How Ayahuasca Taught Me Astrology: Humility and The Cosmic Yes

Hey, everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Today, I am going to pick up on a series that I have not visited for quite some time now, and that is a series that I started making a few years back on how the experience of working with Ayahuasca over many years and some other general psychedelic or entheogenic ritualistic experiences served to play an important role in my process or development as an astrologer. And part of this has been personal for me.

I've wanted to make sure that I catalog and sort of, yeah, just take the time to document some of the ways in which those experiences informed how I think about and do astrology because I haven't been involved in intentional psychedelic work for a long time, and I don't want to lose track of or sort of forget some of the insights and experiences that were so amazing, and as time goes by, it's sort of easy to forget, but also because I think people who watch my channel might be interested to know a little bit about how my view and my approach to astrology was shaped and informed by these experiences. So that is the agenda or goal for this.

In this episode today, I'm going to tell you a little bit about one very particular Ayahuasca ceremony that I had that played a pivotal role in my development as a young astrologer, and I think it's still with me today, and I hope you'll find it interesting. I'm going to issue a few qualifiers before I start because I want to make sure people know that I don't think anyone needs to do psychedelics or drink Ayahuasca, or this is not a promotion of those activities. If you are or are not called to those things, it's totally fine. And there are also many ways in which we might access alternate states of consciousness that we can learn and grow from, other than using entheogens.

So I want to make all that clear before I get started because I know there are some people who listen to this channel who are not necessarily interested in psychedelics or who may even find them, you know, to be not aligned with their path. So, I want to make sure I respect that. I'll say a little bit say a little bit more about that after we get going here with some promotions. Don't forget to like and subscribe before we get into it today, and share your comments and reflections. I would love to hear about your experiences and the kinds of spiritual peak experiences that you have had in any form or path that have shaped your life or your interest in astrology.

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So anyway, now that we have said all of that again, here are a few qualifiers for those of you who don't know: I got into astrology. The gateway that really opened that for me was about a decade ago. Throughout my 20s, I started using psychedelics in medicinal, ritualistic, and very structured settings, guided, safe settings I would describe. That's how I would describe my experiences in South/Central America, traditions from Brazil and Peru that I got involved with in my 20s and utilized the work with Ayahuasca to overcome opiate addiction in my early 20s, which was an amazing life-changing part of my story.

Also, it was these experiences with Ayahuasca that opened the door for me to things like yoga, meditation, a regenerating of my early Christian upbringing, but in a more universal and sort of psychedelic context, you might say, sort of universalizing, sort of a Christ Consciousness vibe.

But it also opened the door for me, especially to yoga. I owned a yoga studio for about a decade with my wife, and then astrology and the language of astrological archetypes and forms of divination, like the Tao, I-Ching and astrology itself. So these things all came kind of flooding into my life after a number of the early psychedelic experiences that I had with Ayahuasca; of course, it was things like accidental, you know, use of mushrooms, really, just thinking I was going to get high, and party like it was any other drug, and having a very unexpectedly spiritual experience. And those things kind of opened the door for me to get involved in more sacred and intentional ceremonial contexts with Ayahuasca in South America.

Now, this was back in like 2004, so I was getting involved in this quite a ways before some of the, like, massive popularity of Ayahuasca and other entheogens, you know, it's, it wasn't quite what it isn't, it wasn't quite what it was back then, as as it is now if that makes sense, I think I said that right, anyhow. So then, for about a decade of my life, I wrote a book about Ayahuasca. I went through two graduate school programs, going back and forth to Peru during off periods, continuing to participate in ceremonies and doing a lot of personal growth and healing work, continuing to address my Christian upbringing, a lot of problems in my family that were taking place my own mental and emotional health and benefited tremendously from those experiences.

All of that being said, I want to make it clear that there are many ways that people can heal and, learn and grow. Just because this is the path that I took doesn't mean it's the right one or the only one. It doesn't mean it's the right one for everyone.

So, I can't officially recommend or tell anyone what to do or whether or not an entheogenic path of healing is the right approach. And just because I talk about it doesn't mean that it's my intention to, like glorify it, as though everyone should do this, because there's always a few people who seem to think that whenever I talk about this part of my background. So, let's just make that clear.

The second thing that I want to say is that the insights that I had are not the insights that many people have had in many different traditions. You know, meditation, prayer, altered states, dreams. There are many ways of getting in touch with, let's just call it, spirit, and receiving insight or clarification or healing through spirit. So, all of that being said, I'd like to tell you a story that comes from one of my most memorable ayahuasca experiences that really shaped a lot of the way I do astrology, or at least an attitude that I have that was like, you know, installing itself in my consciousness at the same time that I began formally studying and practicing Astrology.

So, without further ado, here's my story. I had a ceremony, and it was a very memorable, very powerful ceremony. One reason that made it very powerful was that this was a ceremony that was largely barf-free. If you know anything about Ayahuasca? You know that it is a purgative and one of the things that happens is as we are exploring different domains of our consciousness, our psychology, our history, or soul's karma, whatever you want to call it, there will often be encounters with patterns that become very vivid in your mind's eye and in your body.

And there's a way in which a kind of release often happens when you face or encounter these patterns through vomiting, laughter, crying, or sometimes going out the bottom. It can be quite harrowing at times, but this was a unique ceremony for me in that there was none of that taking place. It was a very comfortable ceremony, from the standpoint of, like, I wasn't feeling particularly sick. There wasn't a strong purgative element, which is nice because, frankly, you know, I did over 100 ceremonies, and throughout my experience, the ceremonies where you're, you know, you're retching into a bucket can be pretty, pretty awful. So good for you. You feel wonderful. You see and are very aware most of the time of what you're releasing and what you're working through. Doesn't make it easy, though.

So it was kind of a night off, but it was a very, very intense ceremony in terms of the effects on my mental and intellectual state. It was an incredible space, what I would call a mental and intellectual space. I would describe the ceremony as though, from start to finish, I was in a conversation with the intelligence of the plant spirits, you know, which are, in my opinion, humble opinion, very wise, ancient, and in a sense, like an elder, is a kind of elder wisdom. I think of plant spirits that way.

Of course, I've been indoctrinated by my herbalist wife, but that's actually part of why we met and fell in love, was that we felt the same way about plants and so anyway, so it was like a conversation with the plant intelligence. So it went like this, and I'm just going to give you a highlight that I remember from it very vividly. Even though this kind of experience that I'm going to describe went on for several hours, it's hard to capture, you know, it is all in its essence. So, I kind of created a script that resembles what happened, and I'm going to read it to you.

So I got into this, you know, as my journey with Ayahuasca was progressing, and I feel it's the same for anyone on any spiritual path, psychedelic or not, you start really asking some of the most profound and authentic questions that you've ever asked, you know, it often starts at the beginning of the spiritual path, like, why am I here? What is real? What you know, what is truth? Like, like this? Well, this was a way into my Ayahuasca experiences of more than six or seven years.

And so, at this point, I was starting to ask questions that were a lot deeper. I was studying Eastern philosophy. I was delving into the history of astrology. I was really getting a lot into a much deeper space. And so I started asking questions that reflected some of my thoughts, where I was getting stuck philosophically. And so this is what happened. I found myself in touch with something. Some people describe Ayahuasca as a grandmother, you know.

So, whatever way you want to personify it, I felt like I was in touch with a very reliable source of numinous divine wisdom. There are actually words that are used like Quechua and in Portuguese, and the different traditions that I was a part of that will actually talk about this kind of divine wisdom that you get in touch with, often in ceremonies that we name in other religious and spiritual traditions as well. When you start in prayer, you hear the voice of the Divine, whatever.

So this felt like that to me. So I'll just qualify it by that. And I started asking. I just said, is anything actually real? And I was talking, of course, in my mind. I was referring to material experience, the body, the world, experience in the world, and other people. And I was, at this point, as many people do, getting into questions about duality and non-duality through Eastern philosophy and stuff like this: Was anything actually real? And the answer was yes when I said, but isn't it? Isn't it true?

Because I've been reading about this, that everything in duality is like an illusion, yes, okay, and it just kept going like this. I started getting the answer yes in this perfect it's funny because, in the way that the word yes was spoken, in the way I was receiving it, in the state of consciousness, it was like it might have well it might as well have been like that, that om, that, that sort of SY, simple syllable of everything at once, and an affirmation of everything, very profound experience for me.

So, I started reflecting on my Christian upbringing, and I asked if Christianity was the right path. Is it? Is it true that Jesus is the only son of God? Like any questions like this, right? Yes, just like the golden towers of Yes, like, well, of course, my intellect is like, but what about Buddhism? Is Buddhism the right path? It's very different. Has very different claims. It's not the same. Metaphysically, it's not the same philosophically, yes, just like this, over and over and over, is yoga the right path? Yes. Is there even a right path among all of these paths? Yes.

Okay, let's get even bigger. Is duality actually real? Do I think duality is an illusion? Is it real? Yes. But what about duality being an illusion? I thought duality was an illusion. Isn't it true that duality is illusory? Yes, okay, these are other examples of things I asked. Do my choices matter? Yes, is everything destined to fade or be organized? Yes, yes. Is time real? Yes?

Well, I thought that time was a kind of illusion. Isn't everything eternal and co-present simultaneously? Yes. Can I ever understand anything? Because this is all so confounding that it makes me feel like it's pointless to try to. Understand anything. So, can I actually understand anything? Yes, isn't this all just too much for the human mind to comprehend? Yes, is Enlightenment past lives karma? Are these all actually real? Yes, is Enlightenment past lives karma?

Isn't it some kind of unnecessary illusion that we suffer from, though? I mean, should we really pay so much attention to enlightenment, past lives, and karma? Isn't it all an illusion? Yes, what about pain? Is it real? Yes, can pain be healed? Yes, is pain an illusion? Yes, is suffering necessary? Yes, is suffering an illusion to be overcome? Yes, it was just like this. And I'm not kidding when I tell you, it was like a couple of hours. Are we supposed to live for spiritual rather than material things while we're here on Earth?

Because the Earth is a kind of trap or prison that will throw some kind of cloak of ignorance over us, yes, but what about this world being sacred? Isn't it divine, too? Isn't it perfect? Isn't it something we're supposed to enjoy, live, and taste? Yes, and it just went on and on like this. I know there's a part of me that was like, didn't even want to tell this story because I feel like telling it. I've just like a cartoon caricature of some dude getting high, you know, just sounding like an idiot.

And for all we know, the voice saying yes is like Beavis or butt head on his couch somewhere, you know? What do I know? But you know what happened was, at a certain point, this, this constant asking of questions and probing and dissecting and getting nothing more than yes, this, this complete affirmation of everything everywhere, all at once. I think it was a movie that came out recently, duality and non-duality total, yes to both. I mean, really, really mind-blowing for me.

For I don't know as cliched and cartoonish as this may sound, this was a life-changing experience for me. I finally just got to the point where, and I was relentless, right? Because something in my mind is in relentless pursuit of understanding and truth. And the voice answering was calm and present, and the voice was a mantra, more than an answer, if that makes sense.

And so finally, what I became, or the way my consciousness changed, toward the end of those couple of hours worth of this repetitive experience was someone just sitting and breathing. And I don't mean that in any kind of formal meditative sense. I don't mean any kind of bullshit posturing. I mean, my mind was literally just not doing anything. It just it was just quiet, and I was just sitting there, and then simultaneously, there were images in my mind, like in my mind's eye, I could see images, like archetypal images of people meditating and In prayer or in trance states. And I recognized it was not more complicated than what I was doing.

Those are images often when we think of spirituality, we glom onto the images of people doing these things and words like holiness and Guru and mystic, and, actually, it's just as simple as someone who has said the word yes enough to just be sitting there quietly. It was profound because, for me, it rewrote what meditation is. It went from something that was a romanticized sort of fantasy image of meditation in my mind to something that was just super simple. It was just sitting there, just sitting there, and I had been like, yes, into just sitting and just being there. I think that this experience is common when we're in it; we often don't know we're in it because we have images of what we think it means to be in it, which prevents us from recognizing when we're in it. And it's just as simple as just sitting like I find that sometimes I'll be sitting on my porch in the evening with two rocking chairs, and I'll be sitting there with my wife, and it'll be a couple of minutes where it's just quiet.

It's not a lot on my mind. Couldn't even tell you what I was thinking. It reminds me that it's just so simple. And what I saw and what I became was someone just sitting and breathing, and the very simple presence of being there sitting on the wood floor in a little Mesa in the jungle in South America. And I, I just had this feeling that there doesn't need to be anything more or less than this, just me sitting here, and everything that is possible is in some ways real, and there's jack shit to actually do about it. It doesn't need me to do anything about it, and it's also not offended if I choose to, that's an incredible, liberating, humbling, freeing, enriching kind of realization.

Anyway, it's been really hard for me ever since that particular experience, although there were others that I don't know who did similar things, like a lot, like 100 Ayahuasca ceremonies. I do a lot of different things, but that particular experience just, I guess, well, I have some takeaways I want to share with you, but it's been hard for me not to recall that experience and how I relate to astrology in particular and to like life in general.

So I called this episode humility and the cosmic Yes, and because I would say the biggest single takeaway that I had from that experience was a real understanding of what humility is and what it feels like when you're in it when I'm in it like a bodily recognition of what humility looks like. Can I understand some things about life? Yes? Is it too much for me to understand? When can I just sit with that? For me, that was the feeling of humility. It's like a tension between knowing and not knowing, being and not being, and duality and nonduality. It's just an ability to say yes to all of it, and when I say yes to all of it, it's like being on a bicycle. You're tilting back and forth as you're first learning to drive it.

But humility is somehow the ability to keep just gently correcting back to your center of gravity where you're nothing more or less, you're both, and you're sitting in the place of like yes, and the real place of yes is not a place that has to take you to any like extraordinary heights, and it also doesn't crash you, and you don't need anything more or less, because it's all right there. These things that I'm saying have been said by so many different people in so many different traditions.

So I don't pretend like any of this should ring out like some glorious undiscovered truth, but this was the way that this was one of the ways that I had an experience of things that a lot of different spiritual people, people with spiritual insight, have talked about. Anyway, there are three takeaways and three ways in which this experience has shaped me as an astrologer. One is that I turn archetypes, and I do this on the channel, so you guys should be familiar with this, but I do this for myself, and this is why I do it on the channel because it's the way that I've learned to approach astrology. So, it's the way I share astrology. I turn archetypes.

So if it's moon Mars, or if it's Saturn Jupiter, or whatever the case Venus, Uranus, whatever the case it might be, I turn archetypes and listen to the reflections and ideas and patterns that they suggest, and then I turn them again and then again and then again. And I find myself saying yes and yeah, look at this angle, and yes, this one. And if I keep turning an archetype and then being able to connect that contemplative act to the living of the archetypal experiences that the archetypes signify, you know, so if I'm turning the jewel of Venus and Uranus as a kind of intellectual meditation. Uh, seeing the mandala of images and themes and philosophical ideas that are presented through the combination of planets.

Then, I'm able to bring that reflection into the experience of my life, where the symbols come alive, and I can then see the multidimensionality of my experience. It resembles that, yes, yes, yes, yes. And in that, I find myself in this the fullness of something that's very present, and it frequently, by continuing to turn the jewel, takes me from certainty about my experiences to multidimensionality, to a kind of humble deconstructing and reconstructing of the nature of my experiences, so that I can just keep saying yes to all the different sides and facets and, You know, reflections of light that are coming through.

That's why I keep turning the jewels of the archetypes on my channel; that's what I learned to do with thoughts that are archetypal. They're the playground of the gods.

Number two, I don't need to be anything more or less than what I am, and it's also okay if I end up trying to be more or less than what I am. All roads lead back to the golden presence. I use the word golden presence because the image in that particular ceremony, when I kept hearing yes, was like these golden pillars, just strong and beautiful and true and sort of filled with tons of different things simultaneously. Anyway, um, one of the ways that I that I'm frequently practicing Astrology, and it, I think it conveys in the way I create content, is I'm constantly looking at our astrological experiences as an opportunity to come back to the very simple affirmation of what we already are, what we always have been, what we always will be.

There's always a temptation in astrology to think I've got to use this energy. This energy is part of the description of a step I have to take en route to a better me or a more evolved or more spiritual me. For me, the constant turning of the jewel deconstructs the temptation that I have to make every single astrological event and every experience in life about an opportunity to get something, or to develop something, or to grow something, or to become something like those are fine endeavors.

There's nothing wrong with them. But the way I tend to do astrology is about continually turning the jewels until we deconstruct the feeling that we need to be anything or anywhere other than who we are and where we are and that the constant reflection on the archetypes and, hence, on our experiences, liberates us from the trap of progress. It's not that progress isn't beautiful. It's that it's archetypal. Is progress real? Yes. Is progress an illusion? Yes, listening and considering, contemplating and taking things in, leads me back to the Golden Temple of presence within, so I think now, after a lot of my psychedelic experiences, the richest and most healing of those experiences as things that taught me how to be a listener, how to be curious, how to be contemplative, and how to how to ask good questions, right?

So one of the things that I that I've one of the ways in which I've always approached astrology, and that you'll see me presenting astrology on my channel, comes from the idea that every astrological configuration is an oper is like, A is like, it's like a drishti in meditation. It's like a meditative, contemplative object that I can circumambulate, that I can walk around with metaphorical prayer beads.

And that by listening and considering and contemplating archetypes and then seeing archetypes in experiences, even experiences that I'm totally enmeshed in, that the experiences and the living of life become a kind of archetypal contemplative meditation, and that that is just its life becomes like a moving prayer. And so the way that I try to do astrology is by bringing us into this kind of prayerful moving around our experiences with the use of symbols and archetypes, which, if we continue doing it as a way of life, what you'll notice is that you move from being so identified with experiences that you're just riding. Roller Coaster to having some reflective space. And that reflective space is exactly the space you need to find that yes, yes, yes, which is like the breath or the heartbeat.

It is like the simple truth that holds all of this incredibly paradoxical, vast reality in place: yes, yes, yes. All right, gonna end it there today. Gone into mystical territory here. I hope that this was fun and interesting. Again, the purpose of this series is not to exalt psychedelics. It is not to exalt my own experiences; it's to share them and just to say this is part of how I've been shaped and how, in particular, the intersection of psychedelics and entheogens, these specific traditions have intersected with my path as an astrologer and continue to come forth in the content that You're listening to if nothing else, you can know more about me as a content creator, know more about my backstory and reflect upon your own spiritual path. And you know, what parallel experiences have you had through other modalities or other traditions?

Some people may feel called to do things like entheogens or to work. You know, there's a lot of people who now that are doing micro-dosing with therapists or, you know, all sorts of therapies utilizing entheogens, and I generally support those things. I have also seen enough and experienced enough to know that not all practitioners and places are safe. To know that there is danger out there, you have to be careful. You can't just go trucking off expecting that every single person will benefit or receive the same thing, right?

So, you know, it's not for everybody. You know those experiences are very powerful, and I recommend before anyone ever considers them that you, you really look carefully at and you do your research and make sure that anyone that you're working with, whether it's in South America or wherever, is reputable and safe, and you know, has their feet on the ground with their heart in the right place. It's very important. So I say all of those things again because anytime you bring up this subject, you run the risk of potentially, um, sort of like peptonizing it, and not taking time to take a moment to recognize that it's not like for every single person.

So anyway, that's it for today, and I hope that you're having a good one, and hopefully we'll see some of you tonight for this talk on the eighth house. Don't forget the beginner's courses on sale as well. We'll see you again tomorrow.