big blue internment camp

I am fascinated by the rhythms within my body. After a fifty-year struggle, I've accepted it. I look at the cycles of night and day, the darkness and the light, the waxing and waning of the moon, and see within my own self similar processes. I was ashamed of my darkness, of my perversity and desires, of my weaknesses - to wit the desires of the flesh! I still sense the coming hurricane and hope the damage done is not too bad.

The use of magic mushrooms was enlightening regarding my darkness and how I pushed him away. The result of my journeys resulted in finally accepting the darkness is me. It's quite liberating with the caveat you have to own it. All the suffering in the world is from your hands. This leads to the question, "Why did I do it?" The answer will surprise you and is a grand monument of wonder upon the path of ultimate truth. Similarly, if you meditate on why there is evil in the world, the answer may shock you.

The darkness teaches duality. Without darkness, there is no light. Without pain, there can be no pleasure. Every time I want my fill of sensual pleasures, I create pain. It's baked into this world I conjured. Reality stares me in the face until no matter what path I travel in life, I will see it. I took the spiritual path in middle-age and wanted to identify with the light but eventually the reckoning was destined to come. I couldn't escape it. I look back at my plant medicine experiences and I see my denial and the pushing away of the darkness. I saw how I used the darkness to become a warrior - a jaguar of the highest order to prove to myself I had the spiritual bona fides to do this whole spiritual trip. And then I saw the Maestro of all Maestros and knew transformation comes through the dragon of the darkness.

We all must feed the dragon to keep the world spinning and the carnival going. I see it in my own insular world where the darkness extracts his pound of flesh in exchange for fulfillment of carnal desires. I easily project this out into the world at large. In my corner of the world, we have had peace for quite a while after the tumult of the early 20th century. World wars begat a period of peace; however, the blowing of the winds of change will enable the darkness of man to return. I sense the bad times coming. It's already started, and I know it has to be this way. I baked it into my world. Suffering is what is needed to shepherd us towards the path of the heart. I know it's the way even though the pain, suffering, and death will be enormous, and I want no part of it.

It's a game from which there is no escape. I can run from my desires in this plane of consciousness, but they are like the shadow. They are always with you no matter how far you go in an attempt to escape them. Try it out for yourself - become a renunciate and try to run out the clock. I did that for two and a half years. When I returned to the amusement park, my tormentors were waiting to greet me and pick up where we left off. Acceptance of what just is liberates you from the hamster wheel of internal suffering. The devastating flip side of having no desire is depression and a steep decline towards the bottom, resulting in suicide as the hopelessness of your predicament sinks in.

Earth is the penal colony of the universe. The Australia of the cosmos. It's unique. The big joke is being in hell and not realizing it. Then taking it a step further and wanting to extend your prison sentence. This waypoint on the soul's journey called earth is transitory. Instead of prison clothes on this big blue internment camp, you are given a body. The way off the spaceship of the damned is a return to love and the heart.

nutcracker

Do I want recognition? I peer deep down into my motivation for making public my thoughts. When I first started writing in this blog space, I had low expectations. The process was a way to coalesce the swirling thoughts and ideas in my head. I felt a release from the mind dump. Along the way, I discovered that the process allows for the distillation of knowledge into understanding. The curious thing about the writing process is the flow which allows words to just magically come forth and then within the corpus of what you commit to alphabetical form comes understanding. This gift of understanding through the writing process has happened so often that it is a given if I want to understand some idea more succinctly, all I have to do is write about it.

So, my motivation for this space is to attain a level of understanding of all the knowledge I have crammed into my brain. The discovery of plant medicines super-charged the acquisition of knowledge. I would list as the number one personal benefit from the use of plant teacher medicines is the acquisition of knowledge. A great deal of the knowledge is metaphorical and the process most beneficial to my own personal journey is the integration of what has been revealed to me. Without proper integration, the plant medicine experience is not fully unlocked and may lead to much unprocessed knowledge that will become contradictory over time.

The integration period is long and challenging work in order to crack the nut of understanding. The writing process is the nutcracker. It is for this reason that I would still write even if I were all alone in the void. The process would give me the understanding for which I was searching. I'm the luckiest man in the world. I know that all the reasons I came here to earth for are in my hands, ready to be cracked. I've shelled most of my questions and fulfilled my desires. The last road I walk is the path of the heart. Everything I've sorted through has led me to this one last proverbial mountain to climb. I've been shown the bliss of living head up and heart forward and know it is my duty to integrate the lessons into my daily life. I separated from my eternal bride in order to become a better man; not to return until I became that man.

The process of my understanding of what I have been taught is profound. I acquired knowledge through my mind; the mind being an indispensable tool on my journey. However, my understanding did not come through my thought processes. Understanding is a succession of aha moments as the knowledge marinates and combines with the rest of the knowledge ingredients. Eventually, something incendiary, a chance happening, or a catalyst will up level the knowledge into understanding. In my case, it is the writing process which is the master key.

So, back to the beginning and the question of fame and fortune. I've had success with other arts such as photography and was encouraged to monetize that skill. I didn't want to because I like photography! Monetizing pleasure for fortune invites discord. Art is best left alone. The best artists are poor. Hey, we all need to make a living and I'm no different. I have wondered what if my blog went viral? What if I became a best-selling spiritual guru ala a Tolle or a Ram Dass? I'd become cynical and would gravitate away from the reason I ventured out on this path. Fame and fortune are at odds with the path of the heart unless one becomes devoted to using the gain for service. My answer to remaining unknown is I'm stubborn and selfish. I'm doing this process of transformation in order to prove to the Goddess I can do it. She has told me to come home, and I don't have to do anything. It doesn't matter. However, I made a promise and set up a mysterious system of pain and suffering which would lead me back to the heart. This is the greatest gift I can offer to the Mother of all.

heart mind

When the mind is silent, the heart speaks.

Xin in Chinese is translated as the heart mind. I never really understood this for the longest time. I had knowledge that the ancients described two minds - the head and the heart but I deduced when referring to the heart, the concept was based upon emotional intelligence, and thus not really our western idea of the mind. My western idea of the mind is a computational logic device in which I process input into output. If I separate the emotional chaff from the equation, then I can get at truth.

Or so I thought.

The primary catalyst towards teaching me something different is the use of the cactus plant medicine called Huachuma. The teaching involved a series of tests where I continually used my intellectual mind while high on the drug and this state bounced me between high and low, which I subsequently described as heaven and hell. Colloquial language concerning mind altering chemicals refers to "getting high" and ignoring the other extreme. In my experience, drugs get you high and low, and without experience the first time you hit the low after loving the high, is traumatic!

So, after being hit on the head by the heavy feather of Huachuma many times, I finally began to get the teachings. Turn off your mind and relax. From this teaching I learned how to do this in daily life with the help of Mapacho tobacco and just observe without "spinning" the input to fit any pre-ordained cultural bias and narrative. Seeing how this was done, I quickly realized that using the mind will not get you to the truth because of so many external factors acting upon what you observe. The way to the truth was to turn off the mind and observe. What is, is the truth.

A funny thing happened when I started to do this. The heart mind starts to speak. At first, you recognize the voice as intuition and feelings, which you may use to guide your actions. We are all familiar with these human experiences; however, culture by and large teaches us that these "feelings" are irrational and not to be trusted. They are consigned to the category of wishy-washy flights of fancy. The seer is confined to the fringes of woo. I remembered a lecture of Alan Watts' where he explained a feeling is never wrong; though it may be uncomfortable or even immoral. The feeling is an accurate representation of your current state. Within this nugget of wisdom is found that the path to truth is attainable.

As you practice methods of quieting the mind, the messages from the heart start to reach you with a heightened clarity. Your intuition and feelings break through the fog of all you have been taught to believe and let me tell you that pall is a good old London fog. When you pay attention and take the advice of the heart mind is when the magic starts to happen. Eventually, you realize the heart mind knows all and you become a devotee of sorts, putting your trust in her.

At the same time I was discovering the wisdom within, I became interested in Tarot. I intuited reading Tarot cards worked if you fully believed in them. If you tried to use logic in order to discover some kind of secret or trick behind their oracle powers, the cards wouldn't work. So, I approached them with openness and curiosity. I didn't overdo it, but I did notice how prescient and accurate they are and connected the art form to the heart mind. The experience ventures off into religious territory where faith and belief become a thing and in turn gives the brain mind something to scoff at.

My thoughts turned to the placebo/nocebo effect and how powerful avenues of mind can be, and this includes both the heart mind and the brain mind. Our default mind, though champion of logic, cast us into despair as we dwell on the past and worry about the future. The yo-yo effect of all this mental stress does sicken us. This is not disputed. Your mind will make you physically ill. Conversely, the heart mind and the power of love is the great healer. The love of your heart, the great Mother Goddess of the ancient Egyptians, is the healer par excellence. The placebo is hope and hope is one of the first medicines prescribed by the great and venerable heart mind.

The brain mind is complex and useful. The fruits of the human mind are evident to see, and this blog post is not meant to be a polemic against this wonderful tool. In my daily life, I see how beneficial the mind can be. In my profession, I combine technical knowledge with creativity. The brain mind allows me to utilize tools and organizational skills to prepare myself for a successful outcome. Once I have prepared the canvas, I allow the flow of creativity of the heart mind to take centre stage and complete the task with a great deal of satisfaction knowing I have accessed the best of both minds.

As the saying goes: "The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master." Lead with love, head up, and heart forward.

parole

You know what is funny? Medical advances which allow us to live longer. When you intuit who you are and see the imprisonment in your mortal coil, the prospect of living forever becomes absurd. You become the jailer as well as the jailed. How bizarre! Not content with your prison sentence, you tell the parole hearing, "Please, more."

The wealthy seek to live longer because they have tipped the balance in their favour. The understanding of duality and how all is reconciled shows you that the accumulation of resources and wealth leads to the haves and have nots. The economically advantaged wish to perpetuate suffering as this is the route towards getting what they desire. How noble, as suffering is the master teacher of transformation which will lead you back to the heart. A grand endeavour indeed. In their selfishness, the wealthy unwittingly are the catalyst for the seeker to understand what the game is all about.

I'm not advocating purposely seeking out death. When my time comes, I will follow the flow of the universe towards my eternal destiny. Wei wu wei, as Lao Tzu counsels.  The divine ebb and waning flow of the desire cycle will let you know when you have had your fill. It is easy to understand this through the lens of childhood. What lit me up in my youth faded away as I entered adulthood. The chasing of biological needs and accumulating wealth to fulfill my desires defined my existence when I was in peak physical form. As I have aged, I have witnessed those desires falling away. I walk hand in hand with the great Ganapati and watch his demons of desire, the Ganas, burn in the hellfire, and fall away like dross. It's quite a spectacle to witness, as I notice what once lit me up, falls away, just like the childish things which waned when I became an adult.

I have kept some memories of my childhood in boxes, slowly discarding the attachments as the years go by. I sometimes lament the passing of innocence, looking back fondly at my youth. Comic books and baseball cards. Baseball board games and a replay of a whole season of baseball. I was taught the importance of play; play being an important check upon the seriousness of adulthood.

These pursuits of my coming of age have all passed. But the lessons of my youth have not been in vain, nor have they been forgotten. Life comes full circle, and as I start the descent into the inexorable decline of my physical body, I notice with a startling clarity the desires of life fade away, just as my childhood desires mysteriously became a curiosity. I often would fret over the desires that would plague me, watching as they came and went, and demanded fulfillment. I tried the renunciate path. I wished them away. I wondered why I could not defeat my adversaries? I proved I could deny them, but they still waited at the door for me to open just a crack so they could get in again. I didn't understand that in due time they would fall away, just as my childhood experience revealed to me. Why did I think I would never change?

The blinders of the moment, and the thinking my incarnation is unchanging, led me to believe I'd never escape the hold of the Ganas. Clinging to what is works to deceive you into thinking you'll always have what you have acquired, and that you'll never transcend what it is that beguiles you.

So, I see my desires being washed away. It's getting late in the evening and the amusement park is going to have a fireworks show before closing. It will open again tomorrow morning; however, not all will return for the thrills and the rides. There's a natural rhythm to life and one is the wiser if you can quiet the mind and just observe what is happening. There's no need for renunciation. If you follow the path laid out for you, curiously the one you personally designed, the flow will never let you down. You may struggle, but all this is what you wanted. The Hindus call it Karma. The reason for this particular trip to the funhouse called earth was to fulfill desires. Once fulfilled, you become way more tolerable.

Ultimately, I don't know; however, I intuit the cycle of the waxing and waning of desire is an eternal process which ensures eternal life. With free will, you are given the opportunity to make of the flow of desire what you will.

What will you choose?