Can you please explain potential risks and benefits of using ayahuasca and what people can do to minimize those risks?

It is quite true that ayahuasca, in addition to the psychedelics and other drugs of abuse, all create an energetic perturbation of the body. This is how people can get into trouble. If defenses are weakened, dark spirits and other beings can intrude much more readily. If there are portals within the person allowing easier entry, this will be a given. The extra energy and the response of onboard spirits is quite unpredictable because any energy surge will be used to advantage. When there is competition by a group of spirits present, in a sense, this keeps things down to a dull roar because there is only so much energy available to any given spirit. When energy increases through the act of taking a substance like ayahuasca and wanting to have an ultimate emotional experience, this gives greater resources to all the onboard spirits and they can literally run amok to take full advantage of their host under these conditions, to pummel them, to disorient, and disturb them, to send darkness by way of thinking and feeling into their sensorium and this can have many adverse consequences. They can begin to alter the person, to throw them off balance and make them increasingly vulnerable to further manipulation that can be done, even with lower levels of energy under more typical circumstances for the person. So there is a significant risk from having on-board risk factors in place. In addition, the outreach of the mind with the attempt to connect to something above the self, which is the typical goal for ayahuasca users, is an open invitation to encounter another consciousness. It will always be met by dark spirits as well as extraterrestrial spirits and living extraterrestrial psychics, who will attempt to exploit the situation to begin a dialogue with the person and seemingly answer their outreach with a response, and this can trigger an amazing inner epiphany of spiritual connection that may be entirely phony. If the person is in divine alignment and has belief in the divine realm and in the Almighty, we can reward such an outreach with at least a sense their search is noticed and their yearnings will be rewarded, and we can impulse an energetic reply to most such experiencers that will be uplifting and encouraging in some way or another. But the majority of the time, people do such an outreach in isolation, not having pre‑established a partnership with Creator of All That Is, and are not looking to have a conversation with Creator necessarily, but something more vague, and that is enough to preclude a direct interaction. We are well aware of how this can be an influence that will send someone in an unhealthy direction and, in a sense, become a quest and a preoccupation to have some kind of exalted status and to be connecting to the divine realm under less than ideal circumstances, meaning there is an impairment of normal faculties. Even though taking ayahuasca can be very pleasurable, it is not a feasible state of being to maintain on a routine basis for any length of time. It is something that is best used quite sparingly. So the person is attempting to have an experience they will expect to be unique, and we do not wish to encourage indulgences that could be unhealthy with much repetition and therefore, are reluctant to answer such an outreach unless there is a potential turning point through inspiration that could help encourage a person to undertake a new direction, not to dwell on drug experiences per se but to follow a more spiritual path. So this is something that we consider very much on a case-by-case basis in how it can be supported or not. Most users will never reach us because they do not have this focus and intention as part of the experience, they are simply looking for something vague and ill-defined and that is the only way we can respond, if at all.