Garett: 00:28

Welcome to the deeper you go, the weirder it gets . I'm your host, Garett Renon. So this episode is about my origin story, the origin story of El Ayahumero.

Garett: 00:40

Before we

Garett: 00:41

get into the episode, if you are enjoying the show, please like it, share it, subscribe to it, and leave a review, especially if you are on Apple podcast. Or if you were listening on Spotify, you can add a review or you can comment on every episode. Doing those things helps me out greatly. And I'm gonna keep the announcement short, but you can go to my website, which is located in the show notes, and that will point you to all the things I have going on. That's it.

Garett: 01:19

Now let's get on with the episode.

Garett: 01:22

Okay. So a question I get asked all the time is, how did I get here? Right? Like, how did I become? And if you watch my previous videos about the number one red flag when people call themselves healers or shaman, me calling myself an Ayahumero is not a red flag because Ayahumero means somebody who works with the tree Ayumo.

Garett: 01:53

Anyway, just didn't want you to think I have a big ego. So how did I get here? Which is a very interesting story because I never set out to do this in fact this was never part of the plan and when you think about anybody's origin story there's always several defining moments in their life that put them on a path. So I was thinking what was one of the earliest turning points in my life? And one of the earliest memories I have of something that changed my life forever, and I would say for the better, happened when I was about eight years old.

Garett: 02:41

My parents had enrolled me into a Taekwondo class. And I absolutely loved it. And I remember after a particular class we were practicing our punches and the instructor came around and he stood in front of us and he put his hands behind his back and he told you to punch him in the stomach as hard as you could. Now granted we were kids probably the oldest kid in there was maybe 10 but it was my turn So I punched his stomach as hard as I could and as soon as I connected with his stomach I felt nothing but pain in my hand. Luckily I didn't break my hand but his stomach was rock hard and it basically crushed my hand and in that moment I remember a flash of going back and seeing the old Christopher Reeves Superman movies because there was always a scene where he was Clark Kent or maybe even Superman and the bad guy would go punch him in the stomach and then essentially break his hand because Superman was aka the man of steel so as I punched this instructor and my hand was hurting and throbbing I thought this guy's Superman.

Garett: 04:15

I didn't know that this was possible. I always thought this was that type of strength was reserved for superheroes. So after class, I asked him, how did you do that? How can I do that? And he essentially told me do your push ups and sit ups.

Garett: 04:36

See after every class we would end the class doing I don't know X number of push ups and X number of sit ups and I was only in that class for maybe another month or two my parents took me out unfortunately we didn't have the money but I never stopped doing push ups and sit ups. I did them every single night essentially since I was eight years old until the present day and that kind of put me on this journey of becoming fascinated with strength and power and trying to become a superhero. Another defining moment in the same timeline of the eighties and nineties were the old school montages. Right? Movies like Rocky, Karate Kid, Best of the Best.

Garett: 05:36

These movies these eighties and nineties action movies even though they were cheesy and even though they were extremely simple were actually really good for my psyche because they essentially embodied the hero's journey. You had a hero who was interested in some sort of sport and the hero maybe had some potential. He engages in a competition does well initially not great but does well enough and then as he progresses he ends up meeting the the boss right who then proceeds to beat the hero into sufficient and shows him that there are levels to the game. So then what proceeds is a state of depression, a state of questioning if this is the path for you, and then a resurrection and a redemption arc and what would happen was the stereotypical 1980s montage which were not only awesome to watch but kind of tells you a lot about the process because the montage was a way to speed up months or years of training into a very condensed period and what it was teaching you was that hard work pays off that you have to develop yourself by repetition and consistency and discipline and doing it over and over again And then of course after the montage ends the hero then confronts the villain and then beats them right very simple story, but that message was embedded and downloaded into my psyche.

Garett: 07:37

That essentially laid a big foundation of who I am and my personality and the way I see life and thankfully I believe these are good things. So anyway my story then progresses just kind of a typical childhood doing a lot of sports and I graduate college with a mechanical engineering degree and then I enter into the workforce the department of defense which is absolutely crazy because you know my whole thing nowadays is about unplugging and escaping the matrix but my first real job as an adult was in the matrix I was the matrix so I worked for the department of defense for seven or eight years doing weapons effects testing and this was when I had another epiphany another thing that set me on the journey that I am on today. See because we were doing weapons effects testing I was part of a program that was testing different explosive and case combinations for the Hellfire missile and we would essentially we had this this building that was lined with concrete and steel and we were able to do about 30 tests a year and then the structure would be so beat up that we would have to repair it and then we would start another test series.

Garett: 09:23

So I remember it was a brand new test series and I think the still the whole thing the whole building was lined with three quarter inch still floor walls ceiling and we set off the first explosive of the new test series and then I walk into this building after and I'm looking at the holes in the wall that had punched through the steel and through the concrete. I believe the concrete walls were like three feet thick. I don't even know, but they were massive. And looking at the holes in the wall and then I see this ball of shrapnel which is just this ball of essentially razors and at that moment I had an awakening of thinking wow this is crazy I'm spending my time my energy and my brain power and this is not just me. Mean, I was only a very small part of this, but it made me realize that how much energy was being used to figure out more efficient ways to kill people.

Garett: 10:35

See, the Hellfire missile is part of is one of the main weapons on a lot of the drones. And so this was also at the time you were hearing a lot of about all the drone strikes happening and particularly a lot of civilians being killed. So at that moment I knew that I had that I could not I could no longer do this job morally. See a lot of people were able to convince themselves that they were doing something good and maybe they are this is not about politics and this is you know bad guys exist and we need defense and we need and we probably need weapons, but I did not want to be a part of it if I did not have to be. So after that, I ended up getting into the fitness industry and doing personal training and group fitness instruction and then I eventually moved up to the Seattle area where I opened up my own gym.

Garett: 11:39

Now running my gym I thought I had made it. This had been a dream of mine forever essentially since I was seven years old and I punched my taekwondo instructor and hurt my hand and I was absolutely in love with fitness and I had dreams of being one of the best trainers in the world and training professional athletes and maybe opening up multiple gyms, but I always felt like something was missing and around ten-fifteen years ago probably fifteen years ago at this point losing track of time I had heard about Ayahuasca and at this time this was nobody knew about it it was very obscure and what I was hearing about it was that that it was hard that people were puking and being absolutely terrified and facing their fears and facing their shadows. But more often than not that these people would leave these ceremonies and they would feel much better about themselves and they felt more motivated and would come back and open up businesses and start charities and it was a life transforming thing for a lot of these people. And that appealed to me because I have been fascinated with human potential and being the best version of yourself since as long as I can remember.

Garett: 13:11

And I felt called to do this. Now, at the time, because it was it wasn't very mainstream, there weren't a lot of options on where you can go and how you could do this. I knew that these people were going down to Peru and at the time it wasn't an option one because I was running my gym and two to be honest, I was a little scared. See I was fairly when it came to quote unquote drugs I was fairly conservative I'd only done a handful of things mainly because of the health aspect right I thought that all drugs were bad and that I was a guy who was trying to be the best version of myself and winners don't do drugs right so anyway I was looking for a place to do Ayahuasca close to home But I didn't know where to go and the message I kept hearing on a lot of these podcasts were saying, when you're ready, the medicine will show up. So I decided to test that theory and I was not a spiritual or woo woo type of guy and this idea of manifesting always seemed like nonsense to me, just hippie nonsense.

Garett: 14:30

But for whatever reason I got the urge to give it a try and so I put that that intention out there. I asked Ayahuasca I said I'm ready and please show up and please give me an opportunity and show me how I can do a ceremony and maybe a month later in walks this woman into my gym. Now she was a hippie looking lady and she was probably 60 years old and at the time I was running a cardio kickboxing gym and she wasn't really dressed for working out. She was kind of in a hippie sundress looking type of attire and she came in there with a friend and she ended up trying the class and after she did the class I was following up with her checking in seeing how she liked it giving her the membership options and whatnot and she was telling me that she really loved the class but that she was headed down to Peru next week and I remember when she walked in there was this spark that I just knew there was something about her so I asked her I said are you going to do Ayahuasca down there and she looked at me very surprised and said how did you know and I said I don't know I just I just knew so she tells me yeah that she's going down there to do it she shows me this necklace that she has with some Ayahuasca on it and so I tell her my story about how I'm extremely interested in it but I was looking for a place close to home.

Garett: 16:09

She then tells me that she knows of somebody who does it and that she will put me in contact with them. So I give her my number and then she leaves and several months go by. Well, she did tell me she was going down to the jungle for a whole month, but a couple months goes by and I never heard from her and so I just kind of chalked it up to oh well maybe that's not the opportunity but then one day I was leaving the gym I had the night off and I was about halfway home and I realized I forgot my laptop so I had to turn around and I go back to the gym and I walk in and there she is she says hey I'm give me your number I lost it and so I give her my number and then she puts me in contact with some people and then two weeks later I find myself driving out to my first ceremony and it's kind of funny because on that drive out there I had almost had a mental breakdown because I was like what am I doing I'm trusting some crazy hippie lady that I had a con that I talked to for all about ten minutes I have no idea who these people are.

Garett: 17:30

I have no idea what I'm getting myself into and I almost turned around and it went back home. But face my fear continued to go through it and I had my first experience. And I will say that in general it was fairly mellow but it was what I needed because again I was coming to it with a lot of fear because when you do a lot of research on this in the internet you hear all these crazy stories, but I had this moment of seeing what it was during this first ceremony weekend, I remember the whole Moloka, which is what we call the medicine room, transformed into this hospital. And I saw everybody, I saw all these hospital beds and I saw all these ferries floating around, flying around the room and I would see a red light go light up over a particular bed and I would see all these ferries fly down and work on this person and then that person would end up purging. And then I saw that happen three or four times and then that's when it hit me and I had this realization of, this is for healing.

Garett: 18:52

This is for helping you get rid of negative energies, energies that do not serve you. And that was just enough to peak my interest. So maybe six months later, I went back for another ceremony and it was kind of more of the same. After that second ceremony I felt like okay this was the missing piece that I needed and particularly by that I mean I was missing energetic or spiritual work. See, I talk about it all the time that we live on the physical, the mental, and the spiritual plane.

Garett: 19:32

And I realized that while I was very strong physically and very strong mentally I had I was very weak spiritually I had zero spiritual practice so then this particular group that I was doing ceremony with organized a trip down to Peru and this was a this was almost a year later since my first experience and I jumped at the opportunity because I had wanted to go down to Peru I had a couple ceremonies under my belt and I was going with a group of people who I knew and so I felt like this was a perfect opportunity and I wasn't going to miss it so I jump on the opportunity I go down to the jungle I end up at Nihue Rao which is the place where I have done all my training and still brand new to this still not understanding basically my understanding of what's going on was very minor but I do a my first sama with a plant called ajo sasha and again I had no I didn't even know what a sama was but on the first night of that so I was that I went down there for two weeks and on the first night I had the worst ceremony of my life.

Garett: 20:54

I just hated every minute of it and in fact I was determined to go back home. See, at the time I was running the gym, I was married, I had a lot going on and it was very a lot of people had to step up for me to be able to leave for two weeks. And I remember thinking after that ceremony that this was a complete waste of time and money and resources. What am I doing? This is stupid had I not been in the middle of the jungle and I had the opportunity to leave I probably would have left the next day and this is not like me because I'm not a quitter but anyway I decide to stay because basically I don't really have a choice and the next ceremony I have this whole death and rebirth experience and I didn't really understand what it was at the time and in fact it took me probably five years to even understand what this all meant.

Garett: 22:00

I was completely deep in the medicine when I felt this something pick me up lift me up into the sky and slam me down extremely hard and I ended up being in the fetal position on my mat and I had this green smoke which I later learned was Aho Satcha and started enveloping me it started started wrapping me up and it was also very ironic that I was in the fetal position because that's like being born and in that ceremony is it took me about two hours to go from being in a fetal position to sitting up on my mat and each position I felt like I had to relearn how to use my body I had to relearn how to use my hands I had to relearn how to breathe I had to relearn how to see and it really reminded me of that scene from the matrix when Neil after being unplugged from the matrix he says why do my eyes hurt and Morpheus says because you've never used them before So anyway fast forward several years I learned that that moment was a was literally a death of my old life and a rebirth of my new life and what was crazy about that is so then I get home and one month later my entire life came crumbling down.

Garett: 23:38

I lost everything. Long story short I was part of a franchise with my gym and lawsuits started being thrown around and I got dragged into court and had to file for bankruptcy and I lost my gym. I lost my marriage. I lost all my assets and completely hit rock bottom and it was extremely hard for several years. In fact, was in bankruptcy for three years, so it was three years of absolute hell.

Garett: 24:16

But what I learned from that was that was necessary for me to go on the path that I am on now because it would have been impossible for me to do that while still owning a gym and still being married and see sometimes your old life has to die so your new life can emerge. So during this time I was doing a bunch of odd jobs and just in survival mode but I had this opportunity to go deeper within the medicine and I started helping out and I started assisting in ceremonies and I started learning more and more and more and after a few years of doing that I decided that I needed to go deeper that I needed to go all the way that I needed to go on the path of becoming a practitioner and this was right around the time that the bankruptcy had ended and the only asset that I and my ex wife had at the time was we still had our house in Seattle. So we sold that house, which had a lot of equity in it and we split it up fiftyfifty and she went her way and I went my way.

Garett: 25:39

But what that did was I gave me the opportunity to then pursue a year long SAMA. And it's interesting because once I made that commitment to do it the doors started opening and opportunities started presenting themselves like the opportunity of having money to be able to pursue this to be able to take a year off and go down to the jungle and just dedicate myself to learning everything I could about the medicine path. That is essentially how I got here. It was never something I had set out to do that first time I drank Ayahuasca I never thought I would be leading ceremony. Thought it was just going to be something I would do a few times maybe a couple times a year but I had no ambition of becoming a practitioner.

Garett: 26:37

Like I said, it felt like I had been called to this and then in a lot of ways it felt like I had no choice, you know, from that whole death and rebirth experience to losing everything, to having my old life die and being rebuilt and forged, which always begs the question of how much free will do we actually have? Right? Did I choose this or did this choose me? And it's a fascinating debate. And I think the answer is both.

Garett: 27:12

I love having debates with people about this. And the way I see free will is that we all have a purpose. We all have a reason that we are here in this life. And your goal should be to discover what that reason is, to discover your gifts and see what you can do and how you can contribute towards humanity and towards the greater good. So I think that the universe is always nudging you in that direction.

Garett: 27:47

It's present it's presenting you with opportunities. Now you have the choice to accept these opportunities or ignore them and you ignore them at your own peril. See just because we have a potential and a purpose does not mean that you are guaranteed to fulfill it. The universe will push you and try to nudge you in that direction but it's not going to just hand it over. So what I believe happens is that as you start listening to this calling and as you start following your path, the doors open, the opportunities present themselves faster and the path starts to get clearer and things start to take over and life starts happening for you.

Garett: 28:44

So anyway that's how I got here and the journey continues. See you on the other side