sister, on the other hand, has forever been a natural magnet and sister to dogs, especially street dogs. My earliest memory of her interacting with a street dog was when she was tiny little girl in a little frock, barely able to put sentences together – she would just simply reach out her tiny hands towards dogs and they would come to her. My mother and I were both not familiar, comfortable or at ease around animals and we would have to lovingly tear her away from animals.
She, my little sister (7 years younger), changed my family’s life altogether when she brought home our first family dog (Leo) in 2018, and then adopted another (Koko – and he soon turned out to be my soul-brother) a few months later. Amongst the four of us (parents and us two sisters), she was the only one who was in love with dogs and truly understood that we needed them. One by one we all came on board and 4 years later, now we are truly a family – humans and dogs. Now we all love, we receive and give, non-stop.
Anyway, coming back to the ceremony – Ayahuasca showed me, at first, Chhotu‘s face and asked me to thank him. I thanked Chhotu profusely. I expressed gratitude for giving me so much love and joy. She told me I could send him a message if I so wished – I did – I told him that he shouldn’t worry about my temporary absence from the beach, that I was just away for a ceremony retreat, and that I will be seeing him soon, once I returned to Bombay.
I was told that he has received my message.
I said “Of Course!“
The beautiful thing about this vignette is that I didn’t even know the big picture yet about why I was thanking Chhotu. As it turned out, over the next three years, because of the comfort and ease Chhotu made me feel about approaching and befriending street dogs, I have befriended over a hundred street dogs. Months later, my younger sister and I started feeding, caring for & playing with a 100 dogs in our hometown. We did this for about a year before we all caught the COVID virus, after which the side effects weakened our bodies and even though we gradually stopped the feeding, we still continue caring for (medically) and playing with the same dogs.
Chhotu was the first ever dog, for Me, who showed me absolute trust, we both felt safe with each other, we both exchanged so much love and playfulness. It has truly changed the course and quality of my life. He opened my eyes up to my own deep reservoirs of love and affection. He made me realise that love comes in so many different packages. He made me understand the beauty and joy that’s out there at every corner, for us to bask in. Just go out of your house, when you’re feeling your worst feelings, and approach a street animal, with a pure heart and gentleness, and they just come and grant you the permission to be happy, to feel love and to understand that the simplest things are the most satisfying and validating.
Go validate your existence amongst animals. Go understand that you are loved and valued once you feed or play with a dog or cat. Or any other animal that’ll grant you their presence and touch.
Chhotu changed my life. And now I truly understand why I was asked to thank him, by Pachamama.
Next she showed me our family dog, the small beautiful one who my sister adopted from an abusive neglectful family, back in our hometown. Koko.
That maginificent creature. She asked me to thank him too. Again, at that time, I didn’t fully understand the scope of the gratitude I owe him. At that moment, I thanked him because I had already begun falling in love with him, during my intermittent short visits to my hometown. But over the next few years, after I half-moved back to my hometown and got to spend so much time with Koko that, I truly began to understand why she had asked me to thank him.
This little dog has given me so much love and joy that it will take lifetimes worth of gratitude from me to appropriately thank him. He is my shadow, he is my brother, he looks at me like he knows something I don’t, he looks for me, he keeps an eye on me (I am never let out of his sight when I’m in the same house as him), he frantically touches his paws & nose to my face when I cry, he goes for long walks with me, he has changed me so much. He lets me take so many liberties that he doesn’t allow others. He pampers and spoils me with his unique affection. He is the apple of my heart. I love this little guy like I have never loved before.
I thanked him.
Ayahuasca conveyed to me that meeting these two dogs was no accident – meeting them both was divinely arranged when I became ready. We are divinely connected in a loving bond with a simple but great purpose. I was brimming with joy and meaning. I felt so relaxed and at ease with life in that moment. I rested into it, so comfortable – no doubt, in self or life.
Around that time, I got up to head to the restroom to pee. I was wobbly high again, suddenly, so much so that I had to be careful while walking. Once I reached the restroom area, I could see myself in the mirror hung on the outside. I had to look away – it was very creepy. My eyes were so intense, I couldn’t really recognise that this was Me. I smiled nervously into the mirror and the smile was so eerie. Who was this person? Someone else. A stranger perhaps. I went in to do my business, and the fluorescent white light in the bathroom was coming at me in waves – the waves were so clear, so distinct – their ‘wave-ness’. When I looked down at my legs and arms, I was taken aback – they seemed bigger (bloated) and very strange/ alien to me. I kept looking at my body (whatever I could see beyond the clothed parts) and noticed how it all looked so alien. Like an ill-fitting costume. – it was quite disorienting. I stepped outside and again peeped into the mirror by mistake, only to rush away from it as I could not bear to look back into that pair of intense eyes that belonged to my face!!
I was back in my spot and continued to feel absolutely filled with glee and a ‘deep knowing’, a confident sense of being utterly loved and loveable. It had been the best night of my life. I had been ‘healed’. She had heard my prayer and helped me in the simplest ways possible. I don’t recall ever feeling anything even remotely close to that feeling – THE ABSOLUTE BLISS OF SIMPLY EXISTING – THE DEEPEST COMFORT WITHIN MY HEART – THE FULLNESS OF FAITH IN MY OWN LIFE, IN MY OWN MIND, IN EVERYTHING THAT I HAD BEEN SHOWN.
Before I knew it, there was a candle flame back on. The ceremony had come to a close. Maestro was leaving the maloca, and before he left he was checking on each of us one by one. I lay there, watching him come towards me. I was apparently grinning gleefully. As he looked at me, he smiled a big smile, touched my head, and said something in his native tongue. I didn’t understand it – but I didn’t even feel the need to ask. I was so blissed out.
He must have left after he checked on everyone. I don’t know, I was busy being blissful.
Most of us chose to fall asleep in the maloca that night as well, just as in the previous ceremony. Upon waking up at 6am the next morning, I felt like I was walking around with a halo around my head. I was obscenely cheery in the sharing circle that took place the same day. I kept saying like a braggadocious buffoon – “I have been healed! I have been healed!“
Yaay!
ArtPeace By Anjuri 
Leave a comment