You drink ayahuasca and suddenly you feel a collapse of your own self. The life you have built — studies, work, relationships, identity — cannot hold the person you are becoming.
You touch your life’s calling, your authentic energy, your deeper capacity, and everything that is not aligned begins to fall away. The ceremony ends, but the real work starts after. What feels like your identity breaking is often identity breaking free — a rebirth into something truer and more alive.
In this episode, we explore how new reference points emerge, what they are, and how they reorganize your life, purpose, and self. I share my most difficult integration experiences, including letting go of a successful career, releasing material status, and returning to Norway to confront the foster family I had not spoken to for over twenty years.
We also break down the five primary reference points ayahuasca activates, and why each one reshapes your life in ways that cannot be ignored:
1. Spiritual Reference Points
Direct encounters with Spirit, ancestors, or the Divine. This reference point reorients how you relate to existence, suffering, and life itself. It lands physically, emotionally, and mentally, reorganizing what is believable in your inner world.
2. Emotional Reference Points
Access to states you may have forgotten, never experienced, or thought were impossible — joy, grief, love, safety. Once it arrives, your emotional baseline changes, and you cannot live as if it never existed.
3. Physical Reference Points
Changes in how you inhabit your body. The way you breathe, move, hold yourself, speak, or occupy space may shift. Your body itself becomes a reference point, organizing how you engage with the world.
4. Mental Reference Points
Sudden clarity that reorganizes your entire story about who you are and why your life unfolded the way it did. Mental reference points cannot be ignored; pretending they don’t exist causes tension and inner conflict.
5. Ancestral Reference Points
Releases inherited patterns, trauma, and unresolved energies from past generations. These reference points often touch multiple layers simultaneously — spiritual, emotional, physical — and demand acknowledgment to prevent repeating cycles unconsciously.
Each reference point is a new organizing principle. Once it arrives, it shifts what you can live with. Ignoring them or trying to bypass them leads to fragmentation, internal conflict, and stalled growth. Integration is not optional — it is the work that allows your life to align with the truths the medicine has revealed.
In this episode, I share:
- How the medicine gave me the word “teacher” and then the teaching of “respect,” and how it reshaped my life.
- The hardest integration task ayahuasca ever asked: letting go of career, possessions, and identity to confront a traumatic past.
- How inner expansion without outer integration becomes another prison.
- Why purpose is revealed slowly, often through repeated reference points that show up across decades.
- How integration transforms chaos into a coherent, living masterpiece of identity and purpose.
If you want a deeper container for this work, go to www.davidvox.com
Here are three ways to step into the work of Ayahausca integration:
The SACRED INTEGRATION FACILITATOR TRAINING
For those called to integrate and hold space for others.
The SACRED MIRROR & The Celebration Circle
A six month group container with 24 live calls, built for people whose gifts are coming back online and who need clean mirrors, real witnessing, and the skills to stand in what is true without shrinking.
Explore options and book a consult via https://www.davidvox.com/
Follow and connect
Instagram: @davidvox
Facebook: Ayahuasca Integration Alliance
YouTube: @Ayahuasca-Integration
Resources and podcast transcripts: ayahuascaintegration.org
TRANSCRIPT:
0:00
You drink ayahuasca and suddenly the life that you have been building for decades with studies, work, relationships and an identity collapses in a moment because suddenly you see a new truth of who you are and what you’re capable of, and the life that you now have cannot hold the one that you see you are becoming.
0:24
Maybe you’ve touched your life’s calling, your authentic spiritual energy, and you see a deeper truth of what you are, and everything that is not aligned with this truth now starts to fall away.
The ceremony ends, but you know that the real work just began.
0:40
This might feel like your identity is breaking, but it’s simply breaking free into a truer and more aligned and a live version of yourself.
And that is what this episode is for.
You will learn what a new reference point is and the five common reference points that we meet on this journey that can rock the foundation of your life and your spirit, and what we can do to integrate them into one masterpiece of wholeness instead of more fragmentation.
1:09
I’ll also share the most difficult integration homework Aya has ever given me when she delivered me the mother of all new reference points towards who I felt I was scared of and how I could transform it, including going home to my home country to confront a previous foster family where I suffered immense abuse.
1:27
This is a very important episode because if you drink the sacred medicine of Ayahuasca and you are on this path, you will experience all of these reference points.
And in a research, up to 60% said that they went into the ceremony as non believers in the spirit or God, only to see themselves as spiritual afterwards.
1:46
So these reference points, they are powerful, they are real, and they usually happen within every single retreat where we get to experience the grandmother Ayahuasca.
2:30
I was guys, a way of showing you, sometimes within just one retreat, that who you are is not who you truly are.
You see suddenly, very clearly, that the identity you have been living from is already falling behind the person you are becoming.
She gives you a new reference point, and once that reference point is there, it begins to move everything.
2:52
Your career starts to look different.
The people that you used to connect with begin to change.
The direction of your life path quietly or drastically starts to shift.
And for most of us walking this path, this moment has already happened, even if we don’t have the land Ridge for it right now.
3:10
And when this happened, the plant of ayahuasca takes us so deep into the heart and so deep into our soul that we begin to realize how little our education or our professional identity actually touch who we are at the core.
Not because it was wrong or a waste of time, but.
3:28
Because it was built.
From a place that no longer match who we are becoming, something starts to move and a different path begins to reveal itself.
Not as something that we planned or design, but as something that is being shown through us and lived through us.
3:44
We don’t get to choose it because it chooses us.
And this episode is devoted to that realization and to the integration that follows when we discover that who we are becoming is not who we were.
And there is a lot of excitement in that discovery, but also there can be grief and fear and confusion.
4:02
We are called onto a path where the old tools and instruments we have no longer work or where these instruments we relied on no longer have the same purpose or produce the same sound.
And when we have to learn a new way of being in order to live the calling and the purpose that we feel stirring inside of us.
4:21
And to help you develop a language that has helped me a lot, is to know what a reference point is when we do this medicine work.
A reference point is not just something that happens in the mind.
It doesn’t live in one layer.
It can land spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically, and very often it lands in more than one place at the same time.
4:43
Sometimes it comes as a spiritual recognition that rearranges how you relate to existence itself, and yet sometimes it comes as an emotional truth that settles in the body and won’t leave.
Other times, it’s a physical knowing that changes how you breathe and how you move and how you hold yourself in the world, and other times as a mental clarity that suddenly reorganizes your entire story about who you are and why your life unfolded the way it did.
5:11
A reference point isn’t something you think yourself into.
It’s just something that lands within you.
Maybe as a child you believed in Santa Claus, like me.
And when you’re a child and you believe in Santa, it’s not just a thought, right?
It organizes your excitement, your imagination, your expectations, even how you, your body feels on Christmas morning.
5:34
And then one day you understand that Santa is not real.
Not because someone convinced you with the logic, but because you saw behind it.
And from that moment, you can remember what it felt like to believe.
You can even play along, but you cannot truly go back.
5:50
The belief no longer holds the reality together in the same way.
And a reference point works like this in our adult life as well.
Once it arrives, it changes what feels believable, what feels possible, and what feels false across your entire system.
6:07
You might still remember how you used to see the world and yourself, and you might even be able to perform that version of yourself for a while, but internally, something has already moved.
That’s why reference points aren’t reversible to willpower or discipline.
You can’t ignore them, but yet you can delay responding to them and integrating them.
6:29
You can try to build a life that pretends to didn’t happen, but you can’t return to who you were before because your body knows, your emotion knows, your nervous system knows, and often your spiritual orientation has already adjusted.
And this is where integration comes in a reference point.
6:47
It doesn’t demand that you change your life overnight.
It doesn’t give you also a set of instructions.
What it does is it quietly changes what you are capable of living with, and over time, that gap between who you’re living and what you know starts to feel uncomfortable, heavy, and even unbearable.
7:07
And if you know that feeling I want to share with you the first time Ayahuasca gave me a reference point that truly shifted how I was going to live the rest of my life.
If you done ayahuasca, you will also come into ceremony with the question, what is my purpose?
What am I here to do?
7:24
What is it that I am here on this earth to become?
And I was in ceremony holding space for 20 clients together with shamans from the Putumayo that I worked with closely over 10 years.
And that night I asked the question that came from a really deep place.
I asked ayahuasca, what am I here on earth to do or to be?
7:42
And she responded really quickly.
Teacher.
And my reaction was such a relief.
My sister is a teacher for children.
I love teachers.
Teachers have the potential not only to change one life but an entire generation.
And I remember thinking how beautiful that felt to be a teacher.
8:00
I thought, yes, I would love to be a teacher.
That feels right.
And then I asked the next question which I should not have asked, what am I here to teach?
And the answer came instantly with her voice respect.
And I resisted immediately.
8:15
No, no, no, no, no, no, no please, please not respect.
Can I pick another one?
Can I pick self love or love to animals?
But there was no answer and it reminded me of the saying we often say in ayahuasca ceremonies, you get what you need, not always what you want.
Because this silence is just stayed with me.
8:33
And in this silence something was planted, a seed that I didn’t understand at that time, but one I slowly began to Orient my life around.
And over many years ayahuasca kept returning to the same lesson and word respect, revealing it layer by layer.
8:49
I began to see that respect was not only something I was here to offer others, it was something I was here to learn for myself.
Because you can only be a teacher for what you are and for what you have embodied yourself.
I had to learn how to respect my own gifts, my voice, my truth, my body, my boundaries, to learn to learn to honor myself in spaces where I had learned to abandon myself.
9:14
She also showed me that this teaching went beyond this lifetime, that respect towards others had been forgotten before, that I had hurt people in past lifetimes, and that this part was not just about standing as a teacher for others, but about taking this medicine fully spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally and ancestrally in every dimension of my life.
9:38
And only then slowly and naturally allow this energy to move into the work that I do as overflow of who I am and nod as an unintegrated package I wanted to sell or share with others.
Another time Ayahuasca showed me a new reference point was in a very different way.
9:57
Many years later I was led into the most difficult integration journey of my life.
And this time Ayahuasca gave me a quest and a challenge that would take me years of courage to actually dare to enter.
For with so many years with Ayahuasca, I went into ceremony and the focus was to heal the trauma that experienced.
10:17
That’s a child and every ceremony would be like a different age and time of my childhood.
I started off being just a toddler, eventually I was 5, eventually I was 7, eventually I was 10.
And it felt like being re parented by ayahuasca and moving through every single memory and every single trauma that I had experienced to release it.
10:42
But eventually almost all of this trauma was transformed and still I was scared.
Scared of the people that once hurt me, even though now I was a big man, a muscular man, a man who had a proud and loud voice, who could protect himself.
11:00
But still there was this fear of meeting these people that once hurt me in childhood.
And ayahuasca showed me that even though I had released the inner walls, the outer walls was still there.
I still had a fear.
I still was as fearful as the child that once were hurt living in this body of a man.
11:20
And the only way to transform this was to go and confront this family that once had given me great harm.
Because even though I could expand my inner world and heal internally and grow my inner capacity, I also had to do the outer work.
Because if I did all this inner work and return to the same outer life, the walls around me would still be just as close to the outside, just as tight, just as suffocating as before.
11:47
And then I was not just integrating, I was not expanding this out of reality.
The inner work and the outer work had to be integrated and come together.
Because my inner world becomes my outer world.
And if not, my inner worlds could be liberated only to find myself imprisoned by my outer walls.
12:07
This is why I many times meet people who do this great healing and liberation on the inside, but they’re scared of speaking that truth and service into this world.
And this for me, was a level of difficulty that I did not want to meet.
I did not want to go back to Norway.
I did not want to confront the family that had nearly taken my life.
12:26
And yet something in me knew that this was a part of the work.
There was nothing in me that wanted to go back because the abuse had been so horrific.
And when I shared this quest with my healing coach at that time, her reaction was very strong.
12:41
She told me, do not go back there.
Do not contact his people.
Do you really expect that people who’ve hurt you in the past are going to heal you in the future?
Stop it, David, she told me.
And she also told me, don’t listen to ayahuasca.
She’s wrong.
12:57
And that moment I knew that this was not the teacher for me because I trusted ayahuasca.
And I understand that most people would never comprehend why on earth you would return to a country and try to connect with a family who abused her in childhood.
I understood that this choice would not make sense to anyone from the outside.
13:17
But there was a deeper truth moving inside of me and it was a reference point to my own liberation.
It was a deeper need that had nothing to do with logic.
And also there was the trust in my teacher, ayahuasca, that I can’t explain in a rational way because I trust ayahuasca with my life.
13:34
And that was the moment I ended that coaching relationship because I knew I could not outsource this decision.
I had to consciously make this decision for myself.
And I knew after many years of therapy, after many years of healing with ayahuasca, that I had healed this on the inside and I could finally confront it on the outside.
13:54
I did not start the journey but going to confront the family where I had not healed and transformed these wounds on my inside.
Because then that meeting would have been a meeting of hate and anger and blame.
And I knew also that this was my path to walk and nobody can walk it for me.
14:13
So I follow this request that ayahuasca kept bringing me, even though a part of me was terrified in this journey.
She also asked me to let go of everything that I had to the go of my identity as a very successful coach.
To stop working.
14:30
To stop defining myself through achievements and money and productivity.
To stop placing my sounds of self into my things.
And this was so painful for me.
I had built such an identity around being this gay man with a successful coaching career.
14:46
And since that identity created safety and money, I didn’t want to lose it.
I had invested so much of my time and energy into this identity, my sense of worth into it.
I’d surrounded myself with beautiful things and luxury brands, objects that carried status and safety.
15:04
And Ayawaska asked me to let it all go.
And I remember one time going down to the street in Barcelona, laying some of these beautiful boxes out on one of the garbage bins, hoping that some lucky person would find them.
And then a man came walking down the street with a trolley full of metal scraps, and he noticed one of these beautiful boxes in the garbage bin.
15:25
And he stopped and opened the box and lifted out this beautiful Gucci silk scarf and held it up and just looked at it in disbelief and threw it behind him into the mud and kept walking.
I remember standing in my doorway watching, feeling a surge of disbelief.
15:42
And I thought, how could you do that?
That scarf cost hundreds of EUR.
And then something in me just cracked open and I started laughing, because the value had never been real.
It had only existed in the story I had told myself about who I was.
Those things did not form my identity.
15:58
They did not form my worth.
And in that moment, I could let that part of the journey finally end.
And eventually, when my apartment was empty in Barcelona and it was only me and the Magnolia tree outside my terrace blooming, I sat on the floor in an empty apartment, decided it’s time to order that one way ticket back to Norway and meet this family that I was scared of meeting.
16:22
So going back to Christmas, I said that I needed to stay a little bit longer.
And I stayed in the cabin next to the house where I grew up.
And I started writing on my book, and I began researching who in my foster family who was still alive.
And strangely, they were all on Facebook, literally just a click away.
16:40
They’ve been there the entire time.
Even my foster dad, who I thought was dead and was so abusive, he was sitting there with seven friends on Facebook.
And I started writing to all of them.
Do you Remember Me?
I need to have a conversation.
And at first there was just silence, and then I freaked out and I blocked everyone.
16:59
And eventually I got a message from one of the sisters that I had in that family long time ago when I was two to five years old.
And together with my sister, we drove to meet them in the nearby city.
And in that meeting, something happened that I’d never experienced before in my life.
17:17
For the first time, my memories were validated.
The childhood I thought I’d been so insane and so dark and so unreal was validated and confirmed as reap.
I hadn’t imagined it.
It was completely true.
And in that moment I found words for the pain that the child in me never could speak.
17:37
I could name the story, I could say what happened, and I stood there as a proud adult and said the things that have been trapped in silence for decades.
I felt like this saved.
Dad had finally come home to Norway to protect that child that I was, that didn’t have any protectors.
17:55
And I stood in front of that inner child and said to him, you were right.
You survived something no child should ever survive.
And I’m here with you.
And I’m here to Share your story with you.
And I’m here to show you that it’s safe to be, you know, not just on the inside, but also on the outside.
18:12
You can share your truth now.
And I could feel my inner child soften.
I could feel him relax.
I could feel him finally feel protected.
And then very suddenly, something just released.
It was as if this entire chapter of my childhood just let go at once.
18:30
I didn’t need any more healing there.
I didn’t need to keep working on it.
I was so done.
And I realized that when you are truly ready to let go of something, it’s over.
In this meeting with these two sisters, they asked me if I had a message to my foster dad and I remember feeling the part of me that would have spoken before I started the Ayahuasca journey who would have told them to tell him to go somewhere not nice and that would have been filled with rage and anger.
19:05
But now, after this spiritual healing journey with ayahuasca, I knew that we were all on the same journey and that eventually we would all come home.
And that one day I will be standing in a gate somewhere in the spiritual realm and wait for him to come back home.
19:22
And I will be giving him a big hug.
Because to forget your lights and to spread so much darkness and pain means that the journey home is just longer.
So when they asked me what message I wanted to share with him, I also knew that in childhood, his goal was to destroy my light, to make me as dark and angry and hateful as him.
19:44
And I knew that he hadn’t succeeded, that I had found my light, that I had found my power, that I had found my voice, and that he didn’t win.
His goal was to break me and to make me forget my light.
And he had done the opposite.
20:00
So I said to them, tell him.
Tell him that I’m not a man of hate or anger, that I’m filled with love, that I’m filled with happiness, and that I don’t have any anger towards him whatsoever.
Because I know that’s what he wants me to be like.
20:18
And he didn’t succeed.
And it felt so good to release that hatred and anger and to rather see him as a very difficult and challenging teacher to help me find my own light and the light that I never lost and can never lose.
20:36
And that was probably the most difficult integration exercise Ayawaska ever given me.
And within a few months of returning home to Spain, my heart was just so open.
There was space.
Finally.
It was like I’ve been carrying this luggage with me my entire life that was so heavy, and now I was free.
20:51
There was lightness.
Song started coming to me that felt so beautiful.
They made me cry.
Love came into my life and everything felt alive and aligned.
And joy was there when I woke up in the morning and when I went to bed, as if I’d never been traumatized a day in my life.
21:08
My inner walls had slowly been taken down, and now the outer walls were also removed and I was free to move within me and outside of me, and life began to blossom in ways I didn’t even know were possible for me.
And it wasn’t something I forced or planned.
21:25
It just started to open on its own.
And it was during this time I was to show me a deeper layer of my truth.
I was lying on the floor, deeply connected to the medicine.
And then she took me into my own heart.
Be fully embodied in my heart, not just to see or feel it, but to experience it from the inside.
21:46
I realized from the deepest place in my being that I’m an artist and people use that word all the time and maybe doesn’t mean that much to you, but for me, it wasn’t a word.
It was a part of my identity that I desperately wanted to adopt.
It was a calling, like a lifelong calling, that I could suddenly reorganize because I was standing inside of it.
22:08
It felt like I could see the melody of my soul, and that melody was purely artistic.
And I could feel how out of tune I’d been with the instrument of my own heart for so long, trying to play something that was never meant to be played.
True me.
And I knew without a doubt that the moment I committed to this journey of becoming an artist, I would be home.
22:30
And not home as an idea, but home in my body, home in my heart, home in the frequency of this heart and in the frequency of my soul.
I knew that if I allow myself to live from that place, I would be the happiest version of myself.
22:47
And that is how these dark nights of the soul and difficult processes and the years of confusion slower revealed my purpose to me.
And today that artistic journey shows up in creating songs and writing children’s books.
And I have so many songs coming true right now that I’m preparing for ceremony next week and that I hope I can share with you soon.
23:07
And these are all expressions of something that has been waiting for a long time to move.
A sacred expression of my truest energy and a way for me to receive my soul and express my soul.
And it also shows up in my work as a teacher, training facilitators in the sacred work and those that are also being called to be in service in their own way.
23:29
And that takes me to the next part because something I’ve noticed that feels important name is that when we start opening this inner advent calendar of consciousness and we begin to look behind these doors that shaped our conditioning in our trauma, we always start seeing more of the truth of who we are.
23:45
And when it happens, there is often an urgency that arises, a feeling that says, I need to become this immediately.
I need to live this now.
I need to make this real right now.
Yet the identity we already have, the tree of life that we’ve been cultivating, it didn’t grow overnight.
24:02
It took decades, 40 years, 50 years, or if you were called early, maybe 20 years.
And that tree took time to form its roots, its branches, its shape.
And it also takes time to change the soil it grows in.
It takes time for new nutrients to reach the roots.
24:21
And if you rush the process, you can actually damage the very life you’re trying to grow.
And I also know this in patients so well.
Because of the retreats and big realizations and new reference points, I often want to change everything instantly, as if I should have already done this yesterday.
24:39
And over time, after working with this medicine and this paw for more than a decade, I learned something important.
If anything feels one step ahead of me, it’s not for me.
When I try to jump ahead, I lose my center, I lose my grace, I lose my ease, I lose my ability to really listen to what is here for me right now, and I start living in stress and urgency and feeling late and feeling behind.
25:05
What I come to understand is that we are never too late for our own purpose.
We’re never too late for our lives calling because it’s why we’re here.
And we would definitely not be late if we are on the path with ayahuasca.
We can’t come late to our own life because we’re already living it, but we can procrastinate, we can sabotage, we can hold on to things that no longer serves us, but we are still always in time.
25:31
That’s when we enter the space of mastery and mystery together.
Because especially after working with ayahuasca, we start to realize that there are more parts of us that we are usually shown.
And when we receive all of these new reference points, it’s almost like we can see ourselves as this huge, beautiful painting hanging on the wall, a true masterpiece made-up of hundreds of puzzle pieces.
25:55
And then we go into sermon and discover one new puzzle piece, and suddenly we think, this is who I am right now.
We feel like we need to throw away all the other pieces and become this one immediately.
But that one piece is not the whole picture that belongs to the larger masterpiece that is still being revealed.
26:13
Because when we find a new reference point within our identity, within our spiritual journey, something very human happens.
We feel like we need to focus only on that puzzle piece.
And we feel like this is the truth, This is who I am, this is the direction.
And everything else suddenly feels secondary or irrelevant.
26:31
And in that focus, we forget that the rest of the puzzle pieces we already are.
So often we become completely absorbed in this one new puzzle piece.
It might be a memory that surface, or a trauma that finally makes sense, or a calling, or a part of the path.
26:47
And we stay so close to our painting, we stop seeing the totality of it.
We get so focused on the details.
We don’t step back, we don’t widen our view.
We don’t look at the enormous, beautiful masterpiece that we already are.
We get lost in the details.
27:04
We get so close to our own self-image, to our own idea of who we are, that we forget to look at who we already became and who we are right now.
And then we start noticing all of these puzzle pieces within us that have never really been honored.
Maybe we are a musician or a singer or an artist.
27:22
Maybe we are a healer or a space holder.
Maybe there’s a part of us that longs to be more adventurous or sensual or travel the world to explore, to take risk.
Maybe there’s a part of us, the ones who start a family or slow down, or to build something rooted and stable.
All of these parts, they live inside of us at the same time, and this is usually a moment that we need to pause because the question is no longer how do I honor this one new reference point, this one new puzzle piece?
27:49
I discovered.
The deeper question becomes, how can I see the totality of who I am, the masterpiece, and how can I see the wholeness of my life?
How can I find a way to honor all of it instead of exiling parts of myself that doesn’t seem to fit the new story yet?
28:06
How can it all belong?
I worked with this very directly yesterday when a client in the one-on-one transformational process.
We’re working on exactly this part of the journey.
She’s someone who is stepping into leadership in this field after hiding yourself for many decades.
28:22
And she’s one of my favorite type of people.
She’s one of the quiet ones, the hermits who carry so much wisdom but rarely show it.
And we took a step back together and began to look at the masterpiece of who she already is.
And I asked her, can you name all the parts of you that are alive within you right now?
28:41
And she started sharing that she was a mom.
She’s an animal lover.
She loves working with children, especially children on the spectrum.
And she loves working with adults.
She loves music.
She’s a designer, programmer.
She plays songs.
28:57
She’s an editor.
She loves creating experiences for people.
And the list kept growing and growing.
So many beautiful puzzle pieces of who she was right now that belong to her masterpiece.
And as she spoke, it became clearer that all of these pieces were not living together.
29:16
Some of them are fragmented, some are placed on the left side of her painting, some on the right, some in the center, some are pushed to the edges, and some are lying on the ground, not placed anywhere yet, just waiting.
So we stayed with that image.
And then I asked her another question.
How could all of these pieces belong to 1 masterpiece to 1 picture, one painting that people could actually see and experience, not something that was hidden inside her mind.
29:42
And then we went even deeper and looked at what path that can make her not only receive every part of herself and honour every part of herself, but also be able to express all of her in a way that feels aligned and aligned.
And she didn’t force an answer, she let it emerge.
30:00
And what came true was very simple.
But she wanted to create beautiful daytime events for children, especially children on the spectrum, where they can move freely, listen to music, play, and feel safe being themselves.
And since she loves animals, she wanted to weave them into the experience.
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There could be whale events or squirrel days, where children learn about squirrels and move like squirrels and play and laugh and explore.
And she wanted the same structure for adults.
She could read stories from shamanic literature about whale.
She could invite them into breath work inspired by Wales.
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And as she spoke, something shifted in her body.
She could suddenly see all the parts of her not competing with each other.
They were united.
The designer had a place.
The programmer and developer had a place.
The editor had a place.
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Her love from music had a space.
Her ability to hold space for others had a space.
None of the jobs that she had had before had to be thrown away.
They were all instruments that she had learned to play.
And now these instruments could be brought into this calling and into this experience so they could be of service.
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And this is one of the most beautiful aspects of integration work for me.
So often we discover a new puzzle piece within ourselves.
We think we need to abandon parts of ourselves that don’t immediately fit in this new direction.
But integration is not about exile.
Integration is about the relationship to ourselves from wholeness and integrity.
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It’s about seeing how all of the parts of you can move together, even your slowest moving parts.
And so many of us doing this work are part of something new that is emerging.
There are only four millions of us that have worked with ayahuasca.
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So we are a tiny family, but we’re also not alone.
And it also means that we are a part of this new myth.
We are bridging ordinary lives and our previous jobs with this mystical and new reality that is now forming.
And that is why it’s so important to ask, what if all of this within me could be of service?
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What if instead of seeing your life as two paths or separate paths that doesn’t fit together, you start seeing them as one path with many instruments?
Because there are so many instruments that we can pick up along the way.
Skills, experiences, roles, identities, and at some point we realized they don’t really define our entire path.
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They are tools for the path.
They are not the destination and any tools to find from jobs to identity, we let ourselves rest there as if it is the final destination.
And then we experienced to be shaken to the core and our entire system breaks down.
Yet if we move with the path and we use and honor all of these instruments we have to play with, we are leading the Symphony of life and we are playing with the universe.
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Because you, my friend, you are the path and the masterpiece.
Even if you got stuck in the details of one or two puzzle pieces.
And at the end of the day, this journey is about falling in love with this process and path that you are already on.
Most of the time, the reason we want to throw away certain puzzle pieces of our self is because they represent pain or effort, or they represent a part of our lives that no longer feels alive or aligned.
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But even those parts, they taught us something and they gave us instruments that we can still use.
I know for myself that I would probably never sign up to the puzzle pieces of my childhood again, but now they are beautifully woven into my path and they no longer hurts.
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They have taught me to play on instruments of healing and respect and compassion that I would probably never have picked up or understood without these experiences.
Right now, they are some of my most valuable teachers and allies on this, Paul.
And when we make these adjustments and we connect deely within, we can allow ourselves to see the full masterpiece of who we are.
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And something begins to shift on the outside as well.
The inner image starts to be reflected on the outside, and the life around us begins to mirror the wholeness we are learning to embody.
And to summarize, I want to share very shortly the five reference points that are very important at all, because they will come when you are on this path with ayahuasca.
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And the first one that I touched on was the spiritual reference points.
One of the strongest experience I had with ayahuasca happened last summer when something inside of me finally shifted around my relationship with the Divine.
I realized very clearly that the Spirit and the Divine did not hate me, did not see me as broken or wrong, and therefore send me into painful childhood.
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Instead, I saw that the Divine trusted me.
It trusted my Light.
It trusted my life.
It trusted that I could learn what I needed to learn, that I could walk through what I had to walk through and still find my way back into the Light.
And that realization created a completely new reference point inside of me, within my spirituality.
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I didn’t even know that I had a spiritual shame that I cared for so long connected to ancestral shame or being gay.
And the belief that something was wrong with me at the soul level and that just assault, the story of my childhood, shifted from punishment and karma into meaning as well.
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Not in a way that made it easy or justified, but a way that allowed grace to enter where there had only been blame and shame.
And that opened a deeper connection with the Divine that I had never known before.
It reorganized my entire spiritual self and life.
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I was no longer a soul to be punished with karma, but a soul that experienced a difficult childhood because the Divine trusted me.
It trusted that I could carry the light through this experience.
It trusted that I had what it took to have a difficult experience in the dark and still know my own light.
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Then we have emotional reference points, because other times the reference points are completely and purely emotional.
I remember 1 ceremony where I found myself jumping from mat to mat within the ceremony room, screaming and dancing of pure joy.
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The kind of joy that you can only see children having these days, or a dog if you have a dog.
This kind of joy that moves through the body without any effort.
And in that moment, I realized I’d found a new reference point in my body emotionally that I lost somewhere in childhood.
I’d forgotten how real pure joy felt like.
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And as an adult, I didn’t have access to that place anymore.
And I remember thinking, can I actually feel this type of joy in my daily life?
Is it possible?
And now sometimes I experience what I called happiness attacks.
I literally I’m just shaking with happiness and laughing and singing for no reason at all.
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So I found this new anchor and joy that is alive inside of me and also very accessible.
And that reference point change how I understand my emotional life.
It’s no longer what comes after anxiety and stress.
Joy comes first because joy is who I am.
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Then we have a spiritual reference points.
And as I mentioned, in a control group with ayahuasca drinkers, in one group 30%, another group, 60% of the participant described himself as spiritual after working with ayahuasca, even though they did not believe in God or spirit or anything before they had a cup of ayahuasca.
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And imagine the shift and that new reference point, never believing in God or spirit, and then One Cup later, actually meeting the divine and being a believer.
That’s a powerful shift that really reorganizes your life and your existence.
And that’s the power this medicine brings.
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And then there are also physical reference points, and you probably experienced this in ayahuasca where you have a new experience and understanding of your body, what your body needs, how to heal your guts, how to heal your anxiety, how to take care of yourself on a physical level.
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And then we have the mental reference points where suddenly we find a new belief or a mental framework.
Maybe we’ve shifted from thinking I’m the unluckiest person in the world or I’m not worthy, to simply knowing our true words.
And a new reference point mentally that transforms a deep negative unconscious belief can drastically change the way we see ourself in our life.
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So that are all the most commonly referenced points that we can find.
And I hope this was helpful for you where you are in your journey.
And before I close this week’s episode, I want to say thank you.
In just three months, this podcast, I received close to over 700 hours of listening time.
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More than 3000 people have listened and that has meant so much to me.
I was really scared about starting this podcast and sharing so many personal stories, so I didn’t want to promote him.
And you have found it by yourself because you were walking on the same path as me and I am bowing in awe of meeting you here.
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It’s an honor to share this journey with you, my friend, and to speak into the space of deep transformation and deep remembering together.
I’m also so curious about what are some of the new reference points and puzzle pieces you have found on this path.
What did you touch that you didn’t know existed before?
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What you puzzle piece showed itself to you that you’re now learning how to integrate into the life you’re living?
I would love if you could share with me in the comments on YouTube or Spotify.
And if you have the time, please leave a review on the platform you’re on.
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It helps me see that I’m here with you on this journey, and it also helps other people to find this podcast as well.
Gratitude for you my friend and for the courage you have to truly heal and transform with our shared teacher, Grandmother Ayahuasca.
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That’s what I got for you this week, my friend.
And if you feel called to go?
Deeper into your own integration.
Work Ioffer 3.
Journeys.
I lead an integration circle for people walking this path with ayahuasca and I just completed finishing a six month integration circle with therapists, coaches, retreat facilitators and those that are going deep on.
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This journey you can.
Sign up at davidvox.com and when you’re.
Ready for the second?
Journey that’s the celebration circle It is 6 months of celebrating your life and your.
Gifts.
And the first reaction?
Many people.
Have is.
Why on earth would I want to do that?
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And the answer is quite simple how you get there?
Is how you will be there.
If you are constantly healing and hustling and hiding and performing or proving, do you think that once you arrive?
There.
You will suddenly feel free.
Because I.
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See that waiting to celebrate until after you achieved the new job had more?
Ayabasta or fixed your.
Relationship is not the answer.
Celebration is not the reward.
It’s the rehearsal.
It’s the daily act of self respect, self honor and gratitude.
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It’s the integration of.
Who you already are.
And when you learn to celebrate who you are now, every future version of you arrives already welcomed.
When you learn to honor the ordinary to.
Bow.
To your own brilliance to see your gifts.
And story as sacred.
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Something inside of you shifts.
You stop chasing your life and you start inhabiting it.
You start living it and every other part of your world begins to rise to meet you, your relationship.
Your voice, your joy.
Even your income, because when you live in celebration.
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You attract a life that celebrates you back.
Every call shows you a different angle of who you are, what you project, what you hide.
What you’re not seeing and.
It ends with the celebration ritual where 20 mirrors reflects your gifts back to you.
Your only job is to receive.
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And maybe.
For the first time ever, you will see your full, faceted, multidimensional, gifted, abundant self.
And then there’s the third journey, Sacred Impact.
And this is the one for leaders in the transformational and spiritual field who have this great vision, depth and sensitivity, but they struggle to bring their service into tangible form here on Earth.
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I’ve guided and coached over 5000.
Leaders in the last. 15 years helping them create platforms and offerings that comes from a real alignment, something that honors their integrity, their sensitivity, their pacing.
And for six months, we meet as a group of 10.
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We bring your platform, your ideas, your service, your medicine into structure, into form and into a rhythm.
That actually grows the tree.
You’ve been cultivating and produces the fruit you’ve been trying to.
Reach for years.
It’s planting these seeds in a container where they can grow and bringing it into resonance.
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And clarity and then.
Watching the.
Fruits of the sacred work.
Manifest in a way that finally feels.
True to who you are.
You can find more information about these three journeys on davidvox.com.
See you next week.
My friend.
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