highs and lows

I know from experience that the best lessons, knowledge, and learning from a plant medicine experience come from the challenge. The direct within ceremony aspect of the extreme alteration of consciousness presents as cyclical highs and lows. This paradigm follows what you experience in daily life in a condensed manner. With Ayahuasca, the intense phase lasts for about five hours. When I sink into the depths and feel discomfort plus fear during the ceremony I react to the challenge. At first, I warn myself to stay away from these drugs as the upset is too much. I resist the darkness and the unveiling of negative influences upon me and the negativity I project upon others. This part of the experience does pass. I ascend to a blissful state of awareness and bask in the glow that has enveloped me. Because of this outcome, I participated in more plant medicine ceremonies. I can minimize the terrible lows, blocking out how bad it made me feel, and balance the alteration of consciousness. I have done this enough that I'm quite aware of the process and how I handle it. Without the lows teaching me, I'd have moved on. I always threaten to move on from these substances because of the darkness but that is the mystery that gnawed at me and made me come back for more.

Ayahuasca is more intense than Huachuma. The difference is the duration and mobility. In my experience Huachuma is about a twelve-hour trip with a strong dose. You can get out in nature and potentiate the intoxication with life. The group dynamic becomes key and the sharing and caring aspect of the plants comes into play. Ayahuasca floors you and sticks you to the ground. The mareación is a drunkenness of the body which precludes much moving around unless threatened by gastrointestinal distress.

My use of the plants has been a ten-year odyssey. Each substance comes on in a peculiar way and has predictable effects. What I have noticed however is that the commonality is the alteration of your vibration which then causes the highs and lows. The effects of Ayahuasca and Huachuma upon the body are vastly different and I have noticed along with Mushrooms, Tobacco, Peyote, Vilca, and Toé that it's the changing of consciousness which is the pinnacle of these experiences. Furthermore, I can extrapolate this out into my everyday existence. My life is a trip. It's a dream where I have locked myself into a frequency and live out a life in a common universe with others who have locked to the same frequency. A wholesale change in vibration will gain you access to obfuscated modalities of existence which I can definitely call different dreamworlds. Everything is here and now. It all exists right here and our perception and perspective determine our reality. The energy is all shared and we shape the drama according to our rate of vibration. Pretty cool huh? That means what I do here in this plane can affect the energetic signature that is reshaped in another consciousness plane or vice versa. When we tire of this play or wear out our welcome in the story, we perish. We leave this soap opera for the new cast of characters and move on in the story of our lives. We liberate our energy, break free of the hypnotic capture of our awareness, and regain a sense of our omnipotence in this multiverse. I like to think we have a purposeful purposelessness. I mean there is nothing to fear in terms of annihilation but a lot to learn in terms of love.

When taking plant medicines, it often feels like a waking dream. Silent Lucidity as the 90's band Queensrÿche would say:

It's a place where you will learn

To face your fears, retrace the years

And ride the whims of your mind

Commanding in another world

Suddenly you hear and see this magic new dimension...

Eventually, this life will start to feel the same way as a plant medicine journey and the parallels will become obvious. Life is a visionary experience full of those same highs and lows you experience in the storm of a psychedelic. They just play out over a longer period of time. The big picture is to get the high, there must be a low. There's no escape from this. The rollercoaster of life just doesn't go as fast as the one at the mindfuck carnival. The great cosmic white knuckle sleigh ride (Hi don Howard and Parker!) seems more in control. The lessons of a life lived are found in the down times - you know those depressing times that go on for what seems forever where sometimes you wonder if you will ever get out of them. You are searching for the light which will get you back to the high of life, trying to escape the pit. Deep down we know hell is going to transform us, but I always resist.

It's all what you and I wanted. It's why we came here. The challenge is what will allow the growth. Nirvana will make you fat and lazy - an eternal couch potato. The struggle and the pain are the elixir of adventure. Adventure in the divine playground awaits.

Living twice at once, you learn

You're safe from the pain in the dream domain

A soul set free to fly

A round trip journey in your head

Master of illusion, can you realize

Your dream's alive, you can be the guide...

going within

Here’s a puzzling thought: What is meant by going within? In spiritual circles, this is a popular phrase as you are told to go within to find answers. Going within is all you need to do as your inner guides will reveal all to you. I tend to examine everything and this unchallenged staple of the spiritual journey had slipped through the cracks up until now when finally, I questioned it.

It is undeniably true. Going within is all you need to do. You contain everything within your being and accessing that knowledge will give you all the answers you seek. Looking externally for answers will eventually lead you astray and convert you into a follower of someone else’s beliefs. They become the shepherd and you’re the sheep. They’ll physically feed and take care of you and also provide you the spiritual nourishment you desire however you give them your wool and are never free. Some external teachers wish to perpetuate you spinning your wheels on the treadmill in order to keep you as a follower. A good one will let you go and be free. An exceptional teacher will point the way to the methods to help you look within.

If you are looking for a teacher, the best ones are dead. They have no need to make a living and thus their teachings are truly free. They are not trying to hook you in any way; sure, they’ll be some trying to speak in their name and capitalize on their wisdom but you’ll easily see through it. There are many great sages throughout history that have left their legacy in print and even some lectures of infinitesimal value are available on YouTube. They will provide you with the knowledge you seek and point the way but ultimately it is you and only you that needs to go within and find your truth free of external pressures.

Okay, so, what is meant by going within? How do I get there? There are a number of methods. There’re methods for the methodical among us as well as practices for those who need to work at it in order for the discipline to project an air of validity. And there are methods that will take you immediately to the source but at the risk of blowing out the game for the naive and unprepared. So, first of all what we have is meditation and breath-work. These methods are a slower physical means of going within with the added bonus it you succeed in developing them as a tool in your spiritual utility belt you can lord it over other because your method is the purest. One-upmanship still thrives, even in the spiritual game! Putting that bullshit aside, meditation will allow you to quiet the mind and enter into a state where you are one with the god within. When you’re quiet, they speak. Breath-work will do similar in that you exhaust the mind and enter into a state of being the observer and listener. Yoga and chanting are similar methods, all with the goal of exhausting physical and mental components of self so you can sit and listen. The hypnotic beat of a drum or quick repetitive movements in ecstatic dance will also alter your consciousness. A plant medicine that will quicken this process but not overwhelm your senses is the tobacco maestro Mapacho. A smoke out in the woods will bring on a quieting of the mind and a sharpening of the senses, including the hidden sense of the teachers within.

The quick way into the inner sanctum is attained through the use of psychedelics. To the unprepared, they have the potential to result in what is called a bad trip and may scare you away from exploring deeper with this tool. Even for the prepared, the experience can be overwhelming. It can be thought of as a shortcut however there is a need to learn to work with these agents of consciousness in order to reap the benefits and like any other spiritual tool, that takes time. I look back on my early forays into the unknown with consciousness altering plant medicines as being unprepared and unaware of what I was experiencing. However, I did write down as much as I could about what I directly experienced and in hindsight so much has been revealed once I gained understanding years later, including the threads of a narrative of my own personal hero’s journey. I now see with clarity that what is within is everything and everything is who I am. This has been an eight-year journey up to now and continues to unfold. Psychedelics are indeed the quick way into the inner chamber but the length of time needed to understand what you experience is probably the same as the other methods.

So, what is meant by within? Within is the hidden dimension that is off-limits to your everyday consciousness that is enabled by your physical sense perceptions. To go within requires activating another sense perception we all have but have forgotten about. This is what the methods are doing - they bypass the blocks that obfuscate another way to perceive consciousness. Access is attained through mastering vibration. It’s simpler than you realize but you’ll need the key. This is a huge topic to cover so I’ll just leave it at that in order to pique your interest. As we become more rational and logical as a species this sense falls further away and it becomes even harder to reclaim the mystical. Culture also enforces the prohibition against the occult. I would hazard to guess that in the ancient world it was a great deal easier to access this realm. Now, you need to be a devoted practitioner with a method or take a strong dose of a psychedelic in order to enter through the archway.

In order to master our physical world, we sold out to our physical senses with the result all the modern human is left with is the rational. The last hold of religion is a few generations away from becoming a curiosity of our irrational past. We still manifest the right-brained creative side within humanity however it plays within structure. Palatable music is composition that conforms to expectation as deviancy just doesn’t sound right. We sold our soul and sacrificed it on the altar of progress. We lost the path of the troubadour heart in order to follow the light of reason. It’s hardly surprising that when we change consciousness we access this lost frequency. I would expect the same if we entered into a dream world where within the fluid dream the alteration of consciousness just ever so slightly would slip us back into a rational frequency, much like what we lock to today.

We usually do not give our sense perceptions a second thought and thus take them for granted. Our sense perceptions create our experience of life. Senses are what define our world, give definition to the energetic storm around us, and bring the world to life. Can we as humans evolve our senses or return to what was lost? In other words, can we reclaim occluded methods of sensing what is around us? The short answer is yes and the ability to make it happen exists all around us.

If we do sense the paranormal or the non-ordinary, what is our first response? It’s fear. As a child, the thought of ghosts was frightening however non-rational it may well be. Using psychedelics always brings with it a touch of fear even for the seasoned practitioner. It’s because of the unknown and having to give up control. The inner adventure tinged with a little bit of anxiety to make for a good game.

I might be getting predictable but the perceptive among us can see where this line of thinking is leading towards discussing. I’m referencing psychedelics because I have finally understood a large part of the experience. At first, I was scared and curious. I returned to their use because I was intrigued with the potential. I knew of the available knowledge of self and of my world contained within which could be revealed in the experience and this curiosity allowed me to develop strategies to deal with the fear. For the last eight years, I have been exploring consciousness about once a year during a cycle of work. Mind altering and expanding substances are agents of consciousness which allow you to “see” what you normally do not perceive. We classify them as hallucinations because it is something we don’t experience in everyday waking consciousness. It’s much more than visions as patterns of behaviour are confronted, ideas are explored, there's a dose of love and fear, and trauma and relationships are reconciled.

It is true psychedelics are a way into the occult. Because of culture, what I just wrote probably gave you some trepidation. We are supposed to stay away from the hidden and for good reason. The Devil hangs out in that world, along with a host of other demons, plus things that go bump in the night. It’s all part of the incredible knowledge available to you and all play their respective part in the drama. This is what makes this experience beyond any journey you can take in the physical world. My journey has been the most incredible arcing storyline, full of twists and turns, leading towards the climax where I discover I’m the actor, writer, and director of my own grand adventure.

Not all psychedelics are the same. Some are visionary, some are active teachers, some can be both, some potentiate the energy within so you can experience the power you possess, and some can make you delirious. What I’m getting at is there’re a lot of planes of consciousness and senses to explore. Our normal senses are attuned to the physical world, allowing us to perceive a world governed by the laws of physics and thus maintain some kind of control over our surroundings. Psychedelics allow for another human sense perception. The non-ordinary world accessed by various methods of changing consciousness is unpredictable. It can’t be reliably measured though there are some scientists trying to map it out. You can peer into an obfuscated world of knowledge and intrigue but you can’t stay. The enduring charm of within remains because of its mystical nature. 

Exploration awaits the intrepid hero. I wouldn’t trade the key to unlock the doors of perception for the world as this inquiry is what gives me that needed boost to my human condition knowing I’m not just putting in time. There is so much to explore and it really is what lights me up.