Battle Ready

by Ollie Ollerton

  As I put myself into her mindset, I started to feel strange sensations throughout my body. When I looked up, I was no longer peering into the shadows, but looking into the harsh sunlight, my vision clouded with sunspots. But as I adjusted to the light, I could see an animal stood over my baby – a threat not only to my kin, but my species. I was looking at the boy and I had become the . . . ‘This is madness!’ I thought to myself, managing to snap out of the morphing. For a moment I was able to put the brake on in my mind, holding back the craziness of what was happening as I tried to focus my thoughts elsewhere.

  At this point I was sitting with my legs crossed, with one arm to the side supporting me. Then, without a thought for what I was doing, I scratched the top of my head with my paw and realised I was the picture-perfect vison of a chimp on a lazy sunny day! I hadn’t escaped the madness at all, for there is nothing more futile than trying to outwit the truth plant; those all-knowing ayahuasca vines are like tentacles streaming through the darkness of your psyche and they will always find your futile boxed-up resistance, turn it upside down and shake it till the truth falls out.

  I heard another voice in my head, speaking a word over and over to me that no soldier ever likes to hear: ‘Surrender!’ Again, my initial reaction was, ‘Never!’, but I knew in my bones that my defiance was pointless, and I opened the gates and accepted what was happening: my defences down, the student finally ready. Physically, I was now on my mat on all fours, my balled fists planted firmly into the mat, a primal rage coursing through my veins. I felt my ears, they were getting larger, my forearms bristling with fur. My back rippled with dense muscle, I let out an almighty roar signalling my imminent attack. I was becoming the chimp again, but this time a genetically mutated cyber-chimp, and in my eyes was a HUD (head-up display) reading ‘INTRUDER. ENEMY’, as if I was the Terminator.

  I was so consumed by being the chimp I didn’t attack the boy. In fact, the whole experience wasn’t about the physical attack at all; it was about the emotion surrounding it from the chimp’s perspective. This heightened sense of empathy and compassion led me to think about everything important in my life.

  Laura, my girlfriend, would do anything to protect her son. I put her under pressure to keep the house tidy and also expected a lot from her in our business. I realised I was lacking compassion; that I wasn’t her first priority, nor were work deadlines and the business, it was her son, William. Quite rightly, he was her most important priority, and she was only doing what the chimp had done, taking care of her kin. But now I realised she’d been doing too much, working hard for Break-Point and looking after William. In future, instead of harping on at her, I needed to pause and put myself into Laura’s shoes. She was consumed by the business, it was suffocating her, ruling her life and leaving her precious little time for herself and William. I needed to be more compassionate and look to get her working less intensely on the business.

  After a second dose drink of ayahuasca, the teacher plant took me to the highway in Iraq where we were ambushed by the Taliban. A level of guilt had always stayed with me since I shot the young kid who had been about to shoot me. I was in his vehicle now, looking through his eyes and I watched myself lift the weapon and shoot through the closed window as I was about to fire. It seemed I was applying the empathy I’d learned from the chimp to everything else that had been buried in my psyche. It gave me closure knowing that his intention was to open fire, it was just that the other guy in the white Land Cruiser (me) had the upper hand.

  In the days that followed we had group sessions where we shared our experiences. I was worried my experience had been so profound it would belittle the stories of the group, and paranoid that it might appear that my ego was on fire (when it definitely wasn’t). I needn’t have worried; everyone else’s stories were phenomenal. Although we were a mixed group, my focus was on the veterans, and it was incredible to see the tangled webs of trauma starting to unwind. This was so powerful and like no therapy I had ever heard of. The stories were traumatic, but you could see the work the plant was doing in allowing the trauma to be exposed and understood in a very profound way.

  Following this, the second ceremony, we were given a night off in which to relax and reflect.

  I was a little apprehensive as the third ceremony grew closer. I really hoped it wouldn’t be a repeat of my turning into the ape, from which I’d gained so much insight, but given that I was nearing 50 and this trauma happened at ten years of age, I still had 40 years to work through. We went through the same process, as each of us took our medicine and set our intention, with a slight increase in the ayahuasca dose. ‘I surrender my body and soul, please show my path!’ I said.

  I returned to my mat and shortly after, I felt the medicine taking control. When I opened my eyes, the geometry was so powerful, the sounds of the jungle defined, despite being mixed with the soundtrack of each of us variously reacting to our visions.

  My first reflection was how outwardly judgemental we human beings are towards others, and how that in turn then creates so much self-criticism. We think there’s this thousand-person audience following us around sabotaging all our efforts, when there isn’t anyone. We put so much pressure on ourselves, create so many unnecessary situations. But once you let go of all that, you stop performing like an animal in a circus and become the real you. That night, as we were all locked in to our personal ayahuasca journeys, somebody started laughing hysterically and it set me off in fits of uncontrollable laughter; in fact, everyone started giggling, and it was lovely to hear, for it pulled us out of our visions and gave us pause to breathe and reset before heading back in. I felt incredibly connected to the other people; we’d all been through the pain and fear.

  At this stage it was amazing and fun, and I almost felt like I was having a great experience. In fact, I could have spent the night in this state, but I was quick to remind myself, ‘You’re not here for the experience, you’re here for the journey!’ I then made my way back to the healers, took a second dose of ayahuasca and reaffirmed my intention.

  I lay down, surrendered to the medicine, and the healers started to sing beside my mat. I was heading back to the circus and though that was the last thing I wanted, I realised that there was obviously still work to be done.

  This time I became the ten-year-old me. I was being attacked by the chimp and fighting back. It was as I’d always told the story, sketchy, with no real noise or emotion, just me and the chimp. As I looked up at her gnashing teeth, I realised I was giving her what for. It was a proper scrap, a last-man-standing type event.

  Then, like a human DVD player, I freeze-framed the action and asked myself, ‘What if you had surrendered that day, almost 40 years ago?’

  I reflected that my entire existence on this planet had been consumed with fighting; not just the physical military wars, but also my relationships, my schooling, my career and more to the point, the war with myself, my continuous internal battle. I heard a voice say, ‘Stop fighting!’ as I lay back on the mat and felt great comfort in the foetal position. The pressure and tension drained out of me; everything was serene. There was no more scrapping, just a sense of peace within me the likes of which I’d never felt before. I closed my eyes and died.

  When I opened them, I saw Laura lying next to me, her angelic blue eyes staring deep into my soul. I looked at her, stroked her cheek and said, ‘Everything is going to be okay. Come with me.’ I wasn’t in a physical body any more, I was in the spirit world, and I could hear everything – the leaves dropping to the forest floor – and the colours were incredibly vibrant. It was the after-life; I was connected to the Universe and it was beautiful. All because I had let go and surrendered. Since the age of ten when I’d fought back against the chimp, it had been imprinted on me never to surrender, and that was further reinforced in my time in the forces. But you must surrender to yourself to become the person you really are. Another word in my head was become. If you want to take ownership of a situation you have to become the situation,
not be just an element of it, and certainly not the victim. Become the host, not the guest.

  I felt like I was in Utopia after the out-of-body experience, and thinking the ceremony had now ended, I put my trainers on, went over to Todd, one of the organisers and said, ‘I know what it’s like, I’ve seen it, the afterlife.’ Then I left, went to my room and lay on my bed. Philosophy was racing through my mind like ticker-tape on a TV news channel, phrases like: ‘Sorry, doesn’t give you an excuse to do it anyway’ and ‘Pain screams the loudest when it’s dying.’ So many people had expressed so much pain these last few nights. I looked back on my life and marvelled that I had survived so much shit. Even in my darkest hour I’d found a smile. That would be a fitting epitaph. I felt amazing, grateful to be alive.

  Just then, Jessie, the American organiser from the Heroic Hearts Project, and Dave came back in the room. I was full of beans, ‘Hey guys, how are you!?’ Jessie seemed concerned, while Dave, who I’d never seen so lost and broken, looked at me and said, ‘I’m never doing this again. War was nothing compared to what I’ve just been through. If it wasn’t such a controlled environment tonight, I would have killed myself.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, and then he told me his story.

  THE HALLS OF VALHALLA

  Like myself, Nicko had experienced very little the first night as the ayahuasca dose was too weak; in fact he’d nodded off! But come the second night’s ceremony with a double dose poised at his lips, he asked la medecina to help him find closure for the death of three friends killed by an IED (improvised explosive device) in Afghanistan. In real life this had never been granted and was part of the fuel of his anger.

  In his trance, Nicko was walking the great halls of an ancient castle. With its mighty walls and vaulted ceiling, he knew instantly it was Valhalla, the resting place of dead warriors. One of his dead friends was there to meet him and showed him around. It felt so real, seeing his friend’s room and wandering the corridors of the castle. In a room with a bar sat all his lost friends who had perished in battle, friends who he’d never had the chance to say goodbye to, to hug them and tell them how much he loved them. He felt so happy to be there.

  Out of nowhere, a Taliban fighter appeared. In real-life Afghanistan at the age of 23, Dave had mistakenly shot and killed this man whom he had thought was fixing an IED into the ground. While it was deemed ‘justified’ by the rules of engagement, the man was innocent and there was no bomb. Dave had never forgotten this man, nor the distress his action had caused his family. And yet here was the Afghan in Valhalla, staring back at him, his eyes full of forgiveness. They shook hands and he embraced Dave. Then one by one Nicko went to each of his friends at the bar hugged them and said goodbye. Before he left them, another of his friends, Kevin, took him to a door and opened it. Sitting on the bed, his mother was weeping. Nicko tried to talk to her but she couldn’t hear him. He then began to realise the terrible strain his anger and his attempts at suicide had had on his family.

  The drawbridge to Valhalla was now closed and gone. As Dave woke up, one of the staff asked him how he was. He answered that now he had said his goodbyes, he no longer needed to feel angry at what had happened to them; every time he now thought of them, he would see them at the bar all together, happy and united. It was nothing but positive. The closure he had asked for had been granted. But his journey with ayahuasca was far from over.

  THE DEVIL IS A BLACK FIGURE OF SMOKE

  On the third evening, Dave had a triple dose. He asked the teacher plant to show him what he needed to live a positive life, and soon he started seeing patterns, everything red but for the black shadow he was following who kept looking back at him and laughing scornfully. Shirtless and shoeless, fires licking around him, Dave passed by the gates of Hell, the figure coiling with pitch smoke, its mouth and eye sockets even blacker. Hunched over and exhausted, Dave waited for someone to come and help him, but no one came. That was his first lesson . . . the only person who could help him was himself – he was all on his own.

  A few hours later into his vision and Dave was moving uncontrollably, thinking, ‘If I keep fighting, I’m going to die.’ In that darkened hell, his body went limp and he was flying through a tunnel of infernal flame at light-speed, his body pulsing with anger and pain, warming him with hatred, anger enveloping him in a sheet of fire. Nicko next found himself being presented with all the bad things he’d ever done but was forced to witness them from the other person’s view, as if he was in their shoes. He felt everything they felt and realised how insensitive he had been, but at the time he’d had no idea of his behaviour. It was overwhelming, he hated himself for it.

  It was now plain to him the dark figure was the Devil. When Dave looked down his hands were dripping red and he was standing over his dead wife and kids, slain at his feet. He had become a killer again. The Devil screamed with laughter as Nicko tried to revive them . . . tried for hours. Hell wouldn’t go away, he was still beside the shadowy figure, his outline indistinct and curling with tendrils of black smoke. The sense that there was no way out of there, that his death was coming, was unshakeable. He knew that a part of him had to die and there was nothing he could do about it. Overcome with self-pity and helplessness he began to sob. In the midst of tears, he realised he had a choice; he could will himself to die at that very moment if he wished. A sense of inevitability, sadness and desolation washed over him, as Dave felt there were still so many good things he could do to help other people before he died.

  And as he began to die, so did his mind-based identity. He found himself drawing away from the soldier he had once been, the ghost of which he’d been holding on to since coming to civvy street. He became disengaged with old concepts about himself and everything he’d been holding on to. And with that death came the rebirth of his true self, the re-emergence of the unconditioned, unlabelled, unbiased sparkle of consciousness that is prior to and beyond any judgement or category. That night the purge he went through was the worst yet, the healer drawing out the black toxicity from Nicko’s body and spitting it in his bucket, my friend convulsing and vomiting so severely, he felt as if his body was being turned inside out.

  LAST RETURN TO CHIMP COUNTRY

  I spent quite a long time trying to calm Nicko and reassure him his family were fine, it was just part of the vision. But I was absorbing his trauma. He wanted to call them and check they were okay, but I managed to persuade him against it. Eventually, he fell asleep. Unless you have a way of offloading trauma you take it on. And that’s exactly what happened. As I lay back down I went back into chimp country. Unlike last night’s attack, when I’d surrendered to the ape and the sound and emotion were absent, tonight’s trip to the circus was very real; I was screaming, broken, crying in panic. I lay in my bed and the chimp was on top of me every time I closed my eyes. This was the authentic replay of the attack that I had buried all those decades ago. It was an emotionally visceral attack, more than a physical one. I’d told such a watered-down, anaemic version of the story, while the real version that dripped with gore, snapped bones and blood, had been buried by my brain for my own sanity. This was the one moment I had not fully surrendered to, and now it was time to face my deepest fear and unlock the emotional pain of that day. This time the emotional trauma played itself out in full Dolby surround sound. The teacher plant had clearly not finished with me until this point.

  WHERE THE RIVER MEETS THE SEA

  The next day, Nicko told me he didn’t want to go through it again, and nor did I, but I reminded him we were here to face our demons. During our spiritual travels we had both died out of necessity in order for the trauma to die too and for us to move on with our lives. That final night Nicko took the teacher plant for the fourth time and it sent him back into the familiar wasteland of flame. He’d always felt diminished and without an identity since leaving the Special Forces, as if he was a weak, diluted version of his former self, but now he found himself arguing with the Devil, telling him, ‘I control my mind, not y
ou!’ The shaman came over to him. Nicko sat up, listening as the female shaman sang, breathing slowly as if swallowing her song. When he opened his eyes it was his wife singing to him. Falling back into the trance, she was waiting for him. She held his hand and said, ‘We’ll do this together.’ All the images of things he’d been through, losing his mates in Afghanistan, killing the man by accident, in fact, everything he’d kept away from her she was now witnessing. They were a team now, he knew he could trust her and had someone to fall back on.

  In his own words: ‘When I got back from Costa Rica, everyone back home said to me I was a different person, I was more approachable. Because I was at ease, people felt at ease with me. I never wanted to intimidate people. I feel at ease with myself now. I’m grateful for my life, my children and wife, my house, car. I feel like I’ve left my PTSD behind me. My wife said I used to violently jump around in my sleep, but now I sleep soundly and deeply. I have so much more energy and want to help others. I think I’m a better person. You’ve really got to want to change for the truth plant to work.’

  My last night, I wanted to return to the afterlife as this place had felt amazing. But as I started to leave my body, floating away formlessly, I saw those that were close to me, Laura, my mum and family, with tears in their eyes as they tried their best to pull me back. It may be awesome but my work and life experience are far from finished. I belong here.

  And my final night’s journey was full of colour, love, gratitude and compassion. The chimp was gone, the tortured river of pain from so many summers past, once so dammed up and twisted inside my mind, had now reached the sea and with its course the ape that had fractured my psyche had now left as a friend.