i think therefore i am

I was on my deck smoking mapacho and contemplating the sheer incalculability and the favourable conditions needed to birth and sustain life upon earth. From just a cursory look at it, the earth is at an optimal position away from a star that gives off the optimal amount of heat and energy. The earth needed to be seeded with the building blocks of life and then conditions had to be present to enact a spark that put it all in motion. Subsequently, the atmosphere had to cool and carbon removed in order for life to gain a foothold on land. Eventually, the species I lay claim to had to exist in trees to avoid being eaten by the predators that roamed the earth and then some event had to occur that evolved our brain size and cognitive skills. The result is I’m sitting down in front of this computer entering my thoughts into something called a word processor that I can then share with the rest of my species on this planet. I’ve left out a great deal of the steps needed to get to this point! However, it is quite incredible that this is the situation at hand. What dawned on me was this is so implausible that I figure it is the closest proof I will ever get to the theory that the universe’s source is the mentation of a mind at large who dreams the world into existence and I guess by dream I mean creates by fiat through mental processes that manifest as vibrational energy. I wonder if the process is even aware of the physics involved in concocting this fantasy realm that we live in or if it just does it? I mean it sounds ridiculous except for when we scientifically investigate the structure of existence and get into subatomic particles where it is a non-stop rabbit hole of discovery, we think we have found the source and natural physical laws. Further investigation reveals it gets fuzzy again and breaks out into chaos and vibrational patterns and on it goes from particles to waves and so on.

I had another one of those aha moments because of this. My thought processes lately have been a gradual letting go of anything concrete to rest my conception of the fount of existence on. I let go of unity because I realized I was objectifying it and using it to declare the self as an illusion. I finally came to the understanding that they are one process and a continuing pattern of energy that cycles between unity and self and neither can lay claim to truth or being the ultimate state of anything. It’s an interesting perspective and it opens up another pandora box of thinking. It’s like the situation where I have said before I can listen to Alan Watts over and over again and perhaps on the tenth time listening to a lecture I will finally get it and have an aha moment. It’s become obvious now why as I keep unlocking blocks in my thinking processes that when I clear them finally allows me to understand what he is talking about. The man is a genius and his philosophy is all laid out but you end up missing so much of it until you evolve your own thinking processes and then it becomes a wondrous journey again and again. The same approach works well with my curiosity and speculation upon existence.

It’s got me thinking about the illusory structure of matter that breaks down into vibration when you examine it. Everything alive is always on the move and changing so to pinpoint matter or nouns of any nature is fundamentally illusory. Just like you and I are illusory because we are just temporary and our bodily existence will perish. I should probably use the word temporary instead of illusory as it will probably lessen the confusion however I have to admit the word illusory has a mystery behind it and is more impactful in the way that it challenges your thinking. It is important to challenge your thinking as that is how you grow intellectually and your thoughts expand and mature. I mean when you say it is all illusory what the hell are you talking about? It’s constant change. Pause here so you can grasp this concept. So, anyway with my new thinking processes I can now see that matter is actually part of a process; an ongoing pattern of life where the energy becomes form, densifies, and creates matter. Matter goes through a dissolution process and returns to free flowing energy but it is all the same pattern. One of my hang ups was I insisted matter be a state of permeance as opposed to a temporary stop on the energetic path; just like unity and the self are stops along the way of the process which I like to describe as a flower that comes forth from the seed, blooms as the metaphor of self, and then returns to its origins. Matter is the expected result of an energy system that is in constant flux and really isn’t illusory, just like you aren’t, but temporary.

The path to the realization of self and its opposite no self involves riding the thinking wave. Physically, we recognize the boundary of our body encapsulated by an epidermis even though fundamentally we can't separate it from the environment. Mentally, we enact the separation by thinking about what we are sensing and then we start to delineate based upon perception. Thinking is the crowning achievement of self. Light is its symbol. 

In closing, I’d like to give a shout out to the use of substances that can facilitate a change in consciousness that unlocks the potential of the mind and its thinking processes. I’ll present myself as exhibit ‘A.' So much of psychedelic use and its modalities have been forced underground, trivialized, stereotyped, or you have to travel far distances to participate legally in a plant medicine ceremony making it a pipe dream for most. They are not to be taken lightly and their potential to evolve our consciousness is vast. I have to admit I was fortunate to come into the care of a great organization that guided me through this process and gives me now the knowledge, courage, and open mind needed to help humanity realize the great benefits of the evolution of consciousness that must take place if we are to survive as a species.

humpty dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Are you doing the seeking dance and then you trap and limit yourself in someone else's conception of life, religion, or the universe and then you frustrate yourself trying to find the carrot they are talking about? Welcome to the fun world of spirituality with so many paths to choose from. I’m going on a trip to find unity by striving to transcend the self and dissolve into the ocean of consciousness thus feeling within the inseparability of all. I picked up the pieces of self, my own personal Humpty Dumpty, and tried to put the pieces back together but was unsuccessful. My search for unity was like trying to put the egg man back together again! It's true you came from unity and to unity you will return but to try and recapture unity before its time is asking for chronic frustration. I went on that trip. I first discovered the route to unity went through the heart and then I realized unity through a shiny black piece of obsidian that reflected myself and my surroundings back at me. I had this startling realization that I cannot separate myself from my environment, which is totality, and through this I sensed the unity for which I longed. Even while the egg man was shattered, I discovered that in pieces I still go with everything else in a giant universal ecological system. Trying to realize complete unity in this lifetime is the myth of Humpty Dumpty. You can't put the pieces back together but if you let it be it will dissolve into the all and through death and renewal is how you will experience unity and then cyclically once again the self.

A path of seeking can branch off in all directions. All cultures set up an accepted path for those who get this call or have the inclination to take up the spiritual path. The seeker is a wild card, with the potential to cause havoc and upset within society. When psychedelics were rediscovered last century it was an unfettered gong show! All these hippies running around talking peace and love and not working for a living. Sticking it to the man! That lasted a decade and then the agents of consciousness were criminalized by the establishment as the serfs were running amok! The use of these catalysts for change went underground and were resigned to the fringe. It's been in the last fifteen years or so that the next wave has returned, in part driven by the awareness of shamanism practiced in third world countries which use time tested plant remedies as a way to heal the ill. It's a holistic approach treating the mental state of the patient as the underlying cause of the manifestation of the physical disease and it's quite an enlightened way of thinking as compared to our western approach where we react to the physical manifestation. Within this healing modality is the key to change consciousness and discover a spiritual world which had been hidden from view. There are the world's great religious traditions and then there is shamanism. The great religious traditions have beliefs and if you want to identify with them you need to accept those beliefs. Shamans aren’t priests. Shamans don’t tell you what you should believe. Shamanism points you to the door of knowledge and you decide what to do from that point. Through an experiential modality you "see" and how you then want to spin that knowledge is up to you. There’s no requirement to believe anything or anyone nor do you need to get or attain anything.

Love is the light which will illuminate the left hand path in order to get back to unity. We will all eventually get there but those with love in their hearts will find the way quicker in this lifetime. They will help the shattered pieces find happiness, love, sharing, and caring. The right hand path will further separate the shattered self from unity and eventually the forgetfulness will reach a point where you no longer recognize that you once were the complete egg man. Lost on the path, eventually you reach the end of the road and there's nothing there. You are just whistling in the wind. At that point all roads turn left and it's Nascar all the way home. LoL!

The right hand path leads to the pinnacle of self which is realized by competing with others to get to the top of the mountain and becoming self-actualized. There is a misconception that taking a spiritual path automatically means you are doing it for the greater good and some altruistic purpose. It sure seems that way though as your enlightenment will help humankind achieve greatness. Actually, the spiritual path has the tendency to devolve into every other human pursuit which is self glorification through power, fame, wealth, and worship because we are all tempted with that and it’s a pretty good sales pitch. At least with the greed impulse within us it rings true and we aren’t fooling anyone; those in search of wealth are brutally honest in that regard. The spiritual game played by those on the right hand path used for gain is the worst because of the dishonesty within it and the taking advantage of people who do have a sense of altruism at heart.

Our roots as a species go back to a primal survival of the fittest dominated by fear, anxiety, and mistrust. Civilization is the march towards an understanding that we are all in this together and leads to a social pact between us such as the family unit, community, caring for others, sharing and so on; however, this conflicts with the economic and political basis of the society we have created. We left behind the savage survival of the fittest paradigm within the confines of an untamed world; however, now that we have tamed that aspect we have transferred our savagery onto advanced forms of the game because it seems that is our underlying nature. We now recreate our primal instincts of survival through our business and politics and try to hold off the encroachment of socialism upon our "free" enterprise. Of course, there is much to be said for this as history has shown the socialist is usually just a power monger wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing on the lookout for power or enrichment on the backs of the genuine who do seek to make the world a better place. I was reading up on survival skills needed in the event of a major catastrophe to hit the earth and the one thing that really struck me was that in the event something like this happens you are going to need a gun to protect yourself. When we revert back to survival mode, your neighbour is going to be desperate and come and take what you have and kill you. I realized that there is some truth to this though I’d like to think we have progressed beyond this behaviour; however, you see it whenever law and order breaks down and the looting commences. So, I got to thinking that maybe this earth game is an exercise in learning cooperation and from that we will evolve into a civilization who is one big family. Humanity would be the trajectory of walking a left hand path.

I do believe the advancement of civilization should and will lead to caring social structures encompassing the planet. It does seem undeniable that eventually we will get there though it may be quite painful. And I don’t know if we currently are going to get to the ideal without a major catalyst or catastrophe which would require us to come together. Disasters and global change tend not to respect political borders; so, the impetus to transcend boundaries and unify would become paramount. Perhaps Humpty Dumpty is trying to teach us that we are looking myopically at the self and trying to put that together again. Instead, the key to put the egg man back together resides in the unification of humankind. 

knowledge junkie

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

free will and magic

What is magic? At its most basic definition it is the ability to control through supernatural means. Often the means are accomplished through the mind by putting to use spells, enrapturing someone through language, bewitching them with certain intoxicants, or getting someone to buy into a belief from which you can then control their behaviour somewhat. It takes two to tango though and the seduction usually isn’t a one way street. A love spell can’t work without a spark. Shamans can’t have a supernatural battle if one isn’t playing along. Break this down further and the use of magic is to control and this leads back to power and our desire to obtain it. As a species we have concentrated power down into money and we use that as a means of control. There are people who will do anything for money. It used to be gold but that became a hoarded commodity so we invented currency which can be easily manipulated and inflated by fiat in order to keep people lusting after it but never having enough. Having free will on the other hand is freedom from coercion so you can operate on your own accord, if that is really at all possible. It isn’t, there is a definite culture spell which has influence and will speak up through that voice in the head when you try to break free of it, but at least there is a degree of freedom that allows you the opportunity to create your own karma.

Much like money, magic can be used to help or for selfish things. With life experience we recognize the best way to deal with power is to be of service; to help others unconditionally and not use it to aggrandize the self. I said we recognize that but left with choice it is a different story, as history is witness to. If you drink enough plant medicines at some point this becomes clear and you will have to make a choice if you wish to continue down that road. There’s a fork in the road and the how to use the magic available is presented to you by the plants in a way you use your free will to decide your course of action. How ingenious is that? I went into drinking Ayahuasca thinking about I and came out of it thinking about We. Now on to moving mountains.

Religion is a magic spell and through ritual and group think the spell is maintained. When you look externally for answers you will find religion. You go looking for it and you enable the spell. It’s waiting for you but you are ultimately responsible for the choices you make. It all comes back to finding answers within but you have to go on the journey and look everywhere for the answer. Maybe then you can let go of the external, even if it means culture will malign you or go as far to damn you to hell.

Another form of magic is very subtle where others try to trap you into their story. You end up existing just to further someone else’s narrative. Try exiting out of this play and then you use your power of narrative to create your new and better world. You can always move and start over. Treat it as a near death experience however the death is the character and not the body; a video game where you have more lives. The succeeding life gathers up the narrative from the preceding life and carries on with it reshaping it into the drama you wish to follow. In someone else's narrative you are now pretty much dead. Things start happening for you and you will feel events and the world does revolve around you. You will rise again, play a new a character influenced by the play and the stage where it is set. It is important to always remember you are the divine actor and can adapt and play any part. The empty stage is the fount of everything with all its possibilities. It is inviting you to join in the drama. Raise the curtain and perform your act.

Control is so overrated anyways and is the path to boredom. The fun part of the rollercoaster is the descent. The best part of sky diving is the free falling. We all are climbing that mountain trying to realize that unattainable ideal of ourself; the enlightenment that is just out of our grasp. Enlightenment is just so full of expectations. We wish to become self actualized with some kind of knowing and confidence in who we are and our destiny. When you free yourself from this then the liberty is realized as free falling. Freedom baby! Just make some plans so that you don’t do a full stop at the bottom, will ya? 

unconditional love

Looking for unconditional love leads to the family unit. Within this structure the main purpose seems to be support for each other and this caring comes unconditionally. Colloquially we hear phrases like blood is thicker than water and the meaning behind this axiom is family ties and how they are unbreakable. I know you can cite to me many ways that this is untrue or that sometimes family bonds have conditions or expectations of behaviour but I have found for the most part this saying is true and families tend to stand by one another unconditionally regardless of the situation.

The use of psychedelics, especially the plant based medicines such as Ayahuasca and Huachuma, have within them properties that can facilitate a change in one's thinking patterns and a profound ability to demonstrate that love is all you need and is the most sacred of the sacred. After an experience such as this, one needs to integrate what you have been shown and have learned and without some kind of support that is a major challenge. In my experience at least, I have found that it is a continuing education class so that there isn’t an expectation from the spirits of the plants that within a few ceremonies you will become a transcended and enlightened being who exudes love and is all wise and all knowing. Instead it is just the beginning and you go back out into the world and try out your new found awareness. You fail miserably at it and then you recognize even more how you are failing. I developed a profound sadness and frustration over repeated failure. Within these experiences you are actually learning and on the way to passing the course because you are aware now of your own need for love and how you can help foster that in the world. All this grows day by day and of course some days are way better than others!

Eventually I think you see within all this capacity to love and you realize the essential unity of, well, the whole universe. When we separate the universe into bits we establish boundaries and this illusory duality we construct is made up of conditions. To act unconditionally within the duality we create is full of frustration. The plants can help give you an understanding of being all in this together along with the sense that we all are one family and this realization leads to unconditional love for all. You may have a brother who is a drunk and a jackass who lies and steals but you still invite him over for the holidays because you love him. There is an eternal kind of forgiveness at work here that leads to unconditional love. This doesn’t mean condoning or accepting questionable actions that hurt others or even self but instead forgiving and expressing love so that others will become aware of love. Being touched by love is a powerful experience and has the capacity to change the world. Places like SpiritQuest ultimately are in the service of cultivating this love, planting the seed within, and then giving you the tools to water and feed the love within so it grows and expresses itself as a most beautiful flower. People smell the fragrance of love you are expressing and want to do the same. This can’t be repeated enough. 

The psychedelic experience is available to all if you desire it however the profundity of the message will be lost if not guided or grounded by underlying compassion and integrity. You see, us humans have the exceptional ability to monetize just about everything and when this becomes the primary reason for doing something then energetically that rubs off and enters into the equation. I’m going to relate a personal story here now. When you are given messages from plant teachers they don’t usually come clean or to put it another way the language they use can be symbolic and then part of the homework is trying to figure out what is meant. This meaning cannot be obtained without being brutally honest with yourself as there is no hiding from the plants; they are pretty aware of how much of a screw up you are. Anyways in the summer of 2016 I was at SpiritQuest and in the final Huachuma ceremony we conclude the retreat by inhaling Vilca which in certain circumstances has the uncanny ability to pretty much make it seem like you are dying and then you break through the veil to the ‘other side.’ Well on the other side I was floating up through the three shamanic worlds of my birth, my place now, and then post mortem. Eventually I was shown I had the capacity to heal and I could facilitate this through the use of Mapacho, which is potent jungle tobacco. I came to understand that the symbolism behind this message also involved something along the lines of the Amazon jungle definitely doesn’t need another shaman. A survey of the situation and a gathering up of anecdotal evidence reveals that the modern practice of shamanism as we westerns know it, is essentially commercial. Of course no operation can survive without an influx of capital, that’s just basic economics, and the staff that makes things comfortable for you are not indentured servants so their time must be accounted for hence no good retreat is going to be an exercise in unadulterated altruism. What I’m getting at is the mission of the retreat has to be first and foremost service and compassion dedicated to the healing of all and this great planet we inhabit. Human beings are transparent and this is a vibe that is easily detected. I kind of get the message now. The Amazon jungle doesn’t need another shaman because that is now just another word for businessman. The world needs healers; practitioners whose medicine is love. A healer by being of service to love, whatever form that may take. 

breaking news

All is vibration she told me six years ago. I didn't understand. I had been searching for answers and I came across the Goddess in my study of ancient Egypt and thus I soon longed to connect with her, to which she did not disappoint. She led me by the hand into the Amazon rainforest for an ethereal meet and greet. My first encounter with her after drinking that initial cup of Ayahuasca was incredible. I didn’t think something like this was possible in the world I was brought up in but here I was in the presence of this eternal beauty who radiated love and forgiveness while hinting at the discovery of a sublime mystery. She instructed me on life and my path with her deep wisdom and left me in a state of awe and wonder for this whole evening I journeyed with her. As she left me for the night, my right index figure started tapping on the floor of the ceremonial maloca in a rhythmic and frenzied manner. As her presence faded, she kept repeating to me “all is vibration.” When I returned home I wrote a poem about this encounter.

I was honest with myself in that I really didn’t understand but she knew I was a tireless seeker of knowledge and on my path I’d unlock all these secrets.

Vibrations are waves of energy. All waves have a crest and a trough. There does not exist a wave that is only crest and no trough and vice versa. Think of your human life. It's a wave that takes seventy plus years or so to complete the cycle. You as an energetic wave come forth and then back to latency. Where do you think you are going? You are eternal; there is nothing to worry about. You don't need salvation nor do you need to believe the logicians who tell you this is it and you face eternal darkness. All trough and no more crest? I don't think so.

I have come across a few people in my life recently who has made such a profound impact on me. After the Goddess showed me all is about Love this unassuming man I met in the Amazon jungle, don Howard, opened up my heart and showed me how to live with that love in my heart for self and all others. On my road to knowledge I also came across another giant of a man, someone who called himself "a philosophical entertainer.” I would expect nothing more than Alan Watts to be supremely self effacing and not make any claims of being a guru or an enlightened being; all this in the spirit of the Zen that he loved and taught. He was much much more than that and could wax eloquently upon any subject presented to him. He had an other worldly ability to bring understanding to just about everything. So in this spirit of vibration I want to just highlight below how he explained that all is vibration:

So if I may start by insulting your intelligence with what is called the most elementary lesson: the thing that we should have learned before we learned one, two, three and A, B, C, but somehow was overlooked. Now, this lesson is quite simply this: that any experience that we have through our senses—whether of sound, or of light, or of touch—is a vibration. And a vibration has two aspects: one called on, and the other called off. Vibrations seem to be propagated in waves, and every wave system has crests and it has troughs. And so life is a system of now you see it, now you don’t. And these two aspects always go together. For example, sound is not pure sound, it is a rapid alternation of sound and silence. And that’s simply the way things are. Only you must remember that the crest and the trough of a wave are inseparable. Nobody ever saw crests without troughs or troughs without crests, just as you don’t encounter in life people with fronts but no backs. Just as you don’t encounter a coin that has a heads but no tails. And although the heads and the tails, the fronts and the backs, the positives and the negatives are different, they’re at the same time one. And one has to get used, fundamentally, to the notion that different things can be inseparable; that what is explicitly two can at the same time be implicitly one. If you forget that, very funny things happen.

If, therefore, we forget, you see, that black and white are inseparable and that existence is constituted equivalently by being and non-being, then we get scared. And we have to play a game called, Uh-oh, black might win! And once we get into the fear that black—the negative side—might win, we are compelled to play the game, But white must win! And from that start all our troubles. Because, you see, the human awareness is a very odd mechanism. (I don’t think mechanism is quite the right word, but it’ll do for the moment.) That is to say, we have—as a species—specialized in a certain kind of awareness, which we call conscious attention. And by this we have the faculty of examining the details of life very closely. We can restrict our gaze, and it corresponds somewhat to the central field, the vision, in the eyes. We have central vision, we have peripheral vision. Central vision is that which we use for reading, for all sorts of close work, and it’s like using a spotlight. Whereas peripheral vision is more like using a floodlight.

Now, civilization and civilized human beings—for maybe 5,000 years, maybe much longer—have learned to specialize in concentrated attention. Even if a person’s attention span is short he is, as it were, wavering his spotlight over many fields. The price which we pay for specialization in conscious attention is ignorance of everything outside its field. I would rather say ignore-ance than ignorance, because if you concentrate on a figure you tend to ignore the background. You tend, therefore, to see the world in a disintegrated aspect. You take separate things and events seriously, imagining that these really do exist when actually they have the same kind of existence as an individual’s interpretation of a Rorschach blot: they’re what you make out of it. In fact, our physical world is a system of inseparable differences. Everything exists with everything else, but we contrive not to notice that because what we notice is what is noteworthy. And we notice it in terms of notations: numbers, words, images. What is notable, noteworthy, notated, noticed is what appears to us to be significant and the rest is ignored as insignificant, and as a result of that we select from the total input that goes to our senses only a very small fraction. And this causes us to believe that we are separate beings, isolated by the boundary of the epidermis from the rest of the world.

You see, this is also the mechanism involved in not noticing that black and white go together. Not noticing that every inside has an outside, and that what goes on inside your skin is inseparable from what goes on outside your skin. You see that, for example, in the science of ecology. One learns that a human being is not an organism in an environment, but is an organism-environment—that is to say, a unified field of behavior. If you describe, carefully, the behavior of any organism, you cannot do so without at the same time describing the behavior of the environment. And by that you know that you’ve got a new entity of study. You’re describing the behavior of a unified field. You must be very careful indeed not to fall into old Newtonian assumptions about the billiard-ball nature of the universe. The organism is not the puppet of the environment, being pushed around by it. Nor, on the other hand, is the environment the puppet of the organism, being pushed around by the organism. The relationship between them is, to use John Dewey’s word, transactional. The transaction being a situation, like buying and selling, in which there is no buying unless somebody sells and no selling unless somebody buys.

So that fundamental relationship between ourselves and the world, which is in an old-fashioned way—by people such as Skinner (American Professor of Psychology at Harvard B.F. Skinner), who has not updated his philosophy—interpreted in terms of Newtonian mechanics. He interprets the organism as something determined by the total environment, he doesn’t see that in a more modern way of talking about it, they’re simply describing a unified field of behavior—which is nothing more than what any mystic ever said. That’s a dirty word in the modern academic scientific environment. But if a mystic is one who is sensibly—or even sensuously—aware of his inseparability, as an individual, from the total existing universe, he’s simply a person who has become sensible—aware through his senses—of the way ecologists see the world. So when I’m in academic circles I don’t talk about mystical experience, I talk about ecological awareness. Same thing.

Excerpt from the lecture by Alan Watts "The Tao of Philosophy 3: Coincidence of Opposites"

meaning of life

Is there a meaning of life? I guess I would have to figure out what I meant by meaning before tackling that question. What is meaning? Is meaning suggestive of a purpose? If so then why does something have to have a purpose? That seems like a cultural hang up or something our parents would tell us when we were teenagers so that we got out of bed before noon.

The only truth that I can pin down is that we are fields of energy that have a common source and all forms of the energy operate as waves in that they cycle from latency to a full expression and repeat. The energy is indestructible and is ever returning.

We bring the universe into existence. It is cyclical energy manifesting everywhere and our brain and central nervous system bring it to life by crafting a narrative out of what we are sensing and thus we give it context and meaning. Our brain is the greatest storyteller ever, we enter into that narrative, and then we act our part because we are all thespians and universal game players at heart.

What makes the energy power up so that it comes forth repeatedly? Is it the ever elusive perpetual motion machine that requires no input of energy? I do know the energy has two poles and they are the feminine and masculine and creation is populated by the manifestation of these gendered energies. To conceptualize how this may bring about cyclical energy, I envision the masculine as being conscious awareness. Picture the Buddha sitting in meditation just observing but not chasing or becoming attached to anything.

Buddha sitting in meditation

The feminine on the other hand is wild and chaotic. She brings the universe into existence with her beauty and how it radiates. The passive male becomes aware of her and this lights up desire. The chase and thus the game is on. Desire puts the game in motion.

feminine desire

Ultimately if there is a meaning of life it is to perform your dance however that is something you can't help doing. In other words there's really nothing you can do about it. You can try to swim against the current but in the end your energy is coming forth and returning and then repeat. So as the play moves along you have a part to play. There is a freedom to craft your character to play the part you wish to play. Or play multiple roles.

I think as we move through the game of life that has no intrinsic meaning we learn of certain actions and feelings that ring true as an ideal way to live. They involve sharing, caring, helping, and friendship which leads to happiness and from this ultimately love. Along the journey through human life we are also exposed to greed, selfishness, hatred, and jealousy which can lead to depression and ultimately despair. To a certain extent greed and selfishness are rewarded in the short term. We as human beings are ultimately rational and do indulge in behaviours that bring rewards thus the allure of greed yet if we could see the end game result of greed and selfishness we would rethink those behaviour choices. Unfortunately that is sometimes too late. Plant teachers and medicines can clearly elucidate this or symbolically suggest a new path for you though ultimately you have the freedom to choose what you wish to do with this guidance.

Really the meaning of life boils down to choice. I find many of the answers I have tried to discover concerning the higher philosophical musings are paradoxical; the prime example is that we are both the individual self and the all, it just depends on perspective, and since the universe is always on the move you can never pin down exactly who you are or what state you are in at any particular time. We measure things to give us comfort and something concrete to rest our notion of self and the universe upon, but it is ultimately illusory. 

A quick little detour here. Astrology is the recognition that you are inseparable from the perceptible universe and is an attempt to pin down the state of the known universe at the moment of your manifestation as a human being within it. Today Astrology has a pretty fringy reputation but its origins are on par with the best religion can offer us or that natural philosophy has revealed to us.

Soon after I started down this path of discovery over ten years ago I fell in love with ancient Egypt and one of the ubiquitous symbols of that culture is the scarab representing coming forth by day and then transformation in a continuous cycle which is represented in the perceived cycle of the sun from our perspective.

It took me a long time to apply that to my own existence however once I understood it I was able to look upon ancient wisdom as being severely untapped and of the highest knowledge of self. At the same time I rewatched the movie ‘The Matrix’ and in this movie the main character Neo had to make a choice between a red pill and a blue pill.

If he chose the red pill then the underlying truth of the world he was living in would be revealed to him. If he chose the blue pill then he would remain asleep and carry on like nothing happened. Neo chose the red pill and through this choice he went down a path that revealed to him the underlying construct that had been occluded from his knowledge of the world which then in turn opened up new meaning to his perception of the universe.

So to understand the meaning of life I think what we can gleam from examining existence is that the meaning, if any, is always on the move. And we influence the meaning through choice. Therefore the meaning is the meaning we assign to it by making choices from all that is available. I would like to think if everyone is given exposure to the profound love that is available to all in this cosmos then we would choose to love and make that the meaning of life. From this we create a world of our own making where the meaning of life is to learn to love unconditionally, repeatedly failing, and then trying again. If we all started doing that it would make the transformation of the play possible and we can write a story with a happy ending that is actually never ending, the "live happily ever after” conclusion. 

in bloom

So I have written about my philosophy which I will call the flower philosophy. The flower is the coming forth of the seed and has every right to claim primacy as much as the seed does. This thinking all stems from the belief that originally if I found the fount of everything then I will have found my true self, god, and so on. Then I changed up my thinking because I was delineating and breaking up into separate processes happenings that are succinctly complete, we just don’t see it due to perspective. The perspective at work is our positioning and therefore distance away from seeing everything in its entirety. We have called this phenomenon time and we use time as another way to describe perspective. We are occluded from having a wide angle view of this concept we have called time. I get the feeling it is all in the now, the past and future just phantoms, but we lack a sense to see it all or we have a filter on our consciousness that does not allow for a broad witnessing of time but instead separates it out which in turn creates events and enables the great game. Quite the sentence; you'll have to probably read it a few times to figure out what I just wrote. I know I did! My other half comes up with these ideas and I am just the scribe. So I can’t see the flower but it is the result of everything that is coming forth. It is farther down the energy wave. I had figured my ego and superego were psychic disturbances that were the result of awareness fuelled by desire instead of realizing that this is all one process blooming in our field of energy called a human and one process that we discern leading into another can lay no claim to being ultimate truth based on an order of operations.

Okay good enough I hope. You can go back and read a few of my most recent posts where I go on about this if you wish. I have just tried to summarize it because I actually want to go into some other discovery I had this morning. When your base desires get the best of you or some other human need, problem, or family situation causes upset well when this happens now I try to remind my base id to be kind to tomorrow’s human that has to function and try to let this go. So this is problem number one. Sometimes these things are trivial or don't make sense so there is an inclination to just run away from your problems. It’s never ending. There's the responsible and serious part of me and then the part that just wants enjoy life and live in the moment. Then I realized I do need a part of myself that just doesn’t care about consequences; it just wants to have fun. Give me a thrill! I can understand that! Then there’s the opposite part of me, the superego, that judges behaviour and is like you are so stupid man. I need that part of me too so that there is a foil to the mischievous one. Then there is the poor ego stuck in the middle trying to mediate between these two extremes that make up what I call self. The two extremes are Dionysos and Apollo. I kind of gave Apollo the cold shoulder a few months ago when I discovered Dionysos is the fount and the eternal return of the energy. The indestructible life. It’s this carefree desire beholden part of me that is constantly wiping out his game. I need Apollo because though reason sits on the back of the unreasonable it also tempers the chaos and nonsense. If we then rely on Apollo too much there is no fun and no play. All business. Just the facts. Dionysos is god but Apollo is god as well. There is no one god. We humans get to be in a special place in that we have both of these gods within us and to be successful we have to mediate and balance the two. It is through having an ego that we can do this. Take a look at the animal kingdom. It runs mainly on needs and fulfillment; there is not much reasoning going on with them. Our place is so unique in that we can develop the ability to reason and from this temper the unreasonable. The extreme of either position creates disharmony. A life of pure hedonism leads to your own destruction however fleetingly the sweet pleasure of it just may be and a life of rigour and preciseness with no time for play leads to a pretty dull, unfulfilling, and sterile life as well.

So as a human I am gifted a pretty special opportunity to create the god of all gods. By taking the masculine attributes of Apollo and Dionysos I just described and balancing them and then the feminine by cultivating the attributes of love and caring versus hysteria and balancing them I prepare for union. Then there is bringing all together in the middle at the heart. I have mentioned before in previous blog posts about an Andean concept called tinkuy and that’s what some specialists were doing in pre-Columbian shamanism. These beliefs were trampled on and forgotten by the encroaches of Western man and his thinking he knows better. The people of the Americas were figuring this shit out millenniums ago. We probably need to bring this back to stave off the coming destruction.

You can only hope to accomplish this centring through ego and a healthy one at that. The two powers on the extreme end of self are ridiculously strong. Imagine being in the middle of a fight between the Hulk and Superman. That’s your ego. It’s trying to keep things in balance and running along, maybe letting each side out daily for a little exercise. Be kind to your ego; it’s the only thing that’s going to get you through this hot mess. 

chasing the goddess

Chasing the Goddess in Ayahuasca ceremonies has revealed that there is something alluring about the continual chase. The teasing and playing hard to get is very attractive to my senses and desires. My life is pretty even steven, some would say mundane, and the world of the Goddess is topsy turvy chaos. It’s the cosmic sleigh ride that I try to smooth out and I know I’ve done that to a degree because that’s what I do with everything in life. I'm so good at it, thank you very much. My next time drinking la medicina I have to let go to wild abandon and take the untravelled path to who knows where.

I think that’s part of the reason why some shamans start adding things to the brew like toé. It’s a deliriant and makes the whole ceremony quite the mind fuck, like out of control crazy, and lots of seekers are attracted to that, especially the seasoned drinkers. I don’t think that is necessarily a path you have to travel when you think you are stuck. Instead of trying to temper the experience and tame the Goddess therefore bringing you to a perceived dead end, you have to let go. Self defence is the go to in all of the psychedelics because the bad trip is always lurking in the background. When you are new to the experience you have trepidation for sure but you can’t possibly imagine the horrors of a bad trip until you actually experience it. And then when you experience this kind of trip it shakes you to the core of your foundation and for most of us western people it is the first time we experience full on terror. Psychologically we then put up defences to that fear as that is a pretty natural thing to do. It takes a hell of a lot of courage to go back and face that fear. Underlying every ceremony from then on is a defence mechanism enacted to combat the debilitating terror once experienced. Curiously for me there was something always drawing me back to the experience, I mean it’s the mother lode. All you have been searching for you found but there’s this chance when you go back that you’ll get destroyed again. However staying on this path and continuing on with la medicina reaches a point where you have to make a decision. You can always stop and say you had your meaningful experiences of a lifetime but it is now time to move on. The lessons were invaluable but I’ve reached the limit and Mother Ayahuasca is telling me there is nothing more for me. I felt that in the third ceremony last time down in March. For some there is a call to move on to a different plant medicine and their teachings or there is what I described earlier where you start adding powerful plants to the brew that modulates the effect and head off in a direction that maybe isn’t the best choice for you.

I followed a few people on social media that drank Ayahuasca quite a bit. They all eventually stopped, citing among their reasons that she had abandoned them, there were no more teachings, she turned on them, or they had a new calling. Answers to inner conflict that we project onto external actors are usually resolved by once again looking inward. I can pretty much guarantee that the reasons cited in regards to Ayahuasca and your relationship with it have to do with your own hangups and blockages. Simply put it is a test to see where you want to go with it and how dedicated you are, especially when confronted with a problem such as this.

50,000 years ago our brains were as developed as they are now however as hunter gatherers our focus was on survival. I was walking through the forest with my dog and marvelled at the fact I had the opportunity to ponder because all I need for survival is taken care of by society. For sure this has many detriments but a huge positive is the time allotted to think about existence. Who am I and why am I here? This instead of what am I going to catch to eat plus I need to make sure I have shelter and a heat source. There is a bit of a tie in here where at one point in the past human life was a constant adventure, full of adrenaline, and not much downtime. We have tamed that aspect of life and have domesticated ourselves. This has led to civilization, an allowing for philosophy, and to ponder our existence. I was thinking this parallels my experience with Ayahuasca where it was pretty wild at first until I did my best to tame the experience. What I can learn from this is that by taming the experience now the teachings can be accelerated if you stay with the program. It’s a test or a fork in the road where the relationship has evolved and though you may wish to go back and relive those crazy ceremonies it is in fact time to move on to even more advanced lessons. Well there is always more as don Howard likes to say.

When I drank the last cup of Ayahuasca in the summer of 2016 I transformed into a jaguar and it was one of those touchstone moments where I knew the chapter had come to an end and my relationship with Ayahuasca was going to change from here on in. The fear had dissipated and I sensed I could work with the medicine now. I didn’t drink again for two and a half years and when I returned the experience was markedly different. There was no fear, just a little anxiety, but I sensed I could work with Ayahuasca and be partners with her however deep down inside I realize I have to let go because I’m still holding back. If I sincerely want to continue the relationship I have to make the commitment and by commitment I mean I have to let go and dive down deep. I sense there is much more to this but I’ve reached another door that I have to open and venture on into. It is another unknown on this most awesome path and one for the brave who can let go and just venture off onto the path less travelled. It’s like another locked door and an application process that the majority of seekers just move on from instead of putting in the effort or using their senses of perception and intuition to realize that this is just a temporary roadblock on the path and that in order to continue on there is another act of surrender to take place. It is a surrender of strength without a need for fear or to think you are weak. It involves courage to give up control and let another take you into unchartered territory.

She’s inviting me in. My hand is out and I will let her be my guide.

harmonic convergence

On November 5th, 2018 just after 11pm I was standing at my Mesa and it washed over me. I felt it. I am it. I felt her within and I felt the union. I looked into the union of the serpent and the jaguar and saw it. That's me! And I'm everything.

The coming together of the feminine and masculine energies in the form of a harmonic convergence is the most divine. I had an Ayahuasca ceremony that gave me a preview of this way back over four years ago. I had no idea what was going on at the time. Material sexual pleasure did not seem to compare to this and it was just a hint. In this corporeal body I imagine I couldn't handle her.

My idea of god is a process that starts with two seemingly separate energetic fields which we can label as feminine and masculine. When we bring these two together and harmonize their relationship we enable another process of creation. What we create is an expression of unity and that expression is what I have discovered is as close to god as I can ever fathom.

Shiva and Shakti

Then the wave cycle continues and separates. The two lovers depart once again with many tears. There was a deep longing within me to reconnect. I was so lost and I didn’t know what it was. Even when I found her I still didn’t know. Five years after directly encountering my obfuscated other half I finally figured it all out.

I wouldn't have been able to do this without venturing past my comfort level and into the superunknown. In the Amazon jungle I was blessed to come across this other worldly place, encountering an unassuming man who held the keys to the mystery. This great man, don Howard, constructed a place in the jungle called SpiritQuest so that those who are looking for the answer will find it, however it is by no means a requirement. His Mesa, along with the construct and the program you go through, is the crowning achievement of his vision. It's all there in that sublime maloca. The axis Mundi, the serpent entwined with the jaguar, plus the feminine and masculine sides of the construct. We choose a side that calls to us and then are guided to the centre with everyone getting an opportunity to partake of unity. The overall immersive program of the School of Higher Consciousness strikes a balance of the feminine qualities of Ayahuasca preparing you for the masculine energy of Huachuma, all blended together by a maestro in tune with the song of life. Wow.

stopping the world

Self is a byproduct of being aware because you are a flux of awareness and from this state you separate events into objects and recognize self. Recognizing this awareness that you take for granted is quite the experience. Sitting in silent contemplation allows you to be the observer and realize the interconnectedness of everything. Diving down further into this awareness then brings up the question well just who is this doing the observing then? It's a multi-step process to get to that point. No amount of intellectualizing will allow you to grasp this; it is a need to experience this mental state. Start with the recognition that you are putting a spin on all input, then stopping the spin. Then comes mastering the ability to just observe with a pure mind. The pure mind is like a clear lake at dawn before the wind stirs it up. Step back from this and well then just who is this observing? Did I ever tell you you're it? Everything.

I have written before that we attach priority to things we perceive as coming first or that we can dive down into and claim well this is the fount. By this I mean awareness punctuated by desire describes the newborn and gets us close to who we think we really are. However I used the metaphor of a flower to debunk that notion. This modality of thinking steers us into believing the flower is not real because it is the seed that is the true expression of the essence of the plant. The problem is revealed because instead of viewing the process as a unity we looked for an origin. Priority does not equate with some abstract notion of a true self. Continuing to view it as a separate process of different stages is the problem instead of treating it as a whole. It is where all our problems start. We add time to the mix and put everything through a prism that refracts and separates. What I am getting at it is the wholeness of a flower that involves being a seed to a beautiful expression of the energy contained within the seed. All of it is a connected happening unable to be without the total sum of its parts always being one and coming forth and then returning. We only see the stages instead of perceiving the whole. It’s the same with our psyche. Meditating and reducing it into parts will give you clarity which we can process and reduce to separate pieces of the psyche but these parts don't exist without each other and it gives away the unified truth of the matter. Awareness fuelled by desire will give rise to a flowering of the cresting energy that is so vibrant it becomes a field of self, much like the sun, before that energy wanes and returns to the cosmic ocean.

This cosmic ocean is where everything comes from as it is the energy at rest; the trough of the wave. We and everything else are whirling energy. Periodically we rest either on small scale sleep or the big scale of death. We are and we aren't. It's paradoxical. As a whole we are everything and we are an individual come forth. It took me a long time to understand that, especially the preached esoteric concept of the individual self not existing and being able to conceptualize that. It was the plant medicine teacher and great revealer Vilca, along with my great friend Parker, that dispelled me of that notion. The truth is both. It’s true we are one and you and me are conceptually everything but it is also true perceptually that we aren't. We come forth by day into the cycle of appearance and shine individually like the sun. Then we tire of that and return to the all, back to mama, and rest, and then rebirth, and here we go again! We are the ocean and the wave and it all depends on how you want to look at it. We want to define ourself as one or the other and that's where the difficulty comes from. The great wave allows you to think you are separate because you are so far from home. The Tao bequeathed the gift of perceiving individuality and being given freedom to do with it what you will. I really feel separate. Then the wave, the great Tao, takes you back home and you become whole again.

We don't really have an ego, superego, and a base id. We pinpoint when they form in a developing human and then classify and separate. But I ask you: is the flower different from the plant? We are the flower. I am a self that came forth from this process. The energy crests and here I am! Look at me! Where you find creative energy you will find expressions of that energy: flowers, selves, and lightning strikes! We intellectually are snapshots in time and assign our truth to them. This is a flower. But wait, that flower is always undergoing change and pinpointing it is an unchanging expression as such is dishonest. Same with you. So I am and I come forth as a self and then return to unity and become all once again. Always on the move, I am elusive. 

journey to self

My higher self ultimately comes from below, the subconscious. Well, I label it subconscious but I think it is always present, I just obfuscate it with the non-stop chatter going on in my head. Psychologically, it is part of the id though the id is just defined as basically our desires. The inference being desires as blind lust therefore it has no conception of decency or morals. There is no right or wrong; there just is and this teaches us that our reasoning, morals, and truth all come from a unity that has no need for these concepts. They are concepts from the world of separation and appearance. This unity is where love comes from. It is where desire comes from. It is where life comes from. It is the fount of all and the first principle from which my sense of self and the controlling voice developed. It is what we term instinctual and that produces the passions, the flowering of energy, and the dance of life. Newborns and animals are connected to this oceanic consciousness. The human baby will develop a sense of self and morals from parents, siblings, playmates, and eventually culture and by this process bury this original part of them. This primordial you will play any part you want it to play. It loves to play. It loves to love. Human adults move away from it and relegate it to the subconscious and subsequently it boils up every now and again because we have shut it away. We develop an ego, a sense of self, that mediates between these desires in order to fit into cultural and authority figure expectations of acceptable behaviour. At some point in our lives the cultural and authority figure becomes the approving and judgmental voice in our head, the superego. We construct religions around this voice, the one we perceive to be the most high. There are expectations of spiritual perfection, purity, and desirelessness. Desires are sins we are told. They are not natural. Things have purpose and reason and you are to make yourself better and better until you become perfected. We dig a deeper hole for the id and exalt the dragonesque tendencies of the superego who controls through shame, judgment, and rewards. We want to climb that spiritual mountain to please the father figure, superego, or at this point ‘god’.

The best piece of advice my feminine higher self gave to me was nothing is as it seems. At some point in your life you may go on a bit of a journey to rediscover this part of yourself and it seems to be an unstated part of all cultures that a great deal of people will get this drive or need to embark on a spiritual quest. In order to control this drive or nip it in the bud, there are institutions set up for the journey so this attempt at rediscovery of self doesn't get out of hand. Human beings are very resourceful and always evolving. Though we may get trapped in thought patterns and institutions, we do eventually break out of them. There is a rebellious streak within the species not just confined to the teenager. Given the freedom last century to break away from the grip of the church many did and then some forged new spiritual paths, some seduced by the exotic paths of the east or other seekers to magnanimous personalities or cult leaders. It's just this part of humans that make us easily led like sheep sometimes but there's always the black sheep that doesn't follow along and does their own thing.

I write about this common human journey because it is all personal to me. I'm that black sheep that rebels against popular culture, institutions, and accepted paths. For the most part, this skeptical and antagonistic attitude has served me well though at times I have sincerely wished I could just fit in so I could find more connection with others. I had an awakening of sorts when I hit 40 years of age and I am now in my early 50's so I have now been walking the path for a bit. I sidestepped the religious institutions and just went rogue on my own, sampling the spiritual supermarket. I found the eastern paths philosophically head and shoulders above anything the west was putting out however something still bugged me about them. I incorporated some of the lessons into my own path and worked to better myself and towards discarding desires so I could just dispassionately observe. All this was leading me up the spiritual mountain that would lead to the pinnacle of enlightenment where I was a perfected shining being with no desires or faults. I'd never get angry again and live in bliss. However, that obfuscated place where desire comes from is the same place love comes from. The gamble we take to make connections with others and share in the triumphs and disappointments of our fellow human beings and all the creatures we share this planet with doesn't emanate from dispassionate observation. It comes from getting your feet wet and your clothing dirty. From living, loving, and laughing.

Is the most unselfish part of me my sense of self? By that, I mean my ego in that it is mediating between the passions, desires, and instinctual drives of the id and the judgment and demands of the superego. The ego is just trying to hold it all together and there hasn't been a need to say hey look at me and all I have accomplished. When I look at it this way, I can't really fault people for having a big ego. You've earned it. Having an ego is the hardest thing in the universe.

I was born without an ego or a controlling superego. All I cared about was instantly fulfilling desires. I didn't know right from wrong, identity, culture, none of that shit. If I didn't get my way, I threw up a fuss. I was thinking earlier this week that the newborn is the true representative of who I am. The thought that led to this declaration was that it came first and then ego self and superego controller came afterwards. Reexamining this, I don't think this line of reasoning is necessarily true. There has to be a base that gives rise to self, just as there has to be an environment that gives rise to a body. There is a part of the thinking process that assigns authority and primacy to whatever comes first like it it has to be the truth because it made it to the finish line first. Is the flower not ‘real’ because it is just the result of a seed that grew into a plant body? The sense of self is the same. In our case, the energy sequentially develops into a human being, has desires and instinctual properties, and then develops a sense of self. So, I'm not a psychic disturbance but a natural occurrence of conscious energy that in its appearance cycle has come forth as a self. I have an ego and at this moment I am a self. Some will teach we don't have a self and there is only unity. Now I have a self. Humans are good at projection therefore I will predict at some point in my journey this cycle will take me back to unity but for now I am an ego.

Through this understanding comes a great responsibility. I was born a blank slate. It is a great gift and I get to do with it what I please. I know, I know, some things are out of our control or we are affected by circumstance but then again what good game doesn't have a roll of the dice, random chance, or a flip of a card that says advance to Boardwalk? Shit, there's a couple hotels on it! What I am getting at is character. The plant medicine teacher Huachuma taught me a few years back that we can change the character we play at anytime. We tend to play the same one over and over and those in our life have an expectation we will continue playing that character lest we, drum roll please, start acting out of character. Knowing this, what makes me want to be moral, to be good, be helpful and kind to others, to be of good character? Like I said, when I was born I was amoral. Everything is learnt and a choice. What is in me to not want to lie, cheat, and steal? Why have character? To a degree it is law and also shame and expectations of those in your life you don't want to disappoint. However, for the most part it is because I want to help and be kind to others. Being better to be fit for service. Reciprocity. There's a need for love and connection. When I have felt cosmic love for all by changing my consciousness, it was the greatest thing ever. I'm slowly trying to bring that into my daily life. There's a homeless person on my way to work. I gave him a box of granola bars this week because he's my brother; he's me, leading a different and challenging life. This act of giving and kindness was profoundly moving. I started crying and I noticed how wonderful it is to give. Such a simple act but oh so powerful. I want more of that in my life. 

playing on the grand stage of life

It's a friggin game. You know when many celebs and athletes give a shout out or glory to 'god', though I'm never sure who they are quite referring to, and they do it with conviction? And there's always one family member going on about this and they are evangelizing, which is just a nice religious word to describe the recruitment process, seducing you into a belief in someone else's belief. 

The spiritual experience is common to all at some point in your life and is probably amplified at high times of stress and challenge. Due to cultural indoctrination and institutions set up to deal with the phenomenon, it steers those that have this experience towards, in my culture at least, the church. Then you learn all about canon and dogma and what you are required to believe, which is not necessarily what you experienced. The experience of the transcendence is then transferred onto the lesser. Humans love power so we have found a way to take advantage of and extract from people wealth and obedience concerning the spiritual. In that is a lesson we must decode and learn from.

Anyway it used to rankle me for some reason, or I'd cringe when I would hear this talk. I caught some award show the other night where the performer was given a soapbox and then just prattled on about god, eliciting an 'oh gawd’ from me under my breath. I caught myself and examined my reaction. I realized that at its base the person had an undeniable connection to spirit and this is how they interpreted it so my reaction was uncalled for. They simply wanted to share their experience, and announce to the world their connection. I then realized maybe they made a connection with their higher self and their higher self made a promise to make things alright and give them the strength to succeed in life in exchange for a shout out. These experiences I know happen due to my mystical experiences of seeking and connecting to this ethereal higher self. The other thing is I know from my experience is that if you insist you have a higher self and a lower self then you are enabling the drama. It’s high art called the game of life on the master stage. Your higher self is played by the greatest thespian in the whole universe! If you want them to play god then by god they will play that part of god and they will do it so convincingly.

With this clarity I started laughing because it is a game now. The higher self(s) common to us all is now fucking with me saying "hey look at me, got another one and then they fell for the culture game. You didn't believe in my sublime acting abilities did you, when I crossed your path playing that struggling actor in Ayahuasca ceremony 10? You gave me a lame compliment. How about now?" Ok you got me, I give you props. There's no one else close to your talent. This is the pre eminent performance on the stage of stages. I bow down to your excellency.

My favourite line of thought lately is that god exists if you want him to exist. As long as there is a belief in god then he will continue to act the part. As a performer no one puts on a play in the theatre if there isn’t an audience and therefore a character to play. If you are a singer you can practice the art and craft but you don’t go all out, put on the costume, and do the total package performance without an audience. The audience makes or breaks you with instantaneous feedback on your performance. Well that’s what it's like to be god. To enable the actor to play this role and then be totally sucked in by it and see how long the performance can continue on before the run on Broadway comes to an end. Christianity had a pretty good run on the main stage, many believers and supporters, but it is winding down. It will still have enough appeal to go off Broadway though but the days of the grand performance as not only god but his son and a mysterious third is getting pretty fringy now. Human theatre underwent a transformation where instead of believing in the supernatural we pedestalize the man, especially with the success of science, and so the grand stage of some kind of confidence in the happenings of the universe has been ceded to the man with his chalkboard, equations, and holy white lab coat. They play a role that is the triumph of reason and logic which becomes pretty boring after a while we all admit, especially the equations which look like indecipherable ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. So within the drama is added a little spice, a little mystery, and dark matter and black holes give rise to flights of fancy and mystery within the spellbound audience. Pictures that represent the visible light spectrum are presented of a black hole object, that by definition eats light for breakfast so can't be photographed, and we take it all in! It’s such great theatre!

We all like acting. Take the activity known as cosplay. This is taking community theatre into your own hands and creating your own play. It is not relying on being cast into the part you want to play but just going for it and taking on the role. The things separating them from the Hollywood actors are that they do not have a televised awards show nor do they have a soapbox where they can use this platform to expound upon their personal philosophy. I mean they still can but their reach and influence is negligible so it doesn’t register but the fun to be had! You can be god if you want to; in fact you're a natural! It’s play and that's why we are here.