A little note from the messy middle of post-ceremony and integration.
I had envisioned myself sitting in lotus,
surrounded by serene rainforest,
in my best goddess posture.
Blissfully creative.
Channeling words and chapters and divine downloads.
Instead.
I found myself on fire.
Deep in the dark and murky.
Pushed into my shadows.
Dancing a spicy, uncomfortable rumba with my shit.
Whisked away by the fierceness of it.
By the intensity of that dance.
It was not journaling in lotus.
It was not serene rainforest goddess vibes.
It was not soft landings and sweet insights.
It was fire.
It was friction.
It was deeper and harder than I expected.
I had booked five days at a lodge in the Costa Rican mountains.
I imagined myself integrating like a good student of the medicine – meditating, writing, gracefully processing revelations.
Instead, I found myself stuck in a remote place that was not at all what I expected.
Alone.
Except for two locals I did not vibe with.
Unable to change my ticket.
Navigating the cold, the sticky, the misaligned, the unpleasantness.
Squirming in discomfort.
Bla bla bla.
Not funny at the time.
Kind of hilarious now.
This is the part of ayahuasca integration – or any psychedelic integration – that we can prepare for, but ultimately just have to be with.
My challenging ceremony nights at Brave Earth took me to a place of losing faith in the medicine in a way I have not experienced before. A new doubt I had not met in this way before.
Only in the wee hours of the final ceremony did the faith find me again.
Landing back home,
as the dust settles,
the journey is finally landing and revealing itself.
This particular one.
And the medicine journey at large.
I understand now.
I see now.
I was indeed going much deeper than I realized.
The glimpses that felt somewhat minor at the time – almost insignificant – were the most monumental little but also big insights of my life.
I didn’t quite realize how deep I was going when I was in it.
I didn’t see the magic when it was happening.
As is commonly the case.
Which I very well know.
And still somehow lose sight of.
The kind of insight that rearranges the architecture from underneath.
Not from the rooftop.
This is what I come back to:
Finding the clarity and the trust that I deeply and innately know – but somehow forgot – that the medicine journey always is in perfection.
There is no other way.
And also –
it is rarely, or never, what we expect it to be.
Or want it to be.
Just when we think we have her – the medicine, the path – figured out,
everything changes.
I find myself in a deep, deep landing.
A reminder that it truly, absolutely is in absolute perfection.
Every moment of the journey.
Always.
Sometimes it does not unfold in clarity and bliss.
Sometimes it unfolds in fire.
In friction.
In being stripped of the image of how it was supposed to go.
Trust and surrender are not slogans.
They are lived in the moments where we want to bail.
Trust that we are exactly where we need to be.
Even when we squirm.
Even when we doubt.
Even when we temporarily lose faith.
Especially then.
Sometimes – or always –
the confusion, the hardship, the not understanding
is the undeniable path –
is the opening, the reveal,
from which within our own New Brave Earth unfolds.
With trust in the path and the perfection of the journey – Tove
