Intentions in an Ayahuasca ceremony can be very specific or general but either way can help you to focus your Ayahuasca ceremonies so they are of most benefit to you. I’ll give you examples of my intentions over my 8 ceremonies and also give you the ultimate intention just in case you don’t have one or don’t know where to start.
Intentions are the topic(s) with which you focus on mentally during an Ayahuasca Ceremony. By focussing on this topic you can make a focal point of it in your mind which, means that your visions and insights gained from talking to Mother Ayahuasca will be related to this topic. Let’s look at some of the examples of intentions I have had in some of my ceremonies.
TIP: You can work on intentions at any time but I would suggest the longer you have to think about these the better before you turn up to your Ayahuasca Retreat or ceremony.
My first 3 intentions:
Changing cerebral pathways:
I have/had a particular negative thought pattern in my mind which I wanted to alleviate. I focussed on this very strongly and was shown in my visions several moments from my past which contributed to this thought pattern. I was also given new insights as to why these happened.
The combination of these two things alleviated them to a large degree. I wouldn’t say that it’s completely cured but, it’s well on the way.
My specific intention was : help me to remove negative thought patterns in my brain.
There is actually a theory as to why psychedelics are able to help in this situation. Based on recent scientific discoveries that point to the ‘Default Mode Network’ of the brain as the house the ego (aka mind – by this I really just mean the part of your brain which runs your day to day activities).
The theory is that psychedelics decrease activity in this area which allows other parts of the brain (i.e. your true self – that part of the brain which is not your ego) to rewrite the pathways by showing you visions and giving you insights that allow a new pathway to be created. If that is true, it’s possible that with time and integration of the thought pattern (to reinforce it) it could become the dominant pathway.
It’s not fact yet, just a theory but, it’s also interesting to note that the active ingredient in Ayahuasca, being DMT, is chemically very similar to Serotonin which is known as an important chemical in the brain very strongly related to building neural pathways.
In my case, I think that the visions and new insights I received gave me the ability to have an alternative perspective on the situations which led to myself having that pattern. With this new information, I started to develop a pattern of thinking that circumvents the old one and with time and integration, I might be able to reinforce it so it becomes dominant.
In the 7 months since I had these insights, I have experienced less anxiety, but I still feel it is not the dominant thought pattern. Perhaps it won’t ever be but, I will continue to integrate with it and see where it takes me.
Investigate other peoples problems and helping them:
In my second ceremony, I saw a vision of someone close to me who has depression. I saw it as a spikey, translucent star fish looking thing and made a note mentally to check that out in my third ceremony.
My intention in my third ceremony was to investigate what that was and remove it.
During the ceremony I asked Mother Ayahuasca what it was but, I wasn’t getting any specific answers. I knew or felt very strongly that it was related to this person’s depression. Eventually, I understood that I didn’t have to identify what it was. All I had to do was ask for Mother Ayahuasca to remove it. I repeated in my head over and over again, ‘I am strong. Take her hardships from her. Give them to me’.
I must have said this 50 times and while I was repeating it over and over again. Every time I said it my stomach twisted and turned and cramped. It was working, my stomach was filling up with my her ‘depression starfish’.
That sounds crazy, why would stomach cramps be helping this person? Great question I don’t know. I only have some ideas based on the things I’ve read and having conversations with an English speaking shaman apprentice.
From what I understand, Shamans see a spiritual reason for all mental and physical health problems and with the help of Ayahuasca, they work to diminish or destroy the bad spirits causing the issue.
One of the ways in which you and the Shaman deal with the expulsion of these spirits is to purge them either via throwing up or by pooping them out.
So basically, as far as I can understand I asked Ayahuasca to remove the evil spirit (causing the depression) and she used my gut as a receptacle for the bad spirit knowing that later I would purge it from existence. Hence, when I repeated my intention my stomach filled up with this bad spirit and I was able to diminish it to a degree. I don’t think I completely destroyed it but, perhaps I took the edge off of it.
Being able to focus more on tasks:
My specific intention here was to work on what I call my ‘scatter brain’ or in other words my inability to just focus on a few tasks instead of taking on too many things.
Ayahuasca gave me a User Interface vision as it were to help me stay with one task through to the end instead of moving on too quickly. Ayahuasca gave me a very specific answer which emphasized breaking the task down into multiple smaller tasks and really understanding it before moving on to the next mini-step in the task.
My low back issues:
Before my first few ceremonies, I had read that it was possible to get physical help from Ayahuasca as well. I asked specifically to Mother Ayahuasca what she could do about my slipped disc and related nerve damage.
During the ceremony, I could feel Ayahuasca searching through my body and specifically my left leg where I had a lot of nerve damage and swelling. At the time I didn’t notice anything in terms of improvement, but the next day I did.
The actual disc injury itself I don’t believe was any better and the nerve damage felt slightly improved but, the big difference was that a lot of stress and mild pain which was normally constant was almost completely removed over the course of the 8 Ayahuasca sessions I’ve had.
I have no explanation or theory as to how that is possible. I haven’t read anything to explain this but, to this day (7 months and 8 ceremonies under my belt since I first took Ayahuasca) the benefits are still with me and my back feels very good relative to other periods in my life. I still have to rehab it but, much of the constant stress is gone.
The reason why I wanted to go into these 3 specific intentions was so that I could get across to you that it’s possible to go in with really specific concepts and things to work on if indeed you want to. On the other hand, you can also go in with a generalized ‘catch all’ intention and I think you’ll also be fine. I’ll discuss this below but first, if you want to be specific I next want to talk about how you might go about finding specific things to work on.
How to create your own intentions:
I recommend taking some time to understand what issues may be of value for you to investigate and focus on via meditation or psychotherapy.
As Strassman et al. recommend in their book Inner Paths to Outer Space doing these things can give you an idea of issues that may come up for you and therefore what you may want to focus on. They mention this method more as a way to be prepared for the potential themes which may present themselves but, it is my suggestion that this will also give you themes to base your intention off of.
Talking to a psychologist is also a decent idea especially if you’ve already been seeing one as they will have an understanding already about what your issues are. Another approach is to talk with them about your reasons for wanting to try Ayahuasca and you can base an intention off these.
I would also suggest that if you can’t see a psychologist for some reason then perhaps you have a close friend, partner or family member who knows you very well who can help you to identify specific areas from which to base your intentions.
Going into ceremony without a specific intention:
This is also very possible and I think highly useful, especially if you have a significant amount of time (e.g. 2 weeks or more which at 3 ceremonies per week would be 6 ceremonies) in which to do multiple ceremonies consecutively.
In this case, I would suggest going in with the intention of ‘show me what I need to know’. This is open-ended and allows you not to worry too much about having to meditate or see a psychologist and let Ayahuasca show you what she wants too.
I did this for 5 ceremonies straight recently and had very useful insights. Some of these insights were along similar themes to what I spoke about above like old family memories and the back injury while others were very new to me. The newer ones I don’t think I would have even known to ask about them specifically.
I think that in Ayahuasca ceremonies there is a place for this as we don’t always recognize what may be a good area for us to work on. In my case, I was made more aware of the separation between my ‘ego’ and my ‘real self’ and was also told that I need to meditate as a daily practice in order to learn how to control my ego better in day to day life. I didn’t quite have an ego death but, more aptly an ‘ego dissolution’.
In summary, there are a lot of things you could choose to specifically focus on (as in my early ceremonies) and if you don’t have anything then just go with – ‘show me what I need’.
If you have particular things to work on then do so, especially if you only have time to do a couple of ceremonies. If you have two weeks or more then I think there is merit in going with the less defined ‘show me what I need to know’ intention and let Ayahuasca do its thing.
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