Amanita the teacher + too much/not enough culture
Riordan Regan discusses the emotional and physical pain of feeling unrooted, linking it to ancestral traumas and the broader issues of consumerism, capitalism, and healthcare in America. He emphasizes the need for community, reciprocity, and respect for life, criticizing a system that prioritizes profit over human needs. Regan highlights the role of Amanita in addressing these issues by working on GABA receptors, helping to manage information overload. He advocates for reconnecting with our roots, indigenous values, and the natural world, suggesting that medicinal practices and syncretism can help humanity expand and awaken.
Action Items:
Explore the use of Amanita and other plant medicines to help individuals reconnect with their roots and inner worthiness.
Develop a framework for initiation, training, apprenticeship, and mentorship to support individuals who are highly sensitive and open to the astral realms.
Observe nature and learn from the self-regulating systems of the natural world to find balance and harmony within the larger system.
Outline
Amanita and the Pain of Unworthiness
Riordan Regan discusses the pain of unworthiness and breaking one's root, emphasizing the importance of reconnection and rooting.
Amanita is highlighted for its ability to work on GABA receptors, helping to manage the flood of information.
The conversation touches on the broader issues of consumerism, capitalism, and over-extractivism, and the need to widen the “I” and let more light in.
Riordan Regan critiques the American consumer culture, particularly the lack of respect for human life and healthcare.
Cultural Programming and Systemic Failures
Riordan Regan elaborates on the cultural programming that leads to a lack of regard for life, including the medical-industrial complex.
The conversation highlights the stress and trauma caused by the healthcare system, which nickel-and-dimes patients and sends unexpected bills.
Riordan Regan shares a personal story of being in the emergency room, feeling abandoned by the caregiver, and the broader cultural issues of narcissism and co-dependence.
The discussion emphasizes the need for a foundation and regard for life, questioning how we can grow up with a regard for life on Earth in a system that doesn't respect ours.
Reconnecting to Rooting and Indigeneity
Amanita is presented as a tool to help reconnect to inner worthiness and deservedness, promoting healthy dissociation and reconnection to the whole system.
The conversation explores the concept of syncretism, sharing ideas and belief systems across cultures, and the potential for expanding human consciousness.
Riordan Regan discusses the importance of regarding one's own life first and the paradox of extreme behaviors leading to a realization of something more.
The discussion touches on the lack of frameworks for initiation, training, apprenticeship, and mentorship in the Western modern tradition.
Medicine and the Antidote
Riordan Regan explains the concept of the antidote being a bit of the poison, and how medicine often involves going further into the pain to find the cure.
The conversation highlights the importance of dissociation in managing pain and information overload, helping to separate what is us and what is other.
Riordan Regan discusses the role of Amanita in regulating GABA receptors and slowing down the flood of information, allowing us to breathe and connect with our inner knowing.
The discussion emphasizes the need for guidance and the potential for learning from nature, the original teachers, to live in balance and harmony with the system.
The Human Game of Forgetting and Remembering
Riordan Regan describes the human experience as a process of forgetting and remembering, dying and resurrecting, and the importance of guidance in navigating this process.
The conversation highlights the role of DMT in activating inner knowing and the importance of grounding and interpretation of experiences.
Riordan Regan discusses the need for balance and harmony with the whole system, learning from nature, and the potential for over-dissociation as a curse and a gift.
The discussion concludes with the importance of Amanita in regulating GABA receptors and turning down the noise to tune in the signal, helping us connect with our inner knowing and the system.
Listen / Transcript:
Amanita for the pain of unworthiness, for add for the pain of breaking your pelvis, your root.
Amanita, what restores us from the pain of unrootedness, breaking my root, letting the pain rise to the surface, seeing our ancestral traumas,
healing the physical pain of the body that manifests itself through things that we're not listening to and our soul is trying to tell us
about reconnection, about rooting and planting and being mycelial again.
Amanita teaches us because it works on the GABA receptors, which relates to the flood of information coming in from this system.
Too much, and not enough of something. It's at the root of the whole thing. It's at the root of consumerism and capitalism and over extractivism.
We gotta widen the “I” and let more light in. We get stuck in these cycles of taking more
than the system can support when we see ourselves as separate,
when it's an I instead of a we, when it's my needs versus the whole system in community, in reciprocity.
We're not taught these things. We're not taught these values in consumer culture, especially not as Americans.
Where human life isn't even respected enough to receive health care
to keep us alive, where, where we have to scrape by without what we need to survive, where we don't even have the expectation
of being provided for in the most catastrophic situation. And so then when it comes, not only are you turning down things you need,
not getting enough of critical care to preserve your life force vitality, but you're stressing through the whole thing,
putting the system through even more trauma when it's supposed to be healing by nickel and diming, turning away the testing.
How much is that pill costing? No, I don't think I need that lab work. How many hundreds of dollars will that be?
Which private contracting company is going to send me a separate bill for 1000s of dollars five months later, when I think the whole thing is over and behind me?
Oh, and that's after I spend four days in the emergency room peeing into a tube, wearing diapers for the first time since I was two,
while the person who I’m living with shows up into the waiting room and asks how I'm going to look after myself once I get out of here,
and I think to myself, well, I thought you were going to help me. I don't know anybody else.
Oh, too much / not enough kids. We're a culture of narcissists and codependents, but it's not really even our fault. We're programmed for it,
because the culture gives us too much of what we don't need and not enough of other things, just like my own parents gave to me.
So how do we have any rooting, how do we have any foundation?
How do we grow up with a regard for any life on earth when we grow up in a system that doesn't regard ours,
that will let you die, literally, because you can't pay the bill to the fucking pharmaceutical medical allopathic industry,
they'll let you die and then send you a bill for $100,000 after the fact to your last surviving relatives.
How are we ever supposed to regard any life on Earth? Of course, we take more and more and more. Of course, it never feels like enough.
Of course, we're a country of hungry ghosts. We grow up being taught that we're worth nothing.
So Amanita can help us reconnect to this rooting by not only connecting us to our own inner worthiness and deservedness, showing us healthy dissociation that can connect us back into the whole system. It can connect us back to our own indigeneity, which shares the same value systems as other animistic cultures and legacies,
where we don't have to appropriate someone else's traditions and we can look to our own bones and backgrounds and belief systems,
and then we see the commonality, and then we see the “I”/eye widened to let more Light in. The eye becomes the we; I need reciprocity.
But we also see the culture is formed by syncretism, which means sharing ideas and belief systems,
which means swapping symbols and practices with other cultures we come in contact with,
and so maybe we can help all of humanity expand and awaken by sharing our medicine traditions.
Because some of these things just work so perfectly together that it wouldn't make any sense why they do unless they wanted to be together.
The key is not to take but to share honor and acknowledge and reciprocate.
But we’ve got to do this with ourselves first. We got to regard our own life first. I guess that's the paradox,
is that sometimes these medicines and extreme behaviors are exactly what we need
to lead us down the path that shows us that there's something more than this.
Pain is too much information rushing into the body at once so it overwhelms the system. The ADD kid is the extra sensitive, extra sensory one, the one most open to the astral, the one who, in another culture, would be a shaman, because their crown is just torn open, and all the other voices from the other side are pouring in, and they can't tell where they end and other things begin,
because we have no framework for initiation and training, apprenticeship and mentorship in this system, in the Western modern tradition, quote, unquote, quote, unquot-tations, and the system where we wrote things down and fixed them and pretended like that was the truth and they were never changing, when really the ones who ensuring those histories were the dominators who had a certain version of culture they wanted to preserve. So the antidote is always a bit of the poison. That's how medicine works, and always has. Ee turned it into taking something to blunt the pain and take away the symptoms. But in fact, sometimes the cure is going further into them,
and sometimes it isn't, and sometimes it's being gentle with ourselves.
The medicine of dissociation helps us maintain a safe distance from the pain that can overwhelm us from so much information flooding in. It can help us slow things down and learn to separate what's us and what is other things. Slowing it down, helping us interpret the different voices coming in. Through the crown and all from all around
and realizing that we're not crazy. We're not hallucinating. It's not like they've told us all these years. We're not witches and black magicians,
or maybe we are, but we're reframing that definition. Really we're just the ones who can listen to the subtle realms of spirit
and the voices that aren't very loud in decibels, but scream and symbols and images,
speak through the vessels that are our bodies, the altars, the prendas, the unique collectors of information and experience
captured for a moment in this thing that we pretend a solid matter, a person that only appears in observation and relation for a passing instant
before it disappears in ether and dissolves in acid again.
abracadabra, hocus pocus. Suddenly, I have a corpus.
Now you see me. Now you don't. shit, I had it, then I lost it. It's okay. This whole human game is just a process
of forgetting and remembering, dying and resurrecting over and over and over again. A
nd it makes sense when you put it in context. It makes sense when we have someone guide us,
but without it, it's really confusing and super overwhelming, too much and not enough of everything it seems,
until someone takes us by the hand and leads us through that darkened tunnel back to the ancestral land, the place where our bones remember and our nervous systems regulate; the forest and the lands of our people. For me, it's the mist that leads us back to the darkness where we see most clearly.
DMT, producing endogenously, third eye activating the real inner knowing,
the kind that you don't read in a book, but feel in your body.
So with someone to guide us and ground us and help us interpret these experiences, we can realize how much we need of certain things
and what others we can live without entirely. And it's know how to live in balance and harmony
with the whole system, but we need guidance, and we can learn from the plants and the fungi
and the trees and the animals directly.
The way we learn is by observing our original teachers: nature, the system that just runs without having to think about it,
the system that regulates itself and balances out. And this is where the impulse comes, I think, sometimes to just tune it out,
to dissociate so far that we can't come back. Because the curse of the ego is awareness, but it's also the gift,
and if we can learn to dance with it, we realize that we won the lottery by incarnating into human existence,
and we see why is the envy of the cosmos,
but it's a lot of information, and that's where Amanita is the teacher to regulate the GABA of receptors and slow down
the flood of information so it doesn't overwhelm us with so much coming in every second, helping us breathe and
get back to what our bones know and we feel in our souls. Turn down the noise and tune in the signal.
dissociation: when the dream becomes reality
(something we can engage with and make magical)
vs depersonalization: when nothing seems real, and it stops being fun
the question isn’t whether you’re dissociating
but whether it’s happening to you
or you’re doing it consciously
voluntarily
going into the night world for exploration vs clubbed over the head by your past self or a substance or an epigenetic pattern or a partner and drug into a blackout
where you wander lost like the minotaur
blinded, bumping into walls
trying to remember how you even got here at all.
ethanol, alcohol, that tricky molecule and compound
the carrier of healing herbs, inspirer of poetry, loosener of verbs
no wonder it both helps and hurts,
it’s the impetus of agriculture, humanity’s greatest blessing and curse
it begins with a fall
GABA can mitigate the flood of too-much information that can overwhelm a system
so we get just enough
maintaining a safe distance between us and other stuff
GABA receptors are a class of receptors in the brain that respond to the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). GABA is the primary inhibitory compound in the central nervous system of mature vertebrates.
There are two main classes of GABA receptors: GABAA and GABAB:
GABAA receptors
These receptors are ligand-gated ion channels that mediate fast synaptic transmission. They are made up of five subunits that surround a chloride ion-selective channel. GABAA receptors are responsive to many drugs, including benzodiazepines, which are used for their sedative and anxiolytic effects.
GABAB receptors
These receptors are G protein-coupled receptors that mediate slow synaptic transmission. They are associated with memory, mood, and pain.
GABA receptors are found on many cell types throughout the central nervous system, including astrocytes. The physiological significance of GABA receptor activation in astrocytes is not yet known, but it may be involved in ion homeostasis and pH regulation.
GABA receptor dysfunction has been linked to a number of neuropsychiatric disorders, including:
Epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, Cervical dystonia, Autism spectrum disorder, Schizophrenia, and Depression.
Alcohol exposure can alter the function of GABA receptors, and these receptors may play a role in the development of alcohol tolerance and dependence.
Meeting Amanita
I am about to undertake my first proper journey with Amanita muscaria today, after a year of microdosing through my broken pelvis. I meet her with no cacao, no nothing in my system interfering, just me and her; the intimacy I’ve been scared of. Pleasure with a woman—perhaps my greatest fear? We’ll see. I think my greatest fear might be dying alone, or losing my mom, or going crazy, but my stomach is getting sick and churny, so maybe I just nailed it.
Today is 9 Kame, the number of life and nahual of death energy; the day to ask our ancestors for help facing our fears so we know what to have the surgeon of Tijax cut out so that we may be reborn brand new. On Christmas morning, just like the Christ child I always knew I was. But I found that divinity through the forest and the interconnection with the animals, and the trees and plants and birds and I can’t even begin to explain how GOOD it feels to have that connection back again.
I closed the Solstice portal as another one opens for Amanita, I can’t wait to meet her, but I also have a healthy fear. I realized in the woods today that this is sometimes the only way I feel okay, in ceremony or in the forest or usually when I’m drawing something. In another culture I’d be a shaman. Ceremony is my calling.
But how can I make this part of a life supported under capitalism? How can I stop participating in that system, spending money I don’t have on shit I don’t need at the grocery store? Ugh. I got sucked into that black hole again today, as soon as I announced I was going to draw and learn all day. I think I should stop saying things like that. Somehow it makes me less likely to do ti.
So I call upon the Kanti, the Siberian group who engage with Amanita to sing the heroic epic songs of their people. As Ash recommended, I will ask the mushroom to show me through the spirit of the bear and the squirrel and the wren and the robin and the winter ermine how to meet my dreams or visions with courage. How to drop everything like Jung did and just LET GO, face my fears bravely and just LEAP, like I used to with codependency, onl t this time into self-expression, Eros, pleasure; live in Kairos, not Chronos; more Mythos, less Logos.
Let’s go.
—
Ash just slayed me, I’m sobbing at the computer screen, because she just gave me permission, told me I’m not a bad kid. “If we are living in the dream 100% of the time then maybe we aren’t doing our duty as humans in a body—but if you’re a chronic pain experiencer and you have a hard time just wanting to be alive, maybe it’s a good thing to be such a devotee of something like Amanita muscaria.”
i always think i’m bad and wrong and abusing the medicine - but Ama and cacao have made me want to live when I wanted to die - same with psilocybin - WE DO WHAT WE HAVE TO DO IN ORDER TO SURVIVE - AND WE DO IT UNTIL WE DON’T NEED TO ANYMORE - regardless of whether that outlasts the physical body.
*the Nutcracker ALL takes place inside a dream.
Enhance self-esteem! Somatic experience of “I” ness - am I allowed to take up space?
Courage to share what I am meant to share in the world–YES! And it’s ok to receive!
But people w big egos it can get worse!
CAN EMPOWER YOU WITH THE ENTIRE MYCHORHIZZAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE FOREST - yes this is what I felt this morning! This is inherently ego-checking - bc you are part of an ECOSYSTEM
“You can BE THE MAGICIAN WHO CREATES EMERGENT PROPERTIES BY CALLING IN THE ENTIRE INTELLIGENCE OF THE FOREST”-!!! TRANS EMERGENCE
DUDE! She keeps giving me a break on all my shame feelings and so do the crowd. They are all doing what I’m doing, stacking things on high pain days, ama and psilocybin and LSD and cacao is what I do but I keep feeling like i’m bad and wrong - you DO HAVE A DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE WHEN YOU ARE IN A HIGH PAIN SITUATION - BECAUSE “THE MUSHROOM HAS WORK TO DO” - IN OTHER AREAS
KNOW THY STACK! So i can’t standardize for anyone - it’s about empowering them to build their own.
Lightning strikes of information, this happens, I get the downloads so fast I can’t keep up w it
8 Kame / from I to we
The channeling usually ends with, according to the transcription, “I.”
This time, it ended with “we.”
Symbiotically. It’s the way everything is moving. Ayni. I am because you’re living. Mychorrizal, fungi and trees living in community. My teachers coming in to help me through every dimensional plane and in every manifestation. But the invitation, through all of it, the message that keeps playing on repeat is:
trust yourself.
you are the teacher. you are the medicine. consult others, but follow your gut, kid.
Audio and Summary / Transcript:
Yeah, I need to add something about that, about ash and Acacia to that honor your teachers, the healers, the teachers that come through direct experience, that speak directly to us, the plants and the fungi, the medicines themselves, the natural world, the moon, the sun, the stars, these are just as real, just as alive, just as embodied and in soul as anything in a human container. And even more powerful for being archetypal, timeless, larger than life, that which persists across cultures, geographic borders, through the centuries and dimensions, speaking to our souls in the language of images we Learn from human teachers. Mine are all named after trees and flowers. That's freaking cool. Which is what my name is, too. It's not the one that I was given by my true teachers, by my interdimensional kin, but it's the one that my mother who brought me into this physical dimension, the mistress of dissociation, which is actually the only way we can have an earthly experience, but also The thing that takes us away from each other in our oneness. She named me Holly, which is also a tree, which is also a death plant, just like the names of all my other teachers. Oh, my God, Ash, acacia and Lily. Huh?
We're all plants of death and transformation, dying and resurrecting over and over again. We are trees. We are plants. We are mushrooms and and we're all connected through the dimensions, and we can travel and speak to each other no matter where we are, in bodies and beyond, through the quartz crystal,
that which it resides in our bones, that which we can hold in our hands, it comes from a stone that's in the mountains, and the pyramids, those great, timeless elements, archetypes, those Teachers who speak strong and silent through our minds. By
and we used to have apprenticeships and trainings, mentorships and learnings, formal systems of initiation and wisdom gaming. But we've learned lost all this in the Anglosphere in Europe and even in the traditional cultures, people are not wanting to be a shaman anymore, because the material culture, the material culture, just like everything, is a paradox, the thing that connects us to the astral by bringing the heavens down into Earth, onto the altar, but it's also the thing that drives us from each other, when it takes on a life of its own, when the symbol becomes worshiped instead of the thing it stands for, instead of the thing behind it.
Those of us who were born with this increased sensitivity in another culture, we'd be shown, we'd enter the system of initiation and training, and we'd learn from the teachers who came before us and learn how to harness our energy and direct our attention. But instead, we're told in this material culture that we're sick and disordered, divergent, divergent to what a system liver built for us to begin with, the system designed to keep us down and keep the few in power at the very top. But the era of the dominator is over. We're in the death rattle of the patriarchy. These are just the final throws of an oligarchy that doesn't want to let go, and we'll keep clutching their dead fingers until we pry it off of them. But maybe we don't have to. I. Maybe we'll be going through the side door and do it subtly and bring love instead of animosity, instead of push and shove, we redirect the energy like kung fu or tai chi, systems of mastery and apprenticeship, systems where instead of power over, it's one entity, one shaman, which simply means the one who knows, passing their experience to The next generation. And I want to be a mentor, too for queer, trans kids and I but first, that means I have to accept myself. First that means I have to mentor the kid that resides within, inside my own heart, inside my own skull, inside this vessel, this prenda, this body, which is just a container of information and experience, sensation, memory, captured in what appears to be solid matter for a moment, a snapshot of the sky that my particles assembled under and assumed form to pretend to be this thing that was named after a tree, but is really barred and poet to the kings, but is really everything, as I screamed to Lily the day that I died, I can't be everything and who's in control? She just smiled and said, You are, and nobody is. And I found that terrifying. I said, No, no, I don't like that. I want someone else to do it, just like I've been spending my whole life going through, giving my power away to anyone who told me they had the answers, to anyone who told me they were a savior, because it's the framework I grew up in that you're a dirty worm, you're bad and wrong, you're you're an evil sinner, and you need God to redeem you. But don't worry, we've got people who can help you with that. Don't worry, we've got a priestly class. Don't worry, we'll tell you the right amount of penance to do and how to clean up that dirty soul. And by the way, don't forget to tithe 10% that part's really important. God needs to get paid. But there's never enough to wipe your soul clean. And so they took our knowledge of direct experience. They took our direct connection to the infinite. They took our ability to use the plants not used, to work with the plants and the animals and the elements and the spirits, not in bodies anymore, and the ancestors and interdimensionary explorers, they took that away from us, and they said it was their idea to begin with, and they sold our own knowledge back to us at a premium, and then told us that we weren't even worthy of it. I But we've when we forgot. We forgot that we were the living spirit. But we're remembering now, when we're helping each other awaken, and we will keep doing it, no matter what they try to take from us. Nothing's ever stopped us, not even death. It only makes us stronger. The bones that break knit back with a layer of calcium. The thing that dies is reborn is something else. Or if you've done the work, it's even more powerful. The bodhisattva path means dying. Means suffering. It means going into the darkness over and over to find the others. To be the pied piper, the psycho pumps between the worlds to find each other. Remember,
death is what we're going for. It's not what we've been told. It's not something to be feared when someone's gone, it's not something to be mourned. We celebrate their life. We celebrate the snapshot that was the unique collection of information and experience and sensation and memory captured and something that appeared to be solid just for a second under a certain arrangement of planetary bodies and elements we honor and acknowledge. Malicious, making each other real, conjuring each other into existence briefly through observation and dissociation. Dissociation what it means to be a human is to pretend to be separate for a second from the oneness. All of human existence is a dissociative experience. But from the very beginning, the medicine has always been the poison. The cure is just enough of what kills you to help you remember so you can die before you die and be reborn as the divine you always have been and
so many to is one of Our most powerful medicines, because she's an agent of dissociation. And then the psychedelics help us remember that we're the ones. And then the earth medicines ground us in that in between place like cacao, tobacco, Ayahuasca, divine are the souls that creeps between all the realms, but
we can also do all of this ourselves, because we are the medicines. They're our teachers, and we've learned from them. We've learned how to do the things that they do within our own systems, within our own universes that are contained in our altars and our apprentice, which doesn't even mean we have to give up one thing for another. All the systems are valid because we're everything, remember, and we're nothing. And that's the beauty that in the end, dying is the easy part. You just stop trying. And I mean that in the best possible way, stop trying to be somebody, stop trying to produce something. Stop trying to do all these things they told us we were supposed to do, and just be be an animal, be a vessel, be an altar, be a tree, a mushroom, a plant, an element, be queer. Be a psychopomp and journey between the realms and find the others and help them remember. They say that to be a shaman, you have to be a hollow bone. But a bone needs some meat on it, a little narrow, otherwise everything just flows through you and the only way we navigate this earthly experience and find each other and help the others remember is by dissociating just a little bit. We're doing it consciously, titrating little by little. Just like they turn the lights down, we turn them back on and suddenly we see what's been here the whole time, our indwelling divinity. We.
EYES ON THE PRIZE
As an ADD kid, all I have been craving for is FOCUS, and yet I havent felt i could get a purchase on it. everything was too fascinating, everything also felt like too much pressure amnd respomnsibility, i had to be everything to everyone and everything ust like with mom and dad
but I am finding the healing and it’s trickling down to everything
I got the message on that equinox journey in 2023 - after breaking convention and before nest - it’s about briding the realms of academia and science and spirituality and art and esoteric fuckin shit. i got the message then but I didn’t trust it but it keeps coming back again and again.
IN MY JOURNEY OF NOMADING AND CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLORING - NOMADING TRANSDIMENSIONALLY - I HAVE LEARNED TO FOLLOW THE FEELING, WHEN THE VOICE SAYS SOMETHING ND I KNOW I CAN TRUST IT WHICH IS SO RARE
it told me to BE A STUDENT OF MUSHROOMS AND CACAO
AND APPRENTICE W ASH AND ACACEA
and two years later here I am again
they are my guides but the plants and fungi are my teachers
and I am not rooted yet becase i need to be free to go where the voice takes me
and i am going into the night world because it’s the key to everything
the plants that flourish under cover of darkness like DMT
cacao that blossoms in the night and amanita the fungi of death and transformation
these are my teachers, sacraments, muses and medicines
so i am being called to the night world of berlin and I am submitting papers and presentations for breaking convention
taking classes from ash and acacea and workshops on theatre devising
the art is also costume and set design and nature documentation
let it SUPPORT what you’re doing not distract from it
I want to talk about music because it has been so important to me but it’s also an attachment to stephen and joe and I can’t do everything
i need to let that go for now i think
and focus on amanita and cacao and performance and transness - the music supports it but let others tell it
I FEEL SO FUCKING MATURE MAKING DECISIONS
Dream + Reality
dream = time + reality
dream / time + reality = ?
dream - time = reality?
dream + time + reality
I talk about the time with Marc as a darkness, speaking if the horror, but going into the night world together, I fucking loved that part. Nobody else understood it.
But I spent my life recreating the pattern I just saw this morning, making worlds of two where nobody else understood us.
Mommy and fetus. Where she provided everything and I was powerless.
Like the patriarchy did to us.
Her body, my body, our body.
It needs to be her body. My body. Body of Earth.
But I have been living her dream. As Jung says, the children live the unlived lives of the parents, unless they can recognize and alchemize it.
I slept zero, again, because the Night World is calling, every time I lean into this thing around DMT as an ancient neuromodulator, death, and dreaming, WILD synchronicities start unfolding, ones Jung would be proud of; all of it has to mean something. I walked home from dance volunteering on legs wobbly as a newborn fawn that could barely carry me, why? I love this shit, it makes me feel alive, staggering around the Night World like a zombie, feeling my third eye finally see clearly, in the nighttime I am myself again, the only time I feel safe to fully let my guard down is in the dark. The Third Eye Drops episode dropped live an hour after I got home at 1am and I stayed awake listening to most of it because I’ll be damned, it was about the Night World, and ancient Western esoteric practices of reaching altered states through methods like intubation, meditating in caves and shrouding themselves in darkness until the universe expanded. Need to rewatch and take notes because I started falling asleep at the end, but only an hour and a half later and I was up again doing kundalini and channeling half-into an Amanita tunnel, and I realize now that maybe I’ve just transferred all my same adoration and clinging to a new Mommy I now just want to be with all the time, which is what I kind of do with everything. But maybe also it’s okay because this mother inherently keeps me further away, she’ll always be at a distance, maybe this is how I finally learn individuation.
Then I crashed out on the couch and missed the last glorious hour of darkness anyway. Soma, the elixir of immortality in Hindu and Buddhist lore, likely made from Amanita, whose etymology means “body” in ancient Greek, or “the body living in its wholeness,” but also makes me think of “somnambulance”:
sleepwalking.
Is that what I’m doing? Or am I astral exploring? Going into the world where I can create and Nutcrackers come to life? Can it be both things?
Bones that knit themselves and grow back stronger.
Things that turn into other things for longer and longer.
Am I becoming Tyler? Is he who I was to begin with?
Fight Club is a trans story, really.
Amanita is no-sleep juice, the shamanic sauce that helps me find my courage and stand up tall, stretching my perceived limits. What can I really do and what do I just think I can’t? My body has been rigid and awkward since I was a kid, it doesn’t move like the others’ do, until a medicine helps me cut loose. But I really don’t think these medicines actually push you past your real physical limitations—I think they just take you where you think you can’t go.
This dissociation feels so much safer, the night feels so much better, in the dark I see more clearly > more DMT is produced endogenously > self-energy generating. Is it wrong to want to live in the world of the night and sleep when it’s light? I think better, I create better when nobody is looking, when the sun isn’t poking its big head in.
Of course I’m going to Berlin next—I said it when I was there last. Berlin is the night world. Nobody does anything during the day. Maybe I will learn to be nocturnal.
This time the AI identifies two different speakers—hasn’t happened in a while. A new one is present…
Summary: The conversation explores the concept of dreams becoming reality, touching on themes from the "Third Eye Drops" episode and discussions about Aboriginal dreamtime. Speaker 1 reflects on the duality of reality and the night world, while Riordan Regan discusses the multifaceted nature of dreams, suggesting they can be both a blessing and a form of enslavement, akin to the Matrix. The ancient Greeks' practice of moving between dream and waking states is mentioned, highlighting the mysteries of the collective consciousness and the potential dangers it poses. The speakers express a sense of synchronicity and fascination with these ideas.
Outline:
Dreams and Reality: A Philosophical Exploration
Speaker 1 discusses the concept of dreams becoming reality, emphasizing the duality of perceiving it as both a wish fulfilled and a profound realization.
The conversation touches on the episode of "Third Eye Drops," which explored themes of dreaming and the Aboriginal concept of dream time.
Speaker 1 reflects on the discussion with Eric about the nature of reality, who is dreaming, and the duality we navigate in our existence.
The night world and its connection to the broader themes of dreaming and reality are also mentioned, with Speaker 1 expressing a sense of synchronicity and fascination.
The Role of Dreams in Human Experience
Riordan Regan introduces the idea that dreams can represent both blessings and enslavement, drawing parallels to "The Matrix" and the concept of dream spells.
The discussion includes historical references to the ancient Greeks, who trained themselves to move between dream and waking states to solve mysteries.
Riordan Regan highlights the collective consciousness and its dual nature, suggesting that it can be both beneficial and potentially dangerous.
The conversation concludes with a reflection on the collective dream and the need for individuals to navigate their own reality amidst the oceanic boundlessness of the collective unconscious.
Speaker 1: What does it mean when the dream becomes reality? I've been looking at it so ominously, but it can also mean when you get the wish your heart makes, when the beautiful thing you're imagining finally materializes on this earth plane. I that whole episode of third eye drops was about dreaming, the dream. Everything Eric and I talked about is back, everything from Glasgow is back. She talked about all of it the Aboriginal dream time, who's dreaming? What's reality? Who's dreaming, whose timeline? What is the duality we're navigating? What does the night world have to do with all of this? I mean, fuck that whole thing was one giant synchronicity. I'm kind of freaking out.
Riordan: The oldest trick in the book. What if you got everything you were wishing for, everything you were dreaming of, and at the end of it all, you were still unhappy? At the end of it all, you're the one who's got to face you.
The synchronicities have gotten weird, when I lean into the dream time and DMT as an ancient neuromodulator everything seems to accelerate. Must be a barometer of what we’re uncovering. There’s something to everything Michael is finding, there's something to the dissociation, the Aboriginal dream time, the dream spell, the fake calendar. The dream can be a curse or a blessing. A dream can be something beautiful, coming to life, or it can be the thing that enslaves you, The Matrix, poison or medicine. Just like everything, intubation, the ancient Greeks that train themselves to move on the dream to waking and back again, maybe the Eleusinian mysteries. Who knows?
Okay, and it's 4 Imox today, the dream of the collective consciousness and to watch for yourself getting swept up in that oceanic boundlessness, Amanita, the dream becomes reality. It can be something beautiful. It can be reinforcing the duality. I look at the collective consciousness like it's a good thing but maybe sometimes it's dangerous. I.
Gaslighting is living in a dream world. Creating a false reality but one that you draw others into. I’m still upset about Callin, dad. Callin wrote me a message that just said “happy birthday” on IG. THOSE ARE NOT THE TWO LITTLE WORDS YOU NEED TO SAY TO ME. It would be so easy—you could make this all go away with one little phrase—and yet you’ll never do it. NEVER. You’ll never just say you’re sorry.
Sorry not sorry, I don’t want to go to your part. Now the two of them can get together and gaslight me behind my back, talk about how I’m so mean to them, living in the dream world of their own creation.
The Nutcracker takes place entirely within a dream—no wonder I’ve always been fascinated by it, and why it’s how the play seems to be shaping up now. It explores the questions: when are you awake? What’s more real?
Gaslighting is like a dream, where you think one thing happened but everyone is insisting it was another.
Marc and I wandered into the dream, it came to life Nutcracker-style around our neighborhood, we saw whole casts of characters have parties in our house and drift along street corners and stare creepily from lawns. And the visions scared me but I also fucking loved it, that weird magical world where anything could happen.
Blackouts are the dream becoming reality, or vice versa, boundaries blurring, and I kept going in to try and find the information I had hidden, to find the answers.
All they have to do is say “I’m sorry,” but as Kastrup said, they’d rather create a universe of suffering, where I’m the villain and they’re the victim, than give an inch.
But maybe it’s her manifesting subconsciously what she wanted, a universe of two where nobody else understands us. The subconscious speaks in images and the 13 Kan kid picks up on the subtle messages and sorcerer’s-apprentices that shit to Frankenstein this world into existence—isn’t this what you wanted?!?
It’s not because we are weak and shameful, we’re powerful manifestors, and we got the world we wanted where only we exist in it, but I don’t want it anymore, I never did, I just wanted to do what she wanted so she wouldn’t be so sad and I wouldn’t be a failure in the day world of adults before I even got there. Deception is what everyone is doing. The tea is sand, we’re just acting out her stuffed-animal tea party for eternity, trapped in her dream, but we have to go back in and make her little kid wake up again. Because this one was born for adventure, the jungle and Egypt, and I want to live, not just dream.
The cough, the phlegm, I overconsume when I’m swallowing truth and not being authoentic or expressing. Mom taught me to eat my feelings; dad and Deedee taught me to drink them; but nobody taught me to SPEAK them. Dad and Ceri, I don’t want your fucking presents, I wanted your presence, but don’t even bother now.
Now I hide from the light and only in the night am I safe to speak my mind, but only into a tape or an unpublished web page or a journal, maybe I’m still afraid they’ll all read it and I’ll get in trouble.
But the darkness is where we have always made magic - the serotonin world is too intense, I’m too sensitive.
Card pull: Page of Swords, because of course, I’ve drawn them every day of Tijax so far. This one is indecision, of course, after yesterday’s entry, I read in Jodorowsky: pages are caught between potential and action - you can’t make this stuff up.
Hermiting at the Altar; Too Much/Not Enough Kids redux
ADD as psychedelic experience, ascesticism, Hermiting, action / potential
Hermiting, the withdrawal to the cave > the cave of the heart > the altar as the roadmap that leads you home by your north star, your inner compass, your intuition
Too much not enough kids > ADD is a super helpful framework but I don’t believe in diagnostics, the labels are limiting
Did Jung diagnose people? I don’t think he did. Freud treated “hysterics” and called everything a complex, neurotic
being human is neurotic, a dissociative experience - in some ways being healed is hysteria > spiritual oneness
Symbols are the language of the unconscious - but then we have to give them language to define them, to make them manifest as matter in this dimension
we have to limit them - by making decisions- killing darlings - drawing dimensional boundaries, building realities constructed out of words like McKenna spoke about. We create the architecture of reality by making sounds - but even more by writing them down - this fixes a little universe of observation in place and it’s defined by the “victors,” the writers of the scriptures of spirituality and history - so we have to insert our people in the annals to change the system.
how does the night world fit in? this is the world of the unconscious, abstraction, subtraction. DMT, death, and dreaming.
how do I express in the physical world something that is defined by immateriality? I long to be free of the tyranny of words, to live in the world where I can just feel and be felt without trying to produce something physical.
Holy anorexics, the spiritual ascetics, the women called hysterical because they longed to assume less form and dissolve into the union with God
ADD is a psychedelic experience, more real than reality, allowing extra sensory and extrasensory material to flood in, making us extra-sensitive
It results in nervous system overwhelm, can’t feel enough but can’t come down, always trapped in suspended animation between two extremes, frozen and can’t manifest our dreams or even get through the basic functions of a day or do our bookeeping
All unfocused action, pent-up energy, so much potential we feel is always only being wasted. All this action, unrealized potential.
Action potential, the thing that causes the reaction in psychedelic neuroscience
AI: An action potential is a rapid change in the electrical potential of a cell membrane that occurs in excitable cells, such as neurons and muscle cells
What it is: A rapid change in membrane voltage that occurs in excitable cells > like ADD brains, overly excited about everything
What it does: Allows cells to communicate with each other, and is central to information processing and transmission in the nervous system > We are super empathetic and good communicators, superconnectors, hyperconductors
Stages: Depolarization, repolarization, and hyperpolarization > Ricocheting between the extremes
How it works: A stimulus causes a rapid rise in membrane potential, which opens sodium channels and allows sodium ions to flow into the cell > Something triggers us, either ecstatic or traumatic, and implicit memory floods in, activating and sometimes taking over us
ACTION POTENTIAL ITEMS:
Draw something for the art show that depicts how artist, mystic, alcoholic, neurodivergent are all the same archetype
Newsletter on spiritual anorexics, the art of not eating, the holy longing to assume less form
Tag this blog with subjects
upload art of eating less pages and note page citations in that and Jodorowsky for PGR
AI Summary: Riordan Regan reflects on the concept of worthiness, discussing how societal expectations and personal experiences shape one's self-perception. He emphasizes the importance of the altar as a roadmap to self-worth, highlighting personal items that symbolize his journey. Regan discusses the impact of parental expectations, the struggle with ADHD, and the transformative power of cacao and other rituals. He critiques the dominant culture's focus on production and advocates for embracing one's inherent worth. Regan also explores the complexities of spiritual practices, the role of the hermit, and the intersection of personal identity and societal norms.
Action Items:
Share personal experiences and neurodivergence as part of art and scholarship to help others feel less alone.
Focus newsletter on the nomadic path, the practice of letting go, and the worthiness of simply existing.
Integrate the healing process into the creative work, rather than trying to produce more.
Seek guidance from the astral and guides on how to share the insights and material in a way that can help the community.
Outline
The Altar as a Roadmap to Worthiness
- Riordan Regan describes the altar as a roadmap that reminds him of his worthiness and existence.
- The altar includes personal items like a photo of himself in a suit, a squirrel, a Jaguar, Frida, Amanita, Shakespeare, and Oscar Wilde.
- Other items include crystals, moss from childhood, a crone, a dancing deer shaman, cacao, and a cloth from Isaiah.
- The altar helps him remember his past and connect with his worthiness.
The Impact of Parental Expectations
- Riordan Regan discusses the impact of having parents who needed him to fill their emotional cups.
- He explains that this leads to a feeling of unworthiness and the inability to measure up to adult expectations.
- He always wanted to be part of the adult crowd and looked down on kids, failing to see their magic.
- Ben's advice that believing in one's worthiness would make the lack of external validation less impactful resonates with him.
The Hungry Ghost and Sensitivity
- Riordan Regan talks about the concept of the "Hungry Ghost" and how it relates to his feelings of never being enough.
- He describes how his increased sensitivity, due to ADHD, makes him feel overwhelmed by others' emotions.
- The cacao from Chiapas is helping him regain his sensitivity and feel more connected to himself.
- He emphasizes the importance of being present and tuning in to his body's feelings.
The Role of Material Culture and the Altar
- Riordan Regan explains how material culture, like the crone and crow images, helps him remember his worthiness.
- He discusses the importance of the altar in connecting him to his past, present, and future.
- The altar serves as a reminder of his Celtic lineage and the wisdom of the ancestors.
- He uses the altar to reconnect with his subconscious and feel validated for simple actions like going to the bathroom.
The Concept of Divinity and Worthiness
- Riordan Regan reflects on the idea that everyone is inherently worthy just for existing.
- He discusses the societal pressure to produce and the impact of this on his self-worth.
- He shares his experience of needing to be validated for simple actions and how this relates to traditional cosmologies.
- The altar helps him remember his worthiness and connect with his divine self.
The Hermit and the Journey Within
- Riordan Regan talks about the significance of the hermit in his journey of self-discovery.
- He describes the hermit as a symbol of solitude, wisdom, and the longing to assume less form.
- The hermit represents the process of going within and finding one's worthiness.
- He discusses the challenges of balancing devotion and self-punishment in his spiritual practices.
The Role of Psychedelics and Entheogens
- Riordan Regan differentiates between mind-manifesting and divine-indwelling.
- He explains how entheogens help him remember his worthiness and connect with his divine self.
- He discusses the importance of approaching psychedelics with intention and respect.
- The use of cacao and other entheogens helps him love himself and see where his false beliefs originated.
The Importance of Documenting the Process
- Riordan Regan emphasizes the importance of documenting his journey and experiences.
- He discusses the role of journaling in helping him feel accomplished and remember his worthiness.
- He reflects on the need to strip away distractions and integrate his experiences.
- The process of documenting helps him share his experiences and connect with others.
The Paradox of Healing and Society's Expectations
- Riordan Regan discusses the paradox of healing in a society that values production.
- He explains that true healing might look like failure to the dominant culture.
- He emphasizes the importance of slowing down and letting things settle.
- He reflects on the need to redefine what healing looks like and how it can be transformative.
The Role of the Hermit in Spiritual Practices
- Riordan Regan talks about the historical significance of spiritual anorexics and their practices.
- He discusses the challenges of distinguishing between devotion and self-punishment.
- The hermit represents the longing to assume less form and the desire to lose the form we've assumed.
- He reflects on the complexity of these practices for people born into female bodies or the LGBTQ+ community.
Transcript:
The altar is the roadmap map that leads me back to the reminder that I am worthy just because I'm me, to the reminder that I deserve to exist, to the reminder that I'm worth it. The road map, the altar is the road map that leads me back through my past to the present so the future can be opened, so that a way forward can be enabled. The altar is the road map that takes me through the reminders of who I am and always have been, the photo of myself in the suit, the squirrel, the Jaguar from the jungle Frida, Amanita, Shakespeare and Oscar, the interdimensional picture that represents me in acacia, the 13 con Christine and the little animals, all the crystal counsel, the moss from when I was a child, the crone and the dancing deer shaman, the cacao and the cloth Isaiah, All the crystals that have taken me through this journey, the Celtic imagery that returns me to my birthright, kit, my guide, the crows, the heart that says Dance like nobody's watching that I got from the burn the Irish mugwort, the tower of Selenite like salt winking in the nitas, a pronoun badge the offering to the ancestors, a candle from IRIS from the baths, the 13 con symbol, and all these gifts for my friends, the worry, the worried all from Jess and oh, a reminder of my worthiness.
There's a reason that I stayed up all night reading the Add book, because it was all about the part where we feel our lives aren't worth anything that will never have produced enough that we have nothing to show for our existence. I say stuff like this all the time, because when we grow up with a parent who needs us to fill their cup, it'll never be enough. So we're born into unworthiness. We're born into a universe where we'll never be able to please our caregivers, where we'll never be able to make them happy, where we'll never be able to measure up in the world of adults, which we long to be part of, because we're brought into existence with our parents both telling us that we're special and a piece of shit needing us to complete them. I always wanted to be part of the grown ups crowd. I never wanted to hang out with the kids. I thought they were stupid. I looked down on them for that cup full of sand, and I failed to see that it was magic dust, and I just couldn't feel it.
So we grow up with this unworthiness. Oh, just like Ben told me, if I really believed I was worthy, it wouldn't matter if there was one shaman in the maloca or 20 or they canceled the whole retreat and we all went home tonight.
Too much / Not enough kids, guaranteed to flip your lid. You're my world, you're a piece of shit, narcissist and co-dependent, two ends of the same spectrum. Too much of what you don't need, not enough of what will fill you up.
And this is where the hungry ghost comes from. Never enough because it was never enough for your parents and too much of the wrong stuff. But when I sit in the dark with my candle in front of my altar, when I look at the images that help me remember. It leads me back to who I was before all of this, and I feel that worthiness again.
And little by little, my body starts coming back online. Little by little, the sensitivity is returning. It's requiring less and less for me to feel myself. I've been so defined by excess, and I've been so embarrassed and ashamed at how much it has taken me to feel something, because I realize now this increased sensitivity that is part of ADD makes me feel like too much of everyone else and not enough of myself. So everyone's shit is pouring in from every dimension, and because we're empathetic, we feel it, we're overwhelmed by it, and then we have to alternately escape from it and also try to feel ourselves through it, so we don't disappear completely, but we have to turn down the sensitivity on what's coming In from everywhere else. And so then that means it requires more and more for us to feel, the Hungry Ghost keeps eating, never satisfied. Empty calories, not satiating.
But now it's coming back. My sensitivity is increasing, and I sensed this the other day. The greatest gift is not just that the cacao from Chiapas from Annabelle is more potent—though it is—but it's that whatever has been happening to me in this portal of Friday the 13th, 40 Gregorian, full moon in Gemini, moving towards the solstice, all guided by Amanita and Cacaosita, it's returning my sensitivity to me. It's requiring less and less for me to feel. Izaias’ cacao had stopped having an effect on me. I was getting worried about how much it was taking to feel anything, and now, now it's back. It's coming back slowly. The sensation is coming back. I'm feeling it, and a lot of it's just about taking the time to be present, pay attention and tune in to the energy, and actually listen to what my body is feeling. Give it a moment. If you just put some space around it and you're not distracting, then you can actually feel it. And this is about today, three Ajpu. It's about finding the divinity in you, the holiness in you and not distracting. The world is full of distractions, and I dive into them because I feel that I'm lacking; not worthy unless I'm producing. And I get pulled in 1000 different directions and I can't focus because I'm so caught up in needing to be something, do something, because I was raised to believe that I was only worth what I was making.
But if I'm worthy just for existing, what a peace that could bring, and that's the gift of the injury. And why I've almost been longing for that time recently is because it was a time when nothing was required of me, when finally the outside world stopped demanding, when finally it was a huge accomplishment just to put my pants on or go to the bathroom, and I really needed that. Really needed that. And that's how it should be, and that's how it should be for all of us. And I think that's why I would always get trapped in the bathroom on ayahuasca journeys, because we need to have that experience. We actually need to be validated just because we went to the bathroom and put our pants on or got out of bed in the morning, because this world is really overwhelming and demanding, and this is not the way it's supposed to be. An animistic societies and traditional cosmologies, there isn't this hungry ghost syndrome, because they are raised to see themselves as divinity, as embedded in everything, interconnected with everything. If you're seeing yourself in isolation and only worth what you were making, then of course it's going to be alienating.
The altar brings you back, the dark and the candle flickering; the images that are the language your subconscious speaks in, the images that remind your body, your nervous system, that return you to the feeling, that remind you you're worthy just for existing, that reminds you of where you've been and where you're going, that connect you to your past ancestors through the Present Moment, the material culture that brings the astral to the present to this moment, the material culture that captures the experience of a lifetime in a moment, the material culture that captures the past and who you've been and what you're meant for in a moment, the material culture that represents different snapshots in time; that captures different moments. Oh, there's a reason I woke up and listened to “matter is frozen light.” The material culture freezes the light, freezes the ever moving, fluctuating waves that are matter; that we pretend are solid. It just captures them. It just takes a snapshot of a moment of our past. I'm looking at the picture of the crone and the crow, and it's moving me so much. The Cailleach, this is my legacy.
There's a reason that I feel the need for Hermiting and that I crave the winter. It's because there is work to do here in my heart, because, yeah, because I still need to look within and be; to find my worthiness and connect through the ancestors, to feel this Celtic lineage, this connection awakening and awakening through the claiming of my name. Because I've realized that every time I tell myself a story of shame. Every time I talk down to myself, I use the name Holly, but I've never once beat myself up under the name Riordan, not really. Maybe I felt kind of disappointed for how I did during an ecstatic dance or something, but it's different. I don't do the shame with them. I've noticed this. Whenever that voice of shame kicks in, it always addresses me as Holly. Holly's dead now. Rest in peace. We transcend and include her, but we are stepping into our Celtic lineage, the Cailleach, the Crone, the hermit who goes within to find the wisdom, the Hermetic messenger who turns the pain into alchemical gold and brings the learnings back to the village, who walks between the worlds. But that means I have to winter. That means I do have to withdraw. That means I do have to go within. That means I can't be producing all these things that people expect of me, but that I put upon myself too. I started doing it again yesterday. I offer myself up, because if I stop for a second, I feel like I should be doing something, because that's that ADD shit. I feel like I'm unworthy if I'm not moving a million miles an hour every second, even when I'm sitting still. And it's fucking exhausting, and I'm tired. I don't even have anything to show for it. Instead, I'm just burned out. So it's time to change things. It's time to cut some shit out with Tijax, use that obsidian blade to get rid of these limiting legacies coming into our own, the Crone. I remember who I am, sometimes in community, sometimes in proximity, but oftentimes just by lighting the candle and sitting down and looking at the images that are the language my subconscious speaks, and that are the language that the ancestors speak and that the dead and the plants speak in, the language that the divine speaks in, which really just means the reconnection of all these other things to me, The reminder that we were never separated to begin with.
We talk about the medicine like we are sick and need healing, like we're broken and need fixing. It's this legacy of shame, the Church Fathers who taught us that we were worms and pieces of shit that God had to redeem. So of course, we make medicine a deity. We've been taught that we are inherently unworthy, that we are naughty and undeserving, that we need to punish our bodies, put them through the trials, starve them, beat them, deprive them for their desires, make us dirty. That's what we've been taught.
So we need to bring back the original meaning of medicine, which isn't something we take to become different. It's not the magic pill that fixes us. It's the pharmakon, the elixir, the soma, the Ambrosia, the entheogen, not something outside us that makes us better, but that which awakens the Divine Indwelling. Could you believe it? Could you believe that the divine dwells within you? Could you believe that you are Christ consciousness, too? Could you believe it? Could you believe you are the living spirit, that you are Buddha, that you are Jesus, that Christ consciousness is something that lives within all of us, that you are Shiva, and that you swallow the elixir that to get the poison out of your throat and cough up this mucus and taste the nectar i.
When I injured myself, it was such a fucking gift to just be able to simply exist. And once again, I remember that connection from when I was a kid. I got to be my favorite person to just hang out with again, and ceremony was my sanctuary. I went deep inside, but I liked being with me. And sure I got lonely. I'm sure I needed more but, but it was important, and this is still present. So the unworthiness must come from somewhere outside of me, even though it feels like it's internal, it's just a tape that starts playing. It was programmed by someone. It's not who I really am.
I think Izaias taps into here one of the core wounds of our society, believing we are unworthy. And so his ceremony was beautiful because it was all about believing we are worthy, just because we exist, and that the plants and their ancestors really do love us. But I still think he deifies the cacao maybe more than we should, and the energy is diverted. I don't feel the same spirit as they do from the cacao from Chiapas. It does feel the Hungry Ghost a little bit. It kind of makes me want more, not as much as Lou goes. I do want to understand this pharmacology and kinesiology, tasting Isaias cacao, I am transported back to Mikaela's and Joe's, and I realized that somehow the particles of cacao dissolving on my tongue have been returning me to my own worthiness, but how I've been beating myself up for abusing the medicine, for feeling like I needed it to Get by, I did for a while, and yet it was working all the while, little by little, somehow it was returning me to the memory of my own Self-energy. Little by little, it was activating the divine within, and it's happening now. I'm loving myself again, and I can tell that it's easing me out of this phase. Eventually I won't need her like this anymore.
And this is the thing with any addiction, it works until it doesn't, even if that's what it is, and maybe that's not what it is, maybe that's my demonization of it, like maybe this is just a freaking resource and it's a medicine, if we can approach it with intention, and I am, I'm doing it with respect and ceremony. I'm wrapping it in a cloth and putting it on my altar. I'm not abusing it. Cacao is helping me love myself again, and Amanita is helping me see where I first got the false beliefs to begin with. This is where I think psychedelic is the wrong term. Mind manifesting is very different than Divine Indwelling. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. Your mind tells you that you're a piece of shit, unless you make more shit and get paid for it, but the entheogen reminds you that you're winning just by existing. I am because you're living. The entheogen has reciprocity built in mind manifesting, creating a world mind manifesting, generating a world of mental fixation. That's not what we want. It is showing us what's inside our mind, what's inside the ego to unwind. But really, the point is to restore our divine element to us.
I drew the king of swords, someone capable of summing up a situation with great emotional serenity and the sword, Tijax, cutting away the belief that I don't know what I'm trying to say, the King of Swords is also embodying the dark side of Kan that can create a false reality. But then I asked for more clarity, and I drew the Hermit. This is what keeps me honest, keeping me in the light, and not the dark side of 13 Kan, is retreating for contemplation, being willing to abandon everything over and over again. And this is why the nomadic path, and this is why the newsletter needs to focus on that and share it. It is worthy, and people need to know it, and people want to know it. I am here to practice letting go of the quote, unquote stability, the false sense of security, over and over again. That's my karma in this lifetime, burning through the attachment to places and situations, burning away the attachment wounds that make me view everything as a womb, a tomb. Everyone is a uterus, the life giving place that can become death, a tomb, like Jesus’, where you can either resurrect or sleep forever.
So I have to be forced to leave a place as soon as I get comfortable, I set myself up for it. It's the only way to see that I am my home and I come with me. This is divinity. And the Hermit is trans. They can be active or receptive. They are Hermes, the light bearer, carrying the torch of knowledge. Eve the serpent, 13 Kan bringing the fruit. It helps us awaken. They represent the cold winter. They are Saturn, the wisdom of solitude, the Crone, the Cailleach. Jodorowsky says the Hermit is kin to the Emperor, yes, the king of swords, the king who has given up his throne, he who has given up his attachment to matter, and he comes after the Fool. The Fool's path has taken shape become the organic life experience of the individual who has drawn lessons from their own path as they've walked it. He has drunk the elixir of knowledge and known death to be reborn. Soma, Amanita, the Eucharist, the holy grail, cacao: all awakening medicine,
So the neurodivergence has to be part of the art. If you feel like you don't know what to talk about, talk about the fact that you don't know what to talk about. Bring your experience into the thing. This is autotheory, seeing the roots of my beliefs that I am unworthy is part of the neurodivergence, part of my experience, part of my identity, part of intersectionality, and it must be brought into the art and scholarship and shared as part of who I am. This is why the critical perspectives on phenomenology are important because you can't separate yourself from your lived experience, not really, not if you want to share with the village, especially people need to hear about these experiences because it makes them feel less alone, and you have to share the pain to turn it into alchemical gold and tell them you found out why, so they can know too.
Reading this ADD book is transformational, and they need to know it; too much, not enough kids is a powerful image, and the images are what speak to our subconscious and connect us through the centuries, what's transforming the wound of ADD into a power, may be the ability to do and be and exist in multiple things at once. The ability to see everything as interconnected, the ability to exist in all the realms. From this perspective, ADD is a psychedelic experience, more real than reality, letting in all the sensory; seeing its fractality and its inherent divinity.
I've wondered if who I if I knew who I am without writing it down. Well, ADD is characterized by a loss of sense of self. Not knowing what it means to have worth because you exist, measuring everything by accomplishment, trying to fit your parents’ standard. Now suddenly I understand what it means this phrase I've been hearing always being measured and coming up short because I was always trying to fill my parents cups, and there was never enough. It's impossible. They were still miserable. So I was always a failure. Suddenly I'm transported to that memory in the jungle of when all the animals and beings were gathered around watching me, waiting for my big moment, and I just coughed and spit and I couldn't even throw up, and I blew it, but they didn't care. I was the only one waiting for it. But I always saw myself as a failure in the world of adults that I longed to belong to, and this is in the Nutcracker, Clara just wants to join the grown ups party. Well, sorry, not sorry. I wanted to go to your party, but now I don't.
And this is the ADD teen I was just reading about. Sorry, not sorry. I don't want to go to your party. I'm the Misbehavin one, spoiling all the fun, pooping on your party, I'm grounded, but with no grounding, no root always torn up by the shoot. They tell me you're nuts. You need medication for all your misbehaving, but they don't see that what fuels ADD is all this restriction. What helps us break free, rather than falling into patterns of addiction and depression is not more rules, but less; more freedom to let our queer, divergent selves Express, because otherwise you never learn to be responsible for yourself if you're only doing things that you're supposed to because you'll get punished. You don't even learn what you like or what you need or what actually makes you feel secure. Everything you do is wrong, and then all you want to do is rebel and counterwill, and your friends can be a tether, but then they take them away from you over and over, with only the parent barometer, which says everything you do is wrong and sick and a disorder. Family is the fucking disorder. The culture is the fucking disorder, not the kids. Where do you think this behavior comes from? Nothing comes from a vacuum. Original Sin, Bitch please. We're born bad. Bitch, please. Organisms get sick from the environment, from the culture they're stewing in.
It wasn't Eve, it was the fucking garden, even if you want to believe the narrative that the fruit made her bad. Then, okay, where do you think she fucking got it from? The garden you put her in.
And I think this is why I write things down, because at least then I can look back and feel like I accomplished something. It's right here. Look, I existed briefly for a moment. There is proof. I get up at 3am because for a few hours, everything else is quiet, and then I know who I am. I am a hero at bonus time, I am clear at bonus time, I sit with myself for hours, and that's more than many people ever do in a day or a week or even a lifetime. So even if I forget, half of it by the time the sun rises, at least I experienced it. I instant. So I guess the key is to come back to it and strip away the distractions. And integration means to review what's been coming up. But you know, maybe also what's okay if the same stuff just comes up again and again every day, and I don't remember it, and I have to write it down. I mean that for now, this is how we go
and document the process, you know, document the process of all this. Happening. Tijax is about healing. It's not just about making incisions. It's about stitching the wounds back up as a 13 Kan. My purpose it's not to produce. It's to be a healer and a shaman, to make art, but mostly to help people. And that starts within, the healing is part of the process. Ti hush involves cutting out what doesn't serve and I keep trying to add more.
So if you feel like you don't know what you're doing, then make make art about it. You feel like you don't know what integration is, and write about that. We are a doing culture that measures people by what they produce. So of course, we think integration looks like more work. Of course, we think we have to have something to show at the end of it. Of course, we don't know how to just rest and let things settle. Of course, we keep chasing peak experiences. We think healing is a place that we get to. We think healing is something that we should be able to summarize in that PowerPoint presentation. We think we should have something we think that being healed means we should be able to produce more afterwards. But no, I think it actually looks like the opposite. I think when we're really healed, it probably looks more like a failure to the dominant culture. And this is the paradox. If you're really healing, you probably look quote unquote lazy to society, because you go slower, more deliberately, you care less. You know you're worthy, just because you exist so you don't have to try so hard. And yet, every journal entry I write could be a newsletter. And all this shit that I'm channeling, I feel like probably could help people if I weren't so concerned about how to present it. So I don't know. I ask for guidance, and I ask for help from the astral and my guides to show me how to share the material with the village so I can help people, but first to feel it and ground it and integrate it and believe that I'm worthy just because I exist too much, not enough kids guaranteed to flip your live. You're my world. You're a piece of shit, narcissist and codependent. And how do we heal it? You're nuts. You need grounding.
Your grounding is inside you and what's surrounding. The hermit crab has the home they carry on their back,
Going far enough inward makes you come out the other side as everything, remember? It happens every time you die, and there's always a new beginning.
But the Hermit is also about the longing to assume less form, to disappear completely, to take up less matter; suicidality, extremes of ecstasy and trauma and of Awakening, this desire to lose the form we've assumed. And how does deprivation, asceticism, quote, unquote, anorexia, restriction play into this the description of all the spiritual anorexics about history, the women who fasted through Jesus and the ones who were demonized by society as hysteric—what's the difference?
I don't know if that part was getting picked up on the tape, and that feels Important to restate: the spiritual anorexics, the women throughout history who starved themselves for Jesus, for divinity and society told them, you're crazy. You are hysterical. Your brain is deteriorating. You need to eat something. I've been yelled at on the street to eat a sandwich. They don't know my story. They don't know what my body needs. And the hermit represents this asceticism as well. From Jodorowsky book, detached from desire, I dwell within my heart as if inside a hollow tree. My body is a vehicle that I witness as it ages, passes and vanishes. But you can get lost in this to attain ecstasy, I cultivate indifference to achieve the love of all things and all beings, I retire into solitude to come out On the other side of enoughness.
You retreat into what seems like not enough. It's interesting. It's a question, where is it devotion, and where is it punishing the body because you feel like it doesn't deserve to have pleasure? These can be hard lines to draw, and maybe that's the work of a lifetime. But I know it's even more complicated for people born into female bodies in this culture, and for the Trans and Queer.
What's devotion, what's disorder? Is there such a thing? What’s sickness, what's us, and what’s society?
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.
Process-ing and Integration / Trecena of Tijax Dec 2024
I. Editing
I think of Tijax, the trecena that starts today, as the editor. As we begin the trecena of the obsidian blade, what goes and what stays? What needs to fall away that no longer serves?
I’ve always been a good editor; I love helping others tell their stories. I’ve struggled with my own, it’s always too many words and not enough of the right essence, substance. I can’t seem to quite express what I want to convey even though I talk in circles. But this trecena is about cutting away the excess, making decisions and killing darlings.
It has become abundantly clear to me that I can’t do it all, that my desire to do and be and see and make too much is causing a total paralysis and breakdown where NOTHING is getting created, and that isn’t going to work anymore. I need to move forward, make things, build things, finish things. Pick projects and places to root. Focus.
A tremendous healing process is happening.
I may not know how to codify what I’m doing yet, but it’s working. Slowly, gradually, almost impectibly, I’m changing irrevocably.
I’m going through another layer of individuation, separation from the mother, and the pain is rending me in two, but it’s the most important work I’ll ever do. The holidays activate this time, but there is also some kind of portal between my birthday, the full moon, the solstice, and Christmas that I’m moving through. I’m seeing how the same patterns manifest in slightly different expressions. I don’t feel alive without pushing my body to the breaking point. I love the extremes, but I also feel a slave to them, like I have all this energy and I’m just wasting it, flaming out when it could be used to make things, build a life, help others and myself. It needs to be channeled and directed.
But first, the pain behind it needs to be seen and processed. It’s more of this Christian shit, again, of course—and ancestral karma—the Puritan legacy. I’m moving through the idea that I cannot allow my body to experience pleasure without at least an equal amount of pain. Because it’s wrong, it’s a sin. Because of the generations of sexual abuse handed down. Their stories, living through my body. I’m strong enough to transmute the karma—but man—sometimes it gets so hard and I don’t wanna. It hurts. I spent half my 40th birthday weekend terribly sick, but pushing through it, sometimes to do things I didn’t even want to do but felt compelled to. Wandering in a daze. It’s a lot.
But the sickness is a producing cough and this is the karma of generations I’m spitting up. And the fact that it’s only the throat, I know beyond a doubt this is connected to my Amanita awakening that is happening, to my realization of part of what this work is about, what I am here to do. To return the knowledge of direct experience back to the people and install the teachers who REALLY belong in the history books in academia. I am the both-between meant to slip in through the side doors of the systems and claim our rightful place in the annals of history—but not to have power-over, not to overthrow them and keep the system going, but to reveal how ridiculous the whole thing is in the process, and thereby change it.
Mine will be the first PhD thesis, to my knowledge, to cite as direct sources mushrooms and trees, animals and plants, the moon and heavenly bodies, dead people and teachers of the underground; my own psychedelic journeys. DMT entities and the hyperobject at the edge of consciousness.
This is how we win, using their own systems against them so we all can transcend and include.
Spiral dynamics is back in a BIG way, Ken Wilber vibes, as I move through different phases of the journey, my healing journey spiraling and cycling, feeling familiar because I have been here before—just not this way. And I am changing, transmuting things that are coming back around, getting a little bit clearer, rising a little higher on the spiral. Just like it’s happening to humanity now. Will any of us get to the awakenings we need in time? I don’t know, but we can try.
And part of the maturing is the realization that I have to make more choices. Some things have to go. I think maybe the newsletter and this music project, especially if I am trying to submit a paper for the thing Carl mentioned, the British Computer Society, which I don’t know. I guess I should try. But one thing is clear, I am recreating journalism for myself with the newsletter and I simply cannot do that. This is supposed to be the time of wintering, and I’m gonna miss the whole beautiful time by driving myself pointlessly, relentlessly forward. It is time to hibernate. To winter. To crone. Listen to the earth, your body. My body, your body, body of earth.
Time, space, season, self.
So many important things happened in this trecena, I don’t even know where to begin, but the session with Ash was everything, the affirmation that I needed: that yes, sometimes human gurus are helpful—but the plants and fungi, the trees and natural entities, these THEMSELVES are our teachers.
After I channeled something that literally was titled “this is how the plants speak for themselves.”
I need the affirmation from someone I trust because I still don’t trust my body and mind, I’m afraid my intuition is the devil trying to tempt me; I feel I can’t discern between what is the voice of ego trying to take over and what’s my higher self and what’s the guidance from the universe. To which my friend Eric simply said: “yes.”
But I’m learning, I’m spiraling upward, transcending and including. I AM healing. Whatever it is I’m doing, it’s working. And Amanita is at the center of everything.
II. Dissociation and Holy Longing
There is something huge in dissociating—this week’s “Third Eye Drops” podcast with Bernardo Kastrup hit on the same thing Ash and I were talking about, this idea that we talk about dissociation like a bad thing, and it can be a trauma, but the whole human experience is actually a dissociation—thinking we are separate from the one. In a way our whole world is a delusion, the psychosis is being human, pretending not to be inextricably interconnected and embedded with everything.
I hadn’t quite conceptualized it this way before, but it makes perfect sense. No wonder I’m finding so much healing through Amanita, a dissociative. I have had a hard time finding where I end and others begin, and Amanita helps me find my boundaries by keeping me aware of everything, bringing me right up close to both the beauty and the pain, while maintaining a safe psychological and experiential difference. Appropriately for the season and her association with St. Nick, she’s like the Ghosts of Christmas, taking you through your life but holding your hand. The Grandmother medicine, firm but loving, like Annabelle described Cacao at yesterday’s Full Moon Ceremony, so no wonder they all work so well together, and Ayahuasca started it, those years ago in the rainforest, where I came home to myself for the first time since I was a child.
Where I realized I could reclaim that Jesus love I used to know, back in the beginning.
It’s the comfort and oneness I feel when I think about the forest and mycelial networks, when I feel in my heart this union with the moon, the fat squirrels chirping on mountaintops in the Pacific Northwest and parks in England, the stark gray Irish coastline and birds skittering on stick legs across crashing surf; the obsidian hexagons of the Wild Atlantic way, the harsh majesty of the Northern Irish cliffs and sea. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful. The way I used to watch that David Attenborough docuseries about birds and be crushed by it, the pure joy and delightedness of the birdsong pierced my very soul at a time when I was my most cynical. I didn’t understand it then. I do now.
I’m reading and listening and thinking a lot lately about holy longing, ascesticism and Sufism, the guru tradition. The realization that this impulse in me that got labeled depression and manifested in obsession with people and practices and careers and even foods and drinks that didn’t deserve it, it was actually that most beautiful and human impulse, which is the one that keeps me tethered to my mother in ways that are actively hurting me, dragging me under, keeping me from living my life; one foot still in the womb and one foot out. I was born so independent, I couldn’t wait to stay home alone for the first time, I knew exactly who I was and what I wanted.
And yet. I was still so enmeshed, so connected, that when the time came to go to college, I couldn’t do it.
I missed my chance to go to art school and film school and study abroad, because I didn’t even realize that I was too scared to leave my mom. Then it got displaced onto whomever my partner was. Forty revolutions Gregorian around the sun later, I am looking back on a long list of missed opportunities, things that could have been.
And I hate that at age 40 I still yearn so badly to be with my Earthly mother, and so embarrassed by how much I miss her, I burn with frustration that I still feel so paralyzed by this connection, this tether, this umbilical cord that all these years later I can’t seem to sever. The trecena of Tijax has to be about cutting this cord with that obsidian blade.
Sometimes we need more dissociation.
And sometimes we need more oneness.
This is the human experience, ricocheting between these extremes, I guess, but I think I take it further than the rest.
Dissociation, separation, is the only way this world exists. It’s the only way we individuate and become a person. But it hurts to much to do it, you spend your whole life longing.
But if you can separate the fixation on the limited Earthly things that don’t complete you and instead recognize it as the divine impulse, the yearning to merge with God and Nature and everything, and that it in fact is our natural state, the one we come from and will return to, then maybe that’s how you shift it from this pain and loneliness into love. Because you are never separate from it if you are the oneness.
That’s what I realized today, listening to the extended version of East Forest’s track of Ram Dass giving the “sit around the fire” lecture. The inflection is everything. I had always heard him say his mantra as: “I am loving awareness.”
But today, sobbing as if my heart would break, feeling all the work of a lifetime begin to integrate, I swear Ram Dass changed the way he said it in the recording from the other realm, because I’d never heard him use this inflection before, and it changed the whole meaning:
“I am loving awareness. Huh!”
Imagine that. You, the oneness.
Could you believe it?
III. 40 Revolutions Gregorian / The wound of deception becomes a power
Reflections on my 40th birthday. // The Otter AI can only think in binaries and dualities, and does not have the ability to learn they/them pronouns. I have to manually change them each time, which I do not have the energy to do . This in itself sums up so much about the tyranny of the dominant paradigm… and so we go with Riordan as a he/him, because I don’t have the energy for authenticity when it comes to the algorithm…
Summary: On their 40th birthday, Riordan Regan reflects on their spiritual journey, emphasizing the interconnectedness of form and formlessness, and the role of trees as their allies. They discusses their transformation from Holly, embodying feminine energy, to becoming the 13 Kan, integrating dualities. Riordan explores the concept of the body as a vessel and altar, and the importance of community and direct experience. They critique the capitalist, extractive system and envision reclaiming math and science for spiritual growth. Riordan emphasizes the need for integration, using systems against themselves to expose their absurdity and promote collective awakening.
Action Items:
Lean into the newsletter as an artistic expression, incorporating more photo essays, drawings, and other creative elements.
Explore ways to bring theoretical insights and astral experiences into the material realm, making them more accessible and shareable.
Reclaim and reframe the use of math, science, and academic systems to expose their ridiculousness and insert esoteric, spiritual, and experiential knowledge into these domains.
Find ways to "infiltrate the system and use it to expose the ridiculousness of it, so that we can dissolve it, so that we can return to the ancient ways of knowledge."
Transcript and Audio Here / Outline:
Embodying the Dance Between Form and Formlessness
- Riordan Regan discusses the significance of the Gregorian calendar and the concept of embodying both form and formlessness.
- He shares personal stories about how trees have been his allies and partners, each with specific healing and transformative roles.
- Riordan reflects on the idea of being a symphony of selves and the interconnectedness of all living beings.
- He emphasizes the importance of living fully and being guided by the community, despite the limitations of measurement systems like the Gregorian calendar.
The Vessel and the Altar
- Riordan elaborates on the concept of the body as a vessel and altar, drawing parallels to the prenda in his spiritual practice.
- He discusses the mathematical formula for awakening and the need for mentors and guidance in a fractured system.
- Riordan shares his experience of receiving affirmation from Ash, which validated his feelings and experiences.
- He expresses his desire to help others feel less alone and to mirror and validate them, as he has been seeking validation in relationships.
Navigating Duality and the True Self
- Riordan talks about the duality framework imposed by culture and his struggle with switching between parent and child roles.
- He recalls a childhood memory where he had a conversation with his higher self, which helped him cope with feelings of abandonment.
- Riordan reflects on the concept of the True Self and Christ consciousness, which he has been accessing since childhood.
- He shares how his higher self guided him through difficult times, leading to the development of his artistic and creative expressions.
The Tyranny of Words and the Artistic Journey
- Riordan expresses his frustration with writing articles and the struggle between academic and artistic expression.
- He discusses the importance of sharing information and the challenge of making it accessible and impactful.
- Riordan reflects on the need to integrate his various selves and roles, including Holly the woman and the 13 Kan.
- He acknowledges the complexity of being a trans person and the process of transcending and including different aspects of his identity.
Awakening and the Role of the Material Self
- Riordan talks about the importance of the material self in the spiritual journey and the need to balance the astral and material realms.
- He shares insights from Ash and Acacia about the role of the material self in making things manifest on Earth.
- Riordan reflects on the need to embrace his body and the physical experience as part of his spiritual practice.
- He discusses the importance of community and the role of the village in supporting and nurturing individuals.
The Role of Math and Language in Understanding the Universe
- Riordan reflects on his struggle with math anxiety and the realization that math is a key to understanding the universe.
- He discusses the importance of language and math in translating and interpreting experiences.
- Riordan shares his journey of overcoming limitations and embracing his ability to understand and use math.
- He reflects on the role of direct experience and the importance of translating esoteric knowledge into languages that everyone can understand.
The Importance of Direct Experience and Community
- Riordan emphasizes the importance of direct experience and the role of the body in translating and interpreting experiences.
- He discusses the need to reconnect with the natural world and the elements as teachers, and to embrace his body and the physical experience as part of his spiritual practice.
- Riordan reflects on the importance of community and the role of the village in supporting and nurturing individuals.
- He shares insights from Ash and Acacea about the role of the material self in making things manifest on Earth.
Excerpt:
This is what it means to trust the plants and the fungi as our teachers. This is what it means to learn from direct experience. This is what it means to reconnect with the elements, the spirits of the natural world, the trees, plants, animals, vegetables, minerals, fungal kingdom. These are our teachers. These are us, my body, our body, body of Earth. We are just conductors. We are just the physical manifestations. We are just the transmitters of the information from one realm to the next, and math is part of it, and language is part of it. These are systems by which we translate, because not everyone thinks in the esoteric i. Because there are those of us who can hear the subtle realms of spirit. There are those of us who are the shaman simply mean the one who knows. There are those of us who speak the language of the subtle realms, and we are the ones that they call divergent and queer. We are the feminine and the non gendered. We are the psycho ponts, the Guardians, the messengers, the hermetic alchemic transmitters, who walk between the worlds and bring the symbols into tangibility. We have to translate them into languages that those who are not versed in these things can understand. And that is math and language. And that is where the analytical and practical come in. That is where the me that was following me in the dream, this is where the version of me that was like, Michael, maybe needs more presence, and they can help me. And it has been part of my calling to be able to speak these languages like beer and food, because they're basic things that so many people connect to. I even someone with no concept or background of esotericism or spiritual shit can understand transcendence when you describe, yeah, but like that sensation when you bite into a really good piece of cake or cheese when you drink a really good beer like everyone understands that
I see your systems and raise you. I take your stakes and I flip them upside down, and we insert ourselves. And then, okay, you want to play that game. We can play that game. Okay, you want us to play, to be part of this framework. I see it and raise you. I. Now there's nothing you can say, and yet it's part of transforming the world to be another way. And yet it's part of like we go in and infiltrate these systems so that we can break them down, not so that we can replicate them, not so that we can just switch to our domination of their system. No, it's a way to show the whole ridiculousness of the thing. That's why I've drawn the full card every single day, because it's a game, because we're tricksters, because we have to remember that we're playing, because that's how we win. And once we expose the system for being so ridiculous, then maybe we can just dispense with it already, and that's how we win, not by taking over. And that is where civilizations have fallen in the past, is that someone new just tries to rise to dominance and just says it's our turn now, and then they try to start the whole fucking shit over again, and that's no and then it just keeps replaying. The way we break out of this paradigm, the way trans is the emerging archetype, the way we drive consciousness into the next revolution evolution, the way we drive ourselves into the next dimension, is by not repeating this pattern again, is by infiltrating the system and using it to expose the ridiculousness of it, so that we can dissolve it, so that we can return to the ancient ways of knowledge, which is direct experience in our bodies, which is our bodies as a vessel, as a prenda, as the conductor, as the transmitter, as the receiver of the experience, as the translator, as the mushroom, walking around on two feet, still cooking on the outside.
using all the languages, math and science, art and poetry, feeling in our bodies, sitting At our altars, writing in our journals, listening to music, staring into candle flames for hours, tuning into the seasons, the space, the time, the place, the person you are in that moment which is always changing, letting things Die that need ending, releasing the performative role in what is dying is this idea of holly, the woman who was supposed to be somebody, these artificial constructs that were imposed upon me, that were never me to begin with, and instead calling back in that self energy, we're calling them Royden, but they have no name and they are timeless. They are the forest. They are the Crone. They are the mushrooms. They are the animals. They are the minerals. They are the amanita and cacao. They are the pine and cedar. They are the trees that made them want to be here. I They are the timeless self energy that is the same thing. And every one of us just pretending to be separate for a moment, manifesting in this snapshot, this manifesting in this vessel, this container of information, experience and sensation captured for a moment in a body, in a vessel, in a prenda, a moment in time, a snapshot of the sky, pretending to Be separate, pretending to be solid, a wave that appears as a particle when it's observed in the cauldron of our body, for a moment under the sky, captured, briefly observed, assuming form, pretending to be solid in uniform for a moment before it disappears again, dissolving an acid, returning to the oceanic oneness again.
You want to play by that game? Sure, let's dance. Let's do the view the thing. We'll pretend that we're separate. I'll play along for a minute, and I will figure out with my community how to use the systems against themselves. So we can turn the lights on little by little, they won't even know what's happening, until all of a sudden, one day, they look around and everything is illuminated, and they see the ridiculousness of the whole thing.
I am the 13 Kan. I dance like nobody's watching. I make my altars, and I make my life a living one, and I offer my body as the vessel, the container, the cauldron, the collection of information, experience and sensation captured in a moment here to help others awaken.
To mom from my 40th birthday portal
I left my mom a voice memo from the mushroom realm, something I’m not sure was wise, but then again, it is part of my journey of realization that I still have a ways to go on individuation. That I have been limited and starting and stopping and missing every train at the waystation because I am afraid on some level to succeed without her. To leave her behind. To go places she doesn’t understand. But it’s happening. Yes I’m changing.
Summary: Riordan Regan reflects on his 40th birthday, recalling a ceremony in a forest where he realized the qualities he admired in Holly were also within him. He acknowledges that her most challenging traits were her greatest strengths, likening her to a shape-shifter who confronted darkness to bring repressed issues to light. Riordan grapples with his own avoidance of creative work and the need to trust his mentors, who have guided him towards a path of integrating esoteric experiences into academia. He envisions using the system against itself to change paradigms, embracing his ability to market and adapt.
Reflecting on Holly's Legacy
- Riordan Regan describes finding a spot in the forest that appears by accident and is a thin place that disappears if you try to look directly at it.
- Riordan Regan recounts performing a ceremony and realizing that he was essentially talking to himself, with friends sharing what little they knew about Holly.
- Riordan Regan reflects on Holly's bravery and how her most shameful traits were actually her greatest strengths, as she confronted the ultimate darkness to bring repressed issues to light.
- The conversation touches on Holly's authenticity and strength, emphasizing that she was not weak or pathetic but was genuinely authentic and resilient.
Embracing Holly's Qualities
- Riordan Regan acknowledges that the parts he liked about Holly are still qualities within him, such as self-energy, wonder, love, and connection.
- The discussion highlights that the challenges Holly faced are also part of Riordan Regan, now transformed and reclaimed.
- Riordan Regan reflects on the idea that we never really leave anything behind and that our challenges and qualities follow us wherever we go.
- The conversation explores the concept of phase changes and how we undergo cellular changes every seven years, symbolizing little deaths and resurrections.
Navigating Personal Challenges
- Riordan Regan expresses feelings of running away from something and avoiding creating, despite having many almost-finished projects.
- The conversation touches on the idea of always having something to do later, creating a sense of liminality and uncertainty.
- Riordan Regan shares a vision received in the morning, which led him to trust his mentors and follow a path of self-discovery and artistic expression.
- The discussion includes reflections on the importance of keeping one's word and the challenges of balancing obligations with personal growth.
Vision and Mentorship
- Riordan Regan recounts a vision received from his mentors, which led him to pursue a life as an artist and a student of mushrooms and other natural teachers.
- The conversation emphasizes the idea that plants and forest creatures are real teachers, communicating through our bodies and the divine.
- Riordan Regan reflects on the importance of giving voice to those whose voices are not loud and the role of bridging worlds as a shape shifter and messenger.
- The discussion includes reflections on the energy of the Maya calendar and the idea of being a wise teacher or magician who brings the collective dream into reality.
Transforming Personal Shame
- Riordan Regan reflects on his greatest shame of Holly, which was her deceptive nature and the belief that she needed men to survive.
- The conversation touches on the idea of transforming personal wounds into powers and embracing one's abilities to play the game and market effectively.
- Riordan Regan expresses a desire to use the academic system against itself by integrating esoteric experiences into a PhD thesis.
- The discussion includes reflections on the importance of sharing one's experiences and finding a way to remix the system to bring about change.
Balancing Separation and Connection
- The conversation explores the tension between wanting to be separate and the beauty of connection, with Riordan Regan expressing gratitude for the support he has received.
- Riordan Regan reflects on the challenges of growing up and the importance of holding space for personal growth.
- The discussion includes reflections on the beauty and pain of the journey and the importance of self-acceptance and safety.
- The conversation concludes with Riordan Regan expressing a sense of liminality and the ongoing process of becoming something new while carrying forward both challenges and positive qualities.
IIV. Is this integration? + Process vs processing
Am I integrating now? Is this what it feels like? Without the guidance of others, how do you know? I realized today that I am not entirely sure I know the difference between
process
and
processing.
What is the difference between the process of accessing, channeling, bringing things to the surface, and processing that material, sifting through all you’ve churned up and left lying there to find the relics, the treasures? It’s an archaeological expedition, so at least there’s one unlived life I got to do after all. Is surfacing repressed memories from your own subconscious process or processing? It seems more the former, but if it’s stuff that was already in you to begin with, that feels like a gray area. But I suppose everything is in you, really. I think it’s a continual feedback loop, so maybe we shouldn’t try to separate them:
process-ing
But I do know it’s important to give your psyche a break, to let it settle and make sense of itself. To land in your body, in your nervous system. Maybe processing and integration are when you don’t have to try and put language to it . Or maybe processing is when you talk about what already happened, and integration is when you just sit back and receive the known and felt.
Process vs processing, experience vs integration, psychedelic vs dissociative. What is amanita and cacao? The difference is the dosage and intention. I guess that’s true of everything. Amanita can help you take a step back and breathe for a minute. Cacao can help you just settle in your body and feel your heart open. But either one can open the channel to the ancestors and the astral. Kundalini is the same. These medicines do all really work together, and I was drawn to deepen practice with Annabelle for a reason. Her event last night was so powerful, I was literally being grabbed by the shoulders and shaken back and forth, and I felt that this was a memory that belonged to my mother and grandmother and maybe it was mine too, but it was really for all of us, this processing.
John Churchill says that karma isn’t a curse, it’s not a punishment because you’re bad. It simply means “the work you have to do.”
There were actions. Now there are reactions.
We clean up the messes of the past so we can all move forward.
But it’s hard, and it hurts sometimes.
What is the process I’m creating, what is part of the work and what is art, and what is just me processing my own shit?
Is there a separation?
Life? Or theatre?
If you are entertained, and you learn something along the way, does it matter?
On 11.12.24 / 9 Aj I wrote: “Skipping or shortening the journaling process seems to make everything else really detrimental. Do I even know who I am without writing it down?” At the same time I hate it, I feel trapped by it, I want to be free from the tyranny of words. I want to cancel my newsletter and start a Patreon. Maybe I will.
The dance reveals, through experience and then conversation with Alis, that the anger we repress blocks all the other emotions—and it’s not until the anger can be released that the others can break free to be healed.
John Churchill says direct experience has a limit, that without a framework for processing, you don’t get anywhere. “States are not structures,” he said. I’m not sure what i think of that, or where my own work falls into that spectrum. I think these states can create the structures. Or maybe I do think they can be structures. If they’re temporary, does that make them less valuable? East Forest talks about sound creating architectures you can literally crawl through; Joe and I experienced it. This is sound as experience, but it’s also integration and healing. Maybe I’m being too literal and that’s not what he meant. But I’m thinking, do you need to understand it for it to work?
Molly McCord describes Sagittarius as the archetype of direct experience, just going out there and doing something, whereas Gemini is the archetype of talking about it. Of course that was me and Stephen, me crash landing into everything and him wanting to intellectualize it, stay in academia, while I yearned to make art and be in the world, as much as I love talking all night too.
There’s that holy longing again. The heartbreaking beauty of the birds felt easier to bear when I was sharing it with somebody.
Mommy and me, the fetus and parent, together yet separate.
But the last part, we never did quite seem to get. Can it happen? I understand now what Aya meant when she said that before I could know myself, mom would have to die.
I’ve longed to be someone’s #2 again, my whole life. I felt it with Stephen. And the others, I guess, though it was all trauma bonding.
I need to trust my direct experience, my body, my feelings. They ARE mine.
My #2 is the universe.
On 12.14.24, the day after my birthday, I got stuck in a time loop, and I thought it was 12.12.24, 12s up and down, like the disciples when they pushed out the 13, the unwanted one. It was the nahual of mother Earth, 10 Ix, and I was also stuck in a look of too much/not enough pain, starting with my parents and replaying with partnerships, including Brian. I felt like nobody cared about my efforts, I was furious and sad about the fact that everything I make, I give away for free, and everyone around me was claiming theirs, from my friends who create educational resources to Lubo giving me a speech about how much labor goes into making his chocolates, I can tell he always thinks I’m trying to pull one over on him. But really, I am made that I’m creating these resources with my labor, educating everyone about cacao and paying out of my own pocket to print the fliers. “This is how the planet must feel,” I wrote. “I let people take whatever they want from me, use me up, and then nobody wants to come to my party.”
The ADD kid, their mom watching pained as they get rejected on the playground. The full moon asked us to pay attention to the parts of self that were rejected, not recognized for who they were, had gifts nobody understood. This needs to be in the Hollow Bone Show, let people know their too-much-ness is just sensitivity, openness to the subtle and astral, the energies that are everywhere; it’s not that the voices aren’t very loud, actually, maybe as much as that they use lower decibels, it’s fucking deafening if you tune into it, they NEVER shut up! The dead and entities were laughing as I journaled that, it’s like me and Brian, actually the other realm never stops talking, and the too much/not enough kids across dimensions need someone to pay attention.
I realized I forget to close the ceremony a lot. That part is CRUCIAL.
Notes from Ash will be uploaded as photos. But some takeaways include that the “death plants” are actually “portal plants.” they open the door, but it might be to a past part of self, it might be getting possessed by your dad. / The magician looks at the medicine or the pain and says aha! What can I do with this? The psychotic gets lost in it. / The “cauldron” cited in all the Amanita research is the WOMB, the PELVIS. She said indepedently that your body is the vessel, and I almost died, she kept saying so many things that I have already channeled whole spoken-word hours and poems about, written about, never shared with anyone.
Something is happening.
She even said “you are the altar,” which blew my head off. But as I shared about Kit and xir practice with the prenda, we decided that your body was the prenda even more accurately - because you carry the altar objects in your body. Your bones are pisoelectric crystals, minerals communicate with each other, like how all the coral reefs in the world go into their reproductive cycle at the same time. Mushrooms help us travel between time and dimensions, soak up what’s in the soil and call down the lightning.
If I can show up in the power and presence of my teachers, I’m walking with my teachers all the time, she said. But the most beautiful part was the realization that i can trust what I feel in my bones, what I feel they are telling me, that they are guiding me, and I can receive them through my own nervous system. She told me, the plants and fungi ARE our teachers, and they use our bodies as the vessel to express the divine nature that we all are. They speak to us using our own bodies as the communication device, because they don’t speak in human language. The messages we are getting from our bodies are not only our past selves and the systems we contain, but the teachers themselves speaking. The Earth herself speaking.
When you need to get right, orient to time, space, season, and self. / “Watch out for the dream becoming reality” can mean checking in with whether you are the observer or participant in a given moment, and is that the appropriate position? This seemed like wise guidance, though I can’t help thinking, but what about participant observation? Isn’t that kind of what life is? But I don’t know, I’ve talked about not wanting to assume that position in my own life, because then it feels like I’m never fully into either one.
/// I had a breakthrough on my birthday, 40 revolutions Gregorian, where I realized that the parts of me I loved and thought were gone were not only still with me, and had been the whole time—they weren’t even “parts” that were separate to begin with. THAT WAS SELF-ENERGY. That’s what your higher self feels like, the one with a capital S they talk about maintaining in IFS; the one you’re striving for in meditation; the guru we are always longing and searching for.
Breathe in, breathe out. Feel that? That’s you. You’re alive. And you deserve to be here.
I was reborn as my own inner holy trinity, Parents, Child, and Divinity —> and through it all, the constant of Self-Energy.
Ash said do the math, after all. Get equations you can plug things into to bring you back in any given situation.
I CAN trust my body, and my teachers are the plant, animal, and forest spirits who speak through my vessel, using it as a recorder for the symboloic language of the immaterial. Our bodies are how the astral communicates with us, we receive the wisdom from beyond by embodying; we become the earth by materializing. We are the prima materia for spirit. And we embody when we can reconnect to what’s present, not trying to force the same experience all the time.
And I am honored to see that I am taking my place in another trinity, a trinity of teachers; a trinity of trees. Ash, Acacea, and Holly. Through seeing what I may be being called to do, I see how I can reframe my greatest shame as strength again: the double deception, making the men believe that I loved them, and thinking I needed them.
Solve et Coagulatio / Dissolve in Acid
I wrote the whole entry without even mentioning the most important part, because imposter syndrome. So I’ve gone back and added: I had my first-ever one-person show and my first theatrical performance since high school on Wednesday, 4 December 2024, or 2 Kame, the day of duality and ultimate transitions, new beginnings, in the trecena I was born into: Kan, my kingdom.
It didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. But it was perfect in its way, because it set the stage for a personal breakthrough I have been waiting for my whole life. Where I finally woke up in an energy of peace and centeredness, and I realized that the moments I had looked back on in life as being versions of me that existed once and had died or been extinguished, those were just the time when the ever-present Self-Energy emerged, and was observed, conjured into material existence for a moment, which is all it can ever be in this dimension. Briefly materialized, spiritualized matter made apparently fixed, waves pretending to be particles, doing their own performance. I finally felt and gnew in my soul what it meant, that phrase that started this whole journey when Rob Bell said it on a podcast:
“You are already at the party, and you’ve been here the whole time, and everything I have is yours.”
I feel it now. And I was about to sit with cacao, but realized I didn’t need it.
I finally then grokked what it meant that “you are the medicine.”
And what I had been reading in this book about spiritual codependency and giving your power away to teachers and gurus, a big theme of the play and my life, Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, also made sense. I am the teacher I’ve been seeking, the guru I’ve been begging for salvation, the parent I’ve been desperate to be seen by and the lover I’ve been longing to redeem me.
The longing is, in fact, the point. This is spirituality, mysticism, divinity. And so of course it’s also art and addiction. Same archetype, different expression.
I forgot half the words, but everyone was so generous with their time and spirit, and it still moved Alis to tears and resonance, so I have to call it successful. And Dave has given me a 50-minute slot to workshop, which will have to be performed in January, because I have to leave the country, because the visa is, for. now, a roadblock.
But I’m just getting started.
When I can just trust and surrender, be open to the flow, the waters meet at the bend and rush to a point that makes sense.
This week it was all pooling around the concept of coagulation and dissolving itself, the alchemical process involving the liquid and solidification elements.
A metaphor for death and resurrection, and the million tiny dyings and rebirths we undertake in a lifetime.
The way our initiatory cycles, psychedelic journeys and illnesses and injuries, divorces and identity crises, abuse and descents into addiction and madness, they dissolve us in acid, sometimes literally, shattering the illusion of wholeness and solidity and collapsing us into particles, until an act of observation resumes the wave function, we are conjured back into existence through the witnessing and assume form, pretending for a moment to be solid, the prima materia, again.
Solve et coagulatio, coagulate and dissolve; take the leap of faith from the lion’s head to prove your worth and return with elixir.
Of course the search for the holy grail is the pursuit of a vessel; it’s a metaphor for the whole thing we’re doing with this existence. We’re all just vessels, containers of information, sensation, and experience, captured as a snapshot for a moment in time before we disappear again.
But like that art exhibit in Dublin said, from an exhibit about a ceramicist whose name I didn’t capture:
“It wasn’t the vessel, but the holding she was after.”
It reverberated through my bones and every one of my incarnations. I’ll never forget it, and it’s quite at the center of my thesis.
While searching for the picture I took of that exhibit, I found this instead, and it blew me away.
No wonder I’ve been feeling that this Friday the 13th, when I turn 40 Gregorian years old, but I’m closer to my Maya eldership age of 42.5 in that calendrical system, the invitation is to acknowledge the death of Holly Regan the woman and the rebirth of Riordan O’Regan, the queer trans Celtic pagan bard and poet.
Holly berries only grow on female trees. No wonder I always hated it as a kid when my aunt Susie called me “Holly berry.”
Reading the book Roy recommended to me, 50 Concepts of Critical Phenomenology, also is blowing a lot of things open, giving form to feelings.
That’s how a lot of this journe y is going: the research is giving name to things I’ve experienced directly, but that is part of my process/practice/praxis and what distinguishes my research. I rely primarily on direct experience and then later find validation and substantiation through documented works, art and research—rather than the other way around, which is how a lot of people do it, reading about something and then trying to test it.
Nah, this is the original science: As Reggie the mycologist and founder of Oakland Hyphae says, “fuck around and find out.”
The Shulgin approach, the alchemist’s path, the Hermetic framework and mystical impulse.
I’ve been reading a lot about asceticism and “holy anorexia,” stumbling across this text in the queer bookstore, The Common Press, where I found myself reflected last year: The Art of Not Eating. Its themes were reflected in Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, a book I’ve been starting and stopping for months now.
A reading in the book about Heidegger’s “Being-toward-death” led me to an episode of “This Jungian Life” on death as the ultimate transition. In it they mentioned Jung’s invocation of the alchemical premise:
"SOLUTIO ET COAGULATIO” - coagulate and dissolve.
One of those phrases that I channeled and drops in periodically, gaining new layers of meaning: “DISSOLVE IN ACID.”
or “HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY”
So I divined through the search engine, and came to this insight: Astrology is part of this process of coagulation and dissolving, assuming form momentarily:
https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2020/08/21/alchemists-2/
MICHAEL MAIER was a famous alchemist of his time (end of sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries) and was one of the founders of the society of the Rosicrucians.
He says: “The philosophers have said: that no one could attain the science of the spiritual, unless his soul be divine and his nativity spiritual. ” > last part means astrology/horoscope - are you a chosen one? Did the collection of information, experience, and sensation captured in the snapshot of the sky under which you incarnated align to make you open to the astral?
Paracelsus says that man has a mind in order that he may understand the truths which are made known in the Gospel, and only for this purpose. But on the other hand man has also a “lumen naturae” (a natural light), a source of knowledge hidden in nature, from which he can draw enlightenment.
This is the confession of a man who was one of the great reformers of medicine, and it states plainly that the Gospel is not the only source of enlightenment, but that there is another source of light and knowledge, concealed in nature. Paracelsus was an alchemist himself
“Nature is one, true and simple, perfect in its essence, and a secret spirit lies hidden in it. If thou wouldst recognise it, thou must thyself be true, simple, patient, steadfast and devout, and must not harm thy neighbour, in short : thou must be a regeneratus, a new being.”
Well, will you look at that—the synchronicity—I just found a note I wrote about that elusive quote and the exhibit wasn’t from Dublin, it was from Glasgow. Of course. Where the astrolocality placed the center of my creativity. Where my advisors who are currently in bodies are based.
Will pursuing something here help yield the ever-elusive visa? I don’t know. My communities are in London. But I feel like there has to be something more Transart could do to help me, even though they say over and over they can’t. Do the resources at LJMU count for nothing? Apparently. Anyway.
I also had the quote wrong. I made it mine by changing the noun, but it said:
“It was not the object but the holding she was after.”
The artist is Sarah Forrest, a Glaswegian ceramicist who I now must try and contact. (Of course, she also works with sound and has a Freud connection.)
This also came up when searching for the quote - because SEARCHING is part of my PRAXIS - wandering around Greece in what seems like aimless fashion but always reveals its purpose even if it’s not until years later. This is from my summer of roaming, first nomading, in 2021:
Speaking of AI. The Otter AI identified me as Cain during my morning channeling. Freaking cool. This was an important one for the concept of Trans* as emergent archetype so I will include the full transcript.
Coagulation + transcendence through specificity
Cain discusses his complex relationship with offerings, payments, and asceticism, exploring themes of self-worth, consent, and the nature of existence. He reflects on his experiences with addiction, overindulgence, and toxic relationships, emphasizing the importance of consent and the struggle to reconcile ancient programming with modern notions of self. Cain delves into the concept of identity, the value of pain as a marker of love, and the paradox of material existence. He concludes with thoughts on the transformative power of art and the journey towards self-realization, ultimately seeking to articulate these insights through his work.
Outline
Struggles with Self-Worth and Asceticism
Cain discusses his complicated relationship with offerings and payments, feeling unworthy and undeserving.
He explores the concept of asceticism, questioning where it turns into self-flagellation and martyrdom.
Cain reflects on the Gnostic belief that existence is about transcending it, questioning the purpose of incarnations.
He shares his experiences with addiction and overindulgence, learning that love often starts from a deficit.
Dynamics of Relationships and Self-Identity
Cain describes creating situations where he always had to atone for his sins, feeling unworthy in partnerships.
He recounts abusive interactions, questioning the naturalness and shame of constrained relationships.
Cain longs for a triad to reconcile the Holy Trinity within himself, finding his inner divinity.
He reflects on the anorexic narrative and self-consciousness about weight, influenced by societal and familial pressures.
The Role of Tradition and Materialism
Cain discusses the importance of traditions and the existence of anorexia and asceticism across cultures.
He explores the concept of denying nourishment and matter, equating it to denying light.
Cain reflects on the materialism and performance in society, questioning the true nature of the cosmos.
He emphasizes the need for identity and self before truly losing it, relating it to the Bodhisattva path.
Embracing Pain and Love
Cain expresses gratitude for pain, recognizing it as a sign of having loved.
He discusses the cultural inability to convey that pain means knowing love, questioning the desensitization of some people.
Cain suggests that alchemy can transform moments of darkness into holy longing.
He emphasizes the importance of experiencing pain to truly appreciate love and life.
The Paradox of Disappearance
Cain explores the paradox of disappearing completely by first being matter and material.
He discusses various methods of dissolving oneself, including meditation, dance, and psychedelics.
Cain reflects on the trans experience, starting with claiming clear identities and then dissolving them into oneness.
He emphasizes the importance of specific identities in the process of trans emergence.
Art and Practice in Healing
Cain discusses the role of art and practice in healing and rewriting trauma.
He emphasizes the importance of observing and witnessing events to conjure a new timeline.
Cain reflects on the duality of life, where both things can be true and must be fully felt.
He explores the concept of bracketing and temporary holding, relating it to the performance of life.
The Future and PhD Program
Cain expresses his certainty about pursuing a PhD program to build community and serve.
He reflects on the need to prove worthiness through art and leave to come back.
Cain emphasizes the importance of leaving and returning to find purpose and community.
He concludes with a call for guidance on how to share his experiences and art with the world.
TRANSCRIPT / AUDIO HERE
I have a strange relationship with offerings and payments, which means to days are always a little complicated. When you come into this world believing that you're fated to always be a worm, groveling below the surface of the Earth, wriggling in the dirt, always being measured and coming up short, born unworthy, undeserving, working your way back from something you don't even know what that came before you and will continue long after.
Oh, Father, please forgive me. I have sinned. Heaven help me. Why am I so unworthy? Why am I such a bad baby? The devil made me I'm just a little warm, undeserving of this body, undeserving of this lifetime. I
The Art of not eating holy anorexia. Where does asceticism turn into self flagellation and martyrdom? Where is it S and M that is consenting and where is it torture? Punishment, yeah, the key is consent. Do you actually, are you actually capable of giving it when this shit is so ancient and epigenetic and programmed in our DNA? Do we have the ability to even know our yes is in our nose when this shit goes back for centuries, millennia since the very dawn of existence. The Gnostics thought that the point of existence was to transcend it. But why would we even be put into these dimensions, into these incarnations, if we were only designed to escape them, even if that is the ultimate end, shouldn't we be participating in at first, enjoying experiencing what is an offering worth, if you don't know what you're actually giving up, if you haven't tasted from the cup, if you don't know how sweet the nectar is, does it mean as much?
For me, I've had to go all the way in to addiction and over indulgence in these complicated relationships with payments, I learned that love meant you started at a deficit and always had To make up for it. So I created situations over and over again where I was always making up for something, where I was always screwing up something and having to atone for my sins. I didn't even know how to exist in a partnership unless I started off at a negative unless I started off as unworthy, unless I started off as A Bad Baby,
unless I push the other person to become angry and hurt and unsatisfied with me. You made me. I didn't used to be like this bitch. You're crazy, bad baby. Why are you always misbehaving? Sit down, shut up, be seen and not heard. Where were you last night? Answer me. What time did you get home? Why does your breath smell like that? Why did you go straight to the shower? Why won't you look me in the eye? Why. I come up here and say it to my face, I dare you. Who did you sleep with this time? My girl, my girl, don't lie to me. Tell me, where did you sleep last night? The pines and the pines, when the sun I will shiver the whole night through these frameworks that are unnatural to begin with. Why are we constrained and shamed by them? Why are we tortured and blamed for them, and these aren't even how we were designed to live.
It should all be sharing in community, love given freely and consensually, nobody, anyone's property. I know everyone gets to choose what's right for them, but I really feel like that's the way it was supposed to be to begin with. That's the way that nature is. Doesn't mean animals don't choose monogamy, but it has to be a choice and not a duty, not an obligation, not a life sentence, not something we're ashamed when we can't comply with doesn't even feel right. I still long for a triad to reconcile the Holy Trinity, though I have now found the Holy Trinity within me, my inner divinity, sun, moon and star, mother, father, child artist, Mystic, Bard and alcoholic, all of them.
So much of my story is tinged with this anorexic narrative, people putting it upon me, people worrying about me, and yeah, sometimes me entering into it out of vanity, but I don't even think that's correct, because I didn't even know that I was quote, unquote fat, until Carol said cookies, and suddenly I realized I was naked in the Garden of Eden. Suddenly I became self conscious about my weight for the first time, until Dad shamed me for stress eating peanut butter, something I learned from my mother and her mother, covering up my feelings with sugar, carbs and Nuts, something I'm still wrestling with, that, and chocolate I
I think an offering and a payment giving given out of sheer obligation because you think you're supposed to, but you kind of resent it, is not An offering at all, and I think you're better off going with what feels right to you in the moment and giving what you can with a full heart, than just doing it because you think you're supposed to, but I don't know, because there's also something to these traditions. There's a reason why anorexia and asceticism exist across so many spaces and places. I and what is it with these women that deny and it's not just women, what is it with these people who deny themselves nourishment? Denying food is denying matter. Matter is frozen light. Oh, I love when stuff starts to come together like this. I was drawn to some YouTube videos yesterday for a reason, but at add and I didn't finish them. So I need to finish them, denying matter. I mean, the material, materialism is a reductionist, simplistic. Market is not the way the cosmos really is, but it's also the appearance that we keep up in this dimension. It's also the appearance we go all along with to have this experience. It's the game we're playing. It's the performance. The performance is assume form, abracadabra, hocus pocus. Suddenly, I have a corpus. Now you see me? Now you don't. It's the shaman show. Pretend to be a person for a little while. Pretend to be this person. Let's see. I truly do believe that you have to have an identity. You have to have a self before you can truly lose it before you can give it authentically. I think that's what's coming up right now, this idea of offering, what are you actually offering if you don't have anything clear to begin with. And this is part of what I'm reading about. This guru, teacher, student, tradition and relationship. And this feels very interrelated to the trisona aukan like you can't truly serve if you don't know who you are or were, I don't think if you're just blindly following, you never even really develop a personality, then you're just a lemming. You're just then you are just matter. And what's the point of having this body if we don't experience what we were brought here for and then choose to give it up? It's not a choice. You can't give consent if you haven't first experienced it, if you don't actually know what you're saying. And I think that is the bodhisattva path, like what's Yeah, like, Buddha started with everything. He didn't start with nothing, and then he had to give it up. He had to have, there had to be some stakes in the game. There had to be something worth surrendering. I mean, and that's not to say it has to be material wealth or anything like that, but I think you have to know who you are. I think you have to have a self. I mean, this was my thesis, years before I even had a PhD like you have to have a self before you can lose it. And your first instinct is usually the best one. I mean, that was one of my rallying cries, because that's under representation, that's, isn't dei that's all the acronyms that's, that's queerness and intersectionality. As we have to claim our separate identities and own them and love them without shame for them to fall away in any way that's meaningful when
you when you've lost everything, you're free to do anything. That means you have to start with something, even if it's an illusion. I don't know. I
I mean, there's no pain without love. There's no pain without an earthly experience. I mean, if you just showed up as kind of a blob and amoeba and then you lost everything. Well, that's not very interesting. A story needs dramatic tension. A story needs a conflict, which means the stakes need to be high enough. Which means you have to care, which means you have to have established yourself somewhere. You have to build things here.
This is making me emotional for for losing them to have any value.
The initiation doesn't mean
anything if you didn't care to begin with,
and this is part of what it means when I say thank you for the pain. I mean thank you for the pain, because inherent in it means you have loved Wow, wow. That's another one of those things that seems trite, but I'm just experiencing now. I.
If you are feeling pain, wow, like that feels like it's something that needs to be shared. Because I don't think people understand that. I don't our culture has no way to convey that if you are experiencing pain, it means you already know love. Maybe you just don't realize it.
If you're feeling pain for having lost something, if you're feeling pain, even if you're feeling pain for feeling like you never had anything like how would you know that, unless your soul had a concept of the opposite? That means that you have touched it in some moments? I think, I think otherwise, you're just completely desensitized to it, and some people are like that. But yeah, I mean, can that be an alchemy? Can that be a self in these moments of most darkness, to tell yourself that the only reason I am experiencing this right now is because I know it's opposite,
and that's holy longing. You can only feel the absence of something that you have a conception you of having known once, of having touched,
the longing, Is the offering, the service, the devotion,
the striving to become one and knowing that you'll never touch it until you reach the other side.
And I think, I think it's a disservice to this realm
getting goosebumps. To not try to experience it, to try to not experience it, to try to just check out from it. I think we have to have moments of that. We have to have practices. I mean, we can't just be complete hedonist. I mean, we can, but I don't recommend it. I think a life is made of service and some restriction. But again, you have to remind yourself, I think of what you're missing for it to mean anything. What good is an offering if you're doing it begrudgingly, if you're doing it out of obligation, if you're doing it out of fear because you think you're a bad baby. If you don't do it,
what would it look like to have a relationship, a partnership, or I don't automatically feel like I'm screwing up. What would it look like to have a practice where I don't feel like an imposter before I even start? What would it be like to have
lovers where no one's trying to redeem each other.
Would it look like to be in a relationship where I didn't always feel like the bad guy? What would it feel like to be in a relationship where someone just loved me and respected me and respected my boundaries as my consent.
What would it be like to be in relationship with someone where I wasn't afraid of them devouring me or rejecting me completely.
I think the paradox is that to disappear completely,
you first have to be matter and material. I mean, that's alchemy, the prima materia, coagulation and dissolving. Dissolve me in acid, dissolve me in psilocybin, dissolve me in anemia and cacao, dissolve me in meditation, dissolve me in dance, dissolve me in the trance and the music. Dissolve me in the silence and the flame the elements
dissolve me in the queerness that first claims its name and its boundaries and then
fades into oneness, yeah, maybe this is part of the transness. It's emergent archetype too, that it starts with claiming clear identities, and then so many clear identities start emerging. I mean, yeah, wow. I think this is part of it. Wow, okay, the acronym is getting longer, and everyone's getting annoyed, and it's getting frustrated, even for those of us in the community, because we're like, I don't know how would you possibly describe me. I'm so multifaceted, I need, like, 1000 words to describe it. So it starts with really getting specific about our identities. And the more we this is fucking the more we go into it, the more we go into it, and the more we focus on our specific identities, the more they actually dissolve in the process. Because the more clearly you try to articulate something that's inherently so multi dimensional and fractal, the more it actually starts to lose its meaning. I don't know. Like, yeah, it just fractalizes so much it it becomes so specific that it becomes unnameable, that it becomes inevitable, ineffable, that it becomes indescribable, multi dimensional, to the point where eventually we just let all the labels go. Yeah. This is part of trans emergence. You start with the specifics, and you go so far into them that you come out on the side of abstraction. You get so specific that it becomes abstract. How can I convey this in art and practice? I mean, this is it. You start with, this is who I am, and I claim it. And this is rewriting trauma right as you go back and you reframe it. And in doing that like that's it just needs to be witnessed. And then you can let it go. Can I get a witness? It starts with observance. I events that conjures a new timeline into existence, one where you are healed, one where you are who you say you are, one where you call the shots and claim the boundaries, and then after you do that, you can look away. The cat can be alive and dead at the same time.
Both things can be true, but that means both things have to be true, and that means you have to fully feel the realness.
You have to fully feel the matter, the material, the frozen light particles, the illusion of a thing you have to observe the container, the vessel, the altar, the offering that is a collection of information and experience, knowledge and feeling, a snapshot of a moment in this illusion we call space and Time. That's all which is what I just described, just just a container, just a holding, just an ellipse, no, just a parentheses of bracketing. That's from some philosophical thing. I don't remember what the bracketing. It's a bracketing attempt. Temporary holding, a performance one night only, the greatest show on earth
is the death and resurrection. Show is the coagulation and dissolving. Is the appearance of solids.
Way. Pretend to be particles. I
Okay, so this is my offering, is to figure out how to share these things with the world. I mean, the good news is that I have no doubt now that I should be in the PhD program. The next I was gonna say challenge, but the next opportunity is what to do with the thing that we're pretending as a body, what to do with this thing we call space and time and visas. And it's so interesting that I'm having to prove that I'm worthy of working in the place where I want to serve and build community and remain. But the way I do that is through art, and so we have to leave to come back sometimes. So I think that's what I have to do. So please show me where, how, with who
Fuck you, spiritual bros
I’m listening to Rage Against the Machine for the first time in at least 15 years, and it’s as cathartic as it was in college.
There is such a thing as sacred rage, and it needs to be seen. Anger is a valid emotion, a needed one even, as long as it’s channeled and released appropriately, not at people but into the aether to be alchemized and trans*muted. Not feeling it is unhealthy, and while there is something to this need to be slower animals and let our bodies relax, today something in me is rising up against the whole idea of rest as resistance.
Wouldn’t that be convenient for the system if we all bought into the idea that the way we win is by doing nothing? By resting, sleeping, opting out, lying dormant while they continue to run rampant over everything?
I won’t rest until there is justice, and maybe all my restless energy, this “ADD” inability to sit still, is also partially a righteous rage that can’t sit idly by while they burn the world down, destroy the rainforest and rape our minds and bodies, take the knowledge we gave them to begin with and try to sell it back to us at a premium, telling us we should trust them because we don’t know ourselves.
Fuck that. I want to burn the whole fucking thing down and let the forest take back over, even if I go along with it. Offer myself back to the compost, my body, our body, body of earth. They can’t have her, and today I am embodying my 13 Kan, the Kaa and Kali Ma that would rather kill her children than let them be devoured. I’ll set the mast ablaze and laugh with my middle fingers raised, and we will will even if we have to go down with the ship.
But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Still, this shit needs to be brought to the surface. And I’ll be damned if it doesn’t feel good to admit it.
I want to put my fist through the walls, scream and break shit. Given the state of the world, I’d say it’s appropriate.
I think a lot of it is being triggered by being in class, where the teacher reminds me a little too much of a Baptist preacher or my Christian schoolteacher, fire and brimstone, telling me I need to purify myself, and part of me knows I’m resisting because she’s right, and the other part of me wants to flip the desk upside down and yell at her and the whole fucking Buddhist lineage to fuck off with their Puritan shit already.
I channel Lucifer, the light bearer.
I channel Dionysus and the maenads, running naked through the woods, half-deranged and loving it.
I want to rip Orpheus’ head off and send it whistling upriver,
shove Pythagorus’ triangles straight up his right angles.
Isosceles, please.
We’ve been holding this shit in for centuries,
perched at the precipice.
Do NOT
FUCK with us.
Rest is resistance? Wouldn’t that be convenient.
I will not rest until we no longer sleep with one eye open.
Spiritual bros, replicating the same system, acting like they’re different because they have their hair up in a bun and their full-sleeve tattoos are Indigenous symbols, it’s all just neocolonialism, a new form of appropriation that pretends to be awake, but still does nothing but TAKE TAKE TAKE and claim credit for shit that was never theirs to begin with, that tries to sell our own stolen systems back to us at a premium.
just because your hair’s in a bun and you don’t wear shoes doesn’t mean you’re enlightened
spiritual bros and TERFs in spandex and slouchy sweaters, fake gurus and teachers in sheep’s clothing.
selling the same fucking binary under a different name.
two can play that game.
you’ll never see me coming
until the snake is coiled around you, gently squeezing.
But okay, I recognize this is the dark side of the 13 Kan emerging, and I must be cautious, because just like Yoda said to Luke, the Dark Side will consume you if you let the rage rule. It’s about giving it space and then finding a safe way to release and dissipate it.
Both my father and I are 13 Kan, and I must be the Skywalker.
I both long for a teacher, a mentor, someone to hold and guide me, and resist this with every fiber of my being; I crave structure and then push back against every stricture when it’s given to me. I guess this is human nature, the surly teenager who wants to be contradictory just for the sake of it. So I ask for wisdom and guidance, to know my righteous no and holy hell yes. We’ll get there.
Fuck you, spiritual bros
Working with the AI: Eve is independently identified for the first time!
WOW! It’s working—it’s learning—the DF is in the house for sure, that’s the first time Otter has identified her. Fucking cool. I tagged other speakers according to nahuales and archetypes; will see if that seems to prove out.
Anger Towards the Spiritual System
- Eve expresses her anger towards the spiritual system, feeling that her rage has been misdirected and that she has transmuted it. - Speaker 3 mentions acting like they were always okay with spirituality to hide their true feelings. - Judas Iscariot and an unknown speaker vent their frustration, calling out the spiritual system for trying to control and conform people, and for taking away their medicines and burning them as witches. - Speaker 1 points out the irony that the spiritual system claimed they didn't know what they were doing, when it was actually the indigenous people who taught them.
Criticism of Spiritual Leaders
- Speaker 1 and Judas Iscariot criticize spiritual leaders for not giving credit to the indigenous people who created the medicines and practices. - Judas Iscariot is particularly angry at a specific leader for treating women poorly and not giving credit to the women in Guatemala who made the medicine. - The conversation shifts to the leader's lack of consideration for the earth and the environment, with Speaker 1 expressing frustration at having to kiss men's asses all the time. - Judas Iscariot is also angry at the leader for faking it and not being authentic, and for the systemic issues within the spiritual community.
Historical and Personal Grievances
- Speaker 1 recounts historical grievances, including the molestation by priests and the passing of blame onto the victims. - The conversation touches on the emotional toll of keeping anger inside and the desire to burn the whole system down. - Speaker 1 expresses frustration with being gaslighted and the need to be creative to survive. - Judas Iscariot shares their physical and emotional exhaustion, wanting to crawl into a cave and burst out like a dragon to scorch the earth.
Seeking Authenticity and Resistance
- Kan and Speaker 1 criticize the spiritual system for selling saccharine substitutes as the real thing, and for not allowing people to claim their own authenticity. - Aj talks about the desire to punch the system in the face and take it back by force, expressing a desire to use anger wisely and not let it consume them. - Aj discusses the imbalance between the feminine and masculine sides, and the need to balance them to create something better. - The conversation explores the idea of resistance and whether resting is actually resistance, with Aj expressing frustration at being told to go slower and opt out.
Critique of the Spiritual Paradigm
- Judas Iscariot and Speaker 1 criticize the spiritual paradigm for being a joke and for gaslighting people just like they always have. - Eve talks about the need to take action stealthily and smartly to bring the system down, while also being tired of placating people. - Eve expresses a desire to unleash her inner rage and claim her place, while also wanting to replace the current system with something better. - The conversation touches on the idea of community and marriage, with Eve expressing a desire to get rid of private property and create a system of community together.
Trust and Betrayal in the Spiritual Community
- Eve discusses the lack of trust in teachers and gurus, even those who claim not to be teachers or saviors. - The conversation explores the fear of being constrained by any box or tradition, with Eve expressing a desire for guidance and structure while also being wary of it. - Eve talks about the betrayal by teachers who said they were different but turned out to be the same as the old system. - The conversation ends with Eve expressing a desire to break out of the current system and create something new, while also being cautious about who to trust.
Action Items:
Reflect on how to use anger wisely and channel it towards positive change, without letting it consume you. (Assignee: Aj)
Explore ways to reclaim and revitalize indigenous spiritual practices in a respectful and inclusive manner. (Assignee: Speaker 1)
Investigate strategies to dismantle the current spiritual system and replace it with a more equitable and community-oriented approach. (Assignee: Judas Iscariot)
Cultivate self-trust and discernment when it comes to spiritual teachers and leaders, rather than blindly following them. (Assignee: Speaker 2)
Snake charmer
Speaker 1 reflects on their struggle with substance dependence, acknowledging a pattern of giving power to substances to control their feelings. They discuss an inward journey of self-discovery and confronting shadow aspects of themselves, including anger and colonialism. Speaker 1 is also contemplating career changes, expressing a desire to work collaboratively rather than alone, and is wary of rigid, fire-and-brimstone ideologies. They express a preference for a Dionysian approach, balancing celebration with introspection, while also recognizing the unsettling nature of their own shadow self and the potential for cultural appropriation in their aspirations.
Reflections on Substance Use and Spirituality
- Kan discusses the exhaustion of being ruled by substances and the desire to break free from their control. - Kan reflects on their past self, noting the obsession with substances even when not consuming them. - Kan describes the internal conflict of policing their own substance intake while planning their week around it. - Kan emphasizes the shift from an outward journey to an inward one, focusing on purging negative feelings rather than blocking them.
Observations on Personal Patterns and Anger
- Kan acknowledges the presence of patterns from their past, particularly in their relationship with Ruvani. (the AI identified this as “Regan,” which is so… perfect.) - Kan expresses anger towards teachers for giving power to substances, noting a similarity with their own behavior. - Despite this, Kan observes their situation from a distance, indicating some detachment. - Kan mentions the concept of the wrathful feminine and the need to move on from certain emotions.
Career Aspirations and Cultural Reflections
- Hermes humorously suggests the job of a snake charmer, expressing frustration with marketing. - Kan contemplates the idea of learning the system to achieve their goals, emphasizing collaboration. - Kan expresses anger at people who want to take away their power, possibly as part of a purification process. - Kan reflects on their fear and attraction to "acacia spaces," acknowledging their own colonialism and exoticism. (this is SO interesting, as I was talking about Acacea’s classes, but there is something to this concept of a liminal, metaphorical “acacia space” as well…)
Shadow Parts and Ego Resistance
- Kan discusses the distance they have from their shadow parts but acknowledges the horror of seeing them. - Kan expresses concern about a faking impression from someone else, possibly due to ego resistance. - Hermes expresses a lack of trust in paths that do not allow for celebration and intoxication. - Kan relates this to their own experiences with the Pythagorean and Orphic aesthetics, noting the negative effects of eating certain beans.
Transcript:
It's exhausting being ruled by the substance, and when you've had enough of it, you can come find me now, Ruvani, you're such a reflection of my past self that is still present, just manifesting in different directions. I'm still obsessing about substances, even though I'm not consuming them. Well, that's not true, and consuming lots of them, I've just cut certain ones out, so maybe I'm being a spiritual bro with myself, acting holier than thou, with the family inside me, policing what goes into the body. This is pure and this is not, well. Meanwhile, I'm plotting my whole week based on what I'm gonna put in me. It's just the same as it ever was.
But I will say now it's an inward journey. It's to go into my soul and get the shit out rather than block the feelings.
It's about engaging rather than dissociating. But that doesn't mean the patterns aren't quite the same. So I think there's a reason I'm with Regan e tomorrow, one on one on this day, because I got to see this stuff. It's really present. I see it. It's right here. It's right there. On the surface, I am very aware of who's here, of the one that gives their power away to things, and that's why I'm so angry at teachers today, I've done the same thing with the medicine and given it the power to control my feelings.
But I don't know that's also not really true, because I am also really aware that I'm working through this, and I'm also observing this from a bit of a distance. I'm not actually blended with it. I
What is the nine con the wrath, wrathful, feminine need to move on.
What's the job you'd rather be doing? Snake charmer. What does that mean? Fuck marketing. That's funny. That's what came through marketing. I don't want to but maybe it's what's calling maybe that's how I get my visa, and if Richard is the one to help me do it, then I will learn the system, and I'll make my own, and I'll do it exactly the way I want to, which is to say not alone, but by bringing other people together, I get so angry at people who want to take my power away, because I'm so ready to give it away.
Maybe this is part of a purification for a trans dimensional journey. But I gotta say, I'm scared of acacia spaces as much as I'm drawn to them. And I see my own colonialism and exoticism that's disgusting, these automatic patterns that rise up. I mean, I do have a distance from them, but it's still horrifying. Maybe that's all it is. It's not liking to see these shadow parts of myself, but I don't know also, sometimes I get a bit of a faking it impression from her too.
And the Baptist preacher fire and brimstone delivery really scares me. And I don't know if that's just my ego resistance or if I'm really picking up on something there. I.
I just don't believe in a path that says there's no room for celebration and even intoxication. A little bit Dionysian, I don't trust anything that isn't a little bit Dionysian. I don't trust anything that's too fire and brimstone, anything that's too Pythagorean, too Orphic, scares me, yet when I eat the beans, the most horrible things come out of me. So maybe those ascetics are onto something. i. <this always ends a channeled transmission…
TRANS*ition Methodology
At 3 am, I know who I am.
Here in my element, early in the morning, when I know exactly who I am and what I want and where the journey of E’ is meandering even if I don’t know the destination, I find peace and clarity for a few hours of every day. I may feel lost and conufsed and struggleto get things done in the 3D world a lot of the time, but the thing that has been consistent for the past 7 years has been my practice. It’s my foundation. And everything is clear then, I just forget when the sun rises sometimes.
Just like the journey of life, we remember in little glimpses, and then the thinking mind and consensus systems we’ve constructed infiltrate us, and we go to sleep again.
But it’s okay. The point isn’t never forgetting, it’s coming back again and again, every time we get bumped or forget.
Keep coming back.
And this is why I’m in this program, because my practice is THE practice, it’s praxis, it’s not only my inner guidance and solace and rock, it’s my offering, my prenda, fashioned in the cauldron of my vessel, my being, my body, my alchemical container. I gather all the information and sensation and experience and translate it through lenses others can benefit from, and now the next step is to learn how to share it for mutual benefit.
I am not sure if or when I need to pause the program; I probably will for DMTx and CMM training, if I do that. But I do know in the clarity of the morning that I need to get this training I’ve been talking about for almost two years now, the facilitator and integration training so I can help others in my great big family find the healing I have and experience the relief that has come to me.
If they can touch for even a moment the way I feel in the morning, my offering will be worth it.
If they can feel the way their heart breaks open in the best possible way and they die to be reborn as everything the way I have in even a metaphorical way, it will all be worth it.
Amanita and cacao is the medicine, this is the portal to awakening and it’s all technically legal. Sitting this morning with them together, feeling Amanita’s mycelial tendrils interweaving with my capillaries, fusing with my DNA and healing the helix all the way backwards and forwards through generations and into the future, as cacaosita’s warm embrace opens my veins, vasodilating, increasing the flow of blood through my system and opening my spiritual heart to myself and the past parts and the whole universe, I feel myself suspended like a scarecrow on the cactus that looks a lot like a cross, making me a world tree; the axis mundi. Breaking open my chest cavity and parting my entrails so the crows can feast on the tendrils, not in a gross or morbid way, but a beautiful one, where I become compost, the thing the whole system revolves around in permaculture, all of us dying and being reborn, fueling each other, alone together. Food, medicine, shit, death, sex, it’s all love.
I am overcome.
I made a list of all the times I felt that feeling and followed it, even if I didn’t know why, and I got exactly what I needed, even if it hurt along the way, and it took up a whole page, and I easily could’ve kept going. This should be part of the methodology because it was so healing and empowering. I CAN trust myself. I DO know what I’m doing, even if the why doesn’t reveal itself sometimes for years.
So I realized that what I’m creating isn’t so much a self-healing methodology as it is
a TRANS*ition methodology.
For helping people make the big transitions, from one realm to the next—whether it’s a transition in gender embodiment or expression or sexual orientation, starting on the spiritual path, making art, leaving a marriage or relationship or religion, going nomad or quitting your job or any kind of big decision, including death and catastrophic injury or illness. I have experience with all of this and I have the tools and resources to help people, I am constantly amassing a growing network of trusted professionals and healers who use the methods of direct experience to help us reconnect with ourselves, each other, and the Universe, through every facet of the world.
And I am going to get the training I need to fully step into my own offerings and create this methodology for transitioning and devising artistic expressions, because the release is a really important part of it.
I will get facilitator training and go through the DMTx program at the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness, unless something else in the Netherlands presents itself, which I got an intuitive hit yesterday might come along, so I am opening to all possibilities. In some way, I will get that foundation, and then take the Compassionate Inquiry training I’ve been wanting to do for two years, which is co-led by a kundalini practitioner, so it already intersects with that other pillar of my practice—and I don’t need to take kundalini teacher training for many reasons, including the Yogi Bhujan scandal. My teachers have already come forward, Yael Haar and Annabelle Stapleton-Crittendon, in the US and UK who will work with me 1:1 for energy exchange and reduced rates. And I have my personal medicine practice, and am working closely with Ash to deepen my relationship with Amanita muscaria, which I will also do with a guide soon by going on my first full-fledged journey with her. And either in Arizona among the Saguaro that appeared in my dream the other night, waving their alien arms, or here in our ancestral homelands in the UK and Europe, we will pursue our parallel and intersecting paths with her.
Alone together.
And I will deepen my work with cacao and the calendar by going to Guatemala, but it’s seeming like the time for that is not now. There is too much to do here. Breaking Convention is in May and me and my ragtag crew of herbalists and astrologers and folk healers are coming together to make our events and presentations, to put on the medicine and education show. We are going to try and present a series of talks with the Psychedelic Society as well, and I’m now envisioning bringing Rick Levine in for some of these.
I am seeing beyond articles, I need to get out of that mindset. I like blogging again, that has been really needed. But I don’t want to write professionally anymore, unless it’s theatre.
It’s time to make stuff, to do things in the world, to bring people together; to dust off my cheese-business chops and bring the community together like I have excelled at ever since I was a little kid putting on plays in the living room and making everything a celebration. The host(x) with the most(x), that’s who I am. The connector. The one who makes the mycelial connections and brings them together so THEY can make the magic happen.
I’m excited. Here in the morning as the TRANS*ition to daytime is creeping in, I feel so clear, so grounded, so myself, so calm and grounded.
THIS IS ME. Remember this feeling.
It’s happening for you, not to you, and anyway, you’re co-creating it.
You’re a motherfucking shamxn, which means “the one who knows,” and don’t you forget it.
But you will, and that’s okay. Just keep coming back. Remember this feeling, and you’ll never be lost again.
Exhibitions, Events, and Performances:
The Hollow Bone Show: My first-ever one-person show! To be performed to a private audience as a work-in-progress for development into a future public exhibition. The Cockpit Theatre of Disruptive Ideas and Creative Panache, Marylebone, London, 4 Dec 13:00
Creating abstracts for presentation submissions to Breaking Convention 2025 and an event series for the London Psychedelic Society with herbalists, mycologists, and community healers Ash Ritter, Rebecca Lazarou, and Rasheeqa Ahmad for a presentation about self-healing with natural medicine/herbalism and Amanita muscaria, using my pelvis injury as a case study
Publications:
Music is the Medicine, Part II: My Substack newsletter; second installment of a multipart series years of research, interviews, and direct experience in the making on the intersection of sound and altered states. Want to create a podcast but need collaborators…
Building and Service:
1-2x weekly volunteering for Ecstatic Dance UK
Building ecstatic dance networks to help Bill Tribble build international directory of ED facilitators, teachers, DJs, spaceholders
Building a list and making initial outreach to ED and queer/trans DJ and facilitator networks and list, along with my friend Lxo Cohen, to start our own queer/trans ecstatic dance in London
Networking, list-building, and conversation-starting for long-term vision of queer/trans urban art/ecofarm and live/work/permaculture/makers space
Discussing potential future energy exchanges, journeying, and facilitator training with DMTx and the Center for Medicinal Mindfulness in Colorado
Courses and workshops:
November intensive day 2, grantwriting workshop. Ece gave really helpful tips for how to write a project description and proposal/grant application that left me feeling vastly more prepared and confident, albeit no less daunted (maybe even more so) about how to actually find the right ones to apply to, and that even allow PhD students. I desperately want to get one of these artists’ residencies but am totally overwhelmed with how to find and filter through them. Her tips for AI were really amazing in terms of completing applications, but I wonder if it could also be recruited for searching. I am going to reach out to her to see if we can chat further. (Plus, I just really loved her vibe and energy, like the living embodiment of Berlin itself, brash and unapologetically her artistic, eccentric, multicultural self.)
Rupert Sheldrake’s Morphic Resonance Course: Did my thing and got a bursary rate and got enrolled. Have not begun yet, because first priority needs to be another course I was gifted that is of immediate importance for personal, spiritual, and professional journeying…
Acacea Lewis’ Divine Master Alchemy Academy: Advanced Journeyers, Transdimensional Crystal Camp. This is the beginning of a very important new phase of the journey, one I was directed by the spirit of Baba Kilindi Iyi to reach out to Acacea about when I was meditating with the group inside the Great Pyramid in Egypt. I have goosebumps all over my body as I write this and am humbled that she granted me the offering on a donation basis. I must honor the teachings well.
Reading (actively):
Alejandro Jodorowsky, “Psychomagic” and “The Way of the Tarot: The Spiritual Teacher in the Cards”
Gabor Maté, “Scattered Minds”
A million research papers
LISTEN:
As part of the methodology, remember that you are working with the AI to better understand yourself and make your way through the minotaur’s labyrinth.
AI Summary:
The conversation centers on the concept of transitioning between different life stages, realms, and identities, emphasizing the importance of illumination and integration rather than denial. Speaker 1 discusses the use of Amanita and Cacaosita for spiritual journeys, describing profound personal experiences with these substances. The dialogue touches on the historical and cultural context of shamanism, the erasure of marginalized groups, and the need for initiation and training in traditional practices. It also explores the impact of trauma, the intergenerational nature of suffering, and the importance of reconnecting with one's true self and the natural world for healing and transformation.
Transition Methodology and Personal Journey
Speaker 1 discusses the concept of transition, emphasizing it as a process of moving between different states
The speaker introduces the combination of Amanita and Coco Sita as a unique and powerful medicine
The speaker reflects on the pain and struggle associated with the transition process
The speaker expresses a desire to help others have similar transformative experiences
Exploring Art and Future Plans
The conversation shifts to the importance of making art with Anne Sophie
The speaker contemplates the timing of returning to the UK and the significance of festival season
The speaker emphasizes the need to follow where the plants guide them
Cultural and Historical Context
Speaker 1 delves into the historical context of traditional medicine and the importance of reciprocity
The speaker highlights the erasure of marginalized groups from historical records
The conversation touches on the impact of consumer culture on human rhythms
Childhood Trauma and Self-Sabotage
Speaker 1 shares personal experiences of childhood trauma and the development of self-sabotaging patterns
The speaker describes the process of repressing memories and the impact of gaslighting
Spiritual Awakening and Transition
Speaker 1 recounts their childhood experiences of dressing up as Jesus
The speaker describes the repression of their true self and the impact of societal and religious expectations
The Role of the Shaman and Cultural Initiation
Speaker 1 discusses the concept of the shaman and the importance of initiation
The speaker acknowledges the lack of traditional initiation rituals in modern culture
Healing and Transformation
Speaker 1 shares personal experiences of trauma and the transformative power of plant medicine
The speaker describes the process of being broken open and the importance of recognizing the signs
The Power of Community and Collective Healing
Speaker 1 discusses the importance of community and working together to heal and transform
The speaker emphasizes the need to turn the lights on and remember the interconnectedness of all beings
The Journey of Self-Discovery and Healing
Speaker 1 reflects on their journey of self-discovery and the importance of recognizing the signs
The speaker shares personal experiences of trauma and the transformative power of plant medicine
The Role of the Shaman in Modern Society
Speaker 1 discusses the role of the shaman in modern society and the importance of recognizing the signs
The speaker acknowledges the need to seek personal initiation and work with subtle energies
Relevant excerpt about the methology and PhD path: It's not a self healing, it's a transition methodology. It's for making the transitions from one world to the next, whether it's life and death, Gender Spectrum, exploration, sexual orientation, leaving your religion and we're beginning the journey of consciousness exploration. I'm here to help you switch around, play around, not switch from one to the next, but rise above the concept of all of it transcending and including though not leaving it behind, not denying anything, shining lights on all parts of it, and bringing illumination to everything, that's the only way we transition, effectively, safely, truly, is If everyone comes along and if everything is illuminated, this is the combination. This is the combination Amanita and Coco Sita. This is the medicine concoction, the combination of the two of them. I need to talk to ash about this. It's like the most unique, beautiful feeling I've ever felt in my whole life. I feel that mycelial tendrils of emanates, of wrapping themselves through my capillaries, entwining themselves with my capillaries, interweaving with my DNA, cacasita opens my heart, the vasodilator, slowing the blood flow, opening me to myself, opening me to the world, opening me to The realms. I can see them right now I see the alchemical diagram the world cut open like my chest cavity, exposed to the elements as I am crucified on the cactus, willingly, happily with a smile, letting the crows eat my entrails, because it's all part of the cycle, not because it's gruesome or morbid, but because it's beautiful, because one thing dying fuels the next.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, and that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. It hurts like shit, and it's hard as hell, we'll cry and scream, drag our feet the whole way down, but once we get there and we're broken open and we're truly humbled and surrender, we see that it was all worth it, all the pain, all the suffering and the beauty on the other side is overwhelming, and the peace is beyond all comparison, and the love is everlasting. I've had these moments with the plants and the medicine where they really feel their calling, and then I doubt myself, and I think I'm not good enough yet, and I think I'm not pure enough yet, until I sit and get quiet with the music and the medicine, I can help people have these experiences. I don't want to just talk about it anymore. I want to show them. So I have to follow this calling. And it feels scary, but maybe there's a reason that rich isn't supporting me. We have to build it ourselves. And as Lxo was saying, I think there's something to this. I think there's maybe the maybe the next season is the time where we kind of hunker down on ourselves, and we gather the things that we need to to build our own offerings that we then bring back to build the village together.
I gotta make art with Anne Sophie. I don't want to miss that opportunity. So maybe Guatemala is not right now, I don't know. I don't know what it is, but I don't believe I'm opening myself to all positive possibilities. And I'll talk to Daniel about it too. Maybe I go back in the summer. I don't know. Festival season also feels like an important time to be around. But I don't know. I like winter in the UK too. But I have to. Follow where the plants take me. When I surrender to that, when I open to that, where would you have me go? What would you have me do? How may it be of service? Christine taught me a lot, and I want to teach other people too, and my own healing will never be done, but I do think I'm starting to reach a point of maturity now where I can offer unto others. I want to be of service. I want to share. I've still got some hoarding tendencies, but I want to be more generous, and I'm going to keep seeing the kids.
These are the medicines: Amanita wrapping, entangling her tendrils with my capillaries. Cacaosita, opening them to receive The blood flowing through my body, relaxing me, enhancing me, opening to all the subtle realms and the cosmology the whole family, earth, heaven, mineral, vegetable, the water that I can only feel in this material plane. There is no separation.
It's a transition methodology. Healing is part of that naturally, but sometimes it's about not healing, and sometimes it's about dying, and sometimes it's about letting go, and sometimes it's about cutting off relationships that need to go.
I'm here to help you transition. My name is Riordan o' Regan, and I will be your psycho pump for the evening, your shaman with an X. See, Shaman is a Siberian term that we've appropriated, like a lot of other things, but as one of my teachers says, It's not appropriating if you use it appropriately. That means giving credit to the people whose medicine This is. That means acknowledging the land and the people and all the medicines of the forest. That means showing up as our best selves. That means being part of an ecosystem, beings being nested within interwoven, entangled animals.
ADD Emergency
Take a breath.
It feels like an emergency, but it probably isn’t.
ADD makes it feel that way.
Everything feels urgent and like it’s all happening simultaneously. All I seem to do is talk about all the things I’m going to do while the undone things pile up sky-high around me.
But I can sit in ceremony, and I can write this blog. So why is the program the thing I want to put on pause? I think I’m wrong.
I do need to get certification, so I don’t know, maybe I’m not.
I just need to dig myself out of this mountain, even a little.
I just found out my cousin has cancer.
Some people have real problems, they told me at the hospital.
But I had a pelvis broken in five places then, so it was gaslighting. And I am making leaps and bounds in personal healing many seemingly more functional people could only dream of. I know I am; I’m changing internally. But maybe the outside hasn’t caught up yet, because two people today basically told me I was overwhelming them.
On 7 Tijax, the thing that goes is voice noting people when I pop out of the astral.
Take the advice I give to other people: don’t share anything received from the other realms for at least two days.
Wait. Breathe.
Get something done.
I need more help with my ADD.
The healing is the practice
…and it integrates in layers.
The past two weeks have been massive for healing. I have had one of my biggest breakthroughs since the injury, slow-unfolding over the recent period but always, I suppose, working slowly in the background.
Like that, right now, Spotify shuffle plays an Odeza song I’ve never heard: “This version of you / simply becomes real. You’re right here with this version of you / to see things as they really are.”
That’s how it works. Slowly, almost imperceptively at times, you’re changing, becoming something new.
Some parts of myself that have been exiled for too long are coming home. For real this time. Not just walking up to the door and peering in the window, which I now realize is what they have been doing in the past—but actually coming in, cuddling up with a cozy blanket and a cup of tea. and being gnown, that’s known with a g. Felt. Loved.
I guess this is integration.
It started on Friday, and on Sunday night, I was self-healing in the dreamspace. I lucid dreamed with full awareness and partial control for the first time maybe ever, certainly since childhood, I think I used to know how to do this and forgot. In the dream I was healing with my parts, playing with them and acting in their plays, helping them perform them on the stage and taking their direction.
They needed that so badly.
It was a large cross-section of my unseen/unheard children, the ones who just needed attention, and once I had truly given it them, as Jess would say, in the astral, that was all they needed; I woke up urgently and was called to my mat and cacao cup after writing everything I could recall down in my journal, like a good Jungian—I remember my Robert Johnson—and wow. Just wow. The adult parts they were attached to all came home. I thanked the kids and their adult counterparts, the medicines and the guides, the whole universe and astral team, everyone for playing their parts and keeping us safe, and just like that…. they integrated. I don’t even know if I can explain it. They just… drifted in, and were a part of me again. It was the part from Austin that was trying to come out during the MDMA journeys, the one who kept secrets and crashed down to Earth when the journey ended and nothing was resolved, the suicidal battered housewife; the kid who used to hobble themselves to get attention, who stayed on crutches too long because they thought it got them sympathy and one day realized everyone was making fun of them; the teenage me who drank to remember; the one who wanted to be an artist and poly but chose Stephen for security; the parts that tried to come out when the conscious mind shut down.
They came home. It was so beautiful I might cry again.
And now I feel like I’m getting sick and might have to go to bed at 7pm again. It’s okay. It was worth it. It also gave me clarity on my path, so strong I just knew it, like when I knew I had to go to California and didn’t know why, but followed the feeling. I recorded it so that I could look back on that moment and know how sure I was.
We may not always listen, but we always know, and can trust that. After a lifetime of not trusting my own intuition, I can’t describe how incredible that is.
The Current Practice
The practice is revealing itself in its forking paths. The current iteration could become a formal research study, one that would easily pass muster with ethics:
Music: Make or pick your playlist with songs that will trigger the issue you want to work on.
Cacao: To open the heart to the parts of self, others, and the Universe. For the full effect, occasional high doses should be worked up to (40-100g, which is still safe; diarrhea is the biggest safety risk for those without heart conditions).
Amanita muscaria: To heal, mitigate, and protect from the pain; for courage; to break you open gently. So far my only experience has been with a microdose tincture, 1-10 or so drops but usually 1-3; I will report back on the utility and frequency of higher-dose experiences once I have undergone them.
(Both Amanita and cacao in the same experience should be engaged with regularly, but also approached separately at given times.)
Astrological/archetypal foundation: Maya calendar energy of the day and personal cross/relationship interaction; Western astrology; depth psychology; dream work.
Divination: Tarot or oracle deck with contextual interpretation (Jodorowsky’s Tarot book, Kim Krans’ Archetypes deck, Jung and Oracle/Tarot cards, animal cards and Indigenous framework, etc
Self-healing modality: IFS or CI to walk the parts of self through the process safely while maintaining self-energy
Journaling: Some form of automatic creative capturing—a handwritten journal feels important to do sometimes, but only if it works for the person. It could include voice memos, videos, drawing, painting, dancing, music, performance, or any form of somatic art. As long as it can be done automatically, as undirected by the thinking mind as possible.
My offering to the community, which I feel I want to include in the research but maybe I only talk about from a distance, would also involve psychedelic work, helping queer and Trans people especially but anyone with religious or other trauma, heal and reconcile with their identities through titration: “mini-dose” experiences more frequently within a larger framework that resembles this one and includes a framework like kundalini or kung fu and working 1:1 with a practitioner (which could eventually include me).
There was a ceremony I wanted to host in California and was building with some colleagues before I broke my pelvis, which I felt at the time I wasn’t qualified to offer yet, and wasn’t. I had to be initiated first. Now I feel there is something to this and that perhaps I should create this as an offering or interweave it into the practice: a ceremony where you marry yourself, sealed with a cup of cacao. And the phrase that had dropped in on Friday—carry myself, carry ourselves, carry each other—which had felt like it was missing something now became complete.
Marry myself, carry ourselves, carry each other.
Jodorowsky n me / the personal is universal
Since my dark night of the soul a few days ago, I was directed by Kit to the traditional Tarot deck, paired with the book xe suggested I order from the shop on Broadway Market, “The Way of the Tarot: The Spiritual Guide in the Cards.” Yesterday it helped inspire one of the most profound processes I’ve ever had with my parts of self, and I was so proud at how I walked myself through it. The integration is still unfolding, but it was a before-and-after moment, which involved going to the Tower Hamlets Cemetary Park to speak with Kit and my dead uncle.
Today, the reading I did for myself is taking me from the personal through the universal, as the visions for the queer/trans ecstatic dance and urban ecofarm and live/art/work space are also beginning to take form. But it’s also confirmation that part of the process/practice I’m evolving has to be this calculation of one’s own energy with the energy that is present - of the day in the Maya calendar - of the planets in Western astrology - of the corresponding archetypes - of the Wheel of the Year in Celtic paganism. This sounds like a lot but it isn’t, they’re all different filters and I am envisioning a wheel or 3D model or chart or app or something where you can quickly plug some dates in and align all of them. It’s the kind of thing Mark Elmy is into and I am thinking this may be a project for when I go to Guatemala.
Which may be happening next year, along with participation in DMTx… because I think some part of me won’t fully be healed from the Marc/divorce/codependency experience until I go fully into that space from a safe 3D container. And I really trust Daniel and his crew.
So I drew from the deck this morning after wondering why, on 3 I’x, the day that in the Maya calendar is all about going inward, all I was doing was reaching out to my networks and planning collaborations, listening to This Jungian Life and checking notifications, and I got the intuitive nudge to calculate my relationship energy with 3 I’x, and combined with 13 Kan it makes 3 Kawok: the inner birthing process. And I laughed and cried, because I had seen myself going into a shame spiral when I thought I was “doing 3 I’x wrong,” and realized that this in itself was a metaphor for the trauma healing process: We create stories of shame when we get the context wrong. Understanding the broader narrative and how our personal energy interacts with the environment and conditions that are present helps us see what really happened. Then we can tell the story the way it really goes and understand each other and ourselves.
And a song started coming in that interwove with a Hollow Bone Show riff: carry myself, carry ourselves, carry each other.
Walk each other home.
So Kit nudged me to draw cards for the current cycle after this realization, and I got:
Past: 4 of Wands / Future: 5 of Pentacles / Present: Queen of Swords in reverse
The interpretation was so clearly Hermetic, as within/so without, that I kept laughing out loud. Page 389, on Fours and the 4 of Wands (the 4 is also my Enneagram number, I just realized… the artistic navel-gazer and romantic), it’s all about the androgyne and the quest, the wandering queer bard who is charging forth into new territory but bringing the old ways with them. I mean, come on, it’s like I made it up… but I guess that’s the point, we are the creator of our destiny, right?
The Hollow Bone Show, 3 Ix Iteration / LISTEN
The conversation delves into the loss of traditional cultural frameworks and rituals in the Anglosphere, emphasizing the disconnect from nature and the body. It explores the concept of gaslighting, where individuals are trained to ignore their bodily signals, often due to intergenerational trauma. The discussion highlights the intergenerational transmission of trauma and the need for transformation through new spells or rituals. Personal anecdotes illustrate the struggle with identity and the suppression of true selves. The conversation concludes with a call to remember and reconnect with ancestral knowledge, emphasizing the importance of community, reciprocity, and self-discovery.
Carry myself, carry ourselves, carry each other / LISTEN
The conversation explores the psychological and emotional impact of unmet needs and the coping mechanisms people develop, such as people-pleasing or substance abuse. It highlights the "too much, not enough" syndrome, where individuals either internalize or externalize their shame, leading to either self-sacrifice or aggression. The discussion emphasizes the importance of community and mutual support, advocating for safe spaces like the queer trans dance co-op to foster acceptance and nourishment. It also touches on the historical context of food as resistance and the cultural disconnect from body signals, urging a return to mindful eating and self-care.
Transcript:
When you go to show them something you made, instead of being celebrated like a kid should be, you get a blank face. In some ways, that's the worst kind of thing. In some ways, that's worse than getting berated. It's being erased, and it creates the not enough kid complex, or then for the rest of your life, trying really hard to be nice or trying to get attention in ways that don't serve you or anybody else, people pleasing, sacrificing your needs to try to get yourself seen, erasing everything. Then there are the kids who get told that they're bad and wrong and stupid, and they push their shame out on everyone else. They get violent, they get aggressive.
They become the psychopaths, while the other ones turn it inward, too much, not enough kids always needing more of something. What's a too much? Not enough kid to do when the only ones who understand your experience are too traumatized from living it to walk with you through it, to talk to you about it, when the ones and the only ones who will understand and the only ones who could really hold you in that pain are too torn Apart from having gone through it to carry you. We have to be there for each other, carry ourselves, carry each other. Help ourselves get through. We have to be there for each other. Carry yourself, carry yourself, carry yourselves. Carry each other. Carry us through. Walk us through. Give us, give us that which we are seeking. More of, always, too much, not enough of something. Carry ourselves. Carry each other. Carry carry myself. Carry ourselves, carry each other, carry myself, carry myself down to the sea. Carry ourselves down to the sea. Go alone together into the boat between what's a too much, not enough kid to do when the only people who will understand your experience are so traumatized from living it that they can't walk with you through it. Where do you go? What do you do? Who do you turn to? You have to carry yourself through. Carry myself. Carry ourselves, carry each other. Down to the sea and drink it up. It's good for you. When I quit drinking the time, all the times I was trying not to drink, the most vulnerable parts of my whole experience were Friday happy hour. If I could make it through that, then I would make it through the weekend. So I think the dance needs to be on Fridays, and it needs to be in a space where we can be open from five to receive all those people who are just trying to survive, we turn to more and more substances because we don't feel our self worth within, because it never seems to be enough to fill our cup, to fill our vessel, to fill our prenda. And so we make ourselves an offering to anyone who will pay attention to us.
And so we make ourselves an offering to those who don't deserve us, and so we make ourselves an offering. Take advantage of us. We turn ourselves over over and over. Over and over, we give ourselves away.
Anyone else show us the time of day to those who don't deserve us. And Steven said, Jeff took something that didn't belong to Him and broke it. He was referring to us, but that kind of makes me his property. I'm my own being, but he did take something that didn't belong to him, my dignity, but I'm the one who gave it to him, dressed myself up on a plate and presented it to him like a turkey on Thanksgiving, we sacrifice ourselves because we don't think it's worth living.
We sacrifice ourselves because we don't think Life's worth living from this place we grew up in. I broke my sacrum, my sacrum, and now I'm burning it, because I've become so desensitized that my spine still doesn't have the right sensation. Maybe I shouldn't say right. It takes a lot more. It takes a lot more for us to feel it. So we keep going past the point when we should and so we keep going even when it hurts us. And so we keep going even when our bodies say stop. And so we keep going even when we feel a no, because we learned that it's a yes, because we learned that's what a yes feels like.
We have to rewire. We have to go deeper. Carry myself, carry ourselves, carry each other. Be our own in our father and mother, the ones we never known, carry myself, carry ourselves, carry each other. All this not enoughness has to be worth something.
All this worthlessness is worth something if we can turn it into inspiration, if we can turn it into holding so it is my mission to create the queer trans dance in our Co Op, live work farming space, because we need a place where we can be seen, because we need a place where we can bring our offering to each other. Because we need a place where there will always be someone who eventually shows up to listen, because we need a place where we are always welcome. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between being hungry, between actually being hungry and hungering for something else.
When your body doesn't get enough love, it gets confused and about what it's really full of. When someone's giving you too much or not enough of something, you're always trying to fill yourself up, and it can be hard to tell the difference between what when. It can be hard to tell the difference between when you really need something and when you're just trying to make up for a lifetime of lacking or getting too much of the wrong kind of attention, you got to retrain your nervous system and not pay attention to. But give the gift of presence to yourself and everyone else. Carry each other, carry myself,
carry each other down to the sea and drink it up. Wash ourselves clean of all the stories and shaming heaped upon us from the culture and our families, carrying myself, carry ourselves, carry each other, down to the dance, down to the farm, down at the sea, down to the place where we can be who we really were born to be. And this is why food education can be such a valuable tool and a portal to awakening, because we all need nourishing. It's one of the most basic ways we get our needs met, and yet none of us learned how to do it properly. In the Anglosphere, in Europe, we need a little help. We need a little holding, because the culture of consumption relies on disconnecting you from your body's signals relies on you putting things in when you don't need them, and depriving yourselves of other things when you do. I was thinking that I'm a typical American because I really like peanut butter. But peanuts aren't American. They're from Africa. The only reason we even know what a peanut was to begin with is because George Washington Carver's ancestors were brought against their will to a land they were never meant to be in.
And they wanted to keep their legacy alive, and they needed to remember who they were and who they'd been. So they smuggled seeds across the ocean in their hair and their body cavities, and they brought their plants with them. Our companion species are kindred spirits that we all used to remember how to commune with and they planted them in the new soil. And it was an act of quiet resistance. The plants are allies since the dawn of existence, sprouting up to support them as everything else that they knew was stripped away, taken from them as they were murdered and raped and assaulted, the plants kept growing out in the garden, and they could take them into their bodies, and remember, This is how food is a form of resistance.
Henry Kissinger said, control the population by controlling the food system. He was right, and that's what humans have been doing since the dawn of civilization. Take the Cretans every time the island got invaded, it would start with cutting up with burning the crops, burning their fields, so that people got resilient. They got crafty, and they started preserving, pickling, fermenting, canning drying. That's why the national dish of the island is dried bread reconstituted with olive oil and tomatoes and lemon juice, because they got so used to being invaded that they just kept their stockpiles piled high so they could keep themselves satiated every time they had to start Over and over and over again.
Ireland, my poor homeland, we're not that good at being resilient. Well, maybe we are, but we didn't learn the proper preservation. We didn't. We perished in the potato famine because we were so reliant on one staple.
We didn't have enough to get us through the winter, so we were extra vulnerable. So we turned to drink. We turned to those empty calories. We. Yeah, the Irish love their baked goods and the whiskey because we all need to fill ourselves with something. That doesn't mean the people are to be shamed or the substances are to be blamed. It's the system that created the conditions where they got too much or not enough of something, and they felt it was their fault, so they turned it inward, and it becomes shame that most toxic of emotions creeps into the core of your bones and tells you that it's not even worth being alive anymore.
My whole life, I've felt myself torn in two different directions, the part that desperately needs to be seen by everyone and the part that wants to disappear completely. Binging and purging, not just with food, but people, relationships, identities, activities and I’m always pushing past when I know I should be finished, or not even beginning in the first place, always keeping in the very back of my mind the ultimate exit stage right.
But now I've done enough work, and I've gotten enough distance, and I've seen enough of the parts of me that need witnessing, that I know I'd never do that again. I didn't know. I'd never really tried to do that again, that even when the cycles come back around and around, that even when I do another revolution around the same pattern, I at least now have a solution, and I have a tool, and I can be the observer and I can step back from it. So I want to be there for others too, and show them what I've learned, to try to get on top of it, because we really all just need witnessing. Someone to tell us that it really happened, you're not crazy, someone to hold us while we cry. Someone to say, It's okay to be alive. Someone to say, you deserve to be alive. Someone to say, I need you to be alive. Carry myself, carry ourselves, carry each other, build the place where we can be together, so we can go alone together into the great unknown. Over and over.
I say I like self reflection, but the ego is really resistant to this turn inward. All I've done all morning is push it out. I mean, that is part of it. And it is sad season. Mercury's retrograding. And I think Mercury is in Sagittarius now. And, yeah, part of it is sharing the message, and part of it is getting these things out that are part of the practice and part of what I'm building. So it's all needed, but I just get to feel today there is an invitation to go inward, and all I want to do is go out. Too much, not enough kids wanting to be seen, because it's a reaction to shame. How can I work with this and sit with the parts that need seeing and give them validation that's self generating without trying to push it out onto everyone else or cover it up with something?
The above came through on Friday. I then ran hard for the entire weekend: volunteering for two dances, one of which ended with a crew member knocking over a giant speaker and almost crushing the crowd but instead crushing his toe. A crew member with whom I recently partnered on building a network of ecstatic dance (ED) Djs and facilitators and who was going to help me set up a birthday ED that could also be a preview/test run for the queer/trans dance I am starting, which will be part of praxis work and the thesis itself. I had gotten the energetic nudge that maybe this was the kid whose birthday party nobody was ever able to attend just wanting attention, and that maybe I shouldn’t be relying on Bill for my party or getting him involved with the Q/T dance.
I’m not saying I somehow made the shelving fall on him with my mind. I’m just saying, we 13 Kan have to be careful about what we’re putting out there.
And I’m not saying this relationship is causal either, but after I spent Saturday in a trans masc drag workshop and festival, the AI is identifying me as Riordan and male.
Clarity about the path
Riordan Regan discussed his PhD on self-healing and creative expression, involving the use of ayahuasca, cacao, and Amanita muscaria. He plans to pause his program for six months, traveling to Guatemala, Mexico, and Colorado for training and certification in compassionate inquiry and psychedelic facilitation. This journey aims to deepen his ritual grounding and build a foundation for his methodology. Regan also intends to establish a cacao collective and explore artist residencies, emphasizing the importance of connecting with the drag community and maintaining ties in the UK. He seeks support and accountability for his ambitious plans.
Action Items
Pause current program and travel to Guatemala to work with calendar teacher and cacao people.
Meet with teacher in Arizona to connect with Amanita mushrooms.
Attend DMT-X training and psychedelic facilitator training in Colorado.
Obtain compassionate inquiry certification.
Renew passport while in the US.
Connect with people in the UK regarding Amanita mushrooms.
Bring Anthi in to work on the drawing side of things.
Continue building dance and performance work in London.
Explore potential artist residencies by connecting with the host of the grant writing workshop.
Outline
Self-Healing Methodology and PhD Focus
Riordan Regan explains the focus of his PhD, which involves devising a self-healing methodology that includes working with ayahuasca, cacao, and Amanita muscaria.
He mentions the legal gray area of these substances but believes they could gain ethical approval.
The methodology includes self-inquiry techniques like compassionate inquiry or IFS, and creative expressions like writing, drawing, dancing, and playing music.
The methodology is aimed at queer and trans people, but it could benefit anyone with trauma.
Travel Plans and Program Pause
Riordan Regan discusses his plan to pause his program for a few months in late winter or early spring to travel to Guatemala, work with a calendar teacher, and engage with cacao.
He hopes to meet another teacher in Mexico and then attend a DMTx program and psychedelic facilitator training in Colorado. This training would help him obtain the certification needed for compassionate inquiry, which he has wanted for two years.
He feels this is a clear path, similar to his intuition about moving to California.
Grounding and Ritual Work
Riordan Regan mentions that his wrist started hurting, which he interprets as a sign that he needs stronger ritual grounding before creating his methodology.
He plans to work with Amanita and cacao to deepen his grounding.
He needs to meet with a teacher in Arizona and connect with people in the UK via Amanita.
He also plans to work with others on artistic projects and bring Anthi in for drawing.
Building Community and Future Plans
Riordan Regan expresses a desire to build a cacao collective in the UK and possibly work with the host of his ecstatic dance for sponsorship.
He acknowledges the need to leave the UK for a bit due to visa issues but sees an opportunity to connect with the drag community and build dance in London.
He feels committed to the program and believes he needs foundational training before starting his work.
He plans to be back in the Americas for about two months next year.
Intuitive Hits and Connections
Riordan Regan shares an intuitive hit to connect with someone from a grant writing workshop about potential artist residencies.
He notes that all the cacao people in his life are Turkish, and he recently got his hair cut at a Turkish barber, which felt significant.
He feels rejuvenated and committed to the program, despite the challenges.
He appreciates the support and accountability from others in his journey.
Listen / Transcript:
Okay, so big stuff coming through today. Major Major stuff, major major stuff kit has been participating. Other ancestors have been participating. I just got, like, total clarity on what my whole PhD thing is, and I don't know if I should add this to the document that I sent to everyone. Still, nobody's looked at it, but I can just tell it to you. I mean, so it's I'm creating a self I'm devising a self healing methodology. I'm devising a methodology for self healing and creative expression that involves working with pydos cacao, emanate to muscaria. Both of these things are technically legal because mate is unregulated. It's kind of a gray area, but it could be something that I think could get ethical approval. But anyways, it doesn't matter. Those are the medicines, and that has to be part of it. So whatever that means, whether I have to go to another country or whatever, and so it involves working with those medicines and self inquiry. So for me, that would be compassionate inquiry or ifs and then automatic creative expression, so writing, drawing, dancing or playing music aimed at queer and trans people more specifically, but could be for also people with religious trauma. I mean, I think anyone with drama could benefit from it, but so that's what it is. It's both self healing and like an artistic devising approach. It is going to be part of the way I support myself materially in the world. I do need to pause my program, but I think early next year, I think this is going to happen. I'm just like, I got a huge download, and like everyone in the astral was like, yes, yes. So I think I'm supposed to pause the program for just a few months in like late, late winter, early spring, and go to Guatemala. Work with my calendar teacher there, work with cacao people there. Maybe be there for a month or two. I'm meeting up with another teacher as well. I think, I hope, I might end up in Mexico and then going to Colorado to do okay, this might be more like a six month pause. I don't know. We'll see going to Colorado to be part of this dmtx training that's really fucking wild. I'll send you an article I wrote about them, and also doing their psychedelic facilitator training while I'm there. And then that would give me the certification I need to get this compassionate inquiry certification that I've wanted to get for like two years, but you need, like, a prerequisite. So then that would give me the foundation that I could start offering sessions to people. I would then have some, I don't know, way of making a living that supports me. I feel like then and and I would so I'd have the foundation also for the program. Like I don't feel like I have the foundation for my methodology for the PhD yet. So, and this just is feeling super clear. This feels like California when I knew I was supposed to go there. I think this is the way it's supposed to happen. And I'm recording this message to you to hold me accountable, because I tend to second guess this stuff, and in this moment, I'm feeling like this is what needs to happen, and I don't want to, because I don't want to go back to America, but I'm not going to stay. I'm just going to visit. Might not even go to Seattle. We'll see. I do need to renew my passport, so maybe I'll do that while I'm there. Anyways, yeah, so, and then I'm supposed to meet with my teacher in Arizona while I'm over there as well. So this will give me, and this is what, kit shared. Oh, my wrist just started hurting. That's interesting. Kit shared, or I feel like kit is not sharing. They're now clarifying. Sorry, kit is supporting my intuition that I need a stronger ritual grounding before I'm ready to create a methodology and start offering something so you know. Z had palo, Lukumi. I've got a lot of different stuff, but I need to ground deeper into something. And so that is going to be this Amanita work and the cacao work. So I need to go to Guatemala to do that. I need to meet with ash in Arizona to connect with Amanita. I have people here in Europe, in the UK, that I need to connect on via Amanita, and then I feel like I'm supposed to work with you more on artistic stuff, and I'm supposed to work with I'm supposed to bring Anthi in after all that, to get into the drawing side of things more. But I'm really and throughout all of it theater, and I made a bunch. So I spent the weekend connecting with people in the drag community. I went to a drag king festival. So I'm also supposed to keep building dance and stuff here in London, and so I don't want to be gone too long from the UK. But while I don't have my visa, I need to leave for a little bit anyways, and so I'm seeing that as an opportunity and an invitation, because I don't think I would go and do this stuff if I had just gotten the visa. So, um, but I do feel like it's gonna happen. And I think, yeah, I also got a download about maybe I'm supposed to build a cacao collective over here. I also might be able to work with the guy who hosts my ecstatic dance on maybe them sponsoring me for work. So that's a lot of information, I realize, but your add, I think you'll be able to track my scattered brain. Yeah. So I don't know, I'm happy to hop on another call with you, maybe, if it's helpful to talk through things, otherwise we can just exchange messages. So I don't think I don't want to be gone from the UK for too long, because building stuff here is really important to you, but I think I would be maybe back in the Americas for like two months next year. Oh, I hate that. I hate that so much that it must be true. You know what? I mean? Yeah, maybe it'd be helpful to have a call, though, so there's no urgency, but yeah, and thank you for your support and holding, because it's definitely all been part of it, and I'm absolutely supposed to be part of trans art. Also the person who hosted the grant writing workshop yesterday, I felt a really strong, intuitive hit to connect with them about potential artist residencies. I don't know how to pronounce their name. They're Turkish, which is interesting, because all the cacao people in my life are Turkish as well. And I just got my hair cut at a Turkish barber the other day, and that felt important for some reason. I'm really excited and I'm really rejuvenated, and I'm actually feeling even more committed to the program. I just know that I'm not able to really begin my work until I do this foundational training, and that feels super clear.
Egypt + Ireland: Going analog
I really needed a reset.
I spent the past few weeks traveling in Egypt and Ireland, and at first, I intended to publish the next installment of my music story, perhaps some travelogues talking about my experience, or at least an Instagram post.
I ended up publishing absolutely nothing, and it was everything I required to get back on track.
I have increasingly felt captive to the tyranny of words, of publishing, of the always-on demands of the digital world. Increasingly, I feel like I can only hear myself think or properly communicate when I sit with a journal and pen, or speak to someone, or record a rambling rap on a voice memo to no one, since I am fairly certain nobody is listening to what I am publishing here. I needed to go analog, to opt out for a while again, like I did when I first went nomad in 2019. That was the last time I was in Egypt, and the first time I found myself. When somehow, I organized most of the same private permissions on my own with a spiritual tour guide that I had just paid a lot of money to a friend to organize as part of the group trip I found myself on in 2024. When I fulfilled a childhood dream and, in some ways, was at a peak point of self-actualization.
I just didn’t realize it at the time. I was caught up in my own stories of unworthiness, feeling I didn’t measure up because nobody was seeing me in the ways I wanted to be.
Now I know that a major part of the problem was that I didn’t know who I was yet, still in denial about being trans, still in the process of becoming someone other than Holly Regan.
Now I have reclaimed myself as Riordan, fully living as queer, poly, and trans; beginning this PhD program and tearing down everything I spent the past five years building, picking through the scraps to see what comes along with me, and what goes. I came out of my morning practice all fired up about creating, inspired to start writing, and then wasted an hour troubleshooting because I broke my Instagram and newsletter connection trying to update my name.
I suppose these things happen.
I don’t know what to say about Egypt and Ireland, exactly, but I captured it in my handwriting and voice memos. Increasingly I have felt bound and oppressed by the tyranny of words.
I don’t want to write anymore, I want to speak, dance, move, perform.
Writing, after all, was developed when humans started forgetting. When we started losing the ability to communicate with each other and the subtle realms in the languages beyond words, and we had to write things down because we could no longer remember.
Words help us preserve our knowledge and lineage, but they also fix in place something that was never meant to be static. The oral tradition is what defined human history from the beginning, and it was improv: flowing like the wind or the river, always changing, a state of constant riffing. When we write things down, we make them concrete; we make them only one way when their nature is change; we create a sanctioned version of a story that used to never be the same between tellings and speakers. This is the tyranny of writing, and what McKenna means when he says language creates reality. Those who tell the stories that get written down create histories that may have nothing to do with the way things actually went down.
So, I will post some selected journal entries from my time away, because there were some major realizations and I want to remember them, but I don’t want to rely on writing and documentation to remember what happened to me, and I no longer need to share everything. In fact, I came out of this journey with immense compassion for the child self that needed to capture my experience in as many formats as possible because maybe then I would remember what really happened this time. Maybe then I wouldn’t lose everything to what my mom used to disturbingly joke was called “trauma brain,” where our true experience, memories and feelings fall out through our heads as it is happening, like a sieve. Seeing this, I no longer felt the need to do it; in fact, I have found a new degree of freedom in feeling that it truly doesn’t matter if I ever publish anything again. I have had experiences of really witnessing both my child self and other people whose paths have crossed mine, and we have held each other and smiled and cried and affirmed each other’s right to be alive, and that is all that really matters.
Suffice it to say that something really major happened over the past few weeks that is all the more powerful for being super subtle. After Egypt, I went to stay with my dear friend Aisling (Ash) in Ireland, where she lives in a haunted house called Rose Cottage that she inherited from her abusive ex-boyfriend, Stephen, on the border between counties Waterford and Cork, where my family is from. I integrated my experiences in the Great Pyramid, which showed me that I didn’t need to tell everybody everything all the time and highlighted the frailty of our human need to document everything, so desperate are we to try and explain, for sensemaking in a world where nothing is certain. We honored the day of triple ancestors, 13 Tijax on the last day of the Kame trecena before heading into Kawok, the rebirthing, all that death and transformation, with high-dose cacao and a fire on the beach in the thick fog to release ourselves from the ties that have bound us to the past. And we had a trust walk in total darkness on astronomical Samhain through the forest, keeping the sound of the water at our side to guide us, seeing and feeling and communing with the fae, the spirits, in ways I had never experienced yet completely related to the feeling I would get in California when I sat with my cacao under the moon, or surrounded by the silent Saturnian mountains in the Sacred Valley of Peru, where everything was animated with vital force.
We learned that this knowledge is more valuable than the things everyone was trying so obsessively to measure and record at the pyramids; we remembered that we could trust our bodies and follow the feelings. We knew that we didn’t quite know what was happening, but it was working. We were changing. We felt timelines rearranging, ancestral karmas behind us dissolving and quantum possibilities around us unfolding.
However it was happening, we were becoming grown-ups.
But the revelations are the easy part. Now we have to make it happen.
I have also realized a new level of what it means that “everything is the practice” and part of the PhD project. The queer and trans ecstatic dance my friends and I are building; the eco-village that might start as an artist’s co-op and city farm; perhaps even plant-based food and beverage pairing events; these community involvement projects are increasingly where my heart is, and the space we create will include artist’s and performance space, where we can break free from the tyranny of fixed things and just be ourselves, ever-changing.
Help me hold it loosely and allow the unfolding, putting in just enough scaffolding to bring things to materiality.
Fear and Loathing at the London Stansted Airport
Summary:
- Riordan Regan begins by humorously commenting on the complexity of their shoelaces and the time it takes to tie them, reflecting on their unique situation. - They mention their upcoming journey to Saqqara, Egypt, to explore ancient secrets and the philosophical nature of wave functions and hyper-dimensional objects. - Riordan expresses their frustration with the lengthy airport security process, feeling self-conscious about their actions and questioning what "normal" really means. - They delve into their internal monologue about their state of mind, describing it as a "reality tunnel" and questioning how others perceive them.
Exploring Identity and Reality
- Riordan discusses their feelings of normalcy and alignment when in their current state, contrasting it with their usual restless mind. - They list various cities they have visited, including Thessaloniki, Pisa, Heracle, Cork, Copenhagen, and Dublin, expressing a desire to visit Istanbul and Corfu. - Riordan reflects on the freedom of travel and the affordability of flights, despite not having a visa for some destinations. - They express a strong desire to spend more time in Italy, feeling a pull towards the country and wanting to make the trip soon.
Critique of Airport Experience
- Riordan criticizes the dehumanizing nature of airport travel, describing it as demoralizing and unnecessary. - They share their frustration with the security process, questioning the necessity of removing shoes and scanning bodies. - Riordan reflects on the loss of freedom and time due to arbitrary security measures, expressing their disdain for the system. - They mention the fear and loathing that lurks beneath the surface, acknowledging the need to maintain a calm and collected demeanor.
Journalism as a Tool
- Riordan discusses their identity as a journalist and the tools and experiences it has provided them. - They reflect on the different personas they adopt in various settings, comparing journalism to a suit that they wear. - Riordan expresses their resentment towards the profession but acknowledges its value in providing them with skills and experiences. - They emphasize the importance of viewing different aspects of life as tools in a toolbox, rather than defining their identity by them.
Embracing Liminal Space
- Riordan talks about the fun and freedom of being in a liminal space, away from borders and deadlines. - They express a desire to stay in this state, enjoying the lack of constraints and the ability to explore their thoughts. - Riordan acknowledges the need to return to reality but wishes they could maintain this sense of freedom. - They conclude by mentioning the need to debrief and plug in their phone, ending the monologue on a reflective note.
Action Items:
Plug in phone and debrief. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)
Make travel plans to visit Istanbul, Corfu, and other destinations in Europe. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)
Consider embracing the journalist identity as a tool in the toolbox, rather than denying it. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)
Transcript:
Hello. Who's here? It's the ghost of Hunter. Fear and loathing at the London Stansted Airport.
I'm wondering if anyone can tell how abnormally long it's taking me to get my shoelaces tied. And granted, they are very complicated. I have two separate sets. I knew this was going to prove a challenge later on, but it's the only way to keep these boots that are too big from flopping all around when I walk through the desert for two hours in Saqqara to discover secrets locked away by the ancients and the place outside time and space where wave functions collapse and particles become things that flow, that are not billiard balls, but are tentacles, spheres, hyper dimensional objects At the end of the eschaton pyramids are really dodecahedrons. But so I'm sitting here after going through airport security, and it's taken me a really, really, really long time to get my shoelaces tied and my shoes on, and I'm starting to sweat because I don't know if anyone can tell that I'm not quite normal, but what is normal? I'm actually normal for me. I'm more normal in this state than in any other one, with a microdose of LSD. This is more real than reality, to the point where, in the eternity that it takes me to get the shoelaces released, snaked through the eye holes, widening the eye to let more light in, waving the head of the snake through the eye holes, like the snake that weaves its way around my arm, like the snake that weaves its way up and down my spine, like the 13 Kan that I am, conning myself, conning everyone
because they can't tell just how normal I am, because this is how I am now, and it's going through a reality tunnel in my head, wondering what happens if I show up in Ireland and I'm straight, and she's never seen me that way, and she's probably rarely even heard me that way, because I always tend to leave her messages when I'm a bit wavy. But it's not wavy. It's actually straight. It's actually focused. I actually feel staying this way. So what's straight? Divergent to what, I ask again.
This is the only time I feel normal. This is the only time I feel okay. This is the only time I feel like my head isn't going a million miles of minutes. Is the only time I feel like the unstoppable death force isn't trying to kill me.
This is the only time that I feel aligned, that I feel like myself, in liminal space, between timelines and time zones, looking at all the places that I've been on the board, Thessaloniki, there was another one, Pisa, Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Cork, Copenhagen, Dublin. I must go to Istanbul. It must happen soon. I want to go to Corfu. There's so many places on this board I haven't been yet. This is a good reminder that I'm not dead yet, and I gotta flex my muscles while I can. Hello. There's Berlin. These flights are cheap, and while I don't have a visa, I should be doing more of this now that I've figured out that I can actually travel pretty lightly. There's Athens, Helsinki, places I want to go back to, places I've never been, Barcelona, Lisbon. I wish I could get off the plane in Milan. I really want to spend more time in Italy. It's been calling everywhere. I need to make that happen soon.
Yeah, so I'm sitting here wondering what reality means, and I say fear and loathing, just because it's the slogan. The only thing I'm loathing is the commercial drone around me. Well, I will say I was loathing the dehumanizing nature of airport travel, because that shit never stops being tired. It's so it's so dehumanizing. It's so demoralizing. I can't believe that we make people go through this every time, and we just take it. We just take it. We take off our shoes, and we take all the shit out of our pockets, and we act like we are already criminals. We act like we're already in trouble. And they scan my body because something sets off their fucking machine. Who knows what it even was probably a. Crystal that I was carried in my pocket, because the places that light up are always the places where I've had them or where my phone has been.
What are we scanning? What are we cataloging? What are we bar coding? What are we becoming? Why can't we just move freely these arbitrary lines, how much time, how much life is lost, just trying to get from one fucking place to another, where we used to be able to move freely as we wanted to. It's insane. Okay, there it is. The Fear and Loathing is just below the surface, but I have to play it straight, and we have to play cool, and that's what we have to do, right? Smile, look nice, and it's funny. I find myself saying reflexively that I'm a journalist, and in the toilet, I found myself going down another reality tunnel where I said, Why am I denying this thing?
And I keep coming back to this again and again, and I resent it whenever I have to write something, but it's really given me so many tools and so much experience, and why am I denying this thing that I worked so hard to become? Just put it in the toolbox. It's not who you are. It's a tool in the toolbox. It's not who you are. Journalism is a tool in the toolbox. It's not who you are. It's a suit we put on, just like we put different ones on every time, when we go to the bar, when we go to the restaurant, when we go to this country, when we go to that place, we have to present in certain ways. It's fucking stupid, and I hate it, but I guess it's the dance we're doing, and it's kind of fun in it. It's all just the lens you look at it through. It's fun in it. It's fun innit. Just let it be fun innit. I mean, right now it's fun because I'm in liminal space.
The problem is that I don't want to go back to the place of borders and deadlines. I want to live in this place and I can't.
Transmuting fear and loathing at Istanbul International Airport
Updated Summary and Outline Using They/Them Pronouns:
Journey Through Istanbul Airport
- Riordan Regan describes their experience of wandering through Istanbul Airport, feeling a sense of liminal space and transforming fear and loathing into openness and wonder. - They reflect on the importance of not needing external validation for their experiences, emphasizing that their journey and witnessing the pyramids make them real for themself. - Riordan acknowledges their role as a shaman and sorcerer, highlighting their ability to transform challenges into opportunities, such as pursuing a PhD despite a broken pelvis. - They discuss the concept of bypassing the conscious mind and making others think their ideas are their own, drawing parallels to psycho magic and charm.
Exploring Personal Transformation and Healing
- Riordan Regan emphasizes the need for healing and the importance of making others think their ideas were their own to bypass the conscious mind. - They mention their desire to visit Gobekli Tepe and the idea that they are all possessed by their families, who put them in a trance without their realization. - Riordan explores the concept of being a vessel, containing multitudes and being a collection of everything that came before and surrounds them now. - They discuss the role of the shaman, sorcerer, healer, and artist, and the responsibility that comes with these roles in setting spells and breaking curses.
The Concept of Vessels and Queer and Trans Harassment
- Riordan Regan talks about the concept of vessels and how it makes people uncomfortable, especially queer and trans people, because it points to the idea that identities are merely containers. - They explain that every being is a unique collection of information and experience, created by a specific configuration of stars. - Riordan describes the idea of being "Star people," materialized from on high by a star configuration, and how this context shapes their unique experiences. - They reflect on the importance of experiencing transformation with all five senses to make it real and grounded, and how confession plays a role in this process.
Role of the Anthropologist Participant Observer
- Riordan Regan discusses their role as an anthropologist participant observer, studying cultures and civilizations to put things in their cultural context. - They enjoy the experience of waking up in unfamiliar places and feeling in their element, despite the initial fear and confusion. - Riordan mentions their feelings of imposter syndrome and feeling unworthy compared to others who have published papers and done big things. - They share how being called the shaman of the group by their peers was the best thing anyone could have said, reinforcing their role as a vessel for the universe's flow.
The Importance of Community and Mystery Schools
- Riordan Regan emphasizes the need for open and receptive individuals to learn to work with their configurations, which were influenced by the skies at the time of their birth. - They discuss the idea of bringing back Mystery Schools and working together in a collective, possibly influenced by Jodorowsky's teachings. - Riordan reflects on the importance of community and spending time with others who share similar experiences and openness. - They conclude by acknowledging the need to keep reading and learning, emphasizing the continuous journey of self-discovery and transformation.
Action Items:
Visit Göbekli Tepe. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)
Bring back the Mystery Schools. (Assignee: Riordan Regan)
Transcript:
Wandering through the airport in Istanbul listening to shoegaze in a semi-LSD haze, and I'm thinking of you, my dude. Haven't slept much in days. Probably look a bit half crazed, but I like existing in this liminal space, transforming fear and loathing into openness and wonder, walking down the terminal, realizing suddenly I don't need everyone to witness everything for it to have meaning, feeling my journey and the pyramids integrating. I don't need everyone to see everything. I don't need it to be independently verified to make it real, because I know it happened, because I was there, because I witnessed it. Yes, there is something important about the holding, and sometimes there are things that need sharing, but not everything, not everything. Sometimes I can do it for myself. I am not a victim. I am not a hapless passenger. I am a fucking shaman and a sorcerer. If I can transform a broken pelvis into pursuing a PhD and the life of an artist and welcoming my trans self back home, then surely I can get a hand sanitizer stain out of a jacket sleeve, then surely I can walk through airport security in a breeze. These are not the methodologies you're looking for. These are not the passengers you're looking for. We go in through the side door and make them think it was their idea to begin with. Just like psychomagic, that's the key. It's not tricking someone so much as it is charming them, entrancing them. Maybe it's the same thing, but they're asking for it. But in the end, we all need healing. The key is to make them think it was their idea to begin with. The key is to bypass the conscious mind, maybe, and go past all claims of ownership.
I need to come back here and actually leave the airport. I need to go to Gobekli Tepe, and I need to assert myself. So I'm going to. Jodorowski says we're all possessed by our families. They put us in a trance, without us even realizing, we become associated with a personality that isn't even ours, borrowed from members of our emotional environment trying different things on, not even realizing when they've taken the helm, not even realizing when we're acting as something that We think is ourself, but actually belongs to somebody else, going through the patterns, doing the dances, stuck in trances, attached to these charms our bodies, memories places, forgetting that we are in a trance to begin with.
This is trans. You think you know who you are, but you don't. You contain more multitudes than you can ever even meet in a lifetime. You're a vessel, collecting everything that came before you and that surrounds you now, you are a whole world made unto your your whole world unto yourself, that is also made of everyone and everything else. I can't be everything. Then who's in control you are. Stay in your power. I don't want that kind of responsibility. Too bad, that's what we signed up for, the shaman, sorcerer, the healer, the psychologist, the facilitator, the artist, psychotic, Mystic, Prophet, all the same archetype, we set spells and break curses.
We charm our audiences and try not to fall under our own magic in the process, you.
Vessels is a key concept. Maybe it's a show. We can we transform the containers? We point to the fact that it's just a vessel, and that makes people really, really, really uncomfortable. That's why queer and trans people get so much harassment. We point to the fact that these are merely empty vessels, until they're inhabited by the senses, until our soul, until they are in soul, until you bring forward all the unconscious material together in a moment, crystallized around a point, the axis mundi, we are each the unique collection of information and experience that that particular vessel was primed to receive, and we incarnated the stars aligned and created a container perfectly tuned for one very specific interpretation, because the universe is seeking to know itself through every possible configuration. And so every single being was materialized. This is what it means to be Star people. Every single being was materialized from on high by a star, by a configuration of stars in the sky, bodies, matter, information that only makes sense in context, In the context of our body, our vessel, our prenda, in the context of our unique experience. I'm starting to lose it and getting distracted. I can see it in my head, the stars and the planets all align in these little configurations, little snapshots of time we are really just snapshots of the way everything appeared for a moment when we incarnated from one realm into the other, when the soul, the ether, the undefinable element, The Teo, beamed itself from one realm into another.
There's something about all five senses in the sixth and anyways, trans people make people uncomfortable because we point to the fact this is just pretend, because we point to the moon instead of suggesting it. Because if we can question the thing that seems most fixed, then what else is up for grabs? Turns out everything is
maybe you have to experience a transformation with all five senses for it to become real and grounded. But it all starts with confession. People end up doing this with me. They always say, I don't know why I'm telling you all this stuff, because I'm vulnerable. And then they are too, and this is where the anthropologist participant observer comes in, just like Jodorowsky says, I I can put things in their cultural context because I study them as a people, as a civilization, both The one they're from and the one unto them.
I like putting hurdling myself through timelines and portals. I like waking up in the airport and not knowing where I am. I developed this narrative about it being scary, but this is me in. My element. This is me. Most me. Maybe there's an element that's bypassing maybe there's an element that needs to come in and spend seasons in community. But I have to say, after a few days, I didn't miss dance anymore. However, as soon as calves walked away that day, I felt pretty sad that I had no one to share it with anymore, because that was important.
When I was having imposter syndrome. I'm gonna start saying they because that seems to be the direction they're headed. Anyway, I confess that I felt unworthy. Everyone's published papers and done all these big, grown up things, and what about me? I'm nobody, but nothing, and they looked at me and said, exclaimed incredulously, you're the shaman of the group. And it was the best thing anyone ever could have said.
There's nothing special about me. I'm just a hollow bone. I'm just a vessel, a prenda. I'm just a container, a receptacle for all the things flowing through from the universe, above and below, within and without, before, on top of all around. And we can all learn to tune in a little bit more if we listen, but some of our configurations did transpire under skies that make us more receptive than others, and so we need to learn to work with it. Those of us who are more open, we need to learn to work with it. We need the Mystery Schools brought back.
I think I see Jodorowsky, and I raise him the collective. We need to do it together. Well, maybe he has that. I guess I should keep reading first. I.
The tyranny of words
Outline: The conversation delves into the philosophical implications of writing, exploring its role in human evolution and the concept of forgetting. Speaker 1 reflects on the shift from an oral tradition to a written one, noting how it fixed concepts and introduced alienation. They discuss the importance of dance and creating spaces for divine communication, emphasizing the fluidity of change. The speaker also touches on personal growth, recognizing the value of service over self-gratification and contemplating turning their ecstatic dance project into an academically funded research study on queer, trans self-healing. The conversation concludes with a vision of integrating personal experiences and community actions to foster collective healing.
Transcript: Yeah, well, that's funny. I was talking for a long time, and I really liked what I was saying. It wasn't recorded. But I suppose that's part of the lesson of Egypt. It's not about the need to document everything. And I think it matters that I just spoke it to the universe, but I don't know if there's repeating that I woke up today so feeling that I was not taking the proper opportunity, feeling like I was missing an opportunity. That old story again,
it's a four Iq’, the day of the Divine communication, the breath. And so my natural instinct is to say, Well, I have to be writing then, like there's some old pattern that is shaking loose that I'm breaking free from now that said that writing was the only authentic way to communicate, and this is tied to the greater human story. We started writing things down in our diaries so we wouldn't have to remember. We started forgetting. Who's to say? Which came first, the forgetting or the writing? That's an interesting question. It started as an accounting system to keep track of the property when the separation culture came in, then it took on a life of its own. Became a way of reality. It was a way to keep track of things, isolate and divide, to say what was yours and what was mine, these concepts that never existed before.
Yeah, what came first? I'd say the alienation. Because we started dividing things and we started creating categories. We started looking at our world differently, and so we started forgetting. We started forgetting that we were one with everything, and that meant that we had to start writing things down. Then all of a sudden, that wasn't just how many Bucha of corn given to the neighbor we had to keep track of. All of a sudden, it was also, I mean, the families our traditions, our stories. All of a sudden we started forgetting everything. And so this way to preserve knowledge and pass things down to the people coming after.
Also fixed it in place. Fixed it arbitrary concepts we call time and space. It fixed things a certain way when in the past, they were always changing, morphing, rearranging and in the past, our way of engaging with the World reflected this shifting, changing nature in the past and it. Our way of interfacing with the world reflected the fact that things were malleable. Writing made them fixed and static. It made there be a right and a wrong. It made there be a way things were done and described. Now fuck this is where the decision archetype came in. The decision archetype emerged with writing trans is what returns us to the time before writing trans is what returns us to the feeling and so no wonder I feel like a prisoner. No wonder I feel like
I don't want to fucking write anymore. No wonder writing feels like a tearing yet, yet it's a way to pass things on to other people. For.
So the key is, I mean, no wonder I do infinite duration, so honestly too, because it's always changing. Because each day, the way I describe something isn't the same. So things just need to get out there, and the record isn't permanent. Yeah, describe them knowing that they're gonna change again.
Don't get attached just to change again the only way i feel so much gratitude that I really do feel like everything was happening was going the way it's supposed to, even if, whatever, I haven't made some deadlines that I set for myself, even if other people are frustrated with me, you know what? I don't think I care, because it's going the way it has to for me to process it, integrate it, for me to actually, feel like an adult.
I actually feel like I'm growing up.
And this morning, when I had that, I had that inflection. It was more just like a flashbulb moment. How come so often feel like there's like the activities that are planned for the day are not in alignment with what I would interpret the energy to the thing. But that's the key. It's the interpretation. Me thinking they can only be one way today, the divine communication is not just from talking like dancing, because I'm showing it to these spaces and interacting with people, and it's just so beautiful that like this is the way change is happening, is through dance and through us creating our own spaces and just making it happen. Like, after all these years of just talking about things like, all it takes is a few conversations, a few coffee dates. And so that's what I've done. I've spoken the first part of the plans into existence. Don't have to have the whole fucking thing figured out just yet. The process has started. I actually see that it will finish. Now I actually see that it will happen. Now it's happening. This dance is gonna be a real thing. It could even happen on Friday the 13th.
It's like I'm moving through options so fast. They don't even have to be realized yet for me to I don't know, get what I need from that stage and kind of advance, like already, I felt today like I was kind of transcending Ed UK, but you know, in A transcendent include way, not in a weird in that way. It's just interesting how even two weeks ago, I really needed it,
like I needed these things. And just already, I don't know if it was what was unlocked in the pyramids. I don't know if it's just the natural way The spiral is going. But,
like, already, just like, I don't need any of it. Like, in a good way, like in a way that I'm grateful for everything that comes.
I actually don't care. Well, I'm gonna cry. I actually don't care if people know who I am,
because I started this morning listening to a voice memo from someone I've only met one time at a sharing circle, who said that I had seen her in a way nobody else had. And. People say that to me all the time, all the time. Well, I barely know, like I can't even tell you how beautiful that is, after feeling like my life wasn't worth anything for so long, after feeling like it didn't get mad or if I was alive as I walked through it's already made a difference. A few people feel seen in a way they never have before. One conversation coming up like That's enough?
Yeah, there's the manager part coming in to say we can make money off of this. Coming in to say there's dad saying we can capitalize on it. And it's true. I think it does mean that I could actually pursue a career in healing, and that I should, but not because I need to get ahead, because I want to be of service. And that was really landing for me today.
I started off when I was volunteering at Ed UK. And like, it it feels like it's been years, but it's only been a couple months. And when I first started off, I was like Bella, and I really just needed the free dance, because I really just needed to work some shit out. And I showed up and I kind of did the bare minimum. That's not true. I always give a lot, but I was always kind of looking for the leverage too, and I was looking for the first chance I could get to kind of just stop being responsible enjoying the dance. And now it's like, not only do I feel like I'm working my stuff out enough other places that I don't need it so badly, but like, it's the value of service, the value of showing up and helping people. And I'm sorry, like you shouldn't be volunteering if you don't have the capacity to show up for other people. Because now, every time this person shows up and I see her on the schedule, I know I'm gonna end up doing her work for her and
and, yeah, I see myself in that, and so I have compassion, but at the same time, Richard, Richard, because it's not really fair to
the rest of us. Um, like I want to be of service. I'm looking at portals in the forest like it's actually more important to me now to just show up and help than it is to dance for me. And I don't know this is sort of a weird instant, like ego moment, but I had the realization today when I was talking to Riz about
the opportunity to change the way we're treating cacao while we both out of town,
and I was talking about how we needed to acknowledge the indigenous origins and like it just easily rolled off my tongue. And I meant it like, I don't know, I had an observer moment there too, where I feel like there was a period where I was saying these things because I just wanted to be good so badly. And it's not like I didn't really care, but it was, but it's kind of like I didn't have the capacity to, because so much of my energy was still going to, like, just, I don't know, wanting to not die, actually, is what it is, and I didn't realize that until Egypt, it takes a lot of energy to just, I don't know it was taking a lot of energy to just want to not to do not want to die.
And I saw these parts of myself from Austin, in the divorce, in the past lives, in the self, gaslighting, real way on this trip, and I set some things in motion for more directly confronting them, not confronting them. That's Wow. That's the wrong word, integrating them, witnessing them. And I think in the need to be a way for that. I.
I also like, feel like I might set the whole thing up, and by the time I get there, it won't even need it, and it'll just be like, actually, that's what's feeling really true. I think that just by making a commitment to my past selves, they're feeling like That's enough. And, well, okay, now as I'm saying that some of them are like, just not us. Okay, okay, so there's still work to do. But I also think part of the ceremony will just be about really, like, meeting and eat in a real way, my ears making noise. So I guess that's yes, yeah. Like, I don't know. I'm also just seeing that. It's like, now I'm not just going through the motions anymore because I need to be good, because I need to be the kind of person that cares about indigenous
people. That sounds bad, but like,
I just have wanted to be good so badly my whole life, and then also so rebelled against that, and so not wanted to be I've wanted to be good, but not by the standards that were given to me. I don't know, just this, this lifelong duality feels like it's a result in itself. I
Yeah, and now, honestly, it's like, it doesn't even matter what happens. Like, I want to create these community actions. That's what I want to do. I want to make dances, and I want to have conversations with people where they feel seen and but also I see the ways that the work I have done and the things that I ironically, kind of did with with ego in mind, could now be used to help the collective, because I have these contacts, these connections, so what's really cool that came to me today was, Well, shit, I could turn this whole thing I'm doing into a research study. I could turn this whole project to create a queer, trans ecstatic dance into a research project.
This could be the first academically funded ecstatic dance. And maybe it's not, because it sounds like someone else may have done this, but this could be the first academic, academically funded queer, trans ecstatic dance. This could be academically funded contribution to the body of knowledge of queer, trans, self healing, and I think that I could collaborate with the person who interviewed me for economic study in Boulder, and we could even potentially explore a collaboration I really want to explore psychedelics and ecstatic dance, even though they say that it's so birds like, let's be real. I want to look at the combination together, so maybe I could join up with them for that ethics community would hate it, but that's why I'm around, I mean, and this is where my anti authority can be a benefit, like someone's got to challenge things.
* * * * *
There's a reason titration has been the theme and that Baba Klindi Iyi appeared to me in the Great Pyramid - the message was about how by "needing" to write everyting down we lose the ability to remember ourselves. AND YET - I somehow also feel it's crucial to document these people, practices, & legacies so they can be shared w/ the new generations - so we don't need to re-create the old frameworks of oppression. He told me to find Acacea again. It comes back to mushrooms and cacao again. Now the calendar is also present. So in the Aswan botanical garden I wrote her and she said: I will go to Guatemala with you. We have to find Sarah Kane’s body. I told her I didn’t know who that was, but I was in. We are talking when she gets back from the monastery.
And as soon as I did this everyone from my group walked up and started talking about acacias, how they suddenly started smelling them and it smelled like DMT, and I laughed because Darren LeBaron called Acacea the “living embodiment of the DMT molecule” at Breaking Convention, and another group member said they had just been invited to an acacia ceremony in Giza, and folks, that’s what we call synchronicity, one at which even Jung would marvel.
Methodology: Time-Traveling With the Diamond Needle / Hollow Bone Show notes / PPS 11 Aq’ab’al
Path of the Plumed Serpent Autumn 2024, Ceremony #4: Childhood LHP, 11 Aq’ab’al
This is my childhood left-hand path, the intuitive creative side of my gestation, and the ceremony ended up being time-traveling with the diamond needle to the part of me that cut myself off from all those forking artist’s paths, the ones I got to scared to walk down, where my holy inner trinity came together—as I denied myself three times.
I got into film school at Chapman College in California, a really good one, and I didn’t go, because I had just met Stephen, and fell in love with him, and some part of me became terrified and started screaming that I might never find a love like this again, so I had better cling onto it for dear life.
I got into Cornish College of the Arts for graphic design, after working really hard to put a really good portfolio together, with Stephen helping me, and at the last minute I said that I was never going to make a living that way, and besides, I didn’t want to end up hating art again like I did when my dad made me draw on the grid system, by having to contain my creations within some digital format.
I went to Western as a theatre major, and was applying to the study abroad program at Trinity College in Dublin so I could get my European fix on and explore the homeland, but then that firefighter freaked out again, and started screaming at me that if I was away from Stephen that long, he would leave me (even though, ironically, it might have saved our relationship by giving us both a break from each other), and that if I put my life on the stage it would come back to haunt me again, they’d persecute me for what I said, nobody could handle what was in my head. If I wanted to be an artist I’d have to be alone, because if they saw what I was thinking about them, they would leave me. God forbid I learn to work in metaphor and simile, I thought I had to portray everything so literally, this is probably still a problem I have; I need to gesture at the moon rather than grabbing everyone by the hair and dragging them to the moon and rubbing their faces in it.
But this is what my parts do to me. Once again, during my IFS practice, I connected with the part of self I wanted to talk to, but these firefighters are so hotheaded, they get set off so easily, and then the Higher Self who is doing the questioning gets pushed aside by some other part that jumps out with a gun in its hand and presses it against the firefighter’s temple, screaming: “TALK OR YOU’RE DEAD!!!”
This will be a scene in the play, that’s definitely not the way parts work is supposed to go, Dick Schwartz and Carl Jung are shaking their heads somewhere, saying, no. So one firefighter is threatening to blow the other’s brains out if they don’t tell us everything they know, and the other one is grabbing at the one with a gun screaming back at them that their only function is to keep the things hidden, and they’ll have to pick it out of their spattered brain fragments. None of us getting anywhere with each other. So I had to abandon the mission and calm the whole internal family system down with some ASMR.
I dreamed that night that a part of me was driving a Mack truck off the side of the highway on the route to Ollytaytambo, that Chad VanGaalen song echoing in the chasm of the Sacred Valley between my temples, richocheting off the mountainside as the car sailed gracefully to a crunching metal death miles below. The front of the car was emblazoned with a metal frontpiece in the shape of a Kame skull, the way the illustrations look of the Death Lords in the Popol Vuh. I guess this must be the Unstoppable Death Force, the suicidal impulse that is also the repressed creative force, the Kali Ma who would rather see her children die than live a lie; the mystical divine child who, when denied, becomes the alcoholic.
But here’s the remix. I always had this story, based on the cultural narrative, that the alcoholic was blunting their pain, cutting themselves off from feelings that were overwhelming. But what I realized is that the part of me that drank to blackout every time wasn’t trying to get out—they were looking for something. The thing I buried so deep that even I couldn’t find it.
They were looking for the truth that I had to hide from even myself, so that God and my parents and partners who read my journal and interrogated me in the psychedelic space couldn’t find it; the thing I had to gaslight myself into not knowing, because actually holding that information could destroy me. SO when I drank, I blacked out almost right away, but I had to keep doing it—and this is what is beautiful, to realize that I was going into the darkness over and over not to escape the pain, as in the popular cultural narrative about addiction, but to run headlong towards it. To relentlessly pursue the truth. To find the thing that one part of me who held a candle, who was trapped in the minotaur’s lair all those years ago when I pushed them down, has defended this whole time—I guess that’s the minotaur in the lair, is not the monster trying to kill me, but the truth that I buried. The Unstoppable Death Force is the one driving the Kame car over the edge, the one who starts getting more careless, getting in “accidents” that are really tiptoes toward the death that feels like the safer option than admitting the truth, even though the world and my life and everything in it is different now.
But we’re getting there. Little by little, we’re showing them that we’re safe now.
Artist, Mystic, Alcoholic, Prophet, Psychotic, Divine Child: they are all the same archetype.
The kid and artist without an outlet turns to addiction and burnout; the mystic without a home has to find something to worship; everyone gets stuck at the gate because they believe what they’ve been told, that they aren’t welcome at the temple, and this is the real reason Jesus overturned those tables.
The only difference between Prophet and Psychotic, whether you are deemed the Holy Lord and Savior or the Devil and Betrayer, Whore and Harlot, Scapegoat of Humanity, is whether or not anyone is following you; if they believe your gospel.
They didn’t believe the gospels of Judas and Mary, even though everyone was in on it from the beginning.
This is what my art will convey, telling the truth about these archetypes; letting the holy trinity inside me have their day; helping others go on these artistic and spiritual journeys.
And one day, my inner family may be more reconciled; we will see. One day, if we’re meant to know, the minotaur will be released from its lair, and we will gather around the funerary table, and feast.
Modality / Methodology: Time Traveling With the Diamond Needle
Choose your medicine (cacao, mushrooms, LSD, amanita, MDMA, or something more tame)
Choose a playlist you have built previously with a specific intention or invocation in mind: a storyline you want to deconstruct, a part of self from a particular time in life you want to speak with, an issue you want to tackle, your relationship with a place, etc.
Get out various materials for documentation: voice recorder, computer, phone, camera, art supplies, journal, scraps of paper, etc
Take the medicine, open the ceremony, set your intention, call in the spirits you want to work with through the medicine and music portal
Hit shuffle on the playlist and let the journey carry you
Document whatever is coming through however it wants to come in
Tarot and oracle cards provide guidance and kickstarts along the way.
The hollow bone rehearsal / TRANSCRIPT LISTEN:
Summary:
Holly Regan's Transformation and Self-Discovery
- They discuss their transition from a masculine presentation to performing femininity at age 14, which they associate with putting on a "suit." - They describe their creative period before age 14, where they engaged in various artistic activities like drawing and writing plays. - Holly reflects on how they stopped embodying their true self and started self-gaslighting, trading their authentic identity for a feminine persona. - They emphasize the concept of the "hollow bone" as a channel for artistic and spiritual energies, contrasting it with the idea of being an empty shell.
The Role and Responsibility of the Hollow Bone
- They elaborate on the true meaning of the hollow bone, describing it as a portal for bringing energies and artistic frequencies from one realm to another. - They explain the importance of cultivating practices and traditions to effectively channel the hollow bone's energy. - Holly warns against being too open and not transmuting energies, likening it to being a "slut" or "whore" in a metaphorical sense. - They stress the importance of intentionality and caution in conjuring and working with energies, as they can lead to trances and unintended consequences.
The Aliveness of Bones and Their Conductive Nature
- They challenge the Western cultural view of bones as dead and empty, asserting that bones are alive and imbued with agency and purpose. - They describe bones as conductors of energy, similar to the walls of temples and pyramids, and explain how they vibrate with frequencies. - Holly envisions the animation of bones and their resonance with other structures when played with specific sounds. - They emphasize the importance of being careful with what one conjures and works with, as it can have significant effects on one's being.
The Impact of Performative Gender and Self-Hypnosis
- They recount how they put themself into a trance of performative femininity and gender normativity, which they now see as a form of self-hypnosis. - They reflect on the lack of a clear framework for their trans identity during their youth and the dangers of being openly trans. - Holly acknowledges their ability to hypnotize themself and the process of reclaiming their true identity as a trans person. - They discuss the importance of recognizing one's own power to both hypnotize and de-hypnotize oneself.
Building a Supportive Lineage and Initiation
- They consider the idea of creating a lineage and initiation process to help others avoid the painful journey they experienced. - They reflect on the lack of a clear lineage in their own path and the value of having guidance and support. - Holly envisions a methodology that could make the journey less dangerous and more intentional, reducing the need for multiple "deaths" and losses. - They propose the idea of a "concierge service" to help individuals navigate their spiritual and artistic journeys more safely.
The Methodology of Time Travel and Intentional Playlists
- They introduce the concept of time traveling with "diamond needles" and using intentional playlists to revisit one's past. - They explain how this method involves going back through one's history with music and medicine to gain insights and intentions. - Holly acknowledges the source of this methodology and emphasizes the importance of codifying and giving credit to inspirations.
Action Items:
Codify the methodology of "time traveling with the diamond needle" and building a "syncretic Hermetic lineage" that can provide a "concierge service" to guide people through the process of transformation. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Give credit to all sources of inspiration for the methodology. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
TRANSCRIPT EXCERPTS:
Recited to: Transfiguration, Your Inner Light by Sandra Ingerman and Byron Metcalf
>and this is when the hollow bone goes from being a channel to just being an empty shell with no meat or marrow. I The true meaning of the hollow bone is to be the portal, the channel, the vessel that brings things from one realm to the next, that allows the energies and ancestors and artistic frequencies to come forth. That is a lightning rod, a diviner, the both between messenger that stands at the threshold of perpetual Twilight and ushers the souls, the archetypes, the ideas, the inspiration, the artistic expression, from one realm to another, from the realm of the formless into the form, from the ethereal dream emotion into physical being, materiality, that's the true role of the hollow bone, the psycho pomp that carries the souls from the under world along the river, sticks into existence. But if you're not cultivating, if you're not practicing, if you're not invoking, if you're not aware, if you're not actually following the traditions, then the hollow bone, then you're simply opening to the astral and letting everything flow in. If you're not actually doing the work, doing the practice. Then you're simply then you are a dumpster
>they call you a slut and a whore, which is because they want to use you up for themselves, but it’s true that you’re too open, letting everything flow through you without transmuting it.
>>This is how the hollow bone goes from being a channel to being an empty shell, devoid of meat and marrow, letting everything flood through it, liberating everything. Walk all over it, letting dogs chew it. This is not the true meaning. Bones are not dead, empty things, as we've been told in Western culture, they are living. Meaning they are imbued with agency and purpose. They are made of quartz crystal. They have minerals that conduct energy in them, just like the walls of the temple, just like the inside of the pyramids, they conduct frequencies that vibrate with the frequencies of other things. The bones are still alive and speaking.
>The bones are not dead. The bones are not empty. The bones have whole stories to tell us. The Hollow bone show means taking what looks like a skeleton and making it sing and dance again. being the channel to guide the psycho pomp, the queer hermetic messenger between the realms. The bones are not dead. They are very much alive. The bones know. The bones are what hold the memory, the vibration of what happened. If the bones are quartz crystal, then of course, they contain the vibration the nervous system conducts the electricity that flows through the bones.
>the bones are what the nervous system sends the signals through, just like the signals go through the walls of the temple and then the body and the pyramid are in resonance frequencies. A frequency is sent through the conductor of the bones, a frequency is sent through the conductor of the temple walls, and they come into resonance when the same sound is played, when a sound is played, when the bones are put inside the temple and the sound is played, then they come into a resonant frequency and can be animated and can be sent to any time or place, and can be aligned to any purpose. So be careful what you're conjuring. Be careful what you're working with. Be very intentional.
Your words are spells, so be careful what you're casting, because you could put yourself into a trance without even realizing what you're doing. And that's what I did when I was a kid. I put myself into the trance of thinking that I was a woman. I put myself into the trance of performance. I put myself into the trance of mono normativity, heteronormativity, gender normativity, I put myself into a trance of performative femininity, and that was never me to begin with. I was always trans, but we didn't have the framework for it back then, but it wasn't safe back then. I was told I would burn for it, so I had to bury it so deep that even I couldn't find it. So I had to hypnotize myself. But this is the transfiguration, this is the transmutation. This is the flipping and reversing. I am such a good shaman that I can even hypnotize myself and forget that I did it. And so the reclamation, the reclamation and the remixing of this storyline is realizing that that's how good I am, realizing that if I could put myself into a trance, I can wake myself up from it. And this is claiming it, and this is realizing it. And I got here, I got here, and I had a lot of help and guidance along the way, and I had help from a whole astral team, but I did it, but I did it, and I didn't have one clear lineage. My lineage was syncretic. My lineage was fuck around it find out. My lineage was do it yourself, which doesn't mean alone. I had a lot of help, but I didn't have an apprenticeship. This is what we're all missing in this culture. And so what if we could build one? Then it could be easier, then it wouldn't have to be so fucking painful for everyone, then they wouldn't have to almost die over and over like I did, though. I mean, the down, almost dying, the dying is part of it, so I don't know, but I do think we can make a lineage and an initiation so that people don't have to flail around so much, so it doesn't have to be so dangerous. It can be easier. Dying is part of it, but it can be easier. The death can be a little. Gentler. Maybe you don't have to also die a million times along the way to the death.
You don't have to get lost on the way to getting lost. Let me at least help put you in the right place so you can safely lose everything. That's the methodology.
Putting Meat on the Hollow Bone
Listen Here / Transmission Transcript:
I document everything, because the antidote to self gaslighting is observation.
But if I never go back and witness what I captured, then it's like it never even happened. So what was the point of doing it to begin with? This is really this is like an act of triple deception, when you deceive yourself, and then you see the truth, and you write it down, and then you forget again.
(Today is 11 Aq’ab’al in the Maya calendar:) Oh, my God, but the reclamation of the childhood left hand power, the reclamation of feeling like I lost myself to performance comes through the 11. No wonder the 11 has been my master number. It is my master number. The 11 brings a possibility of eventual masterythrough devising your own system, which is taken from all the knowledge and experience you have gained while taking so many paths. Holy shit, this is in my path of the plumed serpent that Mark gave me last fall, last winter, the 11 brings the possibility of eventual mastery after restlessness to explore so many different paths within life, becoming the master, becoming the jack of all trades and master of none. I always feel like that. I just said that to someone the other day. That I feel like I never get to mastery. I start things. That's what I started this ceremony by saying, that's so cool.
I started this ceremony by saying that I'm really good at the beginning of things, but I'm not good at finishing. But this is how it actually happens. This is part of the point. The restlessness, the wandering, the exploration of all the different paths, is part of it. That's how you get eventually to your own system. The 11 brings the possibility of eventual mastery through devising your own system, which is taken from all the knowledge and experience you have gained will take in so many paths. Fuck, yes, this is the reclamation of the 11. This is the reclamation of the unseen, unheard children. This is the reclamation of the confusion, the knowing. This is a reclamation. This is what it means to be the hollow bone. Everything's been flowing through you all along, but when you put some meat on it, that starts catching things, but no but eventually the meat starts accumulating. Eventually the meat starts accumulating, and it builds up a residue, and it builds up a framework, and it builds up a system that starts to look like a body, and it builds up something that becomes materiality. This is even a project or an art thing that I see, a bone that things are passing through, and then it builds up and builds up and builds up, and eventually a body builds around it. I can see it in my head, a skeleton that things are flowing around. And eventually it builds up a body around it.
This is what it means to be a hollow bone, not to let everyone walk all over you and use you how they want to,
but to be a conduit. This is, I understand, a new level now of what it means to be a conduit and a channel, not just letting everything wash all over you, not letting yourself get eroded, but to let letting things accumulate on you, letting barnacles build upon you, letting bodies build upon you, not getting tossed in the current, but being in anger for other things that are flowing by to catch onto. This is the hollow bone. The Hollow bone is a rock. The Hollow bone is the coarse crystal on the pyramid. This is what it means to be a hollow bone. This is what it means to be a conductor, an anchor. This is what it means to be a shaman, a channel.
And takes practice and it takes action, and it takes discipline, and it takes creation to make those things happen, and it takes sitting down on the mat and writing and listening. It takes putting things into action. You can't just sit back and expect it all to happen, but like there also is an element of it kind of also just happens when you create the right conditions, but you have to capture, you have to document it. And so my childhood hyper vigilance, wanting to document everything so someone would believe me, turns out to be a skill. Turns out to be part of my shamanistic power and integrity. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for the reclamation. Thank you for the medicine. Thank you for the witnessing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Show me what still needs feeling so that I'm not bypassing so that I'm not just jumping to the conclusion without actually doing the work. Thank you for the medicine. And all of a sudden, I don't feel like I have to tell everyone everything. And I realized I've spent my whole life feeling that way. All of a sudden, the witnessing of myself is enough. Thank you for the medicine 11 Aq’ab’al.
Creating personal cosmos of the garden, fall, sin, + redemption
The AI does not identify me. I wonder who is speaking?
AI Summary: The conversation delves into themes of nostalgia, identity, and societal pressures. Speaker 1 reminisces about tangible memories and the ephemeral nature of modern life, using music to time travel. They discuss the complexities of desire, being seen, and the societal expectations placed on women and queer individuals. The speaker critiques the patriarchal system, highlighting the blame placed on women and marginalized groups. They emphasize the need for cunning and illusion to survive, drawing parallels to shamanic practices. The narrative explores the struggle for acceptance, the creation of personal cosmos, and the journey towards healing and witnessing the pain of others.
Action Items: Help the speaker feel the pain that needs to be felt in order to bring about healing and integration.
Outline:
Nostalgia for Analog and Time Travel
Speaker 1 reminisces about holding tangible items and the slower pace of life before digital dominance.
They mention listening to "Terrible Love" by the National, which transports them back to a specific memory in Grogan's living room.
The speaker recalls air drumming to "Mr. November" and feeling observed, a rare sensation of being seen.
They reflect on the nostalgia of analog experiences and how music can evoke strong memories and emotions.
Cheating and Misunderstanding
An unknown speaker discusses that cheating was never about sex but about being seen and witnessed in a relationship.
Speaker 1 talks about feeling unseen in their relationship and seeking validation through brief encounters with other men.
They describe how cis white men often misinterpret signals, seeing women as objects to be taken rather than equals.
The speaker shares their desire to be seen as one of the guys, not for sexual reasons but for acceptance and validation.
Consequences of Misunderstanding
Speaker 1 recounts the physical and emotional consequences of unprotected sex, including HPV and subsequent medical procedures.
They criticize the medical system for focusing on female anatomy and perpetuating blame on women for sexually transmitted diseases.
The speaker describes being called a whore and having their genitals described as dirty and diseased.
They reflect on the societal and personal impact of these experiences, including feelings of shame and unworthiness.
Patriarchal Power Dynamics
Speaker 1 discusses the patriarchal narrative where women and marginalized groups are blamed for societal issues.
They describe how men in power rarely take responsibility, and those in disadvantaged positions must fight back subtly.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of using existing systems against those in power to survive and thrive.
They highlight the need for cunning and strategic maneuvering to navigate a system designed against them.
Double Deception and Survival
Speaker 1 talks about the shaman's trick of making men believe they are loved to gain access to their systems.
They describe the pantaloon narrative, where the protagonist must deceive to survive in a hostile environment.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of illusion and self-deception for survival in a society that doesn't want them to exist.
They reflect on the need to be masters of illusion to protect themselves and others like them.
Gaslighting and Self-Deception
Speaker 1 discusses the concept of gaslighting and how it involves making someone believe their experiences are not real.
They describe the process of self-deception as a survival mechanism to cope with a dangerous environment.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of remembering and waking up from the trance to regain control.
They reflect on the journey of self-discovery and the struggle to separate illusion from reality.
Nervous System Overwhelm
Speaker 1 talks about the impact of a dangerous environment on a child's nervous system, leading to constant overwhelm.
They describe the binary choices of being a narcissist or co-dependent, depending on the environment.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of patience and understanding that everyone experiences both extremes.
They reflect on the concept of quantum observation and how it shapes their understanding of the world.
Desire for Acceptance and Belonging
Speaker 1 discusses their desire to be seen and accepted, leading to complicated relationships and decisions.
They reflect on the desire to create a world where they can be accepted and loved, despite the challenges.
The speaker describes the struggle of creating a world of sin and punishment, where they can share their pain with someone else.
They emphasize the importance of finding joy and ecstasy in shared experiences, even if they become twisted.
Creating Personal Universes
Speaker 1 talks about creating personal universes where they can indulge and be punished, recreating the garden and damnation.
They describe the process of casting spells and creating entire cosmic realms to play out their narrative.
The speaker reflects on the importance of bringing light back and resurrecting souls from damnation.
They emphasize the need to feel the pain of others to bring them home and heal.
Intellectualizing Pain vs. Feeling It
Speaker 1 discusses the challenge of intellectualizing pain and telling stories about it without truly feeling it.
They reflect on the need to feel the pain of others to bring them home and heal.
The speaker emphasizes the importance of feeling the feelings to bring the children home.
They express a desire for help in feeling what needs to be felt to bring about healing and transformation.
TRANSCRIPT HERE / Excerpts:
What's in your hand. It's an album. Remember when we used to be able to actually hold on to something tangible? Remember when things used to be analog. Remember when everything didn't used to be so ephemeral. Remember when it felt like there was something we could hold on to. Remember when it didn't feel like Time was passing quite so fast, because it wasn't because information is doubling at quicker and quicker rates as time goes on, information, data being put in context, data being captured and observed, it's happening faster now, and I listen to terrible love by the National and I'm transported back in time, time traveling with a diamond needle. And all of a sudden I'm there in Groveman’s living room again, and we're air playing air drums to Mr. November, and he's saying how Mark doesn't get it and I'm agreeing and I'm feeling observed. For the first time in a long time, that's always what it was about. Cheating. Was never about sex. I didn't even like it.
It was about being seen by someone for a moment. It was about not feeling witnessed in my relationship, and not being able to do that for myself. And so there were these glimpses with these men, where I felt like I was one of them, but they misinterpreted. They saw a woman, and they saw something that they thought was theirs to take, because the men, the cis white men, have been programs like that, to think that they can just take whatever they want, to think that if there's someone in a female body standing before them, vibing, that they must want to merge with them. No, I didn't want to be with them. I wanted to be them. I wanted to just be witnessed and held by them. I wanted them to just reflect that I was one of the guys. But instead, they saw something for taking, for using, for abusing, for using at the moon, throwing away, just like the fucking condom. Oh, wait, none of them used one. Oh, wait, that's why I ended up in the hospital getting things frozen off my genitals, the fucking Scarlet letters written on my vagina that says you have sinned and you are dirty and you're unworthy, three little letters that he'd throw back at me, Not the ones that are really fucking scary, but scary enough because they can still turn into cancer, HPV, the ones he threw back at me, because they can only detect it in people with female anatomy, they can’t even test for it in men. What kind of fucking bullshit is that? What kind of medical system has these diseases that we can only detect and quote, unquote, women, as if we needed more things to be blamed for? And so he called me a whore. And so he called me dirty.
They always blame the women, the queer and the trans. They never blame the other CIS, white men. Or if they do, it's the ones who they perceive as poor or feminine or less advantaged than they are. The ones in power. Will never give it up. We have to take it from them, but we have to do it secretly.
The shaman’s greatest trick, the greatest act of double deception, making the men believe that we loved them so we can go in through the side door and use their own systems against them. This is the pantaloon narrative. It's a tale as old as time. It's the only way the daughter gets out of her father's house alive. It's the only way the queer kid gets out of their family's homophobic home alive. The greatest act of double deception making assist white men believe that we love them, so we can go in through the side doors and use their own systems against them. That is how we win. That's the only way we stay alive. In a system that was rigged against us, never meant for us to survive.
We have to go in through side doors and use our cunning, we have to be wolves in sheep's clothing, or is it the other way around? Ba, ba, black sheep. We are the priestxs of the syncretic Hermetic tradition, keeping the medicine alive for generations by hiding it in plain sight, right in front of the eyes of those Who would take it from us, but secretly enshrined. These are not the medicines you're looking for. These are not the methodologies you're looking for. These are not the secrets you're looking for. Keep going forward. This is how we win, by being masters of illusion. And we have to, because when you grow up the queer, trans kid in the society that never wanted you to exist to begin with, you have to get so good at the illusion that you fool leaving yourself and forget that it was a game that you were playing in the first place.
The greatest act of double deception is making yourself believe that you're not a shaman. the greatest trick the shaman ever pulled, was convincing the world that they weren't one. The greatest trick the shaman ever pulled was convincing themselves that they weren't one. The greatest spell the shaman ever cast was forgetting that they charmed themselves in the first place. The greatest spell the shamxn ever cast was putting themselves in a trance and forgetting they were charmed in the first place.
Gaslighting. When they tell you the thing that just happened didn't really happen. The greatest act of double deception, when you get so good at running the illusion, you forget that you were doing it in the first place, and you put everyone into such a trance that you hypnotize even yourself in the process. when you get so good at casting the spell that you put everyone into a trance, including yourself, and forget that you were charmed in the first place.
And so the journey is one of remembering, of waking up from the spell that you cast over yourself because you had to survive to stay alive, the only way for a little kid to survive in a home that isn't safe for them is to believe that it's their fault, because if you did it, then you can control it next time. That's how the story goes. If the story is that the world is cold and scary, that your caregivers are actually not trying to protect you, but in fact, want to hurt you, that's too much for a little brain to handle.
You go into nervous system overwhelm. Nervous system overwhelm, always going up or down. Cannot find the middle ground. Too much / not enough kids, guaranteed to flip your lid. You're my world, you’re a piece of shit, narcissist and Codependent. Which one are you gonna be?
Nothing is a binary, in the quantum sea of possibility, which one will be selected depends upon your parents and your environment, but we're going to do all of them, just not in one lifetime. Selecting one possibility to be captured for a moment in a prenda, an ofrenda, offered up to the universe through your vessel, your unique collection of information and experience and sensation captured in a vessel that we call the body for a moment, Quantum observation, witnessing, widening the I narrows the possibilities, widening the I selects from all the combinations that are possible.
I had to play this narrative out to the end. That was, if you have enjoyed, if you have indulged, if you have tasted creation indulgence, then you are in you are automatically made unworthy, that you don't get to desire, that you don't get to enjoy doing that makes you dirty, and So now you must create the hell realm for yourself and go to it, but I never wanted to go alone. That was always the worst pain, that was always the struggle of my entire life and childhood, is I didn't want to go alone. I don't think I would have even minded Hell if I could have taken someone with me, but the fact that I was going to be alone for all eternity was a party couldn't handle. So I had to create a new little heaven and hell. I had to create a whole little cosmic realm where we could go to the garden and indulge and then be punished and damned, all within one little period of a few days, I was recreating the garden in the fall and the damnation over and over again, the Holy Trinity inside of me.
But that's how good a shaman I am. I can cast this spell and charm myself into a trance where I create an entire universe. And we are all gods, creating our own cosmos. I created little universes over and over where the whole cosmic game could play out again and again, but then I got trapped in hell and damnation for so long I forgot that I created the world in the first place. And so the union is to bring my light back, and resurrect all the souls of the damned, to see and witness the unseen, unheard children by feeling their pain.
You cannot escape the illusion
The speaker reflects on a profound spiritual journey, feeling guided by Ram Dass and other spiritual entities. They discuss the transformative power of rituals, medicines, and personal alchemy, emphasizing the unique experiences each person has with these substances. The speaker recounts their travels to significant sites like Petra and Egypt, and ponders the impact of observation on reality. They stress the importance of witnessing and community in making sense of personal experiences, suggesting that shared pain and understanding can lead to a collective alchemical transformation and a new world order.
Action Items
Obtain an "alchemical salt shaker" for transformation. (this is HILARIOUS)
Explore further the concept of how observation and witnessing can change the nature of reality.
Reflect on the importance of witnessing each other's pain and experiences to provide validation and purpose.
Outline
Navigating the Twilight and Seeking Guidance
Speaker 1 describes navigating in the twilight, seeking guidance and illumination for new ideas. - feels the presence of Ram Dass, the crystal Council, animals, energies, medicines, ancestors, and a ritual fire. - can see and feel the warmth of the flames, smell the burning cedar and pine, and see the moonlight on the trees. - emphasizes that the experience is not about the medicine but about tuning in and feeling the presence of the collective.
Personal Alchemy and Dimensional Presence
Speaker 1 discusses the concept of personal alchemy and how different people react to the same stimulants differently - mentions feeling present in all dimensions and describes the calming effect of this experience. = talks about the unique third thing formed when two energies come together and how it affects personal reactions. - asks for illumination and guidance on what dreams to pursue next, mentioning the EDD kid's desire to do everything at once.
Journey to Petra and Dimensional Travel
Speaker 1 recounts a journey to Petra, discovering the Grail legend and feeling like they won the lottery by reaching the temple. - describes traveling through different dimensions and feeling present in various locations, including Ireland and Egypt. - expresses excitement about the alchemical transformation and the changes in their being. - questions what will happen this time and emphasizes the importance of the collection of information, experience, and sensation.
Observation and Alchemy
Speaker 1 explores the concept of observation and how it changes the thing observed, including the impact of witnessing. - Speaker 1 discusses the act of observation turning data into information by placing it in context - Speaker 1 mentions meditation as widening the I to include the whole cosmic thing and the importance of pupil dilation during psychedelic experiences. - emphasizes the role of light information in turning data into information and making someone a concrete being.
Witnessing and Pain Transformation
Speaker 1 talks about the importance of witnessing each other's pain and how it turns it from a swirling amalgamation into something concrete with a purpose. - Speaker 1 mentions the bodhisattva path and the importance of not holding pain alone - Speaker 1 emphasizes the point of witnessing and how it resolves the swirling cloud of possibilities into a new dimensionality. - concludes by stating the importance of feeling the pain together and how it opens the door forward toward a new world order.
TRANSCRIPT HERE / Excerpts:
Oout of the Twilight on 11 Aq’ab’al. I ask for guidance. I ask for illumination of my new ideas. I can feel Ram Dass and the whole crystal Council and all the animals and energies and medicines and ancestors here with me. I can actually feel them. I can actually see them. We're all gathered around the ritual fire. I can see the flames flick layering on their faces. I can feel the warmth under my skin. I can smell the burning cedar. I can smell the pine. I can see the moonlight in Escondido shining on the trees. I can see us all illuminated in the forest. t's not about the medicine. It's about tuning in. I can see it. I can feel it, it's just a conduit.
I am the conduit. I am the channel. I am the mouthpiece. I am a mouthpiece. I'm not the anything. I am a happening. I am a hollow bone, one of many in the body, the collective corpus of humanity, with the number 11 today, so many ideas flowing in from every direction. That's the way I'm always operating. Today actually feels clear. Today. I actually have a clear vision. Today I see us all gathered around a ritual fire, I feel myself present in all the dimensions at once. And it's not overwhelming. It's calming. The stimulant can be focusing for the kid with too much and not enough, it's about your personal alchemy, the way things combine within your body. It's about the unique third thing that's formed when two energies come together. The way I react to a day is not going to be the same as the way you do. The way I react to a medicine is not going to be the same as the way you do because it's all alchemy, personal alchemy, Better Living Through Chemistry.
The ADD kid wants to do everything at once, but the stimulant helps you focus too much, plus too much equals just the right amount
i asked for illumination, like the Grail legend, which they just discovered underneath Petra, they finally excavated the temple in that pink castle that I sat outside of, that I finally got myself to after a lifetime, reveled in a drinking sage tea and meditating with the pink dust on my shoes and my pants and the pink kittens rolling in it and. Looking at the Treasury knowing I'd won the lottery, just because I actually got myself there all by myself. And it was a portal, and I was traveling through all the different dimensions, just like I am right now. Right now I'm in Ireland. I'm a druid. I'm a forest nymph. I'm a pagan priest, ex I'm in Egypt. I'm underneath the light of the moon at Luxor. That trip was really important, and now I'm circling back to it, and I can't wait. I can't wait to see what's in store coming back now with the collection of information, experience and sensation that's in my vessel. I can't wait to see what alchemical transformation happens this time, because it's not the same me.
Hand me that alchemical salt shaker, I need transformation.
The way it's all about alchemy, the way unique combinations of energies interact, the way matter collides when it comes into contact. How does observation change the thing? What is the impact of witnessing? How does simply looking, seeing affirming? Actually change the configuration of atoms, change the way the particles are flowing into waves, change the vibration, alter the frequency. What is it in the seeing? Widening the eye to let more light in. How does the act of observation change the thing?
This is astrology, observing the patterns and alignments of things happening at a unique moment in time. They're just snapshots of happenings, capturings of ephemerality, things coming briefly into existence and then disappearing. What is it in the act of observing that changes the thing? What is it in the act of observing that conjures something into being. What is it in the act of observing that selects the possibility from all of the millions of potentialities and makes it materiality? Is it that observation takes data and makes it into information by giving it a context, because there's someone observing in a place at a time? Can I get a witness? This is it the act of observation that turns something from data into information by placing it in the context of the eye. When you're having a psychedelic experience or a great awakening, your eyes open. Wider to let more light in, light information, that song by Chad VanGaalen, I knew it was important.
Light information, opening the eye to let more light in turn something from data into information. You witnessing me, turns me from a cloud of swirling possibilities into materiality, into a person, into a being with a purpose. When we witness each other's pain, it turns it from just this swirling amalgamation of horror into something that happened for a reason, because it got us here so that we could witness each other in this moment and tell each other You're not crazy. It really happened, and counteract the gas lighting that tells us that the thing that just happened didn't really happen.
We can tell each other it really happened, you're not crazy, and that resolves the confusing swirl of sensation and emotion that we've been waiting through our whole lives into something concrete with a purpose. It made us who we are. It got us where we are right now. The point is so that we could share it together. The point is the witnessing. The point is the witnessing. The point is the witnessing. The point is the bodhisattva path, which says, I am here before you. The point is the witnessing, which says you are not alone, and you don't have to hold this pain by yourself anymore. The point is the witnessing. The point is that it got us to this moment where we're both sitting here looking at each other, saying, I see you and I feel it too. that alchemizes it, and that opens the door and that widens the I, and that resolves the swirling cloud of possibilities into a new dimensionality that opens the door forward toward the whole new world order .
That first few sips feeling / Wrath of the feminine to black heart procession / LISTEN HERE
AI Summary: The conversation explores the concept of addiction, focusing on the initial pleasure and subsequent struggles. Speaker 1 discusses how the first few sips of alcohol provided temporary relief from pain, despite the negative consequences. Holly Regan defines addiction as a reliance on substances to cope with life's challenges. The discussion touches on the distinction between medicine and poison, emphasizing intention and dosage. The speakers also address societal biases, particularly towards women, queer, and trans individuals, highlighting systemic gaslighting and the denial of their historical contributions. The conversation critiques the privileged position of cis white men and the internalized beliefs that hinder marginalized groups.
Transcript
Outline
The Allure of the First Sip
Unknown Speaker discusses the initial pleasure of taking a sip of something, suggesting it always feels right at the beginning.
Speaker 1 reflects on how the first few sips of alcohol provided a temporary escape from pain and loneliness.
Despite the negative consequences, Speaker 1 emphasizes the allure of that first moment of relief.
The conversation touches on the idea of addiction being driven by the initial pleasure rather than the subsequent negative effects.
Debating Addiction and Medicine
Holly Regan questions the definition of addiction, suggesting it is a reliance on something to cope with the pain of being human.
Speaker 1 ponders whether listening to music in headphones constitutes an addiction, highlighting cultural norms and expectations.
The discussion explores the fine line between medicine and poison, emphasizing the importance of dosage and intention.
Unknown Speaker adds that the ceremonial container and the relationship with the substance also play a role in its classification.
The Role of Intention in Substance Use
Speaker 1 reflects on their past addiction, questioning whether they were trying to escape pain or embrace it.
The conversation delves into the differences between various archetypes, such as artist, mystic, and alcoholic, focusing on observation and belief.
Speaker 1 argues that the only difference between a psychotic and a prophet is whether anyone follows them.
The discussion highlights the societal pressures and biases that affect the perception and acceptance of different forms of expression.
Gender and Social Inequality
Speaker 1 discusses the societal pressures faced by women, queer, and trans individuals, emphasizing the lack of confidence and opportunity.
The conversation critiques the privileged position of cis white men in society, who often assume entitlement and control.
Speaker 1 highlights the systemic issues that prevent marginalized groups from achieving success and recognition.
The discussion touches on the internalized beliefs that lead individuals to doubt their worth and potential.
The Impact of Systemic Gaslighting
Speaker 1 describes the concept of gaslighting, where individuals are made to doubt their perceptions and experiences.
The conversation explores how societal norms and expectations contribute to feelings of confusion, sadness, and loneliness.
Speaker 1 emphasizes the historical denial of marginalized groups' contributions and the need to reclaim their legacy.
The discussion highlights the importance of recognizing and challenging systemic gaslighting to achieve true equality and empowerment.
Those first few sips of medicine, you're always going to think you've made the right decision. the first few sips of something, it always feels right in the beginning. If it started off terrible, you'd never do it to begin with. I always was better at starting things than finishing them. Is this the root of addiction? That first few sips feeling,
and it was always what drove me to drinking that first few sips feeling when it first hits your tongue, when it first hits your belly and makes it warm, that alchemical transformation when one thing mixes with yours and it takes you into a state different than where you'd been before, when it takes you out of the pain of being you, when it takes you out of the pain of being small, when it takes you out of The pain of being separate, even for a moment, for that first sip, it was always worth it, no matter how messy it got, no matter how much I threw up, no matter how much I made a fool of myself or a mess in my life or wrecked my car and almost died, no matter how far away for myself, I felt like it took me. It was always worth it for that first few sips, feeling bargaining, taking one day off a week so I could say that I didn't drink every day. I do it with the medicine now today, but the intention is different. The intention is different and the approach is different. So does that make it different, or is it all still addiction?
What does addiction even mean? It's reliance on a medicine to try to cope with something, with the pain of being human, which is overwhelming, and frankly, in this culture that's sick and wrong and terrible, we all need something. This song should be recited along to things go on with mistakes by Brock, black heart procession,
make a note. I'm listening to it in my headphones right now, and I'm speaking along to it, and this is the perfect pacing for it. Does that make it an addiction? If our culture is so sick that we need something just to cope with the day to day of getting up in the morning, if we need to take something if we need to get outside ourselves, just to go drag ourselves into the framework that we were never meant to live in to begin with. Is that really an addiction, or is it medicine? What's the line between a medicine and a poison? It's the dosage
and it's the intention, and it's the ceremonial container. I think it's the way in which you approach it. Is it a relationship? Are you just using it? Are you trying to produce a different feeling in your body?
Are you trying to avoid something? Are you trying to go into it. But see, even with my worst addiction, when I was at the bottom of a bottle every day, I don't know that I was actually trying to get out of the pain. I think I was trying to go into it.
So isn't even an addiction medicine. In that sense, I was always going to the death. I was always trying to hit bottom. And if that's your intention, is there such a thing as misusing? Is there even such a thing as addiction, artist, Mystic, alcoholic, psychotic, Prophet, all the same archetype, the differences, where is that energy going? The difference is, who is witnessing? The observation. The difference is, does anyone believe in what you're saying?
The only difference between the psychotic and the Prophet and the mystic is whether anyone listens to their gospel. The only difference, the only difference between the artist and the alcoholic is whether anyone puts up the paintings that they scrawl on the page when they're at the bottom of the bottle in a gallery, or if they just stay forever locked inside the sketch pad like mine. whether you just write draft after draft on your computer and never publish it, disappearing into the Google Docs ether, or if you get a publisher. That's the only difference between me and Jack Kerouac. I hid myself away, and this is the feminine repression, and this is the feminine and the queer and the trans repression. They tell us that we're not good enough this. Yeah, see, and there were always those statistics that I used to read when I worked in marketing about how men didn't have any shame, about how men would apply for jobs that they weren't qualified for because they had no shame, and women wouldn't even try, because they'd assume that they were never going to get there, And that's not even taking queer and trans people into account. I mean, fuck, we never think we're gonna make it.
We don't even try, because we assume we're never gonna make it because the world wasn't set up for us to begin with. But these fucking cis white men, they have the whole fucking world in the palm of their hand. These motherfucking cis white men, they have the whole world in the palm of their hand, and they just take everything's for them. They just assume everything's for them and everything is for them. Everything is set up for them. Everything fucking caters to them, these fucking cis white men, they just take and take. They assume everything's for them, because everything is for them. They just assume everything's for them. They just assume they can take whatever they want. They just assume that they can fucking touch your body. They just assumed that they could grab your breasts like they belong to them, like they're your property. They just assume that it belongs to them. They just assume that they can have it. They just assume that that space is meant for them. They just assume that they can go there, take that touch, that person. They just assume they can fucking do whatever they want to you. They just do whatever they fucking want to you. They just do whatever they fucking want to you. They grab your breasts without even asking, like they belong to them. They grab your fucking ass. They put you in their bed. They fucking do whatever they want to you. They do whatever the fuck they want to you, and they don't care. They don't listen. If what you're saying is not only not enthusiastic, but is actually a no. That kind of sounds like a yes, because you don't know what else to say, because you assume you're supposed to go along with whatever they want, because you assume that you're their property too, because you believe the fucking lie too. Because you believe the fucking lie to you that they can take whatever they want, even if it's your body, because you believe the fucking lie to you that those spaces aren't for you because you believe the fucking lie to you, you're not welcome in the temple.
So of course you worship the fucking gate, of course you worship the bottle, of course you worship the medicine. That's the only thing that makes you feel better. You believe the temple isn't for you. You were told the temple wasn't for you. You were told the inner temple wasn't for you. You were told you weren't good enough. You were told you weren't pure enough. You were told that you would burn. You were told that you couldn't go into the temple. Of course, we stay at the gate. We were told that we weren't welcome in the temple. Of course, we stay at the gate. We were told we weren't welcome in the temple. Of course, we worship the gate. We don't know what the temple even looks like, because we've never stepped foot inside. Jesus went to the temple and was horrified, and he turned the fucking tables upside down, and he said, What the fuck is this shit? This isn't what I meant. This isn't how it was supposed to be. I used to say that was gonna be the title of my autobiography. This didn't turn out the way I intended. Well, this didn't turn out the way I meant it. I used to say that was going to be my autobiography, and that the sequel was going to be that wasn't what I was trying to say, because I never could decide on anything, because I never could get it out.
Gaslighting is when they tell you the thing that just happened didn't really happen. When they're turning the lights down so slowly, it's almost imperceptible, and you can't tell what's happening, and then they tell you that you're crazy. It's always been this way. We've always had to fumble around in the dark not knowing where we were going. We've always had to be really confused and sad and lonely. We've always been bumping our heads and burning into each other. It's always been this way, you're crazy, you're crazy, you're crazy. This is the way it's always been, nah, nah. They're denying. Our history, our legacy. They're denying the fact that we were the ones in charge in the beginning. They're denying the fact that we used to all live in reciprocity. They're denying the reality. They're denying the reality because they have to keep up a charade to stay in power, because they have to keep up the appearance of control and separation the song just ended. They have to keep pretending. That's the only way it keeps going. And eventually you get so good at you believe this gaslighting so much that you start to gaslight even yourself.
Rap of the Hollow Bone v2 LISTEN >>
AI Summary: The conversation delves into the speaker's inner journey of self-discovery and healing. They discuss the internal conflict between protective parts and those seeking truth, likening it to a game of hide and seek. The speaker recounts personal traumas, including cancer, a life-threatening accident, and experiences of gaslighting and abuse. They explore their identity, reflecting on childhood interests and the suppression of their true self. The speaker emphasizes the importance of making the unconscious conscious, using rituals and ceremonies to integrate hidden parts. They also touch on societal pressures, particularly on queer and trans individuals, and the need for collective healing and recognition of one's inner truth.
Two speakers are identified, neither named. Methodologies: Depth psychology and self-administered IFS
Transcript
Outline:
Unconscious Inner Conflicts and Protective Mechanisms
Speaker 1 discusses the desperate need to pour everything into someone who sees them, seeking reflection and blessing.
Unknown Speaker mentions the wounded inner child relegated to the shadows, a part that developed to protect.
Speaker 1 talks about protective parts that hide things or make one remember, and parts that want to awaken and face the truth.
Unknown Speaker emphasizes that everyone contains multitudes and characters, all needing to be heard and spoken to.
Carl Jung's Concept and Internal Family Dynamics
Speaker 1 references Carl Jung's quote about making the unconscious conscious to avoid it ruling one's life.
Unknown Speaker talks about ignoring internal energies and how they can manifest as diseases or accidents.
Speaker 1 shares personal experiences of cancer and a serious accident, attributing them to internal energies trying to get attention.
Unknown Speaker recounts a cancer diagnosis on the feminine side and a marriage to an abusive partner, despite not listening to internal warnings.
Listening to Inner Voices and Seeking Healing
Speaker 1 describes sitting in the dark and lighting candles, inviting inner voices to gather around the fire.
Unknown Speaker mentions using various methods like medicine, writing, drawing, and playing to communicate with inner voices.
Speaker 1 talks about working with dreams and guides for interpretation and understanding the story of their life.
Unknown Speaker discusses gaslighting and repeating patterns from childhood, growing up in an evangelical church that taught denial of the body.
Exploring Identity and Personal Dreams
Speaker 1 reflects on being called a tomboy in the 90s and the binary system's inability to conceive of being trans.
Speaker 1 shares childhood interests in wolves, nature, and ancient cultures, imagining themselves in different places and times.
Speaker 1 mentions wanting to visit sacred sites and hearing the midnight symphony of the forest, influenced by Indiana Jones.
Speaker 1 talks about the realness of oracles and myths, and the importance of deciphering esoteric codes for universal truths.
Connection to Natural World and Indigenous Wisdom
Speaker 1 discusses the sentient energy in the natural world, according to indigenous and non-dual cosmologies.
Speaker 1 criticizes the capitalist narrative of separation and the need to sell solutions to people.
Speaker 1 reflects on the duality of having to repress truth and the importance of direct experience and listening to the natural world.
Speaker 1 talks about the threat to traditional and indigenous cultures and the loss of direct experience in modern society.
Ceremony and Reciprocity with the Natural World
Speaker 1 describes the process of taking offerings and giving reciprocity to the other realm in ceremonies.
Speaker 1 mentions writing plays and musicals as a way to search for truth and deliver subtle messages.
Speaker 1 identifies as a shaman with an X, carrying the syncretic hermetic lineage and leading souls from one life to the next.
Speaker 1 talks about the importance of deconditioning fears and insecurities imprinted in childhood.
Trauma and the Power of Hiding
Speaker 1 reflects on the need to hide from abuse and the impact of being told to deny one's body and desires.
Speaker 1 discusses the importance of making the unconscious conscious and bringing hidden parts into the fold.
Speaker 1 talks about the power of forgetting and burying parts of oneself to avoid judgment from God.
Speaker 1 mentions the Maya calendar and the significance of the 13th day, relating it to the story of Judas as a betrayer.
Reclaiming Identity and Expression
Speaker 1 talks about the importance of reclaiming identity and expression, despite societal pressures.
Speaker 1 shares experiences of being in relationships where sexuality and identity were blurred and messy.
Speaker 1 reflects on the fear and discomfort of expressing true identity and the need to bury it deeper.
Speaker 1 discusses the importance of making the unconscious conscious and the impact of trauma and gaslighting.
Ceremony and Connection to Greater Consciousness
Speaker 1 talks about the importance of ceremony and channeling archetypes and parts of self.
Speaker 1 mentions the significance of words in creating reality and the use of charms in ceremonies.
Speaker 1 discusses the importance of turning down programming and connecting with greater consciousness.
Speaker 1 reflects on the role of Judas and Mary Magdalene in seeing the truth and being scapegoats of humanity.
Reconciliation and Acceptance
Speaker 1 apologizes for past beliefs of not being worthy and not wanting to be in the body.
Speaker 1 reflects on the need for someone to see and acknowledge the parts of self that were trying to help.
Speaker 1 talks about the importance of recognizing the truth and bringing hidden parts into the light.
Speaker 1 emphasizes the need to listen to inner voices and the importance of ceremony and connection to greater consciousness.
Final Reflections: It All Comes Back to Beer
And through it all, beer keeps coming in to remind me that I am loved and held, always. My last-ever story for Good Beer Hunting, the magazine and community that launched my career as a freelance writer, journalist, armchair anthropologist, that launched me down the forking path to the PhD and back to my artist self that I find myself on now—was about Hildegard, my friends the brewer and the herbalist, whose nanobrewery and apothecary has been a staple of my community and personal healing in the Pacific Northwest corner of my world, and whose namesake is a figure in the psychedelic musical spectacular taking form. I forgot I had even entered it in the NAGBW awards, because I don’t want to be a journalist and I barely even drink alcohol anymore, but something about these things keeps coming back, tapping me on the shoulder, whispering in my ear, and I think the point of it all is to remind me it’s all home, it’s all love. That I don’t have to be an active beer drinker or identify myself with the community or a movement, but I can still hold space in my heart and life for it, because i do still care about it, something does still tug on my heartstrings when I walk past a truly community-oriented craft beer space or a tiny natural wine bar climbing from a reclaimed industrial corner where you can get a cheese plate and a really funky orange while sitting on an overturned barrel or some rough-hewn reclaimed barn door turned into a table.
But most importantly—of course—it’s the people. GBH connected me to some truly beautiful humans, ones who believed in me when I didn’t, who entered me into the NLGJA awards and got me into that cohort that helped me find the confidence to get out of the whole journalism game. Ironically, getting into the “club” made me realize it wasn’t a place I even wanted to be, but I needed to peek my head in the side door to see that i was meant to return, all along, to the life of the artist.
And maybe I still have a book in me. We’ll see.
But what is really cool is that I got a response from my outreach to Avril Corroon, who I only got connected to because of food and beverage journalism, writing an article that connected my tether to more-than-home in Seattle, Zach Pacleb; my ancestral homeland in Ireland; and my little slice of found family in Belfast—and Avril echoed what Lxo had mentioned, and what my friend at ecstatic dance said she was doing for her performance, that the kind of work I was looking at showing and performing was better suited to a nontraditional format anyway. That I should look at food and beverage and industrial space for my work, because thematically it made sense anyway. I instantly thought of Lily and QBP, and thought maybe I should reach out in case they found another space soon, and then I opened my IG and saw that Hildegard and Dave had put me in their stories thanking me, and being grateful for their own honoring, and I was flooded with love, and then I opened my feed and the first post I saw was from Lily and her wife saying that they just bought a brewery.
Folks, that’s what we call a synchronicity. Nothing’s real, and sometimes it’s amazing.
I see a gallery that is a brewery, food that is on the wall and art that is on the table, queering and reclaiming and reframing what all of these spaces and places mean. Making the brewery a sanctuary, a dance floor, a church; bringing the sacred and secular together but separate; maybe the trial run of my immersive psychedelic theatre is actually in their space, or one like it, anyway, found through my network of food and beverage friends; not burning any bridges but continuing to build them. Being grateful for all of them, appreciating all of it, not having to cut anything out but simply opening to the possibilities.
Even more Judas
There is a beer called Even More Jesus that I used to love. It’s about 12% ABV but it’s silky smooth, everything you want a stout to be, malty backbone and coffee-chocolate overtones. I don’t even know if I can say I drink anymore, I have no tolerance for more than a few sips before I’m wasted, but for some reason I still like to wax poetic about beer. It IS still a really important part of the overall thesis, because it’s not about the beer, it’s about the funeral feast, the thing to gather around but more importantly the carrier for the medicine that takes you to the subtle realms to eat and drink with the dead.
I am debating whether to go meet someone from the beer scene in Glasgow, they’re always nice people, but I’m also really tired. I don’t know if staying home is responsible or avoidant.
Beer, the one I loved so dearly, alcohol in fact, but who betrayed me over and over again.
Or so I said. I suppose it WAS truth serum in that it allowed the shadows I’d locked up in the cellar to come busting out, front and center.
I picked up some clothes I’d left at Ceri’s house in 2023 the other day and there was an old journal shoved at the bottom of the bag, a little time capsule to myself, and it opened with me in Vancouver about to do the ceremony with Ben and Tony, talking about being afraid to go home, getting super avoidant in Vancouver and locking myself in the house for weeks writing in circles, and analyzing my lifelong pattern of the “rule of 3,” caught in triads where someone was always getting left out, replaying the old pattern of me, mom, and Callin. And of course, this is Cain, Abel, and God. Abraham, Isaac, and God. God, always getting all involved in parent-child dynamics.
I then read this transcript from a while back and was struck by it:
[[Today’s transmission definitely assisted by kit. Is Thank you kit, let's give you a hand. Thank you. Thank you for your collaboration. So yeah, today is 12 Khan. So Khan is my Maya and a wall the day of bundling my life experience to. I transmit the wisdom gathered through my life experience. Khan is the serpent, the serpent of knowledge, the serpent in the garden. Yeah, this whole tricena is about how our bodies are vessels. Prendas the containers holding the collections of moments. But also a big theme of all these conversations, a big theme of kit's work is this idea of manipulation. Who's manipulating? Who is the question putting each other under spells. So kit talks about the whole kind of the formula for their process, which is the adaptation, you know, of the ancestral practice is spell, charm, trance. And this is, I mean, again, I do a version of this. I just never put it in those terms before. But like I say an incantation, I open the space, I speak to the spirits in the universe. The charm is the medicine. I don't know it's been cacao lately. Sometimes it's other medicines. Sometimes it's Kundalini and movement alone. Not very often these days. It probably should be more, but who says should be whatever cacao is? What's happening right now, and it's blowing a lot of stuff open. So yeah, the spells, we're all putting spells on each other. We're all kind of manipulating each other, and like there are shamans working in all the realms all the time, kind of like doing battle with each other. And this is, this is what they say in the Shipibo tradition. This is what my source for the cacao story told me yesterday. This really cool person who's like, definitely a hermetic messenger between the realms. She's an American training to be a maya day keeper, and she's translating for me all the crazy shit that's going on in this community. And like, what plays out for the public is not what's going on behind the scenes. And what's going on behind the scenes is this old school shamanistic battle. They talk about it in the death and resurrection show, it's like this, shamans trying to outdo each other and, like, calling in the cosmos and these other forces, I think, kind of being like, Oh, God, really are we doing this again? Like, don't we have bigger things to worry about? But anyways, so, yeah, how is it possible to be in alignment when everyone's trying to sell something. And this goes for myself, you know, I'm so concerned about how to make a living, so I gotta be really aware of that. But anyways, so, yeah, that's kind of another story, but going down that path, yeah, I'm just reading my notes. So yeah, then I started kind of making these comparisons to Judas. Where did that even come from? Oh, yeah, I was communicating with I went into a trance, and I communicate, asked to communicate with the spirit of cacao. So then I saw a vision of ish cacao and ish anim, XIM, sorry, ichim. I don't know how to pronounce that. And then I was like, oh shit, that's Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the spirit of cacao and the spirit of the corn. And then all of a sudden I was like, but So those are the divine spirits. But what keeps us human? I don't even know where this came from, but all of a sudden I was like, oh shit. Judas Iscariot, he was the third and the 13th. He was a really important part of the story. He's the triangle. There's always a third one. There's always a third way. So then I started getting this transmission about I went to this Lady Gaga concert with Bill, and we all dressed up in costume, and it was this very big ritual, and we dressed up like the cast from her Judas video, which, if you have not seen this, you should look this up right now. Just a holy fool, baby, I'm still in love with Jesus. What is it? Just a holy fool? I can't remember the lyrics, but I'm still in love with Judas baby. Just totally fool. Something, something, still in love with Judas baby. So that's, yeah, that's the whole thing.
I looked so much like Gaga that night that people in the hotel where we were staying thought that I was Gaga. Uh, I got blackout drunk, and Bill just this was at a time when I was really struggling with my drinking. I had asked for help, and Bill liked to see the spectacle. And he liked to see people go overboard, even if they were his close friends, and that included me and everyone kind of just again. It's like, I need to take responsibility. It wasn't their job to save me, but I expressed that I was struggling, and instead of trying to help me, They fed me liquor and or at least, didn't Okay, that's not true. I went and got liquor. They didn't stop me. They laughed at it and encouraged it in that way, and then let me eat a pizza that had pepperoni on it, and I was really sick, because I don't eat meat, and I haven't in like since I was 10. So I didn't talk to him for a while after that, but yeah, there were many times, other times in my life where I would get very intoxicated on substances and dance to Lady Gaga. So there's something about like Gaga really represents this Judas archetype. She's also this queer symbol, this queer icon. But who like hasn't come out herself as queer, I am telling you like she's family, and she doesn't quite claim it, and she also really is someone who gets sucked into addiction a lot, very publicly, which plays into this whole artist, Mystic, alcoholic. They're all the same archetype. So what else? Yeah, so sometimes we get sucked in to over consuming. This was related to cacao and any medicine, sometimes we all get so there's this theme in the medicine community of kind of, like, there's a school of, like, spiritual bros who are just like, you got to do heroic doses, dude. You got to go in again and again. You got to go to Ayahuasca retreats every year. And it's like, no, like, I did the Ayahuasca retreat the one time. And like, I will go back, but I don't know when that'll be. And, yeah, I mean, so I think there's a bit of a spell being cast by the men who lead these retreats and who are creating these products and like that. Even includes this guy that I went to a cacao ritual for, and I thought he was in alignment. And then this conversation yesterday, well, my Yeah, it's not important. It turned out I was right that he's not really in alignment. So, yeah, we're all casting spells. There's lots of spells that are being cast to kind of get us to keep consuming, to get us to keep spending, and to get us to keep playing these roles and dressing in drag, and yeah, we're all actors, performing parts, putting on our personas. I did my sacrificial dance, offering myself up in drag as a woman as Gaga, as special, as a suffering housewife, as a victim, as the third who would always be abandoned, but also kind of knew it and left anyways. So I then got in really clear just trust the process of the play, because I was getting a bunch of scenes about this in California, and I was like, Why the fuck are these coming in? So yeah, because it was part of this Judas storyline. So then I got a vision of Jesus Judas and cacao, which is like Jesus Judas and Mary Magdalene, which is corn, yeah, I don't know one of the Judas figure kind of looked like this, like Santeria figure that I was almost like, Ooh, I feel like this is connected to kids somehow. Anyways, then it went into this whole Okay, we have to, if we truly accept all and reject none, and we need every character in the archetypal Pantheon in the divine drama to play their part. That means that no one's ever really the villain, and everyone is. No one's really the hero, and everyone is so that means Jesus too. And yeah, that even Jesus got carried away with his own power. So this is why it was equating Jesus to 13 Khan, which is my Nawal and the Maya calendar system. Because 13 Khan is the one is the serpent is the one that has the power to be the greatest magician, the greatest deceiver, the greatest sorcerer or the greatest healer. And I was getting this, okay, Jesus, I think there was actually a point at which Jesus got carried away with his own power. And even. And Jesus can ego trip. So this is a big thing. Was like, even Jesus can ego trip? Even Jesus can get carried away with his own shit. And then at a certain point this started happening, and Judas was the one who actually tried to call him out. And yeah, so then I have this whole thing about we are the universe's power bottom that came to me during an Ayahuasca journey. And I was like, Okay, I think Jesus and Judas. This is where Dane then started coming in. I was like, this is totally his bag. So it's all a cosmic game of SNM. There's this whole theme I have in the play about existential kink, which is like a healing modality, but, you know, that's another story. So if Jesus was a power bottom? Wait, sorry, I'm trying to read my notes. Judas didn't realize Jesus was a power bottom. He tried to get the upper hand, but then I wrote, well, it was actually all a cosmic game of S and M, what if, in G, what if Jesus and Judas actually gave consent for all of this in the beginning, and the whole thing was just a show for the uninitiated. So this is the death and resurrection show, right? Like, this whole religion thing, all the religions like, it's just a wink wink. So yeah, what if the crucifixion was just another performance like the mysteries of Eleusis? Of course it was. Of course it was. This is hermeticism. This is alchemical wisdom. This is the death and resurrection show. This is the shaman showman, hiding things in plain sight ]]
I’m trying to get these scenes from the play to Guido and my 10-minuter at least a bit scripted and to filter through my notes from the past few days of intense transmissions and don’t know if it’s better to simmer in the mysticism or get out there and drink a beer, have an interaction that might not necessarily “get me” something or even be all that fun—or if that’s an excuse to alienate and separate myself from people, to be one of Those People who can only hang with the “high vibers.”
Beer was really my gateway to awakening, even if it was also my downfall in high school. Once I started really caring about it as craft and built community around it… I don’t know, it’s interesting. The trajectory may have gone kind of like other medicines. I once thought I might actually die if I had to live without it, yet was constantly overdoing it - probably because of this. Then it just stopped being as important when I started reconnecting with other interests and healing. Now I frankly avoid it. But I know I’ve always had a similar relationship with chocolate, now transposed onto the essence, cacao.
We take too much when we feel we’re not enough somehow. The bottomless vessel. The medicine that makes us see doubly… until the room starts spinning.
Suicide-adjacent, the inner lesbian, theatre as salvation
It comforted me deeply when I listened to a podcast yesterday that said Jung kept a loaded revolver in his nightstand just in case all the visions got to be too overwhelming.
I also listened to a Jungian perspective that said isolation is part of this process of receiving, but it does kind of make you crazy. You need to touch in with the world of forms and materiality. Volunteering with ecstatic dance has become that grounding for me; they are my family, and it’s a place where we have altered-state experiences, yet my responsibilities are very grounded in 3D: sweep the floor, plug the lights in, fill the water jug. And now, hand out my cacao informational leaflets, N’oj coming back around.
It’s a tricky one, that isolation. You need some of it to do the work, but it’s also one of the shadows I fear most, the unstoppable death force: the one that wants to get me alone and kill me. The one that has been working subtly on me ever since high school. But the way I transmuted it then was the same as now, I guess, turning it into research and performance.
It was coming out when I was in Austin, because there are no such thing as accidents, just parts of yourself trying to get your attention. On the wall of this housesit are three posters with “2010” emblazoned boldly across the top. The year that I had five “accidents” and turned the first car I had so proudly purchased into a mangled wreck of metal, as witin so without. The only one I had sober was going to see Stephen, where I spun out on the Texas highway and everything turned so slow-motion that I was able to see perfectly clearly that I was about to die, and I had nothing to show for my miserable life, but the good part was that I realized for the first time in that state that I wasn’t ready to exit stage right. I spun across five lanes of traffic and somehow came to a stop on the opposite side of the road facing backwards, and had managed not to hit a single person or even blow out a tire. I got a huge fine, but I survived.
The suicide feeling came back for the first time since I actually tried to do it, three years after that accident, on the train in London last Friday night. But the beauty was that I was able to see the effects of my medicine and healing work n action, because I actually was standing on the edge of it, peering over, from the observer position, watching it all unfold. Knowing I wasn’t really going to act on it. But man, did it come a lot closer than I was comfortable with.
It was prompted by going into an old pattern, one I thought I had cleared: thinking I had feelings for a cis man, because I felt like I needed someone to save me from myself. And it came along with a harsh lesson: that you need to be careful who you share things with.
They keep this shit esoteric for a reason. Tell the wrong people, and they’ll call you crazy.
He told me, gently, that not only were the feelings not reciprocated, but he was worried about me. For a few days, this only deepened my victim mentality. Just like when I was a kid, I doubted myself; I forgot I was a shamxn, because I didn’t know how to share what I was finding in a way people would understand; because the wrong people saw it, as happened when they read my journals and took my books away as a teenager.
There’s nowhere to hide when they get inside your mind and make you gaslight yourself.
But this time, I remembered.
And I realized the whole thing had been triggered by realizing that I actually was attracted to Jade, that mystical bearer of cacao, the queer owner of the ethical metaphysical store with whom I had been divinely connected, whose aunt has offered to sponsor my UK visa. The only other person I’ve ever heard of who is having high-dose cacao experiences; a healer who has learned from Indigenous teachers.
And very much a binary lesbian, like those who told me I wasn’t one of them. Like the ones I was told I would burn for being attracted to, my first memory of self-gaslighting.
Dave assigned me te creation of a 10-minute play in December, because I had to get it out of here, he told me over sad, tired, too-yellow eggs in the cafe of the quirky building across from the theatre, where downstairs it was perpetually Christmas, and once a year the rest of the world caught up with it.
There’s something poetic about that. And it makes me think of Lala’s, the bar of forever Christmas in Austin, Texas, where you could still smoke indoors, and I sucked on American Spirits and thought that Jeff was the answer to my anomie, and decided to leave Stephen before he came back from the holidays.
The play, we decided, would be about self-gaslighting. He told me he also wants to hear more about channeling. I told him that I had an idea for a one-person show where I would basically just do my morning practice in front of people with a more coherent through-line. I thought nobody would care about this. But he loved it.
I do think one of the people I’m channeling is McKenna.
Ha! The song that just came on shuffle has a chorus saying: “Help me to name it.” That’s the thing, innit?
So, before I realized that I was gaslighting myself again into thinking that I was attracted to a cis man who would save me from my own madness and self-destruction and forgot I was a shamxn who had a crush on an astral-traveling lesbian—and a Kame nahual, of course, because I am in love with the death and resurrection—I got into that dark place again, that part of me was trying, as it has been my whole life, to isolate me from my art and the queer spiritual friends who understand, and I stood at the precipice of suicidal ideation and peered over the edge. But I realized it was happening, and that’s why I was sitting on that train having this realization.
I knew I needed to go to the theatre. And I’ll be damned, I was redeemed by a play about a couple of gay Peruvians called “Jeezus: The Musical,” which contained everything from astute observations of South American politics to resurrecting the lord and savior by fellating a crucifix, and the music was catchy and the actors engaging and I was totally captivated, and all those dark thoughts fell away, and I knew I needed to put my pain and joy and stories onstage.
I waited around until they came out of the dressing room and gushed and asked if I could send them some scenes, and they said yes.
Then I read them and felt like they were a disastrous half-conceived mess, so I still haven’t done it.
But it’s a start. The first step is awareness.
——
Transmission transcript: Suicidality
More suicidality. It's all connected. I love when things just start to make sense, listening to this yangian life, yeah. Young was also haunted, slashed comforted by thoughts of suicide, images, the things he was receiving from the other realm were so overwhelming, he didn't know how to ground them, interpret them, make sense of them, land them, and he kept a loaded revolver in his bedside table, just to remind himself that if it got to be too much, he could end it all. That's exactly what I've been going through. But I've been alive things feel overwhelming that seem easy to other people, and I don't see another way out, except to be saved by a man or put myself in the ground. And how sad is that, and how much power Am I giving away to that. But that's what's happening when I was being brought back to Austin's wanting for a reason, because they also say in this podcast that when people start having quote, unquote accidents, that's the suicidal self trying to get out, that's the unstoppable death or trying To finish the job, it's the beginning. You start paying less attention. You start being less careful. You start by just kind of not fearing if it happens. And then it works. All the
times I crashed my car. I mean, I knew I was possibly trying to die, but to see here, it spelled out very sobering. There are a lot of ways to kill yourself. Some are less confronting.
LISTEN:
Insatiable
Holly Regan reflects on theit struggles with insatiability, exploring themes of trauma, addiction, and the search for love and identity. They discuss their experiences with alcohol, sexual encounters, and artistic suppression, linking these to past abuse and the need for validation. Holly describes their transformations into different personas—artist, mystic, and alcoholic—and the trance-like states they enter. They acknowledges the severe abuse they endured, the gaslighting, and the societal shaming that contributed to their behavior. Holly also touches on their journey of self-discovery, forgiveness, and the realization that they are a shaman, emphasizing the expansive nature of the universe and the time available for personal growth.
Transcript here
Summary:
Insatiable Hunger and Emptiness
- They describe a feeling of insatiability, always needing more to fill an empty void within themself. - They mention the fear of the bottom being empty and scary, reflecting their inner emptiness. - They discuss how they make themself into whatever they need to get love, even if it means taking rather than giving. - They talk about the monstrous impulse that awakens every morning, comparing it to a beast that never feels satisfied.
[...] Action Items:
Forgive myself for not going to art school and quitting theater. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Reconnect with and apologize to the younger versions of myself (Assignee: Fiona)
Transmute the trauma and shame I've experienced, especially around my sexuality and identity. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Embrace the creative, spiritual, and authentic parts of myself that I've suppressed. (Assignee: Holly Regan)
Speaker 1 reflects on their creative process, discussing the symbolic use of letters and the deeper meaning behind their art, which includes themes of breaking free from cycles and ending a relationship. They recount a transformative experience involving a conversation with their mother, which led to a realization about their purpose in creating art. This realization was further solidified by witnessing a performance that resonated deeply with their identity and struggles. Speaker 1 also shares a profound revelation about their ability to perceive the dead, which they had previously suppressed, and expresses a newfound desire to document and explore these visions, recognizing them as a unique form of communication and a significant part of their identity.
Action Items
Draw the faces the speaker sees when they close their eyes and record the stories of the dead.
Transcript:
The word y, u, W, A, U, wait, W, A, y, u, written clearly. It's like the title of a magazine written in block letters at the top of an exhibit or I've created with art pieces of letters that were never sent to mark sending messages and some secret code about how we get out of the cycle of samsara, things that are casual, but they're also they're me telling me him, I'm not getting back together with him.
They're like these stylized letters, or like letters written on an old 1950s postcard from Hawaii, I'm saying Like you're never gonna see me again. Kay, by
mm, what if it's the part of me that thought they needed to be saved from men and saved from myself writing this letter to say you'll never see me again. I love that, that that feels like that could be true, and that could definitely be an art project too. Pat's is 12. He drowned. He's a redhead with freckles, and I see his head bobbing above the surface before it goes under. I feel like he contacted me when I was a little child, but I didn't know how to interpret it. All of a sudden, things are pouring in from the astral. I actually really unlocked something, and it crystallized, because I was talking to mom. Isn't that interesting. So I need to only talk to her when I've only had when I've already figured things out, I think for a while, because somehow in that, yeah, like I it's a good time to talk to her when I'm crystallizing things. I am supposed to share what I'm learning, but I'm not supposed to ask her input, and she can help me kind of connect the dots once they're basically already there, not even that. It's just like, in the act of sharing with her and some additional maybe filters she puts on or support she lends, makes it unlock, like I just got to the next level, and getting all the bells and whistles, because I realized that it was I realized that I lost the point of why to create anything at all until I was talking to her, and I realized that that's part of what made seeing that play so important, was realizing that on the train, on The way there, I didn't want to live anymore. And then I saw a couple Peruvian queers get up on stage, and I didn't tell her this part, but mime getting anally raped and sucking off not, yeah, no, not getting annoy raped and mimed getting defiled by a crucifix and sucking off Jesus and reclaiming their queer shame. And I saw my story, and suddenly I didn't feel alone anymore. I walked into that theater and I instantly felt happy, and that's why to create, and that's what I had lost, the threat of I was trying to make the thing for the sake of making the thing because I wanted my puppy to look at me and tell me I was worthy.
I don't need these men to tell me that I'm worthy. I
him seeing me, giving me the label add is actually a spell he put on me. Brewery, a sorcery. I now has become an excuse for everything.
Something like that is only helpful if it can be liberating.
He saw my pain, but then trapped me in a trance with the spell he put on me, black magic, sorcery, men always trying to tell you something's wrong with you. I
He thinks I'm crazy, but I'm a motherfucking shaman baby. Holy fucking shit. I've always seen faces when I closed my eyes ever since I was a kid, but I would kind of shut them down because they freaked me out. They're the dead. That's the dead speaking to me, Holy fucking shit. And it comes in the hypnagogic state. Oh, my fucking god, this is so incredible to realize. I gotta draw them. I gotta listen to them. I gotta record their stories. I feel like there's one called Alan. He's Asian. He was trying to speak to me. He was trying to raise his hand, or it looked like he was trying to pinch something. His dad wasn't listening. The dead have been speaking to me this whole time this way, ever since I was a little kid. And this came through some thought train as I was laying here, half awake about the play and about how the chosen children always have some kind of ability to communicate with the other realms. And I was like thinking I didn't have one. And then all of a sudden I realized it's the faces that appear to me. This is what I got to draw. This is so fucking cool.
Transmission transcript: Rebekah the temptress
Rebekah. Rebekah, now I'm in love with a girl named Rebekah. What is it about these Latin ladies? She danced with all the men at the dance today. At ecstatic she captivated all of them. I watched them. I watched her put each one under her spell was a charm her body, the dance that put them in a trance. She enchanted Lubo and Richard and Simon the DJ. She even got up behind him while he was playing, and started like fluffing him and I almost wanted to say, stop. And if it was anyone else, Richard would have told them to get the fuck out of there. But she put him in a spell too. And she put a spell on me too, but I already was, I already was in. She put a spell on me the second she looked at me. What is it with me and these Latin ladies, I can't resist. Does this make me some kind of colonist, like it just happens to be my type. But Is that racist? I feel very complicated about this. She's just oozes pure sexuality. This has nothing to do with her nationality. I'm talking just separately about her at this point, she like is sex personified. She's a goddess. She's Aphrodite. Her hips just the right amount of sculpted, the kind that makes you think that she gets them naturally from dancing, and not from doing a bunch of crunches, but she's got those little lines on either side of her stomach that were visible through the space between her Crop Top and her spandex that hugged her perfect ass, round, voluptuous, but not big, just well, but kind of big, but not really just perfect. I mean, she looked like a fucking sculpture of a goddess, gyrating those hips, her hair soft, her face suggestive without being excessive, like she's so soft as well, just tempting. And I smelled alcohol on her breath, and it reminded me of all those dangerous men that lured me in with their I don't know, some way that they were free in which I was not. And I grasped that today, and I wanted to absorb her power and be able to feel that for myself. You could like it came from a confidence, like a pure confidence. She's fucking gorgeous, and a past version of me would have been jealous and kind of hated her for it, and how does she charm these men? I wanted to learn how to get that confidence for myself, that's what I wanted. But also she's really fucking hot. I mean, I also wanted her to fluff my hair and grind on me the way she was grinding with them and we danced. But also she's perceptive, and I think she could read that I have boundaries, and also maybe she's not into trans people. I don't know we're women or whatever, but wanted her to rub all up on me like she was rubbing all up on them. But then I actually didn't, because the last thing I need right now is to be put on under another spell. I just got out of that trance. But it was interesting to watch. I mean, it was like she was just deliberately going around, charming everyone. Kali Ma, the snake charmer, getting those men under her paw. It's like, yeah, we need you on our team. So you can do that, so you can hypnotize them, so we can sneak in through the side doors of the borders and the spaces that would try to keep us out and take them, yeah. Kali Ma, be our snake charmer. We need you on our team. That's one way we can win. They'll never even see it coming. I watched each of them fall right under some magic.
5 N’oj - PPS Ceremony #2 - Conceiving the Intellectual Path
Today is the first officially recognized ceremony of this Path of the Plumed Serpent, given that last time I didn’t even realize I was in one.
It has already been a doozy, but this is the beauty and blessing of the calendar: now there is a framework for holding, I don’t feel like I’m just going crazy, there’s a context to put it in.
But going crazy—that old chestnut—it always goes hand and hand with anything that gets heady for me. It’s both one of my greatest delights and greatest fears, diving into the intellectual sphere. Today, ceremony #2 on the path, brings my conception energy to bear, what I came into this world from: 5 N’oj, the energy of work and the intellect.
It’s also connected to Pawhuatuun, the old man, the Maya god of merchants, travelers, and the ocean, sort of like Hermes and Neptune put together. He is said to enjoy drunkenness. Because of course. The ancient beer is still very much a part of things, I have been hearing this morning. There’s a reason that the cacao synchronicities include the ancient beer crossover in the South American jungles where I awakened, the project that launched me on my nomad path and the road to a PhD; there’s a reason that Gönul, the angel sponsoring my visa and my cacao merchant, is Turkish—because this whole tradition of funeral feasting that includes cacao and beer goes back to Göbekli Tepe.
Artist, mystic, alcoholic, psychotic, and prophet: The only difference is whether or not people believe you.
The witnessing. Someone to tell you: You’re not crazy. It really happened.
Just like trauma healing.
Terence McKenna, Jesus, Judas, Richard Alpert, Tim Leary: raving channelers who received gospels that some people fervently believed in, and others vehemently rejected. Some were deemed the prophets, others the lunatics. Richard Alpert became Ram Dass and amassed a ritual following in Hawaii; Tim Leary was made Nixon’s public enemy #1, and got locked up in prison by the CIA. Jesus took over the world with his gospel; Judas became the scapegoat of humanity. McKenna is an interesting one because he was so fringe, he’s somewhere in the middle. Jung too, they found a way to translate things into languages people could understand at least parts of, but at what personal cost?
It’ll make you go mad, all this channeling, without something to ground you.
I fear the days of both intellect and creativity, the push to make something other people can see and understand overwhelms me. I always feel on the edge of exploding or going crazy. Like nobody is going to understand my ideas or believe me after all the years of gaslighting. I long to let the words go and simply feel. This is the best part of the ceremony and the practice, is just sitting and letting the sound wash over me, bathed in the primal light of only candles, breathing smoke.
Free. Home. An animal.
I fear the digital and often long for a world returned to analog. When I set pen to paper it flows until my pen runs dry. I channel and receive truth there that I later don’t know how to translate to something other people can understand. The spoken word is helpful but it’s so rambling.
I don’t know how it all comes together. But I fear my mind.
That’s where they came for me, after all, with the gaslighting.
The labyrinth is the one in my skull, and a brain kind of looks like one anyway.
My own thoughts are the enemy, the monster knocking around in there.
I love the days when the energy gives me an excuse to just be, days like yesterday where I went to the forest and sat nestled in the pelvis of a tree and translated a poem given to me by that sweet green place, and I took photos of the palaces and temples of humans and the earth in the land around the castle, and then I came home and talked to my soul brother about trying to navigate between the formless and the form, and I did a reading for our relationship that put everything in a framework and perspective that made sense.
Mark Elmy, my calendar teacher, reminded me that when things are meant to happen, they come easily. I wrote that in a marketing story recently, because everything is part of it.
It makes sense when I sit before my altar with my candles, it flows when I journal, but then I pull out my computer and it all seems to fall apart, that’s when I get lost in the labyrinth. I don’t know how to translate it, what I’m even trying to say, what people will understand. I know how to build an altar and make an ofrenda but what is my offering to the world of the mind? My play isn’t even a play, it’s a nightmare of half-formed hallucinations, and not in a good way, most of it makes no sense and there is barely a coherent through-line. It’s just another mass grave of aborted ideas, the beginnings of things that could have gone somewhere interesting, the conceptions of thoughts that feel visionary but I don’t know how to frame them.
I know that they revolve around this idea of the culture of direct experience, humanity’s oldest “religion,” the syncretic Hermetic tradition of esoteric spiritualism, of which I am a priestx, a shamxn, and so are Eric and Jade whether or not they know it. So are the playwrights of the Jeezus musical and the fringe performers at the Cockpit and Dave is an elder channeling shit around the campfire, I can see him in my mind’s eye with long dreads and a bone necklace; his eyes are portals to it. Aww, this is cool. We are around a fire together right now, interdimensionally.
He saw the play as what I conceived but was afraid to move forward: basically me just performing my ceremony in front of people.
It’s about self-gaslighting and channeling.
Everyone keeps telling me to trust the process, and I can do that. But I’m afraid of my own mind taking over and derailing me. Driving me into a corner of the labyrinth where the unstoppable death force can corner me.
Queer community, ceremony, and the stage are the exits through the side door of the labyrinth.
But I feel like my work is only in theory. I talk about the play I’m writing and my book proposal and both are labyrinthine nightmares, fragments of fever dream material. I feel like I just need an editor. Did Jung have one?
How do I bring any of this shit to fruition? It’s all stuck at conception.
What’s real is the ceremony and self-healing. What I can’t seem to get together is the documenting and sharing.
I’m so sick of writing. I just want to talk to people around a fire again.
Yesterday I alchemized it in the forest, I listened to that podcast about Jung on the way to a castle and found myself more enchanted with the palace of green that surrounded it than the thing made by humans. But I also took some amazing photos and realized this was something i was really good at, but I had gaslit myself here too and told myself I wasn’t a photographer. I am going to add these to my online art store. I sat in the crook of a tree that looked like a pelvis and hapé wrapped the forest around me like a blanket and I realized that no matter what we do, we can never be separate, and I didn’t just think it, I felt it, I gnew it, in the core of my being, and that was worth everything.
But according to the world of 3D, yesterday I wasn’t working. I’m behind on all my deadlines. I need to get this newsletter out and I keep avoiding it.
I just find it increasingly hard to do anything that’s not just being, feeling, talking, and listening.
Current research/projects: I’m reading “Psychomagic” by Alexander Jodorowsky after seeing it referenced in Kit’s thesis and it’s totally breaking shit open. This is what I’m doing. But I have skipped the public performance part and gone straight to the self-healing, adding my own flavor and experience. I still want to create stories for the audience but the praxis is this process for the queer, the seeker, the divergent, the artist to witness themselves and heal. But I do think it needs holding by another, which is maybe where my offerings come in and there is some opportunity to support myself financially, I don’t know.
I continue to dive deep into the Maya calendar, informally apprenticed by Mark Elmy, and it’s blowing shit open, and my friends can’t get enough of the readings, and i’m using it as energy exchange for things; as currency, you could say. I must tread carefully here, but it feels super life-giving.
I continue to struggle through the music series for my newsletter, feeling like an imposter, delaying publication of part two so much it’s causing me to completely freeze with anxiety. I don’t even know where to start with the podcast.
The second cacao/beer zine is burning a hole in my consciousness as well and I just don’t want to do it.
I don’t really want to write at all anymore, but I have this fucking newsletter and a thousand half-finished drafts that DO need to be shared…
I’m still finishing Kit’s thesis and have started a thousand books, from Donna Haraway to Gabor Maté’s ADD book, ironically, and Jodorowsky. I need to read Bittersweet as it keeps popping up. There is a book about shamanism from Annabelle as well I need to look up.
LISTEN:
Let's choose to be separate in the forest
The conversation explores the concept of oneness and the integration of self with the universe. It suggests that suicide is a desire to return to a pre-birth state of unity, but that true realization is understanding one is already boundless and inseparable. The speakers emphasize that death would not fundamentally change this, as we are already one with everything. They advocate for embracing life, appreciating sensory experiences, and finding comfort in nature, like sitting in a tree or feeling the environment around us. The message is to cherish being alive and the sensory separation we experience, rather than seeking to escape it.
Outline:
Realization of Oneness and Integration
Unknown Speaker discusses the urge to return to the womb and the oceanic boundlessness, describing it as a form of suicide.
Speaker 1 emphasizes that one is already boundless and one, highlighting that death would only mean realizing this while alive.
The integration is understood as recognizing that one can never be anything but one, and there is no need to go anywhere or do anything.
Speaker 1 explains that we are the trees and every species, with Papa Hapé helping to see this connection while sitting in the forest.
Cure for Derealization and Depersonalization
Unknown Speaker reiterates that we used to be free but are already everything, which is the integration and the cure for derealization and depersonalization.
Speaker 1 elaborates that one couldn't be separate if one tried, and death would only mean missing out on sensory experiences and the support of the environment.
The conversation touches on the sensory experiences of being alive, such as feeling the tree beneath you, hearing bird song, and feeling the moss and cold air.
Unknown Speaker adds that we are always one and can't be separate, emphasizing the continuous presence of the womb-like feeling in the forest.
Choosing to Be Alive
Speaker 1 suggests that it is better to choose to be alive while one has the chance, describing this life as winning the lottery.
The separation in this dimension can be brutal and painful, but finding comfort in the forest, friends, or the city can alleviate loneliness.
Unknown Speaker advises sitting in a tree to feel the womb's presence, acknowledging the responsibilities of this dimension.
Speaker 1 emphasizes that the ability to be separate is a blessing and a gift, urging to choose to stay alive and help each other survive.
Embracing Separation and Survival
Speaker 1 reiterates the importance of choosing to be separate while alive, highlighting the gift of experiencing life's sensory aspects.
The conversation emphasizes the need to help each other survive to enjoy these moments and feel the holding of the environment.
Unknown Speaker concludes by stating that everything will go back to the beginning, reinforcing the cycle of life and death.
The overall message is to appreciate the present and the sensory experiences while acknowledging the interconnectedness of all beings.
Transcript:
Suicide is also the urge to go back to the womb, to drift back into that oceanic boundlessness. But that way, it's kind of beautiful. The integration is realizing that you don't have to go anywhere.
You're already boundless. You're already one. You've never been separate. You can't be, you couldn't be if you tried,
fundamentally nothing all that different would happen if you died, you'd just be realizing what's already here while you're alive.
That's the integration, the realization that you can never be anything but one. You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to do anything. You're already there. It's already happening. It can't not be happening. Now, I understand what these forest means. We are the trees. We used to be trees. We are the trees still. We are still every species, Papa jape is helping me see as I sit nestled in the arms of this tree held by the mother, floating in the amniotic fluid of The Forest, looking out at the water, softly moving i
Oh, I spit on myself. Shit. Did not aim that. Well, gross.
i keep saying that we used to be trees, and maybe we used to be more literally, but we already are everything. That's the integration, the cure for derealization and depersonalization is to realize that you can't not be one, that we're already everything.
You couldn't be separate if you tried nothing, all that different would happen if you died, except that other people couldn't enjoy you, except then you couldn't feel the support of this tree underneath you. Except then you couldn't feel the holding and the beauty of the forest. Then you couldn't hear with your material this bird song. You couldn't feel the softness of this moss under your thumb. Couldn't feel the cold of the fall air in Scotland
on your skin, taste the bitter earth of happe on your tongue, smell the rainforest as you sit in the temperate one. We're always one. You couldn't be separate if you tried.
So really, it's better to choose to be alive while you've still got the chance this dimension is winning. Winning the lottery, you get to experience the separation through the sensory and the separation can be brutal and painful, and it can feel lonely, but then you come to the forest, or you sit with a friend, or you go to the city even, and you feel the holding of everything around you, but really go Sit in the tree,
and then you'll feel that the womb is always around you. Sure, in this dimension, we have to do things and breathe for ourself and eat
and move our legs. That can feel like a curse, but it's a blessing. It's a gift. We get to be. Separate. So let's choose to be separate while we have the chance. Let's choose to stay alive a little bit longer. Let's choose to help each other survive so we can have these moments and feel this holding. It'll always go back to the beginning.
Transmission transcript: I don’t want to write anymore
Most people avoid meditation and hate it, but there's nothing I'd rather do than sit here in the candle light, Listening to the rain just being
I say suicide is actually the urge to return to the womb, where there's no more thinking or doing. You don't even have to digest for yourself or eat or breathe it's all done for you, the place where you can just let it all go.
But there is the beauty in being separate and having to do these things on your own. And yeah, it's the depth of experience.
But it feels so overwhelming. I think this is what all the artists experience, artist, Mystic, alcoholic, all the same archetype. There's a reason I'm putting them all in the same play. I think, I mean, there is a through line that's this gaslighting. What's the difference between all these things? They're all the same archetype. The difference in their expression is the witnessing is whether someone is telling you it really happened. You're not crazy. When there's no one to see it, or when you don't know how to share it, you go fucking mad. You but the same things expressed to the right crowd will get you the biggest following in the history of the world. Jesus, but then someone else tries to come along and have a vision. Judas, then they get sidelined and scapegoated.
The Trans is the hermetic messenger that brings back direct experience that tears down the gate keeping that says all of this is available to anyone you just have to learn to listen. That's the three line, self healing, direct communication with the plants, the ancestors, the energies. There's nothing special about any of these people. They just learned. They just remembered how to listen. It's something we all have the capability for which so it's about undoing the gaslighting by validating your experience, by witnessing the happenings and the knowings affirming.
This is the practice, and you can do it for yourself, but sometimes you also need someone to hold it and
I guess it's coming together, but the problem is the execution. Something's getting lost there. Something's getting stuck there. Something really important is happening around the calendar.
I'd say it's possessing me, but it feels more joyful than a lot of the other things I'm doing, but theater is so important to you. I mean, after that experience the other night, yeah, I just don't want to write anymore.
One of. Be free of the tyranny of language, and this is something McKenna talks about too. Words create a reality,
but they also entrap us in the net of duality, drawing lines around what things are and aren't supposedly
Giving my 13-year-old self a suit and a strap-on + Marking the 13 Kan / Libra Solar Eclipse Upleveling
It started on the morning of the eclipse with a vision of the electric chair, with a word emblazoned across it:
“FUNCOMFORTABLE”
The song “The Mercy Seat” by Nick Cave started playing, and I received the message as being about reframing. The electric chair can be a torturous death, or it can just be something interesting that happens in the endless game of hide-and-seek that is the universe seeking to know itself through every possible configuration.
It’s all about the reframe, the remix, pain is only suffering if you perceive that it’s challenging; in a different context, it can be interesting, information.
As my friend Gorgeous George says: “That’s fun, innit?”
The portal twisted and turned, deepening and meandering as I wove my way through my relationship with my own pain and energy that day. I had an appointment for a very important marking scheduled for the day after the eclipse, and was already dropping into it: a cosmic serpent, marking the completion of this period of my initiation by pain, the crossing of the threshold from child to adult and the rapidly approaching horizon line of eldership, as this year I turn 40: when my Maya astrology reflects with eerie accuracy what is already happening, that this is when I start to really mature and move into a position of service, leadership, gentle yet certain authority, claiming a community where, after all this wandering in the dark, flailing around lost, afraid and alone and ping-ponging all over the Earth, I finally start to know my worth, believe I deserve to be alive and choose to stay here, on this body and in this timeline, and build something lasting.
It’s happening.
I can hardly believe it. I’ve longed for it for so long. But the lesson of this eclipse portal, on the day that joins the number of ultimate stability with my nahual—6 Kan—within the trecena of the Hero Twins, reclaiming and realinging with my herox’s journey, is that the point of everything, my work and art and research and life, is that it’s a remembering, a conjuring into physical presence, into something we can perceive with the senses, that which has always been present.
You can’t make this stuff up. In childhood, my Maya astrology says, I came into the world with a strong ability to manifest my creative talents on the physical plane. This phase was closely linked to the influence of women in my life. My mom was at home with me and very involved with my life in a more positive way than what came later up until age 11 or so, just like this reflects. The comes in the storm, the disruptive influence of the men in my orbit, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s when the divorce happened and there opened up a portal of this world of dad’s house, unchecked by mom, where he could treat us as horribly as he wanted. And she made us go there, because he threatened legal action if she didn’t. But still. She should have insisted. It was the beginning of an abusive pattern that I would later fractally refract in my own romantic relationships.
The astrology reflects what happened, that I exploded all over the place, lost in my own mind, lost in misdirection, blown by the hurricanes of relationships and disappearing into drunkenness, but that by age 40, things would start to settle, and I would move toward eldership, rooted in community: Aj, the nahual of leadership and the spine, being a stand-up guy, influenced by Kej, the nahual of the stag, the healed masculine forest-father power, that advocates for what is right and needed, assuming eldership by age 42, of course, the meaning of the whole silly game.
I didn’t see, at the time I got this reading, how that was ever going to happen. I had just gotten to California and thought that maybe I was going to build it there. I was right in that the foundation was laid, but what I never could have seen coming was that it was laid by breaking everything, shattering my root and foundation; stripping me bare and ripping me open like a carcass for the interdimensional buzzards to devour, and I chose the death, because as Christine said, it’s what we’re going for, and when it comes and we know it’s meant for us all we can do is surrender, so I let it take me, I let the scavengers eat me so that my body could be a feast of abundance for the system, composting the lives that were and could have been and thus enabling the resurrection on the cactus, that thing that looks a lot like a cross, making me a world tree: the axis-mundi.
Returning victoriously as the hero(x) of my own story. Finally, not the victim or the maiden, but also yes them, and also I am the villain, but for once, I am steering the ship.
I feel it. This tattoo was a marking of the end of my shama(x)ic initiation, I completed this round of trials and upleveled, I fucking did it, we did it together, I got there, I didn’t know if I would ever get there, but we made it, it was so dark and hopeless so many times but we followed the feeling.
That was a big part of the portal, learning to know the difference between when an urge, an inclination, was ego and when it was the right kind of pushing myself, when it was following the feeling that said to go somewhere or do something that would leave to my unfolding and awakening, rather than just grinding through and propping myself up with coping mechanisms. This was going where I was needed, helping where I was asked to be of service, being the higher octave and raising the vibration of the place through my presence: the balancing element. And I found the middle ground, that I can show up and also listen to myself, that I can be in the world and with my community and also listen to my body, it can be both things, it doesn’t have to be this extreme. I choose to come out of isolation, leave the waystation, move toward the destination of life’s meaning, 42, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude.
The theme of the eclipse portal was conjuring into physical presence, the realm of the senses, that which has always been there, but has been forgotten. One of the things I remembered is that I always knew I was trans, I just didn’t know what to call it. I even realized that the beginning of my hard-femme-performance was when I put on that suit during our X-Files spoof, and nothing had ever felt so right, and it scared me. And I made jokes about how we should experiment with queerness, and they weren’t received, and now I see that I shut down ALL of these impulses after that experience, I abandoned my natural gift for theatre and performance of the authentic sort for the performative kind, the falseness, the deception that is the dark side of 13 Kan. When you get so good at the illusion that even you fall into your own con. I felt it again when I wore the strap-on, and I felt another kind of power and authenticity that had no place in my current cultural story, so that scared me too, and it also humiliated him, even though he asked for it, so we put the thing away and never spoke of it again, and I tried to contain that testosterone that needed expression, so as the shadow does, my repressed masculine came out in other, undesired ways.
The con of 13 Kan, when the illusionist confuses even themselves, and forgets what spells they cast, which charms they’re tied to, and who’s entranced, performing what act.
Spell, charm, trance.
Kit’s applauding this.
When you’re born a 13 Kan, you come into this dimension with the natural ability to perceive the other ones, but without the proper training and guidance, you don’t know what’s you and what’s other forces and energies and entities; if you don’t learn to discern your inner voice from your dead grandma from a squirrel or a tree, you’re always going to be confused about what you’re hearing and feeling, about what you actually want and need, you have to learn these boundaries or else you end up lost, like I did.
This is the point of it all, my work/art/life/research/praxis/all the same shit, is actually putting the healing and mentorship into practice; helping others learn to directly communicate with the subtle realms again, which includes parts of self, learning from the traditions that have always done it, but building our own syncretic Hermetic practices, always with reciprocity and respect. Showing people how to do that. This is my offering and service and personal journey, and the PhD is documenting this process of unfolding and making art that represents it.
Okay, now I know what I’m doing. Can I make some shit already?? I hope so.
The marking is marking the transition, the crossing of the threshold.
Like when Cal materialized at the end of my alchemical descent at Burning Nest, that other circus, I think what he said is prescient:
“Your journey is about to get a lot easier.”
LISTEN:
Funny - the AI doesn’t recognize me as anyone here, recorded on the day after the eclipse, but still in its shadow, at 4am London time. I will rename myself Riordan and see what happens.
Giving my 13-year-old self a suit and a strap-on
The speaker reflects on their sexual awakening and identity, tracing back to their childhood crush on David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson from "The X-Files." They discuss the significance of the Sacral Chakra and the color orange, symbolizing creativity and intimacy. The speaker recalls dressing as Gillian Anderson to connect with David, but later realized they wanted to embody both identities. They emphasize the transformative power of performance, particularly in wearing a suit and a strap-on, which made them feel more authentic. The speaker plans to explore drag and performance further, acknowledging the duality of their identity and the need for both masculine and feminine expression.
Transcript
Outline:
Awakening of Sacral Chakra and Realization of Identity
Speaker 1 expresses a desire to have sex again, awakening their Sacral Chakra, associated with the color orange.
They reflect on the significance of orange, realizing it represents a blend of red (root) and yellow (solar plexus) chakras.
Speaker 1 recalls being shamed for their sexuality and body by past lovers, which they now understand better.
Childhood and Adolescence: Struggling with Identity
Speaker 1 describes their childhood, playing softball and liking micro machines, and their adolescent crush on both David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, struggling to express their true feelings due to societal and family pressures.
They obsessed over The X-Files, taping episodes and cataloging them, feeling a strong connection to the show's themes. Speaker 1 believed in the conspiracy theories of the show, seeing some truth in them. They dressed as Gillian Anderson in middle school, trying to embody her identity to get closer to David Duchovny.
Transformation and Self-Discovery
Speaker 1 recalls a formative moment when they performed in an X-Files parody video, dressing as David Duchovny and feeling more like themselves.
They realized they wanted to be both David and Gillian, and that a triad relationship would fulfill their desires.
Speaker 1 emphasizes the importance of fluidity and embracing their true identity as a non-binary person.
They reflect on their history of writing musical theater and parody songs, expressing their feelings through performance.
Planning for the Future
Speaker 1 plans to meet with Heather to discuss drag and performance, setting up a non-romantic date to talk about their shared interests.
They reflect on the importance of presenting more masculine to feel safe in their body and to express both masculine and feminine identities.
They plan to attend the next queer poly meet and connect with people in Glasgow who share their interests.
LISTEN:
Fascinating - the AI identifies me as Cain, in this recording from the morning of the eclipse, before it happened that evening. I also notice that my transmissions end in the transcript every time with “I.” This is not something I think I utter aloud, but it makes me think of how Paul Selig when channeling always ends with “period… period… period… they’re saying period.” Ending with the I-am?
Funcomfortable
Cain reflects on the concept of reframing pain and suffering, drawing parallels to the "electric chair" as a symbol of liberation rather than punishment. They discuss the fear of being abandoned if perceived as well, and the realization that self-reliance and community support are crucial. Cain recounts personal experiences, including the impact of the 2017 American Eclipse, their struggle with alcohol, and the journey from content marketing to embracing a nomadic lifestyle. They also explore internalized biphobia and the desire for community and support, particularly as they approach turning 40.
Action Items
[ ] Listen to what Cain's pelvis is trying to tell him today and consider the reframing of his pain as strength.
[ ] Reflect on the fear of getting better and not being loved or needed, and work to overcome this.
[ ] Determine whether the urge to return to the jungle is a call or a fear of stepping into his power in this world.
Outline:
Reframing Pain and Suffering
Cain discusses the concept of reframing pain as interesting and the fear of getting better, questioning if the fear is rooted in the belief that no one will be there if they are well again.
Cain shares a personal story about prolonging the use of crutches to ensure visibility of suffering, fearing that without it, no one would love or help them.
The pelvis story is redefined as one of strength and self-healing, emphasizing that one does not need as much help as they think they do and can rely on their body, community, and natural world.
Cain argues that society's "eye for an eye" mentality is flawed, suggesting that suffering is often seen as self-inflicted and that a toxic culture prevents true well-being.
The Mercy Seat and Liberation
Cain introduces the concept of the electric chair as the mercy seat, where suffering is reframed as a form of liberation and strength.
The idea of choosing to laugh all the way to the electric chair is presented as a way to see the captors as those with blood on their conscience.
Cain explains that if one is innocent, they will rise above the suffering, while those who have harmed others will suffer in the chair.
The vision of the electric chair in the word "funcomfortable" is introduced as a radical reframe of pain and suffering.
The Eclipse and Personal Transformation
Cain recounts a personal experience during the Great American Eclipse in 2017, describing the moment of no shadow as a lesson in balance and the value of darkness.
The concept of pain as pleasure and the importance of special glasses to see the Invisible Sun is introduced.
Cain reflects on their journey from being a content marketing director to embracing the nomadic life and the emergence of their shadow.
The realization that those who do less work often make more money led Cain to question their place in the corporate world and to seek a more authentic path.
Navigating Relationships and Self-Worth
Cain discusses the fear of being alone and the need to make oneself invaluable to others to feel loved and needed.
The idea of seeing oneself as an offering rather than a being is explored, with Cain acknowledging the shift towards self-advocacy and valuing their contributions.
Cain reflects on the importance of being seen and valued for who they are, rather than just for their contributions.
The concept of the dance, both metaphorical and literal, is introduced as a way to navigate relationships and personal growth.
Healing and Community Support
Cain expresses gratitude for their current community and the support they receive, emphasizing the importance of having people who need them.
The physical presence and grounding nature of the community are highlighted, with Cain acknowledging the need to listen to their body and its messages.
The fear of not being loved if not perceived as needing help is revisited, with Cain questioning the basis of their relationships and the balance between codependency and equal energy exchange.
Cain reflects on the importance of trusting their community to provide what they need and the desire for a big dance on their birthday as a symbol of connection and support.
LISTEN:
Interesting - the AI identifies me as Cain in this reflection from the day after the day after the eclipse, in the aftercare refractory period of my marking.
Marking the 13 Kan and return of gnosis
Cain describes the profound experience of getting a tattoo of a 13 con cosmic serpent, which he felt was meant for him. The process involved careful placement and adjustments, symbolizing the alignment of his spiritual and physical selves. Cain emphasizes the importance of queer alchemy and synchronicity, drawing parallels between his tattoo and the broader concept of manifestation. He discusses his commitment to natural healing, his role as a community organizer, and his plans for future events. Cain feels a sense of purpose and unity with his past, present, and future, marking a significant return to his true identity and path.
Transcript
Action Items:
[ ] Talk to Richard about bringing more awareness around cacao at the Sunday Embodayfest event.
[ ] Host a cacao gathering on Cain's birthday.
[ ] Potentially do an event with Rebecca and Ash on Cain's birthday.
[ ] Submit an abstract for "Breaking Convention" and get a queer ecstatic dance event going for Cain's 40th birthday.
Marking the Return of Gnosis
Cain describes the process of marking himself with a design that called to him, which he felt was meant to be on his body.
The design, a 13 Kn cosmic serpent, was chosen synchronistically from a metaphysical shop.
The tattoo process was a collaborative effort with Ezrael, involving multiple stencil adjustments to align with Cain's vision.
The ceremony involved alchemizing the time in Austin, embodying and transmuting the design, and letting the serpent guide the placement.
The Journey of the Tattoo
Cain and Ezrael had to cut up the stencil into pieces and print new versions multiple times to achieve the desired placement.
The final placement of the serpent's head and tail felt magical and aligned with Cain's initial vision.
Ezrael confirmed that the final placement meant Cain was conjuring something that was always present in his light body.
The tattoo ceremony was part of a larger tradition of queer alchemy, bringing subtle realms into the material world.
Queer Alchemy and Synchronicity
Cain discusses the importance of creating respect and apprenticeship in a world without long lineages of certain traditions.
He expresses the need for a new mystery school to teach the wise use of practices with respect and reciprocity.
Cain reflects on his transformational experiences at ecstatic dance and the synchronicity around cacao.
Synchronicity and Community
Ali and Ezrael had a powerful ceremony involving a mastectomy tattoo, and Ali opened her home to host Ezrael for Cain’s tattooing.
Cain feels positive about the synchronicity and trusts in the signs guiding him.
The conversation with Ali and Ezrael led to discussions about cacao and its integration in their work.
Cain emphasizes the importance of compromises that bring everyone together and trusting in the synchronicity.
Manifestation and Purpose
Cain explains the concept of manifestation as calling into being things that already exist on the ethereal plane. He believes in vibrating at a high frequency to conjure the higher path into being.
Cain is focused on organizing events and advocating for voices that aren't very loud. He feels certain about his purpose in reclaiming his identity as trans and bringing natural healing practices to the forefront.
He plans to document his journey through art, performance, and educational events as part of his PhD process.
Cain feels a sense of welcome home to his body and community in London. The tattoo marks the return of his gnosis, and he feels more grateful and certain about his purpose.
Open sesame
the word, the spell, on the day when we’re not supposed to say it out loud, all I want to do is write,
which is quite unlike me these days, I’m usually looking for excuses to get out of it.
maybe it’s counterwill
or maybe something powerful is trying to get out.
it’s 3 Iq, the day of the divine breath, Saaq Iq, in the Maya calendrical system,
but the breath can become a hurricane, so beware where the wind is blowing.
I’m tired of holding back, waiting for my chance,
waiting for the right format or platform, trying to find my audience.
I don’t know where to direct this energy, so it swirls around me
like a vortex, caught up in my own tornado
and I don’t know how to make it go
in one direction, trying to focus this scattered attention
makes me dizzy
tossed upon the swells until
all I can do is sit here motionless
frozen, again
just like back then.
still, I know that if I could just throw the first stone,
well, maybe that’s not what I meant,
but rather,
if I could skip a pebble ‘cross the surface
like you were so good at,
stop trying so hard and trust
that the current will carry it,
one little ripple can affect the ocean.
Words are spells, open sesame, trying to find the right combination that will set me free
sitting in the dark talking to the universe
to things that aren’t in bodies
plants and past ancestors, searching for guidance.
the etymology of open sesame was from “1001 Arabian Nights,” which I had a gorgeous copy of as a child,
with gold-leaf pages and color illustrations,
and I used to fantasize about traveling to those ancient lands, putting my hands in the sands and feeling the ancient vibrations
and then one day, 30 years later, I did it
or at least I made it to Jordan and Egypt
and was transported back and forward through timelines and vortexes
I didn’t know what I was doing there, I just knew it was important
I’m trying to keep trusting that feeling but it’s hard when I’m careening
back and forth between spaces where I barely land long enough to get my bearings
because I’m so scared about making a foundation somewhere I don’t know if I can stay
and I’m scared about not being able to pay for it
and I’m scared that it all has no purpose if I can’t share it
I need to share it
Please show me how to share it
please
please help me finish something
please help me know how to help people
people help me learn how to do this art and school thing
i’m spinning in the hurricane and the only thing I can do consistently is ceremony
and volunteering for dance, where all that’s needed is my presence,
sweeping the floor and plugging the lights in, and taking it all down at the end
I can do that.
the dance heals me
the plants soothe me
but what will help me execute on a work? make a thing? put something on the website? finish even one fucking task I’ve started?
open sesame, help me find the magic seed that will let me break out of this cage, this minotaur’s lair, and start completing.
open sesame, what’s the trauma memory that’s keeping me stuck in this story, this pattern of repeating?
I wasn’t born this way.
It didn’t used to be this way.
open sesame, heaven help me find the spell that will unlock what’s keeping me stuck
and break the spell of three little letters
with this sacred verse.
"Open sesame" (French: Sésame, ouvre-toi; Arabic: افتح يا سمسم, romanized: iftaḥ yā simsim) is a magical phrase in the story of "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" in Antoine Galland's version of One Thousand and One Nights. It opens the mouth of a cave in which forty thieves have hidden a treasure
The phrase first appears in Antoine Galland's French translation of One Thousand and One Nights (1704–1717) as Sésame, ouvre-toi (English, "Sesame, open yourself").[1] In the story, Ali Baba overhears one of the 40 thieves saying "open sesame". His brother later cannot remember the phrase, and confuses it with the names of grains other than sesame, becoming trapped in the magic cave.
Galland's phrase has been variously translated from the French into English as "Sesame, open",[2] "Open, sesame" and "Open, O sesame".[3][failed verification] "Open sesame" is the conventional arrangement, however.
Sesame seeds grow in a seed pod that splits open when it reaches maturity,[4] and the phrase possibly alludes to unlocking of treasures.[5] Babylonian magic practices used sesame oil.[6] But it is not certain that the word "sesame" actually refers to the sesame plant or seed.[7] Sesame may be a reduplication of the Hebrew šem 'name', i.e., God, or a kabbalistic word representing the Talmudic šem-šāmayīm ("shem-shamayim"), 'name of heaven'.[8]
Open sesame has been classified by Stith Thompson as motif element D1552.2, "Mountain opens to magic formula"