Tony Westbrook
Artist, Entrepreneur, Facilitator
My story.
Trusting my instincts, Ayahuasca Community Fellowship, began in spirit thirty years ago. Merely nineteen from Washington State, where I grew up. I started serving within the California Ventura Mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
More than church on Sunday, I was full time. A young missionary with a testimony. Teaching latter day “truth” about restored gospel. A Mormon “service” to humanity for the Lord.
All I imagined to be “true,” youth.
At twenty “true believer,” or not? Adulthood, my rite of passage. Coming to terms with what I taught people. What does the church expect them to believe?
That all of human history adds up to the truth of Mormonism? Growing up. Intellectual honesty, it meant remission of childlike gullibility.
The universe is amazing enough. Why believe in made up stories?
January of 1990 in California. I stopped Mormonism. A long way from home. No longer on the team. Two hundred dollars cash to start over. To me, a wealth of insight. To be conscious and decisive, a man.
“TO EVERY THING there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.”
I started over. By enrolling at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria. Supporting myself working the night shift at the Betteravia St. doughnut shop. I chose this over the
Betteravia Beet Factory, which later closed. My instincts were enabling me to attend school and find better work.
I began helping at a home for developmentally challenged teenage boys in Atascadero, caretaking for the overnight shift, and weekend events. I drove from Atascadero to Allan Hancock college in Santa Maria daily.
By working with the group, my work and academic values aligned psychologically. This kind of work with my art, connected me.
Responsible and hard working, I became completely sleep deprived. College, work, and driving between. Always busy, just to keep up.
Psychology and religious studies, general undergrad work. Academics began to look more political than meaningful. College seemed to be for people, who had patience for the politics.
Regardless, I had to make money. Twenty-something-tired, adapting and finding my way. I kept at it.
Soon enough, my intellectual college friends introduced me to poetry club, The Grateful Dead, and LSD. Many ways to open doors of perception. Opening to totality. The expanse of history, meaning, and the universe.
“Time is the moving image of eternity.”
Paradoxically, everything certain is provisional. All of human history is a flicker of everlasting dawn. Shining outside a Platonic Allegory of The Cave.
Westbrook House Keeping
I earned a scholarship and honors GPA. Supporting myself with my knack for cleaning well. Accepted to honors Berkeley and UCLA, with more undergraduate work to complete. Instead of Berkeley, I dove into my art by moving to Santa Barbara. However, my challenges were more than coming of age stories.
From psoriasis to seasonal depression, I had battled autoimmune issues all of my life. At this stage, the seriousness of my autoimmune issues motivated me.
Anxious about my condition, I read my first article about Ayahuasca in High Times Magazine. Plant Medicine and indigenous people's use of plants to cure disease and expand consciousness. A natural topic of interest to me.
Briefly, I had only opened the doors of perception. Enough for perspective, to keep going. To look for more than prescribed steroids for my condition. I wanted to know if Amazonian plant medicine could do more? Maybe even heal my condition?
Westbrook Abstracting
Life happened. I moved for love from California to New Hampshire. An entrepreneur, I partnered with my wife; Westbrook Abstracting, a real estate title abstracting company in the financial services industry.
Westbrook Abstracting performed real estate title searches and managed financial services instruments; recording deeds, mortgages, and liens. All counties, statewide for New Hampshire. On behalf of lenders and firms for approximately fifteen years. In that time, I estimate we researched approximately twenty thousand real estate titles.
“Live Free or Die.”
New Hampshire has a famous state motto. I bought my first home in Canterbury. Built in 1792, as the original post office of Canterbury. Later beautifully, it was converted into residential property.
So my first home felt like stewardship of a New England antique. Literally, passed down post revolutionary war, and signing of the constitution era.
I began from my barn, painting acrylics and printing my landscape photography. My photography of Canterbury Shaker Village was chosen by the U.S. Department of State's Art in Embassies Program for The American Embassies in Yemen and Cyprus.
My photography was sold at the local Canterbury Shaker Village Gift Shop. So I turned my barn into a print shop. I had my first magazine cover on Destination New Hampshire Magazine, and first centerfold in NewPort Life Magazine.
From psychology and religious studies, to self employment at title work. While learning to matte, frame, and sell my photography of New England. Out of my barn.
Autoimmune ulceration began causing me more intestinal swelling. Physically, I was suffering and I had to do something.
By my late thirties, I could only drink liquids. I had to be near the bathroom, always. Ulcerative Colitis feels like constant nausea or sea sickness. Everything is too much or uninteresting, aching intestines stop everything fast. Like an allergy, which instead of sneezing, causes me to feel constantly hungover and swelling until I bleed.
My ulceration became acutely swollen and I was bleeding daily. I began learning about and the cannabinoid system, searching for a solution.
2008 collapsed the real estate market, reshaping my life. After almost 15 years of researching titles, again everything certain was provisional.
Love and life, something died.
Maybe, someday I can talk. Explain the rest.
Starting over. This time painting acrylics full time. I spent my last 300 dollars to rent an art gallery space in The Manitou Arts Center. Manitou Springs, Colorado. A place like Oz meets The Garden of The Gods among The Rocky Mtns.
An artist and entrepreneur on my last dime. I made my art studio home, literally by sleeping hidden under my studio table. A rolling stone, living with friends, at The Maté Factor, or The Manitou Arts Center.
I painted acrylics 10 to 12 hours a day.
After about six months, I won my first “Best in Show” in 2013 at CottonWoods Center for The Arts, Colorado Springs.
Manitou, friends and nature. Literally, a yellow brick road spiral in the center of town. The road to Oz at the start of “The Barr '' and “Incline Trail.” Ascending Pikes Peak, a 14,000ft Mtn. Colorado enchantment. Sailing acrylic painting canvas. Aboard The Ark of improbable odds. My favorite rocky mountain high.
Like magical slippers, there it was. Ayahuasca? It arrived randomly by a friend from Crestone. However, this was not the real brew. He thought so. About a liter of an analog to ayahuasca. Something close, but not Ayahuasca from the Amazon.
Still, I drank it. I had my first experience of an American analog version of ayahuasca, alone in Colorado. Naively, I drank the entire liter.
Analog or not by the next morning, I awoke feeling new. At the beginning of the rest of my life. A path to find and work in an authentic ayahuasca ceremony.
Traveling to countries far from anything I ever knew.
Verified
