Slowness, Resistance, Breaks, and Contractions

Moving in and out of the slow and fast vibrations of the universe.  When we are slow, we are separate and apart.  Things don't work or make sense.  It is heavy and depressed.

As we speed up, we harmonize with all of existence and are not separate from it.  We see non-dual reality.  And our prior slow contraction was just a dream, an illusion to this expansion.  We were always apart of this, but we had no idea.  We could not know this with our slowness just as the caterpillar had no idea of the butterfly or of flight, and the baby had no idea of separation and light.

To experience this for the first time is too much.  It explains the psychotic break I experienced in Costa Rica.  It was too much for my well conditioned ego to contain, so I went outside the ego.  In my vision, I was looking for clues to understand what was going on.  It was the working of a fractured ego looking for an explanation that existed a quantum level about its understanding.

But eventually all things contract after they expand.   The ego expands to take in the new experience and integrate it, now a little more larger than before.  For that is the tension, we are hardwired to make sense of everything.  To endlessly dissect this great unity of a universe which ultimately cannot be dissected.  So we spend our days struggling, like Sisyphus, in a losing battle.

Plants are full of life and DMT and expand with life to the sunlight.  Fermented foods and alcohol are foods already decayed, already contracted, perhaps providing fertilizer for the next expansion.  But certainly when consumed, slow us down and separate us from life writ large.

The expansion is calling me now.  I feel it even outside ceremony now.  Slowly showing my ego that it is all one big God interacting with itself.  Slowly chipping away at my resistance.  And the resistance is strong.  For I will lose myself in the vastness.   I will lose my family, my friends, my way of life, or at least my thoughts about them.  Because they were me all along.  Gaining a universe, losing my life.

The Patchwork Quilt

Starting from our youth, there is a story we have been simultaneously reading and creating about ourselves.  Most of the time, it is not terribly well written or interesting.  It's kind of like a thrown together patchwork quilt.   A hodgepodge of ideas and different pieces of cloth that don't really match.  We did the best that we could with the material at hand.  See, our mind is like that.  It creates a story out of the available information.  We do the best that we can to make sense of things we experience.  But often times, the stories we tell are simply reruns from patterns and narratives we put together long ago.

There is even a story we tell about the spaces in our quilt where there is no story.  Those moments when we drive to work in the morning feeling empty or disconcerted.  We may think we are missing something, but really what we are experiencing is a gap, an experience that is not captured by our old ragged patchwork quilt of a story.  And we may think the hole in our story represents something wrong, some place we should not go, some feeling we should not experience.  And some may call this gap in the story "depression" or "loneliness" or "anxiety."  The natural inclination is to turn away from the gap and not look into it.  But the gap should be welcomed as an opportunity.  The gap should be examined closely as it is perhaps a portal to a new and different story.   And if we look and listen to it closely, and feel what its energy is trying to tell us, we may find that the gap is connected to our heart. For our quilt often tells the story of our mind and our memory.  If we want to create something new, it comes from our heart.

So we can follow the hole in our story.  See where it leads.  Do not be afraid of it.  Do not think it is something wrong or that you are losing your mind or that it is "depression" or that you will not come back.  This is what you came for when you started.  If you remember, you were tired of your story.  You wanted adventure,  you wanted change.   If you can just "be" within that gap, and listen to its beating heart, you may find a new story developing which adds new breath and dimension to your life.  Stay with it my friend.  Stay thirsty my friend.

And if not, then it is nothing more than a tawdry tale of sin and redemption, intermixed with unyielding hope amidst the vast torrents of remorse and despair.  And in this day and age, you can simply change the channel.

There Really is Only One Thing

You might have heard that we are all one.  That there is no separation.   That all is made of God.

You might have read it in a book.  Or maybe you have a Ph. D. in Theology.  Maybe a priest told you.

That is one thing.  To experience it is quite another.  There is no way to describe it.  

The shock of the seed, pushing through the cold dark ground into the light

The baby, now though the birth canal, looking at the light.

Holy Shit.  Oh my fucking God.

I had no idea.  This is what it is.  This is what reality is.

There really is only one thing.  And it is unimaginably beautiful.  And everything I thought was real, was only a dream, for there is no separation.  

Oh my God.

Everything I thought was real.

It was this all along.

I had no idea.

Now where did it go?

I better hurry or I'll be late for work.

Ceremony #8: The Dark Side

This was intended to be the ceremony to encounter the dark side.   It was not clear in the days and weeks leading up to the ceremony whether the ceremony would actually take place owing to the controversial subject matter.  First it was on, then it was off, then it was back on at the church.  Then it was on at Avatotemic.  Then it was back at the Church.  Then it was off.  Then it occurred at Avatotemic.  So there.

The medicine began to affect me on the ride over.  Zach told me it could be like that.  Maybe it began affecting me the night before.  I did not sleep then, but maybe I did, and it was dreamless.  Maybe I worried about what the ceremony would bring.  On the ride over, when we stopped in St. Louis having learned that the ceremony was cancelled (that is, before it was on again), and Sandstar warned me that the medicine for this ceremony was especially strong (something about a 100 year old vine), I entered medicine space and remembered my fourth night at Rhythmia where I had the vision that my current life was something like a dream.  Part of my fear in that realization was the thought that even my daughters were dreams.  I am still processing (integrating) this.  The habit of my belief that I have something in this life that is real and tangible is strong.   And my fear that I am losing something if my ego dissolves is understandable--even though I know at some level that I will come back after the vision is over.  For the medicine is a bridge to this medicine space.   And I have faith that the bridge runs in both directions.

After we all put on our costumes, the fun began. We growled and snarled and yelled at it other with animal intensity.  One of the more interesting practices that Sandstar and Metastar had in store for us was holding up a mirror to a partner to evoke the darkness of the person looking into the mirror.   The person holding the mirror was tasked with articulating the weaknesses and imperfections of the person gazing into the mirror. Sandstar held the mirror up to me and proceeded to berate me with a wide variety of criticisms, intentionally designed to expose my weaknesses.  However, most of these criticisms missed their mark.  I am generally harder on myself than anything he was throwing at me.   Additionally, I had the sensation that what he was saying about me were his own projections rather than anything about me.

Next, I took the mirror and started to probe what I expected to be his weaknesses. In reality, I am impressed with the world and practices of his life.  It is not everyone that has built his castle with his own hands and the sweat of his own labor.  Nevertheless, it was with a kind of perverse sort of pleasure that I sought to undercut all that he had accomplished.  Some of my criticisms I noticed seemed to hit a nerve with him and caused a reaction.   Part of me wanted to turn away from this pursuit and tell him how much I really admired and supported him, but that seemed contrary to this exercise.  In the end, whatever power or energy I derived from this activity was not empowering.  The medicine showed me that this energy was negative, and left me feeling sick and nauseous.
It was interesting that although I thought this exercise was intended to create darkness in the person looking into the mirror, for me, the person holding the mirror pointing out weaknesses created more darkness in himself than the other person.  I wondered how far this darkness would extend.  I imagined that the force of self-criticism would also create a similar nauseous feeling to the recipient.  And the medicine showed me how I had been the recipient of that darkness throughout my life.  I recalled numerous events in high school and college where I had cut myself off from life by avoiding social interactions such as parties and interactions with women and how I had concocted an elaborate web of self deception to justify my actions which were in reality nothing more than shyness.  I saw how that dynamic continues to effect me currently, albeit in the opposite direction, where I feel incomplete if I am not engaged in social interaction.

In the end, if darkness is the flip side of the light, I still feel hesitant about practices designed to encourage the growth of darkness.  I am aware of beliefs that the force of darkness gives the recipient energy.  I am not sure.  My gut tells me the light is more than enough and contains the darkness, just as white light contains all the colors of the spectrum.  And black is the absence of any of the energy of light.  In this way, for me, hell is not the flip side of heaven, or the yang to the yin of heaven.  No, for me hell is the absence of heaven, hell is the absence of God.  Hell is the absence of light.  It is cold.  I am warm blooded.  I need a jacket.  And a blanket, preferable fluffy and comfortable.  And ear plugs.  And nightshades.  And you know where to put the cork.