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.