Reclaiming Joy As Our Birthright

What 4 nights of ayahuasca showed me about how to re-tap into my authentic joy.

I laid face down on the grass, feeling the light dew on my bare chest. The grass looked so green and vibrant. I reveled in the awe and wonder of truly seeing grass for the first time, as if through the eyes of a child.

I laughed a deep belly laugh. Who knew I could feel so much joy from the sight of grass? I surprised myself as tears of delight ran down my face.

I couldn't remember the last time I felt so much unbridled joy in life.

Two nights before, I'd nearly died from dehydration and electrolyte loss and had spent an entire night in the medical clinic. It'd given my wife and me quite a scare. My consciousness had flashed black and then white. I'd spent hours grieving my life almost ending and shaking off the fear and the trauma of the incident.

And now, on the other side of that near-death experience, I just felt so much joy ang gratitude to be alive. Laying on the grass, I kissed the earth, thanking it and thanking me for being here.

I was in Costa Rica, at a retreat center called Rythmia, in my third of four nights of ceremony with the South American plant medicine known as ayahuasca. My wife

Candace Sauve

and I had decided to kick off the new year by doing some deep inner work.

People who practice plant medicine often talk about ego death — a loss of our subjective sense of self so that we can be reborn with a newer more authentic identity — but this near-death experience was something else entirely.

I’d sat with ayahuasca multiple times before, but none of my previous journeys compared with this one. I left the four ceremonies feeling like my entire operating system was upgraded, with a massively expanded capacity for joy.

We Deserve to Feel Joy Whenever We Want

As babies, we're all born naturally predisposed to joy.

But somewhere in our developmental journey — typically in the first 5-7 years of life according to Neo-Reichian models of childhood development — we experience various traumas and subconsciously take on conditioning that limit our feelings and expressions of joy.

One of the most powerful healing and magical properties of ayahuasca is that she — ayahuasca's known as the Grandmother — surfaces subconscious or repressed emotional experiences from our early development.

By understanding the traumatic or subtle experiences that conditioned our patterns of thought and behavior, we have the opportunity to feel through them, integrate them, and heal and dissolve them.

In my own journey, I was shown the different ways I'd lost connection with my authentic joy.

That third night, I flashed back to a scene of myself as a child — full of joy, carefree and playing at home. My mom sees me, and scolds with a stern face, "Did you finish your homework yet?"

I watched with tears and sadness in my heart as little Edmond was taken aback and learned, in that moment, to associate joy with guilt — that he shouldn't play until all his work was done.

Suddenly, so many patterns in my life became clear. Why I would sometimes over-focus on work and on getting things done rather than enjoy presence with my wife. Why there would sometimes be a nagging feeling of guilt whenever I played "too much." Why I'd always held a "work first, then play" belief — except, when is work truly over? And why can't it be both?

From that scene, I realized, that deep within my subconscious, I’d internalized my mom’s critical voice as my own— and that the voice wasn't authentically me.

I flashed to a later scene of me feeling irritated at doing my homework — when what I really wanted to do was play.

I cried again, as I watched little Edmond learn that he needed to endure through life before he could experience joy. Joy was something he needed to earn, through suffering.

It became so clear why I’d been in a creative rut the past few months. I'd try to force myself to sit down and write and would feel at a total loss for getting words onto the page. My body would collapse, as if there were a depressive suction force inside me, and I'd long for inspiration to guide me out of the heavy vortex I was in.

And yet, I wouldn't give myself permission to follow my joy and do something else — because I’d picked up the belief that I needed to endure to deserve joy.

When I was little, my mom needed to work 364 days a year at our family herb store. I flashed back to a scene of myself as a baby, feeling joy. But when my mom came over, she was stressed and upset — understandably given how much she was working as an immigrant parent.

Not knowing better, baby Edmond causally linked his joy with his mom's upset-ness and decided his joy wasn't welcome.

Scene after scene in the ceremony, I was shown all the conditioning, all the patterns, and all the ways I thought I should be — that together limited the authentic expression of my joy.

I felt the sadness of how little Edmond had been too young to see the love underneath my mom's good intentions for me to have a good life and a strong education — and inadvertently took away kinked lessons about joy that she had never intended for me.

And in that sadness came the healing.

Joy Is Ours to Reclaim

When I dissolved all the layers of patterning that showed up, I was left with a simple yet powerful truth:

Joy is our birthright.

It isn't something we need to earn. We don't have to prove to ourselves that we deserve it. We don't have to endure through suffering to be worthy of it.

It's not something we need to limit from guilt — there's nothing wrong with allowing ourselves to feel joy.

It's not something we need to dampen when those around us feel sad or angry or afraid. Our joy isn't something others can take away, and it doesn't take away from their experiences.

This year, I'm reclaiming my joy.

I'm committing to catching the moments when that internalized critical voice comes up — and slowing down to remind myself that the voice is just my conditioning and not actually the authentic me.

I'm committing to breaking the enduring pattern — to notice when I'm enduring a situation and to permission myself by asking, "What would bring me toward more joy in this moment?"

I'm committing to doing things from a place of joy — and to stop when things no longer feel joyful.

I'm committing to noticing when a part of me wants to dampen my joy because I’m afraid it’ll make people around me feel uncomfortable — and to love myself by giving myself permission to stay in joy.

Will you join me?

Thanks to Jenny Messerle, Charu Gupta, CansaFis Foote, and Wes Melville for reading early drafts of this post.