The retreat is four weeks out. I have done this before. I know exactly what’s coming, which means my fear has more material to work with now than the first time.
When ayahuasca took hold during my last ceremony, this world clipped closed. What opened in its place was cosmic and dark and frightening. Not the productive kind of fear that later becomes meaningful. The kind that made me look for the exit.
I found an exit. Not literally – you don’t just stand up and leave an ayahuasca ceremony. But I pulled myself out of my solitary journey into the dark depths of the cosmos and sat around the fire instead, keeping my eyes open and ordering myself not to drop back in. I waited it out. Politely. Like a bad dinner party.
The question I have been sitting with since is not whether to go back. I am going back. The question is whether I will actually stay in this time. Stay to explore and experience mystery.
Which is how recently a long-term executive coach (that’s me) ends up at the door of a shamanic coach with a long and respected reputation, with a very practical agenda. I wanted spirit guides.
Specifically, I wanted to source spirit guides in advance, the way a sensible person arranges travel insurance before a trip rather than during one. The shaman would help me identify which spirit guides could meet me in the dark. I found this entirely plausible and slightly ridiculous, which for me, counts as open-minded.
I had been hearing about spirit guides the way you hear about a restaurant everyone else has been to. Repeatedly. With a casual confidence that suggested I was the only one who had not made a reservation. People described meeting their guides on psychedelic journeys with the offhand certainty of reporting the weather. The jaguar appeared. The serpent showed me something. Mother Mary came and stayed with me the whole time. I wanted to know if that was available to me, or whether I was simply not the kind of person spirits bothered with.
The shaman I visited had lived 75 years. He did not perform wisdom. He simply had it, the way some people have good posture. No website could have prepared me for him. When he started speaking, low and unhurried, I closed my eyes and went where his voice pointed.
Deeper into a forest.
This is where I should mention that I do not do well in forests. No city markers, no street grid, no rational system for knowing which way is out. The terror of being lost in nature is not metaphorical for me. It is physical, immediate, and embarrassing. I have panicked on actual hiking trails because the trees looked the same in every direction.
But I kept walking in my mind’s eye. His voice kept finding me.
He said an animal was waiting.
And there it was. Not the cinematic kind, nothing with dramatic symbolic weight or an obvious casting choice. Medium-sized. Soft and furry. Four legs. Moving quietly behind me, not pushing, not leading. Just present. Steady. Close enough that I knew it was there.
When the shaman brought me out of the guided meditation and asked what animal it was, I cycled through every large predator I could name with confidence. Jaguar. Nah. Lion. Nah. Tiger. Nah. Each one wrong.
A bear? he offered.
Yes! That was it exactly. Not the grizzly standing at full height in every cautionary national park sign. A younger bear. Cuddly around the edges. Walking just behind me as I moved further into the forest than I would ever have gone alone.
And its message, the one I had come specifically to receive, turned out to be a single word: Courage. Not the loud, chest-beating declaration kind. Rather – the quiet, comforting kind.
The shaman made one practical suggestion before I left. When I am on ayahuasca and the fear arrives, as it might, reach for a bear talisman. Something physical to hold in the dark.
I am not someone who collects talismans. I do not have an altar at home. I do not put much faith in woo-woo objects on my body to influence this or that. The old version of me would have noted this suggestion with polite skepticism and moved on.
And yet. There is a small bear charm around my neck as I write this.
I cannot fully explain that to you. I am not sure I can fully explain it to myself. What I can tell you is that four weeks is not very long, and I feel a bit of fear rising. Something about having a soft, four-legged thing padding quietly behind my left shoulder to guide me feels less absurd than it probably should.
Or, you tell me, should it?
