Once Love had my soul, Grandmother Ayahuasca switched it up on me. She tricked me. I had thought I was selling my soul to a Love that was euphoric and blissful. But that was only some of it. She made me experience the whole part. And together, she and Love, uncovered all my feelings of unworthiness and insecurity. It was different in that it wasn’t like the times when I had to learn to tolerate and sit with the darkness. This time, my secret feelings of shame were brought out in front of me and into the light. They made me look.
And when I did, every bit of it was covered in this all encompassing love. It was harder to sit with this full acceptance than it was to sit with the darkness. It was much harder. But what could I say, “Excuse me, Love, I know I begged you to own me but I didn’t know we were going here. Can I take it back?” No, I had already done it. And besides, “the best way out is through” at least, this time anyway. Meanwhile, Katy Perry’s Unconditionally, was playing. And as I said before, the music was alive and inside of me. That means the lyrics too.
Through Grandmother, Love held me and rocked my soul. Their tenderness made me cry out loud. This was even worse than expressing ecstasy in front of everyone. It wasn’t like the nervous crying I did in Dr. Child’s office, or the scared sobbing I did in front of the pastor’s wife. It wasn’t the moderated crying I had done during other ceremonies. No, this was like the pure cries of a child who is so in the moment that they cry like nobody is watching. Just like Love had made me express ecstasy like nobody was watching, they made me cry like that too.
Remember, I was brought up in Fundamentalism, the kind where too much emotionalism is scorned. And so it was not easy for me to be seen as my true expressive self. Had they not made me, I couldn’t have taken it, this kind of love. I couldn’t have born it. I couldnt have withstood it. It’s power was too great. Now I understood that unconditional love was not just that indescribable euphoria of the light. It was the bringing together of both the dark and the light. The light didn’t just tolerate the dark, it accepted it fully. It needed it to shine.
Years ago, during church services, I would accompany my now ex-husband on the piano as he sang The love of God with his beautiful voice. Back then, I didn’t understand I John 4:16b which reads, God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. And I also didn’t know the story behind the song or that the lyrics below were found scratched onto the wall of an insane asylum.
For a long time after the retreat, I remained very focused on the fact that Grandmother Ayahuasca had used trickery to get me to accept myself. Perhaps, you would say the end justifies the means. And it may. But my whole intention, the only time I had set a specific one, was to never be tricked again. And what did she do? She tricked me! I knew Abraham Hicks would say that Grandmother was just matching my vibration. I was focused on trickery so therefore I had to receive something that matched the vibration of trickery. In this case, it was trickery itself.
I see now that Grandmother had to meet me where I was which was in a state of severe naivety. She started by tricking me into thinking the power revealed through those eyes, my eyes, which I had seen in the bathroom mirror, were all I needed. They exuded that dark don’t fuck with me power. And I had thought that was the most powerful power. Months after that ceremony, I was listening to a song from Beyoncé’s Lemonade album. I had played it so many times before. But this one part of the lyrics, I really heard as though it were my first time listening.
“They say true love’s the greatest weapon to win the war caused by pain.” Finally, I had an inkling of understanding. Grandmother had tricked me into experiencing the greatest power, true love, which is unconditional love. Still, I had worried for a long time afterwards, about having sold my soul. Nobody had even asked for it. I just up and offered it without solicitation. I analyzed and hypothesized about how I could have so utterly lost control of myself and what the long term consequences might be.
Eventually, I was able to understand that If I really broke it down, which I will in the next part, I had sold my soul to myself. The short version is that God is love -I John 4:16b (and) I and my Father are one -John 10:30a. I had forgotten the illusion of duality. Grandmother Aya had done it again. She had worn the hats of both trickery and truth, two sides of the same coin. Or maybe, it was two sides of the same hat.