I Gave Birth to Myself on Ayahuasca
A few years ago, I traveled to Peru for an ayahuasca ceremony. What happened in that sacred space fundamentally altered the trajectory of my life — not through mystical revelation, but through the most visceral metaphor I’ve ever experienced: I gave birth to myself.
Toward the end of the ceremony, as the plant medicine reached its peak intensity, I found myself experiencing the impossible. I was simultaneously the mother and the child, the one giving birth and the one being born. It wasn’t symbolic or metaphorical in that moment — it was absolutely real, more real than anything I’d ever experienced.
But the entity that appeared during this process delivered a message that shook me to my core: “The life you are living is not yours. You are living in the residue of a former life.”
This wasn’t about reincarnation or past lives. It was about something far more immediate and urgent. I had undergone profound changes in my life, transformations that had fundamentally altered who I was, but I was too afraid to step fully into this new version of myself. Instead, I was clinging to the ghost of who I used to be, living in the leftover structure of an identity that no longer fit.
The Call to Leave
The entity’s message was clear: I needed to leave. Not just leave Peru, but leave everything — the job, the city, the entire framework of my existence. It wanted me to walk away with nothing but the clothes on my back.
I’m not the first person to receive this kind of calling. There are countless stories of people who’ve had similar awakenings and made dramatic shifts : leaving high-paying corporate careers to teach scuba diving in Thailand, opening bars in remote villages, becoming yoga instructors on tropical islands. They abandon the Western rat race for something simpler but infinitely more fulfilling.
But knowing this intellectually and actually doing it are two entirely different things.
Living in the Residue
For months after returning from Peru, I carried this message with me like a stone in my chest. I was a lawyer, established in my career, with all the trappings of conventional success. Yet every day felt like wearing clothes that belonged to someone else.
The entity had been right. I was living in the residue of a former life ; going through the motions of being someone I used to be, someone I thought I was supposed to be, but no longer was. The profound life changes I’d experienced had created a new person, but that person was trapped inside the old person’s life.
This is what I now recognize as existential detox : the withdrawal symptoms of shedding an old paradigm, of breaking away from structures that had shaped me for so long. Society drills certain concepts into us so deeply that even when we know their illusions, their echoes still rattle in our bones. Responsibility, productivity, stability — these ideas were tied to a system I no longer wanted to be part of, yet they still whispered in my mind, making me question whether leaving was truly the right move.
The Fear is the Programming
As I write this, I’m preparing to finally answer that call. I’ve left my law practice. I’m moving to Asia. I’ll spend a month learning to surf in the Philippines — not as some contrived spiritual journey, but as a form of moving meditation, a way of connecting with something vast and wild while staying completely present.
Originally, I planned to spend that month in silent meditation retreats in Bhutan. But that felt forced, like I was trying to fit my awakening into someone else’s template of what spiritual transformation should look like. The ocean called to me instead: learning to read waves, finding balance on a board, surrendering to something far larger than myself.
After the Philippines, I’ll base myself in Thailand and let each day unfold organically. No five-year plan, no predetermined path — just presence, openness, and trust in the process.
The fear I feel about this leap is real, but I recognize it now for what it is: the final desperate attempt of societal programming to keep me in place. It’s not wisdom or prudence , it’s conditioning designed to maintain the status quo, to keep people locked in structures that serve the system rather than the individual.
The Paradox of Money and Freedom
One of the biggest challenges in making this transition has been reconciling my relationship with money. Money represents everything I’m trying to step away from — the paradigm, the obligations, the corrosive structure of endless accumulation. Yet it’s also the means of my escape.
The question isn’t how to reject money completely, but how to use it without being owned by it. How to carry it without it carrying me. The answer lies in stripping money of its symbolic power ; no longer seeing it as status or security, but simply as a tool, a finite resource that fuels the real journey of experience, study, writing, and deep engagement with life.
The Great Untethering
What I’m embarking on is what I call the Great Untethering — a systematic dismantling of everything that kept me bound to a life that was never truly mine. It’s not about disappearing into a cave or rejecting the world entirely. It’s about engaging with life on my own terms, walking among people without being one of the sleepwalkers, seeing the machinery behind the scenes while still finding wonder in the experience.
This isn’t a retreat from responsibility , it’s the ultimate taking of responsibility for my own authenticity. The entity told me to leave, but it didn’t specify how. That choice, that exercise of agency in determining my own path forward, is itself part of the journey.
Beyond the Birth
The metaphor of giving birth to myself continues to unfold. Birth is violent, messy, and requires the complete destruction of one way of being in order to create another. The old self doesn’t simply fade away, it must be actively shed, like a snake molting its skin.
I’m still in the early stages of this process, still feeling the tremors of withdrawal from the old paradigm. But underneath the fear, there’s something else : excitement, relief, and a deep knowing that this is what needs to happen next.
The ayahuasca ceremony didn’t give me answers. It gave me permission to trust what I already knew: that the life I was living was not mine, that I had been hiding in the comfortable prison of who I used to be, afraid to step into who I was becoming.
Now I’m finally ready to honor that birth, to step fully into the life that belongs to the person I actually am rather than the person I thought I should be. The ocean is waiting, the path is uncertain, and for the first time in years, that feels exactly right.
The entity was clear: leave. So I’m leaving. Not just geographically, but in every sense:
mentally, emotionally, spiritually. Whether by intention or unconscious design, I’ve set fire to the bridges that would have kept me trapped. Now I have to go.