serpent strikes

The Goddess and her many avatars. I got a front row seat.

Ayahuasca was exciting. Ayahuasca scared me but I was intrigued. I didn't run away from the experience; I learned how to tame her. I treated Ayahuasca like one of my relationships. That's what I do. I can see it. Then once I tamed her, I lost interest. She's still around but I played around with others.

She is Ayahuasca. She is a drug that gets me high. I'd do whatever it takes to get that high. Then came the terrible low. Then came understanding. Now I wonder, is she my Goddess or a demon?

I am the casual destroyer. I cause upset in my choices though I mean well. My path of destruction is subtle but still deadly.

The Goddess can be a dragon as well. And when the game is afoot, she can be cruel and play for the win. She won. She crushed me. She wasn't going to relinquish the upper hand and so dropped the hammer. Resiliency saved me.

Trust the process. It's on repeat. You have faced similar, and it had to play out. You faced the darkness within the masculine and stood up to him. You fought back and didn't capitulate. Eventually, there was reconciliation. Can you see the same now or do you think it is wishful thinking? The darkness within the feminine plays a different game. They aren't going to directly punch you in the face but will take you down with their own brand of guile and poison. They want to psychologically hurt and damage you to the point where you run away from them. They will be satisfied with that result and include you in their body count of corpses who deserved their fate.

Remember you had to do this with the masculine, and you know you would not exchange that path for any other. Look with clarity where you are in your life and what is unfolding. The venom inflicted by the feminine works in a different way. The strike will try to encompass and snuff you out with a constrictive hold on all of you. Find the antidote. You know what it is but in this case you use it on yourself. The serpent will recoil and go internal as well. It's going to be a long haul, but you'll one day look back and smile at the journey you chose and once again not trade it for the world.

The reconciliation with the masculine was an internal struggle. The feminine is external. She can strike and run but she will never get away. There must be a reckoning. You know your strengths and not to poke her with a stick. Let her be and show by example how you can rise above who she thinks the masculine is. Show her you are divine. The misdirection should be obvious. Your darkness is singled out and the focus is put on you. It's a good game to prevent the light from being turned on her darkness. I'm not sure if she knows what is taking place and is just weaving a web of confusion.

I want to cry out that I don't know her. I don't know who this is. In truth, I do know. I've seen it and here it is, in my face. I want all of it. I want to face it all. The hurricane is coming and I'm not running for shelter. The destruction lays waste to ignorance and makes room for more knowledge and the subsequent lessons to follow.

The most difficult part of the fight is I'm in love with her. She's playing the part of adversary and for keeps. She wants to punish and destroy me to the point where I'm left a burnt-out husk. I want to hate her, but I just let it slide. Feed me your venom and watch as not reacting to the poison is the antidote. Keep her in my heart and use her power of love to get through to her.

Finding reconciliation is uniting the internal divine within the self. The domination of either half is going to leave you in a continual state of disharmony. The ever-coming darkness will reappear and force you to flee in a cycle that is on repeat. You will light a fire and leave a trail of destruction in your wake. Free of the blaze you find a temporary peace. Eventually, the fire catches up with you and sets your world ablaze once again. The easy way out is to run. The difficult path is to face the oncoming inferno and transform within the fires of hell.

Following the painful flow revealed to me what it is I seek. Letting the hurt come and pull me under eventually allowed me to emerge once again and with grace start an integration of knowledge which would lead to the understanding I search and long for. I never would have figured out the vibration mystery and the role of cycles within our lives without pain.

end game

I was tasked with studying the knowledge bequeathed to me by plant teachers about vibration and the different frequencies we can tune into. We default to the current frequency that is dominant in the world today which is very masculine. It’s the paradigm of logic and reason that has as its flip side intolerance and individuality that is fed by fear. The result is a scarcity mindset that compels us to accumulate possessions for the self instead of being mindful of the planet and all that inhabit the earth. Indeed, I have learned over the course of a lifetime that you will find the extremes in all behaviour, if you look closely. Typically, you do not see it manifest in just one person but if you look at the result of what following this vibe does as a whole than it becomes clear. It’s now hard to ignore the environmental destruction foisted upon the planet due to this mindset of greed; projecting this out into the future of humanity does paint a pretty bleak future.

From this situation is realized the importance of consciousness and raising it. What this means is changing the default mode of the vibration we are stuck in and in conjunction with that goal, over the course of the last seven years I have come to realize that is what plant medicine work excels at. From my perspective, I didn’t see it for a while because once again I was just looking at myself and noticing how it was changing the way I live and want to live which was all well and good but when I looked at the world at large I saw there was no hope. Eventually, I came to realize that the work is to be done one person at a time and then is reached a tipping point where enough are tuned into a different frequency and from that base of consciousness will flower into the world its fruits. Instead of planetary destruction and greed, we will as a whole respect Pachamama and love all, lose the scarcity mindset, and take care of our sisters and brothers. Fundamentally, this inclusive mindset will allow us to see our undeniable connections, with a realization we are all in this together. When we come together, all that holds us back will fall by the wayside.

I have my own thoughts about existence, what all this is about, and it’s not something I intend to argue about, require others to believe, or want to foist upon them. To sum up my beliefs: This universe is the dream of a totally integrated and whole conscious being who is the union of the feminine and masculine. We are living in the psychic manifestation of the wholeness splintering into many forms in order to self reflect upon all that makes itself tick. A psychotherapist knows they cannot examine themself; so, what we have here is the scientific reduction of the great self into all its constituent parts, thrown in with a dose of amnesia in order to study the division. Some of these forms will wake up within the dream; however, that is all part of the study. What is gleaned out of the experiment is no matter what situation consciousness finds itself in, eventually the energy will awaken and find a path back home. Within each splinter of unity is the key to find the way back home to whom you really are; in other words, contained within you is the whole universe. When you wake up, even though you are just a splinter of that energy, it contains the potentiality of everything and you are that everything.

So, why I included this primer in this screed is I’m trying to figure out what the end game or purpose of all this is. Ultimately, it is a game and has no purpose but the flip side to that is the game is to study behaviour and how to go about changing it. There are no absolutes therefore the darkness within the world has an artificial bottom and can go either way as in becoming total deprivation or elevated consciousness. I think that is a clue in that the potential is always present; however, if consciousness is raised and we operate from a base modality of loving inclusiveness, the extremes can be mitigated. This is a lot different than what is preached in our religions where we have constructed the all-being as being the epitome of light and love; though that love is conditional and comes with some punishments, if not followed. But I digress. What I am trying to say is that there needs to be a recognition within consciousness of the darkness and its ability to be really dark. To put it another way, god can be the worst demon imaginable.

We are to raise the vibration of the energy instead of constantly lowering it. I think that is the game in a sense and the outcome is what we make of it. Does the dream end when we all find the love vibe or conversely does it end when we destroy ourselves? Is the free will of consciousness the experiment in that the outcome is unknown and so this simulation to see what the result of a freeing of consciousness with free will would entail? Would it lead to a world of shared joy or would it devolve eventually into a morass that would destroy itself? I think that’s what is playing out and the result is still up to us and how we want to play it out. Nothing is predetermined; instead, our world is a way to peer into the nature of self. Our potentiality, behaviours, and the need for improvement must have been known to the all dreamer. The eventual result is a huge insight into the nature of “god” and ultimately what needs to reconciled. It’s not like there is a time limit so if another simulation must be run, and there are probably many simulated universes on the go, than so be it.

It is an interesting theory I have posited here as I do fundamentally believe this is a stage play and we write the script as we go along. In combination with that sentiment, there is nothing we need to do in terms of salvation or to achieve eternal life. We all are shards of god playing out a part so that we can know self. However, I now tend to believe that there is a reason for all this in the same way a psychoanalyst can take a patient’s dream and learn much from the symbolism and behaviour present in the dream. In this case, the analyst and the patient are one in the same so the trick was to separate this out so no one is the wiser. Or, at least keep the charade going long enough so that when the inquisitor wakes up they don’t screw up the game too badly.

psychic entities

You can be a hardcore atheist however you are still subconsciously inculcated by culture and its beliefs. You can't escape it. Once you manifest your cultural beliefs what do you think becomes their prime directive? It is to prevent you from growing or investigating the nature of your beliefs as culture is the number one cause of self-limiting beliefs. The biggest no-no is to look within and declare you know who you are. Self-deification is frowned upon and could even get you non-voluntarily committed to a scrubbed down institution. 

I wonder how many that go through conscious altering experiences end up having to face this cultural hurdle? I know I did and personally I didn't believe in what the local spiritual outfit was trying to sell me. I spent most of my adult years as an atheist eschewing the simplistic and to me childish belief in some all father. Eventually I became more open to accepting a higher power but knew whatever culture was throwing at me was bunk. However, my first foray into altering my consciousness put me face to face with the cultural beliefs I had denied. If I didn't have a critical mind, I could very easily see how it could galvanize a belief in the religious institution that is set up for you when you reach the crossroads. It was the third time I drank Ayahuasca and there I was in conversation with the biblical god. This nut job gave me his best pitch to join his team of galactic misogynists. I made no promises but at the end of the ceremony thought that it was strange, and I was harangued constantly for days and months afterwards. There was soon after the meeting this bizarre incident I haven't mentioned much. I was waiting in the city of Iquitos for an evening flight, so I hung out by the boulevard which runs parallel to the Amazon River. I walked the length of it then back and sat down at this spot to rest. This guy came into my sight and approached me with a big smile. If I had to picture what Jesus would look like this was spot on. He came up to me and said, "Where are you from?" I replied, "Toronto, Canada." He replied, "Nice to meet you Paul," and then left. Holy what the fuck? How did he know my name? Curiously, I had written a bunch of poetry the year before and a throwaway line in one of them was, "I saw Jesus at a rest stop.” 

I had temporarily forgotten I wrote that line and then when I read it a few months later I was flabbergasted. When I returned to the Amazon two years later to drink Ayahuasca again, "God" was waiting for me trying to get me to sign up and when I refused, I was threatened with death. It was a major turning point as I accepted my fate and said then you will have to kill me. 

As expected, I have thought a lot about these strange experiences and it's my own private Idaho and not an indictment of religion and people's beliefs. However, it was only recently that I connected it to the hurdle of cultural beliefs that must be faced and then you must decide. The pressure exerted is huge and thus manifested in my altered consciousness experience as a choice between life and death with the expectation that we will choose to live and accept the beliefs culture throws at us. No one ever said freeing your mind would be easy, especially when it was a lifelong project to enslave it. 

I'm non-denominational. Whatever you want to believe in is cool. Be cognizant of that though. You can spend a lifetime looking for answers, as believing in someone else's beliefs is very self-limiting. If you do come full circle and look within then you may find the pearl. It is important to be respectful of everyone and where they are on their path. If not, and you say you have the truth, you become what you finally broke free of, as people can’t be talked out of their beliefs; it must come from within. You must realize that you were once at this point, and you must quell the expectation that they should have a belief in your beliefs. Taken to the extreme you resurrect the ghost of Constantine and use the weight of the state to preach your message and force others to convert to a religion at the point of a sword. 

It's like there is this pre-incarnation agreement to make it difficult and to try and prevent the last step in waking up. So, for me in ceremony I faced being threatened with death, that I wouldn't get home alive, told I would be driven mad and would commit suicide, and being told to go home, drop seeking and plant medicines, and just live out my life. Stop investigating! I had the bug though and could not. I kept going despite all the pressures exerted to make me stop. Culture had become an entity that insisted I blend in at the risk of being excommunicated. 

I have faced the “stop investigating” noise from within and also without, from external actors. Within, as I said, threatened me with death. It was a test of courage and resolve. Also, there is pressure from actors within all of society, those who are close to you, those that don’t understand your journey, those who are hypnotized by religion, and especially some who have taken psychedelics and fell for the enchantment hard. They are the most vocal now that the magic spell has worn off, they see they were duped, and it didn't heal them. They just traded their old baggage for a new set of luggage and never grew from the experience. They ended up chasing the experience instead of integration and results. Oh, the righteous and repentant former user of mind manifesting substances. Couldn't get them to work for you or profit from them like you thought. In response, you do the 180 degrees turn and say you will help those who didn't get out of it what they were seeking. The cycle of the quick fix and false promises remains. 

Psychic entities are part of the puzzle of human consciousness that is overlooked. The inculcation of beliefs into the mind must be dealt with and the energy expended to create them form into a psychic entity that will have an eventual reckoning. It becomes the dragon guarding the pearl and to recover what is lost becomes a near-impossible journey. The trek only becomes possible if you have heart, courage, and most of all resolve. If not, you will stop or end up joining one of our cultural institutions set up that redirect your energies. Why we have done this to ourselves is a mystery. It is because the seriousness of the game is lost if you see beyond the veil. The game must continue, be serious, and have purpose or you will wake from the dream. Waking from the dream pulls the curtain down and gives the show away.

harmonic convergence

On November 5th, 2018 just after 11pm I was standing at my Mesa and it washed over me. I felt it. I am it. I felt her within and I felt the union. I looked into the union of the serpent and the jaguar and saw it. That's me! And I'm everything.

The coming together of the feminine and masculine energies in the form of a harmonic convergence is the most divine. I had an Ayahuasca ceremony that gave me a preview of this way back over four years ago. I had no idea what was going on at the time. Material sexual pleasure did not seem to compare to this and it was just a hint. In this corporeal body I imagine I couldn't handle her.

My idea of god is a process that starts with two seemingly separate energetic fields which we can label as feminine and masculine. When we bring these two together and harmonize their relationship we enable another process of creation. What we create is an expression of unity and that expression is what I have discovered is as close to god as I can ever fathom.

Shiva and Shakti

Then the wave cycle continues and separates. The two lovers depart once again with many tears. There was a deep longing within me to reconnect. I was so lost and I didn’t know what it was. Even when I found her I still didn’t know. Five years after directly encountering my obfuscated other half I finally figured it all out.

I wouldn't have been able to do this without venturing past my comfort level and into the superunknown. In the Amazon jungle I was blessed to come across this other worldly place, encountering an unassuming man who held the keys to the mystery. This great man, don Howard, constructed a place in the jungle called SpiritQuest so that those who are looking for the answer will find it, however it is by no means a requirement. His Mesa, along with the construct and the program you go through, is the crowning achievement of his vision. It's all there in that sublime maloca. The axis Mundi, the serpent entwined with the jaguar, plus the feminine and masculine sides of the construct. We choose a side that calls to us and then are guided to the centre with everyone getting an opportunity to partake of unity. The overall immersive program of the School of Higher Consciousness strikes a balance of the feminine qualities of Ayahuasca preparing you for the masculine energy of Huachuma, all blended together by a maestro in tune with the song of life. Wow.

stopping the world

Self is a byproduct of being aware because you are a flux of awareness and from this state you separate events into objects and recognize self. Recognizing this awareness that you take for granted is quite the experience. Sitting in silent contemplation allows you to be the observer and realize the interconnectedness of everything. Diving down further into this awareness then brings up the question well just who is this doing the observing then? It's a multi-step process to get to that point. No amount of intellectualizing will allow you to grasp this; it is a need to experience this mental state. Start with the recognition that you are putting a spin on all input, then stopping the spin. Then comes mastering the ability to just observe with a pure mind. The pure mind is like a clear lake at dawn before the wind stirs it up. Step back from this and well then just who is this observing? Did I ever tell you you're it? Everything.

I have written before that we attach priority to things we perceive as coming first or that we can dive down into and claim well this is the fount. By this I mean awareness punctuated by desire describes the newborn and gets us close to who we think we really are. However I used the metaphor of a flower to debunk that notion. This modality of thinking steers us into believing the flower is not real because it is the seed that is the true expression of the essence of the plant. The problem is revealed because instead of viewing the process as a unity we looked for an origin. Priority does not equate with some abstract notion of a true self. Continuing to view it as a separate process of different stages is the problem instead of treating it as a whole. It is where all our problems start. We add time to the mix and put everything through a prism that refracts and separates. What I am getting at it is the wholeness of a flower that involves being a seed to a beautiful expression of the energy contained within the seed. All of it is a connected happening unable to be without the total sum of its parts always being one and coming forth and then returning. We only see the stages instead of perceiving the whole. It’s the same with our psyche. Meditating and reducing it into parts will give you clarity which we can process and reduce to separate pieces of the psyche but these parts don't exist without each other and it gives away the unified truth of the matter. Awareness fuelled by desire will give rise to a flowering of the cresting energy that is so vibrant it becomes a field of self, much like the sun, before that energy wanes and returns to the cosmic ocean.

This cosmic ocean is where everything comes from as it is the energy at rest; the trough of the wave. We and everything else are whirling energy. Periodically we rest either on small scale sleep or the big scale of death. We are and we aren't. It's paradoxical. As a whole we are everything and we are an individual come forth. It took me a long time to understand that, especially the preached esoteric concept of the individual self not existing and being able to conceptualize that. It was the plant medicine teacher and great revealer Vilca, along with my great friend Parker, that dispelled me of that notion. The truth is both. It’s true we are one and you and me are conceptually everything but it is also true perceptually that we aren't. We come forth by day into the cycle of appearance and shine individually like the sun. Then we tire of that and return to the all, back to mama, and rest, and then rebirth, and here we go again! We are the ocean and the wave and it all depends on how you want to look at it. We want to define ourself as one or the other and that's where the difficulty comes from. The great wave allows you to think you are separate because you are so far from home. The Tao bequeathed the gift of perceiving individuality and being given freedom to do with it what you will. I really feel separate. Then the wave, the great Tao, takes you back home and you become whole again.

We don't really have an ego, superego, and a base id. We pinpoint when they form in a developing human and then classify and separate. But I ask you: is the flower different from the plant? We are the flower. I am a self that came forth from this process. The energy crests and here I am! Look at me! Where you find creative energy you will find expressions of that energy: flowers, selves, and lightning strikes! We intellectually are snapshots in time and assign our truth to them. This is a flower. But wait, that flower is always undergoing change and pinpointing it is an unchanging expression as such is dishonest. Same with you. So I am and I come forth as a self and then return to unity and become all once again. Always on the move, I am elusive. 

balancing act

There is at times this ceaseless chatter in my head spinning all awareness. It's tainted by culture to a large degree. It analyses and speaks in English which kind of gives it away as a product of the language and customs of my local surroundings. It molds my behaviour, points out when I fit in, and warns when I am beyond the pale of expectations. It directs me to lash out at others in anger when it is not respected. Acting on desires will bring with it castigating shame and contempt from this entity as a form of control. Travel to an extent is quite liberating in this regard as being an outsider allows you to transgress their cultural norms and being free of your own expectations is therefore a boon to self. Then there is me who is kind of a puppet to the ceaseless chatter guy but kind of just acts on impulse. That’s the real me! I think. Then there's this part of me that is seemingly on auto pilot though acting like a servant. This guy keeps everything functioning without even asking or reminding him. Breathing, digesting, growing my hair, and so on. Who is this? Who created the universe and keeps it running? Who is the energy behind the stars? Same guy. I wonder if he is the one pushing desires into consciousness? I limit myself to my conscious awareness, and even then I’m split, and because of this I don't realize that the part of me replenishing my cellular structure is me as well. The energy system responsible for the maintenance of you and the universe is the same worker. It is all you. And by it I mean you are it. You do this. We focus on the stream of drivel running through our head as being who we are when it is just a part of it and one that shouldn’t be in the driver’s seat.

That’s the thing that is difficult to move past when I try to identify who I am. The problem is trying to identify who I am because it seems kind of impossible. The advice I usually give to myself is if there is no solution to a problem then by definition it isn’t a problem. It has become a problem because of the insistence on trying to solve it. There really is no I, however long I wish and insist on propagating that notion. At best I am a field of energy that is definable based on others, their feedback, my body shape, and this chatter in my head that tells me I am this guy. I don’t know why I have exalted the chatter in my head guy above the silent worker who keeps this all intact and running and left the guy affected by desire twisting in the wind. I guess if you aren’t loud and get noticed then you get taken for granted and largely dismissed.

Part of why I want to believe I have a higher and a lower self is I have met this higher self. I know it is me but I still can’t reconcile that my localized conscious awareness is not the only me. Damn it, I want exclusivity for what encompasses me in consensus reality and I want it to be the definition of me. So I come to the realization on this spiritual journey I have a higher self but that he stands above me so I separate the two. And then this higher self connects me with everyone else because they have the same one and if they access it then they too are in touch with this universal consciousness. They get tripped up by it as well. How can it be me if it is you?

I look at myself in consensus reality as the controlled looking to break free of the dominance and usurp the power of the controller in my head. In psychological terms it is the ego making a play to become the superego and hopefully breaking free of being the controlled and becoming the puppet master. The puller of the strings is aware of this gambit from the beginning and has tried to prevent me from getting too far in this journey. He scared me, threatened death, and tried to get me to turn back.  I proved my worth, I had the courage to continue, and I was given passage up the mountain. In fact he really helped me to get to the destination. I didn’t stay on top of the mountain and instead chose to come back down. We all seek to be the king of the castle. Our internal drive beckons us to purge the surroundings of our enemies and competitors once we triumph. For the man it is power and the love of women, specifically the feminine divine who is mother and lover, being the ultimate prize. At first she is mother but as we climb the mountain she becomes lover. The underpinnings of everything is desire and this attraction at the level of the sacred is off the charts. Just a hint of her power and the chase is on. In psychology this desire to overthrow the father and capture the mother becomes Sigmund Freud's 'Oedipus complex.’ Delving into ancient Egyptian mythology it was recognized in the form of kamutef ‘bull of his mother' and this motif is also found in ancient Greek mythology such as the overthrow and castration of the King of the Titans, Ouranos, by the son Cronos. In turn Cronus, now the father, waits to devour his children at birth while their mother Rhea goes behind his back and saves the youngest Zeus from this fate. Zeus goes on to defeat Cronus and the Titans and then Zeus becomes the most high and mythologically becomes an asshole. He eats his first wife, the titan Metis, so she wouldn’t give birth to their second child, a prophesied son, who would overthrow him. It’s all an elaborate metaphor of the struggle for mastery within the male psyche and the same outcome is continually the result. The son overthrows the father, gets the girl, and then becomes just like his father and locks her away again. He tries to consolidate and maintain his power. The union of the two powers, the King and the Queen, creates the next iteration of the lower self and he needs to go on the hero’s journey to rescue the princess from the father who has developed dragon like tendencies. And on it goes. How does this cycle break? I think an answer is found in Pre-Columbian shamanism. The process involves taking the two halves of man and mediating them to the centre position. They called this process 'tinkuy.’ Tinkuy is a Quechuan term denoting the joining together of complementary opposites through ritual mediation. It's all about bringing everything into the centre, the in between space, to find balance. This place was called the 'chaupi' and the central axis in this common territory was called the 'chhimi' which means the heart. Once balance is achieved, the complementary opposites are ready for the sacred marriage to the divine feminine who has undergone a similar trial by fire; a figurative burning of the dross. The perfect union ensues when everything is in balance.

Part of being balanced involves recognizing in our psyche this ego and superego that are in a power dynamic. The superego needs a lower self in order to know he is the controller. There’s no superego if he doesn’t have an ego to control. Or to put it in a different way: if you insist on dividing up your psyche then all these pieces must be present in order to create the psyche. They must exist. Well they must as long as you insist on labelling things. It is like the universe. The universe is one enormous energy system. It is us who divide it up and label patterns of contiguous energy as things and then we believe in the things we have given recognition to. For the most part it is arbitrary though there's logic to our categorization. Once we divide things up you can realize that the universe cannot exist without that thing; it is quite illuminating, especially if you ever wonder what happens when this human body gives out and perishes. Your energy is part of the total sum of the universe; in other words there is no universe without you. If there was no you then there would be no this. That’s pretty awesome. I realized because of this that everything is transactional. For instance I transfer energy from my body into a drum skin via a stick and I produce a noise which is another form of the energy. Knowing this, it is then understood there will be a release and transmutation of your energy when you physically die.

Another way to look at this energy process is realizing the ineffable sacredness of what is going on and the opportunity available to act unconditionally and be of service. Plants have mastered this universal precept. They take in their energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil and water without having to take life. Conversely we take energy from others in order to survive, whether it is through taking life and ingesting other plants and animals for energy or by burning wood in order to transfer it into saving heat. The underlying process behind all life is the transfer of energy that enables survival. When we take from others we can offer something in return instead of a constant greed and focus on self. Cultures that are in a symbiotic relationship with their environment realize this and have words in their language for it. In Andean culture it is called 'ayni’ in their Quechuan language, which means reciprocity. This is realizing the energy exchange involved and offering up something in return.

I think I deviated a bit from the original intent of the idea of this split within our localized minds. I was trying to point out the need of a lower ego self in order for the higher controller self to know he is in charge. So when my lower self, with all his warts, embarks on a journey to improve himself and become the model of what his superego wants him to be where does the puppet master eventually go? There's no room for two at the top. Is there a coup, an overthrow of the dominion of this energy field called me? I guess there has to be. So how does the superego self react to this journey? Well at the start I imagine it is made difficult. If you insist on continuing, you know polishing that armour and training for the battle, then various paths will present to you, baiting you to take one of them so you will sidestep the journey to the top. But what if you continue on in the journey to self? You overthrow the father, take what he has including the Queen, and you rule in his stead. But wait a minute. You are destined to repeat the same drama because you assumed the higher position. So there's a new lower self that forms and that needs refining. It's metaphorically the next shit that bubbles to the surface that is not your ideal of what your newly defined self is. It’s a new you with a whole new set of problems! Or perhaps the same desires that frustrated your previous self never went anywhere and will now harangue the new you. Another desire causing havoc to the better man. The cycle begins again and this lower self is going to overthrow the new king unless the incumbent can throw him off the task at hand. This never ends. There's always something that needs improvement. This is the eternal masculine problem. How do I maintain balance once I reach the top?

Oh my god. That's it. That's why I am here. To find out the answer why; why this continual cycle?

What's the answer to this continual problem? Wisdom tells me that an insoluble problem is not a problem at all. The problem is you trying to solve it. As long as you insist you have a separate superego and your ego needs improvement then you must play this game. I wrote about belief a couple weeks ago and I have been empowering this split within myself because I refused to accept responsibility that I am the total package and instead live a life of disintegration with an insistence upon myself being comprised of parts. Accept and recognize what it is that is me without feeling I need to do anything about it. It’s the same way we are fooled into thinking we are isolated from the universe as a whole. There's nothing you need to do. You are already it so instead of trying to improve your lower selfish self, become fit for service and be of service to others and help them. Focus your efforts on improvement of others. Lift them up so they can reciprocate and lift others up and on it goes. If you are at this point in your journey then you can see you don't need to improve yourself, you just need to recognize your own diversity and find balance. In that divine harmony you will acknowledge all that makes you you and and take from each the strengths that will counteract the weaknesses and bring balance into the equation which enables you to become fit for service. Then bring this balance into the world at large. Attaining higher consciousness doesn't mean climbing the mountain and becoming the most high as if you are trying to be the most enlightened in some spiritual contest. Higher consciousness involves Love and forgiveness for yourself and others. It is recognizing your strengths and your weaknesses and that you will never be infallible. Stop trying to make the two ends of a stick, the top and bottom, be the same point. It can't be done. Transform yourself from a stick into a circle. Wherever you are in the circle is perfectly balanced.  

plants and unselfishness

Plants are of a higher consciousness and evolution than humans. They have physically evolved to the point where they can take in the energy from the sun and convert it into foodstuff. The animal must constantly kill living creatures in order to survive. There's no way around it, whether it is taking the life of animal or plant. The plants give freely of their virtues and gifts to animals. The plants heal and if you are open minded you can learn they also teach. The plants offer all this unconditionally. There is no expectation for a reciprocal offering; that is up to you and your free will. The plants teach us unconditional love if you open your heart and connect with them.

peace

As humans we identify with the sun because its daily cycle mimics our own patterns of coming and going, awake and rest. The moon moves around in the sky, doesn't rise and set per se, and takes its time in coming to full power before expelling that power in a gradual cycle. The sun is in a hurry everyday to get to the top and shine like no other but then it experiences a more rapid decline. The lesson is you can't hold onto it, but have to let it go, and when you do it comes back. It is the Tao and to the Now we will return.

the sun setting over the Nile in a blaze of glory!

To climb the mountain entails engaging the carnival. But then again why am I here? In probability because of a desire to climb that mountain. It is done; the mountain has been climbed. I figure now is a return to the valley to rest in peace and in the meantime, on the journey down the mountain, I can be of service.

climbed that mountain

I'm on the precipice of some kind of inner peace. I had thought if I want peace then I have to stop searching for the answer. I'd have to become a child again like I did in the second Huachuma mesada last November and play like a child of the earth mother. However in the mountains of Ecuador I was given the reminder to play and not to go all in to the left hand path but find the centre.

The pull of the right hand path in conjunction with the chill left hand path are becoming balanced. Maybe this is where I was heading all along? The right hand path drives me to find answers to the mysteries of life while the left hand path teaches me Love and unity. To find peace I thought it would be necessary to let go of the seeking. It is balance. Do not sacrifice the right hand path but instead use it to an advantage to give you the drive to keep up the quest for knowledge and to probe deeper into the mysteries.

What is it that I want? Knowledge, forbidden knowledge, knowledge of this game we are all playing, destiny.

Why? It is a puzzle I want to solve. It's near impossible but I like the challenge.

It has become clear over the last few weeks that the path of shamanism that leads to higher consciousness through the channel of the heart is the first thing in my 50 years of life that feels deep down inside a path that resonates with my essence. I say this because so many paths in my life do not. You know that awful feeling in your gut five days a week when the alarm goes off and you have to go to work? I don't mind my job, I'm good at it, but it still doesn't harmonize with my soul. I read this story about a football player who turned pro as a baseball pitcher and then couldn't throw strikes anymore because deep down his soul was telling him this is not my path. Once he went back to football he became a different person, happy again. I want to be of service and bring people to the plant medicines to heal and sit at the fount of wisdom.

My Vilca vision from the summer of 2016 at SpiritQuest of healing people through the use of Mapacho is referring to bringing people to plant medicines so they can see existence for what it is. My gift is my ability to describe the ineffable by bringing back core concepts from my journeys into altered states of consciousness and laying them out in an understandable writing style. That’s a good way to be of service.