Ayahuasca Diaries: letter from a forgotten grandmother

by Joanne Richardson

My dear ones, my lost children of darkness and light. I come from your present and future past,
from all that you have been, and from your hopes and dreams. I have been calling you for a long
time, but your ears were deaf to my song.

Perhaps you have found your way to me after a dark night of the soul. I cannot promise to deliver
you into the light. But I can sit with you, for a while, as you learn to light your own candles. And
it is possible that your night will get darker still, and that you will need to carry many candles
before the dawn appears.

My dear ones, do not look to me to heal you from your wounds or to save you from yourselves. I
cannot do it. All shades of plastic healers and tricksters have said that I can cure everything from
cancer to depression. But the truth is, I cure nothing. And my shamans, they cure nothing. I am
the flesh and the spirit of the sacred wisdom of the earth, of the plants, animals and birds, and of
the stars and moon, which I reflect back to you in your own visions. I am the stuff of dreams –
even though sometimes in me you can see only your own nightmares. I am the mirror of your
soul, I am the mirror of the soul of ages, and the soul of the ageless. When you behold me, you
enter the realm of the bardo, of your own symbolic death; and in that realm it is not external
beings that you see – angels and demons and malevolent spirits, or gods and sorcerers and devils.
What you encounter are your own heights and abysses, your shadows and projections. I am the
mirror that is calling you to stop running and to turn around. To face your own evasions and to
witness the countless ways in which you’ve learned to hide. So that you can better know
yourselves. And to decipher, behind it all, your own greatness. In the end, you must become your
own healers and shamans. I can only walk with you, for a while, and hold your hand. But the
journey is yours to make. And it is a journey you must repeat, everyday. It will take you from
illusion to reality, from the consensus trance of a mad world to the sanity and stillness of your
heart, and from the death of a lifetime of quiet desperation to the immortality of an instant. Let us
share our dreams, together.

My dear children, the rooms in your house are a chaos. The house of your soul and the house of
the earth on which you tread your feet, not lightly. I cannot put those rooms right for you. I
cannot be a mother/father that admonishes you, with a stern voice of authority, to clean your
rooms, under the threat of punishment or the promise of reward. That is not how grandmothers
speak. I can tell you, with a voice that echoes the vibrations of love and understanding, and the
melancholy of quiet sorrow: look at the huge mess you have made. Are you happy dwelling in
this chaos, where it is difficult to encounter yourselves, difficult to find your belongings, where
all your toys lay scattered and buried under the rubble of madness? Can you not see that if you
choose to clean your own rooms, not because of any compulsion or promise, but just so, for
yourselves, and in this present moment, which is all you can ever know of time, then you will be
able to breathe better, to move around more easily, and to learn how to play. Once more. There
are so many lost treasures beneath the mess you have made. Find them.

My dear ones, my lost children of darkness and light. You see the cosmos as a stage on which
the drama of good and evil is played out. You dream of a sword of light that would conquer and
vanquish all the darkness. And you have made the whole world into a projection of the
battlefield of your own souls. You fight, endlessly, against the monsters and demons within
yourselves. But those demons are the wounded inner children of your past, they are your pains
and your defenses, they are the voices that could not emerge into the light and learned to live in
forgotten caves. They are your insanity. And they are your innocence. They are you. And those
others who you rage against, because of their ignorance, and stupidity, and immorality, and
ugliness… they are also you. Lay down your weapons and embrace your enemies. Especially
those enemies that live inside you. Haven’t you understood – no battles are ever won. They are
not even fought. The battlefield only reveals your own folly and despair, and victory is the
illusion of philosophers and fools.

My dear ones. Let us learn to dream, together. This moment is all you can ever know of time.