Do you have the courage to tell society to “Get lost, cause what do they know anyway”? Do you have the courage to sit with these plant teachers and get blasted into the worlds of numinous light? DO you have the courage to take a serious dosage, step into the “beam-me-up, Scotty” trasporter into the numinous, and go where you’ve never been before? And do you have the capacity to be a stranger in this strange land and be grateful for the opportunity to pass through this threshold and into the magnificent mystery of existence in the realm of divine light?
Something happened to me when I was 24. I was touched by the light of the fire within and became at least partially aware of the nature of existence. I became conscious and aware of the understanding that we are infinite beings of light, brilliant, eternal and bright. I mean, I experienced it. I felt it. It just happened… What you see cannot be unseen. And by see I mean experienced. You Only Live Forever (Y.O.L.F. ) became less of an abstract idea and more of an existential certainty for me that day, and that was just the beginning, and for all I know I still have far to go.
The spark of awareness of the nature of existence hit me after four years of fairly consistent zen meditation, mostly done alone in Japan with the guidance of a couple books about zen and zazen. Most people are familiar with the term ‘zen’ or at least they think they are so I will not elucidate it further. Zazen is the lotus seated meditative discipline based on focusing your awareness on the breath using a deep belly breathing technique to calm the mind, be still and transcend ‘normal’ reality, and step into the noble silence, the divine ‘unknown yet knowable’ of the Zen meditative trance.
I moved to Ocean Beach, San Diego a few months before being struck by the light. This was before I had even heard of tryptamines, by the way, and five years before finally meeting DMT, and thereby entering a whole other kind of light world.
In that fine moment, kundalini energy fired up from the base of my spine through my vertebae and shot into my head (pretty sure I felt some leave through my crown chakra, but most stayed in) and back down and after coursing through my vertebrae for what seemed like forever, but was more like a couple minutes, it shot out my fingers and toes and head. I feel it is important to mention one thing here and that is this. Initially the kundalini scared the living hell of me. It was so alien and unknown and intense. But, the disassociated observer state remained and I somehow managed not to activate the thinking mind in the face of that fear, and was able to hang on the sensation for a minute or two.
Waking up the fire within and feeling it surge inside you is something special. It was like this incredibly large stick of life-shattering ontological dynamite had just exploded inside me, and it was completely natural. But, now I wanted it back. I wanted more. They kundalini energy awakened inside me through meditation, but it is long hard road of dedication and persistence before I got anywhere. I needed a shortcut to the mountaintop, and so the quest for the tryptamines began.
Terrence McKenna introduced the term entheogen to me, and if you are not familiar with it already, I’d like to introduce it to you. The etymology of the word is EN- in, THEO- god, GEN- substance. These are substances that help us realize and remember the god within.
There is one crucial notion I must mention about combining these two endeavors, meditation and entheogens. The effect of them combined together is completely transformational, or can be if you let yourself be touched by it and set the intention.
This awareness of being aware through the disassociation from ego taught in Zen is a very valuable tool to have in the toolkit when we step on through to the other side, and take a plunge down the rabbit hole. You must relinquish control. Just sit back, be still, breathe and enjoy the ride. Riders of the Storm learn how to let go of control mostly because if you don’t, then you’re in for a rough ride, and it’s never fun fighting a losing battle.
I needed more dynamite. The urge to know the unknown is one of the most powerful driving forces in my life. It was like looking for a buried treasure without a map or even a clue where to start. It was a star-crossed voyage that lead me on a wild goose chase for four years after that initial experience with the nature of the light within that some call kundalini. Finally, when I was 29, DMT and I found one another, and that experience was one of the most transcendental, existential, powerful, light-filled experiences I have ever had, and I knew then DMT was an entheogen. ‘The Spirit Molecule’ is the title of Dr. Rick Strassman book about this wonderful tryptamine, and he nailed it.
Hallucinogen is a bad word, as far as I’m concerned. Really, it bugs me. It’s ridiculous if you think about it. It infers that is experienced by the being/the aware consciousness after perturbing the senses is unreal. Really? Well, you eat a handful of Cubensis Azteca or take a 10 strip and take that journey where consciousness is impelled into and through geometric fluid light fields, and tell me it was NOT real. I dare you to do either of those or both, but not at the same time, and tell me that the experience didn’t have a tremendous impact on your mind and spirit, if in fact it did not completely rearrange your ideas and beliefs on life, it’s meaning, and death. To imply that we are hallucinating is a rude and condescending inference to place upon some of the realest shit I have ever seen, felt, heard, known and not known I’d known. I think we are opening our awareness to be able to perceive energy beyond the spectrum of visible light, where our awareness transcends sensory organ sensitivity to be able to perceive the next level of light, divine light.
Yes, divine light. You read that right. We are all infinite beings of light, brilliant, eternal and bright. I’ve seen people’s auras, trees’s spirits and much much more through combining meditation and visionary plants. Only once have I shared this combined experience with another person, and that was a night I will never forget. It was nice to go deep in the wild with one of my fellow tribeswoman.
I digress. So, it started with the mushroom and to this day the testimony of the mushroom is the one I hold closest to my heart. The mushroom taught me nature is luminous, alive and numinous; that everything is alive, conscious, and aware. Trees, rocks, mountains, flowers, water. I could see it. I could see the grid of geometric light energy awareness. I could see the tree spirits dancing. I could see the garment of light shining through everything. This just doesn’t happen though, at least it didn’t just happen to me. We must set the intention at the beginning and verbalize it for the universe to hear, and then have the courage to sit and be still. I like to make it ritualistic; perform a bit of a ceremony, you know? Light candles and incense, say a prayer out loud, and sit in nature or in the dark with the intention of connecting with the light. I usually don’t meditate the whole time I’m journeying because sitting and breathing for five hours is quite a commitment. I can usually hang in there for at least one or two hours and meander through caverns of living, loving light, geometric and fluid simultaneously, and all while it’s all moving and spinning and turning in all different directions all at once. If that makes any sense. Words just don’t do it. It’s an experience that must be endured, explored and embraced. I tell you this much, you never seen and experienced so much with your eyes closed.
So, then I found dimethyltryptamine, DMT, and that was a whole new world of sentient light and feminine divinity. It was my introduction to this dimension that allowed me to know further that we are radiant luminescent awareness. It’s said that the millstones of faith grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. I agree. But my experience of being blasted into another dimension of geometric light and my meeting with La Madre was instantaneous confirmation. La Madre is the feminine divine energy of the planet that one may encounter after intense amounts of tryptamines enter your blood stream. She approached me from afar, but I could see her meandering toward me like she were climbing up a switchback, and I could sense the happiness she held inside herself for the simple fact that I was there. It was as if she was ecstatic that I had made it to her world. She told me I belonged there and made me feel welcome. All of this is communicated telepathically. She never uttered a word with her mouth, actually come to think of it I don’t think she even had a mouth. She had four faces, one on each side of her head, which were spinning slowly, continuously. She had long flowing dreadlocks that looked like Medusa’s snakes the way they were dancing in the light. She was a rainbow of spinning, twirling, swirling light; everything about her was light.
It was a magical psychedelic experience that lets one detach from the mind, which in turn helps one loosen their grip on reality, and have transcendental experiences through the use of visionary plants. It’s like trypatimes blasted me into her world, and like the wind, she comes and goes when and where she wills while you’re sensory organs are in this heightened state of sensitivity and awareness. Through it all though, I must admit I have no idea where I am. I don’t not know where I’ve been, nor do I have any idea where I might go next? I do know it keeps getting deeper and bigger and more astonishing the more familiar I become with this strange new world. When the breeze of her spirit touches you, you can not help but feel refreshed, loved, and overwhelmed with the long longed-for sense of belonging, complete acceptance, complete joy.
Just as a side note for the curious, DMT is in most living things. It’s in grasses, barks, vines, roots, your brain. It is believed that your pineal gland produces DMT. I mean who’s to say that the mind isn’t some sort of elaborate continuous trip into consciousness? The mind is a hallucination. The ego is a hallucination. And it was these very visionary plant teachers that reinforced my knowing that mind and ego are illusions. They are figments of our imagination.
Let’s see. What’s next? Oh, yes. Acid. LSD is a plunge down the rabbit hole for sure, and I was touched by its light as well. It all happened one night at a MAPS conference in Oakland, CA, Dec. 2011. MAPS is the Multidiscplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies. Alex Grey held a workshop there that I was attending the day before the commencement of the conference.
It was liquid. I put two drops on my tongue, and thanked my new friend. The end of that workshop was interesting, but that was just the beginning. After about 8 hits of LSD 25, and some Molly and some THC tincture and some dabs I was given a quartz crystal sphere to hold. Immediately it started shocking me. It was a gentle buzz initially. This is the one experience, mind you, that I have shared so far that was not coupled with meditation. Eventually the gentle buzz turned into an electric stinging shock, but I stayed with the crystal at the urgings of my friend. I opened my hand and revealed to all those in the room the pulsating yellow crystal orb that was electrocuting me. We all saw it. We took the moment and the experience in for what felt like forever, but was probably only a few seconds. The burning was too much and I released the crystal from my open palm. It fell to the floor with the loudest crash I ever felt. It didn’t make a sound, but I felt it. As it lay on the floor I sat on the bed a couple feet away and pondered what was happening. That was strange, but something stranger was going on. The crystal was still pulsating, but the glow was reducing incrementally… and… it was in my abdomen. It was still lying on the ground, but I felt it inside me moving from my stomach up to my heart. As the crystal entered my heart I was immediately electrocuted. A physical bolt of electricity shot out of the crystal and into me, or vice versa, I don’t really know, but it entered through my heart, and filled my entire being with energy until my vision shattered into a million pixels and pieces. Mind blown. The electricity blasted out of my left big toe while my whole body contorted and twisted in a violent explosion of light and consciousness interacting. The crystal was still there and it was trying to get back into my heart. That was a gnarly experience, fascinating, fantastically fascinating, but also filled me with sheer horror. Was I still alive or did I just die from electrocution by crystal? I didn’t know what the world was happening to me, but I knew I had to get away from that crystal. I walked into the hotel hallway. The walls to either side of me immediately bent away from me. I felt like Neo in the Matrix at the moment he becomes aware and the walls in the hallway of his apartment move away from him. It was divine, so divine I thought I might be dead. That didn’t last long. The crystal then electrocuted the only girl in the room as she went to touch it as I was escaping.
So, I opened up to the light, or the light opened me up more appropriately, and I was forced to look at it and be with it, but not be blinded by it. That whole experience probably lasted 20 seconds, but I tell you what. It’s 20 seconds that I will never ever forget. That one, yup, it’s coming with me whenever we go on to wherever it is that we go. When this opening act is over and it’s time for the real show to begin I will remember being blasted by that divine light of awareness.
Then, I went to Burning Man, Lightning in a Bottle, Symbiosis, Enchanted Forest, Floydfest, Lockn, and various other smaller burns and festivals. And this was my tribe. I’d found them. I was 30 years old and I had just found my tribe, but they are out west and so far away. I want to find my tribe in Central Virginia. I want to write a piece about our tribe too, but that’ll have to wait for another day.
I know I am not the only natural born seeker in the area looking for a better way to move and be on this beautiful planet. Join me. Be a bringer of the light of the New Dawn. We are what we’ve been waiting for. It’s time to leave behind this divisive, violent, destructive, controlling and oppressive society and make way for the brotherhood and the sisterhood of the light. Take a stand. Demand better. Demand progress. Demand the freedom to put into our bodies any entheogenic substance we wish with the hopes of transcending ordinary reality and have the freedom to free ourselves enough to be touched by the light, our light, all light.
There was a most empowering and glorious reflection that came to me through all these experiences gathered after shining the lights of contemplation and attention upon them. The idea that there is a community of seekers out there that need to come together to explore consciousness, and divine light dimensions, and we need to do it proudly, and do all of this together as one. Stand up against the cabal, the powers that be who are a tyranny of the minority imposing tyranny of the soul on all the people they are supposed to be helping and representing. Instead we are thrown to lions of central banking, corporate greed and their malfeasant special interests.
We must directly experience the transcendent nature of being to enter into the New Dawn. Then, we must reflect and come together to talk about the journeys experienced and meaning gathered. It’s time to find a truer, better, more authentic way to move in the world. This is just one path that I’m offering—well, the combining of two paths into one rather, but the paths are many. The end is singular. Let’s find our tribe. Let’s gather together and figure out how to right this ship of luminous numinous fools, and reclaim our divine birthright as beings of infinite divine light.
This is the gateway to the stars, the way back to remembrance and the path to the kingdom of light. Who’s coming with me? It’s time to rock’n’roll, fam! Remember? Remember. Remember.
Leave a Reply