wandering

I'm not lost in self. What I mean is I do a good job of being of service. I support a lot of people. I'm a good provider. I unselfishly give up my time. I'm a great dog owner. There's always more you can do and when you embark on the spiritual path you become inundated with calls to service. As Ram Dass would say, "How can I help?" It can be fulfilling though I have found I don't resonate with it. I like to help, but I don't go out of my way to be of service.

Will I reach nirvana with that attitude? That's very funny to me. The spiritual path is whatever you want to make of it. If you are expecting a reward, then you are going to be disappointed. This lifetime is a terrific opportunity to learn, and it was Jesus Christ who said ask and you will receive during his sermon on the mount.

Matthew chapter 7 (New International Version)

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.”

If you wander through life and hit upon something so unfathomable it consumes you then for sure at some point you are going to try and figure it out. Personally, I'm going to start asking questions. This is my story. The spiritual path led to some startling discoveries and either I have the definitive answer to this whole charade or my ability to make up a story is next level. So, I guess I should spill the beans.

Within me is the eternal masculine energy. I happened upon him when I first ventured into the Amazon jungle in search of the Great Goddess. I found her and she is my guiding light on this path. I also discovered him. I guess since I call her the Great Goddess then it's proper to call him the Great God. He scared me and I wanted him to let me be. However, the cat was out of the bag and because I'd surfaced him, he was going to harass me as a reminder to not stir that pot again. I was insistent on pursuing the Goddess and so that meant continually dealing with this other part of the equation. I was tested, threatened with death, and told to get lost. I transformed myself in that hellfire and proved I had what it takes to travel to places no one had ever gone before without succumbing to madness.

Over time we developed a friendship, and I was privy to secrets of the universe. I asked questions and got answers. Things really came to a head when I went to Peru this time last year. I drank really strong Huachuma every other day for a couple of weeks and reality came apart at the seams. I saw into the future. I was shown how the pyramid fit into my story and this story spans multiple lifetimes in multiple universes. These universes contain the constant of the pyramid as a reminder of the thread that binds all these creations as well as being a meeting point for the two main characters of the plot.

The two main characters are Goddess and God, bound by love and acrimony. I became part of the story and being a mortal avatar of God I accidentally succeeded in finding the Goddess who had been locked away for two milleniums. It was an omen that would lead to finding her mortal avatar. I did find her and since I believe in fairy tales, I thought we'd live happily ever after. We live separate from each other, and this divide is the cause of creation. This physical plane is the result of our divorce, and she has not forgiven me. She falls in love with me, sees the perfection in our union, and then can't help but notice the faults. I haven't changed. I'm still that garbage she tossed away many aeons ago. And so, she flees. I'm left here in a state of disbelief knowing I have lost her again.

I will have to start the full process over again. I fucked it up so now I must lay waste to this world because I don't think I'm going to get her back. I will destroy this world which I meticulously designed in order to one day get her in my arms again. I will dream another universe into existence and go through the prolonged process of winning her back. I know how to recognize her, my vibration is eternally within her, and I planted the seed of the pyramid, so she knows where to find me when she becomes curious once again. I am a master card player and know all the tricks to winning the game. The game never lasts, and the dragon returns to an unbearable loneliness once again, raging at an injustice that was of his own making, and perpetuated by the obstinacy of his divine partner.

Like I said, either I have the definitive answer to this whole charade or my ability to make up a story is next level. Does it have to be either-or?

eternal student

Magic has been practiced throughout human history. The efficacy of magic isn't good. There is something to it and thus practitioners continue on in their quest to figure out the secret behind making it most effective. Looking back into history is discovered the ancient Egyptians used rituals to boost the chances of a spell working. This has been the default for various conjurers throughout history. Elaborate rituals are conducted based upon previous success and thus the exact same protocols must be followed if the magic is to work. Alas the conversion rate remains slim.

The greatest magicians have a little more success but still are looking for the supreme magical way to ensure spells will work. It's the holy grail of the discipline and they are all looking for the answer. I never paid attention to magic until it started appearing in my life with regularity. This coincided with my foray into the world of plant medicines which have been described as magico-religious rituals. There is definitely something to the description. Within minutes of my first use of Ayahuasca I was thrown into a world of magic I had no idea existed. I was naive when I went down into the Amazon jungle to drink this potion. I believed I'd see visions, waking dreams I surmised, but had no idea about this world.

My first experience revealed a great deal of knowledge which I didn't understand. The Great Goddess appeared before me and said to come away with her. I knew this meant leaving the physical world and I wasn't ready for that. I told her I still had responsibilities in this world to contend with and a desire to continue seeking to discover more about my world. The experience was vibrational, and I could tell the way into the occult was through altering your vibration. The Great Goddess told me all is vibration and that has been a touchstone guide towards my attempts at trying to figure out the mysteries of the universe. During that initial ceremony I noticed the shaman was living in-between the vibrational cycles. What I mean is he or she is functioning on the slope of the wave between the two frequencies. This allows the shaman to keep one foot in both worlds. They rhythmically shake their leaf bundle, called a shacapa, and sing songs to potentiate this cycle. If you think about this in terms of music, it becomes clearer. A solid tone gets annoying really quick and what makes it interesting is the decay and reverberation. This is the in-between state or in terms of witchcraft, it is the hag who straddles the hedge between these worlds.

The raising of your vibration (or lowering) coupled with the base you started from allows you to psychically travel. You remain grounded and cycle between mind states. In that first experience I counted three distinct journeys into and out of a different realm where the Great Goddess was waiting for me. By the third trip, I was wary of the rollercoaster and wanted off as the novel experience was too much. I went back for a second ceremony two nights later and I'm fairly sure the shaman altered the brew. The vibrational cycle took me to another place, it felt like a lower frequency, and I was dropped into hell. The result was a terrible fright and a wariness to experiment with these obfuscated realms of consciousness.

I got over the fright and two years later continued exploring consciousness planes. You'll never know the limits of your mind unless you test the limits of your mind. It's been ten years, I've learned quite a lot, and I don't get scared anymore. There's some anxiety and a worry I might not return from these voyages, but I expect those thoughts. My dreams have become compelling as a corollary to all this experimentation. I learned how tobacco potentiates the dreaming activity and started regularly smoking jungle tobacco, called mapacho, seven years ago. I think I'm a slow student. It takes a while for knowledge to click into understanding though I do take notes regarding what is happening. The use of tobacco and its effects took me a long time to understand, however I eventually figured it out. Tobacco is the bridge the shaman uses to stay within the two worlds. The shaman is always in-between, and tobacco is their ally. The weak shaman will engage other shamans with their newfound power. They are the brujo sorcerers who do battle with each other, testing out their powers in a battle to see who is the most powerful. My searching led me to hapé, which is tobacco snuff. Once I started using this, I could see how it brought me into a higher vibrational state and the regular use of it kept me there. The doorway into a different plane greets me with a gust of wind and a trembling throughout my body. It was a short step to putting the pieces all together.

We live in a predictable world with physical laws. The laws are not orders, but regularities. The scientific method is a predictor of dependable outcomes. When this is proven by many it becomes a law. This is our world. When you change your vibration and enter a different world, it isn't governed by those laws. These worlds are not physical, and their essence is created by mental energy. Thoughts create these other worlds in the same way our dreaming activity at night makes up new worlds out of nothing. Dreams are the doorway into magic and a clue to how it works. The high functioning magician knows this and enacts their magic spells in the different consciousness planes. The hard part is bringing magic back into our world. No one knows how to do it with any regularity. So, within the genre you have the tried-and-true rituals and ceremonies which are designed to make the magic efficacious. Prayer and appeals to higher powers are invoked to make it happen. The holy grail of magic is the quest to figure out a way to bring magic into our world with a great conversion rate.

I know I manifest my desires. With enough time I figure out everything. It seems ostentatious for me to suggest I will learn how to do this. I wouldn't bet against it. 

enlightenment travel agent

There's a life balance towards which we all have to pay heed. By this assertion I'm describing our incarnation which involves fulfilling our dreams. Dreams are code for desires. There is a reason we are all in the beautiful freakshow and if you look within you will certainly find it. The balance I am mentioning is due to a concept called reciprocity. We make deposits in this cosmic bank which gives us the capital to pursue our desires. This is a process I've discovered that is never ending and as you progress through life, it just becomes a little more highbrow.

Let me explain further: I went on a spiritual trip at middle age and fell for it hard. I sidestepped the tentacles of culture that are set up to ensnare - you know the church, the eastern disciplines run by westerners, the new age scene, the guy on YouTube with the pretty eyes and all the answers - you know, the whole lot of them. I'm not a joiner and prefer the lone wolf gambit, I'll figure out my own path. It's uniquely for me and I'm not in your shoes so don't take my words or actions as gospel. I became a repository of knowledge and have all the receipts for the accumulation of gobs of knowing. Like a good stew, I then let it marinate while continuing to explore. My path took me from books to getting out in the world and then going into my inner world. I highly recommend the adventure and can help you with a similar itinerary if you wish. I can be your enlightenment travel agent.

There's no certificate for enlightenment. Oh, maybe there is. Perhaps some establishment will give you a piece of paper extolling your spiritual accomplishments after you give them a chunk of change. The point I'm making is if you have an independent streak, no one is going to bestow the title of enlightened upon you and furthermore because it is so nebulous and undefined, you'll always be twisting in the wind wondering if you can now mingle with the holy set. Allowing others to anoint themselves is bad for the spiritual business. As with all human endeavours, we need to appeal to an authority with the power to bestow honourifics.

What I'm getting at, tongue in cheek, but with a lot of truth based on my journey is that intuitively you will know when you know. What is it that you know? You know who you are. You know why you are here. You know the path forward. You want to help others see it and allow them to progress at their own pace.

A cold plunge isn't going to bring you to enlightenment. You know what will? Sinking into your many faults and making the mirror so present you will see it. Overload yourself with what makes you repeatedly fall down to the point you finally acknowledge it. Then the real work can begin where you transform those faults into strength. You walk through the fire and before perishing you turn yourself into a woman or man of steel.

I'm writing about this because the time is at hand. I have wanted to be of service and give back. I didn't know how to do this. I'm not an extrovert and struggle playing the game of wanting to help groups of people. Frankly, I suck at it. I couldn't start a men's club or a spiritual group. I'd hate it and look for a way out.

I wrote this a few months before my recent trip to Peru. I re-read it recently and it sums up my path of service:

I live a good life. Giving back involves service. I have gifts I can share with those who are looking for answers. I can give them knowledge and understanding and steer them in directions which will help them find what it is they are looking for. I've been through the fire and came out the other side. Fulfillment of the spiritual path is the most difficult undertaking of your lifetime, propelling you through challenges and encounters with the darkest of the dark. Making good choices always works out. Once you see the answer to the multitude of tests, you can let go of the fear and find your way.

I have life capital I can use to invest in others. I can hoard what I have as security against whatever is coming my way, or I can start spreading it around now. I can die with millions in the bank or Be Here Now in service. I've discovered the secret for my happiness. It's to be free. You need some coins to be free, but not a lot. The road ahead is well illumined. That's the startling point of this whole trip. I expected a trip into the fog of not knowing and mystery. The clarity is razor sharp.

My path forward is one of service for those who want to know. Service to the Great Goddess and to show the way towards healing and fulfillment of desires. You are free to call those desires your life mission. I will be a guide and point the way towards wholeness of self.

satan and me

I think if I really understood what awaits me, I'd pack my things and leave tonight. It's my karma to stay and to see my attachments to their completion. I get it. The next stage of the adventure can wait a little longer while I fulfill my duties. Para el bien de todos. I have seen the template and how it is done. Parker is unselfish and wanted to pass the torch. It's hard to accept he's gone, but slowly I'm getting understanding.

I felt Parker's presence today while out in nature. I brought some Nunu snuff, which is uncured tobacco ground up into a powder. I have more experience with cured tobacco snuff, and I have noticed Nunu burns less. I snorted a good one up my right nostril, probably the most I've ever done at once. Immediate tears to my eyes. As the discomfort subsided, I felt him with me. He is free as a bird and tells me how I'm going to love it. He was ready to leave earth and then it happened. He will be with us when mi hermanos y hermanas go to Peru. He is so happy we are still going. It's going to be epic. We are star people. You'll see.

I've told the story of the first time I drank Ayahuasca several times. The Great Goddess immediately told me to come away with her and I declined. I knew it meant leaving my body and Earth behind and I was definitely not ready. I told her I had a family to support and knowledge to discover. I had my attachments for sure. I know they are what keeps me here. She understood and said she'd wait. I feel the same with Parker as he was ensuring me that death is not so bad, and I picture him saying it with a grin. He always seems to go first and do the heavy lifting. I'm older, but he is more the big brother type. He's the set-up man.

I haven't told the story about my third time drinking Ayahuasca as much as the first. It's uncomfortable and not culturally acceptable, so I am hesitant to retell it. I was in contact with the dark face of God, i.e., Diablo, and he offered me untold power over all the universe, like in the Gospels when he takes Jesus up to the top of the mountain and offers him power over all the world. Instead of the world, I got offered the universe. I'd be the leader of a bunch of misogynist galactic misfits who rule over creation. I was delightfully naive and said I didn't want that. I entered the occult to find the Great Goddess. These sideshows of power were continually distracting me. I wanted to see her again. But I mention this because when you find the doorway beyond the veil chances are you are going to be offered power, and most people are going to jump at the chance of even a little bit of power. I had told Parker this story and he relayed a similar story about being offered power. I was always going to be a tough nut to crack so I got offered the big prize. And I declined it. I met Jesus two days later. I'm not kidding.

The next time I was in direct contact with Satan is when I went back to Peru two years later. When I drank Ayahuasca again he was waiting for me. He threatened to kill me and said I wouldn't get home alive. He definitely wasn't pleased that I returned. He thought he had scared me away for good. He threatened my family, and I said do what you must, even kill me. I'll sign whatever you want me to but leave them out of it. The challenge ended before I signed on the dotted line to give up my soul. It was a test of my intentions, and I was willing to sacrifice my life to ensure no one was affected by my choices. When I drank Ayahuasca again two nights later, the Great Goddess returned and told me he won't bother me again. He hasn't regarding power and temptation, but I still had to clear my fear of him. Eventually, I passed the tests, became a warrior, and then explored my darkness. We are now best friends. This admission is an explanation of the tests which involve gobs of power to really see what I was made of. I know I passed them with flying colours. I know I'm not in this for money, fame, fortune, or power. My intentions were made clear.

Service seems like the only way forward. It solves all my problems I still struggle with. Money is a big one in thinking I need it for security in my old age. I can let it go and support others in their journey, hopefully leading them towards what I have found. I know you have to burn through your desires before you can get down to business. I can use my money to help my loved ones live out their dreams. Dreams are code for desires, and it is desire that brings us here to Earth. I want those I love to fulfill their desires. Project this out to the Great Mother and see the Earth is a place where her children can fulfill all their dreams. If I started a school for spiritual fulfillment, I would model the introductory courses upon Tantric practices. I'd amp up the chances of fulfilling your carnal desires, so you get your fill and then see you are still empty. All calories and no nourishment. Then they will see the emptiness and look for answers.

Earth is the place for you to satiate your lusts. This is why you are here and the gatekeeper, jailer, or whoever you wish to call him is Satan. Satan makes sure that your actions create the distressing amount of suffering on our planet. Suffering is built into the Earth game. After getting our fill, there is a chance we wake up. We can't escape the take. The best we can do is practice reciprocity. When we take, we give back.

I live a good life. Giving back involves service. I have gifts I can share with those who are looking for answers. I can give them knowledge and understanding and steer them in directions which will help them find what it is they are looking for. I've been through the fire and came out the other side. Fulfillment of the spiritual path is the most difficult undertaking of your lifetime, propelling you through challenges and encounters with the darkest of the dark. Making good choices always works out. Once you see the answer to the multitude of tests, you can let go of the fear and find your way.

mastering the dream

This funny situation occurred the other day as I was walking home from work. I passed by this man who was looking at me and talking in my direction and I did my best to avoid engaging him as being in the downtown of a large city you just never know. He seemed sure I was a member of the rock band the Goo Goo Dolls. Yeah, I’m in my mid-50’s but sure I can still pull of the facade of an eternal rocker lol. I continued on, informed my wife of the incident, and we both thought it to be quite funny. I remarked that I thought he was high.

A couple days later I was reflecting on the absurdity of it all while puffing away on Mapacho tobacco, my agent of clarity. He compelled me to look closer and compare absurd events such as this with what happens in my dreams. I have recently added Mugwort, known for inducing lucid dreaming, to my plant medicine roster and thus upon working with this plant I have definitely noticed it is a lot easier to remember your dreams as it keeps you on the precipice of lapsing into the forgetfulness of deep sleep. As an aside, I can give you the advice that if you do want to try Mugwort don’t overdo it or you will have a fitful night of sleep. I hardly ever have insomnia but due to one day upping my intake of Mugwort, I put myself in a state of lucid no sleep. Anyway, at times with Mugwort I can start dreaming, know I’m dreaming, and then alter the dream through thought projection. I’m at beginner level and it is quite fascinating though I do prefer the free flow of the dream from my subconscious without the interjection of conscious thought patterns. Through working with dreams and remembering them, I am amazed at how long buried thoughts are dredged up and incorporated into the tapestry of the dream that is woven together by the subconscious into a believable whole, that is until you wake up and have a good laugh.

The Tobacco Maestro was compelling me to go deeper into this phenomenon and make the connection to the waking dream I am inhabiting. Of course, I now see it. The absurdity of the man comparing me to a forgotten rock star is the stuff of dreams. It’s exactly what occurs randomly in dreams. The situation is a crack in my reality and a clue to what is going on. I will never expect my subconscious to directly give the show away and say, “Hey dumbass, you’re living in a dream!” Instead, the inference and connection to this knowledge is made through coincidences, omens, and synchronicities that if we pay attention add up to a reality that is undeniably connected to our nocturnal musings, with the caveat we maintain a ironclad grip on this dream through the promulgation of left-brained logic and reason. Our thinking patterns of daily life, enforced by our culture, prevent us from seeing the magic and thus we live unfulfilled lives, wondering what does this all mean?

When we re-discover the subconscious, our world can become magical, though at first chances are the re-discovery will cause you an awful fright. I heeded the call of my intuition eight years ago and ventured into the Amazon jungle in order to drink a powerful psychedelic. Here I was a middle-aged man whose experience with psychoactive drugs was limited to alcohol and caffeine descending into an unknown world to turn my life upside down. The inner calling and knowing I had to do it was so strong I couldn’t resist. The second time I altered my consciousness I came face to face with my subconscious other half and subsequently frightened myself beyond comprehension. I had never experienced the fight or flight phenomenon or the paranoia such a fright induces. But there I was in the middle of nowhere undergoing this initiation that if I was aware would happen I wouldn’t have done it. This night of terror has propelled me onto a path of knowledge that would have been unfathomable to the previous iteration of self. Eight years later and I consider my shadow subconscious to be a trusted friend, the greatest of Maestros, and a guide to help me navigate the vagaries of life as long as I listen to him and follow his guidance. It will all work out and I know whatever I want he will grant the wish. Therein lies the rub - I won’t enter into that game because I know it has consequences. Instead, we do this dance where he knows my inner desires and then he manifests situations where the chance of fulfillment appears and I make a choice. Or sometimes, the result is presented to me as a synchronicity just because. Take for instance the other day I hadn’t seen this person in a while and thought well it would be nice to talk to them again. The next morning, they appeared on cue. Ha ha! I saw that one immediately! These games are fun to play. I’m not going to ask for worldly power and the ability to make all my fantasies come true. Come to think of it, if I did that I would sever connection with my guides and become a megalomaniac, throwing away a relationship to spirit and the nature of being that really is the elixir of life.

So, this a dream, no different than the frivolous wanderings of the mind all creatures conjure at night. If it’s a dream, does it matter? Well, not really. Take the example I gave you above where I said I can tip the outcome of this dream in my favour. I know I can because I have the receipts. However, I will not do it because an outcome where I know the result is no adventure. That dream would suck. I want chance and choice. If you sit with this for a while and see the absurdity of how we live our lives you can’t help coming back to choice. Nothing matters and thus when given the ultimate get out of jail free card wouldn’t you choose to just love everyone?

dreamcaster

I woke up and it was only a dream.

In creative writing class, this line was how I liked to end all my short story writing assignments. I think we all tried this ploy at least once; like a free pass for when we wanted to conclude our tale. Life imitates the mystery. The master dramatist of said mystery is a joker at heart.

Dreams hold the key. My dreams with Mapacho tobacco as the catalyst, are so vivid and real. The nocturnal world I conjure into existence has me fooled of its veracity and reality until I wake up. From this experiential logic, there is no reason to believe this world is really real. It could be just a dream as well. What is real? Westerners have a definite block in discerning between the mental and the physical; ascribing some kind of solidity to the tangible while dismissing the mental. The truth is the opposite. How bizarre. What is at stake? In question is our definition of a dream. I’m conditioned to believe dreams are frivolous, though psychologists will recognize the dream's importance to help discover the root cause of patient suffering. You wish to be miserable so in essence your dreams reflect that desire. Ultimately, I think the answer lies in the definition. I can understand the manifestation of the dream as energy that is mentally manipulated to form a magical world based upon various stimuli and input. We dream when we have lowered our vibration into the subconscious shadow realm and enter into the hypnagogic state. All altering of consciousness is changing your frequency and this sensation we define as hypnotic. The dreaming mind is shaped by my shadow; the shadow I bury but who is always with me. He has the key to the dreaming and by extrapolation I can see how he has the magic potion to create this world I think is reality. The power he holds in his hand concerns past, present, future, and total control over this reality which just maybe is a dream as well.

I once had a dream where I was discussing a dream I had within the dream. If you are having a dream and you start dreaming within that dream, what happens when you wake up in the dream? Having a dream within a dream is very intriguing because you wake up from the second dream and give instant validity to the dream world you currently inhabit. You think the current dream is reality because you recognize you woke up from a dream and of course that wasn’t real. So, do we dream in order to continuously fool our self into thinking this reality is real? We are a clever species so without the dreaming mechanism we would have less of a grip upon our reality. Because of our ability to dream and create fantasy, alternatively, we can point to this world as being really it! However, my existence in this universe seems to be a lucid dream.

So, when you are released from the mental prison and wake up from this world at physical death, it must be very perplexing. For sure, at first you’ll have a good laugh but then a touch of sadness will envelop you when you think of all the relationships you had within the dream and you realize they weren’t “real.” We are all one and from the same unfolding process. A process so ingenious that all the iterations of the one self are placed within the one dream. Pretty clever, eh? To practice self-love, love everyone. At death, we wake up one at a time. At birth, we go into the dream. We still know who we are and of our origins of a universal consciousness at that point but the joke’s on us. We are a baby and can’t articulate what we know. Once we possibly can communicate this secret, we have forgotten the secret in the same way we can’t remember dreams for the most part. Sometimes, a nudge reminds us of the dream much like in this life a crack in the matrix, such as a déjà vu, confounds us. What a game!

The game of life. Accelerate your vibration and ascend the ladder of vibratory reality until you free yourself from this dream world and enter into the heavenly realm. You leave the reality of earth and make heaven your new reality. Mysteriously, you exchange one conjured world for another. They are all dream worlds however the paradox is that reality is a dream. Everything is consciousness and because of the inherent fluidness of the vibratory rate that sustains your reality, it really is all a dream. The sages of yesteryear spoke of seven heavens and multiple levels of consciousness they would visit in visionary states. 

Sexual energy manifesting in dreams is pretty revealing. Sexual energy is so potent that when I experience it in a dream the energetic response transcends the dream and affects my physical sleeping body. There’s something to this energetic transference between dreams because also affected are emotional vibrations. We all have had the nightmare where we wake up in a frightful state. I also have noted a dream where a feminine succubus squeezed my heart and I physically felt this. I would ascertain that it is through energetic centres within the body, as defined by the chakra system, where the continuity between parallel dream worlds maintains connection. If your inner world is full of torment then what you manifest in this world of forms will reflect that inner torment. It’s the base chakra we descend into when falling asleep that holds the ultimate power that creates the dream or reality; reality being amorphous. 

When I smoke Mapacho tobacco and go to bed, the movie projector is fired up. Tobacco allows you to straddle the hedge between the waking and sleeping states; he facilitates the movement between different worlds acting as a bridge between the conscious and the subconscious or to put it another way between parallel frequencies described as dream worlds. The nighttime world you manifest acts as a revealer and clarifier of just what is. Mapacho potentiates the ability to see beyond the narrative and clearly view the world and your predicament. The creative power behind the dreaming is sexual. How do I know this? It’s because of constant dream time arousal. This power is the energetic pulse that ignites the flame so the story can be told. I know this is true because the iconography throughout antiquity of astral travelling shamans in trance contain ithyphallic images of them.

What if in one of your dreams you try and figure out the physics of that particular dreamverse? You don’t know how you did it. You just went to sleep and manifested this new world. Your fancy instruments just reveal strange quantum anomalies. Hell, what came first - the chicken or the egg? It’s such a preposterous question. Of course, the chicken just appeared in the dream fully formed and sexually ready to reproduce. The dreamcaster just made it happen and created some evolutionary backstory to confound those who poke around in the past!

My shadow constructs this dream. He is the master of dreams. On the other hand, I am but a novice dreamer and my night time dalliances just happen. My shadow lays the groundwork for this perceived reality and lets it play out in how he wishes. He’s the director of the play, taking care to not intervene. If you are willing to sell your soul in order to alter your outcome he may take you up on your folly in order to teach a lesson. By inference, your shadow holds the key and can create your world. Therefore, nothing is off-limits once you realize this power. This is only available if you throw off the chains of culture and go explore the occult. A big part of getting past this block is to observe the reaction of others and summarily ignore them. "You're going to contact a demon and have a bad outcome. You shouldn’t mess around with this." Why not? Getting in touch with this magician, your partner in crime you buried, is surely not for the faint of heart. But guess what? It’s hidden and forbidden because it’s the main vein. Once you realize you can access the power to manifest a world of your choosing that’s pretty tempting. Power corrupts as the saying goes. Think you are going to be different when the allure of worldly success and riches stares you in the face? What about altering the trajectory of the world so that we come together as a species? Is that okay? The maestro don Howard would always remind us to be careful what you wish for. We were his students and with that there was some responsibility for the power he was showing us on the path and how to access it. For most, we don’t get that far anyway so the talk he would give about power remained part of the mystery and made drinking plant medicines intriguing but ultimately benign.

The first time I met this mysterious dreamcaster after drinking Ayahuasca I scared myself silly. The descent into his realm, replete with a hypnotic and creepy vibe, I wasn’t prepared for and subsequently ran from. However, I now knew and there was no closing up the box I had opened. I was afraid to sleep for a few days, intuitively knowing he was waiting. No matter, I started hearing his voice during the day, calling out to me. I certainly wasn’t ready for that! I had to first mentally recover from what it was I found. When I returned to plant medicines, it coincided with meeting don Howard and the sanity he brought to the experience. Immediately upon drinking Ayahuasca again, I returned to the realm of my shadow and he was waiting for me. I had to show him what I was made of; whether I was a coward full of fear or if I was truly the hero on his journey. By now, I had acquired a little courage and bravery and I stood my ground. My shadow revealed his hand; maybe too much in this battle of wits. He told me he could make my plane crash and I wouldn’t get home alive. Do I think these were empty threats? No. They were revelatory that he could do it. I demonstrated I was a worthy opponent so the game was on. I stood up for myself and said do what you want, just leave my family out of this. I know now all I had to do was to be brave and courageous and not back down. Once I did this, I got much respect. The path was cleared and I travelled where it led me to the point where my shadow and I became one.

Ever since then I have been walking this path of unfathomable knowledge with revelation after revelation. I crossed the Rubicon to the point of no return. Slowly, all the knowledge coalesces into understanding. Here I am looking back upon experience and what I know. I know this world is a dream and I have the key to write whatever story I choose. That’s ultimate power I have come across. I’m not tempted and will let the power to control outcomes be. I’ll walk hand in hand with my shadow with a smile on my face and being of service. It’s enough to just know.

acceleration and deceleration

The dream I had a week ago Saturday night will leave me food for thought for quite a while as it was a full plate. During the day, the weather and sunshine contributed to the first spring like day of the year and I spent a great deal of time outside, all the while smoking away on Mapacho. For those unfamiliar with the tobacco maestro, he is a potentiator of dreams, always reminding me that Ayahuasca visions and dreams are of the same world.

So, here’s the dream: I had been hanging out with three other people in a remote location; the identity of the those with me were generic, no one familiar. This particular evening, I went to a sacred spot of visions. There was no catalyst needed; instead you peered into this darkness and it became visionary. With me during this occasion was one of the women. She peered in and then encouraged me to do so. The visions were kaleidoscopic and abstract in nature. I commented that I wished I could record what I am seeing through the auspices of my mind that is interpreting the energy in this portal. The woman with me was talking to me about these revelations and how she needed to show others this place of wonder. She then became part of the experience and started directly communicating with me without speech. I have previously experienced this modality of communication during Ayahuasca ceremonies with the Great Goddess. Eventually, I felt the woman I was in communion with merge into me until she squeezed my chest and heart so much I felt smothered and couldn’t breathe. I physically felt these sensations though I was dreaming which eventually woke me up. The suffocation stopped once I stopped struggling and accepted the hug. When I came to, I was in a wtf state for a bit before I started trying to comprehend the dream. I wasn’t scared though I had some adrenaline flowing from the experience and recurring tingles throughout my body because of the excitement. It was a bit of a shock however a testament to my experience on this path that I did not get frightened or have some kind of panic about what transpired but instead I experienced recurring chills in regards to how real it was. Mapacho makes the dream so real it makes me question the reality I live in. I have indeed dreamt before a dream that fingered Mapacho as the potentiator of the mental energy behind this reality we think is really real.

I have a few initial takeaways from the dream. The major one was the feminine spirit I felt merge with me and squeeze me like a constrictor. I tried to figure out who she represents but, in the end, I think she is an amalgamation of the feminine divine. The dream is showing me the underlying desire of the feminine to possess. They want to hold on so tight and sometimes it leads to smothering. Lately, I have been marvelling at the symbol of the serpent for the feminine because of how in life too much love can lead to feeling suffocated much like a boa constrictor would squeeze the life out of you. The way out is not to avoid love but to let it happen. Let the serpent constrictor have her embrace, celebrate her love, find balance, and proceed to once again disengage and go your separate ways. I also thought about the human custom of hugging and how it uniquely captures the instinct to love, squeeze, and possess. Further clarity on that dream is I remember an Ayahuasca ceremony in 2016 where the Goddess as a green boa entered into my body and took up residence in me. I’d have to believe then the woman with me at the visionary site was her. She was reminding me of the need to stay heart strong on this path.

Another takeaway is something intuitive where I have noticed the feminine has this occult power resident within that I’m not sure they even understand. It is magical and sends out vibrations that are intent upon enchantment. I say this because of certain women I meet who I know become interested in the vibe I put out and in turn they want to possess it. I don’t say this in terms of self-aggrandizement or wanting to give myself an ego boost but instead recognize it for what it is. Ultimately, I am walking a path that has to remember liberation is the key ingredient. I believe the dream represents an obstacle on the path being the tendency of the feminine to ensnare, not in a devious and plotting manner, but in a loving way and this makes you give up the path towards the answer to the mystery and parallel journey that calls out to you. You sacrifice the odyssey to tend to the needs of the feminine archetype which is to create family. In parallel, men also have an instinct to possess, we like to collect things, which in turn enslaves us. I remember a Ram Dass talk teaching the way out of this behaviour. It’s to treat all as the beloved instead of continuously collecting individual manifestations of the beloved. My first cycle of work with Ayahuasca in 2013 dealt with this very predicament. The masculine energy I was in communion with was presenting as a madman and was spouting off about the feminine in a very misogynist tone. I remember sitting there in the dark in the middle of the jungle listening to this and wondering what I had got myself into? I was being told the subjugation of the feminine was because of her charms that took the man repeatedly away from his reason for being here in form in the repeat of his incarnation. To walk the path of the hero was thwarted by settling down into domestic hell. I didn’t know it at the time but this appearance of a madman was just one of the ways the divine masculine can manifest in vision. Sometimes, he’s stark raving mad, pulsing with energy, and other times he’s a wise grandfather. I now celebrate them all. At that particular time, he came on in this way to teach me the lesson. Well, that and to chase me away to see if I had the courage and fortitude to return and take up my sword of liberation.

The thing about the hero’s journey calling out to you is that it leads to liberation of not only the masculine spirit within but will also free the feminine from the masculine’s desire to possess. When the masculine pursues the feminine he becomes a collector, and being the stronger of the two powers he ends up locking her up in a castle made of gold or in some cultures she is veiled and never let out without being escorted by her husband or brothers. The path of freedom leads to extricating oneself from cultural constructs and at the same time making this freedom available to all.

I also recall Ram Dass telling a story where his guru Maharaji-ji told him he should be alone. I don’t have a Maharaji but I do know I need to be alone. The pitfall is that if I spend too much time alone I become destructive so once again it leads me towards seeking balance. Then the scales tip in the other direction and I have to extricate myself out of the ensuing predicament. Ram Dass further explained this advice with the caveat that though he should be alone, contradictory he should be with others. What this advice is getting at are the subjects of freedom and attachment. You can be around others and enjoy them however do not get attached. You’ll sacrifice your freedom on the altar of possessive love or co-opt your ideals to fit in with the group and it’s game over. The journey comes to a sudden stop. Maybe next time you’ll beat the game. Therein lies the rub. There’s always a next time so we fall into the trap and say we have come far in this incarnation and we’ll get them next time. There’re no guarantees. I got a good roll of the dice this time around thus being on to the game, I think I should see it through to where it is leading me this time around.

Overall, the dream is forcing me to concretize what I already know. The impetus of the dream is to get me to examine the nature of the universe and develop my thoughts into a coherent structure that unlocks the mystery of just what is. It’s the next lesson on the path where I knew the masculine was energetic outpouring but the feminine was a mysterious power that entrapped the masculine in order to create form. I wasn’t sure of the mystery. I got it now. The epiphany followed the dream. The energy is masculine and feminine. The masculine is acceleration and the feminine is deceleration and that constitutes what just is. The masculine wants to go fast, to be free, to shine, to roam, and to be unencumbered. The feminine wants to slow it all down, hug it out, unity, love, and create form. Deceleration creates the world of form. Acceleration is the destroyer that seeks to liberate itself from form. That is the mystery.

This simple description of the pulse of energy being acceleration and deceleration plays out on the world stage in the behaviours of the man and the woman. I take a walk in the woods and look at the massive girth of a mature tree and just see decelerated energy that has taken on form. All biological life is this energy of the universe decelerated into innumerable patterns with the acceleration of the masculine polarity giving it life. Within our forms are the two gendered charges creating and destroying life in a continuous cycle. It’s so awesome, empowering, and at the same time comforting to understand this lesson. Even in the world of electronics, I see this concept at work in the idea of the computer replicating the biological life form where the divine feminine is the form of the computer and the divine masculine is the electrical power that gives life to the form. The makings of this construct is also witnessed in the animal kingdom where the instinct animals are said to run on, the law of the jungle and the survival of the fittest, are the traits of the masculine power. The feminine is the form and the traits of the great mother overtake the animal when they are flooded with estrogen during pregnancy and motherhood.

This knowledge I have been sitting with for a while but it’s only now the understanding has come. I have previously described all life as being a verb in the sense that nouns are objects and anything we can lay claim to that does not transform is dead. Life is transformation. Fighting transformation is useless and leads to suffering in the same sense that the Tao Te Ching teaches that swimming against the current leads to frustration and counsels you to go with the flow. Accept that the gift of life is enabled by transformation as opposed to fighting change and the requisite suffering. Once the body stops transforming it dies but the death of the vehicle leads to continual transformation of the energy sustaining that body; free once again to enliven another form. The ancient Egyptians perfectly understood this concept and assigned to the scarab beetle called Khepri the representation of this continual process of the universe. One of the regal names of the Pharaohs of the 18th dynasty included a variation of this theme of transformation. The Pharaoh’s name you see encircled in a cartouche, called the prenomen by Egyptologists, emotes this idea of transformation. The prenomen of Pharaoh Akhenaten is “Neferkhepure-Waenre” which recalling my knowledge of ancient Egyptian means something like, “beautiful are the transformations of light.” His son, the famous Pharaoh Tutankhamen, prenomen is “Nebkheperure” which translates to the “Lord of the transformations of light.” The ancient Egyptians were spiritual masters of the knowledge of energy and its continual transformations.

The masculine impetus of the eternal flame climbs the mountain of appearance. The power inherent in the speed of light accelerates to the top, suffers in his journey, and finally shines in grandeur for all to admire. The feminine deceleration of the energy takes the path of least resistance back downhill towards unity until the masculine leaves once again, fully rested, to seek out adventure.

This blog space is a testament to my journey of discovery where I don’t want to come across as having all the answers. I certainly did not and I can look back on my journey and see that it was a progression where I detailed what I needed at the time knowing that I had so much still to discover. As I have progressed upon the path so much has been revealed, a little at a time, and then I have to understand the knowledge. Once I understand the concept, I move on to the next lesson. The obstacles in the path are removed and I advance unencumbered to the next block of teachings.

desire primer

Alan Watts once told me, “Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” I have been struggling with one such question which is how do I transcend desire? I have tried everything. I tried asceticism and I became a renunciate of all worldly pleasures. When these methods only temporarily worked and postponed the inevitable return, I tried the path of tantra and embraced all my desires. Out of all the paths I tried, tantra seem the most natural however going into the nature of my desires did not allow me to transcend them. The path of the tantric is to eventually transcend desire because you play it all out to its conclusion. You get your fill and are then ready for your beatitude. However, I’m positive you will just find new desires. You can play the part of the hermit on the mountain under the old adage, “out of sight, out of mind.” It will work to a degree however you’re just running out the clock on desires. You transcended nothing.

I’ve embraced my shadow over the last year and from this liaison have entered into a student/teacher relationship. Instead of giving me all the lessons at once and overwhelming me, I get a few at a time which allows me to process them little by little and move on to the next lesson at hand. The teachings include the nature of self, culture, and power. He has taught me who he is and how he became perceived as such. It’s fascinating stuff and I recommend getting in touch with your darkness and starting a dialogue. Because we have buried him deep, non-ordinary methods may be required to start the conversation. Anyway, I have been struggling with desire pretty much all my life and since I’m in this life class I was hoping to eventually take the course on desire and learn from the master how to transcend it. After repeatedly getting beat down by failure to live up to my intention of freeing myself from desire and watching my teacher laugh as I miserably succumbed over and over again, I finally had to ask, "Why can’t I transcend desire?"

My teacher had let me come to the journey’s end. He let me exhaust all avenues and see the futility of the quest. He reminded me of Alan’s quote and then left me to figure out the answer on my own. It was pretty easy once I connected the dots. I can’t transcend desire because I am desire. Ha ha I got myself good. I’m smart enough to realize I can’t transcend myself. I can transcend identity; I can shed the idea of who I am but from this I’m left with a biological form just birthed from the mother’s womb. Who is that? It’s desire come forth, reconstituting itself into a new form in order to chase desires and make more forms. Of course, as the coming forth of desire into this macabre carnival called life, I’m easily addicted, hypnotized, enchanted, and fall for seduction with ease. That’s what desire does. And when desire tires of the lure, Eros looks for the next adventure to leave him spellbound.

We created all needs and wants in order to play a high brow derivation of the canine game of chase because as desire it gives us a hit of pleasure to get rewarded with a successful outcome of the game. This in turn creates suffering when we don’t get what we want. Is this what we want? The chase, the quest, the suffering to propel us along, the capture, and then the boredom and strife so we can move on to a new adventure. I think so. Imagine always getting what you want and fulfilling every desire. Once again here’s Alan:

If you awaken from this illusion and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death (or shall I say death implies life?), you can feel yourself not as a stranger in the world, not as something here on probation, not as something that has arrived here by fluke but you can begin to feel your own existence as absolutely fundamental. I am not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it, I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities, I am not trying to prove it. I am just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. So then, let’s suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power within one night to dream 75 years of time, or any length of time you wanted to have. And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, you would fulfill all your wishes. You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive. And after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure each you would say, “Well that was pretty great. But now let’s have a surprise, let’s have a dream which isn’t under control, where something is gonna happen to me that I don’t know what it's gonna be.” And you would dig that and would come out of that and you would say, “Wow that was a close shave, wasn’t it?” Then you would get more and more adventurous and you would make further and further out gambles what you would dream. And finally, you would dream, where you are now. You would dream the dream of living the life that you are actually living today.

My fondness for Alan Watts is part in part because of my relationship with my shadow. Like my shadow, Alan is the joker; the self-styled philosophical entertainer with a love of good food, wine, women, and song. Alan knew of all the spiritual paths and yet stayed clear of committing to any of them. He saw the truth of the situation and didn’t require a discipline. If you are it why would you need a path?

One more from the genius of Alan Watts about desire:

So anyway, then, this is a drama... I'm not trying to sell you on this idea in the sense of converting you to it; I want you to play with it. I want you to think of its possibilities. I'm not trying to prove it, I'm just putting it forward as a possibility of life to think about. So then, this means that you're not victims of a scheme of things, of a mechanical world, or of an autocratic god. The life you're living is what you have put yourself into. Only you don't admit it, because you want to play the game that it's happened to you. In other words, I got mixed up in this world; I had a father who got hot pants over a girl, and she was my mother, and because he was just a horny old man, and as a result of that, I got born, and I blame him for it and say, "Well that's your fault; you've got to look after me," and he says, "I don't see why I should look after you; you're just a result." But let's suppose we admit that I really wanted to get born, and that I was the ugly gleam in my father's eye when he approached my mother. That was me. I was desire.

We are desire and we have the ability to stack the deck in our favour in order to make all our dreams come true. We have been playing the game long enough we don’t want determinative outcomes anymore and thus here we are.

review

You don’t know what you got until it’s gone or something like that. You don’t appreciate what you have until you have to go without it. We take a lot of things for granted, chief among them health. I haven’t had as bad a flu as what I just recovered from in over a decade. Suffering through the body aches, chills, and fever for four plus days and then the aftermath of low energy and fatigue left me with the sentiment that yes health is everything. All that I like to do was put on hold for a week while I fought and then tried to recover from this malady. In such a short time I was able to witness a low level of depression sink in over the futility of my situation. The fifth night of the body aches and chills left me curled up in the fetal position wondering if I’d ever shake this thing. Getting past that hurdle galvanized me into going for a walk in the woods only to have to prop myself up against a tree to avoid collapsing from exhaustion. The lessons learned are plentiful and obvious, so obvious that it is crazy we don’t think about them until we are faced with the loss of what we take for granted. It’s like my body having a pre-emptive discussion with me, preparing for old age when I can’t take health for granted anymore, “Hey dumb ass! While you are in relatively good health and shape it’s time to take advantage of it and get to fulfilling all your intentions for this life while the going is still good.” I don’t want to get this flu again and I don’t wish it upon anyone else but there did come a pretty good lesson out of it.

Not being at full health really emphasizes the self in that it all starts from the fundamental wholeness of what we call self before we can heal others. The ‘others’ are an extension of self as we are all in this together. It really underscores the concept that in order to heal the world, first start with yourself.

Another calendar year is coming to a close and with it the decade. It’s a cultural marker, the significance of it is highly questionable and dubious, but anyways it provides an opportunity to look back and examine where you are in terms of where you once were in your life and see if that is a positive or a negative. The one thing for sure is we are all older and closer to the grave! I view that as a positive as I have found the more I age and slow down the easier it is to see through the world and into the game and thus have understanding. I am a knowledge junkie and with age comes rewards. The biggest takeaways from this past year have been intention, beliefs, dreams, and self-discipline. I learned that when you connect with the divine and obfuscated parts of self, set an intention, and are sincere about making a reciprocal offering then things will start happening for you. It may be part of a long game and you may have to reach back and gather in some much needed self-discipline but you’ll be walking that path and it’s going to happen for you. I also learned the role of beliefs in the fundamental way we see things and how it shapes our worldview. The truth is slippery and it is beliefs that ultimately create the world we live in and how we want it to be. Ultimately there is suffering in the world because we want there to be suffering. Our work driven society views life as hard and you have to work for your rewards and stresses if you are in an unfortunate situation that’s your fault. It’s clear we created the mess and we can collectively get us out of the quagmire if the will is present. Such responsibility is ours to use and steward wisely, instead of for personal gain at the expense of others. Reciprocity teaches many lessons, chief among them that not giving back causes the divide, the haves and the have nots, and all the strife in the world. It’s pretty simple this reciprocity challenge and as a whole we seem to have developed quite the ability to look the other way, maybe throw the downtrodden in society a bone once in a while but that’s it. I mean we who live comfortable lives work hard for it and damn it I’m going to enjoy the fruits of my toil. To change the world change yourself and envision how you want the world to be. If there is enough of a change in consciousness then we will reach a tipping point. Lastly this was a huge year for understanding dreams. I shed the notion that they are fanciful and nonsensical and saw them for what they are. I’m reflecting my psyche into a world of my own making, using this world to self reflect and to try and come to terms with all that. Because I tend to examine everything, this led down the rabbit hole to the realization that the world we are in now is the product of a dreamer and we are aspects of their psyche. Our world at its core is mental energy. There are a myriad of ways you can try to convince me this is not true and they will all have merit. That’s not how I see it though. To me it is crystal clear!

How about this past decade? Ten years ago I had returned from a trip to Egypt and I was ensconced in learning everything I could about that culture. I was about two years into my obsessive search for the origin of beliefs and I cast a wide net. It would be about another three years until I found traditional plant based shamanism and that opened the floodgates that defined the rest of the decade and gave me all the answers I was determined and had full intention to discover. I was resolute in my searching and this led me to shamanism almost as if the universe was saying okay you’re pretty sincere about this, here you go, walk this path and it will all be revealed. My foray into shamanism gave me the answer to my original question and that plunged me head long into the mystery of self and who I ultimately was. This blog space is a testament to that voyage and the discoveries made along the way. It is by no means over and this decade to come promises as much discovery as I have gained so far. Really big things are just around the corner. Bring it on! 

just believe

So much of our political discourse contains within it a need for conformity and belief in a set of values. For a lot of these ideals then is needed what is called virtue signalling so that people know you are on board with their beliefs. If you have been taking in any of the impeachment hearings going on in the States, it is quite the exercise to listen to both sides of the debate and their cheerleaders. The truth is undefined so instead it becomes a massive propaganda outreach on both sides of the aisle and an attempt to sway opinion through cherry picking sound bites and reporting only on events beneficial to your point of view and beliefs. It sums up what I have been feeling deep down for months now as to me anyway truth seems to be malleable and hard to hang your hat on, like sand slipping through your fingers. Our conception of the universe is the truth until we invariably gather more knowledge and find out more about its structure and function and then we have to revise our theories which then becomes our current truth. Truth is an exercise in consensus. Consensus is derived from the belief of others. Take for instance when we have to make a decision on something. We gather data that helps us make up our minds. Eventually we run out of time and have to make a decision based on the collected data. We could never get to a hundred percent buy in; we'd most likely be dead before that happens. So we move ahead with near certainty and then all the little errors in our thinking and decisions compound with interest and on it goes.

Remember that commercial where 4 out of 5 dentists recommend Trident sugarless gum because it didn't promote tooth decay? That became fact and sugarless gum was the way to go to be more healthy. What about the maligned fifth dentist? They were the real thinker here. They knew chewing sugarless gum wouldn't help, because a sugar addict will just get their fix somewhere else. They understood there had to be a fundamental change in diet in order to prevent tooth decay. But they were silenced, losing out to the majority interest who enforced their beliefs through consensus.

I have often wondered why smart people get sucked into religion. I was educated on this very topic by plant medicines. They have consistently shown me how your beliefs triumph over all. Not only that but the cultural beliefs you are indoctrinated in, whether you believe them or not, will have to be confronted as well and without a hardened counterbalance to these beliefs they will win you over. In Christianity you are saved by faith and not works. All you have to do to be saved is believe in Jesus. Somebody somewhere during that tumultuous time in the classical world knew what's up. By just believing, you give power and currency to the idea.

Ephesians 2:8-9

8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.

Psychically you will manifest these beliefs. You will experiences them in dreams, altered states of consciousness, and stress and they will be real. How can you not then believe, regardless of the absurdity?

I will submit myself as exhibit A. I have written previously about my encounters with icons of Christianity in altered states of consciousness; these psychic entities alive within my culture that penetrate and inculcate our individual psychic energy. The only way I moved past this trapping of culture is because I had a stronger belief in a goddess that couldn't be shaken and that allowed me to move past the trap door laid out on my path. If that had not been present there is a good chance I would have fallen for it as well and I’d be currently selling you on the merits of Jesus.

Picture a circle and call the circumference your beliefs. Within that circle is where you will find truth, with the truth always depending on what your fundamental beliefs are. For example, there are 24 hours in a day and at high noon is when the sun is the highest in the sky. This is palpably true. However you have been deceived by motion into thinking that there are cycles and days. Furthermore it is motion that fools you into thinking there are sunrises and sunsets. The sun is shining while hurtling through space. If the earth was hit by an asteroid that knocked us off course then our whole concept of time would change. Our worldview is fundamentally shaped, or may I say clouded, by our beliefs.

Think of the advertising industry that I play a part in. The trick is to get people to believe in or want something. I manipulate people into buying things they don't need through creating wants and desires, all the while appealing to vanity and ultimately ego. It’s a benign way of exploiting the psyche of the human being and it works! Companies and brands spend millions of dollars in order to get people to like and buy their products. The consumer has to think they need the product or want the product regardless of whether it works or will improve their lives. Obviously the best products actually do what they advertise but truth in advertising is a fungible thing. We do have standards but those are co-opted by money, lawyers, and fine print in a small font.

From this you can see the point about my original premise that we can use selective information to propagandize the electorate into believing only one side of the story. It is a story precisely because it is a belief. It’s the old axiom that there are two sides to every story and even though you might not like your opponent’s narrative it is valuable to listen to it. When discussing politics with friends and family invariably if you are not agreeable or a pushover there are arguments. While trying to make counter points I have been accosted with the accusatory “Have you been watching Fox News?“ line more than once in order to shut down any challenging point of view. Actually I try to watch a variety of news in order to shape my beliefs and hopefully develop some kind of understanding. I’m not naive enough to believe I know the truth but I’m smart enough to know when I’m being fed a line. There’s a reason in a courtroom a judge elicits stories from both sides of the aisle. They are trained in bullshit detection and when they see the bullshit coming out of the mouth of one of the litigants then it is game over for them.

I have spent a great deal of the second half of my life searching for answers. I have always been a contrarian, so I had a leg up on most when it came time to shed cultural baggage powered by cultural institutions. I went out looking for answers, thinking I could find them externally. When I discovered conscious altering plants they were an accelerator on the path of finding what it was I was seeking. The altering of consciousness will force you to look inwards and come to terms with all your beliefs and from this you will learn the truth is slippery and beliefs are what powers the universe. If you believe then it is your truth. Do you remember in the movie 'The Matrix’ Neo didn’t believe he was the one? He visited the oracle looking for answers and she said sorry kid but you are not it. It wasn’t until he believed in himself that he did indeed become the one. The truth was waiting on beliefs because without beliefs there can be no truth. 

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.