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Showing posts with label wizard of oz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wizard of oz. Show all posts

Monday, May 12, 2025

student of tao

Waking up leads you towards death.
Staying asleep keeps you alive on Earth.
If you want to remain on Earth, you stay asleep and keep dreaming your existence into reality.
Once you awaken you will stop the dream, and then it is time to go.
It's a very precarious time.
I can't teach awakening.
Why?
It's suicidal.
How are you still here?
I did nothing.
Everyone is programmed to do something and make a choice.
I'm the opposite.
I made no choice.
I did nothing.
Can't you teach that?
Yes.
Why don't you?
Because if you don't trust me, you will make a choice and then you are done.
Isn't that what the student would want?
Isn't that why they subconsciously wanted to wake up?
I don't know their reasoning.
Maybe they are only curious.
Maybe they accidentally woke up.
How would you put them back to sleep?
You can't.
Once you see it, you can't unsee it, and it calls to you.
Like a siren?
Yes, you must know.
The best things to do are deflection and obfuscation, so you take it slow.
What about those who know and are still here?
They become teachers and are of service.
Some are healers and some are malevolent.
The path of awakening will lead to your demise.
The only way out for some is to get attached to a leader or a group which hypnotizes them into a different train of thought.
Religion will ground you and keep you around.
A cult will hypnotize you, so you forget you have awakened.
You did it by yourself and didn't join any group of spiritual misfits.
I wanted to see into the mystery.
What do you think now?
It's crazy to want to awaken.
You will think it's time to go and others will tell you to leave.
It's very strange.
I don't wish that upon anyone.

Do you have any tips for the awakened soul?
Yes, Tobacco is your friend.
Tobacco will activate the dreaming mind.
You need to keep dreaming your existence into being or you will depart.
Tobacco will do this for you and then you can stay.
My advice is once you experience an awakening is to establish a relationship with Tobacco.
He will teach you for 7 years while you head towards becoming fully awake.
Once you are completely awake, the protection of Tobacco will keep you here.
Why don't you want to leave?
I don't see the point of awakening and leaving.
Why do all the work and not see the results of your labours?
Doesn't the flow lead you to your departure once you have awakened?
Yes.
Shouldn't you follow the flow?
The flow teaches balance.
The master juggler plays with life and death and never chooses.
The flow is a choice to do nothing about your awakening.
Correct.
Don't you teach that?
Yes, I teach a course in doing nothing.
Aren't I doing something by not leaving?
No, you're doing nothing.
I don't understand.
If you wake up and do nothing you make a choice.
The secret is to do do nothing.
That's confusing.
I know, that's why you can't teach awakening.
It's too difficult for the mind to comprehend and stick around.
To balance the flow, you must do.
What you do, is nothing.
The teaching doesn't say do not do.
It says do do.
It's all about do do.
Fuck me.

Mary Jayne makes prophecy believable.
Apocalyptic scenarios ring true when you are on drugs.
It's very funny to me that substances that are reviled by our current culture are the catalysts for all the crazy end of the world stories from yesteryear.
You don't know that.
You do if you partake.
If you never experience altered states, then of course you would deny this.

The trident represents the three.
The Goddess, Eros, and the writer.
Then why is it a symbol of Poseidon, Neptune, and the Devil?
Their depths will lead you to the Holy Trinity.
You reject it because of where you got the knowledge.
Why?
Conditioning.
You are conditioned to not believe those characters because they are dark.
There must be another myth.
Do you think I'm making it up?
No, it's a fool.
Christianity made up their own Trinity.
Yeah, they got rid of the Goddess.
They made it so no man went near her.
Only God.
He sent Gabriel.
That's how toxic she is.
You are talking about the Virgin Mary.
Yes.
No man wanted part of that.
Even God said no way.
Poor Gabriel.
That guy is a saint.
What about her cuckold husband, Joseph?
Yeah, you don't want to be that guy.
She got cucked by God.
You mean him.
Yeah, but the story is about her.
I thought she was a whore?
Well, yes.
She was smart in that she didn't let them impregnate her.
Only God could do it.
This is an interesting rewrite of the Virgin Mary story.
It's much better now, don't you think?
I'm not sure women will approve of the story, but I can see the appeal to men.
You might want to keep this one to yourself.
Anyway, look up the trident symbol.
Poseidon has control over the seas.
You'd think it would be 7 prongs then.
Kali is represented with a trident.
She wants the power of the three.
The Romans were big on triumphal processions, which represented power.
The Devil is power over darkness, chaos, and the underworld.
I like the idea of dominion over the three worlds of the sea, land, and air.
It fits the shamanic worldview.
To acquire these three realms would represent total power.
Would God or the Devil have it?
The Devil has the pitchfork.
That's the more believable of the two.
I mean God seems powerless.
He's not, he just does nothing with his power.
He gets people to worship him and does nothing.
At least the Devil does something for you.
You make a good point.
If you ask God, he just ignores you, and the priest rattles on about how some get the grace of God and some don't.
If by happenstance you get your desired outcome you think you are blessed because of God.
I like that answer.
By contrast those who make a deal with the Devil get what they want though they never think of the outcome of changing your story.
You put your story in the hands of the Devil and are subject to his whims.
Right, so if you are going to ask for a favour, ask God because he is not going to do anything, and if you believe in him enough the laws of the universe will grant you your prayer.
Why?
Belief.
The universe is created through the mind by belief.
So, your best bet is prayer.

With spirituality, you take the ego up a level.
That's all it is.
How would you explain awakening to someone?
You wouldn't.
Why?
It's strange and nonsensical.
To be completely honest it would be preposterous.
It's a porno.
Game.
High score.
Nonsense.
How would that be convincing?
It would be the opposite.
So, you shut up about it.
Talk in generalities.
The essence of spirituality is nonsense.

Dion wants the last word.
The Goddess thinks it's her right to have the last word.
Is that the game?
Who gets the last word?
Obviously, the writer, not the creator.
Makes sense.
Doesn't she get the last word in your story?
Yes.
Utopia.
She finally gets the last word and the story ends.
Why?
You need a writer or nothing happens.
Man moves creation along.

Is Tobacco the dream agent?
It's the master plant.
Why?
It helps you write.
So does Mary Jayne.
Either one will get you started.
Both together and you can write possessed.
Being able to craft a new story is how curanderos heal.
What about CBD oil?
That's a pain reliever.
It's not a healer.
A healer is a shaman who uses Tobacco and other plants.
Tobacco to change the story.
The plant to fix the ailment.
Tobacco gives MJ power.
A great writer will have a relationship with Tobacco.
Obviously.

If you were to teach a course in plant medicines or just this path in general, you'd start with Tobacco.
Don Howard did.
It's a one week crash course, but the first ceremony is Mapacho.
It's by design.
Tobacco starts off the retreat.
Don Rober protects you with Tobacco and blows him around all ceremony.
He's got your back while he weaves his songs.
I wouldn't do a ceremony without Tobacco.
It's 7 years with Tobacco.
You mean until you get to work with him?
Yes, until then you are a student.
After 7 years you can work together.

You save insects and spiders.
And worms.
You alter the story.
It's the flow.
It's something I'd do.
Why?
Either I'm a softy or genuine.
What do you think you are?
I help lessen suffering.
I steer others away from death.
It's because I'm death.
Death would need to balance out his nature by saving what he can.
Some are beyond help.
It's simple to save an insect.
You don't save humans.

Do you think Tobacco is slowly killing you?
If that's what you believe, then yes.
What do you believe?
Tobacco protects me.
If I thought he was killing me I'd stop.
Obviously.
Death is always stalking you.
The answer is to take on the role.

It's a 7 year apprenticeship with Tobacco.
Then he is your lifelong ally.
It culminated in 2023 when you needed him most.
You timed that out well.
I have perfect timing.
Well, if I let it be.
If I fuck with the story, then I throw off the timing.
You are a perfect student of Tao.
Practice doing nothing.
There is no expectation of perfection.
You see how it works.
Now that you know, it is easier to be perfect but the danger in perfection is getting to total knowledge which you then must balance out with mystery.
You can't know everything.
There's always more.
I'm humble enough to realize that is the case.
I prove it to myself everyday even though sometimes I think there cannot possibly be more.
It's incredible when you think of it.
If you closed yourself off to new experiences, then you could get to know everything.
It's a game of perspective.
If you load up on experience you will overwhelm yourself.
So, as you can see, the answer is balance.
That's the fundamental teaching of Tao.
The teaching is to do nothing because it is all relative.
Humans are doers, so that is the medicine of Tao.
Tao is not nothing.
It's balance.
So, what did I see?
Balance.
Okay, but what did I see?
Nothing.
So, isn't Tao nothing?
No, it's balance.
What happens when you see balance?
You see one instead of two or more.
You saw one.
It looked like nothing.
It's non-duality.
It's one.
So, I didn't see nothing.
Non-duality is nothing.
Why?
There's no observer.
But I was looking at it.
Yes.
What did you see?
Nothing.
Is that non-duality?
I don't know.
Why?
Because you can't see non-duality.
Correct.
So, what did I see?
Nothing.
What is nothing?
It's non-duality when you look at it.
Okay, so what is non-duality?
Everything.
But I saw nothing.
You saw everything.
You just can't see everything.
Why?
You can't compute it, so you see nothing.
So, non-duality is everything.
It appears to be.
You can't see it though.
The funny thing is it is right in front of your face.
If you could see non-duality, you'd see duality.
Everything.
It's a twist.
You can't see non-duality.
Correct.
If you could, you'd see duality.
They are the same.
An observer twists non-duality into duality.
Who is the observer?
The audience.
You.
There is always more, isn't there?
It goes on and on.

In theory if you get to the writer there would be no more.
It's like Dorothy getting to the Wizard of Oz or Neo discovering the architect.
What happened to them?
Dorothy went home.
The Wizard let her know how to do it.
Belief.
That story is deceptive.
Yes.
It's a dawdling old man behind the curtain.
He's a fool.
It's a fool.
Nobody sees that until you get to that place yourself.
Nobody gets there.
He's the writer of Dorothy's dream and does what is necessary to remain undetected.
How did the author of that story know?
Field of poppies.
He was taking drugs.
Like Homer and Lao Tzu?
Yes, that's the connection.
Do you think you can get there with meditation?
You can get to nothing.
God mode.
It's beyond God mode.
What is?
The understanding of the writer.
Well, the storywriter of the Wizard of Oz knew about the man behind the curtain.
He knew he was full of bluster, and he was told about the power of belief.
He wrote about it.
He still thought the Wizard was a fool.
Definitely not the writer of creation.
What about Neo in the Matrix?
That's a mescaline story.
The green gives it away and there is a line early in the film about mescaline and dreams.
The thing with mescaline is it shows you reality but it's a heavy mindfuck.
You are never quite sure what exactly you are being shown.
You get close to the mystery with mescaline.
What stops you from understanding it?
Belief.
You don't buy into it.
It's simple.
They knew there was an architect, and he was running a simulation.
A writer creates worlds which are simulations.
He gets the actors to buy into the performance, and you have a great story.
Cipher woke up and knew it wasn't real.
He wanted to go back and buy back into the story.
He was happy there.
The malcontents who woke up knew the Matrix wasn't real and that bothered them.
Well, it isn't real.
It is a story.
What else is there?
Nothing.
Non-duality.
So, the ship Nebuchadnezzar was on a voyage towards nothing?
Sort of.
They were going to make their own story free of the writer.
They were renegade actors rebelling against the tyranny of the writer, instead of just playing their roles the best they could.
It's like they formed a union and thought they had the power to make their own studio which is the same as creating their own world within the writer's world.
Would that bother the writer?
No, it's a great alternative storyline.
The Matrix was a great movie.
Probably my favourite.
I love the white rabbit tattoo.

How did you get to the writer?
Study and drugs.
No meditation?
No, that was a waste of time.
I wasn't good at it.
Why?
It seemed like a slow way to hypnotize yourself.
Why do you think they tell you to concentrate on one object in front of you?
I see.
You can get far with meditation.
To nothing.
That's it.
You stop.
Why?
You think that's it.
You self-hypnotize yourself into thinking you got there.
Where?
Nowhere.
It stops all the game players in their tracks so they can't get the ultimate high score and win the game.
They think they won but all they get is a spot on the leaderboard.
They aren't the most high.
Who is the most high?
Now, it's you.
You got to the writer on top of the pyramid in the game of Tao.
This sounds kind of nuts.
It is.
It's another roadblock in the game.
Absurdity will send you for a loop when you see the underpinnings of creation.
No one will believe you.
What to do?
Smile and shut up about it.
What makes me so special that I became the most high?
You kept going.
You weren't content with getting to God.
You shrugged and kept at it.
Others tried to end you and cause you pain.
You stepped up your game.
You are the prophesied one.
I'm Neo.
This is funny.
Do you believe this?
Well, I'm talking to myself, and my other self is very clever.
He's full of stories.
The kicker is these stories all have basis in reality.
How so?
I keep seeing them play out.
It's very intriguing and funny.
Maybe you are just nuts.
That could be but I don't feel it.
I know I might be a little crazy and I accept that, but on the whole this all seems plausible.
How do you get to me?
I told you, I kept going.
Why?
There's always more.
Belief.
I was looking for something.
I didn't know what it was.
I knew it wasn't God.
Why?
He's an asshole.
What about the writer?
He's a bit of an asshole as well.
Do you think there is something beyond the writer?
I know there is.
There is always more.
What's beyond the writer?
The trinity.
What's that?
The Goddess, Eros, and the writer.
Eros is dual sexed.
I know about the trinity.
What's beyond the trinity?
Nothing.
Non-duality.
Is that what you see when you get really high?
Yes.
It's hard to understand.
Why?
It's nothing.
Got it.
What's beyond nothing?
Everything.
Duality.
It twists back around.
That's why there is always more.
If you recognize the twist, you can be content in your searching.
Are you content?
In terms of searching for meaning, yes.
In terms of my life, no, it's just getting started.
Why?
I see the game in its entirety.
What are you going to do?
Nothing.
Why?
That's the game.
Tao.
Do do nothing.
Follow along and have a laugh.
If I do something to change the flow, I'll fuck it all up.

God was of no help to humans.
All the inventions to make life easier are human.
He's an asshole.
He did nothing.
Best student of Tao.

Monday, May 16, 2022

divine feminine teacher

When you are born, you are tied to the mother through the umbilical cord. Once the cord is cut, you are free in this world. Immediately, you are measured and named. Identity takes away momentary freedom.

We spend our lives searching, not knowing what we are searching for. Here's a clue: A return to the freedom glimpsed in the chaos of birth. Where will that freedom lead us to? Simple. Back to the mother. Back to our heart.

Walking the path of the heart involves recognizing our polar extremes and how we bring the world to life through the opposites. Objectification of the other allows for duality which creates the many. Celebrating diversity and bringing all back to one imbued by love is the eternal game of the universe. It is the reason why we are here and why we created the universe. We find our greatest bliss when we let go of differences and come together. We find the greatest suffering when we are apart and treat all as the other.

The path back home leads to the heart.

I know the next course in my spiritual education has started. I was in the woods yesterday and my dog started barking. I couldn’t see anything, so I walked a bit through the clearing. I saw in the distance a woman sitting on a log. I thought I recognized her and wondered where her dog was? I navigated through the brush into the clearing and walked towards her at the place I like to call “Witch’s Cove”, named after a couple of women who held ceremony at the place back in 2015 in which they lit a fire and burned their bras and panties. I’ve kept the area up as a shrine of sorts to the Great Goddess; always being respectful of the place. I burn incense and make tobacco offerings. The woman I had seen in the distance had vanished. I wondered if it was a mirage. I remembered back to when I saw the dancing light in the winter of 2016 that came from this same area. What I’m trying to explain is there’s magic in this area of the forest and the Goddess has let me know she is teaching this semester.

This ties in with the new lesson plan which has begun because the path of the heart is the Goddess' intensive teachings. My heart is my mother, and she is welcoming me to walk the path of the heart. My heart has physically hurt over the past few days. I know something’s up. The classroom of life keeps getting more difficult and I know in a way this doesn’t make sense. Loving all should be easy and instead it’s the most difficult thing to do. I know, I’ve tried, and for some reason it is the hardest thing to put into practice. So far in this curriculum of awakening I’ve faced great fear. I have shown courage, bravery, perseverance, and fortitude. I’ve understood the lessons. I’ve explored my darkness. I’ve stopped objectifying my capacity for evil as the other while embracing only my higher self. I’ve gone into the mystery and have been bequeathed all the answers I desired. I know the last path to walk is the path of the heart and to take my polar extremes and reconcile all into the centre, into the heart space as defined by the symbol of the axis mundi.

I can put two and two together when given some time. I was listening to a Ram Dass lecture where he was discussing something profound which I had heard before but did not understand what he was talking about. He was relating a story where the Buddhist teacher Trungpa Rinpoche had told him he must take responsibility for his incarnation. Ram Dass protested and said it’s all God’s will. Well, who’s God? Anyway, Ram Dass went on in the lecture to explain two ways of looking at your incarnation. Basically, life can happen to you, or life can happen for you. When you play it small in the game of personality and ego you go through life reacting to the gains and misfortune that come your way, trying to construct a worthy character to be successful in the game of life. The other way of looking at life is to realize your essence, whether you want to call it soul or whatever you choose, has created the world and the curriculum you now find yourself navigating. Everything is happening for you in order to wake you up and get you to follow the path of the heart because this is what you wanted. You are the eternal and exquisite divine being made of love and light. All the suffering in this world is because you made it this way. The suffering is from the depths of a love so deep enacted to forge transformation in the fires of this hell. Suffering is the greatest tool for awakening and transformation that we have.

“Your conflicts, all the difficult things, the problematic situations in your life are not chance or haphazard. They are actually yours. They are specifically yours, designed specifically for you by a part of you that loves you more than anything else. The part of you that loves you more than anything else has created roadblocks to lead you to yourself. You are not going in the right direction unless there is something pricking you in the side, telling you, “Look here! This way!” That part of you loves you so much that it doesn’t want you to lose the chance. It will go to extreme measures to wake you up; it will make you suffer greatly if you don’t listen. What else can it do? That is its purpose.”
― A.H. Almaas

I’ve realized over the last year that I hold the power in my hands and can manifest a world of my desire and choosing. If I wanted it all and to fulfill all my carnal desires, I can do it. I’ve tempted myself and let it slide. I know why I have dreamt this universe into existence and it’s not to fulfill a desire for power. I have the cheat codes to life. If I wanted, I could rig the game. It’s not what I want. I want free will and to walk through the fires of transformation so that when faced with vast suffering I choose love and walk the path of the heart back home.

This world is Hell. It's a collective accomplishment where we as a species can make it Heaven or Hell and we choose Hell. When you die, you don’t go to Hell, you leave Hell. Nobody sees this; well, at least not in my privileged part of the world. The pain and suffering in the world are immense. The temptations and suffering caused by the chasing of desire and power creates the hellscape where we don’t share with our sisters and brothers. In order to have more and get our fill someone else gets less.

I’m the magician who created the universe. I bring this all to life. I destroy it all. I take the rewards of my game and live out my fantasies knowing full well this a zero-sum game and if I prosper someone else is suffering. If one of my avatars takes it all then there is mass suffering.

I will never know all the answers. I'm a knowledge junkie and a great deal of the impetus behind my spiritual path has been an intense desire to know. I wanted to figure it all out. Some of us are content with the puzzles and games we have on earth, which satisfy the intellectual pursuits and curiosities which get my type out of bed in the morning. I have realized this design is the way it has to be. In other words, the absolute truth and confirmation of this existence must remain a mystery that is open to speculation. My speculation can come close to touching and solving the mystery. The universe may smile back at me but then there is a wink reminding me of the agreement that says you'll never know just like you don't know what's beyond the veil until you drop the body that restrains you from finding out in this lifetime. There are certain chemicals that when ingested may give you a peek; however, the understanding of what you experience and how you want to spin it is totally up to you.

The Goddess knew of my heart and desire to walk the path from the start and encouraged me to follow my path of awakening. She knew I would try and destroy myself before figuring out the mystery. Well, here I am. I walked the path and discovered all I was seeking. I started exploring the psychological darkness within and flipped my understanding of who I am.

The great maestro don Howard was fond of saying, "You don't find Heaven, you realize it." The path of the heart will lead you home back to the primordial Garden of Eden. Heaven. Home is where the heart is and it is a magical place which is realized, not a physical journey. Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, all you must do is click your heels three times in earnest and you will return.

There's no place like home.

Monday, May 3, 2021

rewriting experience

Remarkable! Six years later I now understand a majority of the lessons of my plant medicine experience in April of 2015. Lately, I have written much about knowledge and understanding where the plant medicine experience is overflowing with knowledge. It is one of the major draws of the experience as knowledge is power. Each ceremony reveals so much knowledge of self, others, and your place in it. The caveat is the understanding level of all you take in is pretty poor, often your initial takeaway from ceremony in the following days is filtered through what you want to believe, and thus all good practitioners stress the integration period where you go home and sit with all that has been unveiled. The time away from the immediate experience is when you gain insights into what you directly experienced. Knowledge alchemizes into understanding and when you are ready and want to continue along the plant medicine path you return for more lessons. Every time I have undergone the experience, I have written about it. I can’t stress this enough. It doesn’t have to be the written word - you can record it into your phone, draw an image that captures the essence of the experience, or remain in contact with others where you can continue to discuss what happened, almost like psychotherapy.

The catalyst for my understanding is the tobacco maestro Mapacho. I go off into the forest with him plus my dog and the magic happens. From a visual standpoint, the experience of having consciousness altered by Mapacho reminds me a lot of Huachuma in that there’s a clarity that envelops your senses. With a medicinal dose of Mapacho comes a visual acuity and a sharp increase in my ability to clearly hear sounds as well as noises from a distance. Anecdotally, I'd connect this to all plant species from the nightshade family because of my experience with Toé which caused a sharp increase as well in my senses. That condition lasted for days which for a novice was a challenge. I would guess my sense of smell is also increased however due to years of allergies that sense is very poor and even an increase in its efficacy doesn’t register. Allergies also impact my ability to taste, maybe explaining why the shamanic dieta poses no problem for me! For the most part food is utility for me. Anyway, I have a pretty good idea that the increase in clarity offered by Mapacho also affects my intellectual capacities for understanding because I gain a sharper focus upon what it is I have been lately thinking about. In this instance, the clarity and similarities with Huachuma brought me back to my first experience at SpiritQuest and riding in the boat on the Amazon river while in the midst of the grace of the plant medicine Huachuma. In re-living this initial encounter, I realized how closed my heart was at the time and these feelings that were enveloping me were so alien and strange when in retrospect I was being flooded with love. I remember looking up at the clouds and being engulfed with this cosmic love for all. It was the greatest feeling and experience. I felt connected and one with all of the universe so much so that I recognized it as a deep cosmic love and realized the power within love to change and overcome any obstacle in the way. In the sky this rainbow patch formed letting me know that we can live in harmony if we weave together our differences and embrace our commonality. We don’t have to live in constant strife and separation. When we reached land, I remember feeling such a brotherly and sisterly love for the tribe we were visiting. Since the experience was new to me, Huachuma was intent upon teaching me the introductory lessons of heaven and hell. I remember spiralling from the highest high to the lowest low. It was the lesson on states of mind and my influence on the process. Of course, I had no idea what was going on at the time and initially I was like, "wow Huachuma shows you so much love and then takes you into the dark" not realizing it was all me! On the boat ride back to SpiritQuest, I sat beside the shaman don Rober and was flooded with love however I didn’t know what it was and thought it so strange. When we returned to the sanctuary, I recall being in my room when the sensations of love returned and I was so uncomfortable with it at the time. Imagine being so closed off from love for more than a lifetime that when exposed again to this universal love, you reject it as something so foreign and just wanting the experience to end so you can return to your closed off way of life.

It’s only now I clearly see this. The whole two-week experience with don Howard was a process of ripping my heart open whether I wanted to or not. Ayahuasca, Bobinzana, Mapacho, and Huachuma in conspiracy with the maestro were prying open my rusted-out heart like the proverbial Tin Man from the Wizard of OZ. I don’t think I ever thanked don Howard enough for what he did before he passed.

As an aside, the movie “The Wizard of OZ” really is a great encapsulation of the hero’s journey as seen through the eyes of plant medicines. In order to progress along this path, one does need a brain the Scarecrow seeks for understanding, the heart the Tin Man longs for in order to realize the commonality of us all and integrate the power one unlocks from the experience, and from the Cowardly Lion one must develop courage and bravery or you won’t get very far before packing it in.

I see now don Howard was like a parent to all the human children that came to see him and he would go about being of service to enact change within all, one person at a time. His course was challenging and tough, always with an eye on the big picture. The big picture is the evolution of consciousness and his program revealed within you the power to do so mixed with the love that will sustain the transformation. 

Mapacho was not done with me yet yesterday evening. Instead, he helped me put two and two together. In 2016 I passed the tests of courage, bravery, and perseverance and became a warrior on the spiritual path I walk. I wrote about it at length and called my blog post “I am Jaguar.” This experience that culminated in that trip to Peru was transformational as I discarded my fear of the whole process which in turn opens you up to receive more of the teachings, as you are no longer running scared or wondering what’s around the corner. I did not drink Ayahuasca after that experience for over two and a half years. Once I returned to drink again, the experience was remarkably different and in the eight times I have now participated in ceremony since 2016 every experience starts off with a high-speed experience of some sort. I finally realized the why. In the last few months, I have written about the fundamental makeup of the two powers that create our universe which are the divine feminine and divine masculine powers. She is deceleration that creates form and he is acceleration that causes separation. That’s the condensed version! So, it was just a matter of time that what was ultimately revealed is the Ayahuasca experience of high-speed chases was an omen of the coming of the divine masculine in ceremony and how it courses through me now with the Jaguar. During the second ceremony of the last trip to the Amazon, I was engulfed with an unbelievable amount of this power. My whole being was highly vibrating, no visions, I just sat in a complete highly vibrational form wondering what is going on. Thanks to Mapacho, I now know. When I went to sleep that night, the lessons continued. I was on a hybrid of a motorcycle and snowmobile going down a hill at a high rate of speed. I had smoked so much Mapacho that day that this dream was so unbelievably real. I felt all the sensations of accelerating and going as fast as I could push it. Later, I ended up in my parents’ basement where this exotic woman with tattoos on her arms was waiting for me. The Goddess made her mysterious appearance just like in my plant medicine journeys.

Burning within, is a desire to return and expose myself to more direct experience on this path as I find this is the joie de vivre of life. I give thanks for my life and being able to discover this path. I wouldn’t trade this for anything in the world. 

Friday, March 18, 2016

follow the yellow brick road

In the movie The Wizard of Oz, the main character Dorothy is on a journey of the soul. The entry into matter of the soul involves the metaphorical death of the soul, a forgetfulness, with the object being an eventual reawakening if the journey is successful. A great example of this theme is in the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty; Beauty being the soul. The wicked witch of the west harangues Dorothy into embarking upon this journey, much like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, which I have written about previously in this blog post. Similarly, it is the journey the Fool is about to undertake in the Tarot. Notice in the cards the dog who is with him.


The dog in the Fool's card and as well as in The Wizard of Oz, Toto, is the guide of the soul, the archetypal psychopomp, whom the ancient Egyptians called the opener of the ways.

Pharaoh Seti I receiving the gift of life
from the jackal Ophois while Isis looks on

Dorothy follows the yellow brick road and meets the characters, aspects of her inner self, who represent her need to develop her brain (wisdom) from the scarecrow, her heart from the tin man, and the need for courage represented by the cowardly lion.


Fear of the unknown has derailed many a seeker in their quest for truth and knowledge. Personally, after my initial forays into the visionary realm, I felt like the cowardly lion and didn't want to do that again. It wasn't until summoning the requisite courage that I was able to resume the journey. Wisdom is the result of seeking knowledge on this road to discovery and it is through this process you learn the path with heart is the only true path to follow.

"For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel—looking, looking, breathlessly" 
Don Juan Matus

The munchkins are something that seem to be related to the visionary realm and the journey of the soul. In the the myth of Snow White, this concept is represented by the seven dwarfs.


The ancient Egyptians have descriptions of these little people, the apotropaic Bes being the most striking of these strange dancing elf people.

Bes at the temple of Philae in Upper Egypt

And there are also the stories that modern users of the highly psychoactive drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT) bring back of these elf people.


The trip through the forest by Dorothy and her friends is the perilous part of the journey, the wilderness is the visionary realm, and the eventual death of the wicked witch frees you from fearing death. The good witch Glinda helps you with the inner struggle and whether you are to continue on in this journey. Later on the way to the Emerald City, the characters in this adventure amusingly lay down in a poppy field and fall asleep.


This seems to be relating to drug use and the hypnotic state used to discover an alternative reality which shows you another way out of your predicament. I think the Emerald City is referring to the alchemical wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus and the Emerald Tablets and also implying another connection to the Tarot. The journey culminates in an entrance into this city, with the surprising result that the necessary wisdom needed to complete the journey lies within. In the Emerald City, they do find the wizard who supposedly will magically solve all their problems; Dorothy of course desperately wants to return home. The wizard is a fraud, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, and he is representing religions of man. Toto is tellingly the one who pulls back the curtain and reveals the truth. Dorothy eventually finds out she has it within her to return to the place for which her soul longs.

Dorothy clicks her heels three times in order to return home

The theme of this journey of the soul, which we can lift out of this fantastic movie, I begin this blog post with is intended as a starting point in order to segue into a discussion on the meaning of life. Why does the soul enter into the limiting material world and subject itself to suffering and a fundamental lack of knowledge concerning its origins and destiny? In fact, for the most part we have no idea why we are here and what is the purpose of this existence we have been presented with; unsure if we even had a choice in the matter? Without accessing any of the modalities available to alter consciousness, then to ponder this question becomes a dead end. Speculation centres on whether we live on past bodily death and that remains the insurmountable barrier in which our thoughts are consumed by the bugaboo of what is beyond the grave, if anything. But if you can bypass this barrier then the question has the possibility of being answered. Our western conditioning leads us down the path that our consciousness is generated by our brain and in conjunction with that assertion, it stands to reason that without the body we cannot exist. Upon the ceasing of conscious awareness, we are left with a dissolution of self and that is a finality. Our concept of life begins, is tied to, and ends with bodily death. Another way to view consciousness is the metaphor of the television set that is a receiver of a signal. Our brains are tuned to the particular consciousness signal which makes us who we are and defines our reality. I would posit then that it is the ego who generates the self and this fear of finality. The death of our physical self and the persona we have crafted throughout our appearance in the material plane at this moment in time is for the ego the absolute end of the drama. Think of it as a musical composition or a play that eventually comes to an end. It can be recalled and remembered but when the band ceases playing then the music is but a memory. From this we get our first answer to the question of the meaning of life and that is in essence we are here in this temporality to play. We perform a metaphorical symphony of life while here on earth. Just as a piece of music can move us, inspire us, bring out emotion, cause us to reflect and act upon our thoughts or say a movie can bring us to tears, uplift us, excite us, and depress us, it is our lives that though taken as a snapshot in time may seem to be inconsequential, it does in fact affect cumulatively those around us and on a collectively larger scale, the whole of humanity and the planet. As the drama of our lives unfolds, we touch others in more ways than we realize. The sum of the movie of our lives, as it reaches its crescendo and final dissolution, is a marvellous construction. But we should take a step back here and examine life. It is not the ego and thus it is not perishable. The ego is just an expression; one of many expressions. Life changes and manifests in different forms when subject to the great multiplier, which is time. Our consciousness is a wave vibrating throughout the sum of existence and it just so happens it has settled for the moment in the physical plane which is governed by time. So, life does not carry death within it; instead it contains within it the catalyst for change. We are blessed with free will to affect the path we follow at all times. The meaning of life is to play, and through this marvellous experience which is sprinkled with free will, we are on a trajectory of becoming. The act of becoming leads to transformation as our soul vibrates into a higher plane and becomes pure luminous light in a state of non-organic awareness. Staying inert and not participating in the play or getting lost in this grand musical composition, just means you do not increase the frequency of your vibration and become greater; greater being a state of transfiguration that allows you to throw off the material bonds that tie you down. Instead, you remain in this plane repeating the class until you dance to the beat of the cosmic dance and transcend this existence at the cessation of physical life. So you see, the meaning of life involves participation and through this playing we are to transcend the mundane and the profane as our actions touch those around us and the greater whole. The love we share lightens the soul and allows for growth. The heavy heart, still filled with desire and unfulfilled longings, remains in the cycle of life and death.

The heart space is where you find the divine within you and all around you. The secret is in shifting your consciousness into a heart based path, Love, that's all. Once you show the universe that's your intention then you can do it. The labyrinth we call life is complicated but it is a maze of our own making. The minotaur we empower and then one day courageously we just side step this monster and never look back.

The meaning of life is an active journey towards self-realization which in spiritual terms is to head for the light. The ultimate purpose of our lives is to lead others to the light. Even if you are still searching for this light yourself, just the act of encouraging others to search is the noblest thing you can do. The tin man, scarecrow, and cowardly lion are our magi. Traveling on a path guided by the wisdom of the heart, imbued with courage, that are the sum total of the yellow brick road friends of Dorothy, will Guide us to thy perfect light♫.