student of tao

Waking up leads you towards death.

Staying asleep keeps you alive on Earth.

If you want to remain on Earth, you stay asleep and keep dreaming your existence into reality.

Once you awaken you will stop the dream, and then it is time to go.

It's a very precarious time.

I can't teach awakening.

Why?

It's suicidal.

How are you still here?

I did nothing.

Everyone is programmed to do something and make a choice.

I'm the opposite.

I made no choice.

I did nothing.

Can't you teach that?

Yes.

Why don't you?

Because if you don't trust me, you will make a choice and then you are done.

Isn't that what the student would want?

Isn't that why they subconsciously wanted to wake up?

I don't know their reasoning.

Maybe they are only curious.

Maybe they accidentally woke up.

How would you put them back to sleep?

You can't.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it, and it calls to you.

Like a siren?

Yes, you must know.

The best things to do are deflection and obfuscation, so you take it slow.

What about those who know and are still here?

They become teachers and are of service.

Some are healers and some are malevolent.

The path of awakening will lead to your demise.

The only way out for some is to get attached to a leader or a group which hypnotizes them into a different train of thought.

Religion will ground you and keep you around.

A cult will hypnotize you, so you forget you have awakened.

You did it by yourself and didn't join any group of spiritual misfits.

I wanted to see into the mystery.

What do you think now?

It's crazy to want to awaken.

You will think it's time to go and others will tell you to leave.

It's very strange.

I don't wish that upon anyone.

Do you have any tips for the awakened soul?

Yes, Tobacco is your friend.

Tobacco will activate the dreaming mind.

You need to keep dreaming your existence into being or you will depart.

Tobacco will do this for you and then you can stay.

My advice is once you experience an awakening is to establish a relationship with Tobacco.

He will teach you for 7 years while you head towards becoming fully awake.

Once you are completely awake, the protection of Tobacco will keep you here.

Why don't you want to leave?

I don't see the point of awakening and leaving.

Why do all the work and not see the results of your labours?

Doesn't the flow lead you to your departure once you have awakened?

Yes.

Shouldn't you follow the flow?

The flow teaches balance.

The master juggler plays with life and death and never chooses.

The flow is a choice to do nothing about your awakening.

Correct.

Don't you teach that?

Yes, I teach a course in doing nothing.

Aren't I doing something by not leaving?

No, you're doing nothing.

I don't understand.

If you wake up and do nothing you make a choice.

The secret is to do do nothing.

That's confusing.

I know, that's why you can't teach awakening.

It's too difficult for the mind to comprehend and stick around.

To balance the flow, you must do.

What you do, is nothing.

The teaching doesn't say do not do.

It says do do.

It's all about do do.

Fuck me.

Mary Jayne makes prophecy believable.

Apocalyptic scenarios ring true when you are on drugs.

It's very funny to me that substances that are reviled by our current culture are the catalysts for all the crazy end of the world stories from yesteryear.

You don't know that.

You do if you partake.

If you never experience altered states, then of course you would deny this.

The trident represents the three.

The Goddess, Eros, and the writer.

Then why is it a symbol of Poseidon, Neptune, and the Devil?

Their depths will lead you to the Holy Trinity.

You reject it because of where you got the knowledge.

Why?

Conditioning.

You are conditioned to not believe those characters because they are dark.

There must be another myth.

Do you think I'm making it up?

No, it's a fool.

Christianity made up their own Trinity.

Yeah, they got rid of the Goddess.

They made it so no man went near her.

Only God.

He sent Gabriel.

That's how toxic she is.

You are talking about the Virgin Mary.

Yes.

No man wanted part of that.

Even God said no way.

Poor Gabriel.

That guy is a saint.

What about her cuckold husband, Joseph?

Yeah, you don't want to be that guy.

She got cucked by God.

You mean him.

Yeah, but the story is about her.

I thought she was a whore?

Well, yes.

She was smart in that she didn't let them impregnate her.

Only God could do it.

This is an interesting rewrite of the Virgin Mary story.

It's much better now, don't you think?

I'm not sure women will approve of the story, but I can see the appeal to men.

You might want to keep this one to yourself.

Anyway, look up the trident symbol.

Poseidon has control over the seas.

You'd think it would be 7 prongs then.

Kali is represented with a trident.

She wants the power of the three.

The Romans were big on triumphal processions, which represented power.

The Devil is power over darkness, chaos, and the underworld.

I like the idea of dominion over the three worlds of the sea, land, and air.

It fits the shamanic worldview.

To acquire these three realms would represent total power.

Would God or the Devil have it?

The Devil has the pitchfork.

That's the more believable of the two.

I mean God seems powerless.

He's not, he just does nothing with his power.

He gets people to worship him and does nothing.

At least the Devil does something for you.

You make a good point.

If you ask God, he just ignores you, and the priest rattles on about how some get the grace of God and some don't.

If by happenstance you get your desired outcome you think you are blessed because of God.

I like that answer.

By contrast those who make a deal with the Devil get what they want though they never think of the outcome of changing your story.

You put your story in the hands of the Devil and are subject to his whims.

Right, so if you are going to ask for a favour, ask God because he is not going to do anything, and if you believe in him enough the laws of the universe will grant you your prayer.

Why?

Belief.

The universe is created through the mind by belief.

So, your best bet is prayer.

With spirituality, you take the ego up a level.

That's all it is.

How would you explain awakening to someone?

You wouldn't.

Why?

It's strange and nonsensical.

To be completely honest it would be preposterous.

It's a porno.

Game.

High score.

Nonsense.

How would that be convincing?

It would be the opposite.

So, you shut up about it.

Talk in generalities.

The essence of spirituality is nonsense.

Dion wants the last word.

The Goddess thinks it's her right to have the last word.

Is that the game?

Who gets the last word?

Obviously, the writer, not the creator.

Makes sense.

Doesn't she get the last word in your story?

Yes.

Utopia.

She finally gets the last word and the story ends.

Why?

You need a writer or nothing happens.

Man moves creation along.

Is Tobacco the dream agent?

It's the master plant.

Why?

It helps you write.

So does Mary Jayne.

Either one will get you started.

Both together and you can write possessed.

Being able to craft a new story is how curanderos heal.

What about CBD oil?

That's a pain reliever.

It's not a healer.

A healer is a shaman who uses Tobacco and other plants.

Tobacco to change the story.

The plant to fix the ailment.

Tobacco gives MJ power.

A great writer will have a relationship with Tobacco.

Obviously.

If you were to teach a course in plant medicines or just this path in general, you'd start with Tobacco.

Don Howard did.

It's a one week crash course, but the first ceremony is Mapacho.

It's by design.

Tobacco starts off the retreat.

Don Rober protects you with Tobacco and blows him around all ceremony.

He's got your back while he weaves his songs.

I wouldn't do a ceremony without Tobacco.

It's 7 years with Tobacco.

You mean until you get to work with him?

Yes, until then you are a student.

After 7 years you can work together.

You save insects and spiders.

And worms.

You alter the story.

It's the flow.

It's something I'd do.

Why?

Either I'm a softy or genuine.

What do you think you are?

I help lessen suffering.

I steer others away from death.

It's because I'm death.

Death would need to balance out his nature by saving what he can.

Some are beyond help.

It's simple to save an insect.

You don't save humans.

Do you think Tobacco is slowly killing you?

If that's what you believe, then yes.

What do you believe?

Tobacco protects me.

If I thought he was killing me I'd stop.

Obviously.

Death is always stalking you.

The answer is to take on the role.

It's a 7 year apprenticeship with Tobacco.

Then he is your lifelong ally.

It culminated in 2023 when you needed him most.

You timed that out well.

I have perfect timing.

Well, if I let it be.

If I fuck with the story, then I throw off the timing.

You are a perfect student of Tao.

Practice doing nothing.

There is no expectation of perfection.

You see how it works.

Now that you know, it is easier to be perfect but the danger in perfection is getting to total knowledge which you then must balance out with mystery.

You can't know everything.

There's always more.

I'm humble enough to realize that is the case.

I prove it to myself everyday even though sometimes I think there cannot possibly be more.

It's incredible when you think of it.

If you closed yourself off to new experiences, then you could get to know everything.

It's a game of perspective.

If you load up on experience you will overwhelm yourself.

So, as you can see, the answer is balance.

That's the fundamental teaching of Tao.

The teaching is to do nothing because it is all relative.

Humans are doers, so that is the medicine of Tao.

Tao is not nothing.

It's balance.

So, what did I see?

Balance.

Okay, but what did I see?

Nothing.

So, isn't Tao nothing?

No, it's balance.

What happens when you see balance?

You see one instead of two or more.

You saw one.

It looked like nothing.

It's non-duality.

It's one.

So, I didn't see nothing.

Non-duality is nothing.

Why?

There's no observer.

But I was looking at it.

Yes.

What did you see?

Nothing.

Is that non-duality?

I don't know.

Why?

Because you can't see non-duality.

Correct.

So, what did I see?

Nothing.

What is nothing?

It's non-duality when you look at it.

Okay, so what is non-duality?

Everything.

But I saw nothing.

You saw everything.

You just can't see everything.

Why?

You can't compute it, so you see nothing.

So, non-duality is everything.

It appears to be.

You can't see it though.

The funny thing is it is right in front of your face.

If you could see non-duality, you'd see duality.

Everything.

It's a twist.

You can't see non-duality.

Correct.

If you could, you'd see duality.

They are the same.

An observer twists non-duality into duality.

Who is the observer?

The audience.

You.

There is always more, isn't there?

It goes on and on.

In theory if you get to the writer there would be no more.

It's like Dorothy getting to the Wizard of Oz or Neo discovering the architect.

What happened to them?

Dorothy went home.

The Wizard let her know how to do it.

Belief.

That story is deceptive.

Yes.

It's a dawdling old man behind the curtain.

He's a fool.

It's a fool.

Nobody sees that until you get to that place yourself.

Nobody gets there.

He's the writer of Dorothy's dream and does what is necessary to remain undetected.

How did the author of that story know?

Field of poppies.

He was taking drugs.

Like Homer and Lao Tzu?

Yes, that's the connection.

Do you think you can get there with meditation?

You can get to nothing.

God mode.

It's beyond God mode.

What is?

The understanding of the writer.

Well, the storywriter of the Wizard of Oz knew about the man behind the curtain.

He knew he was full of bluster, and he was told about the power of belief.

He wrote about it.

He still thought the Wizard was a fool.

Definitely not the writer of creation.

What about Neo in the Matrix?

That's a mescaline story.

The green gives it away and there is a line early in the film about mescaline and dreams.

The thing with mescaline is it shows you reality but it's a heavy mindfuck.

You are never quite sure what exactly you are being shown.

You get close to the mystery with mescaline.

What stops you from understanding it?

Belief.

You don't buy into it.

It's simple.

They knew there was an architect, and he was running a simulation.

A writer creates worlds which are simulations.

He gets the actors to buy into the performance, and you have a great story.

Cipher woke up and knew it wasn't real.

He wanted to go back and buy back into the story.

He was happy there.

The malcontents who woke up knew the Matrix wasn't real and that bothered them.

Well, it isn't real.

It is a story.

What else is there?

Nothing.

Non-duality.

So, the ship Nebuchadnezzar was on a voyage towards nothing?

Sort of.

They were going to make their own story free of the writer.

They were renegade actors rebelling against the tyranny of the writer, instead of just playing their roles the best they could.

It's like they formed a union and thought they had the power to make their own studio which is the same as creating their own world within the writer's world.

Would that bother the writer?

No, it's a great alternative storyline.

The Matrix was a great movie.

Probably my favourite.

I love the white rabbit tattoo.

How did you get to the writer?

Study and drugs.

No meditation?

No, that was a waste of time.

I wasn't good at it.

Why?

It seemed like a slow way to hypnotize yourself.

Why do you think they tell you to concentrate on one object in front of you?

I see.

You can get far with meditation.

To nothing.

That's it.

You stop.

Why?

You think that's it.

You self-hypnotize yourself into thinking you got there.

Where?

Nowhere.

It stops all the game players in their tracks so they can't get the ultimate high score and win the game.

They think they won but all they get is a spot on the leaderboard.

They aren't the most high.

Who is the most high?

Now, it's you.

You got to the writer on top of the pyramid in the game of Tao.

This sounds kind of nuts.

It is.

It's another roadblock in the game.

Absurdity will send you for a loop when you see the underpinnings of creation.

No one will believe you.

What to do?

Smile and shut up about it.

What makes me so special that I became the most high?

You kept going.

You weren't content with getting to God.

You shrugged and kept at it.

Others tried to end you and cause you pain.

You stepped up your game.

You are the prophesied one.

I'm Neo.

This is funny.

Do you believe this?

Well, I'm talking to myself, and my other self is very clever.

He's full of stories.

The kicker is these stories all have basis in reality.

How so?

I keep seeing them play out.

It's very intriguing and funny.

Maybe you are just nuts.

That could be but I don't feel it.

I know I might be a little crazy and I accept that, but on the whole this all seems plausible.

How do you get to me?

I told you, I kept going.

Why?

There's always more.

Belief.

I was looking for something.

I didn't know what it was.

I knew it wasn't God.

Why?

He's an asshole.

What about the writer?

He's a bit of an asshole as well.

Do you think there is something beyond the writer?

I know there is.

There is always more.

What's beyond the writer?

The trinity.

What's that?

The Goddess, Eros, and the writer.

Eros is dual sexed.

I know about the trinity.

What's beyond the trinity?

Nothing.

Non-duality.

Is that what you see when you get really high?

Yes.

It's hard to understand.

Why?

It's nothing.

Got it.

What's beyond nothing?

Everything.

Duality.

It twists back around.

That's why there is always more.

If you recognize the twist, you can be content in your searching.

Are you content?

In terms of searching for meaning, yes.

In terms of my life, no, it's just getting started.

Why?

I see the game in its entirety.

What are you going to do?

Nothing.

Why?

That's the game.

Tao.

Do do nothing.

Follow along and have a laugh.

If I do something to change the flow, I'll fuck it all up.

God was of no help to humans.

All the inventions to make life easier are human.

He's an asshole.

He did nothing.

Best student of Tao.

just a little peak

Going to sleep every night is reaffirming the hypnotic spell you are under. You are put to sleep through hypnosis, and you are awakened through hypnosis. You are mentally put to sleep during physical wake periods. During physical sleep periods the mind is unleashed. The spiritual awakening is figuring out how to mentally awaken while physically awake. This is the challenge. The process takes a while and if successful results in maybe you are sitting at a computer and writing it down. When you start to awaken there are others who will try to put you back to sleep. They can be tricksters who are challenging you or they just want to keep this domain all for themselves. I'll give them a shoutout, you know who you are. For the man, mastering the awakening in the physical realm is how you go to God. Your life may fall apart around you, however the fruit is there for you to pick.

The opposite is possible where physically you go to sleep and mentally you go to sleep at the same time. A way to describe this is you stop dreaming. This is the domain of the dead atheist. You have no beliefs, and you stop dreaming. It's over. Sounds bad, right? It could be as if it's annihilation of your character. Alternatively, you embrace non-dualism and return to the all.

You see, dualism is all about dreaming and stories. Keep the story alive and you will live forever. We all love stories. What if you tire of the story? The divine playwright makes them fresh and new, so you don't tire of them. He wants to entertain you. He is the great hypnotist. Can the great hypnotist hypnotize himself? So far, no. I can only get so far before admitting it is a spell. I'll let it go for a bit, but I always snap out of it.

What's the endgame?

There is none. I won't make a choice. My lack of decision making ensures the perpetuity of existence. By not making a choice, I'll choose both. My story will continue when my current character ends. I'll honour my word and words and see those I want to see in the next world I create with my words. I won't create Karma I can't recover from by forcing anything. I read the Tao Te Ching over ten years ago and I knew it was the greatest book I had ever read though I didn't really know why. I just said it was. Lao Tzu revealed the strategy to win the game. There's no stopping me. I am going to win by doing nothing.

inner truth

Religion is the objectification of spirituality. It is making the esoteric exoteric, by projecting out from your inner life the inner sanctum which is unique to your story. Every conscious being is responsible for creating a universe. My world is different than yours, and we agree on what we witness through language and definition. The energetic impulse from the dreamer crosses each avatar's boundary. We can interact within each other's dream and create a new dream, called offspring, by merging into one and reproducing.

Our inner lives are similar in experience, much like the outer life. The concepts of love, light, the divine feminine and masculine are common to all because they are what we are. Also similar are the experiences of the darkness and demons which seek to control our behaviour. Because of the overlap, the ability to create a religion, name the cast of characters, and ascribe attributes to them based upon cultural norms and expectations, becomes an exercise that is highly probable to succeed. Human beings are given validation of what it is we all intuit.

Where we get lost is in the ceding of our inner truth to an authority which expects us to conform to a canon of acceptable beliefs. This is because my truth is different from yours. My location on the spiritual path is at a different point in the journey from yours. My life lesson plan is different from yours. We have divergent karma and to feed everyone from the same bowl is not fulfilling the potential of each incarnation. We seek answers and often don't know where to turn, so we look towards the spiritual authorities in culture. The hard part is turning inwards to find the answers you seek. You hold all the answers and if you ask, you will unveil them to yourself.

The role of belief in the game is paramount, but it is not belief in an external projection. The belief is in yourself. I'm telling you that only you know why you are here and within you have the answers to what it is you are looking for. As hard as it may be, you are responsible for your spiritual progress. The true teacher of the path will direct you to go inwards, that is all. Though you will find the answer within, it doesn't mean you are left to a life of isolation. Find the others on the path and celebrate the uniqueness of the journey you are all on together.

I am intimately aware and acquainted with my inner spiritual world. At first, it was all new and fantastic, so I externalized these characters. This has the consequence of inculcating fear. After you exhaust that trip and either run from yourself or stand up to yourself, you reach the turning point. You are either defeated or become a first-class warrior. The warrior gets past the fear and starts to explore which reveals the truth. It's all you.

Religions are containers for spiritual truths. They bring the mystery to life and as humans we take the knowledge and shape it in order to get an advantage over the easily led sheep. At the core is found what it is we seek. It's up to you to use your wisdom to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Other people's fantastical consciousness journey stories are a trap. They wow you with embellishments of what they experience in the psychedelic space and you're like, "I wanna go there! I wanna have that experience!" This takes you away from your personal story. There's nothing like your story and if you stick with it, you will discover the big secret. All of us are sidetracked by the bombast of the other, and we lose sight of our own path. We become attentive and captured by the pull of the other, who mostly cloaks their intention in a blanket of service that shields a desire for followers and a perverse need to monetize the human experience.

It's smaller scale co-opting that is also performed by religious institutes. The human experience will demand you confront your mortality and the guardians of culture know you will start to awaken. At the ready here in the West is the Church. When the time comes, the doors are open and welcome you into the fold. The original awakening that brought you to the doorstep is short-circuited. There's a canon of beliefs you must accept, and the priest becomes the go between in matters regarding the divine. So many blindly fall for this even though they were the original priest who had the contact with something divine.

The positive aspect of all these distractions is to prevent the final awakening. When enough of us awaken we will reach a tipping point. The tipping point is we collectively awake from this long and strange dream and the world ends. You can see the signs already, can't you? The coming destruction is upon us because it's the manifestation of energy on a higher consciousness plane simply of God waking up. You are God. It would be conspiratorial of me to suggest there're many in this realm that are working hard to prevent God from waking up. When you walk your own path in your consciousness journey you reach the door which when you open it will reveal the secret. We are all on our own personal journey of awakening which leads to this door. In the labyrinth of the damned, the detours and sideshows are aplenty. You can travel through them in order to become acquainted with them but chalk them up as learning experiences. Retrace your steps and find faith in your inner guidance. Follow your unique path to the end and find the centre of centres.

The light has been brought and I have come forth by day. I have awakened within my dream and see this as a world of my creation. To take the last step, fully awaken, and get out of bed, means the destruction of the universe. It is Shiva completing the Rudra Tandava dance of destruction. Falling asleep created the world and awakening destroys it. The caretakers of the world scurry about devising ways to keep the dream going. How do we keep God distracted so this whole edifice does not blow up? The eventuality is that it will, but in the meantime the dam is patched in a desperate attempt to hold back the flood waters. Yeah, I'll play along for a bit longer, but it's too late. I can't go back to sleep, so I'm just going to lie in bed for a bit before I get up.

hell into heaven

I feel alone so I objectify my surroundings to create duality which brings the world to life. When it gets all too much, I seek out the solitary in order to get a break and rest from the madness my mind has created. Whew! What a set-up.

We objectify in order to create a carnival of delights which allow us to have an adventure. Whenever we feel alone, we begin the process all over again. Along the same line of creating, we go to sleep at night into the dark and solitary act of rest, and then we create worlds of wonder and amazement. This seems to be what we do. From the base of darkness comes the light of coming forth by day.

From dreams we can learn so much about ourselves from a psychological perspective. The dream world we craft reflects our basic fears and desires. By using dreams as a template for our lives, it sure seems the world we have arrived in is a reflection of the same process from an obfuscated dreaming mind that is unfolding as it should. We are avatars of the dreaming mind acting within the master’s dream.

The first challenge given to all challengers in the game of life is to survive and from that point we try to transcend our limiting condition. The suffering in the world compels us to seek answers, a way out, or a way to control the game. Accumulating wealth and security offer temporary relief from the condition and is achieved at the expense of the other. Once you are on to the game you can manifest all your desires to the detriment of others. This is how to create suffering.

So, how do we beat the long game of universal suffering? I can beat the culture game and be successful at the expense of others, but I want to know how do we transform hell into heaven for all?

First of all, you must realize the power of the mind to take you to heaven or hell. The mind creates the funhouse. Existence on the earth is truly the divine comedy. The mind is so fun to play with but eventually the sweet sugary goo will become all too much, and you will need a way to stop it or it will drag you down into the deepest of hells when it masters you and it’s early in our lifetime when this happens. When you die, you don't go to hell, you leave the hell you created through the mind. It's a good explanation for some instances of suicide. When you suffer and see no way out of the darkness except by killing yourself, that is a subconscious recognition you are in hell and have an innate sense of how to get out of hell. It's the secret no one is supposed to know.

It is said the mind makes a wonderful servant and a terrible master, yet for most of us the mind is the master. My mind has always been my rock and could not only get me out of any jam but ensured I would be successful at whatever I chose to do in life. I gorged on the apples at the tree of knowledge. In addition, my mind is acutely sharp. Spend some time with me and you’ll see. I’m in constant overdrive, reacting quickly and decisively to whatever is thrown my way while thinking steps ahead.

My mind became my master early in my life and contributed to my cynicism and disdain for culture. I never get depressed or down on myself for never having “made it” because I’ve always been the outsider and the contrarian. Why would I want to be successful in a world I hold in contempt? I’ve never had to prove myself. Though my mind mastered me it was never in turn mastered by culture. The prevailing culture casts spells on weak minds and sucks them into their game. Madness is spawned by culture and inculcated by not being free and I was extremely fortunate to escape this predicament. I’m never going to denigrate my mind, though as I have aged, I realized that to get to the heart, the mind must take a backseat.

I don’t think you can find truth through the turnings of the mind. Modalities that allow you to quiet the mind allow you to become the observer. Becoming aware of your capacity for pure awareness without spinning your perception through the mind seems to be a path to truth. The stark polarity between the racing mind and the morning calm of awareness is quite striking. Of course, my awareness is limited to my senses and intuition therefore the truth is always obfuscated by ignorance and as long as I’m in the vehicle of a body my capacity for truth remains governed.

Meditation is such a training exercise which will allow you to get back to observing without spinning input through your mind. It is a course in awareness, getting back to basics, and training the practitioner to not engage the mind because it is the mind that will create the reaction. The reaction will cause depression, anxiety, worry, and animosity.

The lessons of heaven and hell! Yes, this world can be hell, but it doesn't have to be. It's your choice whether you want to live in hell or heaven. Do I deny the suffering, despair, and the games of power and control that subjugate billions of souls? Is that how I get to heaven in this lifetime? Do I just look away? Well, you do the same denying regarding all the acts of giving and service in the world. You ignore the good and fixate on the bad. Ukraine is hell. Satsang with like-minded adventurers is heaven. Collectively, we were given the keys to an amoral world, and we chose to make it hell. Break free and create your heaven on earth and radiate what you have found outwards to others. It’s infectious and will create a tipping point for the world from hell to heaven one person at a time. My teacher calls it the evolution of consciousness.

Align your journey with the path of the heart. Having clarity on what just is and being of unconditional service to help the other out of the morass is a good way to walk home on this earthbound journey.

chicken or egg

A night time wayfarer I am. The intentional use of the masculine mapacho tobacco with the feminine mugwort potentiates the dreaming. Every night I go to bed and fire up the projector. The projectionist has a huge library of flicks to choose from and I let them surprise me. There’re adventures, love stories, tragedy, and at times the 1-star films that are going nowhere.

I was having a 1-star dream last night, sure to be panned by critics and movie-goers alike. It was the first movie of the night; you know the vivid dreams that happen as you cross the threshold into the hypnosis of sleep. My pattern is usually I awake about an hour and a half to two hours in and can recall the dream fairly easily at this point. It is amazing that the ideal length for a Hollywood movie is between 90 minutes to 2 hours. Think about that fact! The hypnosis wears off around the two hour mark and we get restless. So, this one had a lot of peripheral dialogue and no action. What I fully realized last night was that waking up ends the dream and for the most part, when I return to sleep I will dream a new dream.

I experienced this same course of action with magic mushrooms where I would create visionary world after visionary world and could leave each creation by opening my eyes. When I would close them, I would conjure a new world. I assigned the activity to the mushroom and didn't think critically about it. Three months later it dawned on me that I smoked tobacco and drank mugwort tea prior to ingesting mushrooms. The mushroom was the catalyst for putting me into a hypnotic dream state where I remained awake and then my two allies proceeded to create world after world. I was oblivious to the understanding of what was happening until now.

So, what to make of it? I had a dream a few years ago that fingered tobacco as the creator of this world. The dream involved this favourite store of mine when I was a child called "Playtime." The store contained all the toys that excited the growing mind as well as the rare and exotic candy not normally found at the corner store. In the dream I went to the back of the store and found a huge log of tobacco and wondered if I smoke the whole thing would I propel myself into a never-ending dream? What was being revealed by this dream was the ingestion of the plant triggers the mind to enter into a state where we start to create worlds of thought. Ultimately, we do it - the we in this case being the one who becomes the many. Through tobacco we make it all happen and we of course give tobacco a prominent place in our dream world. Tobacco is truly the master plant and I see now with clarity he gives this world the juice needed to continue on. We ingested a shit ton of the plant which put us into this deep sleep. When you become a friend of tobacco and reverently use the gift he provides, you little by little profoundly alter your consciousness. One day you realize how much he has taught you and in the process of waking up there is this understanding that he enabled your dream and he also woke you up in your dream.

My intellect was satisfied with the lesson of the dream as taught because I have always wondered what came first, the chicken or the egg? When you enter into the dream-state and conjure worlds out of nothing, everything just appears as is. It's so funny that of course this is the answer. How about those ancient Egyptian pyramids? Wow! We really did a number on our self!

Certainly, by now, I can easily put two and two together. Worlds are created through mentation and then we trap ourselves in these creations for fun, sport, and adventure. To escape a world of our own making is to wake up. The use of words and phrases are a subconscious phenomenon in that deep down we know the answers and what it is we are seeking, though our conscious self may just be bumbling through life. This bubbles up to the surface in language and a cursory look at spiritual paths puts you onto the game where they all talk about "waking up” even if they don’t realize the deep-seated implications of this course of action.

This world is truly a dream.

have a good sleep

We are obsessed with measuring the world and putting it to order. Thinking about why we do this - of course it is curiosity and our quest and thirst for knowledge. However it occurred to me that subconsciously we do this because deep down we know that it just doesn’t make any logical sense. I mean why? Why existence and why is it so mysterious? Why does there have to be anything? It's just peculiar that anything exists. How did the universe just suddenly appear out of nothing? Why when we peer into the fundamental nature of existence it gets fuzzy and sub-atomic particles break down into wavicles and fields powered by mysterious energy? Think about the whole what came first, the chicken or the egg, and how both answers just seem preposterous when you think about it. We want it to make sense. Do dreams make sense? The worlds we create when we dream they just appear and we don’t stop to think while dreaming how it all exists. We just mentally make it happen. Such is the fundamental principle of this universe. It just is and we busy ourselves trying to reverse engineer it but in the end all this speculation is just theory. The actors in my dream are all me. The actors in this dream are all from the great cosmic dreamer. A dreamer so skilled instead of being one avatar in the dream they are them all!

The dream creates the notion of self. Think about that. When you go to sleep at night and dream you are the creator and all the individuals in the dream come from you as the creator and the dreaming activity creates all these individuals who would consider themselves an autonomous self just like we do. Our ability to dream is quite primitive but imagine you had mad skills when it came to dreaming. You would create a world where these characters had free will and just like you they would periodically rest and also dream while resting.

So which came first the chicken or the egg? It's the dreaming mind that came first. The answer to the question is solved. The chickens then appeared, fully formed through mentation, and started doing their thing. It is one of those questions that we should clue into as being a mystery because the sheer logic of the question throws into disarray all we find logical. We spend countless hours and much energy to try and bring logic to the illogical. To try and figure out how it all works; to chart the progression from single cell amoeba to Homo sapiens.

When you dream you experience it first person just like life. Is life not but just a dream? Our dreaming activity during sleep is a clue as well as subterfuge. The clue is that reality can be constructed out of mentation. The subterfuge is that we can differentiate between what we think is reality and what is a dream but we can't do it while ensconced in the dream. While dreaming we are convinced it is reality however once awake we realize it was a dream. You know what else seems to be? It is that bodily death puts an end to our reality and puts an end to any local dreaming activity. Death occurs when our energy is depleted to the point where we no longer function. What then is energy and the source of the energy?

Each new child/creature born is the creation of another universe with the potential to create through mental activity. We are occluded from it as we share consciousness and a consensus reality with others. We can and do create our own universe as a shard of the all consciousness when we dream. When we access that part of us that does the dreaming then we start creating our own worlds. Can we enter into that world? Do I still need the bodily host to dream or can that be discarded and then it's limitless?

So why do we dream? Because all of this mentation of the dreaming mind is recursive. Every sentient being is paradoxically a representative of unity and when we dream we come forth as the mirror image; the whole filtered through a prism and split into many as a reflection of our psyche. Our world is the psyche of the one on the other side of the looking glass. From one perspective we are unity and from the opposite perspective we are separated into the many. When we dream we create worlds and these worlds of seemingly separate beings and objects all come from the one mind doing the dreaming, the single mind always reflecting plurality. The plurality revealing the interconnectedness of all. My experiences are fodder for creating my own world via dreaming as my psyche helps form and direct the drama.

Energy is the product of mental activity. We dream when we redirect our energy from waking consciousness to nocturnal slumber. Along the same line of thought, birth is the entering of more energy into our collective dream to keep it going. The more actors present performing then the dreamer stays asleep. The outpouring of energy is still strong. When there is death then the energy returns to the dreamer and they start to wake up. So what happens when we die? Do we wake up from the dream and return to the dreamer? Or is it when the great cosmic dreamer finally wakes that everything is reconciled? What happens if I ride this ship to the end, figure it all out, and 100% declare I know this is a dream. Does that put an end to the slumber? Like everything in life it seems cyclical. Our dreaming cycle occurs usually once in a twenty four hour period. There are short cycles and long cycles. The dreamer of our universe has been snoring away for quite a long time now. Estimates are over 13.8 billion years.

Am I a dreaming fool? I guess it is obvious now as playing is what I do. I'm on the precipice of realizing this is my dream and I entered into it and tried to hide this from myself. Of course it's me. I went too far and lifted the veil. I tried to scare myself away but it didn't work. Can I still influence it or has it gone too far off the tracks? I am aware I’m the dreamer. I’m aware I’m awake in my own dream. All of the universe and the objects I create are aspects of myself. I’m now awake within the dream; my reality has become a lucid dream. When you finally understand your influence over the dream, things start happening for you instead of to you. The psyche of the cosmic dreamer is the world we live in. The hatred and destruction we witness are aspects of the great self who dreams this world into existence. The love and kindness are aspects as well. We can make a choice on how we want the dream to play out.

Riddle me this: when you are dreaming you are for the most part unaware you are dreaming and buy into the drama. So when you die and you wake from the dream how would you know that you just haven't awakened into another dream? The one giveaway I can think of would be the eternal world would not have a time limit, feeling of transience, or expiration of any sort. However does that even exist or is everything cyclical and subject to periods of this dreaming activity?

Think of the whole idea of the multiverse and how many are asleep, dreaming away, and creating all these different worlds. There are infinite dreamers and an infinite amount of universes, all birthing the potentiality of more universes that would house the ability to create an infinite amount of universes. And on it goes. Have a good sleep. 

mapacho lessons

Quiet the mind and make the connection. When you are silent it speaks. When I smoke mapacho in the forest it is a cheat code to connection with a wisdom beyond my ordinary consciousness. I recognize the awareness and shift in consciousness. I hear the wind whistling through the trees, the insects humming their tune, and see the sun glistening off of a falling leaf. At this point I know I have tapped into the wisdom frequency.

Earlier this week I came across a news story where the US Navy had released video of a fighter jet coming into contact with an unidentified flying object, locked onto it, and then saw it maneuver in a flash out of its sights and then back in. The pilot reported that it was nothing like he’d witnessed before and the shape of the object resembled the typical flying saucer that the layman has been reporting since the mid 20th century. It’s a pretty cool affirmation of something being out there. I wondered and pondered about this and got the answer out in the woods after I started listening. I have been speculating upon the nature of existence being a dream lately or to put it in a more exact term the mentation or energy of a mind that is creating the universe and we are all avatars of that one consciousness. So what we are witnessing here is a tipping point where enough of the many believe in the UFO and so it manifests through the collective mind as if it is in a dream world. The same paradox is true for all gods and goddesses throughout the ages. If you believe, they exist, and if enough of us believe then they are palpably real. So the exhortation is to just believe! It doesn't matter if it seems beyond logic or is preposterous, it is the collective mental energy we produce and channel that conjures and gives rise to the idea or deity. Mystics in the past came to understand this and some then originated and promulgated the monotheistic ideal which has been passed on down to us. Their beliefs and god would become paramount and eventually the sole god because all others have been stricken from belief and memory.

So you know this then leads me to believe it is possible to create a world of love and caring for all. If we all believe and carry love in our hearts for all it is possible it will happen instead of believing it is not possible. On to the work of showing people that love one at a time. The work involves opening up the heart, blossoming a love for others, and removing the blocks preventing love for yourself.

The transient nature of existence where nothing lasts is a major clue to the fundamental nature of the universe. All patterns of energy eventually disintegrate leaving but a memory before reforming into something else. This same pattern I visit every night when I dream. I create worlds, but they change and then upon waking they dissolve away into nothing, like magic. We create tangible objects to try and defeat the relentless onslaught of the time wave that spells the end of all. We try to forever capture the moment with photography. We revere gold and other precious metals and stones because they give off some idea of permeance. Ancient cultures built pyramids as a testament to the belief their civilization would last and defeat the ravages of time. In the end all will dissolve away, the energy reforming and repatterning, and creating something new.

The great pyramids in Egypt are however unfathomable. They are impossible. UFOs are also pointing towards the reality of our situation being but a dream and the connection between the pyramids on the Giza plateau, where the construction of them is impossible, and the UFO are pointing towards this mystery. I’m not saying aliens built the pyramids, instead I am clumsily trying to say that an ancient civilization built them through collective mental energy. When logic overruns our senses these mysteries appear. The UFO phenomenon is another manifestation of the illogical wreaking havoc upon reason. It is dreaming the world into existence.

I'm curious: the people in my dreams who have lives what happens when I wake from my dream? Do they still go on? What happens to them? Are dreams just frivolous and nonsensical? Just because I suck at dreaming doesn’t mean I should necessarily dismiss the process. I suck at playing the guitar but I know there are other who are maestros at playing. There is no need to reach that elite level of playing the guitar or dreaming but I do have the passion within to level up and find out. Desire fuels all.

Do memories get wiped at death or birth? We chase novelty, always looking for a new and cheap thrill. If we know and are cognizant of everything that has ever taken place, then when we return and tap into the universal fount novelty is the unfortunate casualty. Death is a liberator. It frees us from the connection to the body, its identification, and all that we have experienced and attached to ourselves. When we let that go we can become as a child again and experience all as new. What a gift! When constructing this playground of life that must have been one of the primary considerations. A need to let go of the past so life doesn't become a bore. We fear death but it is the most sacred of all and allows us to once again take in the grandeur of creation over and over again. When it becomes commonplace and we start to figure it all out, death catches up to us and begins the process of renewal. Thinking about this construct further I imagine it is birth that wipes all knowledge and experience. Upon death it would seem all is revealed and we return to unity. It is the impetus, or riding the energetic wave, that sends us towards self again and the self rises from a situation of being a blank slate, ready to create another god. To shine once again in self absorbed glory before once again blowing out its game and returning to the all.

Some of man's religions and philosophical speculations have devised a way to get off the hamster wheel. They saw through the game and realized we keep coming into and out of existence, as the universe is a constant game of transformation. What enabled this constant coming and going is attachment and desire so they preached to cut out desire and do not get attached to anything. They didn't realize however that they were desiring not to desire. It didn’t stop there. The goal became then to silence all thoughts in meditation. Cultivated was a mass of stone buddhas, dead on arrival. You can't escape. Desire is what brings us back. The attraction to novelty and shiny things gets us every time. That right hand path to self is like a carnival, full of wonders and curiosities, and a chance to win at the game of life once more. Come on, take another spin on the wheel of incarnation. Incarnation is such a great word - carne - enter into that meat body once again! We come into the next incarnation full of excitement for the journey. Then it becomes difficult and the suffering makes us desperately look for a way out. Then we return to our origin and boredom creeps in and the sense of adventure promises us this time it will be different. So we ride the roller coaster of appearances again.

We take life very seriously. If we didn't then the game would become a joke. However I think it is a joke and if you want to beat the game you have to become the joker and see through the pretences of man and life. Ultimately if liberated you'd throw it all away and live on the periphery of civilization. What am I striving for? An expensive car and a bigger house so I can let my family, friends, and neighbours know that I am successful and am one up on them? To spend my free time shopping for the latest style in high end light fixtures? To beat the game, if that's what you want, treat it like a game and play it to the best of your ability or laugh at its absurdity. You sir or madam are creating the hamster wheel. You are creating the suffering. Let me say that again - you are creating the suffering. Cultivate and surround yourself in love and dream into existence a world transformed by love. That's how to beat the game and rescue the princess or wake the prince. 

profound respect

Three years ago I had a profound vision in the jungle after partaking within ceremony the sacred sacrament Vilca. The conclusion of the visionary experience revealed that I had the ability to become a healer and that through sacred jungle tobacco, called mapacho, I would be able to heal. In that final week at SpiritQuest in June of 2016 I had grown fond of the tobacco and returned home with some in tow. I then started smoking mapacho on a regular basis, got a hold of some mapacho snuff, and then started observing its effects. At its best and if used respectfully, mapacho is an aid that helps quiet the mind after an initial arousal of the central nervous system and a focussing of the senses. When the effect comes on strong it will knock you off your feet. Then a change in consciousness takes place, if you let go. If you continue to engage the mind then it will accelerate that behaviour. Upon letting go, an inner feeling of peacefulness envelops you and the chattering in your head subsides. It is as close as I can get to the expression “rest in peace” without actually being in the grave. I have noted arousal, an increase in visual acuity, and an increased auditory depth where I could hear sounds from greater distances as well as being able to isolate the sound. Through this I was able to understand what it was like to be the nonplussed observer, not wanting to act upon or mentally spin what I was sensing. It is the ultimate meditation cheat code. I have also noticed the change in consciousness promotes more plentiful and free dreaming activity when you sleep.

I have witnessed shamans and healers using mapacho in everything they do, whether for ceremony, ritual, healing, blessing, and protection. At the beginning of ceremonies, soplando is performed, which is tobacco smoke blown over the patient/participant. It acts as a catalyst to open the senses, to provide energetic protection, and to bring a sense of calm to the person. The shamans envelop the ceremony space and the participants in this smoke as it acts as a fortress of protection and the shaman’s song or icaro that is sung while protecting the space, is called an arkana. To close the ceremony some shamans will seal you with another soplando called a sellado. I have witnessed shamans in the Amazon jungle using mapacho to heal, usually by literally sucking disease out of a patient with their mouths and then blowing smoke over the area which is called limpia. It is very curious to witness and being a western man with a western mind I didn't understand it and at best I considered it theatrics in a placebo kind of way.

Plant teachers and medicines let you believe whatever you want to believe. If you want to be humbled then go spend some time in the jungle. I have smoked pretty regularly for three years and have a good relationship with mapacho. I am very respectful and have felt no pangs of addiction, instead cherishing my time with the smoke and acting responsibly. My plant teachers taught me about the life force power within us all and there are three main uses of it within humans. We can use serpent power for healing, for spiritual growth, and for reproduction which we experience as sexual desire. I know how to channel it into these areas and the plant teachers challenged me on this repeatedly until I finally learned how to work with the power. It enabled my transformation intra-ceremony into a jaguar which completed a stage of my teaching as I finally let go of fear and became the feared.

I had a profound experience last weekend. Someone close to me had been suffering from mental anguish and anxiety since the beginning of the year and this was now manifesting into physical problems including dizziness and digestive problems. I was visiting for four days and within two days they started to feel better. On the third day they point blank asked me if I was responsible for the abatement of the maladies because the symptoms had gone away, they felt renewed, and they could walk normally. The first few days in their presence I felt tired, headachy, with an unquenchable thirst due to the negative energy I was absorbing. I started feeling better by the third day, which is about when I started realizing I was absorbing the energy through the activated mapacho within my system which was in turn healing them by removing it from their energy field. I put two and two together and remembered the shaman sucking the energy out of the patient and then blowing it away. As a healer you transfer the energy into your field and then disperse it.

I learned diseases that propagate through maladies of the mind have an energy that can be extracted and therefore the patient can be cured of the underlying problem. Through mapacho I can do this. Mapacho energetically draws these antagonistic patterns out, absorbs them, and then you can scatter them to the four winds. Phoooooooo.

I am but a speck of dust in the presence of a great teacher. I sit here humbled, in awe, with a deep and profound respect for my teacher. Never rushed, the plant teachers reveal their secrets to the initiate all in due time. I’m not the perfect student, I never will be, nor do I have to be. All that is asked is to have an open heart, an open mind, and respect. 

dreaming the world into existence

Remember when you were in grade school sitting in creative writing class and the teacher had you write a short story? The most difficult part of the exercise was trying to end the narrative and at some point you learned the ultimate cop-out which is “I woke up and it was only a dream. The end.”

I’m sailing on the eternal ship of fools; the one where you seek ultimate truth and it’s like a benevolent Kafkaesque journey which doesn’t have a final destination. There are many ports of call and you are encouraged to disembark and not return to re-board the ship, but the captain never stops you from boarding if that is what you wish. Everybody does get off the ship at some point, even if they have to throw you overboard when you die and you find your resting place at the bottom of the sea. I’ve stuck around and worn out my welcome but I’m still venturing on. I’m at the point now where I have had a breakthrough. I think I got it!

The source of this universe is the collective dreaming mind of all of us. We cycle from unity to self and repeat. At point unity is the dreaming and self is the actor. We all bring the world into existence through mentation and we all channel our thoughts into keeping the illusion going. The self from unity keeps the game going, does the dance, and creates the drama. Unity provides the vibrational energy that powers each manifestation of self. When your vehicle expires you return on the energetic wave to this unity. You wake up from the illusion and declare “This has been only a dream. What a trip!” Those who have already completed the journey have a good laugh, welcome you back, you reintegrate into the collective consciousness and realize you have made this journey infinity plus one times. After a rest period you’re going to do it again!

The ship’s horn is sounding a prolonged blast. I think it’s ready to set sail again. I wonder where it will take me this time? 

knowledge junkie

There's always more and however deep you dig thinking you are on the cusp of figuring it all out, in the end you are just telling yourself a story. I'm an unrepentant and hopeless seeker of knowledge and ultimate truth. I stand, well actually comfortably sitting, before you now and fully admit I will go on seeking. I know to some it is an exercise in frustration however I haven't found that to be so and I enjoy the discoveries and sure it is just another layer off the proverbial onion but to me the aha moments and epiphanies give me the impetus to continue on. It's like being an adrenaline junkie of sorts, perhaps jumping out of planes, however my drug of choice is knowledge. While seeking I have been reminded many times to play and have been given explicit lessons that this knowledge I seek does not matter. Love is all that matters. In a way that is what keeps me going. I have the answer. I do not need to seek anymore. I really love seeking though, so on I go.

Dreams play into this seeking. I dig down and discover all is vibration and then dreams keep suggesting to me not only is all vibration but the vibration is mental in origin. When I dream I create worlds, heck universes with their physics all within the turnings of my mind. On a cosmic scale I'm not very good at it and only do this for a few hours a night. Imagine the mind at large, an accomplished dreamer of the first order, who takes naps that last for billions and billions of years? I'll never get to test out my hypothesis in this lifetime so theory this one will remain. Does that become frustrating? No, not really because I then approach it a different way. What if I ensconced myself in my own dream? Like entered into my own game or better yet instead of limiting me to the arcade version where you can play just one of the characters how about you make yourself into many avatars? Now we are getting somewhere. Then I tire of the joystick, of having to control trillions of entities, so I give them all free will and choice. Then there's this crazy planet called earth where the prisoners, or I mean the inhabitants, have free will and choice which plays out in many different outcomes and I learn about myself.

In this scenario the mind at large, the dreamer, the source of mentation, is an unrepentant seeker of knowledge of self as well. I'm in good company!

While seeking it’s a long and winding road to find unity as you traverse the hallway of self to find no self, which leads you to a fundamental unity. It’s quite a momentous discovery to find the essential inseparability of all and to realize that you are not only a part of the all but to realize the all is from where you came. There is a tendency at this point to disparage the self; to declare it an illusion. To insist that you are fundamentally inseparable from the all so how can you lay claim to the existence of self? In a way it feels like you are one up on everyone else because you realize they are just phantoms but they just can’t see it. Hopefully one day they will see it like you do so you’ll have someone that you talk with about your new found awareness.

Alas the dissolution of ego was just another trip of the ego. The denial of self was another way to rise up above the deluded masses. Oh the games we play, always trying to be the one on top. It adds impetus to any banality found within our game.

If you ever find yourself bored with life then drop everything and go on a spiritual trip. I promise you it is the most fascinating and seemingly never ending journey you will embark upon. You can always declare at some point you have found the truth and disembark from the ship of discovery however please let it be known that ship goes on forever and ever and you’ll never get to the destination. A declaration of enlightenment is really just admitting you are tired of seeking and searching. Time to lay down some roots and let this be.

Okay I’ll come out and say it. Unity is a crock. I went too far and didn’t get off the ship at my intended stop. I found out all that mattered was love and I found unity. That was supposed to be it and then I could teach that to others but I never disembarked and I kept on searching. I should have become aware I’d do this; I mean when I went searching for the ego and found that sucker I tried to strangle it and be done with it. It just came back and then I realized that as long as I viewed myself as separate then I would be separate and from that there was no escape. I then realized I was the flower that was blooming from the fount of energy that everyone comes from and while I was this flower I could look at it from a holistic point of view, see that it is all one process, and integrate all the parts of me I separate, including the ego, and put them all back together and find out that I am the all. Pretty heady stuff and boy I have come a long way.

When I say unity is a crock I mean I am still trying to define something that is fundamentally undefinable. I will blame the conventions of language for this, specifically the need for nouns. I need an object to stand on and I need something solid to base my ideas on. In this case I chose unity. That has to be it and where everything comes from. Unity is the thing man! I wrote a few blog posts back that my dismissal of the self was incorrect because it is the expected outcome of the process. The energy cycles between unity and self, never stopping, so that you cannot actually pinpoint any actual chunk of time as being complete unity or the actual self. It is always on the move. The pinnacle of self is the same as the blooming of the flower but that moment is not forever frozen in time no matter how much simpler that would make this whole process of discovery become. From this I realized there is no use trying to pin down the truth of the flower. Is it the seed? Roots? I was assigning truth to the fount. Unity is my ultimate fount.

Yeah I’m surprised it took a couple weeks as well after this to see the error of my ways. Unity was everything and the truth because at some point I had decided it was the fount from which everything came from. Uh oh, I just talked myself out of that and I’m left hanging again. I objectified unity and I know that’s a bullshit move. The energy, whatever that is, is oscillating from unity to self continuously. Unity is the same as my attempt to define self. Now I’m stuck on energy as my fount, my object. Well I guess at this moment in my odyssey I can say my noun is a verb and maybe leave it at that. My dreaming activity and intuition tells me the vibration is from the mind much like the dreamer that creates worlds through mentation. Okay so who is the dreamer? It’s the self returned to unity. We re-enact this every night when we sleep which is the little death; death being a return to unity. Unity doesn’t last though because well nothing sits still. If this is true, once again who is the dreamer?

Heavy sigh. The ship sails on and I’m its open ended passenger.

Wait, wait, wait… The dreamer is the self but at the opposite side of individual self. The all dreaming as one big unity self, mind at large, the great he she, and the vibration creating the universe. The dreaming of unity creates the vibrations that causes all these selves. What if the mind at large wakes up or stops playing? I guess I’ll have to explore this now for a while. Onward Ho!