After my closing ceremony I had a heart to heart with Cvita Mamic, shaman at Nihue Rao Centro Espiritual. I told her I felt as though I had not completely made peace with my past. I went into some details about the traumas I went through. I told her that I had been been in counseling on and off for about 9 years and it kind of helped but I don't think I've moved on. Ceremonies with Mama Ayahuasca had been incredibly helpful but I just didn't feel 100% healed. (Later I will come to find that I had not fully experienced how much Mama Ayahuasca had changed me at the time. It wouldn't be until almost a month after I came home that I experienced how much Mama Ayahuasca had healed me.)

Cvita said to me something along the lines of, "....counseling has its good and its bad. It helps you examine what happened to you and can be very helpful in the healing process. At the same time it makes you continue to talk about what happened to you so you can never fully move on. Stop telling your story. By constantly telling your story you're bring your past into your present. It's something I had to learn too. Stop telling your story."

It has been 5 months since I came home from Peru after my ceremonies with Mama Ayahuasca and those words have never hit me harder. Our past is a part of all of us but it is up to us to choose how much we are going to allow it to engulf our lives. After all they are just memories. Memories can't hurt us unless we allow them to consume us and take over our present.

"The past lives in you as memories but memories in themselves are not a problem. In fact, it is through memory that we learn from the past and from past mistakes. It is only when memories, that is to say, thoughts about the past, take you over completely that they turn into a burden, turn problematic, and become a part of your sense of self. Your personality, which is conditioned by your past, then becomes your prison. Your memories are invested with a sense of self, and your story becomes who you perceive yourself to be. This "little me" is an illusion that obscures your true identity as timeless and formless Presence." -Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth: Awakening Your Life's Purpose)

Stop telling your story doesn't mean keep everything in. It simply means learn when it's time to let go. Believe that you've made peace with it and stop obsessing that you're not okay. That's the ego. The ego loves obsessing. It thrives on it.

The only way to be fully present is to do just that. Live in the present. Don't forget the past. That's impossible. But don't see yourself as a victim who survived the past. That is the ego at work. Instead see that the past has molded you into the person you are today. That's something I wouldn't trade. I'm very grateful for where I am now and that would not have been possible without the past.