natural healing

IBOGA: Death & dying PT1

the beginning

In February 2024 on a farm in Middle of Nowhere, Portugal, I embarked on a deep transformational experience using the very intense healing power of the plant medicine Iboga.

In this blog I want to stress the intensity of Iboga without scaring people away from this deeply healing plant medicine: Iboga is incredibly powerful and should be approached with care. This blog contains no medical advice and is only my personal experience. Unless proper precautions, such as a medical team and EKG machine constantly monitoring your heart rate, complications and even death can occur.

Iboga is a plant medicine that is known for it’s Grandfather energy; to me, it feels very grounded, earthy, accessing ancestral and potentially past life information ingrained in my root chakra, in the very marrow of my bones. I would compare it to Ayahuasca ONLY in the sense that Ayahuasca is equally powerful and is known for it’s Grandmother essence. To me, Ayahuasca is enlightening and therefore the energy exists up around your head and your upper chakras; whereas Iboga is grounded in your lower chakras and physical body. Ayahuasca goes up, Iboga goes down.

The two sacred plant medicines have similar and different energies in many ways. Iboga comes from the root bark of a shrub in Central Africa, whereas Ayahuasca comes from the rainforest of South America; and both are used by indigenous people in sacred ceremony.

safety

Before the ceremony we got our blood drawn and the medical staff assessed our weight (for dosing), our blood pressure and our heart rate. During the ceremony we were hooked up to the EKG machine the whole time: 36 hours. This was to make sure we were healthy enough to continue taking the dose. Iboga can cause arrhythmia which can lead to death, so if you are considering working with Iboga, take this into consideration in selecting which center you use.

We prepped our mind and bodies before the experience with breathwork and yoga. We discussed how using this plant medicine is very much like embarking on a ‘Hero’s Journey.’ The Hero’s Journey was a story-model designed by Joseph Campbell where a normal person goes through something intense, succeeds and is thereby transformed forever. We (my boyfriend and I) knew that we would be different after this experience.

the ceremony

When the effects of the Iboga began I was mentally and metaphysically preparing to ‘fight’ something. They told us to create a scary monster in our mind that represented all of my doubts, insecurities and fears; in fighting and winning I was proving my worthiness, my courage and my strength to myself.

Initially, there was fear and doubt in my mind questioning:

1. Could I win this fight?

2. What if I do it ‘wrong?’

3. Would I literally die if I didn’t?

This pattern of doubting myself has been present in my past and I decided I was sick and tired of letting it direct my life. Even though I didn’t feel 100% ready I knew I was as ready as I’d ever be, I also knew that when you are afraid is the only time you can be brave, and I found comfort in that.

My mind created the fighting arena: there was a bridge I had to cross with a door on the other side that led into a castle, naturally the monster was on the bridge blocking my path.

I had to jump at the monster on the bridge, kill him and get into the door behind him. He was big and scary but I imagined my brother being in danger behind the door and that gave me the inspiration I needed to begin my attack.

As I jumped toward the monster with all the courage (and a cool sword) I could muster and I suddenly felt this bottomless well of resilience rise up inside me like an earthly flame. It began in my solar plexus and my heart moving and flowing throughout my body to my appendages. It was incredibly visceral and my real physical body moved and undulated in tandem with this energetic flow. It felt like the deepest strength and loudest courage, like my heart was transforming into a very literal ‘heart of a lion.’

This bottomless well of resilience was previously unbeknownst and unfamiliar to me, but I realized in this moment it was my birthright and I claimed it with all the courage I had. Any doubts that danced through my head like “but what if you can’t,” “what if you fail,” were revealed as lies and suddenly died, dissolved and turned to ash. What was left was an even stronger, tangible and more resonant truth that echoed in my bones: “there’s no way you can fail,” “there is no such thing as failure.” It felt like every cell in my body had turned into sunshine.

Once the monster came to his end with the blade of my sword, I opened the door of the castle and I met Iboga. He was African with one green eye and one yellow eye, I only ever saw the top half of his face and he spoke telepathically to me and a rumbling gravelly deep voice. His voice guided me to tumble further back into my subconscious, not falling, but supported somehow and weightless. Under the mentorship of Iboga I was able to begin this deep healing work - it was almost as if my ‘Jess Avatar’ was broken down into the smallest particles and spread throughout the farthest reaches of the known universe so I could see all my parts and components - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, and work with them individually.

As Iboga guided me I saw the things that I had been avoiding, for me this looks like:

1. sadness, because it reminds me of being depressed in the past so it doesn’t feel safe to access because I don’t want to get sucked in ever again

2. avoiding and suppressing the thoughts that I’m an imposter and not good enough

3. thinking that I’m an failure

4. that everything is my fault and

5. thinking that I’m unworthy and unlovable and

6. that I don’t deserve my wild and abundant life.

feeling myself die

During the experience I felt and knew (?) I was dying, but I also was deeply aware that I had to die in order to be reborn.

Iboga helped me feel all the things I was afraid of and I died through each emotion I was resisting. I experienced death through sadness, death through being not good enough, death through failure, death because it was my fault, death through my unworthiness and death through being undeserving. I died through embracing and accepting these things - this process wasn’t fun - it was so painful and felt awful and like the most torturous suffering I had ever suffered!!!

AND

It felt like this old Jess had to die through these things in order to be reborn into a new unwavering resiliency and courage. Old Jess couldn’t fathom those things, so she needed to die.

Kill the boy and let the man be born.

Iboga was still not done teaching me yet: I arrived in hell and I witnessed the most awful things - my imagination is incredibly vivid but the things I saw in hell were surprising, even for me. Hell was barren and dead and the color was all bleached out, it was bleak, hopeless and reeked of the deepest despair. Just as quickly as I wanted to resist it and hate it, I realized it was better to surrender so I decided to keep walking - much like the Winston Churchill quote.

If you're going through hell, keep going.

In surrendering to this entire experience I realized I was okay. Even dead and in hell, I was okay. This was a truly enlightening experience: I was okay in this hell, I sat with the despair, the pain, the suffering, the agony. I didn’t resist what I was feeling, seeing and going through. Through sacred surrender I felt a spark of sunshine and acceptance deep inside myself. I realized I was in hell, and that’s okay. I was suffering, in pain and scared, and that was okay. I was fearful I would never get out, and that was okay. I was afraid I was a failure, and that was okay. I was afraid I was unlovable and unworthy, and that was okay. I felt like I was an imposter and undeserving of my wild and amazing life, and that was okay. Suddenly no matter how negative my brain’s thoughts spiraled, the resonant truth that it was all okay echoed like a heart beat coming from inside and outside of myself.

being reborn

What a revelation it was! Surrendering to every thought of doubt and despair started to shape an innate and immovable self acceptance. I was able to hear the electricity that energized my heart and the blood pumping through my veins.

I realized I was listening to my own aliveness.

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy.

For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger –

something better, pushing right back.

Albert Camus

I realized at the deepest level of existence there exists incredible pain - however, that pain is paired and indistinguishable from the most orgasmic feeling of love and electricity. The very essence of life itself?! How lucky was I to experience this fantastical and life changing truth?!

Even though I was in pain, dead, in hell and suffering, there was this dogged determination to continue, a passion and zest for life’s juiciness even at rock bottom. Due to my prior work with death and transformation, I am comfortable at rock bottom because I know that is one of life’s biggest catalysts for change…

I was being initiated.

My intention before the Iboga was my continued passion, zest and love for life, my desire to go on, live loudly and unapologetically. I have always lived like I was telling the best story ever told and I wanted that magic to be branded on my soul.

Through this activation, I realized there was no such thing as right and wrong, there are only varying perspectives based on the color of our filter of experiences. That we are all one, that we are all different versions of each other, that we are all still twelve years old trying to figure out life, scared and insecure and doing out best. It made me weep tears from the deepest parts of my bones and DNA.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.”

- Rumi

Continue reading in iboga: death & dying pt 2