Iboga ~ One Person’s Experience

Writing done six months ago, in the afterglow of my initial experience…

Iboga is a powerful root bark that has been closely guarded by the Bwiti peoples in Gabón, Africa for thousands of years. Only recently have they revealed it to the world at large. It is potent medicine for healing trauma, addiction, and repairing one’s relationship with one’s self and soul.

I am sharing this, because more than anything else I’ve encountered on my healing journey, Iboga has been monumental. For years I have prayed for the healing Iboga has introduced into my life, without actually knowing what it was.

The work I’ve done on myself leading up to the experience helped me to be ready to let go without so much resistance, but I believe that anyone who feels ready for this medicine is ready. You will know.

How was it???

It was everything I have prayed for and so much more. Unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. First of all, the facilitator was wonderful. Spencer is safe, honest, serious but laid-back, and skilled at seeing us and helping us find our own way to the truth as it is not something that can be given by another.

The Missoko-Bwiti is a wisdom tradition, as old as humanity itself, and the most true to it’s roots, unaltered by colonial ideologies as other Bwiti lineages have become. It contains teachings that are deceivingly simple to the mind, yet when transmitted alongside the medicine, penetrate the psyche, and the heart, in a very effective way.

The teachings point to the truth of self-love as the entrance to the Kingdom, so to speak, in an organic and rooted way that. Received in tandem with the medicine, it penetrates the body-psyche in a very deep and tangible way—unlike the infinite words available in the abundance of self-help books here in the West.

The teachings were transmitted at the outset of the ceremony, both nights, as we sat around a candle and slowly began ingesting the medicine, three doses spread out almost an hour apart.

The medicine is ground root bark from the Iboga plant, and tastes exceedingly bitter, and lands in the belly like fire.

The come-up on the medicine is at once sedating in a relaxing way, and also amps up the cardiovascular system in such a way that can cause anxiety, especially if the inclination is to worry about what’s coming.

As the come-up tapered off, the relaxation of the body-psyche drew me to my mat on the floor, and as the night went on my body became ever stiller and heavier, supporting the letting go of the mind which was becoming very spacious and quiet. My nervous system felt more at ease than I can ever remember it feeling.

Buckets were provided and purging does occur for most people. Especially during the first night—the detox— and although it can be challenging to anticipate and sit with the nausea, ultimately it feels great to get it out and be rid of it. I have had experience purging with other medicines, and my purge wasn’t too bad.

At some point around midnight, I was asked the questions I had prepared for myself. Things I wanted to know about myself, about my life, about life itself.

At first I was looking for the voice of my soul swoop in and serve up the answers on a silver platter.

It dawned on me that the voice of my soul could not manifest completely externally to me, and that I would need to be a conscious agent in discovering my answers. At first this disappointed me.

It’s very helpful to do two ceremonies as the first one is not only detox, but an acquaintance with the medicine which helps to orient towards engaging with it in the most productive way.

Although the volume of the mind decreased throughout the night and into the next morning, it still interfered when I was answering my questions.

But the mental deliberation occurred at such a slow pace that I was able to track each interjection, to interface the serrated edges of the narrative of the mind and the voice of the soul. Each time a thought came through about my answer that was somewhat untrue, I felt fully the devastation, recommitted to loving all of myself, even the part who’d had that thought, and tried again.

Stillness by Stella Jae

This was quite revelatory. A reclamation of choice and free will.

Teasing apart the lies which the mind has told about me for as long as I can remember, which have sculpted such deep and habitual neuropathways, from the truth of the voice of the soul—something I had lost touch with to such a degree that before doing this medicine, just the thought of conjuring it often felt like a joke and a betrayal of who I thought I was.

The music that was being played all night, the indigenous Bwiti music, which is mostly instrumental but also includes some vocals, is an important part of the technology.

Very percussive, it features the first instruments ever created, which Iboga itself taught the people how to build and play. I was infatuated with the harmonics—which somehow resonate with a rhythm all their own—and sounded like another instrument entirely, or sometimes even voices.

Some people have many visions, I only had a few. They were very dim and monochromatic. They were faces of people I don’t know, which I later understood were ancestors.

Early in the morning I was guided back to my room, where I lay my heavy body down in the bed but did not sleep, but was neither in waking consciousness.

Somehow even with the almost complete absence of the mind, a deep and abiding sense of self made me feel more present as my self than the mind could ever succeed at doing, try as it might.

The experiencer, the witness, the eternal being, was more online than ever, and I felt anchored by that in such a way that created an unprecedented sense of safety and wellbeing.

Artist Unknown

Throughout the night and into the morning, I encountered self-love experientially, as an embodied knowing.

Everything I have ever read or thought or believed about it pales in comparison.

My being which is beyond my body but includes it, which is beyond my personality but includes it; my life which is beyond my biography but includes it, I embraced all of it and was embraced.

I was the embrace itself and that embrace was infinite and connected me with all that is, like a spiritual fascia running through and between all units of life. It felt very earthy and not transcendent in a heady or dissociated way.

When a negative thought occasionally did float by, it was so distant and limpid I could barely make it out, and it was not sticky whatsoever, so it was effortless to simply swipe it away, and I was back in the vast space of being and belonging.

I kept consciously returning to my heart’s desire to choose to listen for, honor and trust the voice of my soul, to be reborn as my self beloved to my self, and live each moment of my life that way from here on out.

I apologized to my soul for having exiled it from my waking consciousness, for having abused myself in so many gross and subtle ways for so many years. For the first time, I didn’t compound the memory of that abuse with more traumatic self-disgust.

I loved my self as every iteration of myself that I have ever been. I saw my beauty, and the presence of my soul, though unacknowledged at the time, throughout my history, even in the ugliest moments. It was all precious.

I realized the addictiveness of wallowing self-pitifully in the stale grief I have carried around for my whole life, believing it was me.

But what I had actually been grieving all of that time was the absence of my own loving company, my own abiding presence, my own unconditional love.

I witnessed and cherished myself in a way that felt so uninhibited, so raw, so true, so deeply reassuring. It was like the rush of falling in love, and knowing that someone is in love with me, but I know it can never be lost.

It made me feel like a little girl, being witnessed by an adoring father, completely innocent, completely shameless, completely receptive to that source of nourishment and ease which is his loving gaze, which is God’s loving gaze, which is my own loving gaze.

Artist Unknown

Now I finally feel loved the way I have always wanted to feel loved. I feel safe in a way I never thought I could feel safe.

It is a love that I could never receive from any external source, but will enhance my capacity to give and receive love from others.

It is a love that reveals, indubiously, the truth that life loves me and life will unfold, not in a delusionally perfect way, but in a beautiful and blessed way, because I trust it now, deep down in my being.

I no longer need to get in the way and exhaust myself trying in vain to figure it out and do it right and control it. Before, I had heard that life works that way, but I was afraid to have full faith because deep down I feared I was the exception, I was unworthy, and I was afraid to be disappointed.

I have lost so much, and had come to expect that of life, so had chosen to control my pain by dolling it out myself, denying myself by living out my sad and meager expectations of life.

My soul went unheeded.

Before, I wanted to love myself because I knew that I would have to in order to accomplish the things that I thought would finally make me loveable.

But I felt so much allegiance to the self-hatred.

I had invested so much energy in that identity. Imagining myself radiating with self-love made me feel like an imposter and, I imagined, a narcissist. Self-adoration sounded like something fake, something to be ashamed of.

On the contrary, this love that I feel for myself and can fully receive from myself, as myself, is certainly a state of grace.

Now I don’t need to believe, I know.

Paradoxically, a selfless wakefulness remains in the absence of the incessant internal dialogue centering around self-doubt, self-criticism, self-rejection, around the constant scrutiny of my inhibited speech.

My tendency was to compulsively over-share in an attempt to confess my guilt, my unworthiness, and my powerlessness, whilst simultaneously defending my power, my innocence, and my uniqueness—that vicious internal dissonance, and find redemption in the eyes of another, through their understanding, accepting, and dare I say, celebrating me.

Now I am finally in touch with the only source which can provide that validation which I was seeking: the truth of my soul. I really love and can celebrate myself, there is so much to treasure in my being, and I am so blessed to be here to behold and enjoy it all.

I have the only thing I need, and so I don’t need anything from anyone. I can give to and share with and behold others now without my sense of self hanging conditionally upon their, or my, every expression. From this place I speak with sovereignty.

I am the able guardian of that most sacred threshold, the gate through which anything, especially thoughts, enter my precious heart.

Watercolor by me done during my week at the retreat.

Ironically, instead of killing the ego, I have discovered an awakened and more selfless state by putting myself in the center of my heart and committing to my own truth and happiness first and foremost.

By listening for, and honoring my ‘yes’ and my ‘no’. By offering myself my unconditional faith and love regardless of what challenges, disappointments, fears, or confusions may arise.

I wrote pages and pages longhand, which is a miracle as the pain in my hands let up after years of not being able to write for more than five minutes!

If I hadn’t experienced that degree of relief firsthand, I would still be quite skeptical about the degree to which physical ailments are reversible, as they are psycho-somatic, or arising from a traumatized nervous system.

I wrote sincerely and excitedly and lovingly to my self, to my soul. I promised her that I will never again abandon her.

The comedown is gentle and gradual. For days I was radiating bliss and relief. A spring of energy welling up from my soul fed me trust, inspiration and gratitude. I was enjoying my own company like never before and grateful for the security of feeling like I truly have my own back.

I was completely enamored with the incredible and unlikely reality that is manifest around and through and as me.

I am excited for what my life will bring. I know that action will manifest more gracefully from this place of self-acceptance. I am also just happy to be with myself where I am at, even when that doesn’t involve any doing at all.

Gradually, I will build trust with myself, by keeping my promise to never abandon my soul.

Over time, I will come to really like myself too! The fear-based patterns that I so vehemently rejected, now enfolded in my loving arms, will feel less and less need to react as I respond more and more soulfully to life.

Since returning home, it’s not like all triggers have disappeared. I have been confronted with my difficult patterns of compulsion, of victimization.

Iboga is showing me where I’m out of alignment and it’s not all easy to see.

I notice the momentum of the habit, and the resistance to doing the loving, caring thing for myself in a moment. Often that means stopping what I’m doing, re-evaluating if it’s really necessary and helpful, if it’s truly what my soul wants and needs.

That doesn’t mean I will become lazy and out of control. On the contrary, it will funnel my energy more efficiently and directly towards my true purpose, which of course does include doing things I don’t want to do sometimes, but in accordance with my soul’s truth—with an attitude of flow, trust and devotion.

I know now that I have that choice. When I need to slow down, to check in with what I’m feeling in a non-judgmental and non-avoidant way, to rest, to be, I remember the promise I made to my soul. Everything hinges on my keeping that promise.

When I am disappointed by life or by myself, I don’t abandon myself, I offer kind words to myself, which, again, felt entirely out of reach several weeks ago. I still have much to figure out about my life path, and yet, I hold it lightly now.

I know that I am worthy as I am, my life is precious as it is, I don’t need to prove anything or attain perfection to realize that truth. Iboga stays in the system for up to six months, offering a window of neuroplasticity during which it’s much easier to unlearn old things and to learn new things.

I know my job is to love myself, to be honest with myself, to to do my best to act in alignment with my values, moment to moment, and my soul, with Iboga’s help, will chart the course.

I am the only one who can never leave me, in the sense that, everyone else is transient in my life in a way that only I am not. I have been here since the beginning, I am the only one who knows every single piece of myself and every single thing I’ve been through, and I will be here until the end—until I transition.

I could and did abandon myself, and that feels horrible. But I can choose to never leave myself again. And now, I know, I’ve made that choice, and if I slip, I will make it again as many times as I need to—because I know I can—until it is a state in which I effortlessly abide.

To read a shorter synopsis of where I am at six months later, check out my recent post, Six Months Post Iboga

If you are interested in Iboga, I would steer you towards the Missoko Bwiti Alliance. They will ensure you find a credible retreat center with providers of utmost integrity. To learn more, check out the Get To The Root Podcast.