Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Ceremony #7

As soon as I entered the ceremonial building I could feel the energy.  I felt and manifested gratitude for those that had brought me here.  And the list was long.  It would grow longer as the night progressed.

When the ceremony started and intentions were expressed, I said just that, that I felt gratitude for this space and these people.  And that there was energy in the air.  And that tonight would be special.  And it was.  In the strange way that only a vine ceremony can be: wonderful, painful, and frightening--at the same time.

I came armed with more intentions to this ceremony than to any of the others I've been a part of.  And in case the vine caused me to separate from myself, these intentions were manifested in physical objects in case (as had happened in Costa Rica) I forgot about everything and was looking for clues of my past self.  In this regard,  I brought with me my Buddha symbol to remind me of my Buddha nature and my zen practice, my onk cross for the promise of reuniting my natural self with my false egoic consciousness, and a rosary, in case the shit really hit the fan again and mother aya trounced me down to the ground again where all I could do was pray for deliverance and relief.

However, the totem that I would clutch to most fervently to this ceremony was an Indian feather necklace for courage that I picked up in St. Louis on the way to the ceremony.  I clutched this tightly in my hand during most of the ceremony.  Indeed, I put the cross in with the pictures of my family away from me to be purified in the ceremony.

After we took the first cup of the sacrament, and completed a wonderful yoga/energy/breath practice led by Sandstar we all held hands standing in a circle and I listened to MetaStar speak.  At this time, I begin to enter medicine space.  Time slowed down and when she spoke to the group, it felt as if she was speaking to me alone outside of time and space.  As if the whole play of my life could now be understood without illusion:  as if I was waking up from the dream of my past life into something else that was more real.  Then, as happened before in Costa Rica, the shaman's face turned dark and into a death mask.  And the participants next to her in the ceremony in my peripheral vision turned into wild animals, like standing Buffalo.  When I looked at them directly they returned back to human form.
My first instinct at seeing the death shaman was to turn away in fear like I did before.  But I clutched the Indian feathers and reminded myself that this was my journey.  This is what I came here for.  This is what I was supposed to see.  As soon as this intention manifested, the death mask vanished.  Fear was replaced with gratitude.  Then I remembered my intention to expressed gratitude to those in my life: starting with my mother, and moving through a long list of other people.  Then I looked around me to those in the circle and felt an outpouring of love to these people that were hours ago strangers.  Some where happy, some sad, some self absorbed.  There were lovers holding hands gazing into each others' eyes.

And when the second cup was consumed and we meditated in darkness, I was pulled down into the darkness and I purged again and again.  And my mind told me repeatedly of something in my past that was too horrible to be true.   So I stood up.  And I tried to dance with the darkness even as the swaying more me more sick.

And in the meantime, we talked about Plato's cave.  And we made rhymes and made jokes:

If you think your something better let it go

lest your mind remind you that its just not so

let the strong grow weak

and the smart grow dim

here comes the cycle all over again

verse 2

fuck them if they can't take a joke

joke them if they can't take a fuck.

and we learned funky dance moves.

Epilogue: Katherine Maclean's description of her psychedelic experience in the podcast that we are all a dream dreamed by a vast jungle entity.

Monday, February 19, 2018

The Night After Ceremony #7 and the Night After the Night After Ceremony #7

One practice I learned at the ceremony from one of the participants was to move a ball of awareness/energy (and awareness and energy may be the same--think about it...lol) from different body parts which created (for him) an undulating rippling effect.   In the process, his movements resembled a mime/break dancer during the dance portion of the ceremony.

I tried this when I returned back home and was up in the middle of the night during one of my now common "late night dances" to release energy.  While I certainly don't have the break dance moves yet, I was able to let the energy focus on my heart chakra for a while and then I felt myself channeling all sorts of positive stuff from around me.  My ever growing "Kanko's trance" Spotify playlist was  playing Shimshai & Susana's "Sirenita Bobinzana" which seemed so beautiful at the time that I was just enjoying it and adding many of their other songs to the playlist.  I felt an outpouring of love and imagined how this feeling if nurtured in a supportive community would certainly transform my life into something beautiful.  If this were a cult, I certainly wanted to join and understood/felt the impulse to belong.

I laid down after this.  I wasn't exactly tired, but I wanted to meditate on all the energy that was flowing through me.  I looked upward with eyes closed and eventually entered the dream state where initially I was with one of the self professed Shaman women that I had scheduled to do a podcast with earlier in the week. She looked surprisingly like an old dog--certainly not what I remembered about her.  I wondered if my dream vision of her was more accurate.

Then I entered lucid dream space and could feel my presence moving all about the room.   I remember hearing Sandstar's voice urging me to go deeper into the trance/meditation and to join a group existing in some sort of higher dimension/reality.  So deeper I went.  With my new power, I wanted to visit the moon and I shot up through the sky and was rapidly transported.  I remember being on the white surface of the moon and felt the universe was open to me.  I next wanted to go to Mars which was a longer journey.  As I entered an asteroid belt, I felt the presence of some dark energy and imagined hearing running water from the toilet in the bathroom next to me.  I was immediately whisked back to my body and away from my celestial journey.

However, after I realized that the toilet water was not running, I wanted to return to my lucid dream.  So I again began to meditate.  This time, I did not want to travel in space, but rather time.  I wanted to explore the alleged traumatic event of my childhood which was revealed during Ceremony #7.  Though I did enter lucid dream space again, I was not able to go back in time appreciably.  There was only darkness.  Eventually, I returned back to dream space.  In this dream, I was taking part in a play.  My participation was accidental, as if I had been pulled in off the street to fill in on some part.  Initially, I was just following a group of people who were telling me what I should say and how I should act.  Then I had a script to follow, but the script was impossible to read.

In one of the scenes the main character, a beautiful woman was supposed to kiss me.  Which she did.  I was surprised at the earnestness of her kiss--like she wasn't acting and really loved me.  But it was more than love.  It was warm and hot and it was everything.  I was immediately transported.  In a later scene she kissed me again and I was just following her around like an obedient puppy.  At the back of my mind, I wondered if she was just acting, and if so, what that would mean for me, because I certainly was not acting.

The Night After the Night After Ceremony #7

Once again, I entered lucid dreaming space.  I was in a room that was in retrospect something like my grandparents' front room in Helper, Utah.  But with differences.  To begin with, the workers left open the roof in the back of the house and I climbed up to a universe filled with stars.  I felt as if a portal had been opened to infinity.  I stepped through and had the feeling that if the portal closed behind me I would exist in infinity, alone, for eternity.  This thought scared me initially but must not have ultimately bothered me because I was soon surfing around the stars using a Virabhadrasana 2 pose.

Then I was back in the room screaming.   I don't remember why I was screaming.  I remember thinking that the Louver was next door.  But then I remembered I was alone in the apartment.  I continued in dream space to ascertain what had frightened me, but then I had other dreams.

Friday, February 9, 2018

The Collaboration (WIP)

pale 
 migrated far from the source, 
entranced by an awkward forgetful beat
There is a rhythm, a memory, waiting to emerge from my cracked sheltered skin

Memory of a rhythm this vibe is dignified
case in point
Content of Character inspired with joy
why Judge my reflection from Others
Lyfe of Noise
I am a Man
Alone, Appreciate the humility of the Man
So why view me as a threat?

We learned to fear what we lost
Kicked out of plentiful Eden
Starving
We fought to keep what we thought ours
No more sun
no warmth
no dance
And late at night
We scribbled crude pictures in the cold rock


Visually fixed intelligence
translated pictures so perfect the memory bliss
pages forever turnt.
This Olive branch in Lyfe the Creator
Given w/a Governing twist
Complicity of a Beautiful Freedom
Reason of Being
Vindictive over this precious Happiness

Trout Eyes
Tree Skin
Dragon Mouth
The price of life is death
Life's great mystery:
we are already dead
nohow can we live?



Tuesday, February 6, 2018

The Collision

I am pale because I have migrated far from the source,

entranced by the awkward forgetful beat of my ancestors.

There is a rhythm, a memory, waiting to get out under the cracked sheltered skin.


I was in a car,

but I made the wrong turn

and was heading against traffic on a one way road

In the distance, two cars approach

I try to move my car and turn around,

or to get off the road

anything to avoid the collision

But I was stuck on the ice,

and no matter how I tried,

my car spun its tires and would not move

The approaching cars saw me and slowed down

to avoid the collision

But as I turned around, to my horror

I saw another car behind me

presumably following my lead

approaching and then passing me at a high rate of speed

The passing blue car slammed head on to the approaching car

and there was an absolute stillness

I was in shock

I could not look

The blue car had followed me and I was responsible

When I awoke, I racked my brain trying to think of who had a blue car

who had I led astray

But I only know one person with a blue car

and I guess I should get to know him better

or at least provide him better guidance.

Friday, February 2, 2018

Trance de Orishas

Late at night in the quiet of my bedroom which with its heavy velvet drapes and solitary stillness suggests that of a tomb I have recently and gradually become somewhat proficient at a new activity that is only now coming into fruition.

I suppose it can best be categorized as a self induced trance.  I seem to have access to it when I wake up in the middle of the night (1-4pm) and then endeavor to enter this state.    How this is accomplished varies, but there are some common characteristics.  First, it involves a degree of concentration on a single point, with my eyes closed.  The point can be moving, such as the vibrating colors and designs that you can sometimes see with you eyes closed.  Second, patience is required.   It just takes a while of staying with the point.  Its like a mediation that you keep coming back to your object of meditation.   In fact, though my general objective to this activity is often to go back to sleep, it is helpful not to try to go to sleep, but only try to meditate.  Third, and most importantly, is the breath.  Slow and deep breaths, especially in harmony with the object of meditation are helpful.  Fourth, it helps to move into the body, feeling all of its sensations while at the same time focusing on the point.  The object is to get out of your thinking mind.  And any of these practices, or combination of them can be helpful.

Eventually, I can feel that all my thoughts and awareness are more or less coalescing on this single point or object of meditation.  When this occurs my awareness of who I am or what I am doing drops away and there is only the point.  I can almost feel this physically.  As if my entire consciousness is wrapped up in that single point and everything, time, space, awareness disappear.  If there are any thoughts, I bring them into the point without analyzing them.  Everything goes into the object of meditation.  Sometimes I feel this point is in the frontal part of my brain--like the mystical third eye.
Often the end result of this practice is that I fall asleep and dream either vividly or lucidly.  Case in point last night.  The vivid dream started with an awareness that I can been hurt in my head somehow, and I went back to investigate.  During this process I went back to a room that was vaguely in Gillette Wyoming, perhaps near the old Alco store and I was with Patrick Russell.  (Earlier this week, I spoke with this musician about brain wave entrainment and trance states at the Studio Show).  I became aware that I had the power to levitate.  He was shocked.  Then my powers increased.  More people arrived and I had developed advanced powers of telekinesis with small gestures.   Everybody was scared of me.  I remember looking into the mirror and seeing three aspects of me.  One of the was unfocused.  One of them was for lack of a better word evil--or at least certainly foreboding. 
The lucidity of the dream developed as I became aware that I could induce this trance state at will within my dream.  And with it I developed enormous powers.  I remember thinking of the Orishas that are accessed through trance states and how I had summoned one of them.  I woke up with a chill and fear.  I was alone in an apartment late at night and I felt an electrifying presence all around me.  Sleep did not come again that night.

Thursday, February 1, 2018

I love Kimchi

An impossibly vast grocery store
Next to the meat aisle
wrapped in a little ball
my heart
she pretended not to notice

when no one was looking
a furtive movement
she took it home
and let it ferment
hoping to unlock the aroma