2.3 Creating intentions for the ceremonies

What is an intention?

An intention is something similar to a ‘guide’ or ‘goal’ to your ceremony. It can be developed and used in order to guide the experience and La Madre to a particular aspect youd like to work on. It is usually just a simple sentence or two that you mentally declare in a ceremony. Setting an intention is a micro-cosim of the greater world. We can guide a ceremony just like we can guide our lives. Intention is a great tool to add to your life after ceremony as well. It sounds cliche but what we focus on does become our reality.

NB: An intention can even be a question. Amazonian people ask La Madre lots of different things. Western people like myself tend to think of it as psychological healing but La Madre has many aspects different than this also.

How to form an intention?

You could form an intention in many ways. Here are a few that I like.

1. Instead of spending time developing a very specific intention you could ask for La Madre to “show me what I need to know. I am open to learning and will observe carefully where and what you choose to show me in this ceremony”.
2. You could use an emotion you have that you’d like help with. Perhaps you have a lot of anxiety and you could ask “I feel a lot of negative emotion and would like help to heal it”. Negative emotion being anxity, negative thoughts, depression etc.
3. You could ask to develop a positive emotion. “I would like to experience more joy and love in my life. Help me to develop this in my life”.
4. If you have a meditation practice you could observe your emotions and thoughts during your practice and find something there which you’d like to form into an intention.

Personally, I enjoy the first one the most. I like to prepare as thoroughly as I can and when I show up to ceremony I feel relaxed and open to the possibilities wherever they take me. I think this is also good if you are in your first ceremony and are not sure what to ask for. 

How to use an intention in ceremony?

Once you have your intention in mind you can simply “speak” (mentally in your own head) your intention in the ceremony.

Set and Setting:

‘Set and setting’ is a famous phrase in psychedelic cirlces and refers to ‘set an intention’ and ‘develop a condusive setting’ for your ceremony. By doing Ayahuasca in a ceremonial style fashion with a qualified and experienced Shaman you have likely taken care of the ‘setting’ part. With the addition of this section of the course we have also taken care of the ‘set an intention’ aspect.