indestructible life

It’s important to study mythology and the goddesses and gods if you are a seeker of wisdom and knowledge. Contained within these myths, are wisdom bombs that withstand the test of time and are a check against the obfuscation of language and culture. The indestructible life force behind the body and powering you up is the eternal energy that just is. The Greeks had a word for it, called zoë, which they differentiated from individual biological life of a perishable nature which they called bios. This speaks towards the importance of language and the different meanings of life that we have lost that were ingrained into the Greek mind. This same situation pops up again with our conception of love which we leave as a catch all and depend on modifiers to describe how we are feeling. The Greeks in turn, used multiple and differing words all related to the core concept of love, that related precisely to the specific feeling whether it be romantic love, brotherly love, a mother’s love, unconditional love, and so on.

It is a good exercise to open the mind. My English language steers me in the direction of thinking about life with just the one meaning and that it begins and ends with my biological body and I treat everyone as an individual who concentrates life within their own personal biosphere. I don’t ever give thought to a power behind all life that gives rise to everything and is the arcing presence behind the creation of life because language shields me from this way of thinking. I don’t feel immortal because I have little exposure to a legitimate concept that bestows immortality upon us however there is a force that is indestructible and it is the power behind everything; an energy which the Greeks called zoë.

You can’t kill or destroy this power. A gun does nothing. You can’t stomp it out or burn it. You can try and tear it to pieces but it just adopts a new form or reforms. It lies behind all and is forever coming and going in a cycle of creation and destruction, vibrating in a constant transformational flux. Zoë uses the power of the Goddess to keep reappearing. The feminine is the creator that gives birth to recurring biological forms, allowing the divine actor to take the stage once again and perform the dance of life. The life form is the vehicle for zoë to reappear in our world; the ever-changing and transformational glory of indestructible life.

In my never ending journey on a ship of fools, I’m starting to understand this power called zoë. My biological body is a finite structure animated by this power. This eternal power doesn’t expire and is forever pulsing with a huge amount of energy. It’s the body that eventually slows down and has trouble accessing the power. There is an advantage to this slowing down though as awareness increases and you can sit with yourself and get a feel for what is happening: to you and all around you. I was walking on a path in the woods yesterday and came across a patch of overgrowth that had all these bees and deer flies buzzing about. I knew that was the power concentrated in a little insect and the buzz was the sound of the energy. It was popping, zinging, and having a glorious time. I felt like I was in the midst of a day with Huachuma, with my senses alive and noticing all this wonder. A butterfly came into my view and the majestic fluttering while riding the wind gave me a glimpse of the artistry contained within this power.

It got me thinking about how I have encountered this power in my mythological studies. The ancient Egyptian Heb Sed festival stands out as a celebration of the virility of the Pharaoh. He shows off his strength and concludes this display by maintaining an erection and masturbating to completion. For real! They had an elaborate ceremony for this act. The ability to prove he is still virile is a testament to the power still coursing through him. There is a depiction in a tomb of a courtier of Amenhotep III that describes a renewal of the Pharaoh’s power in which the starry serpent of the sky, as the goddess Hathor, is invoked in order to propitiate the continued strength of the king through granting him this much needed power. I also remembered in Lao Tzu's ancient Chinese Tao Te Ching, the passage where the power is being described as coming forth pure in the erection of an infant male.

Being full of power is like being a baby.

Scorpions don’t sting, tigers don’t attack, eagles don’t strike.

Soft bones, weak muscles, but a firm grasp.

Ignorant of the intercourse of man and woman, yet the baby penis is erect.

True and perfect energy!

All day long screaming and crying, but never getting hoarse.

True and perfect harmony! To know harmony is to know what’s eternal.

To know what’s eternal is enlightenment.

Increase of life is full of portent: the strong heart exhausts the vital breath.

The full-grown is on the edge of age. Not the Way.

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way – Ursula K. Le Guin

To know what’s eternal is enlightenment! Plant medicine teachers reveal the eternal and the homework is to understand it. Then you know. Additionally, how much is our sexuality connected and tied to this power and why does it makes us feel so alive? I thought of how zoë enlivens our bodies and gives us that feeling of strength and virility; personified by the ancient Olympian and the modern decathlete. Also, the bodybuilder who takes this power and shapes it in the human form. Plus, the artist who creates and the scientist who discovers by accessing the creativity, wonder, and wisdom within this power. I also wondered about how the power is taking this amalgamation of flesh and bone and granting it the charge needed to act. I thought of how we can express this power and how it manifests within creation. In the jaguar, you see in the ferocity of the animal this power and in the fur the patterns displaying its savage grandeur. The flower coming forth is the grace inherent in life. The eyeball and its exquisite intricacy and stunning beauty defy words.

This power is mostly hidden. It’s always there with us but for the most part we are oblivious to it and once again because of language we never think about it or go looking for it. There are ways to access it however and in order to re-introduce yourself to this power you have to find a way to change your consciousness. I know of a few methods. A surefire way to directly access this power is through the plant medicine Huachuma. It will sharpen your senses and allow you to recognize this power free flowing throughout your body. At first, it is quite the strange experience as you feel this coursing energy envelop your body. With experience, you will then be able to start to work with the energy. Strong, powerful, lustful, challenging, teaching, rewarding, and connection are some words that come to mind. Connection is the biggie. Through the commonality of this power between all it becomes possible to make connections with nature, others, and yourself through a sub-channel of communication we don’t normally use. Perhaps that is not correct. I think we do use this mode of communication all the time but we don’t know we are engaging in this transmission. It involves harmony and resonance with others. Mental telepathy is a thing; we just don’t have the requisite experience and natural ability to change consciousness enough to recognize it. Plant medicines will show you it is possible and help you cultivate this power. At its core, this power is vibration. All life is vibration and the language of frequency plays out on a scale hidden to us until we unmask its use through changing our consciousness. Changing consciousness allows us to experience the world from a different perspective instead of the frequency we normally lock to that obfuscates much of what is going on behind the scenes. The way we operate in the world is oblivious to this power and the fundamental connection we have to all life, and to zoë.

The ancient Egyptians referenced this power in their art as someone’s double which was the connecting same source life force running through us all that came from the power of the Goddess called sekhem.

Ka power represented as a double

The Hindus call it the subtle body (sukshma sarira) which is the expression of the chakra system and their power centres within. Zoë is the power expressed by the kundalini serpent that rises on up through the chakras. The energy that propels the serpent upwards is zoë. The expression of the power sexually results in bliss and waves of serpent energy coursing throughout the body. It leaves and ever returns, thus the need to recharge. Fully charged, you can eventually express the energy via a different modality. It can still be strong and pulsing sexualized energy but instead of the genital route you can enliven your subtle body and make it shine and pulse. It’s called working with the power and through it you can heal and fully enliven your spiritual centres. This is true enlightenment through tantric practice for anyone who is interested. All of us on the pure and holy path towards enlightenment run from tantra because of its association to sexual power and sex isn’t spiritual; it’s dirty right?

The ancient Minoan god Dionysos is the image of indestructible life. In the myth, zoë is always returning through the auspices of the goddess Ariadne; he mystically impregnates his wife who subsequently becomes his mother.

Dionysos and Ariadne on the Derveni krater from the Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum

The ancient Egyptians called this phenomenon the kamutef which means "bull of his mother."

Ithyphallic Amen-Kamutef from Luxor Temple

Originally in mythology, the ever-coming god was sent away, ridiculed, and torn apart by the Titans but this immortal god always returns. The god is zoë; the one behind all life. Dionysos, once discovered, is the liberator par excellence, freeing one from care, worry, and the self through madness, ecstasy, and potent unmixed wine; the wine being an all-inclusive symbol of intoxication that throws off the chains of self-restraint and cultural expectations. At its best you are free to love all; at its worst you kick down the door of repression and upset the guardians of society.

Dionysos can be described as a he-she. Dionysos is the link between the living and the dead and thus he appears in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries with Persephone as she descends into the underworld and returns with new life. The awesome power you can feel flowing through you is Dionysos. I will do my best not to pronoun Dionysos as the presence of the god encompasses all. Dionysos is the new life of the grape that appears courtesy of the sun and the rain. Dionysos is a vegetarian and the god also eats raw meat. Dionysos comes forth as a creator, as a vegetarian Dionysos preserves life, and by trapping wild animals in the forest and rending them alive, tearing their flesh and devouring it, the god is also the destroyer. The god is a paradox encompassing life and embracing death. Dionysos dances delightfully upon the thread that binds the living with the deceased. 

Dionysos could just be the god for our tumultuous time. The god is a liberator from the restraints of society and culture, allowing all to embrace their passions and kinks. Transgenderism, free love, freedom from identification, and gender fluidity are all in Dionysos’ retinue. These underground currents within society always return to challenge the status quo and invite cultural revolution or repression. Shall we send the liberator god away once again or this time integrate the perverse into society? A little has to be let in or the dam is going to break. Can’t you see it is happening now? Society is being challenged and walls are coming down. Chaos is rushing in. History informs us of the coming backlash and repression or alternatively the crumbling of a civilization. However beware of the forces that rush in when society collapses as that is never predictable. There’s no escaping this influence and it will always be a part of the fabric of life and our attempts to organize and preserve our way of life. The forces of authoritarianism stand at the ready to take advantage of the Dionysian impulse within all civilizations.

Dionysos is the axis mundi who is the link between the dreamer and the dream. The god is the complete psyche; madness and all. Dionysos is the joker and wild card who upsets the jenga of expectations and conformity and lets it all ride on the outcome of a game of chance. The god resides in the orderly pack of playing cards, shuffling the deck, and inserting wild outcomes of chance within the game of life. Dionysos gets on the roller-coaster of life and turns it up to 11. You think you have it together and then Dionysos comes along to upset the perfectly stacked applecart or to scare the living shit out of you and chase you all the way home. Face it, the potential for self-destruction is such a kick, especially when you are indestructible. What game can I play to give this sensation junkie a thrill? How long can I keep up the game and keep upsetting the pillars of society before I’m asked to leave? Conversely have you ever felt you didn’t fit in, especially when you were a teenager? Didn’t you feel there was something funny about the game adults were playing that you knew was bullshit, so you rebelled? But you grew up and decided to fit in and play that game. The strategies you developed as a kid to fit in you levelled up in order to fit into the adult game. Everything eventually has its reckoning. I want to be free. 

harmonic entanglement

The harmonization of the feminine and masculine on a cosmic level is the same template as found here on earth. In other words, it is a random occurrence and two patterns meet and fall in love which seems to me to be a word that can be used to describe harmony. Energy patterns meet and harmonize thus creating offspring. In the cosmic model, the offspring is the universe. In this conception, there are as many universes as there are divine couplings and each set of parents gives their children the free will to grow up and become a reflection of their divine parents. Parents are tempted to guide their child in their development but ultimately let them grow and prosper on their own as this allows for growth and understanding of self; self being consciousness.

I now have two conceptions of the origin of the universe. The other one is a model where a cosmic harmony of feminine and masculine polarities dream the universe into existence and this reality is defined as the splinters of consciousness which have the illusion of independence from the whole. The way each distinct consciousness acts helps psychoanalyze the whole so the great self can understand self better. My two concepts share the similarity in which there is a connection between the divine feminine and masculine and from this is produced the universe as either the divine child or a dream. Both models contain the sum of the feminine and masculine. The child conception recognizes our fundamental unity while the dream accentuates our separateness while encouraging one to wake up from the dream and realize unity.

Why do I love something? Well, because it gives me a good feeling; a feeling of connection, of compassion, of pleasure, of safety. There is a feeling of well-being associated with pangs of love. It also amps up feelings of separation when what you love is not with you and a longing to be in their presence. It’s leading me to realize that love is energetic harmony; whatever form that may take. We are all probably familiar with the romantic kind which is a strong vibration which is very addictive; like a drug including the requisite withdrawal symptoms. It’s instructive to sit with the remembrance of that feeling and try to deconstruct it from a rational point of view. An example which will help understand the idea of harmonic entanglement is the modern pop song. These songs emit vibrational patterns which hook the listener. The hypnotic pull is strong and creates the desire for more. We are addicted to novelty and experiencing this feeling again and again. It is natural that over the course of a lifetime you fall frequently in and out of this love. The kick experienced with each harmonic entanglement, though somewhat familiar, is a new mountain to climb. Taking what I know about energy, thanks to plant medicine and their teachings, I can extrapolate the feeling of love into the heightened energetic state experienced with Huachuma and draw some pretty amazing conclusions.

The harmonic entanglement of disparate energy patterns, as seen through the lens of the great cactus, produces visions of rainbow fireworks and orgasmic sensations throughout the whole body. You can find this connection with others, through nature, and through finding peace and love with your own damn self, in essence bringing all together within the sum of the feminine and masculine. There is a lot of truth to the saying that to fix the world first fix yourself and part of that process is self-love and finding this self-love is discovering your hidden soulmate and having a torrid love affair with self. Once you reconcile within, then you can project that love out into the world and light up humanity.

What a wonderful teaching the plants have given me. It is definitely a course and their knowledge is not something that is discovered with just a couple weeks of class. It is on-going; including copious amounts of homework. My maestro and human teacher don Howard explained that he considered it malpractice to offer just one Ayahuasca session; rather he recommended a cycle of work over the course of a week which involved from three to five ceremonies. Having just the one ceremony would lead more towards confusion, as what the plants teach is revealed over the course of time and the initial ceremony may be a session for purification or to get you thinking about something which is then revealed in a later ceremony, making the lessons more powerful and long lasting. I also think don Howard was holding back a little bit as well. Since he was also running a business, it might be perceived as being a little crass if he told everyone they should come back year after year to continue on with the plants. I have no affiliation with any retreat centre so I’ll just say it as I see it. Also understand that I’ve been blessed to find a place which enables the seeking and understanding to continue, minus any drama or questions of motive. It might not be the case for everyone; perhaps I’m just looking at this from my own personal lens but I think the maximum benefit out of a relationship with plant teachers spans the course of years and multiple cycles of work. I say that with understanding my own personal motivations as an inveterate seeker of knowledge and understanding. Within a cycle of work you may find love and ultimately that is all you need. I needed six cycles of work with them to start to piece together the energetic connections I feel. I’ve always felt the energy but didn’t understand it. I was challenged after my fourth cycle of work to figure it out. Two cycles later and I’m going to write an exam on this one and score pretty high. 

slowing down duality

There is something to the Freudian concept that everything we do is related to the sex drive and positioning us in a way to fulfill our sexual desires. We strive to attain power in order that we may have the ability to choose whatever partner we please and control that partner's behaviour. Equally valid is one who wants to relinquish power to another because of the sexual thrill that state enables. I think you can make an argument that this may be a little too overreaching and I think if you removed the sexual part of it then it is a little closer to the truth as in it is really desire fulfillment that makes the world go around. This is demonstrably true as in the world is the product of our desire and whole classes of religious or spiritual activity, such as Buddhism, stress how it is through non-attachment and the eschewing of desire that we can transcend our condition of suffering. One soon learns that you must give up pleasure and rewards in order not to suffer and thus the dilemma. If you desire not to desire then as a result you cease to be human and will soon lose the desire to even go on.

I was thinking about this because it had a relationship to the blog post I wrote concerning the creator and destroyer. Fundamentally there are two powers in the universe: the feminine and the masculine. One of them creates and the other destroys thus enabling all of creation and allowing it to fundamentally keep renewing itself in a never ending cycle. One power can’t exist without the other and though each tries to get the upper hand, the ability to become dominant will lead to its inevitable decline and the rise of the other power. If we create too many things, the sheer volume will eventually choke out others and the result will be destruction and when the death has played itself out then from the ashes will arise new life. It is a harmonious relationship that sometimes might seem cruel and I am finding it at work in all aspects of life, much like a Freudian would see the phallus present in every guise.

I have noticed the older I get the more conservative I become and I have recently discovered it is because I see the life force of my body dwindling and the eventual destruction of my figure getting near. My knees are aching. To counter balance this escalating condition I want to hang on to what I had and from this conservatism comes in to play. I don’t want change anymore. Change is killing me! I am channeling the preserver and trying to find balance in between the two polarities. From the standpoint of my personal philosophy, I never really wanted to upset the system but instead I was a proponent of libertarianism whereby I believed people should be free to do whatever they wish as long as it is not harming others, within reason of course. We probably should stop at red traffic lights. I still hold these views but what is interesting is despite all efforts of media and social engineering projects to steer me towards feel good socialism, my internal reaction is to move politically further away from them; this reaction despite knowing that unity of the species is our only hope. There’s a power and control dynamic within these movements I am not comfortable with; I know they are not headed towards the unity I seek but instead are power grabs cloaked in equity, and the mob and groupthink paradigms I have avoided throughout my life as they curtail free speech, breed authoritarianism, and not at all freedom. Current events are just doubling down on this and expediting my move towards the right. I think I’m not the only one who feels this way.

What is fascinating in all of this are I believe these forces we are witnessing are derivative of the concept of the creator and destroyer. Each power needs a tremendous outpouring of energy in order to come forth and then once established would necessarily become conservative in order to consolidate and preserve their position. Look at America: it was rebellious and destroyed the oppression of the monarchy of Great Britain and these revolutionaries established this amazing country; though probably not so amazing if you are one of the indigenous peoples whose way of life was being destroyed. The USA grew and became the world’s foremost power at the peak of its strength but playing up against that position now comes the eternal check on its power. The forces of destruction seek to lay claim to its many sins. The destroyers of the left see no redeeming qualities but instead seek to fundamentally change its economic system and way of life and threaten to do so by methodically destroying all of America’s institutions through violence and cultural revolution. The sins of America are systemic and the only way to cleanse it of these transgressions is to bring down the whole edifice is the claim. This is the eternal struggle between the creator and destroyer and is predestined to play out in order to keep it all moving along. Where is it written that a pocket of civilization will last forever? How does America meet this challenge? How do I meet my own challenge as I finally can see my demise in the rear-view mirror? I eat better, get more sleep, exercise, and prioritize what is important to me and what I want to accomplish in this lifetime. It should keep the forces of destruction at bay for a while longer now. Eventually they will return again stronger and come at me once more. It’s a game now where I see how long I can hold them off. Perhaps that is the future of America as well. 

creation and destruction

The child that is the result of the union of the feminine and masculine powers and the subsequent Big Bang is the key to finding our way back home. The child is the universe and contains within their being a little bit of mom and a little bit of dad. The universe is the result when two divine forces meet and harmonize. It is an interesting mind experiment to consider the implications of this way of thinking of existence. In our world we propagate life through the coming together of woman and man and therefore this fundamental truth we can project out into the nature of existence with as much confidence as is possible. Therefore the birth of our universe is the same result and why I refer to it as a child. What is striking to me though is that energy is the underpinnings of all of this and it forms patterns. Our universe is the result of the two polarities coming together that create a new form. Creation seems to be as fundamentally a part of universal nature as anything I can imagine. When I look around I see constant creation and destruction; in other words life and death. Our core loves to create and then eventually form disintegrates. The divine feminine and masculine create form and this form supports an infinite amount of new life forms until like everything it meets its eventual dissolution.

We are headed towards destruction. That is baked into the game because it is a cycle of creation and destruction. The nuanced realization though is that we can mitigate the destruction. We don’t have to head on full boar into the maelstrom. Destruction is necessary for creation. As the masculine destroyer I tear apart forms and allow for the sublime act of creation. Without the destroyer nothing is created. It’s a hard one to accept. Another way to look at it is the garden analogy. Every so often you have to prune the plants and clear out the deadwood in order to create more space for other energy patterns to grow. On a larger scale the same is at work.

If we don’t wake up within the dream then for the most part we head full on towards destruction. Waking up within the dream compromises the study of behaviour but seems necessary in order to love all. Therefore we do need consciousness as a remedy to suffering. We do need to awaken as many as possible. Within all forms of creation we need to be aware of our origin, unity, and inclusiveness. If we remain isolated and look at everything through a prism of separation then it doesn’t work. It leads to a world of hatred, scarcity, and strife. How fast we head towards destroying ourselves is based upon how much love and inclusiveness we let into the paradigm. Make no mistake, the world will eventually end as the sun heads towards its inevitable supernova and therein lies the challenge. Can we make it that far or will we destroy ourselves in short order? The smart money is on us destroying ourselves first.

Through destruction, the energy is transformed into something else spectacular that experiences consciousness in a new regard. We have become so immune to our situation. Every moment we spend on earth should be accompanied with a gasp of incredulity and an exclamation of WOW! Instead we think no big deal and move along in search of novelty, lest boredom envelops us. Paging Dr. Huachumon.

My character and being I call Paul is finite and ever changing. What is behind this life form is that energy and it is common to us all and where we find unity. That energy you feel is the tie that binds. It is the connection between all of us and how we can communicate and make a connection with others using an universal language. If you can connect with others, even for a split second, you will feel that cosmic love. Feeling that cosmic love will transform you and others around you. Love has an infinite capacity to go viral. It's a worthwhile goal.

So all that are reading this at this moment are a pattern of energy that is in a state of decay and eventually dissolution, as it is the natural order. It is the created body that is subject to the coming destruction as the energy that powers it is so strong and is in harmony with the total power of the universe and will remain a part of this creation until the universal pattern dissolves back into the whole. And then at some point it will start all over again. In terms of finding our way back home that is what you need to understand. This is our home and our playground. Mom and dad are always around. They created this world for us. We have all eternity to play. When it’s time to come home they will let us know.

Are they the only parents? That’s a good question. Are there multiple universes that have been created; all a part of the union of feminine and masculine? What is the ultimate origin? Is there a master feminine and masculine power that everything is derivative of or is it a collection of different vibrations that has no master? It leads philosophically into the same idea as searching for a god particle that underlies creation and not being able to find a master particle. Instead everything is just a pulse or vibration. I wonder if that is how ultimately everything functions where there is no boss but just decentralization of liberated energetic forms? Freedom, as in free will, underlies all. Attempts to control energetic flow results in blockages and then finally the dam breaks or there is a monumental explosion. Harmony is obtained by free flow. 

Who is ultimately dominant? The feminine creator or the masculine destroyer? Is the outcome always destruction? Is that the natural order of things and the fuel behind the eternal vibration? The wise one within says you can’t have one without the other and in finding that truth you discover beauty. 

goddess ganesha and me

The universe is the dream of the fully realized union of the sacred feminine and sacred masculine. A dream is the reflection of one’s psyche, the reflection refracting into infinity and beyond. The child is that psyche and is the dream. The child is the universe. Our journey is to take us back home where the family reunites.

Dammit we are so philosophical as a species! How frustrating is this to the cosmic dreamer? Reflecting the psyche into their dream they created the universe. It's a giant simulation designed to come to terms with all their accumulated baggage. Instead of focusing solely on coming to terms with what troubles them, alas a great majority of the time is spent in contemplation of who we are and why are we here? How funny is that? We are so introspective we go straight for the ultimate question. I just wanted to figure out why am I such a dick with a predilection towards destruction and instead I'm left with existential questions about the fundamental underpinnings and purpose of life. I can't escape it and I have to know. Next massive dream I have to be clear to all that it is a dream, enjoy yourself, but please come to terms with hatred and strife and why can't I just love myself?

I had such an amazing dream the other night; well it was amazing in that it revealed something I had been curious about. So here is what happened: I fell asleep on the couch and woke up around 3 am. My dog wanted to go out so I let her out and left the door open enough so that when she wanted to come in she could just nudge the door open. While I waited for her, I fell back asleep on the couch and started dreaming. My dreaming led me to the climax of the dream where I stood by a door and there was a sudden announcement: “now the door is going to open.” I immediately woke up and on cue my dog came in from outside through the door. Fascinating. Utterly fascinating. I have suspected for a while that my subconscious is all knowing, transcends time, and takes over once I put the local body to sleep. This proved it beyond a shadow of a doubt as it was purposely revealed to me in this connection of the dream to reality. I have had situations in the past that hinted at this where the dream would awaken me just as my alarm was to go off by telling me that the alarm was going to go off. Similarly on multiple occasions during the waking hours I have had situations where complete strangers would know my name or comment on an internal struggle they had no knowledge of; this hinting at a connection that goes deeper than our conscious knowledge.

On June 15th I had quite the strange experience. I published a blog post where I ruminated upon my divinity and in conjunction with that I accepted the corollary where I am also the adversary. So I went to the washroom at work in the afternoon and as I entered into the location, on the speakers was playing the chorus to an INXS song called “Devil Inside.” These coincidences are more regular than to be expected. I laughed at what was going on however soon I started to wonder: The subconscious power that plans everything out, unbeknownst to us collectively, is once again showing itself to be tangible. These coincidences have to be common to all in order to pull this off. It is a hidden power that is behind all action, directing it in a way that keeps the story moving along. It’s very strange but this has happened enough over the course of my life that I can now with confidence at least suspect something is going on behind the scenes. My dreams and coincidences are suggesting that this universal subconscious knows I’m awake and on to it. I want to peg it as a masculine power because I’m also aware of the feminine Goddess power that I have been in contact with now for many years. My soul mate is love and also I describe her as Sophia  - the wisdom and understanding available if I ask or feed her knowledge. I’m currently figuring out the next steps. Do I want to use my connection to this power or is that a road fraught with too much risk? Is the power too much and I should just acknowledge it, use the clarity of knowing there is this power, and continue on my path towards what? What am I heading towards? I’ve never really defined that; instead I just sail onwards gathering up knowledge and experience which has led me to this point.

My plant medicine journeys have been at times a continual battle to peer into this darkness; the hidden subconscious that barricades the doors of perception. It works to deflect, scare you away, and sends you on a path of pure and holy righteousness to become enlightened just so you will stop seeking to peer into the darkness. I have wondered what is hidden down there? It’s omnipotence. It’s power. It’s the essence of our divinity. When I dream I become god. In life when you finally wake up and discover this is a dream, and there is a power that exerts control over the direction of the dream, then you are the Buddha. You are then awake within the dream. Life as you experience it becomes a lucid dream. I get now why we aren’t allowed access and are scared off and sent on a path towards faux ego enlightenment.

In my plant medicine journeys when I finally got past the stone blocks the darkness was inserting along my path on the road to becoming awake and embracing the jaguar of no fear and sublime courage, waiting to welcome and acknowledge me was the elephant headed one. I knew enough to realize it was Ganesha from the lore of the Indian subcontinent but I didn’t know much about him. After his appearance, the Goddess came to me in celebration as well. It was quite the night as I finally learned how to navigate the darkness. Up to that point I had been persistent yet frustrated by the constant fear and loathing of the experience. I really don’t know why I persisted and kept coming back to ceremony. I think it had to do with chasing the Goddess. There was always the chance I’d see her so inward I would return. Once I mastered the technique then I could sail on towards whatever siren song undertow pulled me towards knowing full well I could sail away and escape if need be. I have the confidence and am planning my next voyage into the darkness. I am starting to peer into and see some strange things in the dark, not in the least the power to control one's own destiny and depending upon perspective, the destiny of the world.

After first meeting Ganesha and returning home I noticed in my life how things were being moved out of my path both figuratively and literally. The funniest example was the walking path where I walk the dog. It had become overrun with fallen trees and debris. Curiously town workers showed up with wheelbarrows and chain saws and cleared the path. Maybe you don’t think that is out of the ordinary? Well the path is in the woods and no one else uses it. The following summer I had to evict a tenant from my basement and had a court date which was stressing me out. Ganesha came to me in a dream the night before the date and assured me it was all going to work out. Sure enough it did. I have been called even-steven because everything always works out for me. On my recent trip to the Amazon I had another peculiar meet up with Ganesha. There is this tribe that sells their artwork called the Shipibo that visits us at the sanctuary. There is a lot of Ayahuasca themed tapestries depicted with flowing energy in a style that is iconic to their tribe. I was perusing the collection they brought with them, not intending to purchase anything and low and behold I came across one of Ganesha! What the? I mean they are two oceans and the other side of the world away from India and the promulgation of Ganesha. Obviously it was a sign meant exclusively for me, so of course I had to have it.

I’m four months into my latest integration and all that I have mentioned about power and the subconscious is what I have been coming to terms with. I hung my tapestry at work and I often wear a pullover that has an image of Ganesha on the front. I finally added it up and realized the subconscious force that stirs the pot, that removes obstacles from the path and sometimes places them on it that I have discovered has as one of their names Ganesha. I’m sometimes slow on the uptake of seeing what has been staring me in the face. The masculine power I intuit is Ganesha. I’m adding it all up now. The Goddess, Ganesha, and me. I’m god, my co-actress is the goddess, and Ganesha is the reflection of the psyche into the universe who is directing this play. I'm the actor who now has the ear of the director.

So the unfathomable darkness of self, the area that is off-limits is where the director of the play hangs out, who is always creating obstacles or removing them in order to keep the play moving along and remaining interesting. I am the actor in this play and having fooled myself into thinking it is real also denied myself access to the underpinnings of the drama. The director controls the urges that makes us irrational and seek power or to collect items to own because of jealousy others may get them. We seek to win this game either through the pastime of collecting power and wealth, acquiring intellectual mastery and achieving recognition, and when all that is unfulfilling we turn to the spiritual climb. We never think to look at what drives all this behaviour? There must be a certain satisfaction on your deathbed that yes I played the game and beat it somehow! Does that give you currency to play again and give it another go? Put me in another ridiculous situation where I have to eat other beings to survive and see if I can win? Do you ever tire of winning? Is that our fatal conceit that instead of winning we have to elevate all through love but we are not predisposed to do that and we have to cast off the shackles of success and spread our common humanity and decency around the world. This is kind of funny in a way. I know of this power and the temptation is to rig the game, become successful, and live out my life of ease and then I’ll do it again because I know deep down whatever situation I get put in I will eventually figure it out and beat the game. Obviously I’ll increase the challenge in order to make it worthwhile but I know now I’ll always figure it out. I’m good at the puzzles. I stand on the precipice of laying my cards on the table. Sure it is going to be grand to bask in the knowledge of beating the game but what to do with the power? The maestro taught service and reciprocity; I of course never thought I’d get to a place where I could really make a difference but instead live a meagre life of influence, pissing words into the wind, and affecting the lives of maybe a handful. 

Was I finally ready to get the confirmation? It had become clear that nothing is working concerning throwing me off this path. I keep coming back and looking behind the curtain. When I first peered in about seven years ago with Ayahuasca, it was the most disturbing, creepy, and weird experience. I tried to run from it and was threatened with death if I ever looked again. I heard voices for days and worried about my sanity. Back home from this nightmare I had fits of unease, panic attacks, and then occurred over the duration of five consecutive nights a situation where I’d awake at the exact same time every night and have this feeling of fear and an encompassing darkness overwhelm me before I reached out to the Goddess to help me. I eventually returned to Peru and the plants and kept at it all the while wondering why I always would be greeted by this darkness? It’s because what I really wanted to find out was this mystery and plant medicines are both very good at revealing the inner self and the darkness we hide. The holy and righteous climb up the mountain was just a sideshow. We develop strategies to bypass the darkness so we can enter into the state of bliss. Deep down we know the darkness is still there. The subsequent use of Vilca was a good reminder of both polarities as I faced a struggle to reconcile the darkness in order to attain the light.

I had asked the question when I got back from Peru this year: Why do I keep looking? Just this week I wondered what am I hiding? It didn’t take long to get the answer. That seems to be part of the equation where I have to get to the point where I can formulate and ask the question. Then the answer is provided.

Of course the dream is the modality used to divulge the information I was seeking. I sit here now with confirmation of the divinity within, the accessible power, and the ability to know all and transcend our conception of time. Cool. I’m going to need a few days to sit with this one. 

end game

I was tasked with studying the knowledge bequeathed to me by plant teachers about vibration and the different frequencies we can tune into. We default to the current frequency that is dominant in the world today which is very masculine. It’s the paradigm of logic and reason that has as its flip side intolerance and individuality that is fed by fear. The result is a scarcity mindset that compels us to accumulate possessions for the self instead of being mindful of the planet and all that inhabit the earth. Indeed, I have learned over the course of a lifetime that you will find the extremes in all behaviour, if you look closely. Typically, you do not see it manifest in just one person but if you look at the result of what following this vibe does as a whole than it becomes clear. It’s now hard to ignore the environmental destruction foisted upon the planet due to this mindset of greed; projecting this out into the future of humanity does paint a pretty bleak future.

From this situation is realized the importance of consciousness and raising it. What this means is changing the default mode of the vibration we are stuck in and in conjunction with that goal, over the course of the last seven years I have come to realize that is what plant medicine work excels at. From my perspective, I didn’t see it for a while because once again I was just looking at myself and noticing how it was changing the way I live and want to live which was all well and good but when I looked at the world at large I saw there was no hope. Eventually, I came to realize that the work is to be done one person at a time and then is reached a tipping point where enough are tuned into a different frequency and from that base of consciousness will flower into the world its fruits. Instead of planetary destruction and greed, we will as a whole respect Pachamama and love all, lose the scarcity mindset, and take care of our sisters and brothers. Fundamentally, this inclusive mindset will allow us to see our undeniable connections, with a realization we are all in this together. When we come together, all that holds us back will fall by the wayside.

I have my own thoughts about existence, what all this is about, and it’s not something I intend to argue about, require others to believe, or want to foist upon them. To sum up my beliefs: This universe is the dream of a totally integrated and whole conscious being who is the union of the feminine and masculine. We are living in the psychic manifestation of the wholeness splintering into many forms in order to self reflect upon all that makes itself tick. A psychotherapist knows they cannot examine themself; so, what we have here is the scientific reduction of the great self into all its constituent parts, thrown in with a dose of amnesia in order to study the division. Some of these forms will wake up within the dream; however, that is all part of the study. What is gleaned out of the experiment is no matter what situation consciousness finds itself in, eventually the energy will awaken and find a path back home. Within each splinter of unity is the key to find the way back home to whom you really are; in other words, contained within you is the whole universe. When you wake up, even though you are just a splinter of that energy, it contains the potentiality of everything and you are that everything.

So, why I included this primer in this screed is I’m trying to figure out what the end game or purpose of all this is. Ultimately, it is a game and has no purpose but the flip side to that is the game is to study behaviour and how to go about changing it. There are no absolutes therefore the darkness within the world has an artificial bottom and can go either way as in becoming total deprivation or elevated consciousness. I think that is a clue in that the potential is always present; however, if consciousness is raised and we operate from a base modality of loving inclusiveness, the extremes can be mitigated. This is a lot different than what is preached in our religions where we have constructed the all-being as being the epitome of light and love; though that love is conditional and comes with some punishments, if not followed. But I digress. What I am trying to say is that there needs to be a recognition within consciousness of the darkness and its ability to be really dark. To put it another way, god can be the worst demon imaginable.

We are to raise the vibration of the energy instead of constantly lowering it. I think that is the game in a sense and the outcome is what we make of it. Does the dream end when we all find the love vibe or conversely does it end when we destroy ourselves? Is the free will of consciousness the experiment in that the outcome is unknown and so this simulation to see what the result of a freeing of consciousness with free will would entail? Would it lead to a world of shared joy or would it devolve eventually into a morass that would destroy itself? I think that’s what is playing out and the result is still up to us and how we want to play it out. Nothing is predetermined; instead, our world is a way to peer into the nature of self. Our potentiality, behaviours, and the need for improvement must have been known to the all dreamer. The eventual result is a huge insight into the nature of “god” and ultimately what needs to reconciled. It’s not like there is a time limit so if another simulation must be run, and there are probably many simulated universes on the go, than so be it.

It is an interesting theory I have posited here as I do fundamentally believe this is a stage play and we write the script as we go along. In combination with that sentiment, there is nothing we need to do in terms of salvation or to achieve eternal life. We all are shards of god playing out a part so that we can know self. However, I now tend to believe that there is a reason for all this in the same way a psychoanalyst can take a patient’s dream and learn much from the symbolism and behaviour present in the dream. In this case, the analyst and the patient are one in the same so the trick was to separate this out so no one is the wiser. Or, at least keep the charade going long enough so that when the inquisitor wakes up they don’t screw up the game too badly.

rise up embrace release

My brain is a fascinating machine. I feed it knowledge; it digests it over the course of a relatively short time into understanding and from this understanding grows wisdom. This process is repeatable and it has happened enough that I can internally quantify it, though to quantify it externally would be difficult other than recording my understanding of information I have fed into it.

The knowledge we generally feed into the brain comes from our everyday experiences. We live within a tightly held frequency that spills out in all dimensions so that we get hints of obfuscated forms of consciousness but we can’t grasp them for long. It leaves us with the nagging question of whether these other dimensions are ‘real’ or not. All is energy and the energy is in motion. What is energy? It is a vibration. The vibration is motion that we perceive. When we measure the motion we discern frequencies.

Everything is here and now. We are limited by perception. The frequency I lock to creates my world. We can go to heaven or hell now; there’s no need to wait until death. The energy of dead ancestors is here and now. That plane of consciousness is available if you seek for it.

I chose a seed body to incarnate my pattern of energy, in order to come forth in a plane of existence that would allow me to attain self knowledge over buried aspects of self I ignore. Within my current life I then develop further strategies to keep these traits hidden however they are more accessible than ever. We all get lost in the incarnation and forget not only our origin but also our impetus. The journey is always there waiting for us to re-engage, get back on the ship, and sail onwards towards understanding. I don’t think there is a destination or an end to it. I realized this the other day while walking my dog through the woods. There’s no destination or goal on this walk; instead it is the journey that’s the thing. That seemed so obvious. Experience is the teacher. I know I only conquered fear through experiencing full on fear and then taking it on in a struggle for survival. The walk is about exploring, becoming aware of your surroundings, and living in the moment. Aha! The destination is to be here now. Thanks Ram Dass! Eventually we turn around and head back. The natural cycle of the day turns to night. We rest and then rise up again.

I look back now on my ceremonies in the the Amazon jungle and the Andes mountains with Huachuma, that first and foremost acknowledge and celebrate Pachamama, with awe and reverence. The final ceremony this last trip moved me to tears as I understood how she created our universe out of love in order that we could play and understand. The wisdom of the opening of the Tao Te Ching expresses this sentiment,  "Heaven and earth begin in the unnamed: name’s the mother of the ten thousand things.” (Ursula K. LeGuin translation)

It’s always been the Goddess behind creation and it is our destiny to eventually destroy it. Along the way maybe we can show some respect while we head to the inevitable decline and destruction. We can embrace love while we fall from the grace of the great mother.

My pattern of energy animates the body and I take care of it allowing for this experience. Everything is like the breath; it rises and it falls. The body grows and then it decays. The growing is a time to explore the wondrous feats that can be accomplished and the power inherent in our condition. The decay is a time of introspection and insight where if you let go of the clinging to life on this plane of existence then you can step back and start to understand it. Stop being so uptight and blow it out.

The answer seems to be motion. We are deathly afraid of death however we love and are addicted to nouns. If we persist in objectifying then will come death and suffering. We love institutions that have staying power. The rock is what we ultimately look towards to express this ideal. We want to capture and live in a frozen moment and defeat the ravages of time however time is undefeated and claims all. What a predicament! If we change the way we think then we can win this game. Isn’t that cheating though? No and here’s why: If you look around it is easy to see nothing lasts. Everything is in a constant state of growth and decay; life and death. We can deny it all we want but it is self-evident. We can create languages that accentuate nouns as part of the sentence structure but it is still a way to fool ourselves into thinking there is a way to maintain this facade of the character and institutions we have created. Changing the way we think will extricate us from the trap that causes suffering, with the bonus of being able to joyously play the game of life and build the best damn character you can imagine.

By dying we defeat death. That’s a weird statement to make as we understand death as annihilation. If you embrace motion and understand that you rise and fall endlessly then you will get it. Motion is the impetus behind our transformation and this transformation goes on without end. Clinging to non-change will lead to a painful death. Letting go and trusting what is undeniable leads to grace and to living a life that sails on over both smooth and rough waters, marvelling at what comes next.

Surf the waves of time through being in motion with it.

So what is energy? It’s motion that is in motion. Try wrapping your head around that one. Try objectifying a verb. At slower speeds it looks like solid particles and at higher speeds it is a waveform pattern. Energy rises and falls. It’s string theory without the string. Ultimately I intuit that energy is unbridled love and all that has come forth for us in this universe is derivative of that love. Yes even the pain and the suffering. It’s all love because only through love can we face up to the truth of who we are and stop denying it. We are forced to acknowledge the hate and thus we can transform it. Love embraces all regardless of prejudice or behaviour.

Love is the beating of your heart. It rises and falls. The creation of the vibration leads you back to source. The heart is your umbilical cord that connects to the Goddess. It beats out your unique pattern, your signature called your soul, that binds you to the all. She creates. I destroy. We are harmonious. We are the constituents of motion. We are everything. We are nothing. She is the rising and I am the falling. 

the evolution of god

Culture is a bitch. I learned in English literature class in high school that every good story needed an antagonist. After all, it’s hard to go on a hero’s journey without one. I learned from seeking answers to vexing spiritual questions that the answer to all is found within after your external journey has become exhausted. It was strange that I couldn’t see that until I looked everywhere except within for answers. Our life is a drama; I’d also take game for an answer. It would suck if everything were a constant and all was provided for. Some stability is needed in order to allow progression; I mean if I am constantly on the hunt for food and needing protection, then I couldn’t very well sit here at my computer and ruminate upon the nature of existence. So, eventually you conclude that you and everyone else are god and living out this funny existence. Or at least that’s the conclusion I reached. We are the psychic manifestation, to wit the avatars of consciousness splintered, of the dreaming mind at large. This mind being a reconciliation of all who then self reflects through expressing the energy into what we have labelled the universe in our search for understanding. So far, so good. However, English lit class said this would get boring without an adversary. Luckily within, it is this darkness who challenges and harangues us. When first confronted with it, myself being exhibit "A", I ran from it and then processed the experience as a bad trip and an external enemy. I curiously returned to take another look and the darkness was always with me; I couldn’t bypass it. After exhausting avenues of blame for this stain upon my holy self, I finally realized that I was indeed the darkness. Once I grokked this truth, I could peer even more into the underpinnings of self. Hmmm... there’s a lot of hate, desires, lusts, perversions, greed, possessiveness, and jealousy buried down there. Conversely, a whole lotta love. All elements utilized to keep the story moving along. All plot devices for when the drama gets stale.

I was elated to learn I was god. It’s quite the trip you know, especially when everyone else is ignorant of their divine status. Being able to play this role while others are still lost, is the root of monotheism. That’s a good business model to dupe the plebs and get power, fame, and fortune. But I digress. What I mean by culture is a bitch is the realization you are god leads to the crossroads. As a seeker you have a choice to stop and say, "Cool, I’m god" and all is going to work out and I’ll play this role, advisably in a quiet manner lest the whispers of your insanity start. Conversely, you may keep seeking on the path to an unattainable knowledge of self. As I have explained before, I stay aboard that ship of fools. I kept at it and the next step in the evolution of god then presented itself. In order to play the part of god and really make it stick, I need an adversary. A tempter to throw me off my holy path and one who no one can transcend despite appearances and assurances that they are now enlightened and have moved beyond the human.

Yeah, so here’s the thing. As god, I’m also the devil. Far out stuff to keep the game afoot. It’s tough to accept because of cultural indoctrination. This realization still gives me the creeps. I mean the devil? Come on, that dude is really scary, and I’m him? Can I be that guy? The indoctrination goes so deep I am loathe to admit it. Seriously, though I don’t want to accept that culture still plays a role in my seeking, I deep down know it does. I know it because I have reached the stage where I must fully accept I am the adversary who tempts in order to fulfill the role of keeping this game going. The game is set up to learn knowledge of self. If you are the all how do you seek outside psychiatric help when you learn of your pathology? Well, you can’t. The only way to do it is to divide up all your neuroses into aspects of self and then give yourself amnesia. Then through challenge and stress you may learn what it is you are really made of, what you suck at, and then work on moving past that block or at least admitting to it.

It goes back to the union of the divine feminine and masculine and how we are currently separated. Divorce makes up the manifest universe and through this playground we are seeking knowledge and understanding of self so that when we do finally recombine into a harmonious whole, we can drop the acrimony. The long separation began due to this inability to get along and so we went our separate ways. Who would give in first to longing? I lost that bet though in my ignorance I did win the first round. Once I discovered who she was then I longed to hold and possess her once more. She is on to that possession game though. Isn’t that the reason for the separation? From a unique perspective I view this all as teasing foreplay bringing us to the edge of giving in. When we look into each other’s eyes we feel it and want to embrace. We take turns denying each other satisfaction. Yeah, I still have much work to do before I give up the game and recombine into the all.

racism

The answer to the problems in the world we are struggling with is within each of us. It’s consciousness or lack thereof. It’s found in the lens we choose to wear when viewing the world. It’s whether we choose to see separation and division or whether we see similarities and unity. Once again Ram Dass has a teaching that helps with the difficulties or comprehending what we are all experiencing at this moment in time. Delving into the meaning of this name Ram Dass he was given by his guru, it means servant of god and it is in the form of the monkey Hanuman that he serves god as Ram. The central teaching to understand is we are all god or to put it another way we are all one and it is through this remembering of unity that our consciousness is raised and we can lift ourselves out of the hell we create when we are ignorant of who we are. Hell is created when we engage the mind and use it to delineate and objectify which creates separation. Sports are a prime example of dividing human beings up into teams, pitting those teams against one another, and then watching the division boil up into outbreaks of fighting and brawls. Violent conflict is within our nature and the outcome when we separate.

Hanuman exists to serve god, in essence all of us, in order that we awaken to our divinity. Hanuman chooses to not merge with Ram in order that he may continue this work of awakening, similar to the Buddhist idea of the Bodhisattva, who after reaching enlightenment returns to teach and serve others. When we live in the world seeing everyone as separate than there is suffering, hence why Maharaj-ji, Ram Dass’ guru, says suffering is grace and it is all perfect. The suffering is the impetus behind learning there is another way or another reality of consciousness that will allow us to transcend this modality. If you look back on your life it is easy to see that through suffering, or trials and tribulations, are where we learned the most and made change possible, if not a necessity. Ram Dass in seeing he is to serve god, which is all of us, would see collectively we are not at that point where we understand who we are and so instead of proclaiming suffering is grace and it is all perfect, alternatively offers to help. That’s what we can do. How can I help? How can I be of service? The most help we can offer is to promote unity. As Maharaj-ji said, "It is deception to teach by individual differences and karma. See all the same. You can't realize god if you see differences."

wholeness of self

On the path towards spiritual unification where we go on a journey of discovery, our first inclination is to seek the higher self. It is where we are led to believe we will find transcendence from the human condition. We will leave everything which makes us human and fallible behind by seeking enlightenment and a transfiguration into a higher self where we become a spiritual being who is all wise and knowing. We figured it all out and we are at the top of the mountain and that’s where we first tend to explore. When we do that everything else comes along for the ride and it’s very frustrating; so, even though you think you have become this "oh wise one", it’s dishonest and disingenuous to pretend you have left the other parts of you behind. The demons all came up the mountain with you. You can live in ignorance and pretend the desires which make you human are no longer a part of your identity. Within that clue is seen you are still playing the identity game and you’ve basically enlightened your ego. The avatar or character you created now is blessed with a crown and this is with who you subsequently identify. Through this common process you can eventually see that you are never going to transcend the self. The self is always there; it just goes up a story in the house of cards and assumes another up-levelled identity. If you can clearly see the process that has unfolded then unfortunately it puts you back at the drawing board; so, you may be tempted to turn a blind eye towards this realization. You may reach the conclusion that this game was not it and that form of enlightenment was a delusion; so, then you start probing into the shadow or the dark side that you have heard about. For most when you are on this higher spiritual path, you externalize the dark part of yourself and believe it is left behind when you go on the spiritual journey. In truth, the dark side is actually internalized and it’s part of who you are. If you accept this difficult realization, you can turn the tables on the seeking which involved climbing the spiritual mountain.

What I mean by this, is you can take the staircase which leads down into the deepest and darkest regions of self. Here is located all the uncomfortable stuff we leave buried. Do you remember as a kid going down into the basement of your house to temporarily retrieve something and then having all these irrational fears come rushing forth? You couldn't get back up the stairs fast enough! What a peculiar psychological experience which we are all affected by. We are conditioned by our lower self from a young age to not go exploring into the dark and when we do stumble upon that region, our first inclination is to get out as fast as we can because of the irrational fear we are experiencing. In retrospect, what an incredible insight into our psychological makeup; of course we don't realize it at the time and even when I took substances, which allowed me to explore my depths, I didn't make the connection at first. I just followed the conditioned fear and got the hell out of that place and developed strategies to avoid going back. It took brief and repetitive forays into the vast darkness of self before I finally realized that's the destination the plants were pointing me towards. They had previously levelled up my courage and I am an inveterate explorer; so, though it took many years and many ceremonies, as long as I kept at it the subconscious thought must have been "well, eventually he'll get it and set off to explore the deep, dark, and taboo region of self."

It is the most difficult and frightening part of the journey to explore this part of you because the darkness wants to remain obfuscated and doesn’t want to be discovered. The set-up of the game is exquisite. In order to reclaim autonomy over the self, the exploration of what you deny is the biggest obstacle you have to overcome. When you stop pretending that it is not part of you then you can explore all the things which make you tick. The process takes work because when you go to explore those regions the whole journey gets difficult. You face fear, paranoia, and the difficulty of continuing on the path because it puts up as many roadblocks as possible so that you do not peer into this aspect of self. The exploration of the dark self takes the most courage. If you do choose this path and you can get past all the blocks that are put in your way, eventually, you get to look into the hidden self and understand the darkness which is within all of us. Being honest with the denied part of you allows the process of integration of self and a understanding that within us all is this darkness. Yes, there're some awful parts of it but you’ll also discover that’s where love comes from and it is where passion and desire comes from. All this animates our existence and it makes this game worth playing. The whole life experience is powered by these desires that lay within you; some are dark and are not socially acceptable or culturally sanctioned; but when you bury it you also bury what makes you human and it makes our society this detached, non-loving, robotic, and self-centred existence that we all live out, never getting to the point where you see unity within us all. Love becomes a casualty of failure to integrate the human.

We are always trying to transcend the self, which we project out into this world as ego. When you embark upon a spiritual path, we all want to transcend the ego by finding a method that allows you to face ego death so you can lose the sense of self. Through the process you will find your higher self and like I mentioned, you will also find your lower self. You can ignore the darkness or chalk it up as a bad trip and then continue on in your journey; however, if you do discover the way to unity is to harmonize the upper self and lower self and bring all into the centre, known in some traditions as the axis mundi, then you have found the alchemical secret. At some point, you will come to a realization of the need to reconcile all towards the centre, as you are not going to transcend either side, which is frankly the advanced teachings our civilization has lost. In some methods and traditions, if you get past the glorification of yourself into a higher self, you will reach this point. You will discover the need to harmonize all aspects of self and that’s a huge step because you find fulfillment in being honest and recognizing all parts of who you call self. Everything comes from the centre and the self as this is the place where everything is unified. When we started dividing it up or separating things from the centre that’s when you get the opposites like light and dark, which leads to objectifying everything and makes our world come alive. Eventually, when that idea sinks in you realize that the higher self and lower self are aspects of a complete self. The two polarities of self originally come from the centre; so, in our spiritual journey we have taken the two sides and brought them back to centre but that’s what we always were; in essence a wholeness. We are reconstituting self as opposed to creating or coming to an end of a quest to do a spiritual transformation. We are returning to who we really are and once you understand that is essentially who you are, and you always had those parts, then you can realize you will never transcend them or get on one team and leave the other team behind. That’s the fulfillment of the quest in which the answer has been you all along as you have brought yourself back to centre and found wholeness. Once accomplished, you can take that self and contrast it with the no self. By bringing the higher and lower self back to self, you’ve unified the self and then you can take it one step further where you see you have a self because you have a no self. From the no self you find the elusive unity, for which you always have been searching, and you intellectually understand that in order for there to be a self there has to be its opposite which is no self. That’s the eternal game where you vacillate between becoming a self, recognizing a self, and then returning to the no self. The play of the vibration is the eternal song.

disturbed

The most disturbing thing I have ever been a part of in my life was an Ayahuasca ceremony. I can say on multiple occasions I have been highly disturbed by what transpired. What has been disturbing is the darkness contained within the experience which I not only witnessed in vision but also a feeling of unease and intuition that something I have unearthed here just isn’t my normal and mostly comfortable self. The darkness encountered is a barrier to further exploration of the subconscious and brings upon the inner explorer a time of crisis and questioning whether they want to continue to dive into the depths. The divide at this point is whether you want to continue with ceremonies and exploring consciousness or do you give them up? If you give them up the rational excuse is that it was incredibly illuminating to experience the visionary but that was all you needed or wanted to see. If you do continue on in the journey then you become hyper-aware of the bad trip. So, in my case when I first went exploring back in 2013 I was pummelled by my subconscious and spent almost a year recovering and then it was another year before mustering the courage to continue on. I developed strategies to deal with the bad trip, aided by the advice of others. It is a necessary part of the journey, as the exploration of all of consciousness isn’t easy once you have had that bad trip. There are barriers to exploring your hidden dark side and well if there weren’t these blocks then it wouldn’t be hidden, now would it? When I continued on the path the darkness kept returning, hinting at something I didn’t want to face up to. I had my defences readied for the onslaught though and learned how to successfully navigate the storm. The way through it is to disengage the mind and enter into the heart space. It works 100% of the time and so the exploration of consciousness becomes easier since I can handle all which comes my way.

I never leave things alone and I always want to poke at it with a stick. I’ll get the answer or solution to a problem and instead of being content or decide to live happily ever after I instead develop a better microscope and peer even deeper into the mystery. So on my last journey to Peru I was presented with the de facto answer of how to live in bliss, essentially to be high, and it is through the heart and love. I was shown to be in the heart space and full of love will take you to heaven. To engage the mind will bring you back down and eventually to hell. I was given situations over and over again by the plant teachers which showed me how it works. I was elated that all my work with the plant medicines over the course of seven years and about forty ceremonies paid off with this wisdom and knowledge.

I have been integrating these lessons and have gone even further with them. With the help of Ram Dass, I learned even more about being love and how we tend to eventually re-introduce the mind into the heart space and from that develops possessiveness and jealousy along with fear of losing a loved one. We tend to look to others to give us love when in fact love comes from within and from this knowledge we can learn how to become love and have love for all instead of it being something in a limited quantity which is reserved for only some. These were really powerful lessons. I would of course relapse back into the mind and become judgmental and find others annoying but I’d catch myself and remember my plant medicine teachings. If you want to live in hell then keep it up…

It brought up a lot of soul searching and insights. First of all, who am I kidding? I know I still have desires and traits which aren’t all that inclusive and loving. I looked back on my life and wow I’m kind of fucked up. Am I a creep? My dark side sure can be creepy. It’s all still there; I just recognize and have come to terms with the complete self. Then I got to thinking about the bad trips and the darkness. In sum, I reacted the way the lower self/darkness wanted me to react. It’s all part of setting up the barriers to the exploration of all of consciousness. I’m smart and resourceful and so when I continued on the journey of course I learned how to navigate the darkness. Plant medicines present the darkness to you over and over and then you avoid it so you can have a happy time. You see how it works? Funny isn’t it? Plant medicines are trying to get you to experience all of consciousness. The lower self knows all the tricks in how to keep you away from the dark regions and stay hidden; scare you and then help you develop strategies so it is all love and light. Anesthetize the plant medicine experience so that the darkness within remains buried. Engage the heart, go to heaven. Engage the mind, go to hell.

The mind is the doorway into the bad trip and the road paved to hell. When you engage the mind while on plant medicines then you head off into crazy territory. It’s chaotic and undisciplined, like a conspiracy theory on steroids. However, the mind gets you into the lower self and surfaces the darkness so you can finally integrate it all. I have the requisite knowledge to be aware of the pitfalls of the exploration of the lower self. How disciplined is my mind after 52 years of life experience and seven years of consciousness exploration? Despite all efforts to remain hidden I am essentially saying to the darkness within, “I see you!” Where does this path lead?

The precipice where I stand reveals the depths of transformation where if feelings go without recognition, are ignored, and unrequited then they turn dark. Therein lies the dilemma and to bring balance into one’s life. The desperate longing and search for connection if not fulfilled turns into pleasure seeking or escapism to temporarily satiate the need and eventually the reckoning comes and that manifests as depression or destructive behaviour. I understand it and would make a good psychologist. Therein lies the challenge: are you a teacher or a doer?

I love a challenge; it is definitely a source of motivation and will lead me to a single-minded focus to solve the problem. Thou shall not pass. Who decides the line between sanity and insanity? I have identified my darkness as a problem; whether that is valid or not is a question I leave open and will reserve the right to answer at a later date. Instead, I know I am energized to keep looking now that I know I can handle it without running scared or thinking I will go crazy. The key to the next phase of the journey is to be heart-centred so when I do hit the spigot it doesn’t destroy me. Love is the elixir which transforms the destructive tendencies of desires that rise up from the darkness and are given currency by the mind. I need to find the source and embrace the part of me which lies in the depths.

quantified magic

In terms of levels of consciousness that are available, the level we are experiencing is vibrating at a rate that is based upon ego structure along with logic and reason, so any of the old superstitions like magic, spells, and related enchantments are a level of consciousness long past and relegated to the category of woo. At one time it was accessible, as we were vibrating on its wavelength so we experienced transference, shared thoughts and emotions, and feelings such as empathy and compassion were the norm. You could say it was a more inclusive vibe that was feminine in its makeup and made us more open to love. Conversely, we now operate on a level of vibration that is self-centred and goal orientated. It truly is a man’s world. Unfortunately, now when you come across groups that are saying they perform magic, they are of the same ilk as the conspiracy theorists who are trying to suck you into their deluded forms of thinking. They are also appealing to a higher power with a petition for change via fiat which is similar to the modality of prayer. There is a failure to realize their own divinity and the accessible magic which starts with them. This is unfortunate because it devalues magic and consigns it to the fringe. Most who currently say they are practising magic and its derivatives are being disingenuous and they are taking you away from really discovering what magic is.

Magic is something that can be quantified by science and brought into the reasoning world because magic is obfuscated forms of vibrational consciousness. For instance, every time I’m in the set and setting which is the conduit for the energy that is potentiated through ingesting Huachuma, I can experience states of transference of energy plus connections with nature and other beings which is normally unavailable. To me, that is what magic is and I think if enough people who are analytical did experience this phenomenon, they would start experimenting and mapping these accessible levels of consciousness we can vibrate into. The result of this inquiry would demystify and bring magic back into our realm. Once magic is brought out into the open it then ceases to become magic but that’s not to deny that it does exist. It becomes science and knowledge at that point. Take for instance the discovery of electricity. It's a hidden power that when first discovered would seem like magic to those who were living what we would consider a primitive life. The magic of electricity has brought us so much in terms of advancing civilization. Eventually, we were able to ascertain the properties of the mysterious force and through science make predictions of its behaviour. This allowed for mass distribution and it lights up our lives. The mysterious is the magic and it is exactly because it is not integrated into our logic and reasoning culture we don’t have access to it.

As civilization presses forward, all that once was magic becomes demystified and through observation of its regularities and properties it becomes science. Science takes on the role of prophecy in being able to predict behaviours. Imagine how magical fire must have been at one point in our civilizations? In fact, it is still pretty magical to sit around a campfire and gaze at the flickering flames. Just because we have observed the properties and reduced the combustion down into its constituent parts doesn’t make it any less magical that such a phenomenon exists. This line of inquiry also presents us with the perplexing question: why does phenomenon such as fire and electricity exist?

A plant medicine experience is very magical and can be unexplainable. Fundamentally in working long enough with them, you discover that plant medicines are consciousness technologies. The results are unpredictable, much like our psyche, and therefore are a challenge to investigate or create a blueprint for the trip. That’s not to say that generalizations cannot be made about the experience or that if you spend enough time with them then the commonality of the experience will become evident among those who take the substances. A big reason for their unpredictability is the experience is never just about the plant; rather, it involves the plant and most importantly you. It is an exploration of your consciousness which has been tinged by your psyche and culture at large making each trip and individual unique. That’s the spice of life in which we all come from the same source however we all carve out our own unique path, contributing to the tapestry of life.

The plant teacher Huachuma can put out some serious love vibes through its medicine. Through experiencing that state of consciousness it can light the spark within to motivate us towards bringing that state of consciousness back into the world at large. In sum, that what’s we are dealing with because if we still were living in a world that was tuned into the love frequency, then drinking Huachuma surely wouldn’t be medicinal, but rather just odd! 

everyone is your crush

Let the dark side out for a walk as it’s the only way to peer in to the workings and underpinnings of self. When I’m on the pure and righteous path, insights into my darkness are pretty piss poor. My intuition and thought cisterns are filled in the coming days after a dalliance with the dark. This is nothing to be afraid of and I’m not preaching hedonism as love comes from this buried region as well. Let love out of the cage; all forms of it. It’s very instructive. It’s pretty delicious to get a crush on someone. I love that feeling of surrender to cupid’s arrow and just enjoying the intoxicating feeling that washes over you in the presence of your muse. That is until the mind takes over and makes it a problem. The projecting into the future, the uncertainty of whether this love will go unrequited, then the eventual nesting instinct, and the need to possess. Thoughts turn to jealousy and needing to control the behaviour of others. What a shit show this whole feeling devolved into! How do we not get trapped in this nightmare? Love all, serve all, and create no sorrow. Everyone is your crush.

Can I do that? Love all and treat everyone as the beloved? What a challenge that is. I mean if you want a lifelong project bequeathed to you by inveterate seeking then here you go. Give up selfish love for the love of all. Wow! What a predicament I find myself in.

Ram Dass talks about learning to love all and transcending the paradigm of loving only one at a time. I’m a long way away from finding fulfillment that way. I know exactly what he is talking about though as I don’t think our maturity level is at the point where romantically we can handle loving unconditionally. Relationships always end up involving possessiveness and jealousy which pull you away from the original feeling of love generated from the heart. To transcend this is to love all. To taste love is to want more. The feeling is roused from being with others but comes from within. I know what he is saying.

A path of the heart is through plant medicines. With their teachings, no matter who you are, you will glimpse this love that is pervasive within the universe. You will feel it and when you do you will reach a stage where the door to your heart has been pried open. It might take a while to unlock but eventually if you keep it up and you are with a practitioner that is skilled in doing this, then that door to love will be opened and you are going to experience bliss that comes from the heart when you start to love others and yourself. It’s not new to us because in our younger years we probably did at one point experience an open heart however culture and life happens and for a lot of us we shut down the heart as part of a self-preservation mode, or you just get tired of being hurt, and so you encase your heart because you don’t want to feel that hurt anymore. There’s a level of maturity, and I’m not at that point, however I can see it now where when you love someone it is not unconditional so we introduce the mind into our feelings of love and then that’s when we get possessive and jealous. There are all these factors that go into this love we feel and it is the ultimate teacher where we just get so bogged down into the other issues like is that person going to continue to love us or do they really love us and we start questioning it. Even through love we still bring ourselves into this hell world and ultimately it’s not what love is supposed to do so there has to be another way or an answer to the question: how do I not get trapped in this?

Before I went down on this latest trip, I started listening to a bunch of Ram Dass’ lectures and the content of them I found compelling but obviously some of them you hear what he is talking about but you don’t relate it to your own experiences until you re-experience those feelings. I am so appreciative of Huachumita for giving me the opportunity to experience what had been lost and pretty much forgotten. To feel and be enchanted once again by life and to taste the deliciousness of connection. In Peru all those feelings came up and then when I returned home and listened to Ram Dass again, it was like holy shit he is talking about what I’m going through and the big lesson I got from one of his lectures was that you are love and love comes from within and is not something externally that you find. You may use a catalyst; whether it is a person, nature, or animals and they are the key that unlocks the love that is already in you. Once understood, you realize I can be this walking conduit for love and I don’t have to rely on someone else to constantly give me that juice or look for something that is going to activate this within me; I just need to cultivate it within myself. Instead of just loving one at a time and becoming trapped by that and needing them to activate the love within, the mature destination on the path of the heart is to realize that you are that love and to love everybody instead of just the one and trying to possess that one. I can’t say I’m there yet but at least I understand what he was saying and I see that is the way forward, no matter how much I want to experience that possessive love again. I know from my life history that possessive love never works out. It’s almost like the lesson the Goddess has been trying to teach me all along where our separation is because I wanted to possess her and I can get close but I never can fully have her for my own and she knows that if she gives in and I give in to the desire to possess then the flame dies out and the long separation begins once again.

You don’t find love externally; it’s in your heart. You are looking for those who can help you activate what you already have. We get addicted to others because we haven’t learned this lesson and think we can only find love through external means. Affirm to yourself that you are love.

mapacho the great teacher

Smoking Mapacho, as I have written about before, is a meditation cheat in that it acts as a laxative for the mind and allows you to enter a state of no mind, which makes it easier to connect to universal consciousness as opposed to our individual self-centred and limiting consciousness. The nicotine within tobacco is also a central nervous system stimulator which over time is developed a tolerance. When I first started smoking, it would give me a rush after smoking just one puro, so much so I’d have to sit down, close my eyes, and hang on for the ride, as it was pretty intense. Eventually because of tolerance, I’d have to smoke quite a bit to get to this state and in truth it is pretty hard to smoke a lot of Mapacho over a short period of time. I eventually found a snuff that would achieve this result with a few quick snorts up the nose. It burns, causes an evacuation of the sinus cavities, and sneezing, though worth it when done out in nature. It’s hard to do this in polite company though! This past weekend I learned something about myself and Mapacho. Don Howard would always tell us to "lean into it" and finally I decided to lean into smoking Mapacho. After smoking a couple I just pushed past my block of not wanting to smoke more and continued puffing on a few more. I felt some of the familiar energy I feel with Huachuma return in the form of CNS agitation and I closed my eyes. I saw red, it was peaceful and eventually the red changed to green. Then on to purple, mimicking the rising power of the kundalini as it pierces through the chakras. I felt the vibrations and I opened my eyes and everything was sharp, the birds were chirping, and the splashes of green on this spring day were popping.

There was a lesson being taught to remember to embrace all these varied states of consciousness: the red representing the passion and desire, the green the inclusiveness of the heart, and the purple the higher spiritual state all we seekers try to achieve. It’s a big reason why I consider Alan Watts the greatest spiritual teacher of all. You see Alan was well versed, educated, and understood all the spiritual traditions, yet he didn’t promulgate one specific teaching, nor did he follow or join any of them. He resisted the siren call to become whatever and remained true to the wisdom that the answer is found within and once you discover that truth you don’t need a crutch. Not only that but he didn’t fall for the spiritual trip and think he could become a holy man. Instead, Alan embraced all of it and revelled in his humanity. He drank heavily, tripped on LSD, smoked like a chimney, ate the finest food, divorced and remarried, and had a scandalous affair all the while a practicing minister. In spite of all that or most likely because of it, he recognized that each and everyone one of us was it and there was nothing you really need to do, whether that be angling for a reward in the afterlife or trying to shed karma for past misdeeds.

Mapacho reminded me to keep looking within and all the answers will be waiting. Continuously, the progression of consciousness within has now been red, green, and purple mimicking a set up of my mesa that symbolizes the lower, middle, and upper world crossed with the power of the feminine and the masculine. All is eventually reconciled in the centre; the axis mundi where we stand face to face with the truth. Everything that sums as self presents itself as unquestionably connected. As you look into the mirror whom do you see? Do you see just a lonely and powerless being or do you see it all?