tempered

To be birthed by the Goddess gives rise to the ability to become greater than the gods. The child coming forth from her contains both the masculine life force and the feminine life form. Into consciousness we are birthed with the potential to harmonize both powers. Instead of harbingers of either power, we can combine them into a harmonious whole and realize the appearance of the indestructible life force into the conscious world of forms, eventually discarding the body and becoming a perfected being following the example of the caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly. Her powers of intoxication must be the key to discovering and achieving this synthesis. Through rhythm and dance, the song of our lives beats outs the time signature that implores us to become whole and make our mother proud. I rise from darkness, a miracle.

Contained within the spiritual journey is the discovery of the raw energy that animates all. It’s desire. It is Eros who lights you up and you chase the pleasure it brings. Life becomes a game of desire fulfillment and a drive and purpose for getting you out of bed in the morning. I’m all too familiar with this whole scenario I am writing out and I have tried to transcend desire in order to get my spiritual bona fides only to realize this was an impossible task. Later, I learned I cannot transcend desire because I am desire. Okay, I’ll embrace it then; well, not go full on tantric but learn to incorporate desire into my life and not let it over take my existence to the detriment of dominating my life. I didn’t have any idea how I was going to do that and not much of a plan.

My modus operandi is usually to stumble onto answers when I am ready for them. The page in the textbook is turned over and on to the next lesson. The strange part is I already have the knowledge but did not have the requisite experience to fully understand what I know. And here we are. I know desire is what manifests creation. It’s the magical elixir that brings the world into form. It’s raw and red masculine energy; to wit the animating principle that gives the feminine form the juice to allow her to weave her magic. This power can rise up through the body, piercing energetic blocks as it ascends. It’s the basis of kundalini yoga and the chakra system in Hinduism. The serpent is propelled by the energy up and out through the colour spectrum until it reaches the astral plane as purified white light. I have recently written about the ancient Egyptian conception of this purified white light as the Akh, a heron that is the vehicle for the unification of the energetic and conscious components within the human. Eros is the unbridled energy from your shadow who is ever present but relies on the conscious coming forth of the biological life form in order to play. Combining the two makes for a conscious and energetic form that upon realization of their predicament realizes they are all-powerful. It’s quite the rush, with the potential to be highly disruptive and destructive. The superman created by this union needs the power of the Goddess in order to temper the steel. This elixir is Love. Love of the woman purifies the man. This is the completion of the journey up and out through the body and into the astral plane as fully realized conscious energy. A new form birthed through the fires of incarnation that is the epitome of life’s journey. To become greater than the gods; welcomed by the Great Goddess, the mother of all who sacrifices everything for her children.

The first time I drank Ayahuasca I was lifted up and up through the Goddess’ castle until I reached the top. I was on a bed in the middle of her golden room, exalted, and in her eyes, I could do no wrong. Eight years later, I finally realized the initial meeting with the Goddess was a mirroring of the rising energy of kundalini through the chakras. The raising up was intended to propel my being into the realm of the Goddess. I was privy to experiencing the journey of energy towards a purification that leads you to her realm.

Wow, eight years to figure it out. I was awestruck at the time. Sometimes, I wish I could figure out what I’m being shown in vision on the fly as I have a good grasp of myth and belief however I do realize the knowledge is best left for epiphany when I finally grasp the concept. The clues left for me in my day to day life are extraordinary and I always have to be on the lookout for them. I have had friends recently implore me to look more into the chakras, which allowed me to see the connections.

What it has led me towards is something I have been sitting with at night for a bit. I conduct a ritual in the evening where I combine with my shadow. We come together to form a new entity at the head of my Mesa which is the combination of consciousness and energy. I use the example of the butterfly as it drops the body of the caterpillar in order to be free and flies uninhibited through the sky. In addition, is a skull on the table which reminds me that eventually I will drop the body in the circle of life. I envision the liberation of the energetic form. This combination of consciousness and energy creating a new being that is greater than the gods, forged through the fires of incarnation. The Goddess is at the head of this construct, tempering the steel, this all-new and all-powerful form, with the magical elixir of love.

This is a game like no other. It’s off-limits to pretty much all. The fires of hell forge steel tempered by the love of the Goddess. Power is infused with the elixir of the Goddess as a check upon self-destruction. Power and liberation without love is an orgy of destruction. Love without liberation is smothering. The constrictor will suffocate the life out of you. Welcome to the party.

Another lesson - the purification of the energy in the chakra system is demonstrating how we can raise our consciousness to what would be considered holy and is the meaning of spiritual holiness. We are here on earth creating gods and the Mother is teaching us to become holy and pure, instilling within us a higher consciousness. The human project reaches its fulfillment with the dropping of the body and the release of the spirit you have cultivated. If you are looking for a purpose to life, this is a pretty good calling.

avatars of consciousness

Consciousness is what is. Our universe is the result of mental processes which I can explain by metaphor such as the dreaming mind that creates worlds. Our individual capacity to do this is primitive; imagine mastering dreaming, which at this point of proficiency would be having control over your projection of consciousness. With this ability as the creator, you can create innumerable worlds designed to challenge or entertain and within these worlds we would naturally leave avatars for the perceptive among us to make the connection back to source, as the actions of these symbols leave undeniable clues for the initiated. The mystery can’t be mysterious without these subtle clues; instead, it is just forever unknown and well, where’s the fun in that game? Consciousness as a singularity further consists of two opposites, the divine feminine and masculine polarities. The feminine creates form and the masculine is the magical energy that brings the form alive. To conceptualize this, here’s an image of a serpent and a jaguar.

In this sublime metaphor, you can see the serpent body created the form of our universe. Within that form roams the jaguar as the primal energy who lights up this world. The jaguar is the life force. In ancient Egypt, its raw form was known as the Ka and the personification of its magical properties in the deity Heka; in the Indus Valley it is the composite power of the seven chakras caressed by the kundalini serpent, and in the Far East it is known as Qi; energy that resides and emanates from our spinal cord.

The plant medicine Huachuma is a potentiator of the life force to a level where you feel within its pulsing presence. The biggest variable in working with the energy load of Huachuma is set and setting and it’s exponentially amplified; as a consequence, the biggest factor of the experience includes where and who you are hanging around with for the day because what happens is you magnify your energy while others are amplifying their energy. The abundance of energy present within the natural setting also becomes apparent. If you can find a harmonic convergence with nature or someone else’s energy then magic happens. It took me a while to figure that out; I have always felt it but I never added up the pieces until experiencing it this recent trip. I can now understand this phenomenon can occur by grasping the love exuded within your environment as well as a shared interest between a group of people. While there is mutual attraction and synergy while drinking Huachuma, energy fields collide and harmonize, and it can be pretty intense.

Huachuma gives you the key to heaven. That statement has a hidden meaning because humans like to take things literally and will look for a door to heaven. We all fall for it. Huachuma will get you high and eventually give you this key to open the door and that’s all you got to do! I’ll be honest with anyone who asks about the key however I would kind of like to leave it at saying it gives you the key to heaven and let whomever embarks on that path to figure it out for themselves because it is how I was taught. You are given a clue but lack understanding as it takes a while to put all into practice. I can tell you what the key is however until you experience it for yourself it will not compute. For instance, I started drinking Huachuma five years ago. Three times each in 2015 and 2016 and then five ceremonies in 2017. I had a a two and a half year absence until this recent trip where I participated in six ceremonies and as a result, the sum total of all the ceremonies eventually allowed me to understand the key.

Humans and their mental activities are peculiar. There is so much truth to what we intuitively perceive and also what we experience when we perturb our consciousness vibration by only the slightest amount and enter a different reality. The realms of heaven and hell that our culture of logic and reason have discarded, do in fact exist. So does god and the devil. In fact, I’d be bold enough to state that in heaven you meet god and in hell you meet the devil but they are the same dude and that dude is you. Within, we carry these archetypes that constantly re-appear within the culture no matter where we plant our flag. Indeed, Huachuma gives you the key to enter into either of these realms.

My recent trip to Peru was another touchstone along this never ending path to who knows where. The plant medicine teacher Huachumon instructs with the light touch of a feather. A day with Huachuma can be pretty magical however you are given the choice in how you want to proceed. If you wish to be miserable then you can drown in your sorrows. Your state of mind or to put it bluntly, your lack of a state of mind is the key. I had done my fair share of work with Huachuma over five years and have always found the experience to have peaks and valleys where I vacillate between euphoric feelings of an all pervasive cosmic love, connection, and unity to a crashing down into the hell realms. As a beginner, you naturally assign these states to the effects of the medicine. I followed a similar progression with Ayahuasca, starting when I became very paranoid the second time I drank and had a bad trip. Instead of recognizing that the plant was revealing the paranoia within, I assigned one of the effects of Ayahuasca as inducing paranoia. Isn’t that one of the great things about this whole journey? It’s an advanced level course in self-discovery where your prejudices slowly crumble before you and you see it all starts with your own bad self.

My experiences with Huachuma have been similar. I was always slightly dismayed by the hell regions I would get pulled into that would send my mind into a feedback loop that was hard to snap out of in short order. The lesson kept repeating until finally I got it! It was me and it was a choice. The darkness lay within and if I wanted to embrace it then it came forth. All I had to do was choose love. It was so simple, yet the feather of instruction had to become as heavy as a hammer in order to drive home this realization. I remember it vividly when it happened: We were swimming in a tributary off the main Amazon river, which is an enchanted slice of heaven in the jungle which never disappoints. The sun was shining and the ambiance was perfect. I floated on the river and felt the waves of bliss. I swam towards the riverbank as a cloud covered the sun and the light-level dipped. A sharp turn in my outlook ensued and my thoughts once again turned dark. I caught myself right away before the dalliance with my shadow and knew it didn’t have to be like this. I embraced love again and looked up at the trees as the cloud cleared and the sunlight streamed through the leaves of the trees. Just then, a flock of exquisite butterflies passed by overhead. They were an obvious sign that I finally got it. Later, in the Andes mountains on this latest trip, at the Chavin temple the butterflies returned, showing me the intricate nature and harmonization of the energy as two butterflies flew together in lockstep with such grace and poise. The divine feminine is such a maestra at taking raw energy and creating such displays of beauty.

I recently came upon something I had read over seven years ago by a neurologist who had gone into a seven-day coma after contracting meningitis. Upon regaining waking consciousness, he was able to describe quite vividly his experience while in this altered state. The most striking thing I read concerned this woman who escorted him through these realms, who assured him he was loved, and had nothing to worry about. She was curiously surrounded by an innumerable amount of butterflies. I thought to myself, I know this woman. I have met her many times and she is the reason I always return to that land beyond shared consensus reality.

It gets stranger still. For most of my journey, someone else was with me. A woman. She was young, and I remember what she looked like in complete detail. She had high cheekbones and deep-blue eyes. Golden brown tresses framed her lovely face. When first I saw her, we were riding along together on an intricately patterned surface, which after a moment I recognized as the wing of a butterfly. In fact, millions of butterflies were all around us—vast fluttering waves of them, dipping down into the woods and coming back up around us again. It was a river of life and color, moving through the air. The woman’s outfit was simple, like a peasant’s, but its colors—powder blue, indigo, and pastel orange-peach—had the same overwhelming, super-vivid aliveness that everything else had. She looked at me with a look that, if you saw it for five seconds, would make your whole life up to that point worth living, no matter what had happened in it so far. It was not a romantic look. It was not a look of friendship. It was a look that was somehow beyond all these, beyond all the different compartments of love we have down here on earth. It was something higher, holding all those other kinds of love within itself while at the same time being much bigger than all of them.

https://evolutionnews.org/2012/10/near_death_expe_1/

I have had plant medicine ceremonies that we read about in the literature and think to yourself, "wow I want to have that vision." I have transformed into a jaguar. I have been in the presence of a giant boa constrictor who wrapped itself lovingly around me. I have gone into the hell realms and scared myself shitless. I have been to the castle made of gold and been welcomed by the Goddess. I have experienced a bliss like no other and met beings composed of nothing more than love and light. Through it all, the one thing that has remained constant is the presence of the butterfly. It’s the link between my ordinary world of perception and the visionary.