cosmic ocean

Every sentient being I meet is a reflection of self and a part of my psyche. I assign a judgment value to everything I define and objectify, which is based on my perception and naturally is a reflectional bias of my thinking. It leads into the whole idea of an undeniable unity that we are oblivious too and this creates the illusion of a separate world we are living in. As in it exists but through objectification we see it as irrefutable evidence of a universe made of separate things occurring in a dimension of timeline events. A universe of nouns defined by time, position, and volume.

All this instead of a subjective universe unable to escape the role of us all as observers. A universe that can't exist without you - your energy. There is no universe without you. The universe is the sum of all energy, with no exceptions. You aren't going anywhere when your body dissolves and releases its energy back into the cosmic ocean.

Take advantage of your coming forth by day into the light. It’s on now! Find unity within and because of the separation. When I return to unity and embrace all, will I long for separation? Is that what keeps the wheel turning? To stop the wheel, find the balance point where unity and the self are in harmony.

Where do I find the centre? Look within and you will find it. In a spherical shaped construct where everything goes with everything else, you can't help but be the centre. Through realization you enact the axis mundi. You are sacred. 

laxative

Smoking Mapacho tobacco is like a laxative for the mind. Ever sit down on the toilet, take a good dump, and then afterwards you feel so empty? I feel really good after that because all the food the was taken in over say the previous 24 hours you purge and you start again from zero where of the food you processed you kept the nutrients needed to survive and then there’s a huge amount of the crap that you then eliminate. I have found the same kind of principle at work with Mapacho where if I go out in the morning on a walk with the dog in the woods I’ll take some Mapacho along with me and I’ll stop along the river and I will smoke my Mapacho which quiets my mind like a meditation cheat, unless it is really racing. I have also learned that drinking coffee is not really helpful where it does the opposite and makes your mind race, so if you drank coffee and you go out into the woods with Mapacho you are going to have to smoke a lot of it to get to that point where you can empty out the contents of your mind. Ideally you go out into the woods with your Mapacho and within one maybe two puros, you’ll notice your mind will blank out in a peaceful calmness and you’ll start hearing the birds chirp, the wind through the trees, and the water as it ripples off of branches that are in the river. It’s a cheat but for me I was in that state this morning and I noticed it is the same thing as taking a big crap where I have just emptied out the contents of my mind and I feel really good. I don’t have a thought in my head and I’m just looking around and enjoying being aware, not taking in anything and trying to analyze it or any thoughts coming into my head that I have to do this or that. It is just this peace where I’m like oh yeah I’m getting ready to spend the next 24 hours taking in awareness and spinning it and reading about this and watching that and absorbing all this information and some of it I will keep because it is beneficial and nutritious. I like learning and I love knowledge however I have realized there has to come a point where you have to dump it and use Mapacho as a laxative for your mind.

waking to the mystery

The mystery deepens when you think you are figuring it all out. The final destination of the inveterate seeker leads to looking within after exhausting the search to find the answer in the external world. The search for god only culminates when you look into the mirror. In fact all the gods and goddesses of yore are aspects of what's inside. I like to explore the relationship within between Apollo, the god of logic and reason, with the rascal and joker Dionysos, who makes this game worth the candle sometimes to the detriment of one's well being and invites in the suffering. Suffering, as the Buddhists like to remind us, is the product and result of desire. Cut out desire they say and you will no longer suffer. It's the ultimate koan. Desire not to desire! You know what else besides suffering you can cut out by not desiring? Happiness! We live in a world of duality and everything has its corollary. Once there was good in the world there became bad and we started separating all and objectifying the differences. Light intuits darkness. Suffering entails happiness. The universe is brought into existence by desire so if you want this to all go away then stop desiring. Is happiness worth the suffering? That's an answer I will leave up to you.

I leave for the Amazon in three days to continue my relationship with the plant teachers. This journey will take me into the Andes mountains to the great meeting place of antiquity in pre-Columbian South America where all was reconciled in the temple of the jaguar at Chavín de Huántar. By chance I happened upon a talk given by Gabor Maté, who is a doctor that uses Ayahuasca as part of his treatment of patients with addictions and diseases which are the product of culture and the environment, thus understanding the relationship between mind and body and how it is the major contributor to disease. Anyways towards the end of the talk he relates a story about a woman who came to the Amazon for healing and was upset she wasted her money because all she saw in her visions was a psychedelic elephant. Poor lady had no idea! I have seen this elephant and knew enough that I realized he was Sri Ganesha, the remover of obstacles in your path.

When I conquered fear and had undeniable courage then Ganesha appeared. It was a curious reminder of his influence in my life and a highlight of my time with plant teachers. He always puts me onto the path of where I need to go. We all get lost at times but as long as you maintain your relationship to Ganesha you will find the way back home. For me now SpiritQuest is home.

Last night I had a pretty vivid dream that was pretty fresh in my mind. As the alarm clock for work went off, the story was still unfolding and I was disappointed it didn't get to play out. I dreamt about Mapacho. I was with a fellow traveller and we were in a store that sold different kinds of oddities and we were talking about Mapacho. He went to the back of the store and came back with a case of Mapacho and I was shocked that this place sold it. There was a huge blunt of it and I wondered what the result of smoking that whole cigar would entail? I envisioned a Mapacho coma of a long duration. The store we were in was from my youth; a memorable place called Playtime. I loved that store as I remember it having pretty eclectic candy and toys you wouldn't find anywhere else. You could buy two mojo toffees for a penny.

The fact that Mapacho appeared in my dream is pretty interesting. What I mean is that it is through my relationship with my ally Mapacho that I dream so vividly every night. It is the catalyst for my night time psyche creating worlds of unspeakable complexity that just appear out of nothing. I have no idea how I do it and then I insert myself into the dream. I have adventures and live out fantasies. Playtime. This giant blunt of Mapacho caused me to wonder what would be the effects of smoking the whole cigar? Obviously the answer is where I am now. 

blank slate

Plant teachers are gurus that direct you towards looking within to find your strength. Like any good guru that consistently challenge and flummox you until you give up your folly of looking externally for answers, the guru has subtle ways of misdirecting your gaze. Eventually you look within and find that voice of wisdom, of love, and the one who is the joker. You learn how to access them and when they are speaking to you. You learn how to put the brakes on your mind, become the witness, and just let it flow.

You know what's funny? I drank Ayahuasca four times over the course of a week last March and pretty much every ceremony started off with a vision of a high speed drive along a race track. It was pretty cool. So cool it has taken me about a year to figure out why that vision kept recurring. My intention last year was to meet up with the Goddess and merge with her and I was not as focused on the preparation aspect going into ceremony and did not quiet the mind as well as I know I should have. I was pretty focused in my intention and was confident in navigating the Ayahuasca experience. That was all well and good however I finally realized the high speed chase was Ayahuasca teaching me about how the mind can race and repeating it. Imagine the frustration as I just didn't get it even though it kept repeating. It's the old getting hit in the head repeatedly with a blunt object trick but this time I was so hyper fixated I just shrugged it off. It’s an invaluable teaching moment though as whenever I sit in ceremony now with la Madre and I get this vision it will symbolize the need to become the blank slate. How awesome is that?

As I prepare for the next level of teachings I have made it a mantra this year to just shut the fuck up. I call it STFU - Listening to the Plants. Eventually I do pick up on the lessons and become a good student. It just takes a little extracurricular work sometimes.

balancing act

Why are rock stars, movie stars, and athletes more famous than scientists, doctors, and intellectuals? Well because subconsciously we recognize that life is just a game and a performance, whether tragedy or comedy, and that the divine actor, the sublime stage performer that can move us to tears, is the greatest legend of all time. Dionysos is the greatest of them all. We need Apollo and his reason to push us forward in our evolutionary climb but when it comes down to it, our humanity, our triumphs and sorrow, the need for love and inclusion is from the greatest of them all. Euoi!

Dionysos is present in all of us; most of us just choose to bury him, treat him as an outcast, use him as a scapegoat, all the while occasionally letting him out when we alter our consciousness through our drug of choice or are seduced by the passions of life. Suppressing Dionysos can lead to outbreaks of madness and violence when the lid finally blows off the pot. I know Dionysos is always with me and I have struggled with that my whole life. I’ve told him to leave me alone, go away, I’ve suppressed him on my quest for enlightenment. He never left; he is always there. I say he but he should actually be qualified. He’s more like a he she, hermaphrodite, the all. Unity is darkness. The light separates and gives rise to self. Our deepest and darkest desires come from the darkness and is the impetus that gives rise to self.

I’ve been avoiding something I need to come to terms with for about six years now. When I first went down to the Amazon and drank Ayahuasca I set a couple of intentions for my first foray into the great unknown of self and its correlate no self. I wanted to meet the Goddess who was calling to me and secondly I wanted to face up to my dark side. Two ceremonies later both intentions were realized. The Goddess came to me with Love and forgiveness in the first ceremony and then in the second ceremony I scared myself beyond belief and came face to face with my dark side. It was so unsettling and I have never come to terms with it though I have many times tried to figure out what happened. It was so strange and hypnotic at times. So hypnotic that I can kind of still see it in my mind's eye yet I cannot fully reform it or capture what exactly it was. If you asked me to explain it I couldn’t. So strange. Like being trapped in this weird hell and in subsequent ceremonies this is the darkness that would reappear reminding me to not do this anymore; stay within the false comfort of ordinary consciousness. That darkness stayed with me through all my Ayahuasca ceremonies up until this past visit in March of 2019. The darkness had vacated and my ceremonies contained none of my former struggles.

I know why. First of all through experience I knew now how to navigate the experience. Secondly it is partly because I had levelled up, embraced and became the jaguar, and shunted fear aside but truthfully it’s because in the two and a half years between Ayahuasca ceremonies I came to terms with Dionysos and started reintegrating him back into my life after sending him away. Constant reminders to play such as when I went to Peru in late 2017 on a mission to complete the climb up the mountain with the plant medicine Huachuma were part of it and a deep understanding that he isn’t going anywhere. I’m at a crossroads now where I know I can’t suppress him yet I know that if I give him free reign it will lead to my destruction. Cautionary tales in the life stories of Jim Morrison and Freddie Mercury, though I’m by no means a rock star, are a good indication of where reckless hedonism leads to. I know balance is the key but what about a teacher of that balance? I have found it is either or. I can’t discipline myself without sending him away. I’ve entered into a strong cycle of self-discipline now, one where I’m absolute in my intentions, and it is going to be this way and go on for a while now. I’m afraid of banishing Dionysos away again and seek to integrate. When he comes back he’s going to fuck up my life. I will have to ask him for guidance.