Please feel free to listen to my music while you read. Thanks and I hope you enjoy!
Begintro
In the year 2000 I was an undergraduate student at Towson University trying to bring an end to a tumultuous 5 1/2 year Bachelors Degree program in Sociology. Fortunately I still had a couple of electives to finish up so I looked into some classes in the Philosophy Department. I could've taken Bowling 101 or Contemporary Peruvian Basket Weaving but I was at a point in my life where I needed some blend of freedom and pragmatism. I decided that I would take a class on self hypnosis, meditation and yoga. I also remembered that my friend Jeremy had taken a class with the same professor the year before in Amsterdam, Holland. He described the class as a whole as part coffee shop adventure, part Hiphop head fantasy and part educationally enlightening. Who could resist? Especially a class named the Philosophy of Addiction, Co-Dependence and Self Liberation!
After taking care of the requisite planning and financial burden of a month long trip to Europe I was off to Holland. If you've never been to Amsterdam I'm sure you've heard the stories of coffee shops offering the best weed in the world, the sanctioned prostitution, blah blah blah...all the stuff the average American tourist does. But after the first few days, that grew to be the norm and it was all pretty tame. To me the real beauty of Amsterdam is its ability to create a city that allows for different beliefs and practices to coexist peacefully. When I walked down the straats (street in Dutch...cause I'm cultured) I would pass Buddhist temples, brothels, hotels, record stores, coffee shops, heroin needle dispensaries, artist squatter communes and professional offices sometimes all on the same block.
The class was held in a hostel in Vonndelpark, one of the biggest parks in Amsterdam where we were also staying. Every morning we would wake up, eat a horrible breakfast and attend class for two hours. It was during this class that I was introduced to the teachings of Ken Wilber, Carl Jung, The Enneagram, Michaels Overleaves, as well as the various developmental structures of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity and Islam.
After the class we were free to roam around the city at our leisure for the next 22 hours. The idea was to explore theories about the self and then go into the dynamic city of Amsterdam to explore who that self is when presented with a multitude of options of how to be. Amsterdam was the perfect choice for this experiment. I was told by my professors that on the last day of class we were offered to take part in a ceremony called Ayahuasca which involved taking a very powerful hallucinogenic potion that is likened to "holding hands with God". As a budding psychospiritual spelunker I couldn't resist the opportunity find out what the experience had in store.
On July 29th, 2000 three students and one professor took a ferry across the river Ij to a church that looked as if it were built in the 18th century. When we arrived we filled out waivers that informed us about the ritual, the potion (called Jurema) and the group leading the ceremony called The Friends of the Forest. The Friends of the Forest are a group of like minded spiritual seekers that practices ethnobotany, or healing through the ingestion of medicinal plants. The Friends used Ayahuasca to help individuals who struggled with depression and substance dependence and reported favorable results.
Ayahuasca is an ancient practice engaged in by various native cultures of South America. The word Ayahuasca ("Aya" meaning spirit and "huasca/waska" meaning vine) roughly translates as "vine of the dead/soul/spirit" called so because it introduces the taker of the potion to profound spiritual realities about the nature of the universe and deep insight into their true purpose; it can also cause temporary psychosis and severe emotional distress. We were told that what determines our experience is our relationship with our minds and how comfortable we were with seeing what it really contained; some people see angels some demons, some both and some neither. As I was told on the waiver, I should also expect to purge i.e. vomit or diarrhea which is a side effect of the potion and an important part of the ritual itself representing a release of negative energy and emotions. It's recommended not to eat or take any medication at least 12 hours before the ritual but it was too late to do anything about my full stomach of Lebanese lamb shwarma. So Ayahuasca is no joke, and I don't recommend doing it without very experienced guides and a healthy grounding in experiences with other psychoactive substances.
The Friends of the Forest were there as facilitators and guides throughout the 8-10 hour process to make sure that we were comfortable and deal with any disturbing things that we experienced. In the main hall of the church was a shrine on which sat symbols from various religious traditions. Through the center of the hall leading to the shrine was a path of candles and crystals, mainly large geodes, about 100 feet long and a space in the center with a small square blanket with room for about four people to sit. The participants sat along the outer walls of the church surrounding the path. The four of us that attended were joined by about 50 others, all dressed in white, some who appeared to be yogis who wore turbans and had beards that reached down to the floor.
We were told that the ceremony would consist of three rounds and at the beginning of each round we would come to the shrine and receive a cup full of the Ayahuasca potion. I brought a journal with me to document my experience and wrote in my normal penmanship to my girlfriend at the time about how much I loved her and hoped that the ritual would improve our relationship. After I jotted down some other notes it was time to take the first potion. After the first dose I sat down and we were led through guided meditation while listening to subtle atmospheric music. I began to see trails and have some milky bodily feelings. I remember thinking that it was like taking mushrooms. When my eyes were open I saw vivid colors and had a general sense of peace. When I closed my eyes, my mind was awash with images all of which transformed into whatever it desired. The first round was cool. I remember being so caught up in the experience that I was surprised when we were called for the second round. After drinking the next Dixie cup of bitter Jurema I sat down and began to write a little more about the first round.
" The first round was very peaceful. We went through different meditations and then a silent round. During the silent round is when I began to really feel the effects of the Ayahuasca. It was calm and tingly, like shrooms, then it intensified and began to give me very intense geometrical and audial visions. Audial visions. That sounds like an oxymoron but the sounds were so vivid and in other languages and voices but somehow it was all in English but me speaking to me. I went to the bathroom and sat and thought that soon I would be home but no matter how far I fly I can't get away from me."
The second round is where it all fell apart.
I can't really explain the second round because I wasn't really "with it" anymore. Whatever ties I had with reality were cut and I went quite literally somewhere else. It was as if I was transported to another realm where I was present and awake to my experiences but had no control over what I chose to experience. My mind showed me whatever it felt I needed to see. There was no persecution or judgement in my visions, there was nothing that tried to hurt or scare me. Everything I experienced seemed to come to me for my benefit. I remember having a conversation with my deceased grandfather and apologizing to him for not being the grandson I felt I should be. I don't know if he forgave me or not but I do know that he seemed happy. During the second round I joyfully laughed and cried at the vivd, dreamlike display. Writing during the second round was drastically different than the first. Aside from the fact that my handwriting regressed about 20 years, my ability to capture the experience in sentences had been reduced to singular words. I remember opening my eyes and asking myself, "what do I write". What I wrote is:
"The question is what don't I write"? "2nd dose, Trans-critical plateaus unimagined, love, fathomless, grief, beauty, explosions of God, me, ME, WE! J-Who? C'mon now, you know the answer, you've always known. That's the pain. SHOWING UP! SHOWING UP! SHOWING UP!
Showing up, or being present for life is what I took from the second round. All of my life's pain and suffering could be boiled down and distilled into that phrase. I saw how much fear and avoidance were my dominant responses to life and that if I had only been more brave, more trusting that I wasn't crazy, more self affirming, more sure that I wouldn't be destroyed by the experience then I wouldn't be haunted by moments of weakness and frailty. I also realized that because of my conditioning, I could only end my suffering by pledging to show up as soon as possible. Little did I know I would soon be presented with an opportunity to do just that.
While the 50 or so participants of the group were on their internal Jurema journeys, outside of us, in the center of the room was a group of three people playing soft music on a guitar. I remember listening to them and beginning to nod my head to the rhythm. I then began to beatbox very quietly, or make rhythms with my mouth in sync with the guitar melody. I quickly stopped myself, thinking that this was a sacred occasion and out of line. The highly spiritual, yogic like appearance of the other participants and the meditative environment informed me that there was no place for anything Hiphop related. Hiphop is not spiritual, it is not gentle, not subtle and has nothing to do with the divine at all. My mind then flashed to a lesson I learned in my class about a term, "non-dual". That things are not two, nor are they not one. All phenomena do a dance called "the one and the many" where they maintain both their connectedness and individuality at the same moment. What that meant is that Hiphop was not separate from spirit/divine and that although it manifests in various ways that it could never be separate. So me beatboxing was no less "spiritual" than the Ayahuasca ceremony itself, the difference was the degree to which my heart was in aligned with my intention.
I stood up and walked around the path of crystals to the area where the guitarists sat. They smiled, gestured for me to sit and offered me some water. I spent a minute listening to them play, gathered my courage and then began beatboxing, loudly. All of a sudden the group awoke from their collective hallucination, raised their heads and began to nod to the beatbox in unison. After some time the guitar players began to slowdown their playing and I followed suit, bringing the beatbox to a close. When we stopped, the group placed their hands in front of their heart and bowed.
The third round was a blur. I was completely overcome by my visions and don't remember a thing. I did manage to write one word. "Ghost".
At the end of the ceremony many people walked up to me and shook my hand telling me that the beatboxing took them and the ceremony to another level. One man, Soma, had me call his family in America and beatbox for them. I wasn't rejected and in fact the beatboxing seemed to be of benefit to others. Whether it was beneficial or not I can't really say, but what I could say with certainty is that I had never felt closer to "God" and "Hiphop", and my definition of those two concepts had never been more malleable. From that moment I vowed to live that experience whenever thinking about, speaking about or creating "Hiphop". However my vow alone wouldn't be enough to turn my insight into actuality. What needed to drastically shift was my view and practice of Hiphop which would only come with my own psychospiritual development. I needed a path.
Justin F. Miles is the founder of Hiphop Alive and pioneering practitioner, theorist and educator at the intersection of Hiphop culture, mindfulness and contemplative studies. He is the leading voice championing the use of Hiphop infused contemplative modalities to foster resilience, emotional intelligence, and community empowerment.