Life As Ceremony

by | Jul 1, 2020 | for clients & participants, musings, popular

“Pain comes with life, closely accompanied by our “solutions” to it, most of which are all about getting away from it, whether through alcoholic, narcotic, erotic, intellectual, material, egoistical, or spiritual means. The fact that these “solutions,” despite their analgesic/anesthetic capacity, only end up catalyzing more pain usually does little to stop us from pursuing them…. Not all spiritual bypassing so blatantly avoids pain; the dance of avoidance can be done with great subtlety.”

– Robert Masters

A common question for participants and practitioners alike is: how often should I be taking this? At what point does use turn into abuse?

Of course, this question is not unique to this substance.

However, with psychoactive substances in particular, one first might look at why one is taking it in the first place. Then, one looks at what is being gleaned from the experience. Finally, one may look at how that is being absorbed and then applied and practised.

I like to think that the what is a sort of guidance or lesson. When I imagine receiving a lesson, I think of a simple scenario like the conventional classroom. In the classroom there is material I am being shown or given—a lesson. In other words, there is information that I am ‘downloading’ via a transmission or demonstration. I then take that transmission out of the classroom. I can begin to contemplate what has been offered. I can then begin to apply the material in my life outside of the classroom. True, it may be helpful to have a tutor or to enrol in some sort of study group, which would offer me concentrated ways to practise that which has been learned.

“Alone, one can go fast. Together, we can go far.”

In another scenario, I could also leave that particular classroom and go immediately to the next one. In the subsequent ‘lesson’, the guiding force—the teacher—might be counting on me to have integrated or at least practised the material from the last class, and reasonably begins the class building on the material already transmitted. Chances are, one lesson builds on the last. Thus, if I went straight into the next class without having practised what I received in the previous one—having done my ‘homework’—there may be a gap or soft foundation onto which the new material tries to rest.

I ask those who come to this question of “how often?”: have you done your homework? Are you content that you have absorbed what was offered from the last lesson? Has the material that was consumed been fully digested? Or is it half-chewed, needing time to settle, or maybe even needing some helpful enzymes?

If you’re not satisfied that the class material has been integrated, what’s the rush to go to the next lesson? Or, if you’re not sure, could there be another set of eyes that could reflect back to you what they do (or do not) see? If not, what expectations might you be harbouring for the next class? If I were to go so far as to label this information as ‘life lessons’, is it not life that occupies much of the time between classes? Sure, life itself is a classroom, as the adage goes. The lessons are all around us at all times and there are countless opportunities to practise. The life-as-ceremony becomes a maxim in ‘spiritual’ circles. And we use this substance in a ceremony. Putting this altogether, I am reminded of something a wise woman told me once (in one of my own classes): the ceremony begins when the ceremony ends.

 

 

 

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a storey beyond story

by | Feb 25, 2020 | for facilitators & mentees, musings

“Enlightenment itself evolves. Even though the state remains absolute, the means by which humanity awakens as a totality has its own storyline within the maya […] Every individual moves through progressive revelations before arriving at the ultimate Revelation.

[…] The consciousness within form always has a storyline to follow. The trick is to fall in love with your own story and follow it without holding anything back. Two things are then assured — firstly, you will arrive at the story’s end, and secondly, your own story will be utterly unique and unlike anyone else’s.

[…] The truth is that nothing you do or don’t do changes when and how you reach the ultimate. You simply have to have faith in your own storyline. This is also why it is so rare for humans to attain these states — there is no one to follow, the path is virgin and wild and when your revelation finally dawns, it does so without your even being there!”

– Richard Rudd

The MO of 5-MeO-DMT

modus operandi: (1) a particular way or method of doing something ; (2) the way in which something operates or works 

James Oroc describes 5 functioning at the 7th energy centre/chakra. This is not within the physical body but within the energetic body, of which the perimeter is outside the physical body’s limits. Biologically speaking, Thomas Ray has identified that the depth and breadth of the molecule’s interaction with neuroreceptors is greater than any other (only N,N, DMT has a similar depth and breadth). Identifying the depth and breadth at which substances interact with how our system receives transmissions (as the molecular compound is a transmitter of neurons) is a way that we can recognise their function.

Why is it important to understand how 5 functions?

Because to hold it in a way that does not recognise how it functions would be a misunderstanding. A miss. The mark is missed. This is the etymology of sin. And for an experience so sacred, so precious, so divine, to approach it with sin would be, well, a sacrilege.

A religion may be a structural paradigm that holds or contains Spirit.
A structural paradigm that holds the most efficacious path to direct experience of Spirit with miss-understanding, may be sacrilegious.

Beyond stor(e)y

Imagine an elevator. The building it’s in—let’s call it the Shushumna Tower—is so high that one cannot see the top of it. In the elevator there are buttons, much like the glass elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Each button has a specific label and will take you to that ‘floor’, ‘level’ or storey.

There are buttons that invoke technologies that offer specific and non-specific states of consciousness: Peyote (mescaline), iboga (ibogaine), different breathing control techniques, meditation, frenetic movement, prolonged activity (such as long-distance running), LSD, psychoactive mushrooms (psylocibin, amanita), …..
Some buttons simply have life experiences marked on them: becoming a parent, falling from great heights, losing a close loved one, having your heart broken, purchasing a home, ecstatically professing your love for someone, a concussion, a powerful orgasm, and so on.

These levels to which the elevator takes us offer us different vantage points. I imagine myself navigating the ‘floor’ from where the elevator door is to the windows looking out. Once I get through all the material that that experiential level beholds, I get to see what the world looks like from that stor(e)y, from that vantage point. Chances are, I can see further out than when I had been on a different stor(e)y, often one that was below or closer to where I began entering the building.

The building, of course, is life itself. And 5 reliably takes us to the penthouse—and beyond. Perhaps just like Oroc describes as the 7th chakra. All levels before the Penthouse are the stories.

And that’s what 5 does, doesn’t it? It takes one “beyond”. Beyond what? Beyond the seeing. Beyond the navigating of the content of another story. It’s trans-human and trans-story. Transitory but yet eternal. The place where there is no content, just a sensation of the ride that cuts through all the Tower’s stories—and so effectively.

At the Penthouse, one is still on the “edge” of being in the building and being beyond it. It’s the final veil, the margin between the physical body (the tower, and the top levels of the 6th chakra) and the energetic body just beyond (the sky or the ‘heavens’, the 7th chakra). At the Crown of the Tower, from which no horizon can even be seen, all is there. But if we’re looking for a horizon at the farthest reaches of the infinite landscape, then there’s more!

That elevator is actually designed to take us to not just the top floor, but it blasts right through the roof, disintegrating as it loses touch with its multidimensional host, the Tower. The tower now has no connection. The tower is gone. The elevator is gone. The content in the elevator is gone with it. Gone where? EVERYwhere! Horizon?
Infinite?
It?
I?
This is object becoming subject. Or subject unbecoming object. Or some other seemingly witty way to describe the ineffable in its own beautifully unique effing ways. What countless others have already described over millennia.

It’s this. This becoming. This beyond. This actual elimination of polarised perceptivity. Because with any other medicine, you’re always on a stor(e)y in ShuShumna Tower. Maybe it’s tranquil, maybe it’s geometric, maybe it’s personified, demonified, angelic, In any case, there’s a dimensionality as long as there is an “I” experiencing it, as long as you perceive a story.

How do we ensure we get to the Penthouse and beyond?
Maybe if there was enough fuel in the elevator’s rockets, such as in the submission approach. Or, maybe if the elevator’s load was lightened (such as with the surrender approach), it’d get through past the penthouse, beyond any stor(e)y that the Tower housed.

And if we pressed the 5 button but pretended we were on the N-th floor, like a 128th story walk-up, wake-up, we’d miss the point. Like we pushed the penthouse button but tried to get out on the way up….

Misaligned

In other words, why use 5 like you would use any other medicine? This is not operating at the level of other medicines. So, just like a tool has a specific function, it may not need to be applied to a task that it is not designed for. A soup is not met well with a fork; a spoon is the greater tool. The fork does the soup no harm; the spoon applies better.

If a practitioner doesn’t recognise how 5 functions, they risk missing the opportunity to assist people who have dissolved into the All while they were assisting on another storey with a particular story.

Imagine thinking we need to do something for the person going in the elevator, missing the point that they’re not IN the elevator, they’re not the elevator, they’re not even just the building, they’re the entirety of what the concept and structure of a building could even be. And more.

The elevator shaft can be very precise, a tight container and passageway to—if the 5 button were pressed—the Source. A practitioner’s alignment with the vertical perfection of the shaft is elemental so that their own story is not keeping the elevator at a storey other than the button that was pressed.

If a practitioner’s particular way or method is not congruent with the way 5 operates, their MO is misaligned. The practitioner is dimensioneer-ing at the Source of all dimensions.

 

~There is no need for two at the One~

 

 

 

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a practice in dying

by | Oct 6, 2019 | for clients & participants, musings, popular

“If you would die well, permit yourself to fill with the rush of breath, playful movement, stirring warmth, and the clarity of rest. The angel of death bares no harm to life unresisted.”

What blocks us from evolving in a more satisfying or dignified way?
Perhaps fear.
If so, what are we fearful most of?
Perhaps the event that would be the end of all our perceived experience, death.
When we die, what happens? Yes, that timeless question.
Will anyone ever know?
Yes, I would say. I have witnessed hundreds of deaths. Not as a paramedic, an ER doctor, or soldier. I’m speaking of the clichéd ego-death. And yet, not the ones we’re mostly familiar with—the relative ones. But one that comes so efficiently and completely with this particular molecule that can help us die.

What are we free of when we die? What dies? Who dies?

In death, something gives way. Something is released. What is it? Well, amongst other things, all those fears that form much of our identlty—conscious or unconscious. All those barriers that protect us from discomfort, or hold us back from… evolving?

What if we could intentionally be released from all that holds us back, only to come back.
Come back from what? We may have heard the stories of near-death experiences. We may have touched on transcendent joy, ecstasy, bliss. It’s all hard to put into words. It can’t be put into words. It’s ineffable.

What’s not ineffable are the qualities that are linked with an ease—a real ease—of being, a wildness and an innocence that is beyond programming. Not so much a becoming something but maybe an un-becoming, a re-membering of all the disparate parts that would have us feeling broken and not whole.
What are these qualites? Compassion, joy, loving presence, forgiveness, curiosity, empathy, gratitude, grace….

In the full release with the god molecule, death—the temporary yet eternally accessible direct experience with all that is—reveals these qualities by way of helping us shed the patterned, conditioned self. Dying into the whole, into the One. It can be a practice.

Does taking this molecule just give us these qualities? No. However, it can reveal them as we’re released from the dismemberment of a life lived defended, unwitnessed, fragmented. A life sometimes agitated, other times sleepy, tame, perhaps numbed. Tamed by a status quo apparatus that is characterized by echelons of stratified society: separateness.
To separate us.
A sepparatUs.

Perhaps an antidote to this malaise could be a direct experience of unity. This is the reliable potential of the god molecule: it’s trans-personal, trans-human. And yet to be human—to be a cis-human—is to consciously choose to be that, to be here in that, to be here in that now.

And what kind of human do we want to be?
Hopefully not one that is clinging on to life for fear of losing it. Hopefully one that is open to the idea that life is here to be lived and it includes being fully human.
Beautiful human.
Be-a-yoU-to-full, human.
Feel all the feels. Think all the thoughts. Embrace all that there is to be experienced. But first, embracing this experience that is happening right now.

The present moment is eternal. Death, I would say, is that. It’s uncensored by time. And the mind’s ego is the time machine. But the present moment is held. Held in this body—for awhile. And held eternally in infinite awareness.

I don’t wish to embellish or glamourise death. Or make it profane. It is sacred. It is real.
With all due respect, I engage with death to revere even more this life that is being lived.

This is no frivolous adventure.
This is about embodying the freedom to live in an undefended way, in a way that is not fettered by the fear of losing it all. Bringing those heavenly qualities we all have access to and the capacity to cultivate to the forefront of our felt experience.
Because we feel here, with this body.
This wild, ephemeral body.
And we’re on earth.
I practise death to bring heaven on earth.
Sounds like enlightenment?

I don’t know but,

as I learn to die well,

I en-lighten up!

 

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