Happiness Ceremony

“Two or three?” “Two OR three?” “CASEY, do you want two grams or three?” I am a little disoriented and cognitively distant. I have just woken from a three hour power nap. I gaze around the common area at Bromelia with foggy and tiered eyes. I visually comb the room; I see many familiar faces and few new ones. I quickly introduce myself to the newcomers as I inform Tito that I definitely do not want three. I decide to settle somewhere in the middle; I ask for two and a half. Today is the day of the sacred happiness ceremony.

There are 12 of us that are participating in the ceremony. Tito divides all of the mushrooms for the ceremony into each individual's cup. It's nearly 6 pm now. The sun will be setting in less than an hour. We carry our magic mushrooms down the stone stairs, into the jungle, and finally into the sacred temple that will be our home, our personal journey for the next 6 hours.

The 12 of us sit in a circle around a pit of pyramided firewood. We are each handed a candlestick. Tito lights the first candle. He sets his intention and mounts his lit candle in the dirt in front of the fire pit. Each of us, one-by-one, ignite our candle from his. We all set our individual intentions and place our candle in front of us. We raise our glasses. We toast to peace, love, and happiness. Now we wait. We wait for about 45 minutes till the sun has set behind the backdrop of the jungle. After the sun has set, we will light the bomb-fire.

That 45 minutes felt eternal. There is a large circular hole at the top of the temple that allows light to enter and smoke from the fire to escape. The minutes seemed like hours as I lie in the sand starring at the hole watching the sky slowly get darker. Within 10 minutes the magic mushrooms begin to make themselves present. The vines that hang down from the hole begin to come alive. The hole seems to light up and the vines begin to shimmer and become a bright shinny green, even though the sun is nearly below the horizon now. The bamboo walls have beams of light shooting across them writing inspiring hieroglyphics along their path. The open air windows and walls are becoming sealed off with some type of pixelated translucent shield. The outside world looks like a fairly-land viewed though a kaleidoscope.

And now it is night.

We all take our candle sticks, keeping our intentions in mind, and collectively we place our candles into the bomb fire. The fire lights quickly and the heat and energy it emits is quite intense. I gaze into the flames, barely blinking. I don't want to miss a thing. I have never seen a fire so beautiful. I sit there with thankfulness and gratitude that I am here, in this beautiful sacred place, with these amazing people, having this experience. The colors in the fire are so vibrant and powerful. I am mesmerized. The other 11 people in the temple with me seem to slowly disappear. Only the fire and myself are present. As I gaze deep into the fire's pit, I hear the words, "we know that you can see us." When I say I "hear" the words, I don't necessary mean literally. There was not a deep 'god-like' voice speaking to me, similar to what is depicted in angelic films. Nor was it a guardian angle's voice. For lack of better words it was 'telepathy.' I knew that the fire was not speaking to me, neither was the earth, air, or the rain. The colors in the fire were communicating with me. They had my attention before. Now they REALLY have my attention. They spoke again, "watch what we can do when you pay attention" The colors in the fire began to swirl around and consume each other while giving birth to new brilliant and vibrant colors. As the colors multiplied so did the intensity of the fire. The fire shot up through the roof. The sound was amazing! It had the energy of a waterfall and the feeling of electrocution, if electrocution was pleasant. Then the fire shot down to it's normal state. We are starring at each other and it softly says, "I can do this anytime you want." The fire then explodes through the roof again with all of it's might! And then descends back to normal.

Martin reappears back in the temple. He is sitting in the sand on the opposite side of the temple to me. He is doing a rhythmic dance that coincides with the music. He looked majestic, like a fluid moment frozen in time. I continue to stare at him. I have always conceded that Martin is a lot of things, but boring he is not. I continue to watch him. His face changes into a blue painting of a man with three eyes.

Yesterday, Marin and I were at a birthday party. In the middle of our conversation Martin losses focus, as Martin often does, and begins to look past me. He says to me, "isn't that an interesting painting?" I turn around, there is a painting of a blue man with three eyes as part of the mural on the wall. Martin looks perplexed. He says to me, "don't you find it interesting that the man has three eyebrows?" I found it interesting that his 'take-away' was the third eyebrow.

In ceremony, Martin's face became this painting of the man with three eyebrows. Now Martin has a drum that he is happily beating away at. Each of the eyes morph into an individual Martin head. Now Martin has three heads, each of them with that big British Martin smile. He continues to beat on his drum. Now the three heads join into one single head. A little monkey joins Martin on his shoulder. The Monkey has his own little monkey drum and has the same smile on his face as Martin's. They are drumming in-sync. They both turn their heads to look at each other. Martin's smile gets even bigger and nods at monkey as if to say, "monkey, you are doing a great job beating on that little monkey drum." Monkey smiles back and nods. His expression is saying, "No mate Martin, you are the one who is doing the great job beating on that Martin drum." Monkey's molecules change as he attaches himself to Martin's head. Monkey has morphed Martin into the British satirical political candidate, Lord Buckethead. Not surprisingly, Lord Buckethead just has a large black bucket put over his head. Now Martins drum has disappeared and he is using his own buckethead to drum on and keep the beat. I close my eyes and watch as movies play on the inside of my eyelids. I open my eyes and Martin has returned to his normal rhythmic dance.

The evening continues filled with more random synchronicity. It's 10 o'clock now. The last 4 hours have felt like days. We have gone to the other side of the universe and back. We all slowly start to fade back to our normal sense of reality. After hours of silence we begin to all laugh and talk. We have been sweating in the temple for hours. Now it is time to jump in the river adjacent to the temple. We swim and splash like we are all a bunch of innocent children playing in the rain.

We end the evening by eating a feast that Tito has prepared for us as we all laugh and share our experiences. What a perfectly wonderful night. Thank you, Tito.