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.