Finding your intention: an honest conversation with yourself
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9 min read
How to set an intention for ayahuasca ceremony when you aren’t sure what to say.
There’s something ironic about setting an intention for ceremony, isn’t there? We’re asked to name what we’re looking for before we step into a space meant to show us what we don’t yet know about ourselves. How do you describe the shape of a shadow you’ve been carefully avoiding?
If you’re sitting with that question right now and feeling stuck, that tension is where the work begins.
You know more than you think
Here’s what nobody tells you when you’re new to this work: a lot of what we carry lives outside our conscious awareness. It hides under distraction, under denial, under the stories we tell ourselves to stay comfortable. That’s not a failing. It’s human.
So setting an intention can sound impossible. You’re being asked to name something past the edge of what you can currently see.
But you already know more than you think. Underneath the noise and the “I’m fine” you say when you’re not, you know where you hurt. You know where you’ve closed your heart. You know which parts of yourself you’ve been hiding, from the world and from yourself. The question is whether you’re willing to get honest about it.
Intention as honest self-inquiry
You don’t need to write the perfect spiritual statement. You need to be honest, and sometimes that honesty is raw and uncomfortable.
Think of your intention as the start of a conversation with yourself. The kind that happens at 3 a.m. when your defenses are down, when you finally admit the thing you’ve been pretending isn’t true.
Maybe you’ve been in therapy, or support groups, or read the books, or talked it through with friends who really see you. Then you may already have words for some of what you’re carrying: “I close my heart when people get too close.” “I run from conflict instead of facing it.” “I use work to avoid feeling lonely.”
If that’s you, your intention might go deeper: Why do I close my heart? What am I so afraid will happen if I let people in? Where did I learn that love isn’t safe?
Or maybe you’re earlier in the process. You just know something isn’t right. You feel disconnected from yourself, from other people, from the life you thought you’d be living by now. That’s okay too. Your intention can be as simple as: I’m willing to see what I’ve been avoiding. I’m ready to face what’s shown to me with courage.
Sometimes the strongest intention is just a willingness to look.
When you know the pattern but can’t break it
Then there are the times we know exactly what we’re dealing with. We have the words, we understand the psychology, we’ve looked at it from every angle, and we still can’t change. We know we’re stuck, but we don’t know why we stay stuck.
You might know you have an addiction: to substances, to work, to relationships that hurt you, to the phone you can’t put down, to the validation you chase and never quite catch. You might even understand that it’s covering a pain you’re not ready to feel.
But knowing about a pattern doesn’t make it let go of you.
If this is you, your intention might be: I want to understand what this pattern is protecting me from. I want to see the wound beneath the wound. I want to know what fear or hurt or shame I’m covering with this behavior.
Or simpler: I want to understand why I can’t let this go.
In our experience, ayahuasca meets you where you are. You don’t have to have everything figured out before you show up. What ayahuasca asks for is honesty, even if that honesty is just, “I don’t know what I need, but I know I need something to change.”
We are only as healed as our secrets
There’s a saying we come back to often at Two Birds: We are only as healed as our secrets.
The parts of ourselves we won’t acknowledge, the stories we won’t tell, the feelings we won’t feel: those are what keep us trapped. You don’t have to understand everything first. Healing starts when we stop hiding.
Your intention is practice for that moment. It’s a chance to bring something out into the light, even if you only say it to yourself at first and aren’t ready to share it with anyone else yet.
What are you hiding from? What have you been pretending isn’t there?
Maybe it’s grief you never let yourself feel. Maybe it’s anger you were taught was unacceptable, or shame about who you are, what happened to you, or choices you’ve made. Maybe it’s a fear so deep you’ve built your whole life around not having to face it.
Whatever it is, naming it, even privately and imperfectly, is the first step toward freedom.
Your intention will change
Your intention doesn’t have to be perfect, because it isn’t permanent. As you prepare for ceremony, as you journal and sit with yourself, it will probably shift. What felt true two weeks ago might feel shallow now. What seemed important yesterday might turn out to be covering something deeper.
You start with what feels safe enough to say. As you stay with it and get more honest, you can go further.
“I want to heal” becomes “I want to heal my relationship with my mother.”
Which becomes “I want to understand why I recreate the same dynamic with every woman I date.”
Which becomes “I want to see where I learned that love equals control.”
Which becomes “I want to release the belief that I have to earn love by being perfect.”
Each layer is true, and each one opens the door to the next.
What if you don’t know where to start?
Maybe you’re reading this and still don’t have words. You’re not even sure what you’re feeling. You just know something needs to change.
Start with where you actually are. Your intention could be:
I want to feel something real. I want to stop numbing out.
I want to know what I actually want, beneath what everyone else expects of me.
I want to stop running. I want to face whatever I’ve been avoiding.
I don’t know what I need, but I’m willing to find out.
These work because they’re true. They aren’t trying to sound spiritual or enlightened. And honestly? That’s all ceremony needs from you: willingness and honesty. You don’t need wisdom you don’t have yet.
The practice of getting honest
For a lot of us, being honest with ourselves is harder than it sounds. We’ve spent years, maybe decades, lying to ourselves in a thousand small ways. We ignore our feelings, dismiss our needs, override our gut, and pretend everything’s fine when it’s not.
We can’t wait until we drink ayahuasca to start practicing honesty. The preparation is part of the work. If you’re getting ready to sit with us, our preparation course is where that starts.
So sit with yourself. Journal. Notice where you feel resistance. Notice what you don’t want to write down. Notice the thoughts that whisper, “Don’t look there. Don’t feel that.”
That’s where your intention lives.
In the end, this conversation happens between you and you: between the part of you that’s scared and the part of you that’s ready.
A mirror can only show what’s in front of it
Ayahuasca is often described as a mirror. Ayahuasca shows us ourselves, sometimes uncomfortably clearly. But a mirror can only reflect what’s in front of it.
If you show up unwilling to look at yourself or feel what’s uncomfortable, it can’t force you. In our experience the medicine doesn’t override your free will or push past your resistance.
That’s why intention matters. It doesn’t control the experience. It shows how willing you are to look, to feel, and to face what comes, even when it’s hard.
You might set an intention to “hang out with aliens all night” or “experience pure bliss” or some other escape from the real work. If that’s honestly where you are, that’s okay. But deep down, you know whether you’re looking for the truth or avoiding it.
Ayahuasca will meet you wherever you are. It will also, gently and firmly, invite you to get honest about where “wherever you are” actually is.
Bringing it into the circle
When we ask you to refine your intention and share it with the group, we’re not asking you to perform or to come up with the most poetic statement. We’re practicing vulnerability: speaking the truth out loud and letting others witness us as we get ready to witness ourselves.
There’s power in saying the quiet thing out loud. “I’m scared.” “I feel stuck.” “I don’t know how to change.” Naming the wound, instead of just managing its symptoms.
The people preparing for ceremony alongside you get stronger with each honest word. Nobody in that circle has it all figured out. We’re all practicing the same thing: showing up as we actually are.
Your intention is enough
So here’s what I want you to know as you sit with this. Whatever intention you land on, if it’s honest, it’s enough.
It doesn’t have to be deep or cover everything you’re working on. It doesn’t have to sound like anyone else’s. It just has to be true to where you are right now and to what you’re willing to face.
And if your truth right now is, “I don’t fully know yet, but I’m looking,” that’s a fine place to begin.
Ayahuasca is a teacher and a mirror. But the change starts in the moment you decide to stop hiding and really see yourself. Your intention is how you say you’ve made that decision.
So take your time with it. Be honest with yourself. Refine it as you see more, and bring it to ceremony as it is, imperfect and true.