The post below shares the story of Ceremonia co-founder Austin Mao of how he would come to discover plant sacraments. It is part one of a speech being shared at the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit in Boulder, Colorado on June 6-8.

One of my clearest memories as a kid was holding and singing to my mother as she was broken down on the floor, crying. I was 8 years old. I had no idea why she was grieving. I only knew that mama was hurt and I had to do something about it. I would later realize in an ayahuasca ceremony that this would be a defining moment in my life, a formative memory on my path to service.

I am a single child raised by a single mother. As a kid, I moved around a lot. I felt deeply alone. I was convinced that my father loved money more than me. Like my father, I would constantly seek out the most efficient way to squeeze the value out of life. Even on vacation, I would plot out the optimal route to get the best photos: proof that I was living an Instagram-worthy life. This was an essential skill that made me a good entrepreneur, but also something that led me to much misery. I was always stuck in my head, certain of my beliefs and lonely in my projections of pride.

My shadow from my mother’s side was self-sacrifice and wanting to help others, leading me to push my help on others even when they didn’t ask for my help. My shadow from my father’s side was mentalization and hyper-efficiency, leading me to be a master manipulator. With these combined, I became very good at analyzing people and trying to save them by telling them how they should change. Suffice you to say, those I cared about in my life didn’t like that very much. 🙂 And yet, I would stew in disbelief that my positive intentions would lead me to be even more alone. It didn’t make sense.

Buddhists believe that suffering exists so that we could want for a more peaceful, joyous, and harmonious life. Suffering is the impetus to pursue the inner work, to heed the call of spirituality. I didn’t even know I was suffering in 2020 when my dear friend, Keith Ferrazzi, told me that I would benefit from an ayahuasca retreat for founders. At that time, I was living in a new country every other month, working four hours a week, and humble-bragging on social media about how amazing my life was. When I pulled up to the retreat center in the middle of the Mexican jungle, I thought I was on my way to a networking opportunity. Psychedelics with founders? Sign me up! I didn’t believe that I would learn anything new. I didn’t believe that I had anything to heal. I didn’t know that I was about to have the most profound experience of my life.

I remember my very first ayahuasca ceremony like it was yesterday. I felt my mother’s embrace, her nurturing and infinite unconditional love as I became a child again held in her bosom. I had never felt love like this before. I had a vision of my father who passed three years prior, introducing to him my wife and all that I had created since he had taken his last breath. I felt a catharsis I didn't even know I was missing. After that first night, I was ready to pack up and go home. I was healed. Hallelujah! My life would never be the same again.

But the next morning, Keith asked a question in the sharing circle: what is your fondest memory as a child? My memories were blank. I could not extract even a single memory as a kid. Even a few years back was shrouded in fog. I asked the shaman what this could be. She was a practicing clinical psychologist in the Bay Area for many years before starting to serve this sacrament. Instead of psychoanalyzing me as I expected, she grinned and said, “tonight, you ask Grandmother Ayahuasca.”

So that night, on my 36th birthday, I decided to drink a birthday dose of the thick brew of ayahuasca. As the medicine came on, I started to revisit–no, relive–my memories in vivid detail. It is as if my life flashed before my eyes, but in such depth and detail that I could remember turning my locker combination in high school. I kept moving back and back in time until I was a child under sheets. It was dark and warm. Then, for a moment, I felt horny. I sat up out of my psychedelic trance in surprise: how could a young boy feel this way? This must be a mistake. I laid back down and probed with curiosity. And then, I discovered something I could not have imagined: at the age of 4, I was touched in a way that no child should be by a boyfriend of my mother’s. I whispered, “Oh my God”, in shock.

I traveled forward in time, seeing the reverberations of that one traumatic incident on who I would become. I lost my capacity to remember my past as my mind learned to repress the shame, confusion, and guilt of feeling sexuality much too young. I was a bully as a kid, had sexual confusion as a teenager, and would use pornography and pleasure as a form of escape. Because I could not remember my past, I was always skipping from one hobby to another, from one relationship to another, never being able to find grounding in my life.

I watched the movie of my life on fast forward, seeing how every time I turned left when I could have gone right, every pain and every joy, and all the memories I lost to the halls of time… all of it led me to be lying on a yoga mat in the jungle, surrounded by 49 of my peers crying and puking in the candlelight… all of it led me to this moment of awakening. I woke from this trance with tears in my eyes. When I shared what I experienced to the shaman, she had this surprised look and said “I am so sorry.” Through my tears, I hugged her and said, “No, no, no. You don’t understand. I am so grateful. I remember now. I feel like I was cured of Alzheimer’s.”

The next day, I would write a poem titled “Thank You” that I would go on to share on stage in front of thousands of people and at the close of ceremonies. I hadn’t written anything in sixteen years. Since that moment, writing is my number one passion in life as it had been when I was young. That singular experience would come to herald the renaissance of my life. I went into retreat agnostic bordering atheist, holding this frame as a badge of honor. I would leave the jungle certain of the divinity and love that pervades all things.