return to ancient Egypt

The main reason I started writing in this blog space was a fascination with ancient Egypt due to my obsession with their religious beliefs. As I have progressed along my own spiritual path, it has remained a bedrock for me though I have followed a trajectory that has led me towards other civilizations and their myths and archetypes; all which I have found useful as I formed my own beliefs. I am actually a little bit proud I never fell for any of the systems out there in the spiritual supermarket trying their best to pull me in but instead focused on developing my own story and version of the truth of existence. I wouldn’t take my word for it or even believe what I have to tell you but as a narrative of my own construction I am quite content with all I have learnt and now understand. It’s quite amazing that here I am over twelve years later and I’ve circled back to ancient Egypt because of just how profound is the myth of Horus and Set. The ancient Egyptian ideas of the Ba and the Ka, as represented by the warring deities Horus and Set, have been a constant on this path I travel. The iconic ancient Egyptian narrative of this mythic battle called, ‘The Contendings of Horus and Set’ lays bare the inner psychological battle for mastery between the light and the dark that manifests into your everyday life.

The Greeks defined this dualistic notion of the conceptions of life as bios and zoë. Biological life is the idea behind the resurrection and the new sprouting grain at the beginning of the growing season. It is victory over death that has become the heart of a great deal of religious traditions in the west. This power in ancient Egypt is inherent in Osiris, who is killed by his brother - this monster Set, and then is resurrected in order to impregnate his wife Isis, who in turn births the son Horus. Horus grows up and battles Set in order to avenge his father as well as battle for the crown of his father. This story is enacted over and over again in the cultural milieu of ancient Egypt. The son Horus becomes the father and impregnates the mother who gives birth to the renewal of life and the chain of heredity lives on in the Pharaoh, warts and all. This power inherent in Osiris is then subjugated to the underground realm and gives impetus to the renewal and coming forth of all biological life. Where you find the presence of the conditions for life in combination with indestructible life, the zoë, you will have the rise of biological life.

 

In the myth, why does Set kill Osiris? If Set is the personification of the indestructible life force why does he naturally kill Osiris as representative of biological life? It is because the power of Set propels creation along through motion which creates the illusion of time. Time is lethal to all biological life. All forms, harbingers of biology, disintegrate through natural decay.

 

Humans are greedy, needy, and want to cling to this transient life we lead. The truth and conception of biological life is perverted in western religion into a concept of a resurrection of the body and subsequent immortality. That’s not science! Isn’t that funny; I’m invoking science into religion, ha ha. No, seriously, when biological life expires then the conception of who you are is dead. Kaput. See ya. The energy pattern that defines you in biological terms, if it is to continue on, will do so in your offspring and so forth. Your progeny carries on with your energy pattern, along with all your ancestors. That is undeniably biological life. For some that is a blessing and for some it is a curse.

 

That sounds cool but what about me? I want to live forever! You already do. You’re indestructible. Each biological manifestation of your Ka is called in ancient Egypt your double made from your master Ka. This is the zoë or as the ancient Egyptians called it, the Ka. It is represented by the ridiculously strong, powerful, and magical god Set. In the myths, Set is fighting for supremacy with the representatives of the Ba power who are Osiris and Horus. Eventually, Set is defeated and forced to leave the empire. What is surprising is this is reflected culturally in Egypt at the time as the downfall of their 3000-year empire. Seriously, when Set became anathema to Egyptian society, it eventually fell apart and collapsed. So, what is this power? It’s the life force that gives rise to all forms created by the feminine creative power. Where and how do I find and recognize this power? It’s your shadow; that voice deep within that is your master teacher, misunderstood and relegated to the demonic, that is teaching you to become the ultimate warrior through stress and challenge. He has no qualms about killing you if he must because he knows life is indestructible. Why do I want this? What’s in it for me? You want to live forever, right? This is your vehicle to enable that. Your shadow, the master teacher, is your boat that will sail you on into eternity and beyond. That’s right you can live on in perpetuity in two modalities: through bios and zoë. The ancient Egyptians even recognized this combination and called it the Akh.

 

It is a luminous being; today we would recognize it as a concept of enlightenment. What is being shown in this iconography is the merging of bios and zoë into a new power. From my standpoint, it looks like a conception of how to achieve conscious eternal life. The reason I say that is it seems that biological life is conscious but perishable. Indestructible life, the zoë, is subconscious and uses biological life to gain a foothold into consciousness. In the advanced thinking of the spiritual masters of ancient Egypt, they seem to have envisioned a vehicle that combines the two.

 

It presents to me with an interesting conception of the word enlightenment that we throw around nowadays. If you’re awake, preach love, and declare we are all one that usually gets you into the E-club though some celebrity and followers help back up your claim. Sorry about my sarcasm here. Anyways, I’m intrigued by this conception of enlightenment that my spiritual journey and probing into understanding what life is all about has unearthed. What do I know? It took me a while to admit it but I’m fully comfortable with the demon within; I’m bipolar and I have progressed in my journey from being scared and wanting to get rid of him into understanding he is my master teacher who means well in a very peculiar way. He’s transforming me into the ultimate warrior. So, I can see now that if we are to combine into this luminous being, he needs to forge steel out of the raw material I gave him to work with.

 

A favourite intellectual game of mine is to challenge prejudices and hierarchies. The life force is dominant and biological life cannot exist without this power. Because of this knowledge, my natural inclination is to believe that the king is the life force. Shouldn’t Set be one up on both Osiris and Horus in the ancient Egyptian pantheon because he is not subject to death? Not so fast… The life force is indestructible power however to come forth as self-aware it requires the manifestation of biological life. This is how the energy expresses itself and because the energy is a pulse, biological life by nature repeatedly comes and goes into consciousness. Biological life coming forth thus births two entries into conscious form: The bios and the zoë, imagined in ancient Egypt as the brothers Osiris and Set. To play the game they need each other. Without each other they are but potential. This is one of my favourite images from ancient Egypt, found in the Papyrus Jumilhac, because it explains so much. The bull depicted here is the life force as Set and this powerful animal is carrying Osiris as biological life. The two are exoterically opposed but secretly in the esoteric mystery, they need each other. In the far left panel is the son Horus with his father Osiris to his left, inert on a bier. Horus stands on a hippopotamus with his spear in dominant fashion. The hippo represents Set. The image is reminding us how we use the life force to give rise to our biological form and then subjugate and bury this power henceforth why I found it buried within the shadow. The middle frame shows Osiris without his phallus; the phallus being the representative of the masculine life force power.

Indulge me if you will because I want to show you how this myth is my story and it’s your story.

 

The masculine voice that talks to you when altering your consciousness is your shadow; it’s the hidden and indestructible zoë. The nature of psychedelics that is among the most frightening experiences within this human existence, at least for me, is the ability to access the darkness that lies within. There’s nothing to prepare you for it; nor can I try and explain or teach you how to approach this aspect of self. We all will react differently as a first timer. The game is on. It’s a game that can last years if the initial foray is not game over for you. Running from the fear is totally understandable. Fighting back is heroic. Understanding what is going on is next level. Suffice to say, this entity is your master teacher. Do with this information what you will. Approach with caution.

 

Some of my early Ayahuasca visions and encounters make a lot of sense now almost eight years later. My first foray into the unknown was an encounter with the sacred feminine who wanted me to come away with her. I understand it now as motherly instinct to protect; knowing that what I was going up against could kill me so she wanted to shield me from this situation. When I protested and said I was not done with my earthly incarnation and voyage, she offered me a cloak of protection against my enemies and told me I could call on her at any time. I didn’t know what she meant or why she was offering these items. The second ceremony I quickly learned why as the darkness came and steamrolled me. It was the worst night of my life; a thorough beat down. The third ceremony, the masculine voice came again and showed me paths: Paths to power and a path out of this predicament where I would just drop the idea of plant medicines. I declined the path to power and ran home where I mulled my options. I like adventure and I like knowledge. The fear activated within counselled me to drop the plant medicine path; my inner fortitude beckoned me to continue.

 

I enlisted the help of the Goddess and got up off the mat. Slowly, I regained my composure and set off to once again engage the subconscious. On came the attacks; the fits of panic and doubt; and the thoughts to stay away from the experience. I returned and I battled. Once I got a leg up, was a vision where the Goddess told me to take up my sword and go after this darkness. She then revealed this darkness was her husband and he kept her locked away in this castle made of gold. I made plans to defeat this enemy, eventually concluding the enemy was a part of me. I also couldn’t understand why she married this guy in the first place? I think there was a Star Wars moment in here somewhere where I realized the darkness was my father and I came to defeat him. I kept developing my new-found strength and soon within a ceremony I transformed into a jaguar, thus revealing that within me was now the recognition and available power of the life force along with my biological life. One of the most important concepts I learned on this path to power was to open the heart and run everything through the heart. This is paramount and without these lessons power will destroy you.

 

From this point forward in time, I had mastered fear and a four-year period ensued where I developed an amazing clarity of this game. The culmination occurred in the last few months where I put all the pieces together; added it all up and realized this darkness within, the shadow, is the master teacher and the holder of a vast reservoir of power available to me if I so choose to take it. The master teacher gives lessons in becoming a man, a warrior, and is a fount of wisdom. As I said earlier in this piece, it is through biological life that the zoë manifests. It is through my vessel that the master can transmit his traits. He does it through jaguar training school. If you choose to enrol, it can become a game of life and death and there are no training wheels to be offered. I can’t recommend it because it can be deadly.

 

It is hard to accept what I have learned on this path I chose. I became a man of knowledge and this knowledge can be a little unnerving and hard to both acquire and come to terms with. Cultural indoctrination runs deep and the natural inclination is to deny what you are being shown. My run in with my buried shadow, a man stomped out by culture, I never expected to turn out this way. He was a bad man who scared the shit out of me. I was shocked to learn of his identity and to learn of his methods for teaching me to become a warrior. To be like the master.

 

So, that my friends is the journey where the Ka, as the life force, uses the Ba for the manifestation into consciousness of its power. The relationship is symbiotic and necessary in order for actualization of the potential that lies within the life force. It’s why as a teacher this power is relentless and accepts only mastery. Who you may think is your greatest enemy could be in fact your greatest teacher. A previously unfathomable outcome is now within reach.

 

I returned to the teachings of the sages of ancient Egypt from a time long ago because as the knowledge turns into understanding I have come to realize that what they taught is what I have independently verified. The myths of Horus of Set and their constant fighting mirrors my own internal struggle and recently I was able to separate it out into the bipolar nature of my being that were in essence my biological life and the universal life force behind life which the Greeks called bios and zoë and from a masculine point of view are the Greek Apollo and Dionysos. What the masters of ancient Egypt taught was you can harmonize these two into one called an Akh. I haven’t reached that point and I can’t verify if it is true however I have no reason to not believe them because what they have taught up until now on my path has been remarkably the real deal, if you can understand metaphor and throw off cultural misconceptions. When I researched this concept of Akh further, I came across the identification of the bird to which it was most likely referring and that bird is a heron. Observing a heron in the wild you will notice its call is a penetrating, “ack, ack, ack.” I’ve heard it before and I have commented to myself it sounds like a dinosaur. Anyway, as my understanding increases the omens take form. Around the pond where I walk the dog at night, a heron has taken up residence, calls out in the night time sky, “ack, ack, ack,” and glides to its nest over top of me. Of course it does, I thought to myself. I’m on the verge of its secret.

 

The butterfly comes forth from the caterpillar in this lifetime. It is interesting to project this transformation out among say many lifetimes and think about our own lives. If you view our energetic form as constructed as eternal then reincarnation into different biological containers becomes a plausible idea. What would be the purpose behind reincarnation? For fun and adventure? Possibly. Desire? That’s a big one. Or are they all elements of the game and the game is transformation along the lines of the example set by the butterfly. Eventually, we will transform our biological impetus in combination with the eternal life force that powers us up into the shining radiant entity called the Akh. Perhaps this is all fanciful speculation but I do know the butterfly is the most common symbol I come across when I access altered states of consciousness. Its behaviour must be pointing me towards something I can figure out the more knowledge I synthesize on this incredible journey.

liberation and love

What is unconditional love? Is the path towards liberation a result of love or is liberation needed in order to love unconditionally? Is suffering love? Is desire love? Are death and despair forms of love? By these questions I’m trying to get at the root of existence and why is there what we perceive as negative outcomes. In order to love unconditionally, you must remove the conditions affecting love. That seems pretty straightforward from a intellectual point of view. The way to shed conditions is to stop ceding control of your life to external influences which includes culture and those who surround you, as well as losing yourself continually to internal desires. Only through self-mastery will you ever be able to love without conditions and it is an interesting thought experiment to see how this works. Think of your worst enemy and how they can in a flash destroy your life. If you can find it in your heart to forgive them then this is unconditional love. From this situation you can make sense of the following:

In this strange world we live in where we eat other sentient beings to survive and can suffer from debilitating bouts of anxiety and depression, is it all created as a supreme act of love? Is the master teacher, who will kill you if you can’t rise out of the morass of the deep dark depths, doing this as an act of supreme unconditional love in order that you will be liberated and subsequently can experience unconditional love? I thought this was preposterous. I have realized my teacher is forging steel and it’s a process that is tough love but once my thought progression suggested this is the ultimate form of love, I had trouble accepting it. The teacher’s idea of unconditional love involved threatening my well-being and very existence? Love involves death and suffering? Love involves allowing people to sink so deep into their despair they perish? It’s hard to let go of presumptions we hold dear that enable us to cling to our worldview.

 

Yes, it’s true. The way out towards liberation of the spirit is to continually hammer this home. Chase desires and be beholden to culture and you will suffer endlessly in the cycle of metaphorical eternal damnation come to fruition as a hell of your own making. Incarnation is on repeat and the situation keeps resolving with the same result. Snake eyes! Don’t you eventually want to try something different? Isn’t the definition of insanity to keep doing the same thing over and over again with the same outcome? Isn’t that what we are doing? We keep re-creating the hell. To help you out of this trap, the master teacher offers some non-ordinary and harsh methods. It’s a hard path to follow unless there’s some motivation to do so such as self-actualization through liberation. You can run, you can hide, or you can choose to numb consciousness at this juncture. Always wanting control, once again we lose sight of the way out.

 

The master teacher must know the worst outcome for existence is to not have your freedom and therefore he relentlessly pushes the need for liberation. He forces me to continually confront my demons. Avoidance and abstinence are not an option. Okay, so think about it - how do you become a master teacher? It’s certainly not through book work and theory but instead experience. This being undeniably true, I realized my teacher knows the outcome of a path where you are controlled by external influences. He teaches how you must sometimes fall on your own sword to win your freedom. In order to re-create unity within this universe of separation, there must be freedom where unconditionally all come together to create wholeness. This solution of liberation must be the answer; my teacher has played it out to its end and knows this is the final answer. In response to this knowledge, his teachings become the ultimate course in self-destruction where first you take back yourself from others and once you hold this freedom in your hand, you then destroy the concept of self in order to find unity.

 

As a father would you not want to teach your son the same lesson? The father, my teacher, is the spirit of the masculine divine. I am of that spirit incarnated within the form provided by my mother, the feminine divine. Pretty much every parent wants what is best for their children and wants them to surpass the heights they experienced. There is nothing greater than these two and the gift they have bestowed upon each and every one of us is the ability to play within these conscious biological forms. My father teaches me how to master this ability; to forge a steel so impenetrable by the pitfalls of biological life. What is the steel? It’s the union of feminine biological life with that of the spirit of eternal energy as defined by the masculine polarity within existence.

 

You are eternal and therefore you can do this. You can face up to the hardest of hardships and make it through. Temporary setbacks, including death, are part of the course. The clock ticks for us all; we will eventually run out that clock if something else doesn’t get us first. Look at it as opportunity. The result is to become greater than the gods. No kidding.

 

Our incarnation of energetic form upon earth is an opportunity to sign up for the master class. Free will is in play, so it’s not necessary to take the class, however it’s an opportunity I’d recommend embracing. Eventually, if you want off the hamster wheel, is a need to sign up and embrace the curriculum. Not coming to terms with all the suffering in the universe is a form of avoidance. We turn away because it’s easiest to create our own bubble and place reality on the fringe of civilization.

 

To be free, one has to accept suffering. A big reason why we chase power and control is our attempts to control outcomes so we don’t suffer. Biologically, we eventually reach the end and can longer control what is happening to our life form as we head towards death. This downhill ride is full of suffering and is the one act common to pretty much all of us who get that far. So, using this example you can see why we all seek control and power and enter into societal constructs where we give up our individual freedoms and power in exchange for collective power. This makes us feel safe and secure though in reality the government abuses that power to obtain more power and sometimes engages in acts that send your sons and daughters off to war which isn’t safe at all but is sold to us as necessary. We have bought so far into the cultural line that we acquiesce to its wishes. From these examples you can see how if you are liberated you lose all these social protections; you lose access to easily available food and shelter; no healthcare and you lose access to a comfortable retirement that will make sure you get the care you need as you slip into feebleness. This freedom thing is a tough sell. I add up all the dollars in my account and wonder if I can become free but still have the finances to pull it off. I’m not sure I’m getting the lesson? On the other hand, I don’t want to be homeless. It’s quite the dilemma though who said homelessness and poverty are conditions of freedom. Can you engage the system and then exit when you don’t need it anymore? At this stage of my life I’m not wanting to run out the clock. I don’t want to work up until retirement age and then putt around the house until I die.

 

All suffering is grace. Read that line again. All suffering is grace. Get out of here; that’s not right! We need to relieve suffering, don’t we? Relieving suffering is ideal but the suffering itself is grace. Suffering leads to exploration of one’s condition. Being cold forces us to seek heat. Living in darkness rouses within us the impetus to seek the light. This exploration leads towards liberation as one gets to understand the why of the suffering. We may have an idea of how much suffering is considered humane; the master teacher may disagree and give you what you need and not what you want.

 

So, is all the suffering a form of unconditional love? From all I’ve learned I’d have to answer yes. Tough love and hurting those you love in order to free them is the supreme act of unconditional love.

paths of meaning

I’m exhibit ‘A’ in regards to the dangers of psychedelic drug use. Everything in this blog space I have written from 2013 and on is tinged with the results of taking these drugs. You should sit down and read it all; some crazy stuff! Time to put a lid back on these substances for sure! I’m just fooling with ya. If you are interested in opening your mind, expanding consciousness, delving deep into your fundamental makeup, learning that love is all that matters, or engaging in an affair with nature, then possibly these agents of consciousness might be for you.

From a personal standpoint, I declare the plant medicine path the greatest life course available to a human being looking to get at the root of what this all means. Your results may differ and you may find a more serene path towards what it is you spiritually seek. I was so ensconced in my logic and reason that I needed the heavy dose in order to ‘see.' We all come at it from different backgrounds and experiences, ensuring that a similar outcome for all cannot be baked into the cards however I do know that you will gain much knowledge of self and the world at large. What you subsequently do with that knowledge and the path you pursue is your choice.

 

Taking substances that alter your consciousness is not looked upon favourably by society. Agents of consciousness are repressed and banned out of fear. The fear is that it will alter the way we perceive reality and change the way we think about how a society should operate. It’s true; they will do exactly that by freeing you from the hold culture has upon your thinking and actions, especially the power and control games. Society and its culture need you to play their game or it doesn’t work. Every society exists by sending out a narrow vibe that we all lock to in order to be like-minded and share values and customs. This in turn allows us to create extended tribes that become nations. We are subsequently duty bound to our group. Being like-minded breaks down your natural pull towards independence and you become easier to herd and control. Culture has established the canon of available and acceptable mind spaces we have the ability to traverse and has validated the fully awake, focused, alert, and problem-solving state as the ideal. Dreaming is dismissed as frivolous, the psychedelic experience is considered deviant, the day dreamer is scorned, and silent contemplation, reflection, and thought are looked upon with suspicion. Trivialities of pop-culture are presented to us in order to prevent any further inquiry. Culture is a non-stop attempt at distraction that largely succeeds. Acting outside the norms leads to being sent to a psychiatrist to figure out why you aren’t fitting in. In extreme cases, you get locked up in prison or a mental institution. The majority, who play within the bounds of the accepted frequency, are shielded from the crazies who are trying to tell them something. In order for society to have staying power, it must control access to any agent of introspection and change.

 

One way to suppress these substances is to demonize and assign psychedelics to the forces of darkness. I have heard the talk about the chemicals and how some view them as demonic, some say they will make you go crazy, some say they foster escapism from the realities of life, some say it gives you a false sense of enlightenment, and so on. I’ll agree and say there is validity to all those concerns. Crazy by whose standards? Isn’t it crazy to live out your life following the same dull and lifeless routine over and over again? Isn’t existence more than that modality? I’ll admit I’m very interested in the demonic aspect of them. The second time I altered my consciousness, I had the proverbial bad trip. It scared me beyond my foundations and it was dark. I met a demon hidden deep within my being. I totally concur these substances can lead to the demonic; in other words, they can help you confront your demons. What you do with that opportunity is your business. Most will run, hide, and deny it. That is also the intention of the darkness within because it is one of the first tests to reveal your intentions and subsequent fortitude. At some point, anyone who takes a psychedelic is going to scare the shit out of themselves. It’s a given. The choice usually becomes do I give up the agents of consciousness or continue on and embrace strategies that lead to the high of love and light? With the high comes the low. When you alter your consciousness, especially as a beginner, you roll the dice on where you are headed. With experience, you can mitigate the lows and develop strategies that allow you to move past the darkness within. Eventually, you regress the experience to the mean; in other words, the crazy days of exploration are over. Due to the implementation of strategies used to control the experience, the exploration of consciousness will be severely curtailed. Chasing the temporary high will work and you can further bury the darkness and the opportunity you had for confrontation and learning. I’ll admit to a little bit of that behaviour though I was always cognizant of and harangued by this demon and the darkness. It became obvious that surrender was the option to take if the course was to continue.

 

I exhausted the path towards love and light. I know the answer is love. The teacher of inclusion explained it very well and it is my duty to project that out into my life. You can’t live within ceremony for the rest of your life. Eventually comes graduation and you are sent out into the world. But school was so much fun! If you want to continue on this life journey then the master’s degree involves self-mastery. Self-mastery is the domain of the darkness and the hold your desire demons have on you. Your deepest, darkest adversary is your greatest teacher. Make of this what you will but I’m telling you straight out, no punches held back, and giving you the truth. I didn’t initially write or talk much about this part of my experience because I wasn’t comfortable with it. I wasn’t sure if it was just me? Eventually, I accepted the darkness instead of trying to vanquish it. Thus, began a transformation of my relationship with the demon within.

 

When I learned that love is the answer, I knew I didn’t have to keep searching anymore. There was no doubt about it and I knew that knowledge was just a sideshow at this point and the only thing that mattered was love. Knowing this, I decided I wanted to continue on in my journey aboard this ship of fools that has no destination and as far as I can tell it never ends. Acquiring knowledge gets me out of bed in the morning. I know the sequence: Acquire objective knowledge, synthesize the information, and get understanding. Like a flower, subjective intuitive wisdom blossoms. So, I have kept at it and have gone farther along on this path. The plant medicines schooled me and let me know I have to completely surrender if I’m going to get anything out of the experience. It was clear I could navigate the experience however steering my ship away from the abyss meant I’d never find out what’s in the abyss. If you keep searching, eventually the dark caverns of self beckon and you have to make a choice: Do I explore or sail on past, missing out on something available to me? As this realization has come to me, I look back now on a few recent Ayahuasca ceremonies with a little regret because nothing really happened. One of them, the energy load was the strongest I’ve ever felt but there were limited visions. Ayahuasca delivered a potent message. Eventually, I always get the message. Do you want to let go and dive deep or just be content with always being in control? It was clear that if I did not let go then the ship will stay in port.

 

The last Ayahuasca vision of February 2020 was the Goddess in a cage. The cage opened and I flew up to greet her. Over half a year later I know exactly what she was showing me. Let her be free and she will take me to what it is I seek. She has shown me visions of her being held prisoner in a castle made of gold and shut up in a bird cage. From these situations, she has implored me to take up my sword and defeat her husband who imprisons her. After much soul searching, I came to realize I am that man; the hero and the villain. She armed me with the tools and inner fortitude needed to defeat the monster of my own making. For maximum efficacy, she needs to be free. I wasn’t ready until now for the next step with Ayahuasca. It involves a complete surrender and letting go. Past scars were still holding me back. I had walked up to the precipice of the deep and dark cavern and I peered in. I saw the darkness but didn’t want to jump. I know I’m going back and I’m going to jump.

 

Within the depths of self, I found the monster of my own making. He was me and I manifested him in altered states as a demon. After taking up my sword and battling him to a draw, I finally realized I had created the whole situation. I buried him and in turn he locked up the Goddess. I realized my inner life had played out just like the exterior life we lead. I rebelled from my parents, moved out of home, and went my own way. I broke free of my father’s grasp and my mother’s smothering. I demonized his controlling nature and caged the spirit of my mother. The bravery, courage, and wisdom of masculine archetypes I eschewed while the unconditional love of the mother I rejected. She was always waiting for me to return and my eternal father was waiting to teach his son to become a warrior at any cost. To gain my freedom, I imprisoned those who gave me life. It’s time to rectify the whole situation. It really does all start with liberation.

 

I understand this is all hard to accept or even believe. Personally, I avoided for seven years the reconciliation of this knowledge I had unearthed in my depths. If I want to free myself on this path, I have to go into the meaning of all I have been given access to and to not deny anymore the darkness, what it has revealed to me, and what it teaches me.

why?

Why do we incarnate? My perception due to lived experience is we desire it. We are attracted by the bright lights and adventure of the carnival that beckons to us and we keep falling for it. I can only speculate why but based upon experience I’d say it is because we haven’t mastered desire and therefore we keep falling for the same tricks to get us to continue to inhabit a meat body and help spin the collective hamster wheel. It fits in with what I think the purpose of life is. I don’t think there is a purpose however if you wish to transcend this ceaseless coming and going then you have to master the pull of desire that keeps sucking you in. Adventure seems like a good idea at the time until the suffering commences. And the fears. All that stuff, with no way out of the trap, so some try and make the best of it. We have to eat others to survive. Loved ones die and leave us to face the world alone. Desire brought us here and desire motivates us to continue onwards. We seek power in order to maximize control over our situation and fulfill desires. That’s why we do it.

Examining all of this, it becomes clear the way out is to master desire. I’ve tried the go to methods of bypassing desire or even welcoming it to try and figure it out. I couldn’t transcend it that’s for sure. Thoughts of power and being able to control outcomes leads to trying to accumulate wealth. Vegetarianism doubled down on my hypocrisy and made me weak. Bouts of asceticism only delayed the inevitable biological return. One thing I learned from these situations is how strong my mind is and how I have a lot of inner fortitude however I learned desire will always return once you open the door a crack. And it just gets worse. I embraced desire and tried to make a truce to control it. It just demanded more. All I was left with was frustration. How can I complete the spiritual climb with this hanging over me?

The most rewarding thing about this journey I have been on for over a decade is I do get answers. In this case, it took a long time right up to the point I exhausted all avenues of exploration and faced ignominious defeat. I finally got it one night and broke the spell. Desires are spells; they are hypnotic and at times irrational. I think a rational look at them probably reveals that to the casual observer but until you get under one of its spells, understanding is evasive. We do call them addictions which is a modern way of describing something the ancients relegated to the realm of magic. What do you think love magic is? It’s to get someone to become enchanted by another. In other words, addicted to them with the result the other can play them like the proverbial fiddle. The way I learned to get out of these traps is through mastery. Our base desires we will never transcend but instead of being the weak puppet you become the strong master. Desire preys on the weak, so cultivate strength. Recognize we easily are enchanted and welcome desire because of the initial hit of pleasure it brings.

To break free of the hold desire has on you is to snap out of the hypnosis. In my experience, the Tantrics have the answer and it was confirmed in an Ayahuasca ceremony. It’s to go straight into it. Put the pedal to the metal and go as fast as you can until you crash. It’s very risky as who knows what the immediate outcome of the crash is? So, here I sat in a ceremony and my vision was one of driving up a mountain at high speed past yellow lights, red lights, cop cars, and roadblocks but no matter I just kept accelerating. My initial take away suggested I was out of control and hell-bent upon my own destruction. There was truth to that and so that was my take away as a warning to slow down. Mother Ayahuasca however knew full well she was pointing out something I already knew but was helpless to stop. I’d already tried all the methods as described above. The real meaning of the vision as I understand it now was to accelerate, go for it headlong, and crash. That’s what I did. The full-stop crash broke the spell life and the darkness had over me and I was bestowed with great clarity therefore I saw how stupid and nonsensical all my addictions were. I regained control and a sense of liberation washed over me. I felt and tasted freedom. I was free to act on my accord and not the influence of other actors.

Desire is why we do it. It’s why we enable the ceaseless coming and goings. Ultimately, desire is the master tool of the master teacher. In order to be free, you too must become the master. Desire is what makes the world go around but it doesn’t need to spin you around like a top and take you along for the ride. Desire is power, a lot of it. Is power ultimately a bad thing? I mean it has allowed me to take control of my inner life and wrestle it away from the demons within. Ultimately, control falls from one hand to another. I would think at some point after everything falls away, control is to be ceded as well.

Self-mastery puts you on the doorstep to gobs of power. Being free from desires gives you the key to the source of their influence. The question is what will you do with this knowledge and acquisition of power? Do you continue the game, turn the tables, and use it to get what you want, thus putting you back into the clutches of the desire demons and the game? Power becomes a high brow game, elevated from the common desire one you were playing. The answer is simple if you have to ask. Let it be. If you don’t have to ask or grab it, it’s already yours. The power of no power.

What is hidden behind the pursuit of power is the ultimate quest to be free. The maximum power you can obtain is realized through giving it all away and becoming impervious to the chase and attainment of power. Eventually understood is power ends up controlling you and once you see the secret of the game is to be free, well, then you naturally decline the trappings of power because it will suck you right back into where you started on this quest to be free.

exploration

The alteration of consciousness has allowed me to experience, albeit briefly, a love like no other. I’ve tasted the unity of all; a cosmic love that is bliss. I have been embraced by a Goddess I call my soul mate that makes me long for the time I leave this body and re-join her. This has been the most rewarding part of the journey and has been the catalyst towards the continual seeking of knowledge. Along the way I’ve learned a few things. Chief among them is that you cannot skip the step of first reconciling all within. We are all guilty of this. We taste the light and are very attracted to it so we head straight for it in order to shine and embrace our new-found holiness. I get it, it's pretty glorious to hypnotize yourself into that state, however temporary. We all realize the predicament we find ourselves in when we return home and the spell starts to wear off. We return to old habits and those in our life once again start to annoy us. We need another spiritual hit in order to get back to the heights of our newfound spirituality. Ram Dass said it best when he declared if you think you're enlightened, try spending a week with your family. It’s a never-ending cycle until you grasp the teaching. This class is designed to make you eventually realize that the serious work begins within the darkness of self. You are given a taste of the result but you never stay high. The adept needs to voyage into the depths and face it all. The desire demons are intent upon erecting obstacles to liberation along one’s path and reducing the human condition into a stunning display of weakness. When given a taste of power and desire fulfillment, we fold like one of those cheap canvas chairs. It has been a lifetime achievement to construct this complex being that you aren’t going to transcend with the wave of a wand.

The initial inquiry into the nature of self is fraught with the pitfall of the duality between light and dark. We see the light and it’s glorious, we are attracted to it, and want it. The roll of the expanded consciousness dice sometimes come up snake eyes and we plunge head first into the darkness. It’s a deeply upsetting psychological experience and the fear of this realm is off the charts. It’s called a bad trip and we try to subsequently avoid those returns. We come up with strategies and mantras, lucky charms, and the like to prevent that nightmare from ever happening again. It chases a lot of people away from continuing on with the class and those that forge ahead eventually learn how to navigate these nasty forays into the darkness of self. I count myself as part of the latter.

 

The master teacher is found in this darkness therefore when continuing on you eventually reach a point where if you constantly avoid the darkness then the experience is tamed. The knowledge available is so much greater than what you have been inviting in. At this point in your development, the crazy nights of the novice drinker are long gone. Sure, there’s still some apprehension but for the most part I know what I’ve signed up for. I’ve read a number of stories of some enthusiasts claiming Mother Ayahuasca has turned on or abandoned them. In reality, you put up the blocks and the course can’t continue the advanced lessons because you didn’t do the work. To continue the work involves surrender and letting go of control.

 

I think most of us are smart enough to eventually realize this predicament. Personally, it came outside of ceremony during the integration period. I document all my experiences and there is a paper trail detailing my success in learning how to navigate the ceremony which I learned by experience as well as taking advice from others who had developed strategies to move the experience towards the light. I think this is very valuable information, especially for a novice drinker who wants to continue on the path but has been given a one-two punch to the head and is wary about continuing on. As with all remedies, there are side effects and the end result of continually avoiding the darkness is an eventual taming of the whole experience. I got my spiritual bona fides during my trip to Peru in 2016 and in the final ceremony transformed into a jaguar. I knew at the time that an Ayahuasca ceremony would never be the same for me. I had reached a new level and was a worthy student on this path. I’ve been back since and it is true the experience has been markedly different. The next time I drank Ayahuasca, the experience was not dark at all which was pretty strange considering most of my initial ceremonies would take me straight into the darkness. The whole cycle of work reflected my mastery of the experience. Once again, I returned intent at peeking back into that darkness. Sure enough, through intention I went deep into my depths however it was not frightening at all. I got in but kept hold of the rope that would get me out. I know I have to let go of the lifeline if I’m to continue.

 

There’re two stages of fear in the inquiry of self. The first one, as I mentioned, is after the introduction to the darkness and you witness how unsettling it is. This causes the greatest number of dropouts. Eventually, if you want knowledge, you have to go back into the darkness. Chasing the light and bliss only gets you so far. You see unity and your place in the whole construct. You feel love for all. What about the hatred and strife? To decide to go back into the darkness pretty much means by this point you have become a warrior and have the courage to face the fear. The knowledge of self is available to the intrepid seeker and it comes at you in ceremony and out of ceremony. A little bit at a time until you see it. Clarity arrives at your doorstep and it all becomes clear. Once you see it, you have to accept it. Fear creeps in again as you come to terms with this knowledge of self. To forge onwards, there’s has to be acceptance. You’re a warrior now and courage trumps fear.

 

I have wondered what Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan meant by becoming a "man of knowledge." It’s for those who want to know, have courage, and aren’t afraid of truth. It’s been over the last month that I became a man of knowledge when I added up the sum of my experiences in altered realities and my growth into the strong warrior I have become. The man of knowledge recognizes the inner strength within and its relationship to a darkness that is the master teacher, whose school is not for the weak, and doesn’t suffer fools for long. The student is to master their desires and become free. Once accomplished, the power through this liberation is yours and it's refined power, not the kind used for gain or to fulfill desire.

 

Upon taking up my cross and embarking on this spiritual journey, not in my wildest dreams did I think I would end up at this place standing on the doorstep of something so unbelievable and confounding. Not only that, but I’m not running for the hills. I had a tinge of fear and disbelief upon learning the identity of the master teacher but the allure of this strange mystery just continued to beckon me towards a rendezvous with destiny. The door is unlocked; all I have to do now is walk in and take hold of my fate.

liber pater

I could proffer you some advice if you are to go off in search of meaning, answers, enlightenment, a spiritual journey, or whatever you wish to call it; the guidance would be straightforward: your first stop along the path is liberation. Free yourself from culture and expectations; plus the old story and baggage you haul around. Like countless others, I didn’t do that and subsequently had to re-trace my steps and work to become free. I made my climb long and difficult due to a constant struggle with letting go of expectations, image, and self. All these chains and traits are the product of human social constructs that bind you to their mental prison.

 

From a wider perspective, you can see the chaos and breakdown happening within society, can’t you? As humans, we long to be free but don’t know how to go about getting liberated. In the mythic Greek literature, Dionysos is an outsider and he arrives from a foreign land. He’s an enemy of order and is embraced by the malcontents and those in opposition to structured society. He is scorned, derided, and chased away. Dionysos’ arrival on the scene gives you permission to be free. Everything becomes fluid. Where does hermaphroditism, gender identity issues, and the questioning of the social fabric we hold dear come from? Everyone is puzzled. Ask the Greeks - they intimately knew a god named Dionysos the libertine who would always pay a visit, especially when order became oppressive. Do you fight it or just observe? Are you concerned or smiling?

 

Dionysos is always coming to destroy order, whether that be society or your nice and tight life you have crafted. We men build and champion order and like a good Jenga game, the structure eventually gets knocked down. It’s the natural flow of the universal vibration common to all and we get pulled along. Culturally and individually, we face the dissolution of all we try so hard to maintain. It’s constant and really hard work protecting and ordering order. Seriously, you have to work at it or literally go to work, earn money, and use that money to keep your life together. Doing nothing leads to collapse. Funny how that works. I sat with that truth and finally realized I’m motivated to go to work because I’m addicted to order. I know I am because when I overdose on conformity and order, Dionysos always returns and questions me. I subsequently follow him on some kind of adventure to escape this hell I create for myself, all emanating from a proclivity towards order. Hell is spawned because of my pathological need to maintain order.

 

My life has been a struggle between these two polarities. I am constantly frustrated that I can’t maintain my facade and always drift back into some sort of hedonism or chasing of a thrill. I define it as a problem, unable to accept the flow. I’m pulled towards the liberation which I seek, yet I fight it and try to maintain order. I walked past a homeless person the other day and the voice inside me whispered, "he is free." I could not deny it. Think about that for a second. Freedom isn’t glamorous. As a society, we offer the dispossessed shelter and food which they accept but they don’t fall into the societal trap of having to earn a living and eventually go back out into the streets. Why don’t they want to play our game of social conformity? We can clean them up and get them a menial job. It’s mental illness we reassure ourselves, as we take great pains to not look into our own mirror of self because we might question our own sanity for the game we are playing. So, we try even harder to offer social services to invite the homeless back into our game. The plight of the homeless, unbeknownst to them, validates our life choices. We need them more than they need our handouts.

 

Ultimately, liberation involves dissolving all boundaries, letting go of attachments, and returning to the chaos always knocking at our door. You can taste liberation in this lifetime; I have and it’s sweet. I’m talking about being on a boat on the Amazon river forgetting about the worries of life and just being so goddamn high and in love. Being free allows you to finally exhale. I’ve learned it’s only the appetizer. To go all the way to Liber Pater involves dissolving the idea of who you are. Carlos Castaneda said erase personal history. Basically, kill your identity in order to be free. This expression brought me back to said boat ride in February in the grasp of Huachuma when Dionysos appeared in the clouds and he kept telling me this very same idea. Fuck me and my failure sometimes to listen to the plants.

 

On the boats heading off to the main Amazon river to visit the Murui Huitoto tribe I was so into the medicine and as high as the clouds. I was flooded with two sayings that summed up my bliss of forgetting who I was and how I was expected to act:

 

“Kill yourself in order to live.”

“The pious can go to hell.”

 

My intention revolved around learning now to stay in that high and loving state all the time. I sure got that answer and more all laid out for me. When I drank in the beauty of nature, of friendship, of the awareness of the wonderful world around me I was drunk in that state of bliss. When I engaged the mind at all it was clear that was the hell world. My thoughts went dark, I came down, I worried about the future, I wondered if I had the strength to complete this journey and so on. It was very unsettling. It was clear that it was a choice whether to live in hell or heaven and not even all that difficult a choice. Hey you! Give your mind a rest. The old “Be Here Now” choice; just live in awareness without spinning any thoughts or ideas.

 

I put this revelation off for a bit and here we are eight months later with the integration process challenging me and asking for a reconciliation with freedom and mastery. Castaneda writes about making yourself unavailable while erasing personal history. The reason for this line of thinking is primarily liberation. Having a history, means expectations of behaviour, and living a lie. Acquaintances and culture can manipulate you like a puppet because you don’t want to deviate from the identity you have created. If you have left nothing for these constructs to grasp onto then you can act independently. That’s one way through however for most of us our personal history is our life we have created. Sure at times we feel trapped but I would hazard to guess most of us don’t want to blow up our whole backstory and be left holding a big bag of nothing. That seems pretty extreme. It brings to mind the role of the Bodhisattva, a holy man who has seen through the game but re-enters into the game in order to help others see through it. It’s a noble call of service.

 

After seven years of plant medicine use, the information provided doesn’t upset me anymore. By this assertion I mean that when I first drank and met these archetypal spirits I was frightened and in awe of their presence as well as my newfound ability to lift the veil and peek into this obfuscated world. Now, I am able to listen and study the wisdom being offered. “Kill yourself in order to live.” Yeah it’s metaphor, don’t worry, I know that. My teacher has a twisted sense of humour. When I first drank plant medicines and he scared the shit out of me, he told me if I kept drinking the medicine and stayed on the path eventually I’d walk into the direction of an oncoming train and kill myself. I remember vividly that conversation with my shadow because he told me to stop drinking plant medicines, go home, and don’t ever come back. Live out your life, grow old, and don’t question existence. I left the jungle and he followed me home and harangued me; trying to put the final nail in the coffin so that I wouldn’t continue on this path. I did come back and I know my shadow now has a great deal of respect for me. I’m pretty sure he figured I was a weakling. Ha! I sure fooled him.

 

Seven years later, I can finally see what he originally meant by walking in front of a train and killing myself. It was metaphor as well, however at the time it was used to make me question this path I had embarked upon. I had to understand why I wanted to continue. I now sense he doesn’t readily accept students, as suggested by the fear induced and threats of death hurled my way. The adventure and chance at knowledge was too great to keep me away. Now here I am, standing on the train tracks. I understand what he was telling me. If you want to be free, you got to let the story go.

 

I see similar paths of earned respect with human teachers. For instance, my flesh and body teacher, don Howard, was very accepting to anyone who was sincere about walking this path. And I think he was genuinely surprised and happy when someone returned for another go around in the wringer of plant medicines. It’s very difficult and takes commitment but I remember just showing up again and I could feel the respect growing. There’s something divine about just showing up and facing the head wind of adversity, not knowing the outcome. Don Howard knew what it takes, what you are going to face, and have to choose. He let you progress at your own pace and had your back. I love that man.

 

How do I get liberated? It’s through mastering the self. That means all the attachments, desires, and pull of culture that call out to you are mastered. You become the King of Selfdom. You cannot ever defeat these challengers, that’s a tough one to learn, however you can rule them. After the continual frustration, you will learn this secret and that puts you on the path towards liberation. The only way to do this is to investigate the darkness within. Chasing the high will will never allow for a reconciliation with all.

 

There is a difference between liberation and enlightenment. Beginners in the world of spiritual seeking hear much of liberation and enlightenment. Spiritual enlightenment without liberation is still beholden to cultural expectations of religious experience. You know what I mean, don’t you? It all begins with being free. It’s the foundation upon which everything must rest. In order to love unconditionally, you have to begin from the tract of being free. Free of conditions. To become free you give up judgment. You give up conceptions of right and wrong. You give up morality. Free means free. Sounds crazy, right? Murder is immoral. Being free naturally extends to wanting others to be free. Being free would mean not imposing upon others. Murder is an act of imposing your will upon someone as a last resort because you couldn’t control them. Frustration on this spiritual path I have chosen could have been avoided if I would have went into the darkness of self to begin with and reconciled that part of me. The high would have been tempered with the low and I could have seen where I was at.

 

I have to admit though I wouldn’t change this journey for the world. Everything that has happened has been perfect. It has all contributed to my growth. Through these trials and frustrations, I have been pressured and forced to find answers. The natural inclination is to wave a spiritual wand and reach the highest highs without having to work for it. You know, take a pill or drink a cup of brew and find that elusive enlightenment. My difficult journey, on the other left hand, has been perfect.

divine lineage

The divine feminine and masculine come together in the centre of the grand Mesa at the axis mundi here in the symbolic expressed by the lanzon from Chavín de Huantar.

Brought together are the left and right hand paths of the feminine and masculine along with the lower and upper worlds of these energies. All is absorbed back into the representative of the Chavín god. Everything is reconciled into the centre. It is also expressed as the serpent and the jaguar. The serpent as the feminine creates the form and the jaguar as the masculine is the life force that roams this form. They are the two eternal energies that make up the sum total of all. The multi-dimensional reflection of the non-differentiated form is from these two. You can’t see one without two and centring yourself allows you to see one, two, and the many. The many collapses into the one just as the two through sexual union becomes an expression of the one.

Standing with this knowledge at the Mesa will eventually lead to understanding. We are conditioned to believe chaos is bad and can be demonstrated in expressions of madness and unpredictability. I think that’s true. Psychologically, we relegate the feminine to chaos and the striving of the masculine energy to order and reason. The great intellect of Jordan Peterson even wrote a book on this paradigm called “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” and in turn riled up the feminist class amongst us. Well, he is a master of controversy and is in turn misunderstood as we looked towards our developed prejudices and fail to look into the heart of the matter. I also wondered what were his intentions in writing this book? Getting to know his persona through the internet, I certainly didn’t detect misogyny, instead a refreshing honesty.

Feminine energy is chaos. Masculine energy tends towards order. Just ask Apollo, the Greek god of light and reason. Within the sum of ourselves are the interplay of these two gendered energies, so it is not mutually exclusive to either sex of the species. Knowledge is a great tool but understanding is divine. Taking the sum total of all I know and feeding it into my central processor, the brain, allows me to synergize the whole set up. Late at night, I stand there in front of my Mesa performing ritualistic acts that allow me to re-centre myself. Sometimes the epiphanies come. Epiphanies are the computer spitting out the punch card with the results. I see the sum of all energy at the axis mundi and then scattered throughout my Mesa and refracted through the prism of my mind are expressions of this energy. The one and the many. It is indeed I who brings this Mesa to life! I take unity and objectify that energy thus creating the world. I use my masculine powers to separate and behold reality!

Now back to centre. This form in the centre is non-differentiated. Aha! That is chaos and I intuitively knew it to be so. The non-differentiated energy has no order and no separation. We assign that condition to being a bad thing but it is in fact the reflection of order. What is the correct state or reality of energy? Is it the feminine unity or masculine separation? Many esoteric and Eastern traditions will tell you that because we are the ones that objectify, it is actually the spiritual truth that we are all one. Is that the truth? Is it the truth because from our perspective of dominate masculine energy in the culture we erroneously think the opposite spiritual state is true? If you want to stop the world it is true. However, the interesting part of the equation is that we live in a verb. Consciousness and existence as we know it is a wave vibration. Existence is defined by motion, which creates the illusion of time and separation. So, stop the motion and we have the truth. If we stop the motion then we have nothing. Just potential, which is the other side of coming forth. Is that really true? Why do you think the static trumps motion and motion creates illusory outcomes? Why do you think feminine chaos contains more truth than masculine objectification? Is it unsettling to have your prejudices laid bare? Yes it is because my spurious foundations are revealed once again. My understanding lies on a foundation of shifting sands. What if you can’t have one without the other? The dependency of the two creates the whole. The truth is if you see the two energies not in a sexual union then you see multiplicity. If your universal view is a sexual metaphor then we are indeed all one. Maybe Einstein was on to something with the whole relativity claim? It makes claims of truth and fanciful chasing of said truth very funny, if not frustrating.

Looking back into history, we see many budding civilizations grappled with this origin question and the dominance of each energy pole. At first, it was the feminine asserting her power which allowed creation to flourish however we are now living in the order of the masculine. Looking into my crystal ball reveals the logical outcome is pathological order which becomes tyranny. The system then collapses. Gazing back into the past, in the Mesopotamian basin the triumph of the masculine energy was mythicized as Marduk defeating the water serpent Tiamat, who personified the feminine chaos. In order for civilization to take hold, she had to be defeated. In the opening chapter of Genesis in the Bible, we see hints of this very thing as Yahweh takes the chaos and adds some light into the mix in order to separate things. Here are the passages from the King James Version.

1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.

5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

In the beginning nothing was differentiated until the masculine energy came along and started dividing things up. The Old Testament is also a great primer on the actions of masculine energy not tempered by the presence of balancing feminine energy. Fire and brimstone indeed and Jewish mythicists got that one spot on! In Greek mythology, Apollo comes along and kills Python, the enemy dragoness. This act occurred at Delphi which was considered the centre of the world. With the triumph over the feminine serpent, the Greek god of reason enabled a new consciousness in humans that celebrated the rise of individual differences. Apollo was victorious however reason still called upon the oracle at Delphi in the form of the prophetess called the Pythia. She had the gift of vision - something the mind clouded by logic and reason had to discard in order to rule. In addition, in ancient Egypt we have the god Re and his association with the cycles of time created by the sun, continuing along daily in a sun boat that is forever threatened by the chaos serpent Apophis. This battle is enacted daily and motion is eternally perpetuated by victory over chaos with the help of the strong masculine energy personified in the god Set.

Back to my Mesa. Look at how I intuitively set it up, though I didn’t know what I was doing.

The axis mundi is in the centre and the table is full of differentiated expressions of this energetic centre. However, overlooking this whole construct is this image of a jaguar within the form created by a serpent. Somehow, I knew the archetypal two lay at the head of what just is and I left it in place to discover at a later date in my journey to nowhere. The two become one and the one becomes the many. This is the divine lineage from which we all come. 

avatars of consciousness

Consciousness is what is. Our universe is the result of mental processes which I can explain by metaphor such as the dreaming mind that creates worlds. Our individual capacity to do this is primitive; imagine mastering dreaming, which at this point of proficiency would be having control over your projection of consciousness. With this ability as the creator, you can create innumerable worlds designed to challenge or entertain and within these worlds we would naturally leave avatars for the perceptive among us to make the connection back to source, as the actions of these symbols leave undeniable clues for the initiated. The mystery can’t be mysterious without these subtle clues; instead, it is just forever unknown and well, where’s the fun in that game? Consciousness as a singularity further consists of two opposites, the divine feminine and masculine polarities. The feminine creates form and the masculine is the magical energy that brings the form alive. To conceptualize this, here’s an image of a serpent and a jaguar.

In this sublime metaphor, you can see the serpent body created the form of our universe. Within that form roams the jaguar as the primal energy who lights up this world. The jaguar is the life force. In ancient Egypt, its raw form was known as the Ka and the personification of its magical properties in the deity Heka; in the Indus Valley it is the composite power of the seven chakras caressed by the kundalini serpent, and in the Far East it is known as Qi; energy that resides and emanates from our spinal cord.

The plant medicine Huachuma is a potentiator of the life force to a level where you feel within its pulsing presence. The biggest variable in working with the energy load of Huachuma is set and setting and it’s exponentially amplified; as a consequence, the biggest factor of the experience includes where and who you are hanging around with for the day because what happens is you magnify your energy while others are amplifying their energy. The abundance of energy present within the natural setting also becomes apparent. If you can find a harmonic convergence with nature or someone else’s energy then magic happens. It took me a while to figure that out; I have always felt it but I never added up the pieces until experiencing it this recent trip. I can now understand this phenomenon can occur by grasping the love exuded within your environment as well as a shared interest between a group of people. While there is mutual attraction and synergy while drinking Huachuma, energy fields collide and harmonize, and it can be pretty intense.

Huachuma gives you the key to heaven. That statement has a hidden meaning because humans like to take things literally and will look for a door to heaven. We all fall for it. Huachuma will get you high and eventually give you this key to open the door and that’s all you got to do! I’ll be honest with anyone who asks about the key however I would kind of like to leave it at saying it gives you the key to heaven and let whomever embarks on that path to figure it out for themselves because it is how I was taught. You are given a clue but lack understanding as it takes a while to put all into practice. I can tell you what the key is however until you experience it for yourself it will not compute. For instance, I started drinking Huachuma five years ago. Three times each in 2015 and 2016 and then five ceremonies in 2017. I had a a two and a half year absence until this recent trip where I participated in six ceremonies and as a result, the sum total of all the ceremonies eventually allowed me to understand the key.

Humans and their mental activities are peculiar. There is so much truth to what we intuitively perceive and also what we experience when we perturb our consciousness vibration by only the slightest amount and enter a different reality. The realms of heaven and hell that our culture of logic and reason have discarded, do in fact exist. So does god and the devil. In fact, I’d be bold enough to state that in heaven you meet god and in hell you meet the devil but they are the same dude and that dude is you. Within, we carry these archetypes that constantly re-appear within the culture no matter where we plant our flag. Indeed, Huachuma gives you the key to enter into either of these realms.

My recent trip to Peru was another touchstone along this never ending path to who knows where. The plant medicine teacher Huachumon instructs with the light touch of a feather. A day with Huachuma can be pretty magical however you are given the choice in how you want to proceed. If you wish to be miserable then you can drown in your sorrows. Your state of mind or to put it bluntly, your lack of a state of mind is the key. I had done my fair share of work with Huachuma over five years and have always found the experience to have peaks and valleys where I vacillate between euphoric feelings of an all pervasive cosmic love, connection, and unity to a crashing down into the hell realms. As a beginner, you naturally assign these states to the effects of the medicine. I followed a similar progression with Ayahuasca, starting when I became very paranoid the second time I drank and had a bad trip. Instead of recognizing that the plant was revealing the paranoia within, I assigned one of the effects of Ayahuasca as inducing paranoia. Isn’t that one of the great things about this whole journey? It’s an advanced level course in self-discovery where your prejudices slowly crumble before you and you see it all starts with your own bad self.

My experiences with Huachuma have been similar. I was always slightly dismayed by the hell regions I would get pulled into that would send my mind into a feedback loop that was hard to snap out of in short order. The lesson kept repeating until finally I got it! It was me and it was a choice. The darkness lay within and if I wanted to embrace it then it came forth. All I had to do was choose love. It was so simple, yet the feather of instruction had to become as heavy as a hammer in order to drive home this realization. I remember it vividly when it happened: We were swimming in a tributary off the main Amazon river, which is an enchanted slice of heaven in the jungle which never disappoints. The sun was shining and the ambiance was perfect. I floated on the river and felt the waves of bliss. I swam towards the riverbank as a cloud covered the sun and the light-level dipped. A sharp turn in my outlook ensued and my thoughts once again turned dark. I caught myself right away before the dalliance with my shadow and knew it didn’t have to be like this. I embraced love again and looked up at the trees as the cloud cleared and the sunlight streamed through the leaves of the trees. Just then, a flock of exquisite butterflies passed by overhead. They were an obvious sign that I finally got it. Later, in the Andes mountains on this latest trip, at the Chavin temple the butterflies returned, showing me the intricate nature and harmonization of the energy as two butterflies flew together in lockstep with such grace and poise. The divine feminine is such a maestra at taking raw energy and creating such displays of beauty.

I recently came upon something I had read over seven years ago by a neurologist who had gone into a seven-day coma after contracting meningitis. Upon regaining waking consciousness, he was able to describe quite vividly his experience while in this altered state. The most striking thing I read concerned this woman who escorted him through these realms, who assured him he was loved, and had nothing to worry about. She was curiously surrounded by an innumerable amount of butterflies. I thought to myself, I know this woman. I have met her many times and she is the reason I always return to that land beyond shared consensus reality.

It gets stranger still. For most of my journey, someone else was with me. A woman. She was young, and I remember what she looked like in complete detail. She had high cheekbones and deep-blue eyes. Golden brown tresses framed her lovely face. When first I saw her, we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, which after a moment I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us—vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the woods and coming back up around us again. It was a river of life and color, moving through the air. The woman’s outfit was simple, like a peasant’s, but its colors—powder blue, indigo, and pastel orange-peach—had the same overwhelming, super-vivid aliveness that everything else had. She looked at me with a look that, if you saw it for five seconds, would make your whole life up to that point worth living, no matter what had happened in it so far. It was not a romantic look. It was not a look of friendship. It was a look that was somehow beyond all these, beyond all the different compartments of love we have down here on earth. It was something higher, holding all those other kinds of love within itself while at the same time being much bigger than all of them.

https://evolutionnews.org/2012/10/near_death_expe_1/

I have had plant medicine ceremonies that we read about in the literature and think to yourself, "wow I want to have that vision." I have transformed into a jaguar. I have been in the presence of a giant boa constrictor who wrapped itself lovingly around me. I have gone into the hell realms and scared myself shitless. I have been to the castle made of gold and been welcomed by the Goddess. I have experienced a bliss like no other and met beings composed of nothing more than love and light. Through it all, the one thing that has remained constant is the presence of the butterfly. It’s the link between my ordinary world of perception and the visionary.

shadow path

At the close of the ceremony the third time I drank Ayahuasca in 2013, I went to the washroom and on my way back I stood against the handrail on the path back to the maloca and looked out into the jungle on this glorious night that was lit up by the full moon. I looked to my right and it was divine. The jungle was radiating the light of the moon and the plants were 3D extruded. I looked to my left and the path was dark, dull, and lifeless. I looked back right and sure enough it was bathed in an enchanted spiritual light.

It didn’t take me long to figure out the meaning of this waking vision. The right hand path up the spiritual mountain of achievement will lead to your enlightenment and it’s magnificent. The left is the path into the shadows and not all that much fun. I had a choice; I had the chance to become one of the all-time great enlightened sages. It was offered but deep down I knew it was the path of the ego, self-glorification, and not for me. I didn’t consciously choose the darkness. Instead, it chose me.

Indeed, I had faced the darkness head-on in ceremony and soon revealed was the left and right hand path. I had to make a choice about where I was headed or alternatively turning around and running from this crossroad. In the same ceremony as the paths, I was offered an unbelievable amount of universal power, which I had declined. At the time, I remember being a psychological mess and I had to turn back and regroup before coming back to take the left hand path. After mustering the courage to return, I soon became dismayed that the altering of consciousness continually presented darkness. I wanted to head towards the light but the left hand path, with the constant darkness, kept pulling me back in. It was my choice, as I wasn’t prepared to give into the conditions necessary to take the right hand path. I also didn’t understand the darkness was trying to teach and I just wanted to skip class and hang out in the light. A sane person would have found another spiritual path.

As I have revealed and related in this blog space, the darkness attacked and tried to kill me or at least neuter my power. I went back to the Amazon to confront this demon and in no time it was on me again. To my credit, despite outward projections of being quiet and meek, I’m really not. I have fire that burns within, I don’t like to lose, and I’m relentless. My quiet confidence borders on arrogance. The Goddess called me out on it half way through that first meeting. I was up for the darkness challenge. In turn, pretty much each subsequent Ayahuasca ceremony started off with darkness. It kept coming. I cursed it and stubbornly came back for more until I learned how to navigate and move past it. I still craved the bright lights, the grand Ayahuasca vision of light and transcendence however the majority of my visions remained in the subterranean realms. Some of them were just so weird and unnerving however I always came back and pressed on because it was teaching me something. I didn’t know what but I knew something was up.

The understanding and reckoning comes slowly once you start to get an inkling of who and what is behind this life class that is forever challenging and changing you. This has been difficult and I have wanted to run or find a safe place to jump off this ship. I was in port many times, satisfied with the answers I had received. I kept re-boarding the ship though because I loved the knowledge and the learning was a kick. I’m not sure what port I’m at now but as with all my stops upon the never ending journey this one is ultra-fascinating. You see, I had two main impetuses during my mid-life crisis: Number one was when I discovered the presence of the feminine divine I wanted to figure out how the adepts of old came into contact with her. The second burning question revolved around the darkness that lay within my depths that would come and go; an exercise in extreme frustration as I wanted to be gifted with a nice holy and white robe in order to project my success and goodness onto the world.

It was ancient Egypt that sparked my interest in different worlds. By this, I mean they had mapped out a hidden world of gods and goddesses along with an impressive corpus describing this alternative world, seemingly attained through changing consciousness. I studied and searched for methods to achieve this result, culminating in finding shamanism and plant medicines. Before taking any of these substances for the first time, I clearly remember the shaman asking my intention for undergoing this initiation. I blurted out, “I want to meet the Goddess and confront my dark side.” Poof! Your wish is my command. Over seven years later, through trials, tribulations, joy, sorrow, fear, elation, well pretty much the whole gamut, the shaman certainly didn’t let me down. I thought it would end after ceremony in the jungle, especially after the darkness scared the living daylights out of me. But no, I asked for it and it is going to dominate my life now. It will burn within until I get the answers I want. There’s been much gnashing of teeth and occasional bouts of wanting off the ride. However, I have stayed with it. Looking back, knowing I’m still deep within this trip, I would not change this for the world nor exchange places with anyone. I’ll shout that from the mountain tops.

The Goddess is a special woman full of love; every kind of love imaginable. A heart filling love of all, cosmic love, familial love, bliss, and insanely erotic love. She freely offers herself for your growth and benefit. She was the one who warned me about my chosen path, cautioned me about the upcoming darkness, and offered me protection on my journey that I, as an unwitting fool, stumbled upon. She was always there telling me I could call on her at any time - which I did and at times in major distress, I urgently needed to. I’ve always been independent but without her help I would have been crushed. Once she knew I had it in me to succeed, she encouraged me to go on the offence against the darkness. On the other hand, this darkness of self is quite the mysterious character. My initial forays revealed something quite frightening though very mysterious. I didn’t know what this was but I did know there was this demon within me. I went to battle with him, once I regained my strength from the initial beat down. That took courage. After slowly working my way through the tests of the darkness and facing it head on, I got my badge of undeniable courage. The class proceeded to the next level master class. Life’s challenges were amped up; let’s see what you got. It was an exercise in frustration. I want to be holy now and done with these desires of life. No, no, no you just can’t wave a wand and be done with them, you have to figure out how to integrate these little demons. Okay, more gnashing of teeth and despair over my predicament. Finally I got it. Master the self, recognize the obstacles within, and move past them. At the same time, I realized this darkness was the master teacher. Who I thought was an adversary was actually my teacher - the greatest teacher in the whole universe. Buddha didn’t go to Buddha school; his teacher was always waiting for him, for that day when he wanted liberation. A human teacher can only take you so far. The master teacher lies within. So, now I had to deal with this: Who is this guy?

I totally misread my teacher and treated him as an opponent. Maybe that’s the way it had to be? We all read of strict teachers; some of us experience them for ourselves. They are tough, relentless, and sometimes use non-ordinary methods of discipline and training to get you to break past your limits. Little did I know the darkness is an extraordinary teacher who will actually stomp you out if you don’t get through the course. The battle becomes life and death, which is pretty motivating to say the least. All my desires and choices I could project and clearly see where they were leading and the teacher upped the ante, attraction, and the stakes. Not only did I have to give up the pursuit of desires and let them go but I had to break the hypnosis some desire demons held on me. I had to go full on into them to break free of their hold. Once I learned I couldn’t ignore, bypass, or destroy them, I finally broke free. All I had to do was master them. Once I got the upper hand, it all went away. Tasting liberation is pretty sweet. He did a follow up to see if I really did have the strength. It was tough but I passed as I’m not weak.

Do I dare answer the question? I know who this part of me is but I think I’ll just leave the mystery in the dark for the discovery of future explorers. Ultimately, on this journey you do become a man (or woman) of knowledge as Carlos Castañeda wrote about in his Don Juan books. The knowledge is a gift for you, when you are ready, as a reward for your strength and courage. The darkness taught me that inner strength and courage. I was brave and I knew I could face up to anything after taking on this aspect of self and surviving. I was a jaguar now and I knew it. The fount of power is found in this darkness and being able to be free and touch it ensures I can move onto the next level, unencumbered with delusions of grandeur.

The left hand shadow path isn’t glamorous. There won’t be a cadre of followers on social media for you. However if it is knowledge you seek and you are worthy then you get to uncap the spigot. And then you know. Leave the right hand path for those who want the adoration and accolades. The hidden left hand path is like Fight Club. First rule...