being healthily crazy

When you reconcile all back to centre by taking the feminine and masculine, lower self, self, upper self, water, earth, air, and the four directions you reconstitute the axis mundi. It is what you began with and have always had. Ultimately, life is not a quest to discover or attain anything; the journey is a way for you to eventually remember who you once were and reconcile all back to centre. It’s the big game and it’s one hell of an adventure. When you play, awaken, and realize you are everything then you become the I am - the self. You realize there is nothing that is not you. Freedom and liberation in this finite lifetime. From this you can take the next step which is if you are everything then to call it a self is a misnomer. There is no self; it just is.

How about a mythological lesson or two? In classical texts, the terms nusa, nyssa, and nyssi refer to a mountain that is the support stand of heaven, which is the axis mundi. With this information, it's not hard to figure out the Greco-mythical figure of Dionysos is the embodiment of the axis mundi. The ‘dio' part of the name is the connection to divinity. Dionysos is the god of the reconciliation of all. This is the eternal flame, the zoë, and the Great Spirit. The history of Dionysos extends beyond Classical Greek civilization into the Mycenaean period where a reference to the name was discovered in Crete during the Bronze Age Minoan civilization. This is a civilization that extends back in time to 3000 BCE. Why do ancient civilizations has a preponderance of gods and goddesses? Were they superstitious and intellectually inferior, devoid of the reason and logic that our civilization idolizes? My guess is they were more in balance with the dualistic powers of serpent and jaguar that animates the spirit within, instead of valuing and exalting one over the other and consequently losing the knowledge of both. Looking back into history, the evidence reveals the evolution came gradually: goddess and god became just god and eventually that was done away with and replaced by the man. Heralding this event into our civilization was reported by Plutarch who wrote, "The great god Pan is dead!" The news of Pan’s death was announced from the skies to a sailor named Thamus. Paganism, as nature worship, was struck down. The nineteenth century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche exclaimed, “God is dead,” and then proceeded to write a book, ‘The Birth of Tragedy” in which he describes the Apollonian and the Dionysian divide within man and somehow he intellectually accomplishes the act of divorcing them from the gods he had buried. Welcome to man as the godman. Apollo gets top billing now as the bright light of reason and the epitome of man's destiny while the wild man is sent away. Nature remains under attack. Logic, reason, and science is now the god of our culture, personified by the intellect; the feminine chaos still exists in the waters of creation but is relegated to an afterthought. Artificial Intelligence and sentient robots of pure logic and reason will be the crowning achievement of history! Fuck feelings and love; what impediments! The Babylonian Marduk must take to the waters of chaos to kill Tiamat in order for civilization to progress. She has been wounded and relegated to the deep and here we are on the cusp of fulfilling that Mesopotamian myth. The ancient mind hadn’t devolved into this single-mindedness, thus they could sense all powers within the environment. It’s available to us if we can throw off the shackles of culture, get still, and feel.

The central idol of the Chavin culture of pre-Columbian South America, we now call the Lanzon, is also an axis mundi representing the reconciliation of all the forces of nature into one being.

The central idol in the temple of the Jaguar at Chavin

It is reversing the process of the power expanding outwards back into its source. It’s like picturing a point of consciousness that contains all and then seeing this potentiality projected out into the universe at large and subsequently finally realizing it is all you. You are seeing yourself at play. We have for the most part lost this meaning and to suggest it to most is to elicit the response of I don’t know what you are talking about, a dispassionate shrug, or a leave that up to the experts response.

When I drink Huachuma, I feel the coming of the god. It’s the idea of the complete self, once we shed the notion of the separate parts of yourself. I connect with all. I experience bringing it all back to centre, the axis mundi, and sit with the self and bask in the knowledge that it all starts with the great self and emanates all out from there. It’s a touchstone moment on the spiritual journey.

I’ve thought about physics and matter enough to realize that we are limited by our instruments and their ability to peer into subatomic particles. I believe that the further we are able to peer into the underpinnings of the all, the more it will just subdivide and confound us. I have embraced the idea that all is consciousness as in mental energy that vibrates and from these levels of vibration we get what we call rays and what we call matter. To use string theory as an analogy, where at its basic form there are an infinite number of strings which are vibrating and that’s what makes up the universe, well picture that but minus the strings. In other words, stringless theory.

The same goes for the self. It’s comforting to think we are an autonomous self and in a way we are, as long as we hold together the form however I have to believe at the root of all this is the same situation encountered in physics where eventually we will learn there is no self. We are just amalgamations of energy that have taken on a certain vibrational form and who knows how long that will last? Do we eventually disintegrate and return to the ocean of energy and continually transform into a new energetic being? Do you believe in magic?

Enjoy the ride.