Knock Knock Jokes - Extra Special Bitter

! ATTNTN ! JUPITER IS PRESENT ! ATTNTN !

Last night I gathered with the Portland Evolver Spore crew at the Borthwick house and hosted a discussion on Musical Tarot. My friend Rachel (female virgo) joined me (male pisces) in a cooperative discussion on the relationship between tarot cards and vocal exercises.

A few days prior to the event, Rachel and I had met together for the first time to talk about what we would be presenting. Many of the ideas that arose during our first brainstorming session became the material for that night's event.

The first pair of cards we looked at were FOOL (Aleph) and THE MAGICIAN (Beth). Rachel and I related these cards to the idea of the fool's element attribution of AIR (breath) and the magician's role as a physical CONDUIT (energy mediums). During the first exercises, Rachel encouraged us to stretch, bending at the hips and taking deep breaths.

After a minute or so, our bodies were loosened up and we did some singing. Breathing deep into the diaphragm really helps to project the voice with more power and direction.

During our presentation, I spontaneously recalled a silly joke we had come up during our brainstorming session around these two cards. So as we were in the middle of group singing exercises, realizing its anecdotal potential, I asked her whether she recalled the joke. She apparently couldn't recall the joke, because when I brought it up, she wondered out loud if it had been a knock knock joke.

After the event, a guy in the field named Luke asked me what the knock knock joke was. I told him that there was no knock knock joke, and that rachel had been mistaken. The joke had only been a pun on Aleph-Beth spelling out "AB" and the fact that many of use were getting an abdominal workout. Noticing a faint trace of disappointment in his eyes, I swiftly corrected myself and posed the question:

knock. knock.
(who's there?)
Nobody


*     *     *     *     *

Later that evening I met up with Lavendar, the female friend who visited me at the goat farm in California and helped pick some Jasmine Flowers. It was late when I got to her house and I ended up staying the night. Early that morning we heard a knock knock at the front door. Lavendar went to see who was there.

NoBody

She came back to the room and we fell asleep again. Around noon, as we were headed out the door to sieze the day, she noticed something resting at her doorstep. One of her friends (named Christopher) had left a small painting: A 14" x 20" portrait of Portland's skyline.

The apparent "Nobody" had become Somebody with no-body .

I am reminded of Dennis's article on UNITY CONSCIOUSNESS as the solution to psychic fragmentation. My joke about soul-loss had been answered within 24 hours (via narrative synchronicity) by the presence of Christ's knock knock joke. An in-visibile spirit had knocked at the door and left an offering, as evidence of his presence. Christ as messenger of the presence of Unity Consciousness in the Field.

Lavendar and I spent the day together playing mandolin and doing some research at the book store. Met a guy who captures cicadas, dries them in the sun, and frames them in ornamental boxes, the way you might see a wedding ring presented. As the night drew closer, La' got on the bus to go home. I decided to give KBOO a visit.



A bunch of friends showed up and we played music all through the night. For the first hour or so we played George Harrison songs, in tribute to his birthday of February 26th.

Tonight (February 26) was my 24th birthday (Jupiter returns!), so there was a definite air of festivity around the studio. Guitars, banjos, flutes, juggling pins, and voices a'plenty.

One guy in particular had a guitar made by a company called Jasmine. It had a good tone, but he couldn't stop breaking strings. I think he broke three in the course of less than two hours. An odd coincidence, from the dreaming perspective.

He remained calm and jovial despite multiple accounts of his instrument malfunctioning. Was this the spirit of Jasmine speaking through him, as an avatar for her will? 

 A nurturing presence in the midst of strings that snap. Jasmine is often associated with the planet Jupiter and with Cancer/The Moon.

Walking our own path - Colin Bondi

As I sit here beginning a week long retreat I embrace the unknown within before I step deeper into the unknown on an outer level. I'm struck by how much there is to let go of in order to truly walk the path of freedom. As human beings we're conditioned to engage life by holding onto or clinging to 'things' (things being anything that can be conceptualized such as relationship, career, money, beliefs, opinions, validation from others, places, community, material things). There is a great cosmic joke in this however since life is a constantly changing flow with nothing to hold onto. Thus you have the suffering of the human condition. Most people who engage some form of spiritual path are familiar with the act of letting go and have probably even put it into practice to some degree. However to walk in freedom requires a complete letting go or the act of letting go in every moment of every concept. Letting go becomes way of directly engaging existence itself and restores life to its natural flow but only when it becomes our primary focus.

The conditioning of clinging runs very deep and can be so subtle that when we think we've let go we are actually just clinging to something more subtle. There is nothing wrong with this, its part of the path, as long as we continue to illuminate the deepening levels of our conditioning. Awakening is referred to as a path that one walks for a reason, it requires constant motion, we must keep moving because as soon as we linger we cling. The primary obstacle to practicing letting go consistently is fear. The more we let go of the closer we are to our true state of being, we are confronted with infinity which is experienced by the mind as terror. Letting go in this context does not mean not having things in our lives, it means not holding onto them, we see them clearly as temporary changing and as reflections of our creative process. This changes the relationship to our world, we see the world as literally being a dream rather than something solid.

Walking the path of freedom means walking our own unique path rather than someone else's path even if that someone else is a great spiritual teacher. The challenge here for many spiritual warriors is letting go of their spiritual beliefs which of course are just concepts no matter how beautiful they may be. They may have been useful for a time but if they are not eventually let go of they become the newest object of attachment and the very thing that traps us instead of freeing us. So what are we left with if we let go of our spiritual beliefs? We're left with our own path and the full responsibility for our own awakening as we realize no one is going to save us or do it for us. We create the space needed to hear the subtle voice of our own hearts and intuition which is all the guidance we will ever need not to mention to the only real source of true guidance. For me this is why the path of freedom is a warriors path because it requires endless courage to face the totality of ourselves, infinity. It requires great discipline to never stop letting go no matter how much fear and terror we may experience in the process.

On one level this path is one of intentional madness because what we normally think of as sanity is also let go of. Sanity means normality and is characterized by thinking, speaking, feeling and behaving within a set spectrum. This set spectrum is that of consensus reality and is also known as the prison or matrix which separates us from freedom. The path of the spiritual warrior is all about dissolving this limited dream we call reality. We still relate to consensus reality but we no longer mistake it for reality which means we can no longer obtain security from it. So there is a very real fear of going mad that everyone on the path of freedom must face. However this type of madness is not what we see in mental hospitals even though it can appear to be on the surface. What differentiates it is intention and personal power. Warriors are doing what they are doing with awareness, intention and power whereas the average person suffering from mental illness does not possess these qualities at least not in a developed form.

As we walk our path we will learn many things and probably have many teachers but it is the degree to which we integrate these teachings and practices that makes the difference followed by letting the conceptual aspect of them go. One of the hardest things to let go of is the need for validation from others, for encouragement and understanding because there comes a time when we must walk the path alone. If we're able to embrace that aloneness we recognize that it is the key to a deep interconnectedness with every facet of the universe. That very aloneness also opens the door to true relationship where we're able to see others clearly without the veil of what we need from them. A true deep heart connection becomes possible.

I breath in receiving the flow of life which I am
I breath out releasing the flow of life which I am
I lack nothing because in being I am everything
Through intent I channel the flow of life with creativity into form
Creating and destroying worlds in every moment
Life and death, one.

awakeninthenow.com

A Vision of Unity Consciousness - by Dennis Engleman

Unity Consciousness infiltrates the planetary field, gently enfolding the globe. The effect is subtle at first, similar to gradually decreasing the density of earth’s atmosphere. All life is affected; every organism throughout the plant and animal kingdom is elevated in awareness to some degree, though local variations occur.

This change in the field of consciousness is experienced as either mild or severe depending on the emotional integrity and mental cohesion of the person affected. Those unprepared for the shift feel discomfort and disorientation, resulting in a broad spectrum of reactions ranging from irritability to intense acting-out of unresolved processes.

On the other hand, people in a state of anticipatory acceptance experience the shift more purposefully and intentionally. Inner attention moves toward the heart region of the central corpus, and mental “noise” begins to clear. Thought ebbs out of the foreground of awareness, becoming less distracting and interruptive.

Such individuals feel a sensation of upward mobility characterized as “letting go.” This is a voluntary relinquishing of attachments to personal identity with their attendant implications - an act that is self-reinforcing since the more whole-heartedly and single-mindedly it is done, the greater the resulting satisfaction and consequent desire to repeat the process.

Some people, due to their prior work with radical self-inquiry and spiritual healing, find themselves comparatively comfortable within the changing field of consciousness. These serve a vital role in helping others navigate the transformational flux, a prospect that is extremely demanding for most – especially those with strong habits of emotional suppression and hardened conceptual viewpoints.

As enlightened beings have always stood out from the crowd, this distinction is likely to be more, rather than less, pervasive at the End of the Age. During previous eras the average person was so far removed from an enlightened state that saints and bodhisattvas were regarded as somewhat distorted replicas of the norm – deformed individuals in whom something called “holiness” resulted from important human components being missing. Such sanctity was often considered not merely impossible for ordinary men, but undesirable.



But in the Last Days unity consciousness will extend beyond a few historical anomalies into the furthest reaches of incarnate awareness. As this gradual but inexorable process unfolds, those able to bear Christ’s divine Light will be detectable through their self-composure, grace and good-humor, being at peace even in the midst of a society in shock. Having become grounded in Truth, they will have nothing to fear – and know it.

This knowledge will effectively make them kings among men in terms of spiritual riches. Yet such royalty will be borne humbly while they busy themselves assisting those struggling to navigate the seas of cosmic awareness. As learning to swim in ordinary water requires overcoming one’s natural fear of drowning through mastering a complex set of non-intuitive skills, so navigating the Deep of unity consciousness will necessitate the development of abilities which - for many people – are at this time still far from functional.

Finding the Self Amongst Mirrors in the Crucible - Ezra Sandzer-Bell

The mythological tale of Narcissus and Echo describes the tragic failure of communication between a man and woman. Echo falls in love with Narcissus but he is too self-absorbed to give her the attention that she desires. Feeling rejected, Echo dies of a broken heart and her flesh returns to the soil. Yet Echo's spirit had been cursed by Hera, Wife of Zeus, to be forever incapable of speaking from the center of her being. When Echo spoke, it could only be a repetition of the words of others. Thus, when her body disappeared, Hera's curse lingered in the air and continues to this day to find expression in the echo of reverberating chambers.

Narcissus and Echo are presented to us as masculine and feminine embodiments of the temporal glitch of reflection. We are reading the mythic enactment of two complementary modes of human perception, hearing and vision, through the mythic lens of romantic tragedy.

Consider how this archetypal drama relates to the typical dynamic of AitD groups.

As a group, we experiment with alchemical reconciliation of waking consciousness and unseen/unconscious influences. To allow energy to move freely through the room, we collectively agree to detach from identification with many of the voices we pick up during group. Perhaps a voice comes through us and has therefore temporarily possessed us, or we have possessed it. That voice is only one of countless fragmented "selves" floating through the container, which in turn behaves as a holographic signature of the non-local, collective human psyche.

There is a risk in practicing this form of group magical practice, which I have not yet witnessed anyone fall prey to, but which would be a rather annoying disturbance. To become totally possessed by the "spirit" of either of these two characters without enough Self-Awareness to snap out of it, could lead to severe neuroses.  We turn to Narcissus and Echo for a map of the problem and its solution.

The masculine figure in this story obsessively studies the mirror reflection of himself. From this reflected image, he creates an identity, which he pours all of his love (source-energy) into. As a result, he fails to appreciate his feminine counterpart.

Mirror Reflection
M.R.
Mr.
Mister
Male Ego
M.E.
Malignant Egophrenia

Our young male protagonist is afflicted with a mental disease not uncommon in 21st century American culture.

The feminine figure has had her voice stolen by the wife (Hera) of the father-god (Zeus). Annoyed by the young nymph's chattering, and resenting Zeus for sleeping with other young nymphs like Echo, Hera punishes Echo by taking away her ability to speak from the heart.

Hera treats Echo as if she were a "representative" for all of the nymphs whom Zeus has been sleeping with. Archetypally, this speaks to the Jealous Wife's hatred of the Husband's secret romance with Young Nymphs.

But if we take this myth and apply it to AitD, we can see how Echo's inability to speak from the heart may represent the necessary counter-imbalance to Narcissian self-obsession.

Participants in group may choose to dwell obsessively on the details of their personal life, losing touch with the receptive, feminine aspects of their being. Alternatively, we sometimes become so wrapped up in what other people think and say that we forget to listen to our hearts and speak from what we know is true. We may even get the sense that we no longer know what is true.


Having named the demon of REFLECTIVE GLITCH and located it during a session, we may resolve it through body awareness. Our masculine self-obsession is invited to redirect its orientation toward the heart. Having resolved the Feminine aspect's empathetic loss-of-self, reconnecting with heart-consciousness, Feminine energy returns to its home in the psychic womb, creative matrix of Life. The heart radiates in the presence of the womb, and like sun impregnating earth, the flower of alchemical resolution begins to bud.

Dispelling Duality in Dreamland - by John Hubbird

Dispelling Duality in Dreamland - by John Hubbird

Human consciousness is now experiencing a quantum evolutionary awakening into newness, wholeness, Oneness, a sacred embracing of our diverse experiences, a transcendental reunion of polar opposites, and so forth. The Path that must be traversed in order to awaken and evolve ourselves, is ironically to delve headlong into incarnating the very self-same duality that we are in the process of transcending,  while at the same time skillfully  navigating these deep unconscious waters in a way that avoids compounding suffering by re-traumatizing ourselves.  The only “way”  forward is to move lucidly and fluidly through shadowy ancestral thickets of murderous dysfunction, abuse, war, rape, pillage, etc. and live to tell about it.   This is where we become the proverbial snake eating it’s own tail.

In order to dispel dualities in a relatively safe manner, ideally such work takes place in what we call a “container” that is strong enough to contain the pressure that must be allowed to build and build, until it reaches sufficient intensity for a major transpersonal psychic shift to occur, at which time the shadow material becomes illumined and liberated.  In the Awakening in the Dream community, weekly groups function as conscious containers for the purpose of invoking, embodying, playing out, transmuting and liberating shadow material.  [For a more detailed explanation of the container and how it works, see http://www.awakeninthedream.com/wordpress/?p=216#hermetic]

During my 10+ years of participating in the Awakening in the Dream groups, I have both witnessed and experienced how most “issues” that get constellated in the groups initially present themselves as seemingly solid dualities, as apparent dilemmas, where there are at least two distinctly “different” voices urgently pleading for supremacy over some seemingly “opposite” voice(s).     Energetically, for those  present in the group, this experience is likely to feel like conflict, both tense and intense, heated, oppositional, etc., and -- depending on ones conditioning -- may even feel unsafe, scary and/or abusive, as in something to be avoided.  This is where we may or may not drop into the Rabbit Hole, where most anything can, and probably will, happen.   

One of the more likely things to happen at the edge of a Rabbit Hole is what we refer to as “Edge Phenomenon” (EP)  [<link to Chelsea’s article], where some seemingly random distraction suddenly pops into the field, such as side-chatter, disjointed eruptions of laughter or giggling, interrupting one another, a cat suddenly walking into the center of the circle, lights flickering weirdly, etc.   Interestingly, EP’s can also function as a dreamlike fractalian side-show that further illumines the very process that is unfolding.  [For more on edge phenomenon, please see article "Tarot Reading for the Field" at: http://expressionsofthedream.blogspot.com/2011/02/tarot-reading-for-field-anonymous.html ]

For example, a person may be “in their stuff” in a somber story-telling process about how poorly their parents dealt with conflict, and then * BOOM * a seemingly unrelated “conflict” will break out between two other people in the circle, which can easily be seen as a rude or “inappropriate” distraction or interruption that sucks energy and attention away from the person who is talking.  Or, if we are awake enough to catch it, the “interruption” filling up the room can be seen more expansively as an energetic real-life portrayal of the story-teller’s own process around conflict.

Regardless of how duality shows up, its trademark is to urgently impose a false choice onto the field, like about whether something is “this or that”, true or false, good or bad, real or imaginary, abusive or standing up for oneself, and so forth.  Often, two (or more) people will pick up differing voices, giving present real-time shape and form to whatever archetypal duality is being touched upon, thus playing it out.   Then other voices, roles, alignments, and realignments typically start getting played out by others in the circle, so as to render the display more vivid, detailed and colorful, and perhaps even more intense.   Still others may remain silent as witnesses to anchor the energy and simply hold space for all the intense energy that is present, and/or pick up more of a facilitator role,  and so forth.

Thus begins the “cooking” phase of the process, where a particular duality has constellated itself in a room full of witnesses, where it is being illumined, reflected upon, psychically digested, and eventually assimilated and dispelled.  This is where having a strong container becomes essential in order to “hold the tension of the opposites”, which is a Jungian term referring to how we can alchemically transform unconscious shadow material into golden stardust of awakening.  There is no telling how long this cooking process may take: it could take 15 minutes, or hours, weeks, months or years, or it could happen in the “twinkling of an eye”. 

But regardless of how long it takes, the point is that cooking “opposites” represents the homestretch in humanity’s journey towards alchemically dissolving and integrating classic archetypal dualities of the collective unconscious shadow that have historically proven so destructive and damning to our species and to the planet -- and that there is a way to do this cooking that is safe, psychically organic and emotionally healthy.

This is, of course, merely a statement of my own experience in the Awakening in the Dream groups, and does not necessarily reflect how others in the Dreaming community may experience how we deal with duality and conflict.  Fortunately, there is a “comment” section below, where others can supplement what I’ve said with their own experience and reflection.  

Tarot Reading for the Field - Anonymous

Tonight I picked three cards for the group. The approach I take to reading tarot is triangular, treating each card with equal significance, rather than imposing a linear "past-present-future" map upon the cards. This eliminates the problem of divination and brings us purely into the scholarly consideration of how our three Keys communicate with each other, on their own terms.

The sun is positioned as a focal point in all three images, emphasized by the appearance of the Sun card. I'm going to zero-in on the relationship between the fool and death cards, in terms of the position and function of the sun in their contrasting imagery. I also want to make note of how these processes potentially take expression during dream group.

Paul has been identifying what he calls edge phenomena, to describe an empathic, collective response taking place when individuals in the dream-container enter a phase of alchemical transmutation.

Held within the container, our shared morphogenetic field begins to "cook", expressing pressure release in physical events. These events take many forms, including but not limited to nervous shiftyness of people's bodies, side-chatter, thoughtless commentary, joking around, and even loud noises or lighting changes occurring suddenly, with apparent synchronistic intensity.

Whether these edge phenomena are counter-productive distractors or necessary elements of the process, they are clearly identifiable to anyone who has witnessed it happen.

The idea of reaching an edge clearly corresponds to the Fool archetype, who is standing at the edge of his cliff. However, there is a second hidden symbolism in the Sun card itself. Note that the children each have one foot inside the inner circle's edge and one foot on the outside. Their youth conveys a state of spiritual innocence in our personal masculine and feminine aspects of Self.

Each one of us in the group has a different relationship with our inner child(ren) and therefore respond in a variety of ways to the Uranian Electricity of the Fool, as we pass from the outer to inner spheres of the Solar Force. Edge phenomena resembles turbulence of passing through the Earth's atmosphere.

To enter Detached Awareness, we must leap into it like a fool, from the "familiar territory" of the cliff into the unknown ways of being on the inside of the circle. We do this in dream group whenever we become vulnerable and allow ourselves to enter certain blind spots that we would not normally feel comfortable entering. The goal of this leap of faith is to land on the central dot of the Innermost, where we are no longer identified with the patterns of our many personas. This Center is both detached from all of these patterns and simultaneously connected to them through an awareness of their existence.

Detached Awareness feeds on observation of old patterns. These old patterns (ways of being) are like plants, being harvested in the Death card, to nourish the Center of Awareness (Inner Circle of the Sun Card). Each of us is a fool, made humble by the power of the Hidden Sun.

Tuesday Night Dream Group - Bijoux and Ezra

Bijoux on ink - Ezra on colors

(Stand on head to view properly)

An Oceanic Cosmology : ChelseaTyler

I find it quite absurd that I am just now discovering Ernest Haeckel's illustrations and contributions to the curious creation which is our world.  My artistic brain is particularly fond of fractals, so I am quite thrilled to have stumbled upon this geniuses work recently.  Being inclined to fantasy, people usually shrug off my wide-eyed exploratory speculations of experiences i’ve had with, for clarity and lack of a better word, extraterrestrials.  With a head-titled back to the stars i’ve been guided in tone and healing with spectacular species coming from a place unquestionably “other.”  It is not a stretch for me to assume that such extraordinary beings, with a knowledge inconceivable to the human brain, are found hidden in the depth of the seas.  I imagine them swimming and sunk into the darkness, resonating throughout the wild waters, and tuning into this beautifully unique world at stake.

Haeckel, with his drive for discovery and an eye for detail, depicted onto the preservable page wonderfully intricate images he witnessed from the life of the ocean.  Flipping through the online collection of Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms of Nature) is like seeing with someone else’s eyes.  I love imagining this prolific man turning his sights from microscope to etch and back again millions of times to embody the precise calculations of symmetry so often found in his work.  What I like best about these images is that it stimulates a fractal oriented cosmic view of world.  It brings the usually unseen, untouchable, ungraspable secrets up from the very magical soup of our biological beginnings and presents it to us with a flash breath of beauty.  Representing at once our cellular similarities to the artistic wonderment of the cosmic ocean and leaving us just that much more assured that beauty exists even when we are not looking.

By the way, I just learned this man coined the term “ecology.”

Although I haven’t read much on the man himself (besides being aware of his contributions to the field of “scientific racism” in the late nineteenth century) I get quite a transmission of personal alchemy through his artwork.  I am fascinated with the subjects he spent enough time with to master and with the repeated particulars he choose.  While his work ranges from various species both submerged and surfaced, there is one in particular that synchronously struck me, leaving me believing that this man perhaps was far more than a zoologist, naturalist, artist, physician, teacher, son, and philosopher; he is a spirit song humming along with immaculately “art”-iculate attention; Eternity doesn’t ask much more from us.  His collection of hummingbirds: 

I am captivated by this shared fascination of the unseen.  I am drawn to mystery like a hummingbird to nectar, a starfish to stone, and the artist to the eyes of god.  In my few dreams with hummingbirds they are always swimming over the ocean.  It is as though they are taking messages from the sea and whispering them into flowers.   When we take the time to stop, be stunned, and smell the beauty, we can receive miraculous gifts.  In one of my experiences with being energetically near “extra-terrestrials,” while taking time to sit with the magical flower of Darlingtonia californica, aka Cobra Lily*, I asked them how to communicate with them.  In that instant, while sitting under a star-blanketed night sky in the quite stillness of Southern Oregon’s woods, I heard what my brain could only attribute to a hummingbirds** winged vibration fly up right next to my ear and then off again.

Martin Pretchel in his book, The Disobedience of the Daughter of the Son, includes a true story of a man enthralled with South American hummingbird bird songs.  Managing to land a job on a mammal research ship working in the Pacific ocean, he convinced one of the researchers to broadcast his slowed-down hummingbird songs (to replicate sonic sounds) underneath the water.  “For days on end, pods upon pods of whales of every kind came rolling in, breaching and blowing alongside the ship, diving and gathering around the underwater speakers, chattering, hooting, and cooing in courteous, measured replies between the hummingbirds phrases” (137).  Upon speeding up the recorded whale responses the crew discovered that they sounded like, “very ornate hummingbird songs!”  They are listening.  Thankfully.  Are we?

for clickable zoomable images of Hackels illustrations click here


*Dedicated to the stellar teachers held and kept manifest within the endangered colony of cobraesk plant beings.  All my love and gratitude for your healings, initiations, and supreme wisdoms helping me "relax into being" the artful observer of life's hidden wonders.  May we help you as much as you have helped us as we go forth in our inter-galatic hyper-dimensional journey toward wholeness.
**To the vibratory preparation of the hummingbird: My heart beats rapidly in your divine presence.  Thank you.

My Initiation into the spirit of Ayahuasca

by Paul Levy

I was first introduced to the spirit of ayahuasca in the mid-nineties, when a South American shaman who had never been out of the jungle before came to where I was living to give a teaching about his culture’s most sacred medicine. He had a big jug of ayahuasca next to him as he gave his talk, and he would sometimes cradle it as if it was his most holy possession. The bottle seemed like it was simultaneously his infinitely beloved child, and his most treasured consort, as well as his precious mother and supreme guru all at once. We innocently came up to him one by one to get initiated into the spirit of ayahuasca, and he simply touched a little bit of it to our forehead. It was a very simple, but powerful, and very dreamlike, ceremony. Little did I realize that the ayahuasca genie was out of the bottle.

            A little while later I had the following dream: I am drinking ayahuasca and spontaneously singing the icaros, the sacred songs invoking the spirit of ayahuasca. It is as if I am simply a channel for some energy or spirit to sing itself through me, as if I was discovering a new voice within myself. The songs were simultaneously creating themselves through me while at the same time it was as if in singing them I was remembering something I had known long ago. At a certain point, the ayahuasca takes effect, and I start having a full-blown psychedelic experience in the dream. Shamanically journeying on the wings of the creative imagination, I was lucidly dreaming that I had taken ayahuasca, having apparently created that experience for myself. Or, more accurately, it felt like the spirit of ayahuasca was dreaming itself through me.  

            Upon awakening, I found this experience to be simply amazing and mind-blowing, as I had just experienced how my mind had literally created a dream of a turned-on universe. I had just dreamed a dream in which I was using the power of the dream to create reality so as to wake myself up. There was something very important about how my voice was the channel through which the spirit enlivened and inspired itself, singing itself into incarnation.

A few months later I connected with ayahuasca in its full-bodied form, which is an experience that does not easily lend itself to words. I can say that my ayahuasca experience was very much like my dream, as if my dream was a precognition of the actual experience. I ingested nonlocal ayahuasca before I drank the localized version. One thing I remember very vividly is the feeling of my DNA lighting up, as if there was a hidden light encoded in my very cells which had been activated by the medicine. The whole situation was very dreamlike.

Instead of focusing on the particular mind-blowing visions and experiences that happen on ayahuasca, when I get to the bottom of what animated all of my ayahuasca journeys, it always come down to the same thing. As if tailor-suited to my unconscious, ayahuasca has its own unique way of revealing to me that as long as I am trying to “solve my problems,” I have already missed the mark. Thinking I have a problem is a viewpoint that is reinforcing the seeming concrete, existing in stone, reality of the problem, as well as relating to my situation as problematic in nature. Sacred medicine such as ayahuasca always get down to the same thing for me – showing me how in this moment, and this moment, I am the very one who is retrieving, calling forth, investing in, and literally creating the apparent problem that I, with the best of intentions, then go about trying to heal in a diabolically self-reinforcing feedback loop. This dynamic is of the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy, in which I am using the creative powers of my own mind to influence reality so as to entrance and imprison myself, which is a form of madness. I imagine, deep down, to the extent we are asleep, that this madness is an archetypal situation that is similar for everyone. Ayahuasca was ultimately bringing awareness to how I am actively participating in the creation of my own lack of freedom, so that I could potentially dream it differently.

            The spirit of ayahuasca taught me about itself. One of the many things my experiences with ayahuasca revealed to me is that it is a “nonlocal” spirit, which means it is not constrained by the conventional laws of space and time. Being nonlocal, the spirit of ayahuasca is not bound by matter, which is to say it is not solely contained in nor constrained by its seemingly liquid, physical form. Being nonlocal, the spirit of ayahuasca is multi-dimensional, which is to say that its drinkable form is but one of its various channels of incarnating itself.

We seem to enter into and become acquainted with ayahuasca’s nonlocal field of influence when the time is right. For me, the spirit of ayahuasca was able to shape-shift, first manifesting as the original shaman with his bottle, then incarnating as the dream of drinking what was in the bottle, and finally materializing as the actual event of taking what was in the bottle into myself, as if receiving holy communion in the flesh. Being nonlocal, the spirit of ayahuasca was revealing to me the nonlocality of both the universe and myself, which is to say my own lack of limitations in the realm of the divine, creative imagination.  

            Ayahuasca is a medicine that heals the disease of modern humanity, an atrophied imagination. Ayahuasca stimulates and works through the organ of the creative imagination so as to actualize its very real effects. Ayahuasca introduces us to the reality of the psyche, which is to say it announces itself in the channel where what is imagined has a real effect on what is happening. Ayahuasca helps to collapse the boundary between what is real and what is imagination, as the imagination seems more and more real, and the real, imagination. From the point of view of the divine imagination, which is reality itself, what is primary and most real, if we can speak in such terms, is the imagination itself.    

My encounter with ayahuasca initiated me more deeply into the nonlocal field which underlies our world and connects everything with everything else. The spirit of ayahuasca taught me, just like in that dream where I journeyed with ayahuasca, that we are literally moment to moment creating our experience of ourselves. The spirit of ayahuasca, both in the sleeping dream as well as in the waking dream, was revealing to me that it is our own mind which ultimately and fundamentally creates our experience. My dreamlike experiences with ayahuasca introduced me to the fact that the living spirit which animates ayahuasca is to be found inside each one of us. Just like my dream, I can imagine that I’m drinking the nonlocal, holy sacrament right now, and can’t help but to sing its song.     

Improv Storytelling - John William Johnson

Women in the new paradigm - Colin Bondi

As we move further into the new paradigm and further out of the old, one thing I'm repeatedly and intensely struck by is the power of the Divine Feminine and the role its playing in the process of the transformation into the New Earth. The old paradigm has been very much one of the destructive masculine, the manifestation of the masculine when it is disconnected from the feminine and takes the form of reckless ungrounded action. We see that all over the place from war to the destruction of the environment to the totalitarian governments that dominate this planet. The destructive masculine is also dominating because it is disconnected from the the true power of the feminine so we get the subjugation of women and the destruction of mother nature as the disconnected masculine reacts with fear to the very power it so desperately needs, the feminine. Both men and women can embody the destructive masculine although it has been primarily men because of their masculine embodiment.