To Love and Let Go

by Rachel Brathen

  Laura practiced yoga at a small studio in town and I started tagging along. At the same time, I continued what I’d started in Spain—devouring spiritual books and teachings, eager to deepen both my meditation and yoga practice. I felt more empowered and more at peace than I ever had. I was finally living on my own and making choices for me with nothing to hold me back! Because I felt at peace, I created it everywhere I went. The strangest things happened; I would think of something and it magically manifested. I sat on the beach, longing for a coconut, and a friend suddenly walked by and offered me one. Whenever I needed extra money, a customer at the restaurant would give me a huge tip. Things like that. After a few months I began taking my newfound ability for granted. I got to a place where I could listen to my iPod, put all thousand-plus songs on shuffle, and know which song would play next. Now I know it as the law of attraction—your thoughts become your reality—but at the time it seemed more like magic.

  After working at the restaurant for what felt like too long, I was ready for something more adventurous, and right on cue, an opportunity presented itself. I was chatting with a table of customers one day, and before they paid the bill, I had a new job. Their company was in the process of acquiring land to build sustainable hotels. I was hired as the personal assistant to the head of the initiative, a man named John. It was a new position, and I think neither John nor I had any idea what it would entail. He told me he’d felt so strongly about having me on the team that he created the position for me. I did everything from administrative and e-mail work to more personal things like booking travel and keeping the team healthy with vegetarian food and fresh smoothies every day. One morning during a break, I rolled my mat out on the patio of the house the company was working from. I practiced the poses the way I’d learned them, feeling so comfortable in each one by now that they came without my having to think about what to do. When I walked back to the house John stopped me. “Can you teach us that?” he asked. “Teach you what?” I asked. “Yoga. It would be a nice thing for the team to do together in the mornings.” I thought about it. Teach yoga? Me? “Sure,” I said. “Absolutely.” The next day I guided John through a series of postures, speaking while I moved. I didn’t have to pause and think about what I was doing, even though I’d never taught it before. Strangely, it flowed naturally. At the end of the session a thought hit me. Had I just taught my first yoga class?

  One of the main properties the company was involved with was owned by a family who had started a commune, an intentional community, years before. I’d never seen anything like that—a group of thirty-some people, living together by choice in the rain forest. They shared chores—everything from tending to the grounds to cooking and cleaning. There was a strong spiritual component; everyone meditated and many practiced yoga, and they spoke to one another in a frank and honest way. Everyone had a say in how the property was used, so we spent a lot of time there and engaged in a lot of intense discussions—usually about communal finances. When long days turned to night, I joined in the meditation circles.

  One day John told me the commune was hosting a cacao shaman at the farm and that there would be a chocolate ceremony later in the day. I had heard of chocolate ceremonies for emotional healing and I was intrigued. A cacao shaman works with special types of beans from sacred parts of South America. An ancient ritual to prepare the cacao involves roasting and grinding the beans, then mixing the hot chocolate with brown sugar or agave syrup and cayenne pepper in a large pot. Cacao increases the blood flow to the heart and frees the heart chakra. Emotionally it translates to releasing pent-up feelings, and the ritual can be both intense and therapeutic.

  John and I arrived at the farm in the early afternoon and joined the group on the patio. The circle of twenty or so people, some of them new faces, sat around the big pot of bubbling cacao. I’d never met a shaman before and was intrigued to see what he would look like. I envisioned an indigenous man, dressed in beads and robes. Instead, I arrived to find that the shaman was an American man in his sixties, with white hair and a long white beard. I sat down in the circle feeling a little wary—what had I signed up for? Of all places, the shaman sat down right next to me and we locked eyes. Looking into his clear, blue eyes, I felt a jolt of electricity zap through my body. It felt as if he were looking into the depths of my soul.

  “Interesting,” he said. “We’re going to do you last.” I had no idea what he meant, but I felt chills up and down my spine. We all drank the cacao and my mouth went dry from its bitter, spicy taste. This tasted nothing like the hot cocoa I used to drink on ski trips back home! My friends from the farm told me it could take some time for the cacao to “work its magic,” but it was only a few minutes before I felt myself welling up with emotion. How did I end up here? In the middle of the jungle, with people I barely knew but somehow trusted deeply? The circle felt absolutely sacred, filled with a golden glow.

  One of the attendees was a sweet man named Jesse who lived on the farm and had come to the ceremony with his wife and kids. Jesse was a realtor in town and a friend of John’s. His last name was Angell (seriously!). I felt curiously drawn to his four-year-old daughter, Grace, who sat on a cushion—cross-legged, eyes closed, fingers in a gyan mudra—meditating. Grace wasn’t trying to be present the way the others were. She just was. Seeing her so intensely present without effort awakened something deep inside of me. We were all just trying to make our way back to what we already are! We are born this way, full of light, emanating love. We see it in children; it’s effortless. But somehow we get lost along the way. I felt a light emanate from Grace straight into my heart and, before I knew it, I had lost track of time and space. My eyes were open but I was breathing so deeply, completely immersed in the intricate workings of the moment unfolding around me. I felt one with the circle, one with the earth and the sky, one with all, and it lasted for what felt like forever. It was the most intense spiritual experience I had ever had. There was no thought, no ego, just light.

  Meanwhile, the shaman worked his way around the circle, taking his time with each person, sitting with them, guiding them deeper. Eventually, after many hours, I was the only one left. Turning to me, he spoke out loud to the whole group. “We are about to enter a very sacred space together now.” I heard his voice clearly, but it was as if I were somewhere else. I felt like I was floating above the ground. “You are on the verge of something life changing,” he told me. “Everyone has a purpose in life, but it’s very rare that I meet someone and immediately know theirs. I knew it the moment I looked into your eyes. And you are meant to realize and understand it now, too.” When he said this, I started crying, but it was different from the tears I had shed in the past. I wasn’t gasping for breath or wiping snot from my nose. Streams of tears flowed, no, poured from my eyes, but it didn’t feel like I was crying. It felt like I was purging. These are not my tears, I thought. But if they weren’t mine, where were they coming from? “They’re your ancestors’ tears,” the shaman said, as if he’d heard my thoughts. “That light you’re feeling in your chest? We all feel it, too. Keep expanding it. Keep breathing into it. We are going to move into your ancestry now. It’s a dark place and you’re going to need to bring this light with you.”

  I did as he said and closed my eyes. “Standing behind you are your ancestors,” the shaman said. “To your left is your mother. To your right is your father.” Behind them were their parents—my grandparents—and behind them theirs, and so on, he said, “creating an infinite triangle of generations behind you and forming the entirety of your past and your lineage. As you can feel, your ancestry is weighed heavy with pain.”

  Suddenly, I was overcome with emotion. I still felt the light emanating from my chest, but the rest of my body grew heavy with sadness and fear. Visions came before my eyes that felt like memories. I saw it all so clearly. Just like the tears I was crying weren’t mine, the memories I saw flash in front of my eyes weren’t mine either. I saw my dad, as an infant, being thrown across the room by his fath
er in a fit of rage; whipped with a belt; abandoned in a sterile hospital bed. My mother as a little girl with bruises on her arms, all alone and crying under her bedcovers while her sisters ate dinner with my grandmother in another room. My grandmother as a child locked in a cold dirt basement, the space so small she couldn’t stand up or lie down. My grandfather, chased down by his dad and beaten with a closed fist. The flashes of abuse went so far back that I didn’t recognize the children in them anymore, but I felt their fear and their sadness intensely. I was witnessing abusive behavior as it was passed down through generations. I felt my whole being weighed down with pain and sadness, but if I kept breathing into the light in my heart the way the shaman guided me to, it was bearable. Vision after vision passed in front of my eyes, and although I wasn’t speaking, the shaman was able to address them all. He saw what I saw. After a while, I felt myself strangely distant from yet intricately connected to what I was seeing. A part of me understood: this all lives in me. I was witnessing pain passed down from person to person, and however awful it was, it was what it was. I couldn’t change it. It was the past I’d been given, and it was given to me for a reason. In an instant I had a massive revelation: None of the people in my family had acted with intentional cruelty. They were acting out what they knew, repeating a pattern that started long before their own consciousness, generations before they were even born. The trauma was passed on to them and, strangely, they had no other choice. This was the best they could do.

  Finally, I saw myself as a child, and all of the emotional damage that was done to me. I saw glimpses of my mother’s depression, her suicide attempt, leaving me alone to take care of myself. All the separation and divorce in our family. I saw my father abandoning us to start another family. Threatening us. Yelling at me. With every flashback I felt the pain I’d been carrying for so many years. With that came the insight that I’d lived my life up to that point with the idea that my parents “should” have done things differently—as if they had made a conscious decision to bring about such hurt. Once I could see and feel what they endured as children, my own childhood began to make more sense. In one swift moment, I understood that my parents loved me the only way they knew how. They had done the best with what they were given. What more could I possibly ask?

  The next breath I took was so deep it felt like the whole of the universe was breathing through me. As I breathed out, I exhaled much of the resentment I’d been carrying for most of my adult life. The pain was still there, but it was bearable now. There was still healing left to do, but the weight of my sadness was lighter. With that realization, I cried so hard it felt as if the world was crying through me. I’d been right earlier when I’d thought my tears were not mine. They were the tears of an entire lineage, of all of my ancestors combined. I cried for my mother, for my father, who were just children once, too. I cried for my grandparents and for their parents. I cried for every child who had ever felt unsafe, for every moment of pain they’d ever endured. I cried for all of humanity until, suddenly, there were no tears left to cry.

  When I opened my eyes again, it was getting dark outside. The whole day had passed and the only people remaining were the shaman, my boss, John, and a woman I didn’t know. They were all looking at me with tears rolling down their cheeks. The shaman spoke to me: “It is your life’s purpose to take on the accumulated pain of your ancestors, carry it on your shoulders, and transform it to light throughout your lifetime.” As he was speaking, I felt a palpable light shining from my chest. If light was a feeling, this was it. “This all ends with you. All of this pain—it ends here. It’s a heavy life purpose to have, but you can do it. It’s why you are here. This pain ends with you. Your daughter will be the first in your lineage not to take it on.” Goose bumps suddenly covered my body. “My daughter?” I asked. “Yes,” he replied. “Your daughter. Spirit has great plans for her, too.” I smiled. One day. A daughter. Looking at the others, he said, “Place your hands on Rachel. She needs to feel this connection.” They did as they were told, but I felt uncomfortable. My own hands were on fire—I didn’t need people to put their hands on me. I needed to put my hands on someone else. I turned around and put my hands on John’s and the woman’s backs. It felt like flames were shooting out of my palms. John later said it felt like he was being lifted off the ground.

  I don’t know how long we sat there, the four of us, on that wooden deck, but I felt the need to rest, so I closed my eyes. When I awakened, I was alone. A quiet rain fell on the tin roof, and a mist rose from the grass. The light I’d felt emanating from my body earlier was still there, and my heart felt like it was swelling out of my chest. Everything was so unbearably beautiful. The silence was otherworldly, like nothing I’d ever experienced. But it wasn’t that the world had gone quiet. It was my mind. The incessant chatter I’d lived with, that little voice in the back of my head that said, You’re not good enough . . . no one loves you . . . that’s why everyone abandons you—the voice I was only ever able to quiet during moments of intense meditation—that voice was quiet. The silence was coming from within. Is this enlightenment? I wondered. With that thought came the instant realization that it wasn’t, because if it were, I wouldn’t be asking the question. I felt no disappointment. Okay, it wasn’t enlightenment. But it was damn close.

  I stood up; my pink and turquoise dress was sticky with sweat. Stretching my arms above my head, I let out a deep sigh. With my mind still quiet I stepped barefoot out into the jungle. I felt reborn. I walked into the woods. Everything was shining, as if dusted with glittering light. I walked for a bit and then laid down, belly first, with my face buried in the wet grass. I inhaled the earth and felt at one with it—the soil, the trees, every blade of grass. Soon, a deeper knowing sunk in: I am this earth. This earth is me. Everything is alive, like I am. We are alive together. All those clichés I’d heard in yoga class, or in meditation circles, or read in spiritual books were true. We are one.

  By the time I got back to the farm the sun had set. I stepped onto the deck where the ceremony had been held, still feeling the vibration of the deep healing that had taken place. I longed for my mother and father. I yearned to tell them how much I loved them. “That was a wild ride!” someone said. I turned around. The shaman. “Yes,” I said. “It was—” He interrupted me. “No need to explain,” he said. “Stay silent, let it integrate. What you did here today was life changing. Healing moves both ways. Old generations and new. You have a great, big purpose in life. Don’t lose sight of it.” After a moment he asked, “Have you recently been invited to an ayahuasca ceremony?”

  How did he know? A week earlier I’d been invited to an ayahuasca retreat but, after much contemplation, decided to decline. Ayahuasca is a vine with hallucinogenic properties that is boiled into a tea and used for intense spiritual awakening. I was a little overwhelmed by the idea. “Normally I recommend against it,” the shaman said. “You see, with cacao, you take it on your own journey. You are only faced with what you are ready for. You steer the ship. But ayahuasca . . . it takes you on its own ride—you have no control. It can be a scary thing, taking the medicine. But I feel intensely that you have been called to do it. If you have the opportunity, go.”

  Putting his hand on my shoulder, he smiled. “Remember: there is nothing to fear,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “There is only love.”

  let go

  5

  * * *

  SURRENDER

  A day later, John called me to say he had decided to attend an ayahuasca ceremony and he thought I should come, too. Everything is divine, I thought. Nothing is random. I hadn’t told him that the shaman already urged me to take part.

  A girl named Kim from the farm joined John and me, and I brought my new puppy, Quila. Kim was familiar with ayahuasca and told us what to expect. The medicine would show us what we were avoiding and force us to deal with painful things from our past, she said. The purpose was to clear out negativity and old wounds for optimal spiritual healing. “But it’s a hallu
cinogenic, isn’t it?” I asked. I’d never been into drugs of any kind. I’d done my fair share of experimentation as a teenager but nothing I wanted to repeat. I didn’t even smoke weed, unlike almost everyone else I knew. I didn’t like losing control, and every time I’d tried it, marijuana left me feeling uneasy. Ayahuasca wasn’t technically a drug but a deeply spiritual ritual, an ancient ceremony performed by indigenous shamans in certain parts of the world. Yes, the substance used was a hallucinogenic, Kim said. “But nothing like mushrooms or LSD.” I had no experience with either mushrooms or LSD so I didn’t quite understand what that meant. I decided to trust that I was put on this path for a reason, but I was still afraid.

  The retreat center was in a remote location with no easy way to get there. We drove for hours to get to the nearest town, then navigated a small boat through the mangroves and arrived at a deserted beach just as the sun was setting. I saw, in the distance, a small figure dressed in bright pink. As we got closer, I could see it was a man who was very small and very old, wearing indigenous clothing and white face paint. He was smiling, his hands joined at the center of his chest in prayer. Now this was what I’d envisioned a shaman to look like! But I knew now, light comes in any form. In the cacao ceremony, it was four-year-old Grace who had initiated me. In a way, she was a shaman, too.

  The man gestured for us to follow him into the jungle. He was barefoot but maneuvered the narrow paths like a child, jumping across rocks and balancing on roots sticking out of the ground. After a bit of a hike we got to the retreat center. It was bathed in candlelight, and a group of twenty or so people were gathered around a table, talking. They were stunned by the fact that we were there—there was no electricity at the center, and since we had decided to join in several days into the retreat, no one knew we were coming. They had all been eating dinner when the shaman suddenly stood up and announced, “They are here,” and left the table. How did he know we were coming? I was in awe. This shaman . . . it was the real deal. He only spoke the indigenous language of his tribe and had an interpreter there from their village, translating in Spanish. When I asked how old he was, he smiled and spoke in a tongue I didn’t recognize. “He says he’s not sure,” the interpreter said. “He thinks, a hundred and twenty-seven.” I smiled, as if he were joking, but his face was serious. They gave us small huts for sleeping, and we prepared for the big ayahuasca ceremony that was to take place the following day.