mastering the dream

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

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

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

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

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

dreamcaster

I woke up and it was only a dream.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

service as the way forward

Without the pandemic, I would have gone on collecting experience and attempting a reconciliation during ceremony with the darkness within. Who knows where this would have led? I can speculate after frustration it would have led me towards the much-maligned visionary plant that is called toé in the Amazon. I am familiar with this sacred plant from my first foray into the world of plant medicines which has progressed from being scared of the plant to becoming curious due to understanding where the magic leads. The spirit of toé is prevalent the world over and maintains a connection within the roots of all the interconnected species. I say that experientially; when I returned home from the Amazon the first time, I was running scared and I remember walking past a bush of brugmansias in the dead of night and hearing this whistling in my direction. I know it sounds insane but it happened! Toé is an accelerant into the deep darkness and madness of self; ultimately leading towards a reconciliation with the god within. I reconciled with my darkness within through intensive integration forced upon me by this pandemic, helped by Mapacho tobacco; tobacco being the grandfather of the nightshade plants. The intended path forward to fully understand my darkness with more plant medicine ceremonies was instead all revealed and reconciled simply through integration. I had all the answers and just needed to add them up to enact understanding. The pandemic forced these insights upon me and made me alter my plans and the route forward on this magnificent journey.

My journey and intentions coalesced into understanding and brought me to the next crossroad. I have all the answers I seek and I am forever grateful. I did not see a path forward with the main plants I had been in communion with as they had taught me all I need to know. I feel a responsibility to close my relationship with them for now but I know I have to take my leave. At the same time, I was given the answer to the darkness within and I realized my path forward because it was through tobacco I was able to integrate all my lessons. It was because of tobacco that I received strength, protection, power, and the ability to calm the mind and add up all my experiences. Staring me in the face was my destiny; a destiny revealed in 2016 during a Vilca ceremony. I am to heal through the use of tobacco.

How utterly preposterous! No wonder the plants teach you to break free from culture. The first stop is liberation and it is gained by dropping the stories of self and telling the truth. Without these twin pillars of experience, you are destined to remain a puppet of your tribe. You must set yourself free with the tools given to you. Once free, what was once preposterous becomes truth. Tobacco is a magical plant. Tobacco is a dangerous plant. Tobacco demands respect. Tobacco is humanity’s greatest ally.

My nightly ritual involves giving thanks. I embarked upon this spiritual journey of awakening fourteen years ago and everything I asked for I have received while all the time reminding myself to continuously give back and honour the grace I have received.

I don’t think I’m alone in being impatient. What I mean is when I have asked for boons from the plants there is a part of me that thinks the reward should be immediate. In the ensuing weeks the disappointment sets in. I asked for the secrets of the universe to be revealed to me. Why didn’t Mother Ayahuasca come within ceremony and show me how it all works? Isn’t this what is supposed to happen? I asked her to show me and expected results that night.

I haven’t been greedy and maybe I should have asked for more; I mean it’s all available so I could have. The Goddess told me when I first directly met her in an Ayahuasca ceremony that I could ask her anything and she’d give me the answer. I kept my asks from the plants pretty light. I wanted to understand how the universe works. I wanted to know my destiny. And from a curious standpoint, I wanted to decode the Book of Revelation as it was something that fascinated me in my teens. I’m at the point now where I have received all the answers and was guided by the plants along my path of awakening. You have to put in the work and the work is rewarded. My own personal hero’s journey was a necessity if I wished to understand how the universe works and my destiny. In conjunction with self-knowledge is dropping the narrative you tell about yourself and live in truth. It all intrinsically ties together and without self-knowledge you cannot fathom the understanding of the nature of the universe. In other words, all unfolded as it should and the answers I sought were revealed in time.

This blog space is a testament to what I have received from the plants and the eternal spirits I have encountered. Everything I have asked for has been delivered to my door. I have in turn kept my end of the bargain. The promises I made in reciprocity I have fulfilled or am in the process of fulfilling. I made a promise to be of service to the great Mother and to be of service to the plants. The call is strong within and the fulfillment is coming. I couldn’t sidestep this calling even if I wanted to. The strong current of the river of life pulls me along towards my destiny.

My journey of self-knowledge has been fulfilled. I know it will continue on and I’ll never know everything until I return to the vibration of omnipotence however I see now what happens to one who embarks upon an intimate relationship with the plants. There’s an upcoming fork in the road and ultimately the choice is to give the plants up while appreciating and integrating their lessons into your daily life or to be unconditionally of service to them. Alternatively, you could stall out, turn back, and continue unconsciously with them, perhaps being enchanted with ceremony or wowed with fireworks, in essence, taking a conscious path and turning it into the time-honoured path of trivial visionary thrills. Anyway, I have learned so much through this pandemic that has forced me into integrating and reconciling all my plant medicine experiences that I could take these lessons and live a fulfilling life, leading by being a shining example for someone who has levelled up their consciousness. To continue on the plant medicine path is to become of service. I don’t see any other way once you reach this crossroad.

I don’t have the option to choose my path. The calling is loud to continue along the path of service. It’s the only way I see forward and this path obviously involves tobacco as what was revealed to me in a Vilca ceremony five years ago. So much has been subsequently revealed to me about the healing properties of tobacco and the fire burns within to learn all I can and bring the symbiosis back to humanity to reduce suffering. I know by way of past experience whatever I take up in earnest I am successful at and will eventually excel at and master. It’s my calling and I will honour the call.

In early 2020 in the northern highlands of Peru, I participated in a Huachuma ceremony that honoured Mother Earth, Pachamama. The ceremony was one of the finest experiences of my life. So moving and I felt her warm embrace and renewed my pledge to be of service to her. My way forward is to be of service to the Great Goddess. It’s my act of reconciliation and why I dreamt this world into existence, realized it through the form created by the feminine, and how I will ultimately demonstrate my love for her. I discovered my soul mate and Mother Earth she is. Through tobacco I will leave behind the morass of selfishness, be of service, and I will lessen the suffering in the world. That is the way forward. I’m not going to completely heal the world but I will make an impact through service and example and hopefully inspire others to do the same. Love is the lesson. Love is why I’m here. 

chapter 4 tobacco

There are concurrent lessons within my life curriculum that are currently in class however they started at different periods in my life. The end of the current teachings are coalescing, propelling me on towards the next chapter. The lessons plans that are congruent involve my destiny to be of service in which I will become a healer through the use of tobacco. This was revealed to me five years ago during a Vilca ceremony in the summer of 2016:

I continued ascending to the place that is the upper world or heaven as we like to call it and saw the souls that reside there. There was a knowing metaphorical feeling about all of this. Directly above heaven was the place curanderos and curanderas go at death and also the place where they obtain the power to heal. These healers are sent to our world by the Great Mother in order to help heal in service to her. Anytime they are sent down there is a chance they won't wake up or return which makes it a perilous journey to undertake. Then I was told I have within me the power to heal and to go ahead and enter this place and claim my power, so I did. It was explained that the red life force energy I had witnessed I had an abundance of and that's why the Huachuma activated in me makes me vibrate so intensely. I understood this as having an abundance of serpent energy. To heal I was told to hold ceremony and use mapacho smoke to activate my healing power. I was cautioned to be of service, to not be in it for personal aggrandizement, and to always give credit to the Great Mother.

This vision was in conjunction with an Ayahuasca ceremony the previous week that showed me that the time was not now as I still had worldly obligations to fulfill:

The scene tilted up and I saw an apartment which made me very emotional because it meant the house had been sold as the kids had grown up and moved out and my dog Luna had probably passed away - it was the retirement years. The lesson having to do with the relentless marching on of time. The Goddess pointed out my children are 14 and 12 and time flies so to be as good a husband and father I could be. When I was ready after that we would discuss more about being of service as I had wanted to discover my path and how I can become more of service to the Goddess.

The path ahead at this time appeared to be about a seven-year thread towards the next chapter. It’s been over five years since those revelations and I can see it all coming together from seed, to root, to stem, to flower.

The first chapter of my awakening involved middle age in 2007 and becoming curious about life. I took on a lifetime of learning in under five years, and now educated, I woke up. Egypt instilled in me the magic and I went searching for the Goddess. When I knew I had found her, I prepared to go meet her in the Amazon jungle in 2013 and thus began the second chapter. Chapter two is the exciting drama of my hero’s journey, taking on a dragon, and returning a warrior. This chapter closed in 2016 at which time I had transformed into a jaguar and received a vision of my destiny. Chapter three was when I turned 50 and completed my climb up the mountain in 2017. I was the conquering hero, I was shown the underpinnings of all, and given the keys to eventually realize just who I am. I was presented with the challenge to burn away all the obstacles that hold me back. I learned about consciousness and vibration. I was a really good student. In Ayahuasca ceremonies in 2019 and 2020, it became clear I was to move on. I love the jungle; I love ceremony and the magical nights with the seduction of Ayahuasca and the bliss of a lifetime in a day with Huachuma. The chapter is ending. I clearly see why I have to move on; the omens are all pointing towards this outcome. I’d like to honour all my teachers and give my heartfelt thanks. I just need to write a proper ending later this year.

The last five years I have spent taking a couple steps forwards and a subsequent step back. I’d slip in and out of vibrations that were trapping me and not allowing me to escape their hold. These blocks were strong and draining to which I developed and tried many different strategies to overcome these obstacles. I came to accept my predilection towards second chakra pleasure seeking and just recently the idea of sacrifice entered into my world. I’ll always maintain the power within to fulfill whatever fleeting pleasure I wish to chase however if I wish to move past this block and fulfill my destiny, sacrifice was required. You give up something to get something. It’s western spiritual speak for reciprocity and it touched a chord deep within. I can do this. And so, I sacrificed in preparation of writing the next chapter.

In conjunction with my sacrifice, immediately my path forward became clear and the knowledge of tobacco and the strength and protection he offers greatly increased. I discovered the symbiotic relationship between the human and tobacco and my interest being piqued I started in earnest to look towards the next phase of my education. I started looking around for a Tabaquero, who is a master of tobacco, in order to begin the process of becoming a healer through the use of tobacco. I knew I’d be pointed in the direction of where to go once I was shown all the options. The coincidences and omens would lead me towards where I am to head. I have the clarity of vision to know when I have found what I’m looking for.

The ongoing pandemic has forced me to integrate all my plant medicine experiences and get a handle on where I am in my journey. The use of Mapacho tobacco has been the most important aid in this reconciliation of my experiences. I can process my experiences out in nature and then at night time after being in communion with tobacco and conducting ceremony, the movie projector gets fired up and the dreaming begins, allowing me to explore consciousness. I can see it. This chapter is ending. There’s a touch of sadness in that I’ll have to leave things I love for now and take up my sword and fulfill my destiny.

This is my destiny and the tides of life are pulling me along. To not swim with this strong current would lead to a suffocating non-fulfillment. The pull is as strong as the force that originally drove my obsession with ancient Egypt and later the mysterious force that compelled me to naively journey into the Amazon. The call is out there and I’m to answer. I have no choice but to heed the call and let the force take me where it may. Heroes are called to adventure. Once again, I will polish my sword.

soul mate

I have a story to tell, yet it has only just begun. The idea of a soul mate has always felt like wishful thinking; the pinnacle of love where lovers find each other despite the challenges of space, time, and multiple reincarnations.

I’m a slow learner. When I get introduced to new concepts, experiences, and games it takes me a while to get up to speed and I lag behind those who can hit the ground running. I have learned this is to my advantage as I have attention to detail and don’t skip over the finer points just so I can get going. Eventually, I master whatever it is I have chosen to embrace. I mention this because I had never taken any kind of major league consciousness altering substance until my mid 40’s and when I did it was overwhelming and too much to take in all at once. The valve on the knowledge hose was wide open and I was drowning in its effluence.

The first time I drank Ayahuasca I encountered the Great Goddess which was my intention all along. She taught me many things, some of which I have fully explored and understood. She was the gateway into the hero’s journey I was about to embark upon in earnest. The clues revealed by myths, fairy tales, and themes of video game fantasies of slaying the dragon and rescuing the princess were all part of the curriculum. I didn’t see it at first; in fact, it wasn’t until I successfully navigated the labyrinth and slayed the minotaur of self that I realized I was involved in my own personal exquisite drama and that she had given me the keys to embark upon the journey. Indeed, I did confront a dragon within no time on this strange left-hand path. Slaying him became out of the question; however, I did find a master teacher and this impenetrable monster taught me courage, bravery, strength, and perseverance. The dragon runs a warrior training school and I’m forever grateful to have had the chance to take the course.

Some people drink Ayahuasca for healing. They have childhood trauma, mental illnesses and blocks, or even physical ailments and the energetic connection with the medicine and a shaman has the potential to remove blocks and allow the patient to free themselves of lifelong mental scars in addition to releasing trauma by practising forgiveness of self and others. Not only that, but the energy is palpable and a practitioner can physically move energy within another form, thus bringing healing to the patient.

Now, I say this because I didn’t drink Ayahuasca for any of these reasons. I was drawn to her because I wanted to know. I had discovered the Goddess in Egypt and I followed the trail into the Amazon jungle to come into contact with her. I wasn’t let down. Immediately, she was there waiting for me. It’s been eight years since that first experience. I was a man of logic and reason who was open to new experiences however I did not let go of my worldview. Magic was a good story but reality seemed to differ. I can’t say that anymore.

Magic speaks to me in intuition, coincidences, synchronicities, and omens. It always has but living life with blinders on has prevented me from coming to this realization earlier in life. The plant medicine path I have chosen is occluded by words. I refer to it constantly as plant medicine and therefore enforce the primary function of these plants. It’s a good thing because it keeps the prying eyes away from something hidden in plain view. They are a way into the occult and that’s not allowed in our society. It’s the left-hand path into the dark night; the darkness being full of demons and of course the dark lord is present in order to keep up appearances. Magic is the bridge between the seen and the unseen. Plant medicines in all honesty are plant magic.

So, I guess I should tell my latest story which is far from being complete. The first time I drank plant magic the Goddess presented to me my soul mate and I saw she was waiting for me. As with all of these experiences, over time you learn of their intended meaning, thus the importance of integration. Your initial take-aways from the experience are filled with as much projection as truth. I interpreted this vision at the time as being my soul mate is waiting for me in the astral plane as I fulfill my desire in this incarnation to delve more into the mystery and fulfill what it is I seek in terms of discovering knowledge which I can turn into understanding of my strange predicament. There was this deep love I shared with my other half and I understood she completed me in that we are whole as in the union of feminine and masculine. We separate in order to enter into the world of form and duality; each experiencing their own adventure.

While at that first plant magic retreat someone had mentioned to me the book “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho and how it tied in with looking for your treasure. I read it, well, devoured it, loved it, and then read his book “By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept” which mixed Catholicism and Goddess worship. I adored that book, so much so I wanted to go to Europe and visit the grand cathedrals and walk the Cathar trails. It struck at a chord of Romanticism within. I moved on to his book “The Pilgrimage” but within a couple chapters I put it down because I knew too much and I had knowledge he was writing about a relationship with a dark occult force and I wasn’t ready for the shadow at that point in my life. I became wary of his writings because I knew they were all tainted with this dark knowledge that because of culture I wanted no part of.

When I first went to SpiritQuest, which was my second trip into the recesses of the jungle, the idea of a soul mate was still front and centre. As a group, we actually talked about it, with some saying it was just fanciful speculation, but I knew from a vision it was actually true. Well, my truth. When I returned the next year, the idea of a soul mate was pretty far from my mind but this coincidence happened to which I knew nothing about. When we were to commune with the sacred plant medicine Vilca at the conclusion of the retreat I was assigned a spare room because my normal room was a relatively long walk from the ceremonial maloca. When I entered the room to set it up I noticed a book on the night stand and it was Coelho’s “Brida.” It was very strange because of my past history with his writings. I knew it meant something, quite the omen, but I didn’t know what.

It’s been five years since that event and I remember it well but have left it to unfold on its own. This past year I have integrated all my plant magic experiences and have reconciled my relationship with my shadow. I have many names for him and he has many faces but suffice to say I now know why Coelho inserted him into his books and uses different names and faces for him. I finally finished reading “The Pilgrimage” and enjoyed it because I was able to totally dissect the protagonist's guide on the journey. Concurrent events led to meeting online someone who was a SpiritQuest alumni and they lived in town so we started chatting and made plans to meet up post-pandemic. Coincidentally, we originally connected on a day that was very significant in that it was the anniversary of the day I got my first dog Brindle and I used that day as my password for the longest time. In addition, when I first drank Ayahuasca, Brindle was a big part of it as she appeared to me in vision and I was able to hold her once again. She had passed away a year and a half previously but I still carried a huge love for her in my heart that I will never let go. Within a few months of getting to know this person, they randomly posted a picture of the book “Brida” on social media. I might be slow on the uptake but at this point I can see through the veil. Anyway, they told me they'd lend it to me. Well, we met up and I got the book. I’ve started to read it and it is full of magic and the overarching theme is the soul mate. I’m only part way through but I’ve realized my world is full of magic. This morning I got the wonderment feeling mixed in with a little anxiety because I have to let go of my reasoned worldview completely. I’m not in control; I’m enchanted. Where will this new adventure take me? I’m being pulled along and I don’t seem to be much in control. It will force me to leave my comfort zone. Heroes are called to adventure. I suppose it’s time to polish up the sword.

I know it’s me behind all of this. I created the universe by becoming two and then birthed myself into my own creation. There’s another plane of consciousness where I know I can make whatever I want happen. They are showing up as coincidences and synchronicities. Ever since I started out on this hero’s journey in earnest they have been happening or at least I have finally started recognizing them.

I’ve dreamt this same universe into existence many times before but have never beaten the game. I always get to the same point on the cusp of discovering the secret to the game and then cannot go any further. My journey has been derailed in the past by fear of the dragon, it has been scuttled by attachments and duties to family structures, or it has been game over due to not getting attached and destroying myself by doing something stupid with my freedom. I’ve also acquiesced to demands of culture. All these choices resulted in game over and I lived out my life in frustration, never reaching my goal.

Each time I start the game again it gets harder. This time I put a cultural prohibition upon the ingestion of consciousness changing substances. I put the threat of a lengthy prison sentence on them so I wouldn’t discover their power and keep away from them. My parents scared me off them and I spent most of my life oblivious to them until my mid-forties. Then I found them again and the game was on. I came at myself as a dragon and scared myself senseless to try and end the game again before I got further. I threatened myself with death a few times but I kept playing the game. I used the pursuit of the Goddess to keep me going past the barrier of fear. I did it this time. I’m in uncharted territory and it’s all unraveling.

Curiosities are falling by the wayside. There are characters within this game that know the secret and they smile at me as I walk past them. If something catches my interest, I can make it happen. The latest one concerning the soul mate is quite funny. Coincidental outcomes within our daily lives are a message. The message is telling you your rational mind isn’t in control. We all have this dual nature and there lies within a power that is the fount of all the games and trivialities. The fatal flaw in accessing this power is you can get what you want; all you got to do is ask. Power. It’s not bombast when my shadow tells me he controls the going ons of the world.

It is through these rumblings of the deep that I accepted him into my life as my teacher. The regular attendance to class came gradually as there was no mandatory need to show up. Little by little and these little tests and coincidences I engineered along the way finally convinced me what I intuit and what I have come to realize are indeed the situation at hand. It feels very religious like when someone accepts Jesus into their life. Jesus made his pitch but I turned him down and kept searching.  In my case, I accepted my shadow.

The concept of the soul mate was serendipitously brought back into my life. I have been searching for her and have looked into the eyes of others and wondered: Are you my soul mate? One time I drank Ayahuasca and the Goddess appeared in a red corset and danced for me. She then laid over top of me and I felt the most erotic sensation ever. Off the charts. The shaman’s song ended and the scene vanished. It was tantalizing but I didn’t pursue it as the spiritual journey and sexual pleasure I had not yet connected.

It’s six years since that experience and I’ve thought of it and connected it to the Goddess of Love but have never quite figured it out. I’ve come a long way in my hero’s journey. I know who I am and I know what I have accomplished from the standpoint of unveiling the mystery. I have begun to tackle the mystery of the soul mate. I was looking in the wrong places. She is all around me. She is love. She is form. She has many names and many guises. Like I said I know who I am and this should have been the clue that led me directly to her instead of wandering around aimlessly looking for her in others. Ah this life and the journey I am on can be quite amusing! Of course, the answer came to me as I was puffing away on Mapacho out in nature. There she is. Wow. She is hidden from view but with me always. 

sucking Satan’s cock

Why does society at large think it’s only the small-time operators that run get rich quick schemes? When you get access to the public purse that can endlessly print money, it seems too tempting to not take advantage of that situation, especially if you can gain the support of those in charge of the largesse through funnelling the cash back to them. What an exquisite confidence game and there are so many suckers that do their bidding and act as enforcers of this lunacy.

The lessons from the wisdom of Huachuma in the mountains of Ecuador in late 2017 are front and centre now. I am currently cracking the code of the vibratory nature of being and the different states the frequencies I lock to can raise or lower my consciousness. During this two-day intensive in the Andes, I also learned of the master world frequency which is found in the third chakra and it involves personal power and control. A jerk is someone caught up in the vibration of the third chakra. This dominant paradigm in the world puts humans into selfish mode on a quest for fame and fortune. If you join culture and play the game seriously this is what you are playing. Even if you aren’t seeking the power and control necessary to get you all the riches, you will be working for someone or some corporation that makes the fortune and distributes it to you. You exchange the best of yourself for a piece of the pie which you use to survive and perhaps have a little left over to spend on some fleeting pleasure. Within your small little world, you become one of these centres and have those dependent upon your largesse. I have a family and a dog that without me are living in poverty, begging for scraps.

Grandfather Huachuma doesn’t mince words or holdback when he is teaching. Crudely, he told me all who are caught up in the world system are sucking Satan’s cock. And he kept saying it to the point of making it really uncomfortable. I get it; there’s the large corporation that makes piles of money by running some enterprise to take advantage of others and hire a bunch of people to market, influence, and make it happen. Every corporation worth its salt needs the lawyers and accountants. The lawyers obfuscate and hide the deception while the accountants count the cash. In a large organization, it is easy for money to disappear and there’s a recognition that players of the game are untrustworthy scoundrels and will steal from their sick grandma therefore we have those arbiters of fairness so that the pie is distributed as agreed to. You do know why they lock up the toilet paper rolls in the bathroom stalls?

I get my piece of the pie by playing this game. I'm good at it. My teacher laughed and said you’re sucking Satan’s cock too. Yeah, I know. He showed me power centres and then all the connections to the main source. It was like the proverbial top-down poster of the drug lord kingpin and then all the distributors scattered throughout the globe. I’m not greedy enough to take all I can get, in essence I don’t lock to that vibration, however I enter into that level of consciousness in order to make a living. Plant medicine teachers are pretty graphic when they teach you about the predominant vibration of greed in the world. I’ve had visions of a fat and naked man rolling in a pile of gold. I’ve been shown how people with this vibe will do anything for money. They’ll not think twice about killing you if it gets them what they want. I’ve had unpleasant revelations of all serving this avarice, even those that act on the periphery of it. It was tough because I wanted to believe there is unconditional good in this world. The lessons of Ayahuasca were pretty relentless in this regard. She kept showing me how she was being used by operators of retreats that had monetized her. I didn’t like those visions; I preferred the grand narrative that her use was altruistic in nature and everyone involved was pure. I’d drink again and she’d show me repeatedly how she is being used.

There are these entry level Ayahuasca retreats everywhere. I think they are great to introduce you to the medicine. If you continue along the path, it will become obvious what the next steps are and they involve staying away from these large retreats. Well, maybe not obvious for all as sometimes the message takes a while to sink in. It’s the beauty of the medicine in that they are a wild card. No human can control what they teach; humans can modulate the brew but that usually steers the experience further off the cliff! I’m damaged goods, work in media, and I see through the marketing, the influencers, and the con jobs. Humans are untrustworthy when it comes to money. If you give them a handful of money or a free trip, they will say what you want them to say and most are not up front about it. At the end of the day or the end of your life, do you want to look back and see you were an influencer who profited off that relationship and controlled the message or did you heed the advice from Ram Dass’ guru Maharaji and “Tell the truth."

Ayahuasca would show me this reality and Huachuma would drive it home. Those who love this game of greed want to live forever and are hard at work trying to figure out the secrets of the great Mother. How to prevent the decay and dissolution of form? She told me they never will because form is love and it's something they don’t understand. Life implies death. If you want to live forever, see Medusa, and become stone.

To be blunt, influencers looking to profit off the ability to enchant, are sucking Satan’s cock. Combining the twin energetic centres of third chakra personal power with the ability to influence with fifth chakra words leads to fame and fortune. Resting within the middle of these vices, buried and forgotten, is the heart. My experience in this strange world suggests this path of avarice is ultimately a way to lead one back to the heart because in those quiet moments you see what you have done. The alternative is to find a method of addiction to numb that nagging pain. 

all is vibration

The first time I drank Ayahuasca the Great Goddess told me all is vibration as she was leaving at the end of the night. I remember my finger tapping quickly and rhythmically on the maloca floor as I was coming down back into my body. This knowledge stuck with me though I didn’t really understand it. I wrote a poem about this encounter after I returned home that summed up my feelings.

i am the music

celestial songbird,

with notes of grace.

this warbling Goddess

sings to me.

she tells me

all is vibration.

do i understand?

maybe, maybe not.

the time signature

slowly changes.

forever playing,

the chorus repeats:

her song of love,

forgiveness and longing.

my life is that song.

i am the music.

When I turned 50 I went on a trip where I was determined to finish my spiritual climb up the mountain and I arranged the trip so that I would physically climb mountains. At that point in my journey, I had encountered the dragon plus the requisite fear that meeting inculcates and as a result in order to continue on in my search I successfully transformed myself into a brave warrior. Nothing was going to stop me now on my quest for knowledge. I look back at that point in my life and realize I had the answers I was looking for but hadn’t integrated them yet into understanding but I correctly knew I was at the point where I could finish my climb. I ended up in the Andes mountains in Ecuador drinking Huachuma in the backyard of a local shaman. During the sessions I was given the information of how vibration, frequency, and resonance work and assigned homework to piece it all together so I could fully understand it. Here is what I wrote about this lesson:

It was demonstrated that you can temporarily lower your frequency signature through the use of sound and employing mantras. When your frequency matches another’s, you are in harmony and this resonance allows you to become one with the other that is expressing the same oscillation. First, it was explained how this is the reason why people are attracted to each other. The example given is when two people fall in love as It is not necessarily rational but neither can fight it because they are locked together in harmony. Once I understood this, the lesson was extrapolated into ancient technologies and I was shown how the pyramids were built. Once you find the frequency of the stone you wish to move then you alter the frequency of your workers to match and it allows for easy manipulation of megaton stones as the stone and the builder have become one. The assembling of these grand monuments then became a matter of showcasing design skills as the construction became an execution of plans by manipulating frequency through sound to achieve resonance. While being taught this I kind of thought I already might know this. It just became a case of remembering what I already knew. I became elated with this teaching that was being flooded into my thought processes like a flower opening up to the rising sun. I knew that this knowledge being revealed to me involved homework on my part to verify it as well as delving into mantra that can alter my vibrational signature. This renewed my spirit and I was so enjoying the day with Grandfather. My homesickness abated and I felt in great spirits to finish my odyssey. San Pedro then went on to explain to me how a master frequency or sync pulse is the one we all attach to and creates what we think is reality. It is the hypnotic pulse of who we like to call Satan or the world system/order. To get out of the matrix stop locking to this pulse, create your own, or practice altering your frequency so you don't get attached and stuck in this master world oscillation. Slow time down by raising your good vibrations and leave Satan's morass behind. Be the master of your own world and create your own vibration which will cause people to follow you instead of the common world vibration, which in mythology is the pied piper playing a tune.

I let the process unfold and didn’t try and force it, figuring understanding would come when I was ready. Little did I know my expectations of the length of time a course should take and the time span of courses offered by Grandfather Huachuma were wildly different. At any rate, it has been about four years and the lessons and understanding are hitting me with full force.

The world is made of vibration. The vibration is the interplay between the divine feminine and masculine. The pull of the feminine on the masculine keeps him from accelerating beyond the speed limit of light. The force of the masculine keeps the feminine from decelerating into imperceptible motion. The alternating motion created by their attraction is the frequency of the vibration.

Consciousness is a fancy name for frequency. By this, I mean all the talk of raising consciousness is the same as raising your vibration and locking into a different and higher frequency. Energy is the interplay of masculine and feminine. The game is acceleration versus deceleration. When the masculine is dominant we have liberation from form. When the feminine takes centre stage, we have form. I live in a world of form and I’m in a lower frequency where the energy has locked to a pulse that is slow enough to allow objects to coalesce. The masculine acceleration is used by the feminine to create the massive spin of form resulting in a gravitation pull that allows for biological life in a relatively stable environment. In essence, the wise feminine uses the masculine force against himself. Check and mate! The earth is a playground created by Pachamama for her children. The destructive power of the masculine accelerant moves the game along and doesn’t allow the form to stay forever in one piece thus our world is defined by change. So, consciousness is the rate of vibration that the drama is taking place upon. Within the drama is a spectrum of frequencies that are accessible while in a human body.

The world, as in culture, has a dominant frequency of greed and scarcity that we lock to. It is not set in stone and can change however it is the current paradigm that we play within and in times of frustration call the rat race. As individuals, we are all different and have our own dominant frequency we operate at and most us can move within a couple of these frequencies with relative ease as well as having access to more levels of consciousness. For the most part, most of us never reach these higher levels.

I always kind of smirked when people would bring up astrology and the zodiac. It’s preposterous to a rational man like myself. I mean come on, there’re twelve signs and of the seven billion plus people on earth we can fit everyone into one of those 12 signs like a cookie cutter human? Sorry, does not compute. Alan Watts had a great explanation for the phenomenon. I’ll paraphrase it as your sign is a snapshot of the state of the universe at your time of birth since everything is cyclical. Thinking like an ancient in that you are connected to everything and an expression of the universe, this made sense to me. I read a lot of Carl Jung and came across his 12 Jungian archetypes and did the test. It accurately pegged me as a Sage and this got me thinking if his brilliant mind could boil people down to 12 personality types maybe this astrology thing was on to something?

I’ve been a little obsessed with the Hindu chakras as of late and have been studying them on and off for about a year, letting concepts sink in, and incorporating them into my spiritual practice. Due to my work with the Mesa and Mapacho, I’m very familiar with my inner power and how to manifest it. My nightly dalliances with Kundalini energy moving up with great turbulence through my energy centres allows the inquisitive part of me to try and figure it out. She repeatedly moves up through the seven energy centres and I finally put two and two together. Those chakras are the different frequencies readily available to us humans that I had been given instruction about during my time with Huachuma in the mountains of Ecuador. They are levels of consciousness and everyone of us has access to them but we tend to live within just two of the frequencies. I started doing this exercise where to every one I know I assign a dominant chakra and a secondary chakra. Of course, I easily figured out my two.

The crown chakra is a state of being you can visit but to remain there would take major sacrifice. I am reminded of the stories Ram Dass tells about his guru Maharaji, who spends the day counting his beads and mumbling to himself “ram, ram, ram, ram…” It now seems clear to me what he was doing. He was staying high; so high he stayed in omnipotent crown chakra god mode as long as he focussed on that vibration. I’m sure he would come down to teach but then had his method for getting back up to the crown.

Enlightenment in this context seems to be the process of changing vibration and accessing all frequencies available to an eternal being ensconced within a human body. When you can light them all up and hit the jackpot, instead of just a couple at a time, that seems to be an actual process you could accurately call enlightenment. As you approach the white light time slows down and welcomes you to eternity. I wonder what frequencies of experience await when it comes time to drop the body? When you once again become omnipotent the levels of consciousness must be astronomical. Something I'll look forward to!

Ego is dependent upon the common cultural frequency to which you lock. It’s comfortable to act within your role in a narrowly defined drama. When you alter your consciousness, the ego flags it as a threat. You think you are being hypnotized when in essence you are being deprogrammed and given freedom to scan the consciousness spectrum which causes the ego to go on high alert. The old dependable you, who can be manipulated by the power centres within culture, is waking up. If you keep it up you are going to start breaking character and really tasting all life has to offer.

Okay, so let’s take a quick look at the seven frequencies of the subtle body. Our base chakra called the Muladhara is our wild nature before all the overlays of life are added. It’s our natural physical nature and we see this energy on display within animals. It’s our survival instinct that allows us to go into warrior mode for preservation or run from the danger magnified by fear if necessary. Meet a free-spirited person and they likely have this chakra as one of their main frequencies they traverse. The second chakra is the home to our lusts, desires, passions, and urges which also fuels the creative juices within us. We all know someone who expresses these traits explicitly out in the open while culture forces most of us to bury these passions which in turn causes them to build up to the point the energy must be satiated. Gluttony unchecked and the desire for more is found at this level of consciousness. Satiating desire is so satisfying and thus this is a hard obstacle to get past. The third chakra is our personal power. This powerful mental energy is found in politicians and those who strive to make it in this world. It’s the main frequency of the world, forcing everyone to play the game of fame and fortune to survive. The egomaniac pulses with this power. Lower chakras are what we normally experience in this world and here we find the final block as we strive and drive towards personal greatness. From this "all for me" energetic vibration it’s a short jump to the heart chakra. Breaking past the obstacle of selfishness leads you directly into the heart. The heart is the home of love and compassion that we constantly confuse with the second chakra. Eventual understanding leads to the recognition that in a human body this chakra in the centre is where we find the answer we seek. In duality, the only answer is to unconditionally love all. We are all of the same unfolding energetic pulse. I am you as you are me and we are all together. The fifth chakra is the throat chakra where we learn of the power we have to influence others through our speech. It is describing the magnetic personality of many that can be used to influence and gain power. As with all the levels of vibration, it can be used for positive or negative means. Personally, this chakra reminds me to live in truth and drop the narrative I create about myself. As well, be conscious now that I am older of the effect my words have on the younger generations who are still seeking out their place in life. The sixth chakra is the third eye in the psychic plane. As a natural born mystic, I know all about this chakra though I spent most of my life not knowing of my nature or my connection. Once I discovered a way to alter my consciousness, making a connection with the spiritual realm became second nature. There is a tie in to the creative energy of the second chakra which hints at the sacredness of sexual energy to the spiritual. The seventh chakra is the crown chakra where you return to omnipotence and find yourself as god/goddess. Like I said earlier, you can’t stay there but it’s fun to get a glimpse of omnipotence.

How long can you stay there, well, this goes for any of the vibratory states, is determined by your mastery of each level. From a purely colloquial standpoint, the language used within spiritual circles is pretty spot on. Terms like “I feel blocked” or “I’m going to level up” and “good vibes/bad vibes” are bandied about and the expression of these truths comes from a place within that knows. It really is quite fascinating that deep down we all know what it is we are striving for and the game becomes finding the spark that will help you remember what it is you already know. If you are chasing personal power and can’t give it up you will feel blocked and never reach the next level. Same goes for our lusts, whether that is food, drink, money, sexual pursuits, carnal pleasures and the like. If your vibration constantly pulls you towards these pursuits you’ll expend your precious energy in this frequency. It’s pretty simple to understand once you make the connections, though to put all into practice is a different story.

I was thinking the other night while smoking Mapacho about the great debt I have to some of my spiritual teachers. My rock is the Great Goddess. The Maestro of Maestros is who I call the Dragon. The three main human influences on my path have been Alan Watts, Ram Dass, and don Howard and they all brought their unique strengths and teachings to the table. Alan Watts appeals to me because of his ability to intellectually break down worldwide spiritual concepts which allows for understanding. Ram Dass is very different in that his journey was experiential and there is something to him that is very genuine. His admission that he is a spiritual dilettante is very endearing. I mean why not? The goal of a spiritual discipline should lead you to the god within and the vibratory nature of the universe. How you get there is of no real concern. I met don Howard at a time in my life when I needed guidance on the spiritual path and he provided a place I could trust as well as introducing me to concepts and experiences I would never have come across. The power of the Mesa and my love of Mapacho are directly related to my good fortune of coming into his sphere of influence and I don’t think it was accidental. I mean, I can’t envision my life path and all I have discovered without having met the wizard. Anyway, I bring up these three men because their teachings are multi-faceted and you can listen to them over and over again because when you’re ready you will grok the teaching. I usually joke about listening to Alan Watts’ lectures about ten times before I finally understand the topic. Ram Dass’ teachings are simpler and more heart based. They are laid out pretty straightforward and in this way he is being a conduit for his guru Maharaji. I have mentioned before the simple teaching of Maharaji telling him to "Love all and tell the truth.” This advice is wildly transforming. I happened upon one of his earlier lectures and he was talking about vibration and everything was lining up with what I have discovered in my own experimentation. It’s funny that of course now this is resonating with me. This led to me remembering a three-word slogan he uses. Love Serve Remember. Love all, Serve all, and Remember God.

I grew up chafing at religion, God, and the like so the use of the word God is always slightly problematic. Ram Dass talks of God, guru, and self all being one so I get what he means by remembering God. I finally made the connection of the missing link of vibration and it relates to what this blog post is all about. Maharaji would sit all day with his blanket and mumble “ram, ram, ram, ram…”. Ram being God. Everyday, in his notebook he’d write two pages of “ram, ram, ram, ram…”. He’d have his beads in his hands constantly counting them while remembering God. He mastered vibration and was using these techniques to stay in the crown chakra! So, he gives the simple instruction “Remember God.” You want to hang out at this level of consciousness then it’s really easy. Spend every waking moment doing acts that will bring you to God. You want to be in the heart chakra then Love All and Serve All. That’s it. Easy, right?

the serpent power

This study of tantra has opened up a liberating line of thinking. It has led me to experience the chakra energy centres within the subtle body non-linearly instead of treating them as a conceptual ladder of ascension that symbolize achievement of spiritual bona fides. What I mean is all the energy within the body can be experienced and it’s all sacred. Instead of treating the lower chakras such as the second chakra of sexual energy as a gross manifestation of energy that needs to be refined and purified, I was shown that the creative power which sustains life is the direct result of this energy. This knowledge has been staring me in the face and I have been denying it all my life due to cultural hang-ups about sex. Once it was pointed out to me, I immediately connected to this wisdom and felt so free. It does tie into liberation where you let go of your narrative and the hold culture has on you and just sit with what you experience. It’s so natural and yet sexual energy is denied and buried in our culture. It is the rocket boost to send you up on your way in your journey of ascension after unification and transformation.

Another revelation is the nature of each of the chakra energy centres and how we have subsequently organized, structured, and placed them into a hierarchy. Once again, it is through liberation of thought I connected with different ways of perceiving energy. It was pointed out by a teacher that in meditation you don’t experience these states in the order you read about them. I definitely already knew that but and it’s strange this fact had to be pointed out to me so I could register and acknowledge the reality of these vibrational centres. Perhaps I thought I was an outlier? The energy centres are non-linear and can be accessed independently of the others. Quite often in meditation you may find yourself in the higher states and you will notice your access was not a linear and structured progression to get there. First off, I’ve experienced a purple energy, followed by an energy that resembles an eye, as well as a bluish energy encircled by gold speckles. These are the higher spiritual states yet they are what I experience during deep meditation. The lower chakra centres on the ascending scale I have never directly experienced in meditation, though curiously with the plant medicine Huachuma they manifest as smouldering hot red and orange flames of passion that lead to the heart and a green energy becomes palpable. The power experienced is non-linear and it’s our left hemispheric brain which takes a perceptual experience, devoid of a linear defining characteristic, and organizes them into some kind of achievement to be ascended a step at a time. It’s very funny to see the process that the masculine mind tries to overlay upon the non-structured feminine.

As with all attempts of defining experiences on this path, it’s near impossible to fit chakras into a non-linear or linear box. Though I realized I can access their respective vibratory states in a non-linear fashion, the actual linear ladder like climb is the stuff of the masculine hero on his journey of ascension. Each power centre acts as a block on the path and the one that holds your particular predilections is the most arduous of them all to break free of. In my case, I found a dragon that prevented full access to this tree of life however I was able to move past him after developing a little courage and bravery. The second chakra of life passions, desires, lusts, and urges has been my particular bugaboo and the biggest block upon my path. It wasn’t until I understood the vibratory nature of existence that I was able to master this frequency. Onwards towards the third chakra and my egoistic aspirations and personal power. Like all, I have selfishness however I have never exalted myself or tried to take advantage of others for personal gain. The one roadblock I do see in this frequency is spiritual inflation. To put it bluntly, I know I’m god. That’s a tough one to not succumb to inflating one’s outlook upon themselves. I think it’s kind of funny and I know you’re god too so I don’t think I’ll get too stuck. It’s the next chakra, the heart, that I’ll need to spend some time on. Head up and heart forward.

In addition, chakras are dualistic so that each energy centre has a positive and negative charge. For instance, the second chakra can undulate with desire or can express the awesome ability to create. The throat chakra gives you the power of words to use to enchant, influence, or tell the truth. It’s your choice in how you want to use the power bestowed by the flowering of the energy.

As with most experiences on my spiritual journey, I experienced the coming on and rising of the kundalini energy and had no idea what was going on. Looking back on my early experiences with the plant magic of Ayahuasca and Huachuma, I can see how powerful they are for changing consciousness in addition to taking you into states of energetic rapture where it’s trial by fire. Even if I had studied tantric yoga and was intellectually immersed in all outcomes of the psychedelic states, nothing compares to actually being in the eye of the storm. The second time I drank Huachuma, my whole body started vibrating with the energy reaching a crescendo that brought me to my knees. The sensation was this fluttering within that was very strong. Think of a giant moth buzzing behind your ear with a great vibration but that being within your body. I felt my heart opening but wasn’t scared by the effect it was having on my heart. I could very easily see someone thinking they are having a heart attack. Instead, I just stayed on the ground with my whole body in some kind of a pre-orgasmic state. I closed my eyes and saw two huge serpents flanking an incredible ball of intense light. I held out my hands for others to touch so they could feel the energy and someone else wondered what I was experiencing. I blurted out “serpent energy” which was strange because I just said it without thinking. Throughout the rest of the day I was seeing serpent shapes in the ground and cycling in and out of highly energetic states.

I had no idea at the time what happened. I was taken aback by all of it and was even unsure at the time if I should drink Huachuma again. I convinced myself to experience this potentiator of energy a couple days later and looking back I can clearly see what happened. I was blasted into the heart chakra. I sat on the boat on the Amazon river and felt this incredible cosmic bliss. My heart was wide open and I looked up into the sky and this rainbow patch formed. We got off the boats and I felt such love for the tribe we were visiting. I physically started seeing energy manifest all around me and I was confused by this novel experience and spiralled down again. When we returned to the boats I sat beside the shaman don Rober and once again my heart opened but it was so strange. How bizarre that I’d spent my life with a heart so closed that when it was opened I was confused by the sensation. As we returned to the Sanctuary, I looked into the distance and saw manifest heavenly apparitions of fireworks. I now look back on the experience as a celebration of blasting through the energetic chakra centres and then lighting off fireworks at the completion. The funny thing was at the time I had no idea and just wanted off the ride!

The musical scale mimics these energy centres within the body. This is vibrational magic and the expression "good vibes" is not just a trite expression. Changing vibration is how the magic works. In order to access occluded planes of consciousness, alter your vibration. Practice the ability to modulate frequency through love, emotion, music, speech, desire, and the like. Try singing the musical scale now. Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. Notice how you start deep within and to hit the high note requires you to look towards the top of your head to hit it. It’s a pretty good meditation to sing the ascending scale and then reverse it so the energy descends. Now, notice the rhythm section in a piece of music. It’s a low-level bass and drums. Just like the root chakra, it is the pulse of our life beating out our song.

Within your daily life you can find experiences and practices to further you along on your journey. Obviously, it is impractical to function day to day high on a mind-manifesting substance that changes your vibration so the answer is to make your life the spiritual practice you seek. 

sacrifice

There’s always something to master. I embarked upon a spiritual path about 14 years ago and I have answered the majority of the questions that I wondered about. I am cautiously proud of myself for seeing the journey through, for forging onwards when the journey got very difficult, and for not falling into any of the myriad of pitfalls placed along the path. Always having something to master is frustrating. I would have thought spiritual mastery and seeing through the game would be the ultimate achievement. I’m pretty much at this point, yet I am incredibly frustrated at my inability to master some basic life skills. My otherworldly teachers must shake their heads as never before have they had a student that could complete the spiritual journey like I did considering my starting point as a beta male in a western material world. Worldly power and rewards did not capture me. Cultural pitfalls sure to trip anyone up, I sidestepped. Heavy doses of fear, I overcame. Threats of death I ignored and soldiered on. Many magicians posing as teachers reached out for me however I stuck to the dead teachers of yesteryear and ignored the parasites that attached themselves to their teachings. Ha ha I did it! I won! I see with a clarity like no other how it all works. Yet, my life isn’t perfect. Desires and thought patterns I know I can break free of I remain a slave to. I think I should turn my attention towards them much like I did with the spiritual path. I need to quell the frustration within.

Liberation involves sacrifice. When you are ready to go full on into freeing yourself from all that holds you back then you have to start giving up some things that will cause you suffering or in some cases it’s sacrificing some pleasure to forego that subsequent pain. Ice cream will give you some immediate mouth pleasure however the obesity and diabetes may not be worth it in the end!

I wanted to write a blog post about sacrifice in order to better understand it. My knowledge concerning sacrifice immediately leads me to stories in the Bible concerning sacrifice for ablution of sin and the story of Abraham’s obedience to Yahweh concerning sacrificing his firstborn son Isaac. In that case, it’s a pretty good study of what was valued the most in that period of time and to Abraham it was his son Isaac who would inherit his worldly possessions gained by his accomplishments. The test was to see if he would give that up for his god. Similarly, the idea of sacrificing your best bullock to your god is a big deal. We’d all prefer to give up the small and sickly animal and the idea of ancient sacrifice involved paying a heavy price. A nice reward from your chosen deity isn’t free.

What is the limit of credulity? What can you get humans to do in order to obtain power? Do they have a limit as to how far they will go? For some, there doesn’t seem to be a line they wouldn’t cross. Is that the lesson of the absurdity of the backbone of some religions? If you give up what is the most valuable to you, besides your own life, then you will be rewarded. The sacrifice is a symbol of your depravity and the extremes you would go to get what you want. Would you sacrifice your firstborn to gain favour with your god? When the bastions of power within society come for your children for profit and the subsequent power it brings, do you let them have your children or do you stand up at great risk to life and livelihood?

Sacrifice of life in order to go on living is a necessity. Daily involuntary slaughter of life so that we survive. That reality is something I don’t like thinking about. What is survival and why do I have to take life to live? Why do I trap myself in a belief that in order to attain my spiritual bona fides I need to become a vegan and not take animal life? What is the reward that is sought? Are you not upsetting the god of the plants? Why this paradox and this question I can’t satisfactorily answer? For animal life forms, the game is designed so you have to eat others or perish and eventually in turn be eaten. Them the parameters of the game, if you choose to play. Limit the suffering, move on towards the next level, and don’t get caught.

This kind of answers the question about ancient practices of taking life as ritual and sacrifice. Since there was no way out of the trap, in turn it was made holy. The life was offered to the god, including the best fat of the animal, and in turn you got your fill.

There’re also stories, not only in the Bible, but throughout antiquity of sacrificing the firstborn with a prohibition concerning this practice in the Bible confirming that it was practised in ancient times to gain favour with a chosen god. Ultimately, the substitute sacrifice for the firstborn is transferred on to the Lamb and reaches its fruition in the New Testament crucifixion and sacrifice of Christ to save humankind from its sins. The backbone of Judeo-Christianity is sacrifice of the firstborn.

I could go on and on about this and have even written a book about this very idea however it’s not the scope of this post. What I’m really trying to get at is the concept of sacrifice. At its core, sacrifice seems to be the idea that in order to gain something from your god or perhaps gain favour there has to be a transactional exchange. This struck a chord with me because it sounds like the concepts of reciprocity and reconciliation. We are playing a zero-sum game and for every gain for someone there is a loss for others. In a community where resources are all shared, if someone suddenly has way more material goods than another then somewhere along the line someone had to suffer a loss in order for the wealthy to have acquired their goods.

Spiritual paths of antiquity all had elements of sacrifice in them. You gave something up of value to the gods in exchange for a boon or forgiveness. In a way, it speaks to reconciliation and reciprocity where in essence you are trying to even out your karma so the evil eye of others’ jealousy does not cast a spell on your good fortune.

The concept of reciprocity as found in pre-Columbian South America was called ayni and operated on the simple concept that for everything you take you must give back an equal amount. I’ve seen it at work in my exploration of plant medicines. You can ask for a favour or a healing from a plant however there is an offering to be made. In other words, a sacrifice. It’s an honour system where the plant medicine will give you the boon you asked for and then await fulfillment of what you promised in return. This is where reconciliation comes into play. If you work with plant medicines enough you will see that if you do not fulfill your promises, eventually they leave you. The internet is rife with stories of selfish humans claiming the plants abandoned or turned on them; all said in earnest without a clue that the problem may lay with you and the fact you are all take and no give.

So, what I’m getting at is the concept of sacrifice parallels with the idea of reciprocity. Giving up something to get something. Reciprocity and reconciliation. The ultimate sacrifice was when you originally gave up knowledge of self for a ticket to the carnival of life. To return, I must sacrifice the rewards and pleasures of this life I have earned and grown accustomed towards. It’s such an interesting wheel of fortune. Give it all up to advance on the big game board. Give it all up for a new roll of the dice. Start over with nothing and play that earth game until you accumulate a new-found fortune. And then to return home, you once again give it all away. The ticket to ride always involves sacrifice.

You sacrifice omnipotence in order to play the game of life. Finally, you sacrifice the self and everything you accumulated in order to return to what it was you originally sacrificed. Therein lies the rub: Do you wait until the catastrophic full stop of death or do you beat the game and do it now?

experiential

My pulsing energy within is the intertwined feminine Serpent and the masculine Jaguar. This is the conjunction of power where earth meets sky and the sun and moon energies collide. The Hindu chakra system of ascension of the earth based feminine Kundalini serpent tells half of this eternal story. The masculine energy as a bull or feline descends into our sacred vessels from the sky. The meeting place of these two lovers is in the centre, the fourth chakra, which is the heart chakra.

It’s through the use of psychedelic substances that I was able to sense this eternal truth and subsequently make the connection to ancient spiritual paths. Consciousness altering methods allow the human access to obfuscated sense perceptions normally unavailable to us.

The ascension of the serpent gives rise to achievement and spurs on the masculine goal of enlightenment of our physical form. The descending of the masculine energy as spirit is the energy to rouse the sleeping serpent. I experienced this in an Ayahuasca ceremony where I envisioned my crown chakra being permanently opened and the white light continuously entering and lighting up the seven energy centres in a continual process as each chakra lit up with its respective colour. It was during a Vilca experience a year and a half later where I witnessed these eternal and imperishable beings made of love and powered by ever-transforming light. It’s only now that I finally connected these two visions. The beings were composed of the love of the Goddess and the light of the God. This is what is described and experienced in moments of rapture when the Kundalini rises up the Ida channel after the spirit descends the Pingala to rouse and propitiate her. A third plant medicine, Huachuma, first allowed me to physically experience this phenomenon, though at the time I was gobsmacked. The second time I drank Huachuma, the energy within was potentiated and I became lit up with power and disoriented to the novel experience. My whole body was shaking with an intense electrical charge and my heart was fluttering with a tremendous energy load. I closed my eyes and saw an intense ball of white light surrounded by two larger than life serpents. I was experiencing the full effects of the chakra cycle, lit up by the light and the power of the Kundalini serpent. Subsequently with Huachuma, I can experience intense states of an energetic load as I am a conduit for the pulsing of the two eternal energies of the universe. I can also experience this reaction within as a burning hot passionate flame that radiates from my being. I close my eyes and I see smouldering colours of an intensity that is combustible.

The great pre-Columbian South American civilization at Chavín de Huántar, which used the sacrament of Huachuma to build community, deserves a second look in conjunction with the principles ascertained in the chakra system of the Hindus. This post Bronze Age civilization marked a high point and probably the last flicker of a flame of human co-operation before we devolved into a race defined by conflict. Chavín represented the axis mundi and is where the confluence of elemental energies and cultures converged. It is in the stone idol we call the lanzon that the two eternal energies of the feminine serpent and the masculine jaguar come together as one representing the same love and light captured in stone as I detailed above. In addition, the designation of Chavín comes from the transposition of a Quechua word chapin via the root word chaupi which refers to the heart in the middle of this grand reconciliation of all in this great temple in the Peruvian highlands. The connections to the Hindu chakras are tantalizing and helps understand the teachings. The serpent and jaguar, one rising and one falling, meet in the middle at the heart chakra. Our human potential, powered by the rising Kundalini becomes conjoined with the descent into the human of our spiritual potential which then meet in the heart space. We can experience rapture with the rising energy while the spiritual energy comes to awaken our eternal self and lift us up.

I’ve experienced this, seen it at work, and then saw my destiny as an imperishable and eternal being made of the love of the serpent and the ever-transforming light of the jaguar. I finally added it up and can now clearly see it.

Within my own European heritage this same knowledge has been preserved in myth. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs representing the feminine presence within the seven energy centres along with the Prince who awakens Sleeping Beauty from her sleep being the masculine power giving the feminine the power to wake up and rise.

This experience of the energy within is real and palpable. I invite us all to go on the most magnificent journey of discovery that will lead to revealing your destiny.