The eyes / I’s have it
Individuation + the coming together of visions
It started with cacao activating like she hasn’t for me since the very beginning; I remembered what it was to connect with the plant spirit without having to even ingest anything. She started working, speaking to me through images before I even prepared the pot, as I was on the mat doing my kundalini in the pre-dawn in front of Alastair, our magickal Queer Winter Solstice Christ-ing Tree, all lit up, connecting me through my nervous system and ancestral memory etched upon the quartz crystal of my bones to the Celtic pagan Druidic traditions this incarnation was composted from, the prima materia of this particular unique expression the byproduct of centuries and millennia of people with mystical practices, directly experiencing the spiritual through the material, transcending this realm to those more subtle by connecting to what is right here, right now: the seasons, changing practices and foods and presentations with them; the place itself, the trees and moss and fungi and plants and animals and elements; the feelings this alchemical cauldron of inputs awakens in the body. And this part is really important:
Fusing it into your being in ceremony, then sifting through what you’ve received to see what needs to be shared with the village, and how it wants to be communciated.
I am learning this practice. I am learning what my process is by listening to my teachers — trusting that I am directly receiving the messages and methodologies I need from the divine through the plants and fungi in the form of imagery and feeling, because they don’t use spoken language unless they REALLY need to reach me, and then they contact some once-human intermediary to help them translate and inject a message into my consciousness, but it takes a real group effort because it’s energetically expensive, this is what happened in dance when Amanita spoke to me in the voice of a human mother and said: Drop the visa stuff already. It’s not a no forever, but it’s a no for now. There is something for you in Berlin; go get it and bring it back to the village. These are our original teachers, and they use our bodies as the conductors, the transmitters, the lightning rods to communicate the practices and lessons from the subtle realms to those of us who learn how to attune to them, and the work of the shaman is to then translate them into healing—which doesn’t mean explaining them, but conveying the broader learnings in ways people can feel in their beings.
ART EXHIBIT
With photos, drawings, and writings from my travels, or inspired by - showing the interconnected nature of nature, space, place, food, fermentation, bodies, farming
Permaculture as art? Theatre?
My exploration of FORM-LESS - place, space, bodies, identity > the things that seem most fixed, mountains and cliffs - food, the art that only lasts for a moment > like a mandala destroyed as soon as it’s finished, an amalgamation of place + experience, bringing the landscape and people and cultures and geologic forces together only to dissolve them, merge them, cook them in fusion
the “gallery” should be a cafe or brewery or farm shop or market stall or something
the opening includes people cooking their own ancestral fusion foods and this is a performance piece in itself that is documented
showing my process of (em)(BODY)(ing) > my body, our body, body of Earth > earth(l)ing > carry myself, carry ourselves, carry each other back to the sea, through the forest that reminds us we used to be trees and the mountains that call down the lightning through the mushrooms and the moon who connects us to the womb that is this whole world, swimming in the astral amniotic fluid
dissociating and individuating, merging through exploration of place and space. BODIES of different materials, different peoples and places and practices that resonate, different MATERIAL CULTURES, the PLACES that are ALTARS - landscapes and ancestral legacies evoked through putting the combination of objects (charm) into the right arrangement at a certain places with a resonant frequency, making the sounds that call it all together (the spell) to create the time portal, a recursive loop that connects the future to the past and back again in the present.
This is how I learn who I am as a Hermetic syncretic trans* Irish person, by exploring living altars, places, cultures, and seeing what makes my bones activate and vibrate
Current Resource/Learning List/Works Cited:
Direct experience with Lavalove Cacao + Cacao Sol UK combined, and Cacao Sol solo
17.12.24, powerful direct experience with Annabelle’s sourced cacao from Chiapas, Mexico (then a synchronicity comes in with the perfect energetically aligned place in Berlin dropping in, and the owner is about to travel to Mexico, as Ash also speaks of her learning there and I feel the Saguaro calling…)
Direct experience communing with Amanita through her spirit, not ingesting, sleeping with the beautiful dried mushroom on the pillow next to me and meditating with her on my knee
50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology
Ram Dass lectures: Ep. 152 The Still Small Voice Within; Sit Around the Fire
Third Eye Drops podcast: Consciousness, UFOs, and Non-Human Intelligence with Bernardo Kastrup
Acacea Lewis’ course, Interdimensional Crystal Camp
Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance course
The Sheldrake-Vernon dialogues, “Matter Is Frozen Light” and “Forms and the Reformation of Science”
Direct experience, Annabelle Stapleton-Lewis’ Kundalini, Sacred Kakaw, and Soundbath Full Moon journey - live event, 15.12.24 in London
Direct experience, EDUK volunteer lead
John Churchill interviews - healing the ancestral nervous system, 7 stages of human development
Mark Elmy, The Four Pillars blog and new trecena video
Integration: East Forest online ceremonies
Art exhibit and catalogue: Zanele Muholi at Tate Modern, 2024-25
Life? Or Theatre?
The Way of Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards by Alejandro Jodorowsky > pulling a card and interpreting every morning
Methodology:
Kundalini - self-care, getting out of my own way.
process dream space, do mind mapping / Jungian dreamwork on anything that comes up
Jodorowsky tarot pull - which looks at IMAGES of the cards and how the fit into the mandala
Cacao - grounding connection to astral and intense feelings - body of mother earth
Amanita: how can I stay close and dissociated?
Altar - roadmap - who is guiding? Where are we going and where have we been? Ancestral connection
What is the SUBCONSCIOUS trying to communicate and how does this fit into the bigger picture, image, mandala? How are the universal archetypes speaking? How are the plants/fungi using my uique vessel, prenda, to receive in this moment what I am meant to heal and share?
It started with the eyes, that’s how this beautiful cacao from Chiapas called me: the eyes of Aya and Cacao, DMT, the night model that activates the astral model where we communicate in the language of symbols because language is the modality of the serotonin model of reality. The day world, where things need to be explained and understood. The night realm is where we feel and make sounds, let our bodies speak for themselves and meld back into the oneness again.
The day world, the serotonin-neuromodulator world, is the one of dissociation - where we play the game of separation - and communicate through words, the tyranny and freedom of written language that fixes things in place yet is always changing. The night world of DMT is where we merge with the Cosmic Mother and each other, the forest and the Earth and the heavens and planetary bodies again. The realm of collective consciousness that communicates in symbols and abstractions.
>the power of the adverb, what are you modifying? where do you start from and how does it get you where you’re going?
Then the voice comes in, I’m still a baby, I need help, somebody save me! Maybe I can’t put on this play while she’s alive.
There’s a difference between isolation and hermiting to receive the transmissions. I have important work to do. Don’t go out just because, only with purpose and intention.
The other cacaos have disappeared quickly and barely seem to affect me but this one has blasted me into the astral, I had no idea, I wouldn’t have sat! But okay. Allow it. Now you know.
Healthy dissociation includes both the ecstatic and traumatic, Mark said it in the blog today for 2 Kawok. “Kawok represents the birth process in all its glory, the emergence of the new hope, new life into the world even through both the ecstatic and the traumatic. Whilst the birth process may be painful, the result is one of the most important, if not the most important, part of life itself. The number two represents the duality of existence. This reproduction cannot happen in unity. Duality, with all its difficulties, is a necessary part of life. Neither one aspect or the other is better than the other, which is what can lead to indecision. Each side is complementary to the other, the masculine brings balance to the feminine. Today both sides or polarities can be called on to bring the new into the world. This is the day to ask for the new emergence, the new life created by two equal and opposite forces enlivening the world.”
Trans is about the nondual view, but you still have to make decisions, or nothing ever happens in this world. Everything just exists in quantum superposition, suspended animation, endless possibility and no manifestation. Squandered potential until you make it actual. This is what I’m always trapped within. Potential and no action. But psychedelic neuroscience revolves around an action potential firing, synapses rewiring, we can take the trauma and reframe the pain into healing. This is how mushrooms and cacao help us reclaim who we are, with healthy dissociation, closeness and coming away again.
The eyes of cacao | birth + individuation
Wow… the AI analysis of what I just channeled is particularly helpful this morning, especially the action items.
Summary: Riordan Regan reflects on the profound effects of consuming cacao and Amanita, discussing the energetic experiences and their symbolic meanings. He explores the duality of dissociation and unity, the role of DMT in perception, and the balance between retaining agency and becoming a passive observer. Regan delves into personal struggles with creative expression and the influence of his mother, contemplating the need to individuate and break free from her influence. He also considers the importance of education and community through cacao, and the duality of human experience, emphasizing the integration of ecstasy and trauma.
Action Items:
Make time to read more.
Focus on the PhD process and academic publishing, rather than committing to non-academic articles.
Continue hosting cacao education conversations, as it feels meaningful and impactful for the community.
Consider visiting Glastonbury during the Christmas week, but be mindful of any potential desire to seek another "mother" figure as he detaches from his own.
Transcript:
I feel super tender, broken open again. I feel as if I'm sitting with cacao for the first time today, I felt the energetics coming through before I even took her into my body. I'm also just sitting here with Amanita on my knee, the beautiful, the beautiful, beautiful, whole cap in her beauty, with her resplendent outfit on the red and white, that Christmas magic, Santa Claus vibes,
and I'm feeling it all coming in without even having to ingest it. But then I also did ingest the cacao, but I felt the energetics; I understand now what it means to absorb the energy of the medicine without consuming.
I was seeing 1000 serpent eyes blinking at me when I closed mine, the realm of the unseen, of DMT, of the neurotransmitter that switches on in the dark, DMT, the neuro modulator that switches on the new model when your senses are deprived. There's something there.
DMT, the neuromodulator that switches on in the dark. DMT, the neuromodulator that switches on the other model that comes on when your senses of the physical realm are deprived. The serotonin model, the consensus world that operates with the input of sensory validation.
Serotonin is the model of dissociation. Maybe it's a model of separation. It's a model of using our senses to engage with this consensus world, this realm we've all agreed to pretend to inhabit by pretending to be separate for a while. DMT is the model of unity dissolving into oneness, dissolving an acid you
and Amanita is fascinating. And cacao Sita is fascinating because they, because they are grounding in this earth plane, this cacao, this tree that the tree that populated all of the other trees that feed humanity. The tree that, in a way, represents duality, creating the things of this earth plane and Amanita, the mushroom of dissociation.
Dissociation, the only way we have a human, earthly experience. But the paradox is that dissociation is kind of billed as the Ultimate Alienation in this earth plane. It's a disorder disconnected from your body. I'm on the verge of something here that I don't quite understand yet. I mean, life is paradox. My God, dissociation is the only way this world exists. But if you dissociate too much, then you're not in it. It's like dissociation from what? A spiritual dissociation. Dissociation from the oneness is what makes us human, but dissociating from our bodies.
Well, again, that depends on the context. It either puts us in trauma or it puts us in a super spiritual place. Meditation is dissociation from your body. Meditation is dissociation from this realm. All this stuff is dissociation from this realm. But it's about the intention. It's about, are you retaining agency, or is it just happening to you? That's what Ash means by, are you the observer, or are you the participant? You got to learn participant observation; when to click in.
Are you the one retaining agency of when you're dissociating or is it just happening to you taking over? That's the key.
Are you the observer? As in, it's hijacking your system and you're floating up somewhere outside of it. Or are you participating in it?
Or are you the observer in that you're watching all the patterns go through that you're sitting calmly at the center while the chaos swirls around you. Are you the participant in that you're getting swept along by the crowd, or are you the participant in that you are fully engaging in this world. Both can be either. We need both in different scenarios, and Anita and cacao can help us with this. And they are grandmothers. We all. We need all the great mothers. And I is the one that started the whole process by showing me that my mom had to die, and I found myself wondering this morning if I can even write this play while Mom is still alive in this earth plane. And maybe I can. I mean, Susan Cain couldn't publish her book until her mom died, so I don't know. Is there some way mom and I can overcome this paradigm? Is there maybe something empowering in me, still doing it while she's alive and her being able to see it? Or is that just me not letting go? Is that me still afraid to individuate and let the umbilical cord with her. I gotta just make shit without worrying how she's gonna react to it or wanting her to be proud of it.
I gotta just make shit without without letting the fear of how my parents are going to react to it stop me, and I think that's been part of it this whole time, because I got all my freedoms taken away. Maybe there's something here to that dream I had last night of I dreamed that I willfully almost, that I watched. I dreamed semi lucidly that I watched from a dissociated state while I put my own bag of stuff on the bus and watched a drive away, and one part of me was watching the other part of me do this and screaming at them, hey, you idiot, don't send that stuff away. It had everything in it. It had, I mean, it was just like when our stuff got stolen, when I was with mom, when I felt like I was getting swept along that day. That's interesting. I didn't draw that parallel before all the way I dreamed that I willfully gave away the same bag of stuff that was stolen that day that I went along with mom, inviting me to the woods, calling me with a siren song away from the creative impulse. I was sitting down to write, and it was flowing, and I knew I needed to follow it, but then I thought, well, always going to the woods is a good idea. And when I did that, I gave away all my agency, and all of the earthly things got stolen from the car. And so I dreamed that I was doing this again. And I think. There is something big in this. When I'm giving in to her consciousness, her perception, when I'm doing things because I think she'll like them, or when I'm trying to bring her into everything I'm giving my power away. I'm giving my ability to function in this earth plane away. I'm giving my ability to be a grown up away, and I'm entering into the realm of the Puerh because then after that, in the dream, I went and descended with Jeff into alcoholism again, him and his false promises, he had lost all his sheen and all his luster. He was just a gross old man with his teeth falling out, and I couldn't remember what the Appeal had ever been.
I get lost in the false promise, the empty escape realm of the puerh when I give my power away by trying to bring mom into everything, by defaulting to making something she can approve of. Sometimes I just really need to share things with people, and she sees them and understands them, but I know there's other people who will see it too.
So we switch on the DMT model to enter into the night world, the one that's about images and sensations, the one that doesn't use language. The shaman is the one who can find the language, maybe to contain and describe and bring back what they need to of the experience, or maybe it's even just who brings it back into the ceremony without needing to use the words the shaman is the intermediary who bridges the realms. Language isn't necessary, but sometimes it helps. Maybe the shaman is the one who helps us individuate. That's why we initiate. We have to separate from the mother. You can't be a shaman while you're still a baby. You can't be a shaman while you're still a child. Only adults can do magic.
I want to be a crone.
Is it that I don't want to be alone or that I don't want to leave her alone? I guess it's both.
and I wonder if there's something in just embracing this paradox fully and saying she is me. I am her. There is no separation, really. So stop trying to bring her into everything, because it happens automatically, and yet I feel every time I have some breakthrough or some realization, I want to share it with her, And I don't know where that line is yet. And interestingly, part of my protection from her is this language. Is this academic realm? Is this no world this sort of abstracted, philosophical academic place? It's actually a place where things are safe from her because she has blocks that says she doesn't understand them. I.
I don't know. And I guess if I keep staging plays and works and things in other countries, and she can't really come see them, that allows me more freedom. But I feel broken open again by this cacao like a new baby. The energy behind the creator and the share infuses it with intensity, or maybe it's it'll be interesting to go back to the other ones and see how it feels, because maybe it's also just that now I'm more sensitive because I'm breaking away from the mother, so I'm not diluting all the nutrients that are coming in. I'm not feeding for two anymore, as the cord is starting to wither, as publio said, it's not about cutting the cord in some big, definitive motion, decisive moment. It's about nourishing myself and finding the resources and becoming stronger so that eventually the cord just withers and drops away like a ripe fruit falling from a tree,
ready to nourish the other things in The ecosystem,
I really feel a call to go to Glastonbury, but I wonder if that's my impulse to seek another mother as I detach from one.
I don't know. I kind of don't think so. I wonder if I could do that in the week of Christmas.
This process is the work of the PhD. I also need to make time to read,
and I do still think I can share little bits in the newsletter, but I gotta stop committing to these article like things and unless they're for academic publishing. Honestly, I have to, I hate to admit it, but I have to focus on that and doing more of this cacao education Through Bean to Barstool actually feels really alive. Because I do have a responsibility to educate and share, and I think hosting these conversations about cacao is really important, and there's a channel that's already being offered to me where I can do a lot of good for my community, so don't push that away. Okay.
Oh, good luck. The birthing process, the duality that is necessary to experience the human experience and is so painful, but I absolutely loved what Mark said in today's calendar description, that it's the birth process in all the ecstasy and trauma like those are really the two extremes of human experience, aren't they? Like those are the two ends of the spectrum. People talk about fear and love, and I think ecstasy and trauma maybe is more accurate. Those are the extreme ends. I. Or maybe those are the manifestations of the feelings, fear and love. I don't know.
It's all part of it. It's all alchemy. It's all healing, like, yeah, it's all medicine. It's all poison. And integration, I think, is reflecting, pausing, feeling and calling in your agency and bringing your agency to the experience. I think when you know you've integrated something is when you can bring your agency to the experience and retain the self energy and the presence even when extreme things are happening.
I think I know more than I think I do, and I think I'm learning, and I think that the next year is about just letting indeed serve its purpose, while I build my foundation for offering experiences to people that will have settled in. I'm ready. I'll know it Okay. Let's go.
