iboga

Iboga gifted me the insight of Truth like a lightning bolt that struck me at the center of my heart.

Hi seeker of Truth. Welcome. I am so honored to channel the spirit of Iboga and share its powerful magic with you. There is magnificent ancestral wisdom rooted in the bark of this "Mt. Everest of plant medicines." If you are here, I know that you are a courageous explorer of the inner and outer worlds devoted to reaching your highest potential. I'm grateful you are curious, because Iboga has a message for you.

Iboga is calling

There is a lot of literature on what Iboga is and where it comes from. You can search the internet if you want more scientific information. This transmission is from the spirit of Iboga itself, a download that came through my personal experience with this plant medicine that perhaps will serve you in some way too. I hope so.

Before I continue, I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting you try this plant medicine. Dr. Gabor Maté, renowned addiction expert and psychedelic plant medicine advocate, has said that this is one of the hardest psychedelics to experience. It is. But if you do have a calling, Iboga is calling you too.

I've worked with many master plant medicines over the past 10 years to heal severe trauma from my childhood and some challenging experiences in my adulthood. The sacred wisdom of plant medicines now support me in helping others overcome similar traumas that I have successfully transcended.

Iboga entered my consciousness only a few years ago as I listened to a story told by the owner of an ayahuasca center who healed his drug addictions and found his life's purpose through Iboga. His process sounded frightening and intense to me, but it also intrigued me to know that there was a plant medicine that could cure addictions, show you the root cause of pain, heal brain injuries, and give you clarity on your path forward. Ibogaine, the alkaloid in Iboga that combats addiction and heals brain injuries, is successfully used for veterans who suffer brain damage due to combat. I wondered what Iboga could do for someone without addictions or brain injuries.

Fast forward to January 2024. My intention for this year was to get rid of any lingering self-doubt that I was carrying so that I could confidently be of service and share my sacred offerings. What happens to people like me, who were raised in traumatic environments, is we adopt a powerful hyper-vigilance that lives deep in the fascia and muscles of our bodies. The memories of unsafety and fears of being annihilated are embedded so deeply into our brains, we don't even know they exist - until they are triggered of course. It is hard to feel fully confident if your body holds memories of unsafety. No matter how much positive thinking I did, I still felt this lingering self-doubt.

You can only take people as far as you’ve gone. And you can only go as far as your mind and imagination allow.

Because I am devoted to the spiritual path of embodying the Divine Self, and supporting those on the epic journey of self discovery and healing, I feel strongly about guides, healers, coaches, mentors, teachers, and spiritual influencers doing their personal work to carve out a sacred space within themselves from which pure spirit can be sourced - myself included.

I had an auspicious break in my January schedule, and like the precise hunter that it is, Iboga came looking for me. Iboga presented itself through my social media feed and conversations I had with friends (who never tried Iboga). I called Soul Centro Iboga Retreat Center in Costa Rica to see if they had any openings the week I was free. They did (Iboga has a way of making things happen).

Bwiti Tribe

Tabernanthe Iboga is an evergreen rainforest shrub indigenous to Gabon, Africa. It is known to be the strongest psychedelic on the planet. The Bwiti Tribe of Gabon are the first known people to have discovered the plant's spiritual and medicinal effects. The short story talks about a female Bwiti tribal member who ate a porcupine that ate from the Iboga shrub. She later experienced hallucinations and direct communication with ancestors and Spirit. She obtained divine wisdom and received direct answers to her sacred questions. The Bwiti is not a religion, but a way of life through spiritual self-discovery. Through the medicine, the Bwiti were gifted how to use the technology of the plant and studied how to live in Truth. Their traditions are shared orally to those initiated into the tribe. Iboga is said to carry both feminine and masculine energy. I appreciate how the Bwiti are intentional with balancing the feminine and masculine in ceremony, which are always led by a man and a woman. This balance of energy feels safer and more complete for me.

Fire Ceremony - Ingestion Phase

The first phase of the Iboga journey happens around the fire. The Bwiti believe fire is medicine, that it protects our souls. We gave the fire our fears, our insecurities, our negative patterns of behavior and watched them burn in its flame. The fire also serves as a spiritual protector for ally spirits to be called in to support our journeys. During the fireside chat, we were introduced to Bwiti stories and traditions which helped us tap into the ancestral realm. We were asked introspective questions and shared our truths.  

We were then presented with a granulated powder form of Iboga cultivated from the second layer of root bark, which has the highest level of active alkaloids. The N'ganga, or ceremony leader, poured the substance into our open palms and we said our full names, our mother's full name, and our father's full name out loud and thanked the medicine before ingesting the root bark. We swallowed the dry bitter tasting grain with one gulp of water. It did not go down that easily.

My interpretation of saying our parent's names out loud was so the medicine had a direct portal from which it could seek our lineage wounds and our lineage magic.

Epigenetic science indicates that ancestral trauma can be passed down to future generations, so it makes sense that the medicine wants to know who are parents are.

The onset of Iboga happened for me about an hour into ingesting the medicine. As I listened to the stories, I would start to clearly visualize the ancestral lineage of the Bwiti and the temples and the shamans they spoke about. Flickers of light danced before my eyes, and my body felt warm and gooey and sleepy. We were soon offered a second dose of the medicine.

I felt like I was the most sensitive of our group because I was the first to get nauseous and vomit each time. The second dose made me feel very dizzy. As the medicine settled into my body, it caused ataxia which is a condition where you lose muscle control in your arms and legs. What makes this medicine really difficult is the ataxia and the nausea that comes about with any type of movement. We all needed help to enter the temple for the second phase of the ceremony.

Journey Phase (a) Detoxification Mind Purge

The journey phase is when the medicine is most active and you are forced to lay as still as possible because of the extreme nausea, ataxia, and out of body experience. At this stage, the root bark is substituted for TA (total alkaloid), a processed pill form of Iboga that makes it easier to swallow. For many, this is when you detoxify anything that doesn't serve your mind, body, soul. This can happen by physically purging, sweating, and by the random mind dump of thoughts, patterns, images that flash through the mind as it cleans everything out. After the mind purge, you have room to go into the realm of ancestors and truth. Often times I would zig zag between a purge and cosmic wisdom.

My first detox experienced was both visual and audible. The most inconsequential images floated through my mind one after another in carousel-like fashion: a Christmas tree, a wizard, my kids' kindergarten classroom, Deepak Chopra, a woman having sex with a Lion, unknown faces and places. None of it made sense to me. I wondered if my mind was reflecting the randomness of doom scrolling on social media, which can be an addiction too. I heard whispering and believed that the shamans and helpers were talking about me.

The second night, my mind purge went into to the nooks and crannies of my memories to find disaster and paranoid thoughts. It was like I was in a Fight Club with my mind. I found myself seeing worst case scenarios of my deepest fears: my kids falling off cliffs, the Golden Gate Bridge crumbling as friends drove across it, avalanches, eyeballs accidentally being pricked, gigantic tidal waves that caused a big flood which was about to drown us all. I thought that everyone in the room was in harm's way and needed resuscitation for taking too much medicine. I thought the police were going to raid the temple. I didn't trust that the shamans knew what they were doing.

No wonder I had a hard time feeling confident in my body, I was always waiting for a disaster to rear its ugly head. I realized I had an unknown addiction to overthinking. This is not uncommon for those of us born into a violent family system - danger is all we know.

Journey Phase (b) Realm of Ancestors and Truth

The great thing about purging the mind of thoughts and images that do not serve us, is it opens space for creative thinking and divine wisdom.

This is when my journey got really interesting. This is the phase where you tap into the ancestral realm and get to find out the answers to your deepest questions.

On the first night, once the highway of my mind was purged of all the random, useless information it had stored, I saw incredible imagery that I believe Iboga used to share important wisdom with me. These images were clear and detailed. I saw Pangea and its splitting into today's continents. No humans existed during that time, but I got the sense that Iboga was telling me it existed even then – that its knowledge extends beyond the origin of time.

My focus then moved to Africa where I was introduced to the most majestic of tribal people. It was clear that all humans come from Africa. Face after face after face of exquisite looking powerful beings showed themselves to me. The imagery time lapsed all the way to today, and I could feel how disappointed our African ancestors are about the racism that exists. I couldn't help but believe that Iboga can heal racism because it clearly shows us that we all come from the same ancestral lineage. I was then greeted by every plant and animal that exists, reminding me that all sentient beings are sacred.

Then the shaman came to give me a guided journey to find my soul, my spirit animal, and to answer my soul questions that we prepared the day before. This is what is unique about an Iboga journey, it is collaborative. The shaman will take you on a specific guided journey to see how deeply the medicine is working through you. If you are deep in the medicine, you are basically in the quantum realm of pure knowledge and can ask any question and get an answer. This is the beauty of Iboga, whatever questions you have, your questions are answered in the simplest and most direct way. You are not clouded by projections or overthinking, you are simply left with the Truth.

I learned that I had a spirit animal named Chaos, a black panther that is teaching me to live instinctually in my primal body.

Chaos is showing me how to hunt the divine truth in myself and in others. She shared how I can luxuriate in the sensuality of my body without shame.

When I asked why she was named Chaos, she said that chaos is also a part of the elegant Universe, and chaos is intrinsic to Creation. The medicine shared I have the magical power of creating, which is also the power to manifest, a rare gift that when used properly can help others on the path of self-discovery. The answers to my questions were short, sweet and so simple I had to laugh at how complicated I usually made things.

By the second night, I could answer my own refined questions the moment I asked them. This is freedom. This is wisdom. This is infinite potential. This is a clear and brilliant mind. This is way better than artificial intelligence. This is Truth. I felt as if I got an upgrade on my nervous system and a total brain reset.

Processing Phase

The "end" of the journey phase is when we go back to our rooms to "rest," but you can't really rest because Iboga is a powerful stimulant that can keep you up for 24 to 48 hours. Instead, we retreated to our rooms to process and try to make sense of it all.  Some people have auditory hallucinations and are still purging thoughts in order to receive more insights from the medicine that is still working in the body.

During my first journey, this phase gave me great insight on my talents, magic, soul's purpose and life's path. I was tired, yet inspired. During the second journey, this phase was wrought with guilt and overthinking. I was still purging the stories and projections. But once I fully accepted that this was my process, clarity flooded my body and my patterns of overthinking and projecting disastrous thoughts seemed to disappear completely.

Integration Phase

I woke up with the feeling of groundedness, clarity, and pure presence that I have never felt before.

I felt reconnected to myself and my soul. My mind was free of patterns, memories and traumas. The felt sense in my body was that of equanimity, which Buddhists describe as a sublime state of even mindedness and inner calm regardless of what is happening externally. It felt like a new beginning, that anything was possible. It was such a good feeling that I nearly forgot how hard the purging phase of the medicine journey was.

We had a traditional Bwiti Spiritual Shower which cleansed away the old patterns of yesterday and prepared us for our new tomorrows. It was a beautiful ceremony that connected me to the earth, to my ancestors, and the wisdom of the cosmos. I felt the miracle of life sprinkle down on my skin with each blessing of the baptismal water. Each drop promised to strengthen my spirit, by body, my mind, and my soul.

Reborn

Iboga gifted me the insight of Truth like a lightning bolt that struck me at the center of my heart. It showed me that fear's only use is to shock us awake, to protect us, or to make us present. We are to set fear free because holding on to it just deepens our traumas. I believe that the Iboga experience, done in the traditional Bwiti way, not only helps us let go of our physical, emotional and spiritual wounds in order to evolve into a higher consciousness, it can help heal the wounds of humanity and the planet. Tradition matters with ancestral medicine. The intelligence of the Iboga spirit, in its whole and natural form, works with the uniqueness of each person to heal and impart the wisdom we seek and need.

The Buddha has said, "All that we are is the result of what we have thought. We are made of our thoughts, we are molded by our thoughts." As we think, so we become. Iboga was the no-nonsense experience that cleared away the thoughts that didn't belong to me and gave me the freedom to embrace what is Divinely Real. What is Real is that there is only Truth and Love, whatever doesn't align simply lacks Truth and Love.

There is absolutely no room for self-doubt when Love and Truth are around, I'm confident about that.