Whole Being: Life Alchemy
Being, Belonging, Becoming
The Vine That Calls Us Home
Every time I gaze at stars above, I feel small, big, infinite and connected all at the same time, and tonight on the Amazon is no different.~ Michael Sanders
Ayahuasca is not a drink. Not a substance. Not a simple brew of vine and leaf. It is a living medicine, a sentience that stirs awake in the ceremony, pulsing through the bodies of those who gather, stitching them together with breath, with music, with the fragile threads of their longing. It is not taken. It takes us...somewhere unknown. It moves in the dark, winding through voices, through drumbeats, through the rising and falling tide of human vulnerability.
I feel them murmur, I hope this is the healing I need.
They come. Pilgrims searching for healing, for the absence they can feel but cannot name. It is not about the journey inward. Not always. Not for me.
I did not come seeking a revelation. I have walked that road before, plumbed the depths of my own wounds, traced their edges until they were familiar landscapes. I did not come looking for myself. I came to meet the medicine—to sit in ritual, to drink the vine that has called these pilgrims across time and geography. I came for the we, for the murmur of breath beside me, for the fragile, trembling web of human entanglement that the vine stretches taut and luminous.
All politicians should be required to drink Ayahuasca 10 times before taking office. ~Graham Hancock
The Ceremony of the Many
They come broken. They come searching. They come with holes in their hearts, wounds where belonging should be. They drink and wait for the medicine to show them the missing piece, but the truth is this:
The missing piece is each other.
We do not heal alone. Healing happens in the mess; bodies purging, trembling, surrendering dignity before strangers. And in that surrender, the alchemy begins.
There are hands that cool fevered foreheads. There are voices that whisper, You are safe. Take my hand. There are those who hold the bucket while another retches out grief, hands steadying them in their storm.
This is the medicine.
Not just the vine, but the hands.
Not just the cup, but the company.
Not just the self, but the whole.
Some return again and again before they can surrender to community.
And yet, I did not turn inward. The music took me outward. My body was danced by the medicine, carried by the voices that rose in a language I did not speak, yet understood. We sang to the medicine itself, calling it forward, urging it on, celebrating its work among us. It was not a private conversation between ayahuasca and the self. It was a symphony, a choir, a weaving.
I was in the dance of the whole, not the dissection of the singular.
The Medicine Speaks in We
For some, ayahuasca digs deep, excavating buried pain so they may feel, finally, the warmth of belonging. For others, it asks only surrender. And then there are those who, even in the thick of their own experience, turn toward another.
A man near me was struggling. His words spilled out fast, unraveling, caught in a current he could not steer. I wanted to go to him. I wanted to hold his hand and remind him:
You belong here.
Not just in this room, not just in this moment, but in this world.
I did not move, but I knew. The rules forbade us from interfering with another’s journey. But what if we did? What if, instead of silence, we wove around him a net of love? What if we became the medicine for one another?
I wonder. I wonder.
And in the morning, as this man and I spoke, I understood that this was it, this cry to belong. This illusion of separateness is the pain we mistake as our own.
Ayelet Waldman’s critique, "The idea of going down to Central or South America and taking ayahuasca and shitting my pants and puking in a circle of overprivileged white people is not my idea of a good time. That's not going to happen.", reflects a perception of ayahuasca ceremonies as self-indulgent, commodified experiences catering to Western individualism. And in many cases, she is not wrong.
When the focus remains solely on personal healing, detached from any community context or communal responsibility, ayahuasca can indeed become another tool for privileged self-exploration, a spiritual tourism that reinforces the same isolation it claims to mend. But when the ritual is understood as not just about the self, but about the whole, the framework shifts. When healing is seen as an act of community, not just a personal journey, privilege gives way to humility. What can be humbler than shitting your pants and puking in front of others to heal a stranger?
With this focus the ceremony ceases to be an exotic experience to consume and instead becomes a reciprocal offering, a space where vulnerability is shared, where the medicine is not just the vine but the hands that hold, the voices that sing, the collective tending of one another’s wounds. Healing, in this light, is not a transaction but a responsibility, to the community, to the lineage of the medicine, to the web of life we are always already entangled within.
Ayahuasca is driven by sound, by song, by whistling. And its ability to transform sound, including vocal sound, into the visual spectrum indicates that some kind of information processing membrane or boundary is being overcome by the pharmacology of this stuff. And things normally experienced as acoustically experienced becomes visibly beheld, and it's quite spectacular. ~Terence McKenna
The Medicine Calls Us to Each Other
The facilitators take the medicine too. But they do not journey inward anymore. They stand at the threshold, holding the door open for others. They have moved from self-work to community-work, from seeking their own healing to tending the wounded hands of another.
Do they know? Do they see the shape of this transformation?
I think of Whitehead, his cosmic web, the way he whispered that every movement stirs the whole. That world-care and self-care are not two rivers but the same tide, pulling us toward wholeness. That to awaken to the whole is to shift from healing the self to healing the world.
What If We Came for More Than Ourselves? Ayahuasca does not tell me anything new. It only confirms what I have already felt in my bones: the work must lead to community, or it is incomplete.
But what if the ceremony were not for us? Not for our own breakthroughs, our own revelations, our own salves for our own wounds? What if we gathered—not to stitch ourselves together—but to stitch the world? What if we drank not for insight, but for service? What if we sat in that circle, trembling with vulnerability, to heal a stranger?
How many would come?
How many would endure the trembling, the losing, the vomiting, the surrendering of control—not for their own healing, but for the great mending?
Yet, in the end, this is the only way we heal the world. We are all the ayahuasca ceremony. And the vine, whispering its ancient knowing, calls us not just to drink, but to sing together. Not just to journey inward, but to dance outward. Not just to heal, but to heal each other.
The medicine is calling.
She is calling us together.
Will we rise to meet it?
About Ayahuasca: History and Uses
Below: Medicine carrier Claudino Perez
Ayahuasca is deeply rooted in the spiritual and medicinal traditions of Indigenous peoples across the Amazon basin, where it may have been used for at least a thousand years, if not longer. The exact origins of ayahuasca use among Indigenous Amazonian cultures remain a subject of scholarly debate. While some researchers propose that its use spans millennia, concrete archaeological evidence is limited. Notably, residues of β-carbolines and DMT—key components of ayahuasca—have been identified in a 1,000-year-old ritual bundle discovered in the Andean region, suggesting the use of similar psychoactive preparations during that period. Additionally, early colonial accounts from Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century document Indigenous use of ayahuasca, indicating its presence in spiritual practices for several centuries. However, the precise timeline of ayahuasca's origins remains uncertain due to the scarcity of definitive archaeological data.
The sacred brew, made primarily from the Banisteriopsis caapi vine and the Psychotria viridis leaf, is far more than a psychedelic—it is a plant teacher, a healer, a portal to the unseen. It contains the hallucinogenic active ingredient dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, which is illegal in Mexico, the United States, Canada and some European countries.
Among Indigenous groups such as the Shipibo-Conibo, Quechua, and Asháninka, ayahuasca is not simply a tool for individual insight but a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds, a means of communication with ancestors, spirits, and the deeper intelligence of the natural world. Traditionally, shamans, or curanderos, undergo years of rigorous training, fasting, and plant dietas to work with the medicine responsibly, serving as guides who mediate between the human and non-human realms. For these communities, ayahuasca is not a recreational experience, nor is it centered on personal enlightenment—it is a communal and cosmic responsibility, a ritual of healing, guidance, and reciprocity that reinforces the interconnectedness of all life. To drink the brew is to enter into relationship—not just with the medicine itself, but with the land, the lineage, and the collective web of existence.
- Miller MJ, Albarracin‐Jordan J, Moore C, Capriles JM. Chemical evidence for the use of multiple psychotropic plants in a 1,000‐year‐old ritual bundle from South America. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2019;116(23):11207–11212. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
The Reverend Dr. Kathleen Rose holds a Doctorate in Clinical Pastoral Psychotherapy and a Master of Divinity. Her areas of focus are thanatology and Process Philosophy. Kathleen is an ordained interfaith minister. She currently works as a board certified healthcare chaplain, and as an Eco Chaplain. Kathleen is also student of Japanese Tea Ceremony through the international Chado Urasenke Tankokai associations of the Urasenke School in Kyoto, Japan. Kathleen Reeves is a published poet, and writer. She is a philosopher and a ponderer
I am so glad you shared this experience with us, Kathleen. Thank you for your commitment to our transformation.