179: The Ayahuasca Episode with Shaman Omar

Namaste, it's Sahara Rose. And welcome back to the Highest Self podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest development. I am super excited to be sharing with you this episode about a topic that a lot of us have heard about, but maybe we don't know everything all about, and that topic is ayahuasca. What is ayahuasca? The sacred plant medicine that so many people are crediting such incredible transformations for. What really is it? Well, in this episode, you are going to find out exactly what ayahuasca is, what you can expect in an ayahuasca ceremony, the benefits that it has in many people's lives, and more just about this powerful plant medicine that has really been taking today's world on a spin for a reason. And I believe that right now is the time that a lot of people are opening up to this higher dimension, this higher level of consciousness. And ayahuasca has come really full force in this time to help guide people to this new level of awareness. Now, at the same time, I myself have never sat with Mother ayahuasca. I believe that it is a powerful tool for healing when it is right for you. And that's another thing that we talk about in this episode. It's not for everyone. It's not something to take casually. It's not something to do because you've seen other people are doing it. You must really feel the call. And it's something that if you haven't properly prepared yourself for, can actually do more damage than good. And you don't need ayahuasca to be spiritual. I would consider myself a spiritual person. I've never sat with ayahuasca because I personally haven't felt the call. Not saying that I never will. I'm in no way against it. I've seen it do incredible healing for so many people, but it hasn't been part of my journey yet. But it's something that I'm very interested in because I'm interested in learning about all levels of consciousness. So come to this episode with an open mind, looking at it like an anthropologist would, and see, what is this? Like, how is it helping so many people? Let me learn more about this, because it is a plant, which we talk about in this episode, and this plant essentially accesses your consciousness, so you're able to see the world in space, such new ways. So I brought on who I believe is the perfect person to help introduce this topic to us, a good friend of mine, Shaman Omar. Shaman Omar is an ayahuasca shaman. And he has, I think, done at this point about a thousand ayahuasca ceremonies. He was right before the 1000 mark when we did the interview. And he has facilitates ceremonies all around the country, from Miami to la, New York, and he also travels to the Amazonian jungle. He has filming a documentary about ayahuasca there and the healing benefits it has for people with tumors and brain cancer. So he's really someone who's quite knowledgeable. I think a thousand times doing anything, you would become very knowledgeable, especially something like ayahuasca. So he's really able to speak to us from a very logical and rational mind. So if you're someone who you feel like the language has been a little bit confusing for you, you want to know really, what is this thing? Well, this episode is for you. Again, ayahuasca is not that I am recommending or telling everyone to go do. I myself have not. This is simply an educational episode for you to just learn more about this plant that has been indigenous to shamanic cultures for thousands of years and see it in a whole new light. So without further ado, let's welcome Shaman Omar to the Highest Self Podcast. And before we get started, check out these brands that make Highest Self podcast possible. This episode is brought to you by uvaida. 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SA. Thank you so much for that, Shaman Omar, and welcome to the Highest Self podcast. It's so good to have you here.

Good to see you again.

So the first question that I would love to ask you is what makes you your highest self?

Truth. Clarity. The ability to see truth, which is a tricky one because you can only see what you can see. So I think it's the never ending journey of rediscovery or self discovery, as some like to say, that puts you constantly in new parts. Every footstep is a new part of the path and brings new awarenesses and new understandings of things that you once thought you knew from the past. And through that whole thing we have new abilities to see, you know, like a 360 sight of present, you know, the future, the past, so to speak, into this thing called oneness. And so ultimately it is the understanding which brings the truth.

I love that. And clearly your desire to find truth is what has led you to not only use ayahuasca in your own practice, but to facilitate ceremonies all across the world to hundreds of people a year. And now over a thousand ceremonies that you've conducted really with the intention of helping people cleanse themselves from the disillusions that they're living in.

Yeah, no, I've had a thousand ceremonies. I haven't led a thousand ceremonies. I've led like 600 more. But yeah, that's a lot.

A lot.

It's a good amount.

So a lot of people listening are very curious about what ayahuasca is. They have probably heard the word round because we were just speaking about how suddenly in the past three years especially, it's really blown up.

Yeah.

But I really wanted to bring someone who had a really clear understanding like yourself, who is a true maestro, a true expert in this topic, to demystify what ayahuasca is and people understand how this plant can benefit people, but also that it's not for everyone. So can you just start with what is ayahuasca from like a physical, like what is it made of? And then a spiritual level?

Sure. So when I speak about ayahuasca, I'm not speaking about liquids you pour into cups, I'm speaking about ayahuasca, the spirit of mother ayahuasca. So ayahuasca in the physical form is a vine. It's one of two ingredients for classical ayahuasca. Ayahuasca, the drink that people have. The tea in essence is two ingredients and water. So it's the vine of ayahuasca, a leaf called chakruna, which is a DMT source boiled in water. So it's just a two ingredient tea. Why people tell us you drink this tea but don't drink that tea, and why people listen to that, I don't know. But, but ultimately this is what ayahuasca is. Now in different countries they call it different things, like yahe, which is usually ayahuasca, the traditional ayahuasca with other things added. But ayahuasca in a traditional form is the three ingredients mentioned. Ayahuasca, chakruna and water. But ayahuasca from the spiritual component, you know, because it's like this body is Omar, you see? Oh, that's Omar right there. But the life inside of this body, the spirit inside of this temple that we call the soul, that's me. Right? And so that spirit of ayahuasca. Ayahuasca, the word comes from the language of Shipibo, which is one of the major languages across the Amazonian rainforest. And so this word ayahuasca is the same word as Mother nature. So whether you say Pachamama, referring to the spirit of Mother Nature, or Gaia in Christian mysticism, or in Islamic mysticism, Ariana, or in recent history, Fatima, is all a depiction of the spirit of Mother Nature, which in essence is one, also known as the abuelita, like the grandmother. So it's like a bigger version of the connection within the divine feminine at large, both in the macro and the microcosm. But ayahuasca as we can experience in ceremony, on the fundamental foundation is the spirit of Mother Nature, known as the word ayahuasca.

Beautiful. And I know many people who've sat in ceremonies have really almost seen or felt a motherly presence that can nurture them, but can also, like, you know, like your mom can really give you an ass kicking sometimes and show you, show you your true self. But it definitely has that. Everyone who's done it would say that feminine and motherly characteristic to it.

100%. 100%. It's an interesting thing because with ayahuasca, if someone has one experience, they could understand everything on the fundamental level of mother, ayahuasca, her mission, et cetera. As someone with a thousand ceremonies, there are certain fundamental things of experience, especially when relating to another person or going to a specific place, et cetera, eating a specific food that you don't have to have a hundred times experience. And to understand the mission, the reasons, and to speak about in reverence, it just takes one. And so this is the tricky thing, because when you start speaking and some of your listeners, I'm sure, have never experienced ayahuasca, and many of them may have never heard of it before this podcast. So when you hear someone talking about being an ayahuasca, a shaman, and then talking about she, and you're like, hold on, I thought you're talking about this drink and you're referring to it as a she. This is stuff that just can only be experienced. But yeah, 100%. It's definitely the overwhelming, feminine, nourishing, truthful spirit that has the ability to imagine if you have 20 people where five different languages are spoken as a first language, with 20 different people, 20 different karmic paths to get to this moment of now, and 20 different experiences and this thing called life in the body and. And all these things put together into one circle. And ayahuasca can communicate to each person the exact perfect prescription for them in a combination of sense of knowingness, which brings a comfort and a peace that we are searching for in a sense of visually, because we are of the five senses. Sense of sight is the one that we seeing is believing in the sense of direct communication with language. And give you and you and every single person in their primary language the exact perfect combination for them to understand what they need to understand at this moment. And that's happening at the same time in a ceremony that's happening at the same time in all the ceremonies across the whole world at the same time.

Wow.

Imagine.

It's amazing. And what's so amazing about it is that it's so personalized for people, and I think for people who are wondering, well, how can a plant have a consciousness if we even think about an adaptogen, right? If you think of Ashwagandha or these things that we're taking all the time you could call Ashwagandha is more masculine, Shatavari is more feminine. So even these herbs, even foods that we're eating can have masculine feminine properties. So with a type of plant medicine it's just so much more apparent. It's less of that subtle, like she will let you know that she is of the feminine nature. But we're all actually experiencing the qualities, the gender almost qualities of foods and plants on a daily basis.

Absolutely, it's just more subtle. So in the jungle they have dietas, which is like the word diet. And so the smallest Dieta is like 10 days, but usually a dieta is like 30 days. So one month. And this is when you would go into a tambo, which is like a specific small cabin, like a one room cabin off away from everybody else. You can't hear anything except nature. And you're brought specific foods that will not interfere. Right. And you're working with a specific plant. So for instance, one plant called bobhen sana. And so the goal is for you to be isolated only with this plant. And the person who's bringing you your food twice a day is also on the same dieta. And the whole purpose is the same concept as the vipassana is over this course, this set amount of time, whether 10 or 30 days, that this plant will see your commitment and she or he will reveal itself to you.

And it's a form of plant medicine as well.

This plant would be not all, I mean all plants are medicine because through understanding all can be healed. So everything is medicine. The whistle can be medicine? Yes, yes, of course, but it's not from a psychedelic component or an entheogenic component. So it's not something that you're going to be able to take and then all of a sudden see visions and so on. It's more of a surrender. And through the journey of surrender then it will reveal itself to you. And thus you'll be able to enact this spirit of this plant when you start to sing to it. And you'll be able to have this guidance, this like meeting one of your aunts. So it's like through the shamanic path and the various medicines even consolidated within the Amazonian rainforest is the family of elders that we're searching for. So in other paths we're looking out to the mountains and we're looking out to different deities or entities or stars and planets. But in other cultures, which is what you would call shamanic cultures also they Also have the plants. Is this the elders. So these dietas are designed for you to be able to come into contact with these plants. Right. And so the difference is that these subtle plants, it may take up to 30 days. Whereas ayahuasca, there's going to be no misunderstanding. In the same evening she's coming in, people say all the time, they say, I don't know if I'm feeling the medicine. Don't worry. When she arrives, there'll be no misunderstanding clearer than looking at my face. Right here will be you with ayahuasca.

Well, it's actually something that I've heard and I've had different friends who sat in ceremonies and they say especially the first time, they don't feel anything. And do you think this has to do with their inability to surrender or it has to do with something else?

I think a combination of things. I see now in our society the need to blame the participants, you know, so an ayahuasca ceremony, oh, it was good until this one person. And they ruined the whole ceremony. It's like, no one person doesn't have the ability to ruin the whole ceremony. If you're sitting here, someone's over there purging. If you look over and make your put your consciousness. We're infinite creators and we're very powerful. You go in an ayahuasca ceremony and stare at someone else's and you're going to purge what they purge, you know, so it's like people want to sit up and look at the room, but there's nothing happening in the room. Everyone's laying down. And it's because they're trying to escape the reason they came. You know, it's like someone. They have this energy and I want to release it. They drink ayahuasca and then they want to hold on to it. It's like. But you came to release yourself of that. Why are you trying to hold on? And it's like this weird thing within human nature to want to experience suffering. And it's also another thing is to blame other people. And so it's the job of the ayahuasca or the ayahuascara, masculine or feminine, is a few parts. The first thing is to hold a powerful, safe space where everyone knows they're safe and feel protected going into the sandwich. Very important. Connection and setting is something you hear a lot in the psychedelic community. I completely agree. Set and setting is important, naturally. And then also the second is to for the ayahuasquero wayahuasukero to deliver you into the hands of the mother. Now, that could be a combination of someone needing more medicine or the right ikaro or the right vibration, you know, breaking up a blockage. It could be a combination of anything. But the point is that that's the job of the person who's serving the medicine. Okay? Out of all the people that I've served medicine to, I've only seen less than a handful. Like maybe four people say they didn't feel something, like they didn't have an experience. Okay? And that's a very. You're talking about 7,000 people and five. This is a small number. So that's something I don't see that happen. Like, I don't see why that's a problem. There's a difference between taking medicine directly from the rainforest as it's served in the rainforest, and trying to serve it here in the urban jungle. Okay? We're more dense here. This is a denser energy. We're all a part of it. I'm here with you right now. And so you have to make sure that the medicine is catered to, to your audience. You have to make sure your medicine is catered to your audience. If you take you and I and we go to Peru right now and go to The Amazon, within 48 hours, we're like, ah, right, we feel so much better. So all that density is just released. So we're going to be connected to the same medicine. But you bring that medicine here, or if I, you know, you serve it here in this room with all this extra energy, it may not work right, but that's not the participant's fault. That's the job of the person who's serving the medicine. You don't know how many barriers and blockages you came here with and how many you've created as defense mechanisms. It's the job of the person serving the medicine to make sure that they guide you through and break through and open each door to hand you to Mother Ayahuasca. There's nothing worse that I hear than someone saying, oh, I experienced. It was the worst experience of my life. That makes me feel bad because now I'm like, wow, One of the greatest blessings and gifts we have is to the connection with the earth. Which sounded to me like a bunch of hippie nonsense. Before I had that experience, I was like, oh, the earth, I get it. But yet you don't get it until you really get it. And then you speak in reverence and awe, you know, and now that person's been robbed of that possibility. Because they had this really horrible experience. Or someone said, yeah, I tried it. I just threw up and nothing happened. And I say, well, did you have any changes in life after that? They go, no. And like, you know, hopefully they try that again. So it's tricky.

So it's a combination of your internal blocks, the blocks in the environment, and then also that shaman not being able to give you exactly what you needed at that time.

Yeah, a combination of. There's so many factors, you know, so many factors going into something. It's the job of the shaman. I mean, it's really that simple. It's the shaman's job to make sure that any and all to every single guest that they bring has the experience. You know, you can't force it. It's not about forcing. It's about the art. The art of it. You're not, like, just pouring big vats of ayahuasca down people's throats. And of course, that could work, but you can't quantify spirit. And so sometimes for people, when I start digging in, they go, oh, there was. How many people were in the ceremony? There were like 50 or 60 people. I'm like, whoa. So maybe your higher self put a block.

Yes.

So you don't have a dark experience because you can't unsee certain things with any drugs or medicines. You can't unsee something. So there's a combination of that. But then there's also the component of just because you drink, someone comes and says, I'm a shaman, and here's ayahuasca. And they pour one or two or three cups and servings into a cup and you drink. It doesn't mean ayahuasca is present in the ceremony. Again, if you want the divine goddess to dance for you, to bless us with her divine presence and to dance and in the dancing, cleanse us of all of our just everything that's not serving us collectively and just right. And then we reveal our true nature, then sing to her in the language that she's been sung to for thousands of years by who knows how many shamans. And then, you know, so that's the thing. So just because you drink ayahuasca doesn't mean that ayahuasca is present.

You know, that's a really amazing point. So for people who are wondering what is an ayahuasca ceremony, like, what can I kind of expect that I would experience? I know it's going to be very different for each, but maybe if you could go back to the first time you experienced it and what that felt like for you.

The problem with that is that's again, giving people false perceptions. Because if my first ceremony was the best ceremony of all time, they expect, and if it was the worst, then, you know, I can say, a friend of mine once told me, he said, you know, Omar, telling people how to prepare for the first ceremony, I realized to just tell them not to listen to anything. And I say, okay, why? And he goes, because how are you going to tell someone to prepare for the moon?

Beautiful.

How are you going to pack for the moon? Because some people will get hot. Like, hey, make sure you bring light clothing. But then the other half of the people freeze and say, make sure you bring extra blankets. But then the other third of the people will be hot and cold in the same night, you know, so to prepare for the first ceremony, the most important thing for sure is the diet. The diet. You know, I like to say karma is a bitch if you are. If you don't have the respect for yourself and the unknown, to prepare properly, to go into potentially the most powerful experience of your life with one of the strongest medicines known on the earth, and you go and eat cheeseburgers and drinking alcohol the night before, then you're going to get what you deserve. That may be nothing, that may be violent purging, that may be whatever you want to call it, darkness, you know, but if you come into the ceremony with the proper diet, with the proper intentions, with the humbleness, you know, everyone goes into their first ayahuasca ceremony with fear. But fear makes you humble. And humble is how you walk into that first ceremony, because then you're met properly. You walk into the temple humble, you're going to be received. You walk in and start saying, oh, I've taken LSD 142 times. Don't worry, I've got this. You're going to get humbled and then you'll be a part of the ceremony.

I love that. Embracing the fear, because I think a lot of people don't want to do plant medicine because they feel fearful. And to know that that's actually part of the experience.

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, the darkness is scary, right? Even if you go into your own backyard under the right settings, it's dark. Oh, what's that? What's that? It's like the same thing. It's always been, that chair's been there since you moved in, but yet that chair just scared you. Right? So that's the same nature regarding going into our own darkness and the possibility of seeing the truth. The possibility of seeing, you know, because you can feel as soon as someone's like, ooh, ayahuasca. It brings this energy into the room of this. No bullshit energy. Like, oh, we're not gonna predict our way out of this one. You know, we're not gonna talk our way out of this one. We're not gonna, like, bullshit our way through this. This is gonna be real and good because it's gonna be realer than that. You know, one time I was told ayahuasca only delivers you what you can handle, but that's true for everything, because we can. Yeah, so it's like you see something that you consider dark, and it's like that's where your ignorance begins. Because you thinking that that can harm you is what you need to get over. Something cannot enter the temple unless it's invited. And fear is the food for what you call darkness. Right. That's why shamans are there. That's the whole point.

So I've heard from some friends that said that their first ceremonies felt very gentle and that it was mother ayahuasca, kind of like, you know, giving them a hug and welcoming them in. Do you feel like that happens a lot of time with first timers?

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then they think they got it figured out, and then they come back in the second time. Yeah, it's like having sex for the first time. You don't know what to expect, and someone's going to tell you what to expect. But that may be relevant only for their experience, and it may be completely true. That person tells you, but that was true from their perspective. So until you have your experience, they're like, okay, that's my experience. And maybe that experience was great and beautiful and like, oh, it was so good. And now you think you've got it figured out and you go into it the second time and you go, oh, this is a little bit different, you know, and it's almost like you're having. It would seem like you're doing it. It's like different people, but it's just like understanding that any living consciousness in any form has its light and its dark side and its personality and its own flow of the way they talk and their own energy and stuff. And that's what you're dealing with in essence. But you're dealing with something on such a grand scale that, you know, even 10 experiences doesn't mean you've got it figured out. Even a hundred. There's no such thing as having it figured out, because you're Talking about a living consciousness. And consciousness is always developing, always co creating and always a connection right within everything. Every ceremony is different and every cup of medicine is different, you know, so every single someone will have this amazing experience, like, and they'll come up, they can't even walk and they're crawling to the altar because they want more medicine, because they're thinking in their mind like alcohol. I'm having the best night. You want a shot? Hell yeah. Give me another shot.

Like, what does good feel like on ayahuasca? Is it still in the thoughts you're thinking of? Good thoughts? Is it a feeling in the body?

Oh yeah, there's no thoughts, there's just like omni consciousness from your perspective. I don't mean omni consciousness, meaning in the oneness of the infinite om. I'm talking about breaking free of your five sensorial three dimensional reality. You know, between the temples lies the key, right? And the, the DMT is the third eye feeds the third eye. So the DMT is added in ayahuasca. So that way the mother has a screen to project. Because visually we like to learn. So when we break free of our five sensorial three dimensional reality, then we ascend into our higher self, right? The seventh chakra. Then we're in our higher self and then we are just pure consciousness. And then we can truly just observe. The thoughts come in such a delayed manner that as we like start to like analyze that, we become the narrator over the Runway show. She goes, and she'll fast forward that. So then now your thoughts are talking about 10 minutes ago and they just fade away. And for a lot of people that's a beautiful and big blessing because the ability to truly be in mental peace for a moment isn't a feeling. And that feeling through that experience is something that you're going to be able to find again through meditation, through breath, whatever the practices are, your practices are going to mean more when you've had a deeper experience. That's one of the things that ayahuasca can provide people with.

So a lot of visuals. Sacred geometry, is that a big part.

Of is in the early stages? It is in the early stages sacred geometry. So it's like people always report about the visions and there's like the most amazing sacred geometry. And I went through the portals and that, but eventually you say, okay, you're going through this cosmic umbilical cord, but then one day you realize that you're actually inside of your own DNA and there is no difference. So it's like were you in the universe or inside of your own DNA? And then the answer is, there is no difference. And would you be able to tell anyway? It's just the awareness of recognizing that, you know, it's like, okay, well, we're made of the earth, right? But we're really made. The earth is made of the cosmos, and so are we. And then that what's inside of us is life. The spirit inside of us is connected to this. And that's that whole concept of duality, of a materialized existence in reality, but then at the same time, a part of actuality, timeless existence. And so. And then that dance between those two is this. This magical creation that you just observe in this state of awe. It's like. And then everything. And then one of the most interesting things is the way that. That instantaneously many things are completely different. That's it. It's like it never happened. Like, after my first ayahuasca ceremony, I never touched alcohol again, right? Never touched alcohol again. And I used to drink, like, three to five times a week. I was a business consultant. I'm driving a Lamborghini in south beach. I'm working 20 hours a day because it's a global economy. I'm making money. You know, Like, I'm just, you know, I'm 30 years old. That was that. I'm drinking, celebrating myself. Drink when you're happy. Drink when you're sad. Drink when you're tired. Drink when you want to wake up. Drink, drink, drink. This is like American medicine, right? Entertainment after the first ceremony, clear to the point that even when it's one thing, if you say, oh, I don't eat cheese, I don't eat pizza anymore. But you smell it, and it brings a memory. If I smell alcohol, it's nothing. It's like, I've never had it, which is an amazing thing. People will tell me stories about when we were drinking and things that remember when this happened. And I kind of remember, but as if I saw it in a movie form.

Like, it was a different lifetime.

It was eradicated from the existence. From my existence.

Yeah.

Which was like, what a blessing, you know, because I don't have, like, a struggle. There's no, like, decision. It's like, oh, I've never eaten pork. Do you want this? No, I don't eat that.

So I'm sure it could help a lot with emotional eating, with any kind of addiction, which even technology addiction, maybe.

You know, addictions are just us trying to fill something, right? We're trying to numb something. But really, we're trying to fill something that's. That's empty. And there's a combination of that that's special for each person, which makes it tricky. You can get through and to the bottom of things through the mind only so far. But there's infinite depths, right? Infinite depths. And so depression. And this is not to say depression is not a big thing. It is because it pulverizes people's lives. It paralyzes them in so many different ways. Right. And so that's real. That's real. But depression in my experiences, through ayahuasca, in the ceremony, I mean, this gets eradicated relatively fast. I mean, the people come in and they're just. Oh, you know, like, can barely handle it. Like life. Like, they're just dragging themselves in, you know, with the hope. That's one thing that I've noticed with humanity, we have hope. Faith is optional. Hope. We have that. And that's one of our strongest attributes. So they still have hope. They still have a gleam in their eye of possibility. And that possibility is met. Is met. And the waters of the body is cleansed and the nadis are reorganized and fired, and the subconscious is brought up and taken in front of you and shown to you and cleansed where it needs to be, which you are actually cleaning through. Understanding. Through understanding. Oh, oh, you know. You know, it's like, oh, I thought our perceptions when we were a child, it's like, oh, you think that this happened this way, but you were nine years old.

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Many, many, many ways. And it's always something no one thought they knew. They had no idea that's what it is. And I'm talking about even past life components. People are shown past life stuff. People are shown stuff that they're shown that they receive this through their mother, through their grandmother, and then through through the feminine incarnations. And that's just one example.

Is it passed more through the feminine incarnations?

No, I'm just using one specific example.

Because we do talk a lot about ancestral like woundage on this podcast. So I was wondering, is it passed more through the maternal than the paternal, or is it kind of equal?

See, the feminine can get blame or credit for that at all times. It's like the concept of Kali. Through Kali's womb we came right? And when we pass through, we're going to go pass through her womb. And all of our actions and inactions are going to be remeasured when it shoot off to our neck next existence. So you can look at it like that. But it's both. Karma just means action. So both masculine and feminine side of your entire lineages are just compiled with action after action after action. And those are all just measured into this thing called you now. And so the question is, where does our awareness begin and end? And the understanding that our mind fills in those blanks. And that's the dangerous part, because we're in an altered reality because of when we don't understand something, we will understand it because the mind will create this illusion. And so really, it's not that magical for ayahuasca to cure depression in a single night because it just removes the illusions. Like a simple breath, like a simple wind that's moving a cloud. If a single cloud were to stay over after a generation or a few years of your life, you would think there's no sun. But as soon as the cloud moves, you think there's magic that occurred. Oh my God, there's a sun. There really is. It's not just a. You know. And so that's the way I look at this, the depression component. Depression addictions, drug addictions.

What about anxiety? Because this is an issue that I think is probably the most rampant right now in our generation. Just the constant worrying of what's going to happen next and not being in control. How can ayahuasca help with that?

For sure, I bundle depression and anxiety into the same component. Not because of the same thing, but because the weight of it in the person's life is so dense and deep. But at the same time, it is something that is real because you're holding onto it. And a lot of people don't want to accept responsibility for these things. Say, no, it's because of this and because of that. It's because my mother and father and because of, you know, this past relationship. And there's many components of that that can be true. But if you don't hold on to something, then it's fighting to get in. If you don't feed something, it will cease to exist. That's the way I look at anxiety as well. You have people say, I have panic attacks. Okay. Like, is it okay? It's gonna be just fine. You know, I've had dozens of people that say they have panic attacks. And one guy thought he was having a panic attack in the ceremony. And he's like, I'm. And I go, okay, listen, you're having a panic Attack. He starts freaking out because he couldn't believe I told him he was having a panic attack. I said, but here's the thing, it's in your control. Do you want to have a panic attack? He's like, no. But I go, don't talk. There's no talking allowed in the ceremony because you're going to make your reason more real. It's impossible to have a panic attack if you breathe in through the nose and out through your mouth. Panic attacks will only occur when you hyperventilate. In and out through the mouth. Panic attack. You can't panic attack. That's not going to happen. So breathe in through your nose, breathe out through your mouth and ask Mother Ayahuasca to release this tension. And within like two or three breaths of real concentration, you know, because at first they kind of. That's still not deep. But when they go into the deep breath and release, good to go. And many of the people never have those panic attacks again. But this is the thing ultimately, because people may be listening and saying, oh, this sounds a little too good to be true, but is it that far fetched that the earth would provide medicines to heal us? Modern drugs, right, Modern drugs. Pharmaceutical companies, we know that they're not the listeners, I'm sure, know that the pharmaceutical companies are not here for us. There's a reason there's no cures and there's ways to take these pills and live forever with certain diseases. But the majority of the medicines that have been made over the past 50 years and even more are just to counteract existing problems from previous medicines. You know, so that's the problem is like a drug is a synthesized chemical, a medicine is something that's naturally occurring and a shaman is dealing with spirit. It's like when Durek talks about spirit shaman. Exactly. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about the spiritual component of these medicines, the ancestors. Whether you want to track ancestors of tribes or ancestors of lineages, following in specific from a guru mentality, or if we want to talk about the ancestors of the earth, there's supposed to be solutions. We keep looking and looking for the next new drug to fix these old problems. But these problems that we're looking at didn't really exist in the past. A lot of this stuff is all created and humanity collectively has a problem with that. And that's why the key to our futures by understanding our past, the key to the future of us living freely is to understand our past and our past traumas in childhood and Experiences and decisions and relationships and parents. Right. Not to change, but to understand so we can be clear on that. And these medicines provide us with a very deep understanding and the ability to really get to the bottom of the infinite.

Definitely. And I think that a lot of people see that even these pharmaceutical drugs are based off of a plant that they then synthesized and are able to, you know, profit off of first minimal amount. But I remember I was in Bali in the jungle, and they said that this pharmaceutical company had bought, like, a large portion of the jungle because there were some herbs that cure Alzheimer's there. And they didn't want people to have access to them because they wanted to be able to synthesize a drug made from that same plant.

Yeah. Synthesize it and then suspend the active ingredient so that way they can have it not cure, but have it bring down. So the whole goal is to find the cure. Right. To suppress the cure and then to understand it chemically. And so if these two chemicals are the reason, so what we're going to do is take those chemicals and reduce them to 20%, and we're going to take that and put that in that pillow. So that way the person is going to feel 50% better. Right. But never be cured. That's the whole. And patent that for sure.

They're a lifetime subscriber to it.

Yeah. It's like if you see Mama Coca, if you go to the Andes, Sacred valley, Peru, as soon as you land in the airport in Cusco, they have barrels, baskets of coca leaves for the altitude.

Yes.

Right. Mama Coca is a very powerful plant spirit. Right. And you can drink it with tea, you can chew. You make an intention, and you put the leaf over. Make the intention, put the leaf over, and you put it in and you start chewing and concentrating on that attention, intention. But then the conquistadors, right, the conquering people, they come and they see, and then they ship that back. They see these little guys drink, you know, chewing this and working. Working. What is this? And then that becomes the syrup. Right. So then. Then in the late 1800s, it became cocaine.

Yeah.

And then in the recent history, it became crack. And the only ingredient is greed. This is greed.

Yeah, very true.

But it all came from a leaf that's still here.

Exactly. Yeah. I remember the mate de coco in Peru, and, like, we couldn't bring back the tea because you could take, like, you know, a whole room of it and. And turn into, like, a little grain of cocaine.

Yeah.

But it's interesting because we never think about crack or cocaine. As coming from a plant. We just think of really the shadow side because that's what we're surrounded with. But over there, it's just something that they use for altitude, for work, for conscious reasons as well.

It's a completely healing spirit, plant spirit that you can experience and has this beautiful, windy, airy touch of just dancing with your soul without trying to change you, but just in this most subtle way, just giving you a new dance.

I love that.

You know, like, not in any way like Iowa, but they're all different.

Yeah.

It's not trying to compare everything to everything else. Right. And you're talking about like the ability to. And. And on top of that, I mean, I would not have survived in Sacred Valley without the coca le. There's no chance. I mean, you're waking at this 42% oxygen, you know, but then you have this leaf and the spirit that now gets taken into the hands of those who know not. And there is used for one part of it. Right. So discard the body because we're looking for our kidneys. And then it's like, now we're going to use this. And then they extract it even further and even further and use more chemicals, more solvents, more alcohols to extract, extract, extract, and to make it more concentrated for this one thing, you just. It's like hunting lions or hunting the elephants for the horn and then turning.

That horn into powder.

Yeah. And just disregarding the existence of the. The elephant there. They will tell you about the nature of the elephant, its role here, its presence. It's. This one is an individual living one where prone to see this with animals. Because we can touch a cat, right. You can see the dog. And there are good dogs and there are bad dogs. Right. But there's not. Nothing is all good or all bad. You know, it's just a matter of your direct experience. This is the same thing with the plant kingdom. It's just that it's a more subtle. And I'm sure you noticed all the ayurvedic work, right. I mean, it's just a more subtle thing on average. But then there are those elders that will come in like a cosmic roller coaster and just appear, you know, and those. And to take the respect. To take the respect from us. And this is the problem. As things get more popularized, then there's anybody who has three experiences becomes giving talks, you know, so it's like in a room full of virgins, person who had sex one time can talk. Right. But the ego is a son of a bitch, right? So then all of a sudden, the person who's had sex three times is now giving a talk on tantra, you know what I mean? But in the room full of virgins, they don't know anything. Right?

Right.

And so that's part of the problem is Problem. You hear ayahuasca DJs. I'm like, really? Like, yeah, there's 35 people in the d. You know, I'm like, the shaman, what happened? They tell me something happened. They say, what happened? They say, oh, the shaman was busy. And I said, busy with another person? No, he was in the middle of a mix. And I go, you mean like mixing medicine? Like, because sometimes people should be separate. And I said, okay, but this sound. But then he came. He's like, no, but he was in the middle of the mix. And then, like, it got worse. And I'm like, and mix. So why didn't he just put it down and go? He's like, because in the whole ceremony. And I'm like, I don't understand if he's in the middle of mixing medicine. She's like, no, not medicine. Music.

He's like, no, I need to do a little bit more scratching.

He's in the middle of.

Keep throwing up over there.

Mixing music in an ayahuasca ceremony. You have turntables in an ayahuasca ceremony. Oh, my God, it's real.

It's crazy.

I mean, here you have LSD shamans, right? Right. DMT shamans, 15 minute shaman, you know, and also, another important thing to touch on is this microdosing concept, right? Because you see the ability to microdose on everything. And that's perfectly fine. Choose what you will. But I will say from my experience directly that the last medicine that you should consider microdosing with is ayahuasca. 100%. You microdose with all sorts of other things people do.

Are people microdosing ayahuasca out of.

I mean, it's becoming popularized from a couple different people who serve ayahuasca and also are biochemists. Also. There's, you know, we're talking about profiting, right? So you take like 10 drops of ayahuasca and put it in this little vial and then sell it, say, oh, take this. But the thing is, is with ayahuasca, we're talking about the divine goddess of Mother Nature. You better honor her properly. And she wants you to ding the bells, open the ceremony, honor her, sing to her the whole time, right? Ding the bells, close the ceremony. You don't just Open up and take. It doesn't matter if it's, oh, it's only five drops per day. But how many spirit is in a single drop?

Right.

You don't know. So you don't just take drops of ayahuasca or take spoonfuls of ayahuasca and go. Go to the office.

It's our. It's our multitasking culture. It's like, how can I be more efficient and more creative and more productive?

Biohacking. Neurohacking.

Exactly.

And I understand, totally get it. And that can work with certain medicines for sure, and certain drugs. People do it all the time. But you don't microdose with ayahuasca. Ayahuasca. More than any other medicine, above all, she demands honor and ceremony. And if you. As long as you do that, then you're never going to have problems. You're going to hear only the biggest blessings. You're going to hear the biggest transformations. You're going to experience the biggest transformations. This is the reasons why I serve medicine is because it's not. I don't serve medicine because it's like the only option I have or something. I do because I can. And to experience the degree of healing and to see the degree of healing on a consistent basis is a huge blessing, you know, and so it's like every single week, you go in and see these different experiences and hear about it and hear the transformations. You see people like, I've been. Life's changed since then. It's like they drank medicine eight months ago, you know? And like, that's what it's all about, you know, it's not about being cool. It's not about popular. It's not about profiting off of it. You know, it's not hard. I mean, it'd be easy to create some microdosing stuff and to start selling it. And it would sell like crazy, you know, especially from someone who has some recognition in that field. But there's a reason why I don't.

Of course. Yeah. And it's not. It's supposed to be something that you do, and then you take everything that you learn from it and actually integrate into your life. And I think even when people are microdosing mushrooms or acid or whatever it is, it's like, why don't you just. Just take whatever it is that you saw and utilize it, but not keep using it as a crutch, because you're not able to actually embody whatever it is that you're trying to embody.

Thank you. I Completely agree. It's like using. It's like the ceremonial approach.

Yes.

You know, it's like the ceremonial approach. Whether you're going to a wedding ceremony, funeral ceremony, ayahuasca ceremony, you go. You dress differently, you prepare, you go in with a different energy. Right. You meet people in their higher energy as well. And then there's this experience, and then everyone goes back to normal. This is how you actually have transformation. It's people that are going and popping a couple painkillers and having a couple beers after work or having a couple glasses of wine every day after work that substitute that for these medicines.

Yeah.

You know, drugs can be used medicinally. I have good friends that are leading the front with the ketamine research for PTSD and depression. And these are doctors, you know, and it's like, okay, cool. Do I think that's the end all be all? No. But if it's helping people, it's helping people. Right. Certainly no one's going to die from that. They're doing it very clinically and they're doing with. Under medical supervision. But medicines can be abused and used like drugs. And that's what you see a lot of. You see a lot of people utilizing sacred medicines the same way that they used to use cocaine. They're using this medicine the same way I used to use alcohol, using that one. And it's like the need to be something. So it's like, you can tell, like, everyone's wearing, you know, the way they dress. They come in and, you know, and so.

And we need more opportunities like that for ceremony in our lives. You know, we used to have so many ceremonies for everything. You know, the girl and the boys coming of age and so many different. Like, life was so ceremonial, but now we don't have time for that. That I think even the experience of sitting in circle, being prepared for something, having an offering, having an intention, that alone is so healing.

Exactly. And it doesn't matter what else you put in the middle of, whether the common denominator is unifying through breath or unifying through drinking ayahuasca or unifying in a Temazcal sweat lodge, or unifying underneath the moon with monoatomic silver. It doesn't matter what it is. It's going to be a collective, energetic unification and things are going to change. And I think that's one of the things that two parts. The need for ceremony for our tribal, global heritage of humans is one of the reasons why people stay in religion for the community aspects and one of the things that we miss the most when we take ourselves out of the religions. We don't have those ceremonies anymore, you know, and there's no way to like make one overwhelming blueprint for ceremonies. But for sure there's ceremonies happening everywhere of every kind. And it doesn't mean you have to consume a medicine.

Right.

It doesn't mean you have to consume anything.

Yeah.

You know, our ultimate breath ultimately is going to be with you. It doesn't matter what else you take, you know, and so an intention, you know, intention, unification, and sitting in a circle with your brothers and sisters of humanity is the foundation of any ceremony.

Yes. And you facilitate breath work experiences as well.

Yeah, 100%. I travel for the last year. I've been in Miami, New York and Los Angeles every single month. And plus other cities like North Carolina and Washington, D.C. lots of places. But yeah, breath work, meditation. I'm doing more talks now regarding anything, regarding whatever the subject is. And yeah, yeah. And to me, it's all ceremony. To me, everything is a ceremony.

It is life.

Ceremony of life, huh?

Ceremony. Yeah. An awesome ceremony.

You're doing that well.

Yes. Same with you.

I follow you on Instagram.

Oh. So I'd love to know. I think a lot of people here, you're supposed to do ayahuasca three nights in a row. Do you think that this is a requirement? What's your take on this?

No, that's not how it works. That's not. The three night in a row component is based off of the protocols put in place by the retreat centers in the jungle that you're flying into. So what happened is they say, okay, you're going to do three ceremonies in a seven day retreat, but then the next retreat center says, going to give you four, and then you go, shit, four, fine, we're going to give you five. Someone else says, six. That's what that boils down to. Okay. It all has to deal with trying to get people in. Okay. Now that's one part. The second part is the reasons why they're doing three or four. Whatever the ceremonies are is because there's no guarantee that when you get someone flying in from Manhattan, flying to Iquitos, Peru, and to get into the jungle, the first ceremony is going to do anything. Maybe the second. So now they're building the medicine into their system.

Got it.

And then they're hoping by the third unraveling. Yes, Right. But is that necessary? Absolutely not. You just have to be able to cater the medicine for your audience, you know, so like medicine that you would serve in the jungle, you know, is going to have. I mean. I mean, I could throw numbers, but it won't mean anything to anybody. But a certain amount of the ingredients, or you can make it super condensed. So what they do is they'll boil it down to make it stronger because they know the people from the west have blockages, but that means you're going to purge more. So they just. Instead of just adding more ingredients, you're making a tea. So there's the Japanese precision of the way they make tea. Or you can just grab a tea bag, throw it in, put the water and start drinking it, right? There's a ceremonial component to tea. And so sometimes when the shamans in the jungle have learned the ceremonial component of this tea, the way that their father and their grandfather, they don't mess with the formulas ever. They say, this is the formula, okay? And they don't take into account that this is beautiful formula. But the audience has changed. And so now you need. And not everybody, because lots of the retreat centers and the different curanderos I deal with in the jungle, they get it. They go, oh, nothing happened this tonight. And most of the real true maestro curanderos, their medicine is going to be so powerful, there's nobody who's going to get out of it with nothing the first night. But the. Most of the centers we're talking about are the more popularized ones. The way they became popular was because someone from the west went there, had however many ceremonies, had the transformation, had some sort of 401k or bank account, says, hey, let me buy into the center, made a website, started promoting it, and then that's what's going on. It's not the shamans with websites. Most of the real shamans I know in the jungle don't even know how to write. Okay? They don't even have electricity. So how are they going to have a website?

So how can someone go about finding the right shaman?

Ultimately, you have to trust your feeling. Trust your feeling. It's easier if you've experienced something, because then you know what you don't want. Sometimes in life, the most important thing is to know what you know for sure. I'm. I don't want in, like, relationships or anything. Music is a huge component, like what we did at the beginning. This song is called an ikaro. Ikaro is the word. It means like mantra. And so there's invocations and then there's also, like, for movement. And so the music is a huge component because one ayahuasquero may be the nicest person in the world. But his ceremony could be horrible. But he's the nicest person in the world.

Or maybe even not a musical match for that person.

Yeah. Or just a certain energy. Yeah. It's all personalized. Or someone. You may not like him or her as a person at all, but their ceremony is magic, you know, and that's the tricky part because you really have to go off your feeling. There's no one website that's telling the truth. There's no.

Because I see these websites of these like shamans in Peru and they're like all five star reviews on Yelp. So would you recommend staying away from that or do you think that some of them are good and they really just genuinely have a lot of fans?

Everybody wants to crown someone. It's like, let's say you're born in New York and then so now you're Catholic, because there's five and a half million Catholics in Manhattan. And so now you're like, okay, I'm Catholic. It's like, but are you. Are you sure? Based. Compared to even all the other monotheistic religions, Catholicism and the Roman Catholic Church is the one. No. And the problem is that that could be, but the chances are unlikely. Right. And that's one of the cool things about Hinduism is there's all the different opportunities for devotion, yet it's all within collective Hinduism. Right. That's why it's so that's last forever and will continue to live on because it's not confined into one specific canon. And that's the tricky part with religion. So it's like with religion, you're seeing people want to crown something and then they take that and they put it into shamans. And so they go, my Taita thinks this, my Taita says that. Or they go to the first yoga class and now they're meditation teachers the best. And now their yoga teachers, the best. And it's like, of course you're going to want to feel that whomever you're learning from is going to be the best, because why else would you be choosing this person? And that's the tricky thing, you know, it's like someone goes and spends 12 years studying one specific type of shamanism with one specific medicine, and they want to think there's nothing other than that. So, okay, there's nothing other than that with this medicine. Okay, perfect. But they go, but no. Even within my own teaching, my teacher. So it's like, this is a very dogmatic, regimented thing. When you can't look outside of the Track that you randomly jumped on for the first time, right? It's like when people, you know, so that's the difficult part with it is like, for me, when I. Someone says I'm religious, it's like, are you, you know, one religion? If you were religious, you would learn all of the religions based around Abraham to have a complete understanding, not letting any one specific thing define you. So for me, it's the art of cura ndirismo, it's the art of ayahuasca. So I've experienced ayahuasca nearly through the entire Amazon. That's why I sing in six of the different languages, because I've learned that each different tribe is like a different chakra, you know, and so it's like, ah, okay. Of course, it's like the same way that, you know, the Amazon is like this. And just like in ancient Egypt, the Nile river was considered the body or spine of Mother Kemet. You know, it's just like you have to look at it like that. So it's like if you pick up one part of this one and that one and that one, then you can have this grander understanding.

So is there a resource that people could go to to look up the tribes and what energy, what chakra that would. Their ayahuasca ceremony is related to me.

Saying it right now is probably the first time that it's ever been quantified like that. But that's just the mystic enemy understanding. The way that humans work and the way that when we move in specific sides of a mountain, even though there's one mountain, depending on where the sun and the moon rise, the tribe's gonna have a certain vibration depending on their exposure to the elements and the forces around the same mountain. It's just the understanding of that and that and this is within humanity especially. It's tricky to answer the question this is the reason why I offer my breathworks is because I want to provide. So you say, omar, what is the number one way you can help someone? I would say serving ayahuasca ceremony. And as far as shamanically speaking, from my hands, I'm not talking about anything other than my own perspective. I would say as a shaman. Ayahuasca. Okay, no, ayahuasca breath. Right. So my breath work is taking ancient breath practices that have been used for over 3,000 years from the Indus Valley, and so replacing the ayahuasca for the breath, unifying a whole room of humanity, one section of humanity in the same breath, and then using the shamanic tools, the Drums, the ikaros, the flutes, to rise that energy collectively. And so a lot of people, whether they've experienced ayahuasca, they tend to come to my breathworks because they get the same feeling and the same energetic rise of the shakti through the breath. Whereas they may have experienced three ayahuasca ceremonies in the last year, they've done one because the breath keeps them going. Or other people who have never experienced ayahuasca experience the breath, and then they may experience ayahuasca with me or. Or go to Peru, and they notice that they're familiar with the vibration and the flow that those vibrations called ikaros create in the force within us, you know? So I think breath is good.

Yeah, it helps prime you for that experience and see what it's even like. But you still feel like you're in.

Control, and there's still no comparison. Truthfully, of course, there's no comparing. Like, my breath works are practice, you know, Like, I travel, the majority of my living comes from teaching breathwork around the country. This is what I do. But I know there's no comparing my breath work to an ayahuasca ceremony. But there's nothing to compare that to.

Yeah, the closest thing that we can do just with our own breathing.

It was my best effort to prime people. To prime people. Ultimately, I think with ayahuasca, you have to just. It's difficult. I really wish there was a way to be able to tell everyone this is what you go to visit this website. It's just not.

Yeah, it's really not. I think that's what scares people, too. The fact that they don't know. They don't want to be the guinea pig of, like, they show up and, like, well, that was definitely not the shaman for me. And now I'm gonna find, you know, like, you obviously had a really curious nature to these things that you were willing to, like, pretty much put yourself out there and learn everything. But for me, or someone who's never done it, I'm like, I pretty much, like, want to have a guarantee that it's going to be a good experience, but you can't.

But you can't do that with anything, right? You can't even do that guarantee in relationships with partners, with restaurants you've heard about, you know, it's really interesting because, you know, it's like, oh, I heard that restaurant's the best, and your experience was mediocre. You hear that this airline is the best, and it ends up being the worst experience. But maybe it Was just that one. Maybe the next hundred times you do it there is going to be the best. You know, and really that boils down to us not putting all of our eggs in one basket. Meaning that from the perspective of not putting all of our energy into the one experience and. And making it more than it was. Yeah, that's really. You know, it's like I've learned through this path. It's like I can't control my thoughts. My thoughts are just gonna go. Because they're not mine. They're just. I'm in possession of this mind and it goes into whatever. Right. Especially with all the amount of information that you just start shooting off all of a sudden. I'll just start thinking about the 12 lines that. Anyway, what I can control is my environment. I can control my environment for sure. And then I get to control how much energy, how much food I feed those thoughts. And so the tricky part with ayahuasca is if someone has no experience, they go, oh, nothing. But if they have too hard of an experience, then they go, oh, right.

You know, finding that balance.

The Goldilocks zone.

Yeah.

And I think due diligence. And ultimately, like anything, you have to trust your own feeling. There's no one shaman to rule them all. It's not Lord of the Rings, you know, and within ayahuasca, there's different expressions of ayahuasca. I mean, there's churches that sing. They don't even call it ayahuasca, they call it daimy. And they. They tie ayahuasca to. To Jesus and they sing in Portuguese. And so it's like you're talking about a Catholic church singing in Portuguese to archangels from the Roman Catholic Church, but drinking a medicine from the rainforest, you know, and to them, this is divinely inspired.

Yeah, I think different. You know, the last time we had a conversation, we were talking about how even different parts of the world had their own ayahuasca type substances with the same chemical compounds. And that's how so much of what we know came to be. So I'd love for you to help people who aren't sure if ayahuasca is for them. How do you know if you're feeling called? Because it's such a thing that everyone says you'll know, you'll feel called. What does that mean? You heard about it on a couple podcasts. Like, what does it feel like to feel called?

Oh, called because it's tricky. Because we're so powerful, we create our own reality. And so. So someone will Say, oh, my gosh, everything's changed, like, and I just want to serve. I just want to serve. It's like, well, in our minds, we immediately think the way we pay is, like, somehow we, like, learn how to serve ayahuasca, right? Which is like, that's not the thing, because you serve a blessing by your life. You know, you serve ayahuasca by showing the world your transformations. When your friends see the change in you now you've served. You know, you serve through your words. And then for me, as an ayahuasca, I serve through planting seeds. So when I say the word ayahuasca to someone for the first time, I'm serving them by planting a seed. And the truth is, is that their pain and their suffering will be the water that makes that tree grow, you know? And so if someone's feeling down in life and if they're feeling like there's nowhere to go, or sometimes on the the other end of the polarity, they. They think they've got it all figured out, and they just like, oh, well, there's only one thing left to try, and it's ayahuasca. I already have my practice, and I've been doing yoga for 12 years, and I visit the guru twice a year, and I go to Bali in India for three months a year.

I think a lot of podcast listeners are there. They're like, I do everything spiritual, so might as well try this too.

Yeah, of course. You know, everything's. We're just in complete alignment and divine blessings everywhere. It's all I see part of the oneness, you know, it's like, yeah, cool. You know, the reasons why you would go to ayahuasca remain the same because you never can know it all. There's not a human on this earth under the right circumstances that served ayahuasca and will learn nothing. That's not possible. Okay. Because if the soul is eternal, then that means that the eternal part of us, life itself, has been created since life has existed. There's no way you can know all that in one lifetime through books. There's no way you can drink yourself to that extent. You know, like when you said earlier that someone really focused on ayahuasca for one year. Cool. But maybe the things that you're searching for in that year, you're not ready for. And actually, that time of not drinking ayahuasca is called the integration. That's going to prime you for that realization that's gonna just drop into your lap in the middle of the afternoon. With nothing in you, you know, so it's two parts. If you have a lot of pain and suffering and you're on antidepressant pills or you're abusing alcohol and drugs, et cetera, then for sure, ayahuasca is something that you need to look into, okay? Because ayahuasca will be able to free you from that which you cannot hold onto. And I only tell people they need ayahuasca only under one circumstance when they have said they're not in control of their life. I am an alcoholic. I am a drug addict. I am a this. Now, you have admitted and confirmed that you have no control. So that I will come and help you get control and say you need a ceremony. But if you have none of that, then I will never tell someone they need ayahuasca. But what I can say is that the earth has been in existence, is the mother. Mother Earth, Right? Mother Earth. And then within the earth body, we have the three components. We have the plant, mineral, and animal kingdom. Plant kingdom, Mother nature, mineral kingdom, Father nature, the minerals, the mountains, and the animal kingdom. The children, us. So when the child wants to learn, they're going to go to the parent, and we've gone to our parents. And then our parents tell us to go to our religious leaders and. And maybe we found some gurus and we find Tony Robbins or something. Yeah. And they can fill certain components within things. But sometimes the best way to understand where you are is to figure out where the start line was, find out where this journey started from. You know, and if someone has that desire to really, really know the truth about where they are, I mean, all the good and the bad, okay? All the good and the bad, and really get to the bottom of it, then ayahuasca is something they should strongly consider. But if someone thinks that it's just going to be, knock it off my bucket list, come back another time, because you're going to be the person that's going to get. Find out the hard way. You know what I mean? And that's your. You know what I mean? Or you're going to. Nothing's going to happen to you. You're going to be the person. I drank it and nothing happened. I'm even more magical than when I walked in. And that's the lesson, you know? That's the lesson. But anybody who has any problems, prescription or illicit, drug problem, alcohol problem, abuse problem, traumas of any kind, things like that, I have seen only freedom through understanding come into those people's paths. And anybody who's looking for a deeper understanding in general, that's the person. But as far as calling, those are the things you should be looking for inside. You know, just because you hear the word ayahuasca pop up and then all of a sudden, three more times in the next week, ayahuasca popped up. That's just because you became conscious of the vibration of the word. That's how it works. If you get, you know, if someone says, oh my gosh, I just got audited by the irs, then you're going to hear the IRS a few more times too. That doesn't mean you're called to reach out to the irs. So we have to really pay attention to those things.

But it's just a feeling for sure. And knowing that you're ready to receive its messages.

Yeah, yeah. Which is a difficult thing because you say, how are you going to know to be ready for something that's indescribable, but it's the ability to know. I want to really fill in the blank. And if that desire is strong, then you're not going to let go of the thought. The feeling and the thought will connect. And this is a calling. Whether it's through pain and suffering or the possibility of fill in the blank. That would be a calling.

Beautiful. So how can listeners connect with you, sit in ceremony with you and experience your breath work as well, which is amazing. And I've done.

Thank you, Instagram, Shaman Omar. I post my schedule, my travel schedule on social media. Then also we have an organization that handles all of the retreats and all the ceremonial stuff. That's the theonostic society. That's theonosis.org T H E O G N O S I s.org I'm sure you can put the links up.

Yes.

And there's a process to that. It's not just show up. So there's a whole process to that. But for sure, I think the connection, experiencing the vibrations to the breath work or the meditations provides people an opportunity, you know?

Well, I know people personally, like Sharon, who've sat in Ceremony with you and say amazing things. So if you're looking for one, we're talking to one right now.

A lot of times people turn to serving medicines because they're like musicians. And then like you're a musician and then you have this amazing, powerful, transformative life experience, this called ayahuasca, and you go, oh my God. And then your life changes and you go, I want to be able to help facilitate that for other people. Aha. I'm A singer and I play the guitar. So they just start learning the songs real quick and they want to, like, rush the process. Like, I didn't sing anything, play any instruments. I in no way wanted to serve any form of ayahuasca or any medicines of any kind. You know what I mean? I could barely see, stand up to go use the bathroom. Okay. And she just started showing me visions of serving the medicine, which made no sense to me. It made no sense. Don't speak the language. Don't sing. I mean, I wouldn't. I remember in my fifth grade, play, lip syncing the song because I was afraid that people would hear me sing, you know? But yeah, I can talk. Singing is a different thing. Right. So it's a calling and it's an ability that is a blessing. So with blessings you share differently than something you've earned. I consider it a blessing as something I've earned at the same time. But the blessing far outweighs any energy I've put that can be measured in the form of time of earning and rising up and becoming better and better at it. Right. But the blessing outweighs all that. So it's like when something's a blessing, you always share it. Look at the way people are with birthday cakes, right? This is a birthday cake. Everyone come have a piece. Because you didn't pay for it, you didn't earn it. It was a blessing. You share blessings. So that's just the way I look at the medicine.

Yeah. I remember you said you basically downloaded the ability to be able to play the flute.

Yeah. In Sam. Yes. 100. Yeah.

So it's amazing the things that we are capable of that our conscious mind is not aware of yet.

Yeah. And how. And that's. But that's also a beautiful thing to know.

Yeah.

The mind can go this far. Right. And then the soul is everywhere else. But to know that. Right. Is a huge blessing because it brings peace. Peace. You know, let's say calm, calm. Tranquilo, relax. We can go so far with the mind, but the mind is going to always, always create. Like in Christian mysticism, the knight of gold. Gold representing pure gold, representing when a star explodes, there's less gold than there is silver. That's why it's more precious. So the knight of golden armor approaches the castle where the evil dragon is. The knight always slays the dragon. The dragon representing your reptilian brain, your ar. Cortex, the fight or flight. You can never kill the dragon, but what you can do is slay it. Turn the volume down so we Awaken our sixth sense up. Right. When the sixth sense wakes up, then the feeling of the intuition. Right. The knowingness wakes up and then the mind becomes a tool of reflection on the true knowingness of how we feel. It sounds like the volume went down, but it didn't. It's just that the energy and the electromagnetic energy of the brain is focusing on the sense, our sixth sense. Because the brain in essence is the tool that manages the five sensorial three dimensional reality. So when that sixth sense starts to wake up, then eventually the mind just becomes a tool of reflection and therefore it's your teammate. But when you don't have the sixth sense open, the intuition opened, then it is your prisoner. It is the mainframe that you're in control, but not that you're in possession of what possesses you. And then we're in different states of suffering and false sense of knowingness.

Yes. So it's not dropping the mind, not being mindless, but allowing the mind to be your friend and on your team so you can use this amazing tool that you've been gifted for embodying what it is that your soul came here to create.

Absolutely. Like our mind is an amazing tool.

Yeah, right.

Why would I want to silence the mind? Yeah, I don't want to silence the mind. I want to control, have the ability to gain control of which thoughts I feed. I want it to be as loud as it is, but I want it to be only in those thoughts that are vibrational. Resonance with how I want to feel.

Exactly.

And you can't do that when you're not fully awake and fully awake, just not meaning enlightened. I'm talking about ascending outside of the current state. Right. Fully awake. From the perspective of all six senses activated, all seven chakras connected, this is awake. And until you have that, you know, we're going to be in different forms of struggle.

I love that so much. Well, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us for allowing us to look at this beautiful plant medicine. I hope it helps deeper way and understanding its consciousness. And I think you answered a lot of people's questions, insecurities and confusion around the topic and given the them a really solid understanding with your very, you know, formulaic mind. So it really, you know, I think most people who lead ceremonies can't talk about ayahuasca in a way like this. So you have a really strong gift of being able to have like one foot in the, like the urban jungle and one foot in the tropical jungle.

It's necessary. Yeah, it's necessary. Yeah. Thank you so much. And maybe we do part two after.

After I try a ceremony. You said it sounds good. Namaste.

Oh, thank you.

Wow. How fascinating was this episode? I mean, I myself feel really grateful for Shaman Omar to be sharing all this wisdom about ayahuasca, because I'm someone that really likes to know the ins and outs of something before I dive into it. I would definitely not put any substance in my body, whether it's an herb or a tincture or anything, without knowing about it. So I feel really grateful for him to be able to share with us from such a. A rational mindset of what this whole thing is all about. So if you want to connect with Shaman Omar, feel free to connect with him on social media, Instagram, at Shaman Omar. He facilitates ceremonies all over the country. And if you're interested in learning more about ayahuasca, there are a lot of books, resources online. There are now more clinical studies about it. And again, this is in no way telling you that this is your sign to do IOR or anything like that. This is simply an educational episode about sacred plant medicine that has been used for thousands of years. Not telling you to do it, not telling you not to do it, just simply telling you about it. I hope that you use your best judgment. For me, myself have not felt the call. So don't feel like you need this because you don't need anything. This is a tool, like meditation, like yoga, like anything else that you can have in your toolkit. And I really believe that it's important to talk about these subjects because that's how we're able to make the right decisions and know if they're for us. So if you loved this episode, I would love if you could leave me a review in the itunes store. And as a free gift, I will send you the first half of my unreleased book, Eat right for your mind body type. Simply leave a review, take a screenshot, and send it over to me@saharaatfeelfresh.com and I will send you back the first half of my unreleased book, Eat right for your mind body type. Please connect with me on social media amsaharose. I share lots of poetry, wisdom downloads, and all that good stuff. So I'm so looking forward to connecting with you. Namaste.

Like a dungeon. Like a dungeon.