My last experience with a substance in my search for the understanding of consciousness gave me a pleasant surprise. It was like a rite of passage, an initiation into a new vision of myself, my purpose, my mission, and my life. We all started with the setting up of an altar. Just the setting up of my shamanic power tools gave me a sense of anticipation of the power of the ritual with which I was about to be involved.

The experience with the substances was varied. With Adam I felt in that very familiar space that I have explored in the past. With 2CB I felt myself to be in a state of consciousness similar to the experiences I have had with magic mushrooms. At the end of the effects of Adam, and at the beginning of the effects of 2CB, I did a lot of work with what I call "junk". It was very powerful, especially due to the fact that some issues concerning my mother arose into consciousness from a repressed space, and I was able to deal with them without fear and with compassion. Even though I still feel that I have more work to do in that area, the memories that came from the past were very powerful, and with my heart opened the way it was, I was able to see it with compassion and understanding.

After dealing with those issues, the rest of the evening was sheer pleasure for me. I felt my heart open like never before, and I would look at the rest of the people in the circle with a great amount of love and compassion. I was then channeling this love energy and I was really seeing everybody in a different light.

I reached the level in which the understanding of how we create reality was very solid, and in my inner world I realized that I had to stand on my own two feet for awhile; I said goodbye to my therapist, who was also present in this ceremony. It also became clear that to complete my ritual I had to give up my most "valuable" power object, my big crystal, the one that had been with me in the past. I also had to give it to the person who had guided me in my recent explorations, as a token of appreciation for the work that we had done together -- and so I did.

I began that evening after the workshop to have the most amazing and powerful dreams that I have had in a long time, culminating on the fourth day with what I consider one of the most important "completion" dreams that I have experienced up to now. It had to do with the fmal letting go and separation from the esoteric group that I belonged to in the past. I had been trying to totally let go of any hold that they might still have on my consciousness.

In this dream I confronted one of the key persons in the group, who in the dream was acting as a sorcerer trying to separate a couple who were getting married. Something very unusual happened: while I was dreaming and confronting this person I found that I still could not beat her, but then I "woke up" and in the awake state of consciousness I found a feather I had collected that day when hiking, held it in my hands, closed my eyes, and was once again in my dream, in front of this person, but this time with the feather in my hand.

When I confronted this person with the power that the feather had given me, this negative entity disappeared, or I should say dissolved. I then fully awoke with a sense of lightness that I had never experienced before after a dream. It was as though a great weight had been removed from my body and my process of detachment from this group had reached a conclusion. I told my wife about it right away, and I felt happier and more connected with her than I had in a long time.

In all, the weekend was definitely a rite of passage: from heaviness to lightness, from prison to liberation, and from dependency to the realization that I have the power to guide my own destiny and to create my own reality.