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The first big trip
I wish the first macro dose trip had been on purpose. I still appreciate every inch of what happened. A certain part of my ego, my hubris, my coyote spirit, entrapped me into falling into the experience I needed.
It turns out that I had been doing beautiful work with microdosing. They connected me to practices I knew were necessary for living. Praying had become a normal part of my life. Running, going to the gym, breathing exercises, meditations. I had found a path that was transforming me physically and mentally into an evolved version of myself. The mushrooms gave me a state of possibility beyond the known, a constant “why not?”.
“Why not run out of breath?” for example. Why not pray?
I had tuned into practices and methods that gave me a way of living.
Anyway I must say that the sense of well being that the mushrooms provoked forgave any lack of care. They had me in a contented or neutral state. I could eat whatever my relaxed digestion would allow. Nothing was bad for me. I could feel content to do and not do without judgment or reprimand.
When I started microdosing I had the feeling that I had passed through a portal to a parallel world. People were kind to me. Everyone had a certain happiness about them that they didn't have before. Those who fought with me stopped fighting with me. I realized the valuable power of one's own vibration. When the microdoses opened my heart a little and gave me harmony in the hemispheres, brain-heart coherence, everyone around me seemed to transform. I was amazed. I wanted to give it to everyone.
I distributed mushrooms everywhere, I cultivated, I harvested, I gave away, I went on pilgrimage, I went on mission, I preached. I never tired of talking about the benefits of mushrooms.
I remember once while drinking beer with a friend and commenting on the fungi power in life, global and medicinal panacea, a friend told me: “No, Sato, it's you”.
Just like that. Very simply, he said that the things that happened to me happened to me because I was the one going through them. I had no use believing that.
Maybe, I admit it, there are people who have eaten two big mushrooms and have not felt what I felt with a six-millimeter primordium. Maybe it is not the global panacea that will save the world. I had a hard time believing it. I would still find it hard to believe. The potential of psylocibin is very nice and huge.
There is a quality of surrender in that, Ramon said it in that ceremony in Huachuma:
It's not the quantity of medicine you take, it's the quality of surrender.
Paraphrasing.
Anyway. I spent months distributing mushrooms to everyone I could and had a hand to receive. I sold and gave away. I cultivated, I got. I put it in mate, I made tea. Sometimes people drank mate with me without knowing I had mushrooms. I didn't kill anyone. I proved that it was possible. They smiled a little more.
My parents were victims of my obsession with mushrooms. Several times I made them tea with microdoses and lovingly indulged them. Handing it to them with both hands and reverently telling them. “I want you to take this, which is a gift from the deep love and affection I have for you”. Imagine, both parents, having seen their child being stale and sad and so on. Bringing something with both hands, confessing love by bowing their head. Hugging and kissing. It had to be tryed and so they did. They never told me what they felt. I did see them going to the bank to do paperwork, laughing hand in hand in love, that was all.
You have to give these medicines with that affection and love. Expressing it with the heart, with the mind and with the body. That way the receiving channel can be opened. Or be denied with truth, because if it was not right for that person or not the right time, inevitably there would be rejection.
I used to chat with my mom about her processes and problems, her emotions and stories. In my psylocibe time I recommended her many times to do a microdose process. She was afraid and I would tell her that it was absurd, that it would do her good, that it would take away her fear, that it would give her peace to reflect, that this and that. It became desperate for me to hear a problem that I knew its solution was right there in the kitchen cupboard where we were chatting.
I would cut the little piece of mushroom and say, “Here! Take this! You'll see!”
And she'd say, “No, well, let me, later.”
Maybe I could get her to eat a little bit, but it was so small that it was insignificant.
One day we started arguing. She must have been upset about something and I insisted that she take the mushrooms and in the heat of the argument I took a big mushroom. The biggest of the whole crop. It must have weighed an easy 2 grams. It had his black hat open sporulated. Drunk with power and arrogance I ate it in his face saying:
“See, this is how you have to eat! If you eat so little it won't do you anything.”
Then I said goodbye and walked home.
I walked along the bank of the big canal. Quiet, flowing. I crossed paths with a childhood friend and continued my journey. Then, as if attracted by the adventure, I took a narrow path through a reed bed that after bending down several times to bow to the branches, leads to an abandoned farm. I walked aimlessly through the farm, already feeling the first effects of the fungus on me. Relaxed and observing. Within a square of the field, which no longer had fruit trees, thousands of poplars had proliferated. They were growing upwards like rays from the earth and I felt that all those poplars shared the same root and that they were the same poplar that sprouted and sprouted. I was inside a forest.
It occurred to me to pull one out to take home and plant for shade in the summer. Shade I needed since my front door and window faced the afternoon summer sun. I had no tools but my hands, and in the “why not” of the mushroom I grabbed a thin sapling six or seven meters long and started pulling. It took a lot of energy to pull it up but it was not in my calculations. The concept of fatigue or energy had completely vanished. I had supernatural strength. I pulled up three saplings by the roots. And, panting and perspiring, I returned home. I remember crossing the canal on the narrow footbridge of old and rotten boards with three trees in my hands. I remember getting home and looking for the most efficient way to plant them. The mushroom relaxation was coming, I yawned and yawned. I turned on the water pump and started breaking up the hard soil with the pressure of the hose. I splashed mud everywhere and, very precariously, I put them there. I thought they should take care of themselves and be strong because they were just wild poplars. The three poplars died soon after.
I found myself covered in fungus, muddy and sweaty, decomposed, as if I were sick and nauseous. I decided to take a bath.
I felt bad because I really got into that trip, I didn't expect to be like this. So hypersensitive and open. So self-conscious.
When I went to the bathroom I remember looking in the mirror and in full nausea seeing my long beard. I immediately realized that my long beard, on the map of my life, was synonymous with abandonment. Perhaps it is an ancestral force in me, or a program, or a way of communicating with myself. I realized that my long beard hid the swelling of my face. The swelling of my face was because I had very bad habits. The beard was the mask that hid my true face from the world, but it also hid me from my true face. Back there were my cheeks of gluttony, my swollen glands from swallowing filth. I began to shave in desperation. In the sensation of being mounted surfing a long arcade as long as my five foot seven inches.
In the automatic process of shaving my body, I saw my naked torso. Scissoring and pinching. I felt disgust all over. Added to my face, my torso reflected more of the gluttony. I could see and feel in my liver and belly the thousand and one ways of poisoning I had perpetrated on my body. I could feel every piece of garbage I had swallowed amplified. In addition the gluttonous nausea contained things that should not logically be there but the link was clear: Other psychic vices, my relationship with my parents, excessive use of social networks, business relationships that did not serve me, my relationship with my daughter. My own character in the theater of life disgusted me.
My eyes were big and my pupils dilated. My face was completely symmetrical. I realized that my hemispheres were fully balanced in resonance as both sides of me had amalgamated. I looked like an android.
And at the same time, from my lower abdomen I could see my sexual dramas. A reptilian posture. Indescribable. I felt it was vile, inconsiderate, hurtful. I perceived the enormous power and responsibility of sexual energy. Life-creating. I saw the harm it could cause and perhaps I had caused without realizing it. I saw the divine and miraculous creative potential. Like a bolt of lightning it hit me in the back of the head receiving an upgrade of the software of living. I was able to perceive the world from the point of view of the sexual equation. It took me years to thread the knowledge I received but the impression was so overwhelming and abysmal that I felt the effects of every trauma there is and ever will be. I believe I felt every violation and abuse in all the lineages of my ancestors. I felt what fibers of beings I touched in victims and victimizers.
I felt where I vibrated them in me, nauseating. I felt the fire of hell burning life by the evil and selfish use of the vital alpha and omega. Promiscuity profligate masturbatory indolent insensitive desidious irresponsible harmful debilitating. There are no words. All that in me. Reptilian. Burning me to a crisp.
I realized the millions of ways all these behaviors manifested in my material world in addition to my body. My home was embedded in that, my objects, my tools. Everything my home and my living environments were and emanated symbolism from what my psyche and body had constructed. How to explain it...
My home was the physical manifestation of the use of my sexual energy and my eating drives.
When so much information fell into me, the natural reaction of my mind was to go into self-flagellation. Despair. How could I be so shitty. How I had been so ignorant. How much damage I could have caused. I am such a piece of shit. I went in to punish myself with words and feelings. The cycle of self-flagellation and thinking the old adagio “what does one more stripe do to the tiger?” “if I'm already a piece of shit why not hurt myself some more” “who cares, if I hate this thing I did with me I'd like to destroy it” The very vibration of guilt.
Until I heard the voice:
“Ease. Build on top of this” A compassionate voice said in my ears.
And surprise bathed me in light and calm. The sound of the voice from heaven stunned me. It wasn't coming from anywhere. The things in my bathroom were normal, I was not hallucinating, the silence was profoundly normal, the image in the mirror was the same as always. During this whole trip I hadn't seen things that weren't there. Nothing was moving or melting. I was just seeing things as they are, so normally manifest that the simple and the obvious revealed profound truths. Everything is in plain sight, it cannot be hidden. I was as sober as a breathalyzer test would have given me a negative score.
When the gaze is purified, the heart is cleansed, the truth is obvious and manifest. It is when the senses can cross time and space and recognize themselves living other experiences and other lives. It is when telepathy becomes normal and one can sense information and decode it. I realized that not a single thought is private and even less hidden, everything springs forth and manifests in the physical world in a transcendental language.
All this astounded me. I had not uttered such words, I could not even have conceived them.
“Repentance. Total change of attitude. Mutate action.”
I listened to the words again and felt the bath of light, love and harmony.
It was telling me that I should walk and act in the opposite direction. That to do so was as simple as turning on the spot and heading in the opposite direction. As these thoughts washed over me, my reflection morphed into a more harmonious and beautiful image. I no longer reflected that sore and vile chained reptile, but a more human image. As if locks had opened and chains had fallen from my body.
“Ascending is like descending” He said.
And I saw a downward spiral dragging my life and soul into a hell. As I went, so went my whole family, my house, my dogs, my plants, the souls of my parents and my ancestors. At the same time that I was self-flagellating and hurting myself, I was taking my children's children with me into deep misery, into the endless pit of infinite suffering and dark evil.
And at the same time I saw the other spiral, the one of paradise. Where we help each other to create an improved and effective version of living in harmony with divinity and life forces. A resonance capable of levitating all things and houses, objects, dogs and souls towards heaven on earth. An ascending spiral of light, love, peace, benevolence.
“When you want to go up, just go up. You have a thousand lives.” Said the voice
And I felt a divine neutrality of free will. Divinity shrugging its shoulders and showing me its clean hands that never got involved in anything without my asking. No one was forcing me to choose any path. No one would ever intervene for me. No one could. Nothing would bring about any change. I could see a thousand lifelines in the river of eternal drowning but no one was going to move my arms to grab it and hold on. No one was going to lift me fallen. No one was going to give me the wings to soar. (Unless I asked for it perhaps.) It had to be a conscious decision of my own. And I realized that the effort and energy of taking the upward spiraling path was the same as the downward path. Either one required the same energy and will. It was willingness to hurt yourself or build yourself up. It was a thought of distance. Love each other, hate each other. To live, to die. And when I heard “a thousand lives” they actually said the infinite number. Saying a thousand, the voice was generous to me. I could die and be reincarnated five hundred trillion times eternally with the same subject and the same problem. The actors would mutate, the scenes change and repeat themselves with different colors. My life is this, the only one. Because by not learning, it repeats itself, and returns, and repeats itself. And it returns. And in these sensations I recognized the inconceivable quantum power of life and resonance. I will not be able to explain, but nothing is as it seems, and it would rather be like a tremendous dream of resonance frequencies that at any moment can be transformed into a nightmare if we think in those directions of darkness and fear.
And worse than that would be to grow old with unresolved issues, to give up, to give up for dead, to try to escape them and evade the self. To evade free will, what a paradox. We have so much freedom that we can choose not to have it.
Already in the shower I could see myself from above. Detached from my body. I recognized the vessel that had been given to me to fulfill the mission of this life. My body. My avatar. The vehicle of my consciousness. The most impressive sophisticated work that could have been conceived, self-creating. But it was part of me, it was not me. It was just a part that I had to take care of and honor because it was a sacred temple where my infinite consciousness dwells. A tool of limitation for my being to be able to travel in these planes of this world.
And when I look at the glass of the shower stall, I see the drops of water falling and splashing. When several drops of water slid down to the floor on the surface of the glass the figures that transparent on the steam fogged glass were identical to a bunch of rising souls. Like tadpoles of light going skyward. And I heard the voice:
“Ascending takes courage and bravery. It's all right, go up.”
And I thought it was extraordinary that in addition to words they were synchro/tuning my gaze with images that were representative of what they wanted to tell me. Speaking in plural because my intuition told me that I was being communicated with “The cosmic brotherhood”. I don't even know what that means but thank you very much for the data.
And I saw my hands as divine instruments. And in them I saw how many times I had been a coward to take action for my own good. And I had been afraid of what people would say and to be the rainbow sheep of the herd. I understood that my body has memory beyond my brain. That in every cell there are stored memories and information of what was and the moves that were made. That every time I had been afraid and acted in and out of fear I had nurtured cowardice. Like a conditioned reflex.
But now I knew that ascending is simple as descending, and that they were waiting for me. They have the patience of all lives.
And I saw the other parts of my body, sitting in the shower. Each one was looking back at me. Because we were a self-conscious whole. It's hard to explain. How can a foot look back at you? I don't know. I felt it and it went right through me. Not only was I looking at them, but they were looking at me. My feet, my legs, my penis, my belly, my hands. Not only were they looking at me, but in that look was encoded the information of what they were saying. And it was a look of the dog that destroyed the couch while the owner was away. And when he confronts the owner you can see that he knows what he did, and that it was wrong. That he surely regrets it and that his master looks at him disappointed. That's how they looked at me, my body parts. Regretful, intelligently knowing and recognizing themselves. Defeated, ashamed. The team failed.
I spoke:
“We have to get it right. Talk to me! Let me know. Wake me up when I'm inattentive.”
My hands had a boldness to move, taking my words of encouragement. Their expression changed.
“Let's go to in the same direction and without setbacks” I said ”let's allow ourselves to make it without fear and be brave.”
“That if there is fear let's see it as delusion”.
“Let's walk life with the courage of those who are dying”.
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Love at second sight
About five years ago now, working in my tiny workshop, actually outside of it, because I didn't even go inside, I suffered a carpentry “accident”. I say “accident” in quotes because the instant it happened to me I knew I had done it to myself, because I saw all the safety rules I had overlooked and I knew it was going to change my life. I needed that.
With a hand-held circular saw, I wanted to cut a length of green poplar lath. I started the cut and when the saw advanced far enough I grabbed with my right hand (I'm left-handed) the back of the lath, where I had the beginning of the cut. The humidity of the wood itself added to my strength when I grabbed it from behind, closed the cut and the saw jammed. My left hand, even though the saw slowed down, pulled the trigger. And instead of moving forward, the saw went backward, pulling on the closed cut and passed over my right hand. In an instant, my index finger was all fringed and dangling. It was the only thing the saw cut. Right hand, index finger. The paternal masculine side, pointing to direction, purpose, law. I jumped up and ran in circles screaming. I knew that instantly. “You did this to yourself” ”Your life changed forever.” I sat up and passed out for an instant. My dogs were sniffing me. I was alone. I called Anto and she took me to the hospital.
I healed my finger. That's about where it is. It looks like a hook. It is stiff. I wanted nothing to do with repairing it, traumatologists, antibiotics, surgeries. They just put the stitches and it healed. I put propolis on it. It got infected. I learned a lot from watching his healing and his infection.
It turns out that the wound was infected for a long time, part of the tissue turned black and died. I let it be, watched it. Never did the infection leave the finger to my hand. I trusted. One day the infection pushed out a centimeter-long sliver of bone. And there the wound closed.
It closed in the hand, but it did not close in the mind or in the heart. I became quite depressed. For a long time I couldn't go back to work. I rethought the whole way. Why be an unhappy, poor, one-armed carpenter? For what reasons had I walked that way. It was then that I began to meditate a lot, to rebuild my subconscious. It was then that I found healing ideas, Dr. Joe Dispenza's books, Paramahansa Yogananda's prayers, Neville Goddard's books. I saw that the way out of the painful equation was through prayer, meditation, understanding what ideas led me to work that way. Understanding what buried parts of my mind led me to decide to work precariously, to not take care of myself, to have accidents. Because this serious accident was the icing on the cake of several other accidents I had had, less serious ones. I had already lost parts of my fingers, in fact some were still missing and others had grown back like a lizard's tail. From that I also knew it was something like a self flagellation pattern. The question was why?
My dad would always watch me work and tell me of my carelessness. I believed I was beyond pain and the law.
In my subconscious I found pure devaluation of myself and my work. I found that I didn't want to do what I was doing and that I would rather travel and play soccer. Why shouldn't I be able to live doing that? I meditated and prayed. I kept dissolving. I spent about sixty days on that healing plan. My family putting up with me, helping me financially, having infinite patience.
Within the meditative mystical wave, by synchrodestiny, a friend that I had not seen for many years invited me to participate in a group of Deepak Chopra's Abundance. I knew Chopra's books. I joined right away because it was specifically something I needed to work on and had been praying about a lot; my relationship with money.
I actually remember going through the 21-day meditation challenge and that. But going to the actual issue itself, I re-established the bond with my friend. That one of those days of hammock and meditation he sends me a message offering to help me with a move and pay me for it. In my meditative openness, having broken several schemes of pride I thought yes. Why not.
I went to his house and it was not far. He showed me where he lived and what he did. He grew Oyster mushrooms, edible mushrooms that grow on poplar wood. The first thing I said to him was that if anyone was going to grow magic mushrooms then it must be him. I don't know where that line came from but the next thing made me laugh. He took me to his room and showed me inside a big plastic box, a white organic thing full of mushrooms.
I had heard a lot about mushroom trips through Terrence Mckenna, I used to put it on the speaker in the workshop and listen to hours and hours of his talks and lectures. His travel stories were very interesting.
He offered me a try and I automatically said no. I didn't want to add substance to my life. I was already clean of everything. No alcohol, no cannabis. Just yerba mate or coffee.
The mark that cannabis had left in my life had not been good, and I related the effects of cannabis with those of mushrooms, I don't know why. Maybe because the idea that they were “psychoactive”.
We started to move and while we were moving, Huguito appeared.
With Huguito we knew each other from that huachuma ceremony. When Hugui saw the mushrooms he was happy and Luis offered him the same thing he offered me, “Do you want to try?
Hugui didn't even hesitate and pinched a little mushroom so small it fit on the tip of his index finger. It must have been 6 millimeters tall.
Immediately my brain thought it was missing something and inevitably said “Well if it's that small I want to see what it tastes like too.”
I ate an identical mushroom that was right next to the one Huguito had taken.
We continued with the move and carried a batch of things. In one of the comings and goings, I was in the back seat of the van and I could feel myself present. A certain harmony, vital flow, heart-mind coherence. There I was, rejoicing in the moment. So lucid that I was surprised. So present that a smile came from my heart to my face. I didn't even hear what the other two were talking about, if they were talking at all. I was alone back there. Relaxed in the seat letting myself go. I asked: “Hey, could it be that this has had an effect on me?
And laughing they said yes.
Then I looked outside, a summer sunset. The sun was low in the orange, the magical hour. The plants on the side of the road. I saw things that were there but would never have paid attention to their simple beauty if it weren't for the mental rumination gone. The layers of hubris put on like glasses to reality. I saw clearly what was there without judgment or lucubration whether it was good or bad, pretty, ugly, whether he wanted or didn't want it to happen. I loved, so to speak, whatever was happening. And in that vision, seeing the weeds on the side of the road, for the first time I saw them as intelligent living beings and not as part of the scenery of the drama of life. The plants stretched out to receive the sun, which was the last of the afternoon, the most beautiful. They managed to make room for each other and assume a yogic posture. They had body, mind and spirit. They made room for themselves and for each other. Their leaves pointed to the great orange sun and they were efficiently praising it and taking it with every bit they could. They had moved to that hour to do that. It would not have been the same at noon. They were all leaning toward the divine radiation. They had gotten there through a dance.
Wow!
That was there every day of my life for 28 years and I had never seen it. I had other software.
The feeling of peace and harmony continued throughout the day, I had never felt so lucid and connected to what was happening and that night I slept like a baby. Literally. The next morning I woke up remembering how I woke up as a child. Fresh, rested, excited to play and live.
I instantly called Luis and told him I wanted those mushrooms in my life, in whatever form. I told him I wanted to learn from growing and I wanted to buy and give and have and eat and live.
From then on they were present in my life almost without interruption.
Almost.
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Huachuma the way to heaven
I was born by circumstances that you may later understand in a house where God was almost a bad word. Where Christ was fiction and religion was the opium of the people. My father, having gone through a Catholic school as a child, having been whipped by teachers and priests, having been tried to indoctrinate, generated a strong rejection of religious institutions. His adolescence and youth was steeped in Buddhism, Lanza del Basto’s Pacifism, Zen, Taoism and Shinto animism. At the same time, his mind and his work kept a great fascination for science, the scientific method, matter. His profession was that of a sculptor. Touching, seeing, feeling, molding nature was his daily work. Although he always spoke of animism as his greatest conviction, as a father he imposed laws on me and my older brother. Things had to be tested and proven by the scientific method. Hypotheses and theories could only be true if they were supported, if experience confirmed, if they were part of the collective consciousness and if the most studious and respected scientists confirmed them. As a father he framed us in this way, he took care to keep us away from religious dogmas by imposing another type of dogma. When one spoke of God and spiritual things, he tried to say that there was no God. That one could not prove his existence. He said he was an atheist. When Jehovah's Witnesses came to our house to bring the word, he would come out saying "in this house we are secular communists, so please, I thank you but go somewhere else!".
He was something of a communist, but he called himself a socialist. A secularist for sure.
My mother also shared some of that, she dared to say little or nothing. My dad's logic was irrefutable. And my mother was always right, an extraordinarily intelligent and articulate woman.
All this generated something in me. On my maternal side, my grandmother was Roman Catholic. Of the pope and the Christian church. Her children had attended religious schools.
So I wondered: What is it to pray? does it work? I try it. It doesn't work. Whatever.
But I prayed again, what do I know?
I don't disown my home and my upbringing. I don't resent my father's laws. It was perfect. I loved to be like that and I loved to change. I discovered God and Christ, I discovered Mother Earth and spirit. I am grateful that my home was this neutral or polarized to another side. It was my soul that needed it to take on the divine search and encounter. I needed it to study and prove to myself that magic exists.
I always had a rebellious spirit, I always wanted to be remembered. I always wanted stories of my courage and daring to be told. As a child and teenager I wanted to be told of my follies, of my mistakes. Remembered for bad and for good. Somehow my clan did the same. I was the crazy one, different, the younger brother, the creative one. I had chosen that place and my family also gave it to me. The stability of my older brother, his sense of responsibility and prudence gave me the fertile ground to be the other one.
So when I was a teenager I created a reputation for myself as crazy, daring, rebellious without a cause, unpredictable, creative for the screw-up. This led me to be a pioneer of substance testing. I drank alcohol at 11 or 12, went out to night clubs at 14, smoked marijuana for the first time at 14. I also tried cocaine at 17 and lysergic acid among other things.
Rebelliousness and substances went hand in hand. Also the same rebelliousness made me stay away from the discos and seek out the streets. We teamed up with school friends who heckled at the back of the class. We explored drugs and alcohol together. We walked the endless streets. We vandalized, we ran. We played with gasoline. We would go into dark neighborhoods.
We also bonded over football and its little matches. We had a team that played and played every weekend. At the same time I was competing in the youth team of the local club.
In my beliefs I named myself an atheist. "I am an Atheist" "God does not exist" and I thought that made my father proud.
In this innocent/not so innocent exploration also on its positive side we turned to nature. We philosophized in the middle of the desert for hours watching the stars. We would take acid walking under the moon in the river. We laughed out loud. We listened to classical music inside a hermetically sealed car filled with pot smoke. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Charly García, Spinetta, Ravel, Beethoven. We shared poetry, cinema and humor. We played guitars. We swam in the river. Hedonism and nihilism mixed with deep reflections touches of spiritual experiences and always present wonder.
I tied my sanity and decency with football and girlfriend.
At the age of 15 I fell in love with Antonella. We were schoolmates. To this day, 17 years later we are still together and have two children. Antonella my grounding cable. Libra, my balance and equilibrium.
After returning from my university failure in Buenos Aires, we became parents. Young, with no job and no trade, Sofia came. We lived in a small house on a farm in Stefenelli. A year later we moved to another little house, close to where our parents lived.
One day Anto and Sofi, who was 1 year old at the time, went on vacation with my in-laws to Brazil. I think it was two weeks. I didn't want to go, my pride was hurt because I couldn't pay for the trip and I was an adult invited to live an experience I didn't deserve. I had a closed grace and I could not accept the failure of not having a job and not wanting to be a slave.
In that synchronicity coincided that a couple of shamans were coming to town to offer a Huachuma ceremony. The San Pedro cactus. I had heard of ceremonies and master plants, at one time or another I'd trod through Hoffman's and McKenna's books. My acid trips had made me touch strange dimensions of which I saw a potential of self to "realize" things. To ask questions from which there is no return. Plus two of my friends had already been in Huachuma ceremony with the same shamans.
But the real reason I went to that ceremony was that all five of my friends in my group were going to be there. We were all going. That gave me a security and a sense of power. Another drug with the lads! Another night. And I thought it was naughty and naughty to do it while my family was away. For one night I could abandon decency and the role of father. To return to adolescence and meet with the boys.
I remember the nerves when we went. We knew we were doing something illegal. We met at a traffic circle on Route 22 and there we would find the traveling shamans. When I saw them arrive, the image and first impression of them confirmed the staging of my rebelliousness to the ceremony. Ramon and Aldana, the givers of this medicine, were a young couple. Perhaps a little older than me in age. Or maybe even older but well preserved and youthful. They had some of a shine, unexplicable bright.
I remember them hugging everyone as they greeted each other. Deep, heartfelt hugs. When it was my turn I offered resistance and gave no more than a cold, boundary hug. "You are not like me and I don't even know you, don't even try it with me con man priest!" It was my rebelliousness, my atheism, the traumas of the priests who beat my dad, speaking.
That marked my experience. I had no respect for them. Who were they? Just kids like me who were looking for substances.
The ceremony was interesting. There wasn't much difference in the setting between what happened that night and what happens today, ten years later.
People came, I counted thirty-something souls, did we do a speech circle? I do not remember. Ramón spoke, truthful, in peace, absolute coherence. I listened to him intrigued, he was a different being, he was the leader of that herd and he had the merits. He said things that I don't remember but that were surely in line with medicine. My layers of pride kept no memory of what he said. But I was still struck by those things, his temperance, his voice, his youth, his symbiotic alchemical union with his partner Aldana. The synergy.
It left me itching, I had to rebel, I had to call attention to myself and disrespect, I had to be unpredictable and insightful. I think my friends felt empowered to do the same, the five of us were very united in those subversions.
I was more or less well behaved until I took the medicine. I played guitar loudly. It bothered me how much they were out of tune, I always had an ear for inharmonicity. It bothered me how rudimentary the songs were. The noise. Still Aldana riding on the Djembe made my rib cage resonate with the beats. And they didn't stop all night long. More than eight hours, no matter what was going on. Bum Bum Bum Bum. For me and my "refined musical taste", the songs sucked, but the drum in my chest, moving the water and life out of every cell. That resonance was a big part of the experience.
At one point we left the circle to smoke doobies and shit ourselves laughing. That's how we did it.
I had no visions other than those of tiny little devils bursting out of me and making me bitch and curse. I recognized that they were not mine and that they just wanted to play. A kind of momentary Tourette's syndrome. I had fun doing it and giving them room. Maybe by not fighting it or repressing it I was able to give them an outlet and peace. It has not happened to me again.
Also I had some curious thoughts I didn’t expected. At dawn I saw the flowers and the sky and the clouds and I thought: “these don’t belong to me”. And as weird as it sounds, I felt really light and something clicked. “Was I thinking those things belonged to me? I don’t know”. And this “I don’t know” was relieving and clearing. Like I needed it. I needed to not know and let new pathways to create in my mind, out of curiosity and wonder. That clearance stayed with me for months, I would say, if not for ever.
I know we bastardized the ceremony a bit. I know we tried to rebel in various ways, leaving the circle, playing a few passes with the ball. Shouting things out of the dark of night. Wandering around. Today I understand that it is not easy to gather people in a medicine circle. And that it's not good to have those at the back of the class (the teacher is not the shaman but the medicine).
Beyond a rather exacerbated marijuana madness by Huachuma, a lot of laughter and fooling around, that night I felt almost nothing. I didn't feel the spirit of the plant, I didn't know what I had gone there for. Yes, I was really high that night. And the next day I felt peace.
And I do know that it took me many years to understand what Ramón and Aldana were doing. And that behind the off-key recital there was a transcendental intention. That it was bigger than them and their successes and mistakes. A purpose that went through them and chose them for a necessary work.
After that, certain tastes of mine changed, certain preferences, and habits. With processes full of trial and error. Comings and goings. Huachuma, its taste, its sensation had entered me. And this is also difficult to explain. There is "other way". I think Huachumita opened it.
I think I did not understand it but I understood it. I think that paradox can be put together. I did not understand it. But time was glueing me the parts. I was re-membering. Small micro-decisions were falling from the shock wave of that day and time where Huachuma and ceremony moved my blood, and my psyche.
That plant somehow allied with my spirit. That ceremony still beats in my chest. And like a magnet polarized towards the metal I was getting involved in "yes for me". Much more in “yes for me", for my body and soul. Much less "not for me". For my life, my body, my family. I changed my diet, studied many books about master plants and weeds, practices. I meditated, I ran. Little by little I washed away vices and healed brokenness. I think Huachuma gave me a sense of a path that was hidden from me because I didn’t know who I was. Or I knew too much who I was so I had to defend it. So that rigidness of being was misaligning me with truth and the way to create a meaningful life.
What did Huachuma do and what did I do? Who knows, maybe it was always a negotiation. A letting me do and doing myself. A constant recognition of oneself. Having touched the sky with my hands and coming down to earth to find new ways to do it again. Different ways. Knowing that there is another way. One that reconciles paradoxes.
I do remember that the experience of that first Huachuma I understood not to understand. I conceived that structures and reasons, logics and patterns had been undone. Perhaps for that night I had just lost the sense of the ground and the sky, of good and evil, of soft and hard.
I often say that I “floated” in absurd concepts that have no meaning except in human survival, often outdated even biologically. Concepts of God, entheogen, spirit, path, began to be felt. Beyond logic and explanation, I began to feel them. And if I feel it, it is real. And when I feel it, I begin to see it manifest in life.
It took me 9 years to appreciate and recognize the value of what Ramon and Aldana were doing. It took me 9 years to forgive their lack of musical ear. It took me 9 years to forgive myself for my arrogance and stubbornness, for my lack of respect. I understand that I was still a child, I understand that I still had a lot to understand. Today I breathe and I am grateful. We met several more times with the coolest and most modern shamanic duo in America. Today we embrace and love each other. Today I consider them my father and mother of that path. They inspire me with the courage and rebellion that they also had when they sent themselves to harvest and serve Wachuma without lineage or tradition, against the law of the State. I do not know nor can I imagine other courage and acts of bravery they had. Traveling the country and the continent collecting medicine, words, songs, experiences. Bringing that to this inhospitable corner.
Last Saturday I was, for the second time, in a Huachuma ceremony with them. Today they tune in a heavenly way. Today the tribe they formed is big, we recognize each other as accomplices in the street. Because we are creating a fabric of harmonious relationships uniting heaven and earth with art and labor. We are co-creating an epic mystical circular and decentralized culture. A historical journey that may not remain in any history book but that will permeate the foundations of the hierarchical pyramids of power and eat the dead as a fungus eats the fallen trunks and branches in the forest. May the incarnated divinity remain, the fruits of the seeds and flowers, as they say. The labors and the works for the coming generations that will be born knowing of “the other path” in their genetic information.
Today the resonance of their songs travels in alignment with the laws of physics. In phase with spiritual planes and with the resonance of air and time. Their songs were embellished, poetry was channeled from the sky and plants. The oral tradition they create and co-create begins to emerge in popular culture. Don't believe me, but I know. You won't understand until you live it. I wish you all the Huachuma experience with Rama and Aldi. And I'm proud to have been there ten years ago and to still be there. I am proud to be called a friend and to be called "Hermago" by the people who shared the fire with me.
I often worried about people around me not buying Bitcoin and aswell I was worried about them buying Bitcoin and outperforming my buys.
I don't have much money or wealth. I'm by far the poorest guy in my family constellation, both my in-laws and my family are all working middle class folk.
My shadow aspect doesn't want them to get too rich for me because I will never be able to catch up. My lighter aspect want all people to buy and have Bitcoin.
Still there is some competitiveness in me.
I want to be king. I want them all to be kings and queens. Yin yang.
So I think...
No one bought any Bitcoin whatsoever.
No one would dare to risk anything on that which they don't understand and coming from the lowest denominator in terms of wealth in the family. They don't listen to me because it would challenge their statu quo.
Then I went silent and said nothing for years. Stayed humble and stacked sats.
And I start to think now that no one in my family will have spare amounts to catch my initial investment and outperform me. Nor they would dare to do so. Nor they are willing to study and understand. Nor they are willing to trust me.
Perhaps Bitcoin is resonantly reaching those weird ones that have a power to cure the crooked world and bring equilibrium. Perhaps we were chosen to create a culture anew, while people live borrowed lives, have loans and think not their own thoughts.
And I'm just accepting all that.
Yin Yang
It's Game theory right there and I'm part spirit and part animal.
So the same as I am a kind loving compassionate one I also need to compete and strive.
I live within contradictions.
nostr:nprofile1qqsxpuhwm8qys9q4gc7e0xvjp8mp6apf2ukptkyhrsc6hzqjd93vjrcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhszwvlhc I can think of he is a great curator.
nostr:nprofile1qqsgx23t8nh5k965cjn4w2ty53xmvngeahmz0mz9z7d4r8g2t6hgrxgpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzvuhsjehpxx and his thought I can think of.
Nice one
This painting is inspired in a Huachuma ceremony we had last summer. We were lots of folk there sharing songs and fire.
Huachuma unites and opens hearts. It's a beautiful experience.
And I remember seeing the music flying through the sky as I tried to paint it there. It was as if music was carrying order and prayers embedded in the lyrics of the medicine songs.
I saw music as trascendental order and the night was so warm and calm that you could feel it elevating through the space. The drums were so loud they moved your chest and all the water in our bodies. The guitars and voices were in some otherworldly tune with such carrying power and clearness that I knew we could reach distant lands with beauty.
It was imprinted in me very visually and it was predominantly greenish in colour. As the plant is.
And I usually give thanks to the visions received and promise to make art out of them under all my limitations and incapabilities, but intending to turn those seeds into flowers into fruits into seeds again and again. To share and service.
nostr:nevent1qqsgvv2qhuu8hm6928py2tk6vx860lk9h6yf30kh8tzz8lhu5rcwjugpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgsz8dkqec78zt8qhnh5atu3wfwvg2t8llxs2022an6azd7rplwwddgrqsqqqqqpl3uzws
I told the clerk it was spoons and he wrote "wood"
Is it a gift? Or commerce of some sort? "A gift"
I think I even told him how much is it worth.
(Checked my emails and didn't find anything)
Do you need me to write them ?
Nothing that cannot be solved with a couple of silence and slaps in public officials' faces.
No but seriously, ask lovingly and adress to the human being behind the costume of NPC robot state clerk. Speak to their hearts with truth.
You tell people:
-Dream big
-Buy Bitcoin as much as you can.
-Just wait enough time
They will find a trillion excuses and crooked thoughts to avoid doing those three simple things.
(And above all , avoid trying to understand)
And whenever they see an ATH they tell you they should've listened to you.
When you say: "It's never too late, just buy now"
They go deaf and stare to the infinite void like a doped sheep, and change subject of conversation
Vas a ir despertando juicios sombras celos envidias todos estos años. Hasta que de repente seas el rey. Y van a venir los mismos, pero no interesados en Bitcoin sino en adularte y que los dirijas. Así son. Porque Bitcoin es ser responsable y soberano
Y vos no te convertiste en rey por cryptomillonario sino por soberano responsable y por tu preferencia temporal.
Preparate
This one is apple wood bowl and walnut stem.
It can be done by opening in half the stem and gouging a channel both sides and then glueing with cianoacrilate.
This one is the case.
Or it can be done by choosing a very nice little branch and boring a hole through the center with a really hot and hard wire.
This is my little man-cave.
It's been a not so productive day but we still have hours to go. It's a bit messy now (Messi). And the good thing in a little space like this is that it can get to order really quick. Feng Shui y'know.
It's always finding new ways to order tools and things. It's a neverending process until things come and go smoothly from their storage place. It's always needing correction to the places where tools are hanged. Because I like them to be respected and soft landed, and flowing.
If I find a tool always out of place and order I start to think "what is it that this tool can't get back to its place?" Usually the answer lies in friction of some sort. It touches another tool in the way, it requires two movements to return instead of a single one. Or it just doesn't belong there because in my mind configuration it has to be nearer another part of my bodily avatar. I know I have a lot to think and rethink this, but this is the most flow I could get in years... Is it age? Wisdom? Luck? Ancestral spirits whispering my ears?
https://video.nostr.build/63906931d49151b0ec229dcbc3ae0fd8954c0cf58389854fc1d6d654bf6eb888.mp4
Playadito is one of the cheapest and most common ones. There are premium, organic, smoked you name it.
And don't worry about filling it up because it's not normally the case with large mates like that one. Just keep enough in it to cover the low part of the straw and about 1/3rd of the mate and not make a soup out of it. The yerba will gain size as you pour water.
Be aware of a common story shared among old folks here: no one likes mate at first. But gradually and then suddenly:
https://image.nostr.build/6620e97e715c72e8e34c7ac1f7c2ae122519413990fced554d3f863e8fbc5496.jpg
You will find yourself walking the streets like this.
This is my collection right now. All wooden except for one calabash in the upper shelf and below there are glass, plastic and ceramic ones. But I never use the ones below. I stick to woody ones.
Yours is very beautiful I would use indeed. And the straw looks really good aswell. Have a really nice experience!
https://image.nostr.build/1aebc5b4d3d2468bf6f8a32557510d58f52dbedabe26e4b4408b2fa475a90460.jpg
It's just that there is an inflation of mates here. Everyone has at least three of them and when you grow older you acquire more because it's one of the common gifts adults receive. Sometimes even you have to discard some or convert them into small plants pottery because you get your shelves crowded. I didn't even knew I had so many until I took the picture. I would throw away all the ones I don't use.
Mate is a great alternative to receive caffeine. Coffee can have some acidic downside and give you more jitters (in my experience). So alternating coffee and mate is a great healthy chance.
Then consider getting more herbs of your taste to add to the mix or even to the inside of the kettle.
Like I told you, you can have caffeine and digestive herbs at the same time , ginger, gingko biloba for brains, chamomile. Mushrooms!! I used a lot of magic mushrooms microdose inside the hot water, or reishi mushrooms. Very practical and purposeful.
Coca leaves also, great choice for everything in life.
People often here uses Huachuma and call it Huachumate and its San Pedro cacti brew (mescaline) inside the water.
It's up to your own personal taste and imagination.
People often also mix in a pinch of ground coffee. Also people use sugar every two or three sips (I find it horrible)
Or mix a pinch of dried coconut.
Or lavender.
Yesterday I got green tea and dried moringa leaves to add to it.
And realising this ( it happened this year for me) led me to be more honest. I don't really go through the world thinking people is evil and I am so virtuous.
By being sincere about my evilness and sense of despair I can observe my life properly and not judge. Ideas come clear, not fought over or denied.
And I get a much more clear path and direction in my life.
Otherwise I was just mental, dislocated, bent to the good side of me proving the world my goodness at all costs.
And I fell so much in debt by my words and promises and ideas. And I became like a politician of some sort parasiting and being parasited. Promising my goodness and judging evil doers.
And behind all that was my desire to manipulate, to own, to attain power, recognition, to punish, to tie, to make suffer.
It's now clear to me.
How do I know I'm not the villain of the story?
It also led me to be less ignorant and innocent around people.
I tended to gift my time, my words, my companionship, my stuff, to anyone.
I was so naive thinking we are all good because I am so so good that I can only relate through goodness.
I fell into those traps. People manipulated me, used me, and parasited me. It was the mirror in action.
Today I am more aware of the evil side of people. It's not the only thing there is, there is also good. I am careful with where and with whom I open myself sincerely.
I am much more reserved with my time and company. I don't speak openly about my ideas or plans. Neither of my feelings.
Cookoon mode. Life is crowded with fools. I'm one of them, so I will try to help myself
nostr:nevent1qqsdp2n7nrk49vdyknvv0n6s5hgepj5yy6qkp0qt8kdjvt0h8trvn8gpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgsz8dkqec78zt8qhnh5atu3wfwvg2t8llxs2022an6azd7rplwwddgrqsqqqqqpaav9ru
Thank you.
I think in the end is the pursuit of truth and sometimes it manifests ambiguously, Yin Yang. There is both sides and we don't really know from our perspective, it is so narrow and little. Recognising this without judging and condemning ourselves is a good favour of freedom we can do to our beings and to others. Because it gives us freedom of movement.
Trap ourselves in the good side of the story makes us fight a war constantly and exhaust our efforts. And the result is growing a larger shadow and finally becoming it. Snap to the other side in an outburst.
It is quite difficult to explain, I know this because it happened to me, I've seen it in action. And the thing is when you pay sincere attention, you start to see the manifestations of it in your life. So it begins to be clearer what you need to work on and nurture to create differently. You give to your dark side a place to exist in some order of time, space and action. For example you can become a monster at some sport or in a theatre, pursue your ambitions merciless, fuck banks stack sats, study how to impress and improve and attain power.
The twofold effect is you get to know your shadow better and you avoid being tricked and manipulated by pricks and evildoers. You know how to identify when people is casting their shadow upon you. When they have double and triple intentions. You see more clearly because it resonates with the parts of you that are there alive at the same frequency.
By killing or damping your own darkness you don't cure the wicked in others. It only makes you vulnerable.
Paraphrasing McKenna, we just don't know what we don't know and life is stranger than we can suppose. So staying humble and openminded is better
I'm far from being all good.
I have my evil, my demons, my selfish purposes.
It's in the right moment when chance and crossroads meet, through action and decisions I get to let manifest the good in me, to the world. It's like a conscious act, each day presents its own moral, ethic and responsibility problems.
Some days I do better than others.
And realising this ( it happened this year for me) led me to be more honest. I don't really go through the world thinking people is evil and I am so virtuous.
By being sincere about my evilness and sense of despair I can observe my life properly and not judge. Ideas come clear, not fought over or denied.
And I get a much more clear path and direction in my life.
Otherwise I was just mental, dislocated, bent to the good side of me proving the world my goodness at all costs.
And I fell so much in debt by my words and promises and ideas. And I became like a politician of some sort parasiting and being parasited. Promising my goodness and judging evil doers.
And behind all that was my desire to manipulate, to own, to attain power, recognition, to punish, to tie, to make suffer.
It's now clear to me.
How do I know I'm not the villain of the story?
It also led me to be less ignorant and innocent around people.
I tended to gift my time, my words, my companionship, my stuff, to anyone.
I was so naive thinking we are all good because I am so so good that I can only relate through goodness.
I fell into those traps. People manipulated me, used me, and parasited me. It was the mirror in action.
Today I am more aware of the evil side of people. It's not the only thing there is, there is also good. I am careful with where and with whom I open myself sincerely.
I am much more reserved with my time and company. I don't speak openly about my ideas or plans. Neither of my feelings.
Cookoon mode. Life is crowded with fools. I'm one of them, so I will try to help myself
nostr:nevent1qqsdp2n7nrk49vdyknvv0n6s5hgepj5yy6qkp0qt8kdjvt0h8trvn8gpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgsz8dkqec78zt8qhnh5atu3wfwvg2t8llxs2022an6azd7rplwwddgrqsqqqqqpaav9ru
Perhaps you would like to zap my lunch lnbc50u1pnj26ufpp5dxjqrdrr85z7l2jruv7lzt7e3fsztcxm685f37ppgwfy0v8wl6fshp5dwqd0vlaa96dp6kq0sccfrq0kqmeuj4nv9lanldzpwmcepn4sr5scqzzsxqyz5vqsp5tdvx2j3rwxt7kpq7vzvwnv4u4mclud9ve0gndcsth6suwavz8l8s9qxpqysgq95hkvtrcpacxznrjdpnud0v692cw8t3xskdcejmgmppk5dhtzm0y4nk57pyescr59t8p46wdp3u4372g8thz8uqraavnn77mkkepu3spstud3x
And instead?
Bring a purposeful goal to the table. Imagine a better future. Eliminate doubt, judgement and distraction. Go for it, no mercy, relentless.
Thanks,
I am using the future authoring program now. I think it was designed by Jordan Peterson.
It can make you sweat with unconfort and clarify where you are wasting your life. And think about what you can do from your own starting point
(I found a free pdf with the exercises)
https://wavlake.com/track/195b5a4f-a3b8-48ad-820c-f50a55858bad
A little music and Terrence McKenna.
A bit crappy but I am crappy aswell, so I will just have fun. You are crappy too
You cannot imagine how I recorded this, juggling camera, computer, cellphone.
I recorded this one today.
https://wavlake.com/track/67f67fe5-a345-423d-b009-f4a48a90fdd1
A couple of weeks ago I moved my piano.
It was in my mother's house , I moved it there because I created an event last year.
Now it returned to my home.
Now pieces will be a bit more noisy and loudy.
#music
#piano
#wavlake
Luckily when I wrote my book about them, in March this year, I had all those paintings to feature and illustrate each chapter.
If I knew they were going to end inside my book I would have painted them differently but anyway they are just perfect because I know I can trace my own process through them.
nostr:note1s8s9qecs4wjfzjaygg87ry55pgwecqdhaht8vhxsytql3jurq7zqqa2jcq
And 25 dollars is less and even less sats each day
nostr:nevent1qqs9265uwtzef47lplvkyq893wn50je5evvnczs67e4s4yje6xg8vngpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygprkmqvu0r39nstem6w47ghyhxy99nllng9849weaw3xlpslh8xk5psgqqqqqqs76gywy
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