I attended the August 1st, 2017 Mythic Voyage at Tierra Mitica. It’s taken me many months to put all the pieces together of what happened to me there. If you plan on doing this Ayahuasca retreat, there are a few things you should know…
1. If you choose to not drink the medicine, they do not give you the option of staying at the retreat to ground. They will make you leave and drop you off at a hotel in town, even if you are still under the influence from the medicine. I wanted to stay at the center (because I paid for a safe space when I am not in my right mind) and they said if I do not participate in the ways everyone else were, then I could not stay. So they dropped me off at a hotel, still under the influence. I later found out from someone who was also a participant at the retreat that they didn’t even do another ceremony after I left! So they made me leave for not wanting to drink Ayahuasca again, and then they didn’t even do it again. There was another girl who also quit a day after me, and they did not make her leave the retreat. Their reasoning for making me leave was because they said I was hitting on one of the Tierra Miticans there that was married. I believe they are referring to this time I touched his arm, but again, I was not in my right mind and forgot he was married. The other reasoning was because I wrote a note in a girl’s journal. This I recognize was not right, but is minimal and not a reason to kick someone out of a retreat. That is the point of doing retreats like this, to learn and grow as human beings. When you are under the influence of the world’s strongest psychotropic plant, some unconscious things will arise. They claim to be able to help people with all kinds of mental disorders, and kicking someone out for writing a positive note in someone’s journal is should not be grounds for kicking them out. If they can’t handle that, then I would definitely NOT trust them if you have some serious mental health issue.
2. Mikis, the main shaman does not drink Ayahuasca with you and is not even present during the ceremony. You are with his assistants who are like shamans in training. Most of them have only been living there for 1-4 years.
3. They also believe that being vegetarian/vegan is a form of mental illness, and that it means that you have a belief system that ‘’god did not create everything perfectly as it should be’’.
4. If you are a man with long hair, they will most likely make you cut it off as a form of symbolism for the new ‘you’.
5. Be careful if you are a feminist or a woman who has been physically/verbally abused. Mikis Hassan, the main shaman and owner of the retreat center does not refer to women as ‘women’ or ‘ladies’ but as ‘pussy’. He says his methods are controversial and that is part of his process to break down your belief systems. However, he does not refer to men as ‘dicks’ or ‘cocks’. When I brought this up to him, he said because he didn’t think the work ‘dick’ or ‘cock’ is as cute or endearing as the term ‘pussy’. Which is his own personal beliefs system, that I feel does not help with women who have been degraded or dealing with oppression issues.
6. I saw Mikis physically slap his assistant in the face multiple times with what looked like all his strength because he kept making grammatical errors on the white board, because English is not his first language.
7. Mikis has a temper. He yelled at me when I put a blanket on myself when I was cold, because it disrupted his train of thought. He blamed it on his Autism, but then goes on to teach people to take responsibility for themselves. He got extremely mad at someone who was complaining about their back hurting from sitting in the chair for too long because they were in a car accident. So the car accident is not a good enough excuse, but his autism can be excused.
8. Mikis is a hypocrite. He says that most people’s unhappiness stems from Paradox in the world. However, he is full of them himself. He has a lot of health issues, and he is teaching us that we can do anything we want, and heal anything we want. So I asked him why he has not healed his health condition. He said, that it was not his priority and that the retreats and the work they do helping people is his priority. BUT, he cannot help anyone when he is dead, so that is a huge paradox.
9. He got most of the women in the group to admit they were in love with their fathers aka the Electra Complex. I felt like he was just breaking people down, picking at their insecurities, and implanted false ideas/ problems.
10. Another big red flag for me, was when he was being so mean and rude to this one guy for his mistakes, and said that someone needed to spit on him. Then he looked at me and asked me to spit on him!!! I said, ‘’No’’, then he said , ‘’Why not?’’, then I said, ‘’Because he is deserving of love and respect like everyone else, despite his mistakes’’. Then he asked this other girl to spit on him, and she actually did it!! I believe there are much more healthier ways to help people than that.
11. There is a lot more of my personal experience that happened after I left the retreat that I will not get into. But my mother contacted him, and he actually told her CONFIDENTIAL information that I shared our group therapy. He is not an actual licensed therapist, so there is a loophole with this because there is technically no law he is breaking. The participants have also shared ‘Confidential’ information about me and my experience all over the internet, which is extremely unprofessional!
Please beware of this retreat center. While I think they have some good messages they teach, their methods and approach is very unhealthy and damaging. They put you on the spot, use peer pressure, and try and make you feel like an idiot if you use any form of critical thinking or disagree with their teachings. I believe they take advantage of people in their most vulnerable state and use brainwashing, hypnotic, and cult forming techniques. Please feel free to contact me if you want to know my story or have any other questions at ontheroadwithin@gmail.com.