Initiitaion into Shamanhood (or psychological breakthrough)

Rating: 10/10 (4 April 2018)

This is the third review I write on IMDb (and I have written a lot more reviews on a Russian forum, after receiving more and more impressions. It's a result of a long mind journey through a labyrinth of impressions, endless metaphors and different meanings, all true, yet hiding the real meaning through their incompleteness. Having read almost all reviews on IMDb, I believe that I'm the only guy who understood the true substance of this film and also, why there are that many versions of meaning and such a high number of truely alienated and disgusted people. It's possible that even Garland and the film crew not understand the meaning like I have and have never intended it this way (as sometimes something, which has the deepest meaning for us and completely transforms us, was never intended this way). But for me they are possible the best shamans of the Western word (if not the whole world. At least the only ones who "got" to me) and the film is an embodiment of a shamanic ritual or an ultimate seance of psycholytic psychotherapy.
First I thought that the film is the best "psychedelic film" made (meaning, the film best depicting a psychedelic experience). Then, after reading the negative reviews and analyzing my impressions, i thought that the film was a real audio-visual psychedelic drug, not only having caused a never-ending flashback of all the strange dreams, all the stuff I ever took, all the stuff I wanted to take at least once in my life and all the stuff I was afraid of ever taking, but also having warped my logic and sense of normality all the time, like in a "normal" dream (without any critical thinking), turning into a lucid dream (some critical thinking, but adhering to a "twisted" logic), a psychedelic trip (different type of "twisted" logic) and dissociated state, constantly morphing in-between those states making the film appearing as one of the most logical movies ever made, because I experienced this types of logic before, while people without those experiences have thought that it's the most stupid, illogical movie ever made. So, at the same time an audio-visual "drug" and "illustrated" description of different altered states of consciousness, consciousness and psychology being the main themes of the film
Then, not yet completely satisfied with my conclusions and irritated by it, feeling that there was more to it, I watched the movie again during daytime. This time I had no flashbacks and wasn't that impressed by the visual side again, but, remembering what others made out to be logic flaws, the logic still seemed coherent by me. The day after that I felt like I have to describe my unhappy drug career to others, like sort of a warning and means to understand it better myself, at the same time.
And today I was able to piece all impressions and perceived meanings together. Or actually, they "fell" together by themselves.
As I already said, this film is a shamanic ritual, like the ones existing with Ayahuasca and Iboga. People, who aren't ready and fear the strange, experience fear, disgust and alienation by the perceived "raping" of their consciousness. People, who like strange feeling, are getting lost in the beauty of caleidoscopic visuals or full-fledged visions, music played by the shaman or, if they understand the language, interesting stories with twisted logic, which may be told "like that" or in song, thinking that those beatiful impressions are everything that there is to experience. Other get deep philosophic insights about the world, people in general and themselves and also get lost in-between the metaphors...
I, however, realized today that I underwent a shamanic initiation - from "deeply hurt" patient becoming a doctor, beginning the process of healing myself by accepting the sickness and and understanding myself and it as fully, as humanly possible. I understood my sickness intellectually long before that, but only now was able to begin to accept and heal it. I'm the "chosen one" to understand it all, not because I'm the smartest, most intuitively gifted or insightful person, but because I fell that low with my addiction and sickness, that I was ready and in desperate need to accept this beatiful gift.
Don't get me wrong - I don't think that I've become an "all-powerful" awesome shaman, being able to heal others, understanding the sense of all being, etc. No, I "broke though" and was put on the beginning of the journey to mental health and understanding myself, which I longed for all my life, which was the reason of my beginning of taking drugs.
10 years ago I was on a "real" Ayahuasca ritual in the Netherlands. I feared of taking too much, had only light "cheap" visuals and a feeling of enchantment, but overall I was disappointed. Soon after the ritual I got into a downward spiral of mental sickness and addiction. Now I wonder if the shaman on that ritual could, feeling that I want and need the transformation, have sent me on a long way of self-destruction and annihilation - symbolically being forcefully "taken apart", only to later get the parts "washed and reassembled" by another shaman - Garland - as the Amazonian shamans describe the initiation.
I don't expect many people to understand, what I said, and believe, that most will get the impression, I got completely crazy by taking too much drugs or taking shamanic folklore too seriously, but for me, this movie produced the most intense religious, transformational experience I ever had. Now I should me mindful not to get lost again trough the feelings of grandeur or something like that.
P.S. I though a little more about it now and now think that I formulated everything too weird. I want to leave it as is, but add a more simple and precise explanation from a psychological perspective.
After watching the film, I realized that something probably most important in my life just happened and I got a very important insight about myself on an intuitive level. I already knew it, but to understand it on the intellectual level, I knew, I had to explain the film to others and, in the process, to myself. It took me a week of writing endless versions of reviews, explaining the same idea in different words and sometimes contradicting myself in seemingly minor detail, and reading almost all available reviews written by others (which, as I felt, was necessary to understand it). The more I wrote and read, the more I felt that somehow all different versions of meanings I described and all meanings described by others (that were meant without trolling) were 100% right and at the same time misleading by their incompleteness. I knew that everyone was right and there could be no wrong interpretation, but that at the same time I was probably the only one who grasped the only possible true meaning of the film. And that I never could transfer the paradoxical understanding of what I experienced in all its completeness and felt about the experiences by others, but that it could be described very easily as a metaphor or an allegory, which everyone, even a child could understand. This is what I so poorly managed today (before this P.S.) and what I have to explain in it.
Today I understand that what I experienced was a very deep mystical experience, lasting the whole week and in trying and succeeding to transform my intuitive knowledge into intellectual understanding (words), I realized that the essence of that mystical experience was contrariwise transforming my long-had intellectual knowledge of being a drug addict and a mentally ill person into deep intuitive understanding, or, simply said, accepting it. And as everyone knows, acceptance is the first step to healing. This is why I described what I had experience as a shamanic initiation - becoming your own healer through an insight. A "sober" psychiatrist will call it a breakthrough.
I always had problems connecting and communicating between the level of intuitive knowledge and the level of intellectual ideas. I only had either feelings or thoughts. And this may sound as a banality, but when I finally managed to build a connection between those two domains - I experienced a profound mystical transformational journey.
Before I made the connection, I thought that every little detail in the film was important and intended and that Garland and his crew are genius psychologists. Now I'm not sure it's true and think that it's not really important. I felt the need to find out Garland's e-mail address and ask him many questions, but now I don't really care about his intentions or vision. Every detail of my experience was important to me and my insights are the only possible - for me. But let me repeat - the only possible explanation for the plethora of meanings and impressions, almost never repeating, are the proof that Garland is a true shaman - it doesn't matter if he realizes it or not.