path to and with heart

There is no self. The final attachment we cling to is the sense of self and language and culture are not our friends in this regard. Language is pretty well near impossible to use in an everyday manner without the assumption of selfhood. Try it - I dare you! Pretty much everything about me is an attached behaviour and I can reduce myself to a sense of conscious awareness combined with this emotional feeling of what we call the heart - the intuitive, insightful, and loving part. The combination of these divine principles within is us. The mother is common to all as the heart and our minds are individual beacons of the divine mind at large which represents all of consciousness. We are all children of divine parents and we incarnate in this world and build this edifice by attaching behaviours to it by choice; the choices we make are of course compromised by previous choices we have made and these are also influenced greatly by our environment and circumstance. Advertisers and their sophisticated systems of data analysis know this all too well. It is stunning to see how they track and use our online behaviour to pretty much build a complete profile of us as individuals. It’s funny, I’d almost expect an advertising information technologist to become the world’s foremost proponent of an eastern type of philosophy of letting go of the self. It is clear that only by shedding these acquired behaviours, attachments basically, that we can hope to figure out who we are. Without giving up the sense of self, which we have spent a lifetime building up, we can never get to a point of understanding.

In mythology you can see now why the Goddess is both the mother and the lover. The feminine and masculine are joined together and that is the all. They separate and we have the building blocks of creation. The feminine takes the energy and births forms. The masculine is the intellect driving the direction of all this creation. The mind desires to incarnate into the multitude of forms in order to self reflect and understand itself. The feminine mother acquiesces to this desire and allows the mind into forms through the construction of a limited mechanical device called a brain which allows for consciousness to appear in a restrictive and low vibrational material form. The masculine mind gets lost in creation and the feminine mother is buried away as we lose connection to her because of the dominant nature of consciousness which by now has split into a bipolar nature in this dualistic existence. The original eternal pair retain a faint memory of each other and call out in desperation. They are the original divine lovers and the mother becomes the lover once again searching for her lost loved one. This theme is the basis for many myths.

I saw this interplay in at least three visions. First time I drank Ayahuasca I was witness to the feminine as lover, soul mate, and the Great Mother. Fifth time I drank I went to the castle of gold where she is locked away. Seventh time I drank was an erotic meeting in the temple at Denderah (The most erotic feeling I have ever experienced).

Goddess Hathor's temple at Denderah

As well my Huachuma vision of the light and the two serpents was the intellect protected by the two aspects of the feminine, mother and lover, that form the heart.

Huachuma Vision

This was followed by her telling me the ego mind will stop at nothing to prevent the reunification of the two divine principles. This last journey to Peru seems like it was a summation, a call to finally understand what this was all about, to trust the heart space and turn off the intellect because it is tainted with the ego mind. When I was finally able to do that it began the process of piecing it all together. I knew the story now and just had to find her. I've found her.

To heal others is to help them find her as well. That seems to be my path going forward.

strange medicine

I returned from close to three weeks in the Amazon in July of 2016 and had a rash of maladies that lasted for six weeks or so which I admit wore me down. I felt really good about my time in the Amazon this past year and coming home I was quite eager to begin the integration process and learn as much as I could from the plant teachers. My plans and the plans of the masters seemed to be quite different though! August was a most challenging month. I've been successful in some ways in fulfilling what I knew needed to be done but I have also backslid a bit into old behaviours and I have felt very challenged in that regard. Serpent energy, as I was taught in the Amazon, is what makes the world go round. It's all in how you use it; it can be used for healing, for sexual procreation, and to attain higher spiritual states and conversely used for the negative aspect of these graces - illness, sexual misconduct, and darkness. These are all freely available but there's a catch in that it can be very strong and not controllable especially if combined with intentions that are less than pure. When you channel this serpent energy into actions that are not pure of heart it will devour you; it will destroy your higher self you have previously awakened. As I have learned, abstract language is not the preferred method of communication from the metaphysical aspects of what we perceive of as the heart and the higher self. Symbols, signs, and metaphors that we interpret and give meaning to is the language commonly used by these higher principles.

On a late August Sunday morning I took the dog outside for a walk as per our normal routine. I stepped out of the house and the dog went to investigate something to our left. It was a snake devouring a frog. I immediately recognized it as a sign. I took the dog away from the snake who was feeling vulnerable and threatened by our presence. Curiously the frog just seemed to be accepting of its fate. As we proceeded on our walk the wheels in my head starting spinning, my knowledge of mythology allowed me to quickly grasp what this is representing. In the ancient Egyptian cosmology the primordial feminine power is represented by the snake and the masculine is the frog.

8 primordial powers - feminine serpents and masculine frogs

The snake is ever present in our world and it can be considered a chthonic creature. In the Amazon the three shamanic worlds of water, earth, and air have the serpent as being central to the first two. The snake sheds its skin to renew itself and though it may disappear into the waters or hide under or within clefts of rocks, it is always present. The frog on the other hand goes through a birthing process of tadpole which then undergoes a metamorphosis into a frog. The frog springs forth from the tadpole in the water in an act which symbolically represent a springing forth motion that can be interpreted as a resurrection out of the waters. So the female motherly principle is a cycle of renewal which is always present. Its spiritual connection is to the heart and soul and is a nurturer. The frog is the higher self or spirit that suffers repeated death in the lower realms and is symbolized by the motifs of the resurrected god man throughout mythology. It is very dynamic. In harmonious combination these two principles are attractors, you could say soul mates, that unite to create a transfigured luminous being; the rising kundalini energy experienced by those who have awakened these two divine essences being how we can directly experience this. So of course now you're wondering why is the snake devouring the frog?

To put it bluntly if not used wisely serpent energy will kill. If not used wisely plant medicines can kill. If your intentions are nefarious then these modalities can be used to harm others. The lesson was staring me in the face. It is not enough to suppress your dark side or to ignore the negative aspects of serpent energy, instead you need to manifest and come to terms with these demons and conquer without remorse. The beginning of the month of October was waiting in the wings. I fell back into the abyss.

I surprisingly really struggled this time after my latest journey with the plant medicines. It's funny, I thought I did really well and the integration period would be clear sailing and so on. It turns out the opposite result was awaiting. It's like okay you want to take this to the next level, well you have to deal with all the baggage and nonsense you have suppressed. Four months later and I was reeling, everything had resurfaced. I broke down crying in the woods on a pleasant October morning; it's the day I also found the secret of my heart. I was so sorry for hurting my heart once again. I could never do that again. But in the process I found something. I had been searching for so long and I didn't quite know what I was searching for or why I was searching for a Goddess but I knew I had to find her. She’s my heart. The Goddess I can contact is my heart. She's also everyone's mother, healer, and wise woman. When you drink Ayahuasca the feminine spirit is your heart and she is common to all so we all report this rendezvous with a Goddess. I get it now. We have a divine mind and an ego mind in this world of duality. The ego mind takes over, makes the divine mind subservient, and then buries the heart. The princess gets locked away in the castle by the dragon and the prince has to come to his senses and rescue her. It was by peeling away all the layers of who I am that I finally understood this. The final attachment is to the sense of self. Everything is an attached behaviour and I reduced myself to a mind and what we call the heart - the intuitive, insightful, and loving part of us. The result of these two divine principles within is us. The mother is common to all and our minds are individual beacons of the divine mind at large which represents all of consciousness. We are all children of divine parents and we incarnate in this world and build this edifice by attaching behaviours to it. It is only by shedding these behaviours, attachments basically, that we can hope to figure out who we are. Without giving up the sense of self, which we have spent a lifetime building up, can we ever get to a point of understanding. I see pretty clearly now. That was a hard lesson to learn.

what the shadow knows

While smoking mapacho and burning incense outside on the deck I noticed the smoke has a shadow. I always bring a flashlight out with me to illuminate the smoke of the incense so I can watch it dance. The smoke was swirling, but not frenetic, and it was making dark creepy shadows upon the walls of the deck. It was so creepy I had to blow mapacho smoke on the shadows. As with most things that cross my path, physically and intellectually, this lesson was not complete. The next morning while walking to the bus stop I noticed my own physical shadow and how it behaves. I detected it on my right, it grew bigger then disappeared. It reappeared behind me, walked out in front of me and became elongated and then disappeared once again. Next, I couldn't find it until suddenly it appeared on my left, quickly gained on me and overtook me and then once again disappeared.

I thought what an apt way to describe the behaviour of my shadow side. At times I think I have vanquished it only for it to reappear and then become really overbearing. And then it disappears again. This happens to me in my own personal drama so this was all very curious. I'll be on the lookout for its reappearance. I also got the thought that in order to completely defeat the shadow you have to live in the dark in an unenlightened world which is not at all familiar with light. If you walk in the light you will always have to contend with the shadow. When you become the light you are free once again.

nowhere paths

In my third Ayahuasca ceremony of my recent trip to SpiritQuest in June of 2016 I experienced a major turning point. The beginning of the intoxication once again started off in a dark place and was very challenging, as it should have been as the issue being addressed was my knee jerk reaction which at first always looks towards the negative. I came to the realization the mind is a hindrance in trying to move past this unpleasantness and the failure to bypass the mental will lead to delusion and travel further down into an abyss of negativity. I turned off my mind and called out the thoughts which tried to repopulate the void. I successfully navigated the treacherous waters designed to shipwreck the Ayahuasca voyager and before me in my vision was the elephant deity of Hinduism called Ganesha. I later learned that Ganesha clears your path of obstacles - the mind, and its ego baggage being a major obstacle of mine. I now have a jacket emblazoned with an image of Ganesha that I constantly wear. This story is leading to this point in time about five months after that ceremony. I walk my dog in the woods on this makeshift path, a path largely of my own creation. There are lots of branches and logs that litter the path, a great deal from an ice storm last March. So a few weeks ago a bunch of workers showed up with chainsaws and wheelbarrows and cleared the path of all obstacles. I ran into one of the workers and asked what they were up to? He said they were cleaning up the river so the water would flow more freely - it's a floodplain where I walk the dog. The path they cleared for easier access of their wheelbarrows and they have done a ton of work; it is quite impressive how much they have cleared. It dawned on me on the weekend I should take this as a physical sign for what I have accomplished post ceremony in my mental state where I trust the heart and let her lead now. It was really quite wonderful to realize this synchronicity. I thanked Ganesha and my Heart/My Mother down at the river's edge.

The paths available to me now are a good representation of how the Ayahuasca intoxication initializes. There are now two choices for entering into the woods due to the good work of the clean up crew. The original way was not cleared and you have to navigate over some fallen branches to get to the cleared path. This path is representing entering into the visionary state still being mindful and facing a challenge to trust your instincts and turn off your mind. Once you find the path then it is clear, if you don’t then you get stuck in a maze of shrubbery, fallen trees, rotting logs, and thorn bushes. The other path detours down a trail next to the pond, the pond representing the stillness of the mind. This part is a little tricky but once negotiated the path is opened up in front of you. It represents entering into the heart space upon commencement of the intoxication. It is the wiser of the choices but both paths are valid. The clear path last for a good while and then eventually you reach a point where it is not cleared once again. This is a sign denoting that ahead in the journey are challenges but it is familiar terrain now and I'm more than capable of being successful. After weaving through this section I come upon a clearing down by the river's edge that I call witch's cove after these two young ladies who held a full moon ceremony there in May of 2015. I connect here with the Goddess, often bringing incense and smoking mapacho in this location. After this section the trail becomes adventurous and the options for exploring are presented. It is a very apt depiction of what is possible with Ayahuasca once the entrance into its world is cleared and you realize you must check your mind at the door. Thank you very much Ganesha.

Sri Ganesha

I love you brother.

wishful thinking

I came across the ideas of wishful thinking or wish fulfillment plus the avoidance of difficult situations, my feeling being that difficult situations can be incredibly healing and allow you to transcend your current situation. These ideas gave me pause for thought due to the nature of duality we live in. The masculine intellectual mind has the ego mind as its polar opposite. The feminine world soul, our hearts, I have viewed as being an undivided rock mainly because of my belief that love transcends duality and is something that comes from unity hence our difficulty with it, though when exposed to it we realize it is the only way. Engendered from the love bequeathed by the feminine polarity is wisdom and from this we also get intuition. There's always been the question of how do you know your intuition is correct? That's where the wishing comes in. We may wish something to be true or decide to believe the best or worst about something or someone despite our intuition telling us something else. It's the intuitive faculty being compromised by a function of ego steering us towards a fantasy or something we or the ego wants to control by assigning a false belief towards. It's a very subtle way by the ego of directing the edifice it has attached itself to towards its end goals. It is a form of delusion that creeps in slowly because instead of using our inner guide we start believing things based on whether it aligns with our thinking and what we want to happen. Intuition can be uncomfortable and it can challenge us, reveal things about our nature that are not at all pleasant and not always positive.

self analysis

In terms of behaviours I have a question. I want to be left alone a lot. It's a tiring effort to be in others' company. I have caught my ego mind fantasizing about being left alone as well. In contrast, I like being around animals. I connect with the heart while alone in nature or sitting on the deck smoking mapacho and these moments are my favourite times. In trying to understand this behaviour I realize a few things: first of all, in terms of ego it is a struggle to connect with others in terms of personalities. Many traits in others I find turn me off and make me want to avoid them because they are either tiring to deal with, drain my own energy, or I don't want to listen to another ego babble on about themselves and the edifice they have created. I'm also guilty of similar behaviour and the creating and careful crafting of a personality. I have sculpted mine, so it's shrouded in a little bit of mystery, the “what's he up to?” I tend to keep to myself because I know I don't want to hear about others' drama, so I recognize that few want to hear my story or of this me I have built. And what a marvelous edifice it is! I've figured it all out and will lay claim to that distinction. That's a big ego boost! I know I haven't figured it all out and I remain enthralled by discovery but part of me, the ego, wants to lay claim to this, advertise it, and participate in an act of self-aggrandizement. It's another big reason to strip away the sense of self and be left with just the feminine and masculine polarities and a blank slate. By losing the sense of self I can avoid falling into the ego trap. There's nothing real to attach to the label of spiritual.

Back to the behaviour of wanting to be alone. A great deal of this when I was growing up was because my mind was utterly fascinating. It was smart, inventive, and good company. I recognize a lot of that was part of a developing ego mind as I would over-analyze and judge everything but also, I had a healthy intellectual mind and enjoyed exercising that part of me on my terms. Meditation always seemed strange to me because I thought why would I want to turn off my mind; it's my everything! I built up a sense of trust with my mind and I didn't realize its inherent duality. At some point the mind, whom you now trust, leads you into behaviours which benefit it and allows this splinter of self to control and subvert who you are. A little bit at a time, it's very crafty, and then it demands increasingly more. At this point you don't know why you are behaving this way and since you have always trusted the mind it can't be the mind. Until one day you explore this aspect, and it is unmasked. It really will stop at nothing to enslave you to its desires. Always remain vigilant. So, was this behaviour and desire to be alone which continues to this day a product of the ego mind?

2023 edit: My original thoughts said yes. I blamed the ego mind for all my problems until I discovered this psychic part of who I am was a weak puppet subject to the control of something which presented as the greater force. It was not until I outed the other and saw how culture and society turns you into a sheep that I was able to figure out the puzzle. My exploration of self denigrated the ego and placed blame at his doorstep. This was necessary to confirm how the Goddess informed me of the many layers of deception we fall for in trying to unravel the mystery of self. What I thought was the ego influencing my behaviour was the superego, which is an amalgamation of external pressures that I sublimated into a psychic entity which had control over my behaviour. This became a great scapegoat as I had a place to lay blame for why I was not perfect. The answer is understanding the dualistic self and the drive to fulfill desires. You cede control to the part of you who will fulfill those wants and they craft the subterfuge so you can get away with it.

I think the ego capitalized on it. I never would have discovered my heart without going through all this. Being attracted to this behaviour was steering me towards a lifetime of quiet contemplation which would lead me to the heart. It does seem risky though because of the aggrandizement of ego by constantly living in the head space unawares of the danger but at least it was tempered by not needing to be a big ego; instead, it was a smug and superior ego. Little did I know the ego was being played. The superego was trying to destroy me because I would not use my power to dominate others and I get the sense to lay claim to that victory would be something of a fantastic accomplishment for it. It came close I must say, and I stopped it at a critical juncture. When I finally caught wind of the game, it was very difficult to extricate myself from its dominance and it played havoc on my mind. Even still in psychedelic journeys it would offer me untold power, a chance to be part of the conquering of the universe, and anything I wanted along with frothing threats to kill me if I did not give into it. My heart as the Goddess, warned me during one inner voyage that this power would stop at nothing and would create fantastic deceptions to learn the secrets of the divine mind. It was not until I learned to quiet the mind completely that I was able to bypass its grasp and dig down deep into my soul. I'm in a good place now.

True self analysis leads to the discovery of no self. I can strip myself right down of everything I think is me and be left with a meat shell which is sustained by instinctual needs to prolong physical survival. All the rest of this edifice I call me are behaviours I have chosen to attach to this mental and physical construct. When your instincts badger you to be fulfilled - hunger, sleep, sex drive, survival - your intellectual mind is reduced or switched off in order to get out of the way. It is a mechanism used to ensure survival of the corporeal body and looking at the big picture, the species in general. This presents an opportunity for external control of the ego mind to dominate the mind set while the instincts are front and centre. The much-used axiom about men thinking with their genitals as opposed to their head is very appropriate. Instead of approaching the sex drive from an instinctual basis, it becomes hijacked by control of the ego mind and is led down strange paths of fetishism, almost looking for the next and greatest “high” which can be achieved. Since the ego mind has carved out a piece of the brilliant mind for itself, it uses this to its advantage and concocts all kind of schemes in the pursuit of a perverse hedonistic pleasure. There is nothing inherently wrong with seeking pleasure but there seems again that the controller of the ego mind is using it to achieve ends which are nefarious. The superego seems to take great delight into leading the human into perdition and it is very patient at doing this if need be. When it is allowed to be dominant this results in behaviours where people seek power without care for others, they become controlling, there's no compassion, along the same line the food intake can reach unhealthy levels, the sex drive is perverted, resulting in all kinds of deviant behaviours and in some these behaviours are taken to the extreme - sadistic serial killers, sex crimes, grand obesity, eating disorders. These are all outcomes of a weakened ego mind which is then parasitic. Looking at the use of alcohol it removes inhibitions - it loosens you up. The grip of the mind is eased at first and the intoxication relaxes you. Upon further use, the controller takes over and latent behaviours inherent to desire fulfillment come forth such as anger and pleasure seeking outside normal boundaries, plus language filters are removed concerning topics not normally discussed. To some this is the true personality manifesting however I disagree. They are products of the ego mind that are allowed to come forth due to the use of these intoxicants. It is important to see what is being done to you to control you and steal your light. If this capture is not successful, society takes a perverse pleasure in destroying you. The capture of the ego mind is a killer. If the parasitic force cannot get its way, and this is the path of power, it will start killing if necessary and will not stop at killing the host if necessary. From this it is possible to conclude the superego is a parasitic entity on the lookout for a host and can survive the material death of the host, much like consciousness survives physical death as well. This is purely speculative, but the evidence points in this direction and is worth pursuing intellectually.

consciousness as a remedy to suffering

On the question of suffering: I really don’t know if there are cascaded parallel worlds built off of each other, which seems plausible as a dream within a dream and so on, each with diminishing levels of consciousness and by dream state I mean projected energy emanating from the masculine mind. The suffering in this world would reflect the level of consciousness within its creation. This world contains mental energy emanating from the 'mind at large' masculine spirit which is then materially formed and birthed by the feminine soul, this sum total reflecting the current consciousness level and requisite amount of suffering. The mental energy is not fixed; we can actively change it for the good or the bad through choice. If I currently had to guess at a reason for existence of the paradigm we find ourselves in it would have to be to evolve into a purified mind that through free will has shed the darkness and embraced love while being ensconced in a hostile world which presents a difficult dilemma of what choice to make. The further our conscious intention is enveloped by love the more perfect world we can create. I’m not sure it has a fixed destination, however Love is the path and the way forward.

In a ways the mythology which could be created by this idea is one where the male seeker was distraught because he was forever being pursued by an evil villain and wished to vanquish this dragon once and for all. So they became locked in this world created to host combat so twisted that the hero ultimately forgot what he was fighting for. The feminine lead is distraught and desperate to get him to awake from this amnesia and worldly distraction which will lead him to remember why he is on this journey. She too is confused as to her whereabouts but still holds a intuitive connection through the heart to the reason behind this madness. She is suppressed and subjugated to second class status in order to keep her away from the hero. The darkness' goal is to continue the conflict for as long as possible, racking up victory after victory, and sinking the hero further down into the abyss. It is through letting go of self and embracing love that the hero finds this goddess and the strength to ultimately prevail. Until that event happens, round and round the combatants are entangled in a struggle no one can win.