Program Notes
Guest speaker: Shonagh Home
http://www.terraholcomb.com/[NOTE: All quotations are by Shonagh Home.]
“The mushroom has a wildness to it because it is wild, just as our minds once were wild.”
“I see the mushroom as the ultimate test of the initiate because you’re on your own. There’s no shaman to guide you, and so it is up to you to determine how this [experience] is about to look.”
“What is the point of doing these medicines if you are not going to break the spell of your perceptions, of who and what you think you are, and what you perceive this world to be.”
Exploring Psychedelics Conference, 2015
Shonagh Home is a teacher, shamanic practitioner, and the author of
‘Ix Chel Wisdom: 7 Teachings from the Mayan Sacred Feminine,’
and the upcoming, ‘Honeybee Wisdom: A Modern Melissae Speaks.’
Website: www.shonaghhome.com
Contact: shonagh.home (at) comcast (dot) net
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:24 ►
And today we’re going to hear a talk that Shauna Holm gave this past June,
00:00:29 ►
and it was at a conference held in Southern Oregon University in Ashland.
00:00:34 ►
The conference was titled,
00:00:35 ►
Exploring Psychedelics in Culture, Religion, and Science.
00:00:39 ►
Now, the full title that Shauna gave to this talk is,
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Breaking the Spell Through the Portal of the Sacred Mushroom.
00:00:46 ►
But for purposes of fitting it into our MP3 player title bars, a little better anyhow, I shortened it to Breaking the Spell on You.
00:00:56 ►
And as you can tell, I’m a big Nina Simone fan, and her song, I Put a Spell on You, has long been one of my favorites.
00:01:04 ►
and her song, I Put a Spell on You, has long been one of my favorites.
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However, as Shauna so clearly points out in her talk,
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we humans seem to be in the habit of using some words and phrases without clearly thinking about what those words actually represent.
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So, is it possible, even to us more materialistic people,
00:01:21 ►
that someone can put a spell on us?
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Well, if you’ve ever been in love, then you
00:01:26 ►
know that is exactly what seems to happen. And after listening to Shauna’s talk a few minutes ago,
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I see how our entire culture has put a spell on us. And as Shauna explains, our friendly magic
00:01:39 ►
mushrooms can remedy that situation if you just spend the time and effort to do the work required.
00:01:46 ►
That is, after you return to the default world of materialistic spells
00:01:50 ►
that often holds us back from becoming the beings that deep down we know ourselves to be.
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However, Shauna explains this so much better than I can,
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so why don’t I just step out of the way and let her take over from here.
00:02:05 ►
So I am so honored to be here today.
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And so in this talk, Breaking the Spell Through the Portal of the Sacred Mushroom, I am going
00:02:15 ►
to spend the first half of the talk just speaking to the construct, which has been revealed
00:02:20 ►
to me through my work with the mushrooms.
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So the beings that work with me, yes, I consider them as others.
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They speak in terms of spells.
00:02:31 ►
And so I want to speak to the spell of the construct
00:02:33 ►
and then go into the fertile, rich world territory of the mushroom.
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And so I’m going to open with this image. This is by a dear friend of mine,
00:02:47 ►
Tara Holcomb, and her name is spelled T-E-R-R-A, and she was born on Earth Day. And she is a
00:02:55 ►
phenomenal photographer, visionary artist, and she travels up to the Olympic Peninsula,
00:03:13 ►
And she travels up to the Olympic Peninsula, to the rainforest there, and she takes these extraordinary photographs and she immerses herself in the scenery.
00:03:18 ►
And this is from a series called Married to Nature.
00:03:27 ►
And my first thought when I saw this image was, oh my god, that is exactly how I approach the mushroom.
00:03:36 ►
The mushroom to me really is a portal to the forest. And I was in the Olympic rainforest when I had my first experience with the mushroom, a la Terence McKenna lying down five grams in the dark, but surrounded by ancient mosses,
00:03:48 ►
trees just dripping with this moss and moss on the ground.
00:03:53 ►
And my approach was that, with great reverence in a very high ritual.
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And through that, a relationship was formed.
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Actually, a union came into union with the spirit of the forest.
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The forest opened its gates to me,
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and I in turn opened the gates of my heart.
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And I actually came into connection with
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the first of a couple of extraordinary allies,
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this one in this case being Pan.
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Pan has long been known as the god of the forest.
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I will talk about him in the second half of this talk.
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This might be a little bit of a departure.
00:04:41 ►
You’ve got the ladies’ view now. So a little bit of my experience. So I want to speak
00:04:48 ►
to the power of initiation because really initiation is designed to break the spell.
00:04:56 ►
It is designed to break the spell of who we think we are and how we perceive our world to be.
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think we are and how we perceive our world to be. And so through initiation, we’re thrust into this experience. And through that, then we are never the same. We are forever changed. Now with the
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mushroom, there’s no formal container really, is it is not like the native american church
00:05:25 ►
it’s not like the santo daime the mushrooms really rogue and you know what i like that
00:05:32 ►
the shaman is rogue and the witch is rogue and the seer is rogue and the mushroom has a wildness to it because it is wild, just as our minds once were wild.
00:05:47 ►
And the mushroom has said to me, I am that which will not be civilized.
00:05:56 ►
I am that which will not be legitimized.
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I am a mystery and I cannot be contained.
00:06:05 ►
I am a mystery, and I cannot be contained.
00:06:10 ►
And so our modern science, material science,
00:06:13 ►
I have great regard for it, and at the same time,
00:06:15 ►
it does like to do just that.
00:06:19 ►
It will pluck something out of its natural environment,
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it will isolate it, and it will break it down to the sum of its parts.
00:06:32 ►
But these medicines usher us into very rich territory.
00:06:35 ►
They are gifts from nature,
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and nature is far more than the sum of her parts.
00:06:46 ►
And so I see the mushroom as really the ultimate test of the initiate,
00:06:53 ►
because you’re on your own. There’s really no shaman to guide you. And so it really is up to you to determine how this is going to look and where are you going to do that medicine.
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And if you ask me, I would recommend you do it out in nature where you belong.
00:07:07 ►
And so I want to talk about spells.
00:07:10 ►
I call this work, or I think of this work as the work of know thyself.
00:07:15 ►
And in order to know thyself, we have to know what we are not.
00:07:21 ►
We have to break the spell.
00:07:24 ►
And it’s really about undoing our conditioning. And
00:07:28 ►
I really think, what is the point of doing these medicines if you’re not going to break the spell
00:07:33 ►
of your perceptions of who and what you think you are and what you perceive this world to be?
00:07:40 ►
And so I want to just play with that word spell. And I looked it up in Webster’s 1828 Dictionary.
00:07:46 ►
And so it says, to charm as spelled with words of power.
00:07:53 ►
And also a charm consisting of some words of occult power.
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And the etymology of the word spell is story, saying, tale, history, narrative, fable, discourse, command.
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And from circa 1200, quote, an utterance, something said, a statement, remark,
00:08:27 ►
meaning a set of words with supposed magical or occult power, incantation, charm.
00:08:33 ►
And the term spell is generally used for magical procedures which cause harm or force people to do something against their will, unlike charms for healing, protection, etc.
00:08:39 ►
And that is from the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore.
00:08:43 ►
And so I just think it’s very interesting
00:08:45 ►
that the word spell is directly associated with words.
00:08:48 ►
That’s where spelling a word comes from.
00:08:50 ►
And words are really a double-edged sword.
00:08:53 ►
We can uplift with our words,
00:08:56 ►
and we can also imprison with our words.
00:09:00 ►
There is a proverb, Proverb 1828,
00:09:04 ►
and it says,
00:09:06 ►
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
00:09:17 ►
And so that is a very strong statement.
00:09:19 ►
In other words, I see our words as a wand.
00:09:24 ►
And so we can create heaven on earth. We can create absolute
00:09:29 ►
magic with these words, or we can create an unholy mess. We think in words, we speak in words, and we
00:09:38 ►
create in words. We conjure quite literally with words. And also, the English language is so crazy wild
00:09:46 ►
because you can say one word
00:09:48 ►
and yet it means something entirely different.
00:09:52 ►
And that’s really strange and confusing.
00:09:55 ►
And there is a woman, Laurel Irica.
00:09:59 ►
She’s a writer and a linguist.
00:10:00 ►
And she writes about word spells.
00:10:03 ►
And she says, as one who spent a lifetime playing in
00:10:07 ►
the magical undercurrent of word symbols and sounds, I’ve come to the conclusion that English
00:10:11 ►
is largely a fear-based language of limitation and persuasion towards conformity and mediocrity,
00:10:17 ►
and I think we need to do something about it. And she’s so brilliant, and so she came up with this.
00:10:23 ►
and she’s so brilliant, and so she came up with this.
00:10:28 ►
Consider the sad ring of morning that greets us each new day as we come awake from our nightly immersion in our personal life’s dream.
00:10:33 ►
Hear how the weekdays sound like the weekdays,
00:10:36 ►
and how weekend is hardly different from weekend,
00:10:40 ►
which is precisely how so many of us feel after being pulverized in the daily grind through which we endeavor to earn our living at various jobs and undertakings.
00:10:51 ►
What a somber vision of a fallen life such words conjure together when shown in translation.
00:10:58 ►
It’s little wonder, then, that our most common salutation to each other is,
00:11:02 ►
Hell, oh!
00:11:07 ►
Ten years of such mind-numbing living is termed a decade, which the British so wisely pronounce decade. And so our words
00:11:15 ►
determine our mindset, and we create with that mindset. And so we all grow up in this culture that really tells us how to be, how to perceive,
00:11:29 ►
how to perceive the world around us. And that crap is repeated over and over and over to us.
00:11:37 ►
And repetition is very important in spellcasting. And repetition also happens to be how we learn.
00:11:47 ►
bell casting. And repetition also happens to be how we learn. And those who hold positions of power know full well the power of repetition. They know that if you repeat something long enough to
00:11:52 ►
populace, eventually they’ll believe it, no matter how absurd. And so through the constructs of
00:12:00 ►
language, entire societies have been formed, and systems have been formed within those
00:12:07 ►
societies that would perpetuate the society.
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And so here in our society, we’ve got a system, a construct that has been created, and within
00:12:19 ►
this culture, massive numbers of people, I would say growing numbers of people, are actually
00:12:26 ►
being tortured emotionally, mentally, physically for their inability or their refusal to conform
00:12:34 ►
to what I see is a rapaciously dictatorial society. It’s really a construct of empire.
00:12:46 ►
And it seems to be getting
00:12:48 ►
steadily more authoritarian.
00:12:51 ►
And this particular system
00:12:52 ►
has educated us,
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or I would say,
00:12:55 ►
indoctrinated us.
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And so we have become
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domesticated like farm animals
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and we are propping up, really,
00:13:01 ►
what is an artificial construct.
00:13:03 ►
And everything that is presented to us is presented from the exterior.
00:13:08 ►
And something that I have noticed through my work with the mushroom is
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everything, it seems, is opposite.
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Like what we are told, it’s really opposite.
00:13:17 ►
And so, for instance, health insurance seems more like sickness insurance
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more often than not.
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And justice system is really one of trickery and deceit, if you delve into that one, which
00:13:31 ►
is quite the labyrinth.
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That word progress, progress is the catch word that was used to usher in all the great
00:13:39 ►
wonders of the industrial age.
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And yet now today we are all witness to the indescribable devastation
00:13:47 ►
of our planet through that word progress as a result of that.
00:13:54 ►
And my very favorite one is hallucinogen, as if to say that these substances merely
00:14:02 ►
provide us with hallucinations, when really, in reality, the true hallucination
00:14:08 ►
is the very construct that we are all holding together through a collective agreement. And
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so I just want to get in a little bit about form and substance. Substance is from the Latin word substantia, which means to stand under or
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ground. Form is the shadow cast by substance. And so form is a physical form, of course,
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but it’s also quite literally forms that we get in the mail, these pieces of paper,
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and they’re really covered with sigils. Like I look at, you know, bills and that kind of thing
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and I think, my goodness, this is only real
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because we think it is so.
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And so we could, because really when you think about it,
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if we really did sort of click on, on mass,
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we could simply just, you know, disagree
00:15:02 ►
or no longer consent to uphold something that I think is really
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enslaving a great number of people.
00:15:11 ►
And certainly in my explorations of the commercial and civil system that we’re in, I had a revelation
00:15:17 ►
and I realized, oh my God.
00:15:20 ►
So those dudes basically have created reality for us.
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Yet in the words of a very close friend of mine who is a very wise elder,
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he said, reality is the most malleable substance in the world, really in the universe.
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And so just as clever folks have figured out how to create a reality for great masses of people,
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it stands to reason that as we, those people, begin to wake up
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and get in touch with our own connection to that greater reality,
00:15:56 ►
that realm of infinite possibility, we can usher in something very different and hopefully something which has the substance of wisdom, great wisdom.
00:16:11 ►
So I want to just take a quick look at what is the current reality for a number of people in this country.
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And so let’s start with this.
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So we’ve got the big city, and I lived in that city for a long time, quite familiar with it,
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quite familiar with the spell of the city.
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Cities are very rushed, very, very busy, very, very crowded places,
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and yet the irony is the great numbers of desperately lonely people who are in those cities.
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And then we have this mess, rush hour traffic.
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And according to Forbes magazine,
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the average commute time in this country,
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back and forth to work, is 25 minutes each way.
00:16:55 ►
And yet for over 10 million Americans,
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that commute time is over two hours,
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upwards of two hours and more, each way.
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That’s an aberration.
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What kind of life is that?
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Then we have this mess called television.
00:17:16 ►
Talk about crazy realities.
00:17:18 ►
The average American watches four hours of television a day.
00:17:24 ►
And in the words of the late, great 20th century seer Bill Hicks,
00:17:30 ►
he said, watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.
00:17:35 ►
And that’s as far as I’ll go with that.
00:17:38 ►
Then we have this, cell phones.
00:17:42 ►
And boy, have these guys taken over our lives. lives now i work part-time at a little farm
00:17:47 ►
in the seattle area and i was in the sales office uh last week and a mom walked in and then behind
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her uh her between probably two and a half year old uh tripped over just the three inch step in
00:18:01 ►
there splayed forward, full face plant,
00:18:06 ►
and before her was the cell phone that this little toddler was like this the whole time,
00:18:12 ►
completely oblivious to all of this around her,
00:18:16 ►
couldn’t even sense a three-inch step in front of her.
00:18:19 ►
And so I read that the average person between like 18 and 26 sends 110 on average text messages a day on these things.
00:18:32 ►
And I would argue that that figure is low and really takes us completely out of our senses, away from nature.
00:18:40 ►
I mean, they’re great, right?
00:18:41 ►
I mean, they’re really convenient, but oh my goodness, talk about a double-edged sword, which leads me to this. And so for those listening,
00:18:48 ►
this is a photo of a bottle of Prozac superimposed on a city. So here we are.
00:18:56 ►
Despite the progress, quote unquote, in the last two decades, the use of antidepressants has
00:19:04 ►
the use of antidepressants has skyrocketed.
00:19:09 ►
And 1 in 10 Americans are taking antidepressants.
00:19:14 ►
And in women in their 40s and 50s, that figure is 1 in 4.
00:19:22 ►
And so this is the current reality for the great majority of people in this country.
00:19:29 ►
And so we grow up in it, and we are utterly spellbound to it. And we end up becoming sterile and overly rational. And we lose touch with a kind of magic that is there for
00:19:40 ►
us, but we can’t seem to connect to it. Instead, we really try to go along to get along, you know,
00:19:48 ►
and we’ve got to buck up and say a few positive affirmations,
00:19:54 ►
but above all, get back to work,
00:19:59 ►
or more aptly, get back to the real world,
00:20:03 ►
what we are told is the real world. Thoreau once said,
00:20:08 ►
man is little more than a machine serving not as men, but as machines. Yet the reality is,
00:20:17 ►
it’s a construct. It’s an overlay. A construct is a container and a container is a box, and a box is limitation.
00:20:29 ►
And so it keeps us bound and very highly limited.
00:20:35 ►
Einstein once said that we can’t change our problems with the same mindset that created them.
00:20:41 ►
We have to think outside of the box.
00:20:47 ►
same mindset that created them. We have to think outside of the box. So once again, quoting the great seer Bill Hicks, he said, this is where we are at right now as a whole. No one is left out
00:20:53 ►
of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions, a world
00:21:01 ►
where greed is our God and wisdom is sin,
00:21:08 ►
where division is key and unity is fantasy,
00:21:12 ►
where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised rather than the intelligence of the heart.
00:21:17 ►
And in my words, we have sold our souls to a construct
00:21:20 ►
that has isolated us from nature and the unseen intelligences
00:21:24 ►
that our ancestors of old once knew well.
00:21:27 ►
And it was that relationship that informed their rituals and ceremonies
00:21:32 ►
and day-to-day engagement with the natural world around them.
00:21:36 ►
It was that world that filled them with inspiration to create beauty,
00:21:42 ►
to speak poetry, to profess and express love.
00:21:47 ►
We have been removed from our true connection with nature,
00:21:52 ►
both the natural world around us and our own human nature.
00:21:57 ►
And so the alchemical maxim of as within, so without applies here
00:22:02 ►
because just as we have misperceived who we are,
00:22:07 ►
so too we are also misperceiving, really, what we are in.
00:22:11 ►
And so we must break the spell of being civilized.
00:22:17 ►
And that really takes vigilance, takes great vigilance.
00:22:21 ►
The source of our issues ultimately lies within our relationship with the natural landscape around us.
00:22:29 ►
Only society has totally, pretty much, I mean, this is gorgeous, yes, but I am speaking to, you know, this is, you know, if you’re in Detroit or wherever else, I mean, that is not your landscape.
00:22:41 ►
It has been replaced.
00:22:46 ►
landscape, it has been replaced, it has been eradicated by a lot of concrete and steel,
00:22:56 ►
and really by constructs, literal and figurative. And so ultimately, the problem, I think ultimately is not in ourselves, the problem is in this construct that we are in, and we’re constantly
00:23:01 ►
trying to adapt to it, and try to not go crazy, some of us,
00:23:06 ►
and yet it is the construct itself that is really an unholy mess. We are told,
00:23:15 ►
I think of that term, the worldwide web, and really we are caught in a web of extraordinary technological wonders and these mental constructs.
00:23:27 ►
But yet we have fallen away from the true reality,
00:23:33 ►
and that is nature.
00:23:36 ►
And the mushroom interrupts the spell.
00:23:41 ►
It was through the mushroom that I came into relationship with teachers, with unseen ones
00:23:48 ►
that have had so much to teach me, and they have guided me impeccably. And so how best to break the
00:23:57 ►
spell for ourselves, I see it as a threefold process. First, we must break the spell of how
00:24:02 ►
we perceive ourselves to be. Then we must break the spell of how we perceive ourselves to be. Then we must break the
00:24:05 ►
spell of what we think we’re in. And then we must break the spell of seeing that beauty out there
00:24:11 ►
as just simply landscape or scenery. And we see it as really like these biologically programmed
00:24:20 ►
organisms. No, no, no. We’ve got to break that spell and really see it for what it is.
00:24:26 ►
And so in terms of breaking the spell of how we perceive ourselves to be, I like to take it back
00:24:32 ►
to the original issue, which happened to me in a mushroom journey once, where I was taken back to
00:24:38 ►
that pure potential. We all come in and quite really what we are, you can look at it in this way, is when we
00:24:49 ►
take our first breath, we are the physical manifestation of the positions of the constellations
00:24:56 ►
with regard to where on the planet we were born. And so we come in with the magnetics of that.
00:25:02 ►
We come in with the magnetics of that.
00:25:07 ►
We have this extraordinary potential, and the patterns have been set.
00:25:14 ►
But then we are born to people who they themselves are under the spell to whatever degree they are.
00:25:20 ►
And so in words, they speak to us, they teach us, and we are imprinted by that and further imprinted with the words we are taught in schools.
00:25:26 ►
And, you know, religion, media is a huge one.
00:25:30 ►
Oh, my goodness.
00:25:31 ►
And so we develop this really like a false persona in a way.
00:25:38 ►
And hopefully, for some of us, I’m willing to bet it is the majority of people in this room,
00:25:44 ►
For some of us, I’m willing to bet it is the majority of people in this room,
00:25:52 ►
we come to a place where something is made available to us, whether it be a profound revelation in meditation
00:25:56 ►
or the use of these extraordinary medicines,
00:26:00 ►
where we have that opportunity to see
00:26:02 ►
and to see the deeper layers beneath the surface story
00:26:07 ►
of how we perceive ourselves to be. Now, the second piece is to break the spell of what we
00:26:15 ►
think we are in. So once again, quoting Bill Hicks, if you want to understand a society,
00:26:23 ►
take a good look at the drugs it uses. And what can
00:26:26 ►
this tell you about American culture? Well, look at the drugs we use. Except for pharmaceutical
00:26:32 ►
poisons, there are essentially only two drugs that Western civilization tolerates. Caffeine,
00:26:38 ►
from Monday to Friday, to energize you enough to make you a productive member of society,
00:26:43 ►
and alcohol, from Friday to Monday
00:26:45 ►
to keep you too stupid to figure out the prison you are living in.
00:26:50 ►
Now, I see deeper messages in the films
00:26:54 ►
that I will sometimes watch from time to time.
00:26:57 ►
And there was a movie that was out a number of years ago
00:27:00 ►
with Jack Nicholson called A Few Good Men.
00:27:03 ►
And there was a line from that movie that was bandied about ad nauseum.
00:27:07 ►
I wonder if anybody remembers that line.
00:27:10 ►
You can’t handle the truth.
00:27:12 ►
I think that’s no accident.
00:27:16 ►
And I heard someone say once that politicians lie to conceal the truth.
00:27:22 ►
Hollywood lies to reveal it.
00:27:28 ►
to conceal the truth. Hollywood lies to reveal it. And it’s quite a metaphor because it presents us with these stories. And most people just sort of see the surface story and they’re wowed by it or
00:27:34 ►
touched by it or whatever it is. But most people miss the far, far deeper layers of what is being told to us. So truth is really for those with eyes to see
00:27:48 ►
and ears to hear. There’s clues all around us. And I also look to those sayings that we hear
00:27:55 ►
so often. And there’s two that I’ve been pondering lately. The first one is truth is stranger than fiction. And the other one is nothing is as it seems.
00:28:08 ►
Now that’s a biggie, because we’ve been told that we are free,
00:28:12 ►
and we live in a free country.
00:28:13 ►
Well, let’s look at this endeavor to get medicines like cannabis and psilocybin legalized.
00:28:21 ►
Those grow freely out in nature. They are made available for anyone. And yet,
00:28:29 ►
we are told, like children, that we are not allowed to use those substances. And so,
00:28:38 ►
people get together and they petition for the right to explore their own consciousness. Now let’s talk a little bit about
00:28:48 ►
rights, because any time you ask for the right to do something, you are in a guardian-ward
00:28:57 ►
relationship. You are subject or slave to the authority of another. Rights in a civil system, which is what we are in, are privileges,
00:29:08 ►
which means civil rights are privileges. Your right to vote is a privilege, and privileges
00:29:14 ►
can be taken away at any time. Now another word for privilege is favor, and there is a legal maxim.
00:29:23 ►
Maxims are principles of truth,
00:29:27 ►
and they’re found in the back of these law dictionaries that I like to read.
00:29:31 ►
In the back of Bouvier’s law dictionary,
00:29:33 ►
there is a maxim that says,
00:29:34 ►
favors from government often carry with them enhanced measures of regulation.
00:29:41 ►
So we today are paying for the sins of our fathers who fell under the spell of
00:29:50 ►
those in power and they traded their autonomy for convenience and so we have ended up now in a
00:30:00 ►
false paradigm that requires absolute conformity to its dictates.
00:30:07 ►
I mean, I think we can see this as getting worse and worse and worse.
00:30:11 ►
So we have to step back and see the construct.
00:30:17 ►
We must see it.
00:30:18 ►
You cannot heal or correct what you cannot or will not see.
00:30:23 ►
And in order to break a bad habit, you got to see it
00:30:27 ►
first. And then you have to correct the behavior. In an article titled A Foucauldian Analysis of
00:30:34 ►
Psychoanalysis, it says, quote, by modifying the truths and knowledge within which we are fashioned
00:30:42 ►
and in terms of which we fashion ourselves as subjects,
00:30:46 ►
we can resist the dominant forms of power relations
00:30:50 ►
instantiated in the developing disciplinary society.
00:30:54 ►
Indeed, thinking differently means
00:30:56 ►
not just disrupting taken-for-granted modes of thinking,
00:31:00 ►
but experiencing the world in new ways
00:31:03 ►
and acting in it on the basis of a new perspective.
00:31:09 ►
Well, the mushroom will open you to a very, very different perspective. And it is one in which your
00:31:19 ►
societal conditioning doesn’t apply. In fact, it’s a hindrance. The mushroom brings us to an extraordinary
00:31:28 ►
world where we leave the world of form and we enter the world of substance. And we experience
00:31:35 ►
things that we have been told are just our imagination. And I’ll tell you, if you are still
00:31:41 ►
under the spell of modern culture, there’s no way you can really absorb those worlds.
00:31:48 ►
You’ve got to have that spell broken for you.
00:31:51 ►
Now, in the words of Carl Jung, he said, we cannot realize another world ruled by quite other laws.
00:31:57 ►
The reason being that we live in a specific world which has helped to shape our minds and establish our basic psychic conditions.
00:32:06 ►
We are strictly limited by our innate structure and therefore bound by our whole being and thinking
00:32:13 ►
to this world of ours. Mythic man, to be sure, demands of going beyond all that, but scientific
00:32:20 ►
man cannot permit this. To the intellect, all my mythologizing is futile speculation.
00:32:27 ►
To the emotions, however, it is a healing, valid activity.
00:32:33 ►
It gives existence to a glamour which we would not like to do without,
00:32:37 ►
nor is there any good reason why we should.
00:32:42 ►
In traveling these realms, we leave behind this mindset. And in doing so,
00:32:51 ►
we are opened to the wisdom of, in this case, the mushroom teachers. And they will expose to you
00:32:59 ►
your shadow. They’ll expose to you your shortcomings, and they will also expose to you the infinite
00:33:08 ►
power and majesty of your being. If you’re really lucky, you’ll find an ally or two along the way.
00:33:19 ►
And so when that journey is over, what are you going to do with it? You’re really
00:33:23 ►
tasked with bringing that into your life in some way.
00:33:28 ►
How’s that going to look?
00:33:30 ►
And then if you have the courage and the wherewithal,
00:33:33 ►
perhaps you can bring that wisdom into your greater community.
00:33:39 ►
So science has found that when we do these medicines,
00:33:41 ►
we access many other areas of the brain,
00:33:46 ►
and I think that is an interesting metaphor, because when we do these medicines, we access many other areas of the brain. And I think that is an interesting metaphor,
00:33:52 ►
because when we do these medicines, we access an infinite field that is full of different intelligences,
00:33:57 ►
and they coexist and they interrelate,
00:34:00 ►
and they will dance with you.
00:34:03 ►
Now, when we take the mushroom,
00:34:07 ►
I found a quote by a French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
00:34:11 ►
and he is describing the effect of mescaline on researchers.
00:34:17 ►
The mushroom I see is very similar, and just listen to this.
00:34:20 ►
He says,
00:34:20 ►
The influence of mescaline, by weakening the attitude of impartiality and
00:34:25 ►
surrendering the subject to his vitality should, if we are correct, favor forms of synesthetic
00:34:31 ►
experience. And indeed, under mescaline, the sound of a flute gives a bluish green color,
00:34:39 ►
and the tick of a metronome in darkness is translated as gray patches, the spatial intervals between them
00:34:46 ►
corresponding to the intervals of time between the ticks, the size of the patch to the loudness
00:34:53 ►
of the tick and the height of the pitch to the sound. A subject under mescaline finds a piece
00:35:00 ►
of iron, strikes the window with it and exclaims, this is magic. The trees grow greener.
00:35:09 ►
Seen in the perspective of the objective Cartesian world with its opaque qualities,
00:35:13 ►
the phenomenon of synesthetic experience is paradoxical. Now David Abram in his book,
00:35:18 ►
The Spell of the Sensuous, then wrote, seen from the perspective of the life world, from the perspective that is of our pre-theoretical awareness,
00:35:28 ►
such experiences are recognized as amplifications
00:35:31 ►
or intensifications of quite ordinary phenomena
00:35:35 ►
that are always going on.
00:35:38 ►
Under the influence of the mushroom,
00:35:41 ►
we are brought back, we become very hyper-aware of what I see as a magic that is
00:35:50 ►
always going on around us. Now, this speaks to me of relationship, this piece from her series.
00:35:58 ►
I was interviewed once by a guy who had read my book, Love and Spirit Medicine, and he commented,
00:36:02 ►
once by a guy who had read my book Love and Spirit Medicine and he commented
00:36:04 ►
he said, you know, the majority
00:36:06 ►
books that I’ve read in the
00:36:08 ►
psychedelic realm, written by
00:36:10 ►
men, really deal with
00:36:11 ►
these guys are dealing with mind states, they’re dealing with
00:36:14 ►
hyper-dimensional physics
00:36:16 ►
and inter-dimensional languages
00:36:17 ►
and you really seem
00:36:19 ►
to have
00:36:21 ►
major exploration through relationship
00:36:24 ►
and I said well, yes, because life to have major exploration through relationship.
00:36:29 ►
And I said, well, yes, because life is relationship.
00:36:33 ►
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what you did for a living.
00:36:37 ►
It is about our relationship to ourself,
00:36:39 ►
our relationship with others,
00:36:43 ►
and with the natural world around us,
00:36:44 ►
and, if we’re really lucky,
00:36:49 ►
our relationship to unseen intelligences, whether you think of them as angels
00:36:51 ►
or the divine or nature spirits.
00:36:56 ►
So I have formed a relationship,
00:36:59 ►
a few relationships,
00:37:01 ►
with extraordinary, I call them beings,
00:37:06 ►
and my primary relationship is with a being that calls itself,
00:37:11 ►
well, it presents as a white owl, and also with Pan.
00:37:16 ►
And they have affected my life dramatically.
00:37:22 ►
And I have this sense
00:37:25 ►
I’m no scientist, not at all
00:37:28 ►
but my sense is when we ingest these medicines
00:37:31 ►
the intelligences can read our DNA
00:37:34 ►
and they can track back through your ancestry
00:37:37 ►
and I am a woman of Celtic blood
00:37:40 ►
and North Germanic and Gaul
00:37:43 ►
and I know that in pre-Christianized Europe, before the
00:37:48 ►
Romans showed up and civilized us and Christianized us and there went the neighborhood before
00:37:53 ►
that, I know my people were working with these medicines. And also, there was something very
00:38:01 ►
prevalent at the time and continues to this day, and that was spirit mediumship.
00:38:08 ►
And it was often the domain of a woman.
00:38:11 ►
And we heard a little bit from Meryl on the oracles,
00:38:13 ►
where the woman really acted as a bridge between the worlds,
00:38:19 ►
and she would take in substance and go into an ecstatic state and bring through wisdom.
00:38:29 ►
She would bring through healing.
00:38:32 ►
She would be able to help people find things.
00:38:37 ►
This was back before people became really stifled by intellectualism,
00:38:44 ►
and they knew that nature could speak to them.
00:38:48 ►
And I am praying that we can return to some semblance of that at some point.
00:38:59 ►
I was with someone, I was in a deep, be-mushroomed state.
00:39:05 ►
And this friend was along for the ride,
00:39:07 ►
and she was speaking to the being, speaking through me,
00:39:09 ►
and she asked if we would be able to meet it in physical form.
00:39:13 ►
And it said, we are not in form, but we can inform.
00:39:19 ►
And so this is what they have been doing for millennia.
00:39:23 ►
For millennia, mankind has been in relationship with allies.
00:39:28 ►
Now, the roots of witchcraft and shamanism are intertwined,
00:39:32 ►
and in both practices, one always works with an ally.
00:39:37 ►
In witchcraft, it’s called a fetch, and in medicine work or shamanic work.
00:39:42 ►
And by the way, these are labels.
00:39:44 ►
I mean, you know,
00:39:45 ►
God knows what they called this way back then. But in any case, I think you just think of it as a
00:39:51 ►
spirit ally. And that is a helping spirit that provides you with guidance and knowledge and
00:39:59 ►
also protection. And so I chose a photograph of a stunning tree. It looks very, very old because
00:40:07 ►
trees were at one time in our history considered allies. And for the early European people,
00:40:16 ►
they worshipped the trees. They worshipped the stones. They worshipped the waters. They were
00:40:21 ►
in very deep relationship with them. and they understood that within the tree
00:40:26 ►
was a spirit, and if you treated it appropriately, it would work with you. And there were these great
00:40:34 ►
clans of folk, and they would gather around some great tree, and it was huge, and its canopy was
00:40:42 ►
amazing. You could fit one or 200 people around those
00:40:45 ►
those trees and that tree was considered to the Celts anyway like the clan leader and so much
00:40:53 ►
revelry and joy and sadness. Everything was this wonderful community around this tree,
00:41:01 ►
this beautiful relationship with nature.
00:41:05 ►
And I would highly recommend any of you who wish to work with these medicines
00:41:11 ►
and go outside and if you could find a forest and be by the trees.
00:41:18 ►
And they continue to speak with me now.
00:41:23 ►
And, you know, I don’t believe in these beings, by the way.
00:41:26 ►
I’m long, long past belief.
00:41:28 ►
I know them.
00:41:29 ►
I know them.
00:41:30 ►
They are my kin, really.
00:41:32 ►
And when I go out into the forest in particular,
00:41:35 ►
I’m so lucky, truly so blessed to live in the Pacific Northwest
00:41:40 ►
where I can get into beautiful forests and experience these beings. And I’ll tell you
00:41:47 ►
also, since I’ve been working with the mushroom, I have been writing a lot of poetry. And it would
00:41:55 ►
often be as a result of being in the forest. And then I would come home, I would have these words
00:42:00 ►
coming into my head and just write out these poems. And at one point, the trees, the tree beings said, well, dear one, don’t you get it? Poet tree.
00:42:10 ►
And so really what happens, what I find is that the conversation continues beyond the medicine
00:42:18 ►
and it continues through synchronicity. And then I realized, huh, just as I can travel their worlds,
00:42:24 ►
so too they can travel ours through this extraordinary and strange synchronicity. And then I realize, huh, just as I can travel their worlds, so too they can travel ours
00:42:26 ►
through this extraordinary and strange synchronicities
00:42:29 ►
that I’m sure many of you have experienced
00:42:32 ►
as a result of your work.
00:42:34 ►
And this requires a very different way of perceiving.
00:42:38 ►
We really do have to let go of our conditioning
00:42:41 ►
because truly we have been told for so long,
00:42:43 ►
oh, that’s just your imagination.
00:42:44 ►
of our conditioning. Because truly, we have been told for so long, oh, that’s just your imagination.
00:42:55 ►
And we’ve just become very sterile mentally. And that is, it serves in one way, but then it is at the loss, the great loss of connection to this magic. Magic is not like a Harry Potter sort of
00:43:02 ►
movie. It is very real. and these beings are very real.
00:43:07 ►
And there’s nice ones, and there’s assholes.
00:43:09 ►
I mean, it’s as above, so below.
00:43:12 ►
So we’ll talk about a cool one.
00:43:14 ►
I love this guy, Pan.
00:43:16 ►
Here’s my homie.
00:43:18 ►
And so on my first journey with this medicine, Pan appeared to me.
00:43:25 ►
And later, of course, it made sense.
00:43:27 ►
Like, of course, I was in a wild forest, untamed forest.
00:43:32 ►
Of course, the god of the forest would show himself.
00:43:35 ►
And to my people, the Celtic people, he was known as Cernunnos.
00:43:39 ►
And also the Druids called him Hugadarn. And so he is a god of the forest, but also sensuality, unbridled sexuality, revelry, joy, prophecy.
00:43:54 ►
He taught Apollo the gift of prophecy before Apollo took over the temple.
00:43:59 ►
And so I just, I wanted to look up a bit of Cernunnos.
00:44:02 ►
There’s so little out there on the Celtic mythology.
00:44:07 ►
And so I found this and it says,
00:44:09 ►
the horned one is a Celtic god of fertility,
00:44:12 ►
life, animals, wealth, and the underworld.
00:44:15 ►
He was worshiped all over Gaul
00:44:16 ►
and his cult spread into Britain as well.
00:44:19 ►
Cernunnos is depicted with the antlers of a stag,
00:44:21 ►
sometimes carries a purse filled with coin.
00:44:24 ►
The horned god is born at the winter solstice stag, sometimes carries a purse filled with coin. The horned god
00:44:25 ►
is born at the winter solstice, marries the goddess of Beltane, and dies at the summer solstice.
00:44:30 ►
He alternates with the goddess of the moon in ruling over life and death, continuing the cycle
00:44:35 ►
of death, rebirth, and reincarnation. Paleolithic cave paintings found in France that depict a stag
00:44:42 ►
standing upright or a man dressed in stag costume
00:44:45 ►
seem to indicate that Cernunnos’ origins date to those times.
00:44:50 ►
Known to the Druids as Huguedarn, god of the underworld and astral planes,
00:44:54 ►
the consort of the great goddess, he was often depicted holding a bag of money
00:44:57 ►
or accompanied by a ram-headed serpent and a stag.
00:45:00 ►
Now, I think it’s very interesting that this figure was known throughout Western
00:45:07 ►
Europe and Greece and all the way back to Paleolithic man. And the images are pretty
00:45:13 ►
consistent, aren’t they? He’s half man, half beast. I ultimately see that as a symbol of man’s union
00:45:21 ►
with nature. I mean, we’re way separate from it now,
00:45:28 ►
but we really are nature, I think.
00:45:31 ►
And this being is saying,
00:45:36 ►
he is wanting us all to come back to our senses,
00:45:38 ►
as it were, our senses,
00:45:42 ►
where we are feeling and experiencing and in relationship with nature because you know what she has the cure
00:45:47 ►
for everything that ails us i gave a talk on bee venom therapy last night to the klamath basin
00:45:53 ►
beekeepers association and you want to talk about a healing mechanism for pain boy oh boy, those bees are pretty magical. So she can heal anything, truly.
00:46:08 ►
And also we can learn so much by looking to nature.
00:46:12 ►
And I’m not a non-dualist, I have to say.
00:46:15 ►
But I look to nature for my answers.
00:46:17 ►
And you can’t have life without duality, positive, negative, charge, day, night, sun, moon, whatnot.
00:46:23 ►
And so I do see these beings as, well, you know what?
00:46:27 ►
It was explained to me by these beings.
00:46:30 ►
And they’re really fun.
00:46:32 ►
And they said, well, dear, we’ll speak in terms of jewelry
00:46:34 ►
because we know you like jewelry so much.
00:46:36 ►
And they said, you are all like a gemstone.
00:46:39 ►
Think of the facets on a stone.
00:46:41 ►
And so we are each individual facets on that gem.
00:46:45 ►
Now, if one of those facets was missing,
00:46:48 ►
you probably wouldn’t buy that stone, would you?
00:46:51 ►
No.
00:46:51 ►
You’d say, what’s wrong?
00:46:52 ►
That piece is missing.
00:46:54 ►
So we are what they have told me, all right?
00:46:57 ►
Just me speaking.
00:46:59 ►
Individual frequency signatures.
00:47:02 ►
And we are essential components
00:47:06 ►
to this beautiful cosmic
00:47:08 ►
dance that we are in. And really,
00:47:10 ►
if you think about the human body,
00:47:12 ►
nature, it is composed
00:47:14 ►
of cells, part of one being,
00:47:16 ►
yet every cell is
00:47:18 ►
enclosed in a cellular
00:47:19 ►
wall. And I think it’s
00:47:21 ►
quite, makes things interesting,
00:47:24 ►
you know, when we get different individuals and different forms together and we can play. So I will take these last 15 minutes
00:47:32 ►
to tell you some stories and just kind of induct you into a very different place where, you know,
00:47:38 ►
certain academic eyebrows would be raised. But this is my reality, I will tell you, and I’ll share a few images with you.
00:47:46 ►
So after that experience of seeing Pan on the Mushroom Medicine, a month later, I was teaching
00:47:53 ►
a group of women. We were doing a medicine wheel of peace, and I led a fire ceremony, and one of
00:47:58 ►
the women asked if she could take some photos of the ceremonies. I said, sure. And that night,
00:48:03 ►
she sent me a bunch of photos, three or four of the fire and a few of us women. And I sent them off to a friend of mine. I picked
00:48:08 ►
like one from the fire, different photos, sent them off. And he wrote back and he said, Hey,
00:48:13 ►
I did the face in the fire. And I said, face in the fire, what the hell are you talking about?
00:48:16 ►
And, um, uh, so I looked at the picture again and, um, uh, I don’t know, it looks like Panda and me.
00:48:28 ►
And I do know that every fire has a different personality,
00:48:33 ►
and we have been working with fire since time immemorial, right?
00:48:37 ►
So there’s Pan saying hello to the group of women,
00:48:41 ►
and I think winking, taking advantage of the photo op,
00:48:45 ►
because I’ll tell you, they have a fabulous sense of humor.
00:48:49 ►
And then another time I was in Belize several months later.
00:48:53 ►
And I love the jungle.
00:48:55 ►
I just walk barefoot through it.
00:48:56 ►
I just feels like home to me.
00:48:58 ►
And so my friend and I found this place a half hour from the lodge we were staying.
00:49:03 ►
And it was this beautiful stream.
00:49:04 ►
It was stepped.
00:49:05 ►
It was water and then stone, water, stone.
00:49:09 ►
So we did a little bit of medicine there,
00:49:12 ►
and I did a little ceremony first, created an altar and whatnot,
00:49:16 ►
and we walked through this water until we found this beautiful,
00:49:20 ►
well, I felt like it was the perfect place,
00:49:22 ►
and I plunked myself down,
00:49:24 ►
and I proceeded to speak with the jungle spirits, until I looked straight ahead and realized, I said, there’s Pan.
00:49:30 ►
I was sitting directly across. Look at the water, the way the two sides of the water come down. They
00:49:35 ►
look like horns, and the two eyes, and a nose, looks like a face. And I really get this piece
00:49:42 ►
where they say, this is for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.
00:49:47 ►
And so truly, when you engage these medicines, you are given the ability to see things that many others can’t and to hear with different ears.
00:49:59 ►
And so there he is.
00:50:02 ►
And I’ll just tell you another really fast story. I got divorced and
00:50:08 ►
my husband is a good friend, ex-husband. We lived together for two years. I had no dough and I was
00:50:14 ►
not going to do an apartment or whatever. I said, I want a cottage on a horse farm nestled in trees.
00:50:19 ►
It has to be close to my girl’s school because where I live, there’s horse farms.
00:50:24 ►
And it took two years, but I held to that.
00:50:26 ►
And I did ceremony outside, not with plant medicine, but just talking to the trees.
00:50:30 ►
And I called in Pan, and I said, please, dear one, bring this to me.
00:50:35 ►
Speak to the trees, have them send it through their roots, and bring me this place.
00:50:39 ►
Well, two years later, a month before the place showed up, a friend of mine, who has some dough,
00:50:44 ►
said, hey, are you going to need some dough for the deposit? And I said, I am. I was going to need
00:50:47 ►
like five grand. And she goes, how about five grand? I was like, okay. And then a friend of
00:50:53 ►
mine found this place. And so I decided to take it. It was absolutely perfect. It was right next
00:50:57 ►
to my girl’s school, nestled in trees on a 16-acre horse farm, 1940s cottage. And then the landlady,
00:51:03 ►
I’m talking business with her and she
00:51:05 ►
says, all right, if I said to you, let me talk to my finance person, I wouldn’t tell you their name,
00:51:09 ►
who cares? She says, let me talk to my finance person, Pam, and I’ll get back to you.
00:51:16 ►
So, you know, 10 minutes. Okay. I’ll be fast. So yeah, I mean, strange things happen when you can open to this, and these beings will work with you, truly.
00:51:28 ►
It is a very different way that we’ve been taught.
00:51:32 ►
But we can call in this magic.
00:51:35 ►
And then I will just quickly talk about this other ally, White Owl.
00:51:39 ►
Now, what better guide for a seer than an owl?
00:51:45 ►
Owls that can see in the dark and see what others can’t and others won’t.
00:51:49 ►
Now, this being assists me when I work one-on-one with people.
00:51:54 ►
She helps me to hear beneath and between the words that this person is saying
00:52:00 ►
and then zero in on the origination point of the wounding which is psychic wounding and
00:52:07 ►
mostly happens during childhood and i had uh synchronicity after synchronicity after synchronicity
00:52:14 ►
with this medicine with owl uh what happened was it it started with one time in the woods and then
00:52:20 ►
i had to go back the following month and then i had to go back the following month, and then I had to go back the following month, and it really became a soul journey,
00:52:26 ►
and the soul doesn’t give a rat’s ass
00:52:27 ►
what the rules of the day are.
00:52:30 ►
The soul has this being to grow,
00:52:33 ►
and so I did a year of monthly
00:52:36 ►
five and higher doses of this medicine in nature,
00:52:43 ►
and it was really like a training when I look back,
00:52:47 ►
like a soul training. And I grew so much. And so the owl was coming to me, showing up on my
00:52:53 ►
journeys, flying over me in the forest and hooting. And then I started bringing it through
00:52:58 ►
and speaking this very strange owl language. Then I was a runner at the time. All of a sudden now,
00:53:04 ►
I run early in the morning and the owl’s hooting. And then an owl was outside my window at night when I would go to bed.
00:53:10 ►
And then we applied to this school for our girls. And then I go and the mascot, lo and behold,
00:53:16 ►
is the owl. And I knew then, of course, they’re going to get in. And then I get a call from
00:53:20 ►
a person I know who is a Native American medicine person, a dear friend, and they create
00:53:26 ►
medicine objects. They didn’t know any of this was happening to me, and they said, listen, I have
00:53:30 ►
something that was bequeathed to me four years ago, and I want you to have it. It’s yours. And I said,
00:53:35 ►
well, what is it? She said, I want you to come see it. And I said, can you just tell me? And by the way,
00:53:40 ►
that was a Monday. I’d just gotten back from the rainforest that weekend and I had this profound experience with an owl. And she says, it’s the tail of a snowy white owl. And, uh, so,
00:53:52 ►
uh, so yeah, so she is my ally. And by the way, there’s a formula and I’ve heard, uh, heard like
00:53:58 ►
some government official say this on like a YouTube video. He said, uh, we always look at this. If it happens once, it’s an accident.
00:54:07 ►
Twice, it’s a coincidence. Three times, it’s a pattern. And so this has absolutely been the case
00:54:13 ►
for me. It’s been a pattern. And so through the working with the mushroom, these beings have
00:54:18 ►
pierced the veil and they’re guiding me. And not only that, I work with people one-on-one and I
00:54:23 ►
teach. And you know what? The majority of people I work with, they’ll never find their way to these medicines. They won’t.
00:54:28 ►
It’s not realistic for them, and they don’t need to. And yet the medicine is working through me.
00:54:34 ►
The medicine is working through me and assisting them. And I do find it interesting that the
00:54:39 ►
majority of people who I speak with who are devoted to these medicines are in service.
00:54:46 ►
people who I speak with who are devoted to these medicines are in service. They’re very moved to be in service in some way. And so this being is just, she’s exhorting, oh, okay, so real fast, this is a
00:54:54 ►
good one. I was in Bailey’s, that trip I told you about, at the very beginning. Where I live in
00:55:01 ►
Seattle area, there’s garter snakes, and I love them, and I pick them up, and I hold them, and I admire them.
00:55:05 ►
So I was in the Central American jungle, and I wasn’t thinking, and I saw this beautiful red and black snake,
00:55:12 ►
and I picked it up immediately, and it bit me, and it was poisonous.
00:55:16 ►
So I spent the night in the hospital and anti-venom and the whole deal, and I could have died.
00:55:22 ►
And anyway, so later that week, when we found this
00:55:26 ►
beautiful place on the stream and we did the medicine and I had done ceremony, created a
00:55:31 ►
little altar by this tree and then we walked through the water. Towards the end of that,
00:55:35 ►
I started to get scared and I realized, oh God, it’s getting near dusk and that’s when the snakes
00:55:39 ►
come out. For the first time in my life, I felt fear. And the jungle spirit said, Daughter, do not be afraid.
00:55:45 ►
The snake people will keep away.
00:55:47 ►
We will see you safely home.
00:55:49 ►
Now, this is an owl story.
00:55:51 ►
And I said, okay.
00:55:53 ►
And so, you know, I make my way back to the beginning of this stream
00:55:56 ►
where the tree was, where I did the ceremony.
00:55:58 ►
And on that tree is that butterfly.
00:56:00 ►
And I’m standing there waiting for my friend to come.
00:56:03 ►
And the butterfly lifts off.
00:56:04 ►
It lands on my third eye and then on my shoulder and then on this tree. And I say to my friend,
00:56:10 ►
hey, check this out. This owl just did this. Look at it. Anyways, then we start walking. It’s a
00:56:15 ►
half hour back to the lodge. And about 10 minutes in, I start to get scared. And instantly in my
00:56:21 ►
mind, the jungle spirits say, dear one, we told you we would see you safely home and it is so.
00:56:26 ►
Do not doubt.
00:56:27 ►
And in that moment that butterfly shows up and it’s flying all around me
00:56:31 ►
and I was like, oh, okay, all right.
00:56:33 ►
So I keep moving and then down a bit I’m thinking of this Mayan goddess.
00:56:38 ►
I have done a lot of work there and it’s Ixchel.
00:56:42 ►
Now sooner did my mind formulate the word Ixchel,
00:56:44 ►
then that butterfly
00:56:45 ►
shows up again, flying all around me. And I started to think, I don’t think this is an ordinary
00:56:51 ►
butterfly. This is so crazy. And then I keep going another, I don’t know, 10 minutes or so.
00:56:57 ►
And I turn a corner, it’s there flying. And at that moment, I put out my hand and it landed on
00:57:03 ►
my hand and it stayed there in time for my friend to open
00:57:05 ►
his zipper, pull out his camera, turn
00:57:08 ►
it on, take the picture
00:57:09 ►
and I realized in that moment this is our envoy
00:57:12 ►
that the spirit sent to
00:57:14 ►
see us home
00:57:15 ►
okay, I get home and a month later
00:57:17 ►
it occurs to me, I wonder what the name
00:57:20 ►
of that butterfly is, I’ll look it up
00:57:22 ►
on Google, there are 700
00:57:24 ►
species of butterfly in Baileys,
00:57:27 ►
and don’t you know the name of that butterfly is owl butterfly.
00:57:35 ►
Which brings me to my final image by my beautiful friend Tara, and this makes me think of receptivity. So when we break the chains of our
00:57:48 ►
conditioning, we are an open conduit to the waters of wisdom. And this is when we experience gnosis.
00:58:00 ►
This is when we feel that reverence for life. and truly, if we are going to heal ourselves, each other, this planet,
00:58:10 ►
that is the state that we want to be in.
00:58:13 ►
And so I’m going to finish my talk with a poem.
00:58:17 ►
When I was preparing for this talk, I requested a poem from my friends.
00:58:24 ►
And my friend LaLaurian once said,
00:58:27 ►
poems don’t happen just every day.
00:58:28 ►
And she’s right.
00:58:29 ►
They’re really like an event.
00:58:30 ►
It’s so special when one comes through.
00:58:33 ►
I see poetry as the language of the soul.
00:58:36 ►
And so I just invite you to come into an even more receptive state
00:58:42 ►
and just receive these words.
00:58:45 ►
This mystery lies hidden in view,
00:58:49 ►
yet sadly is known to only a few
00:58:52 ►
who have eyes and ears that can perceive
00:58:56 ►
and the imagination to conceive
00:58:59 ►
of worlds within worlds where beings of knowledge
00:59:02 ►
hold secrets contained in an ancient college
00:59:06 ►
that all can access who have the heart and burning desire to learn the art of speaking a language,
00:59:13 ►
a foreign tongue learned through a medium growing in dung.
00:59:19 ►
An unlikely place for a ship to be found that transports the seeker from common ground to spectacular
00:59:27 ►
wonders that fly in the face of reason and rule that constricts your race to a prison of mind
00:59:34 ►
that holds you back and colors your imagination black. Come fly with us and you will discover
00:59:41 ►
a wondrous place that is like no other,
00:59:47 ►
a place of connection to all that is dear,
00:59:51 ►
a place long known to the ancient seer,
00:59:53 ►
who humbly traveled with open heart,
00:59:57 ►
whose intention was pure from the very start.
01:00:01 ►
This place has cures for what ails your folk,
01:00:04 ►
and wisdom that feeds the fires you stoke. The beings who dwell in these places
01:00:07 ►
are real, known only to those who are able to feel. We watch you all from behind the veil.
01:00:15 ►
We possess what you call the holy grail. It can only be accessed by breaking the spell.
01:00:21 ►
It is then you can drink from the sacred well of knowledge and truth and noble
01:00:26 ►
intentions that transcend the constructs of man’s inventions. Come fly with us, dear seekers who
01:00:34 ►
yearn, whose souls ache for truth, whose beating hearts burn for communion with shimmering beings
01:00:40 ►
of light. We offer you the gift of sight. We offer it freely in spite of your rules, made by those
01:00:48 ►
who play for fools. Our worlds offer freedom
01:00:51 ►
to be and express, to call forth your nature that is
01:00:56 ►
no less than magnificent in its radiance
01:01:00 ►
and beauty. Wake now, dear humans.
01:01:04 ►
That is your duty.
01:01:07 ►
Thank you.
01:01:21 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:01:28 ►
Did you do what I did when Shauna spoke about the fact that our daily lives are actually hallucinations?
01:01:35 ►
It made me think about the title of one of Terrence McKenna’s books, True Hallucinations.
01:01:40 ►
So what, if I may ask, is the true hallucination in your life for me well this seems like a good
01:01:48 ►
question to keep in front of myself as I proceed through the day and when Shauna mentioned Bill
01:01:54 ►
Hicks in her talk I was reminded of a comedian who is most certainly on the same level as Hicks was
01:01:59 ►
and that person is Barry Crimmins to be, I hadn’t heard about Barry until I listened to Joe Rogan’s interview with him on Joe’s podcast number 679.
01:02:10 ►
And with Barry during that interview was Bobcat Goldthwait, who had just released a documentary film that he made about Barry.
01:02:17 ►
The film is titled Call Me Lucky.
01:02:20 ►
And while I don’t want to be a spoiler here, all I’m going to say is that if you enjoy the comedy of Bill Hicks
01:02:26 ►
then you’re going to love the early Barry Cummins
01:02:30 ►
however there is significantly more to this documentary
01:02:33 ►
than some excellent social commentary in the form of humor
01:02:36 ►
so if you get a chance
01:02:38 ►
I suggest that you listen to Joe’s podcast number 679
01:02:42 ►
and then go out to Netflix and watch the documentary.
01:02:46 ►
It’ll blow you away, I’m sure.
01:02:49 ►
By the way, at the suggestion of one of our fellow salonners,
01:02:52 ►
I just opened a new forum titled Psychedelic Thought and Action,
01:02:57 ►
which will hopefully provide a place for you to post things
01:03:00 ►
that you think our other fellow salonners might pick up on.
01:03:04 ►
Also, Chartas’ recent post titled, The Edward Snowden Guide to Practical Privacy, has a
01:03:11 ►
link to some tips that may help you evade some of the mass surveillance that our governments
01:03:16 ►
are conducting on us.
01:03:17 ►
There’s also a lengthy discussion that Viridis started with his post about the Psychedelic Society in the UK.
01:03:29 ►
And Greg VK caught my attention with his post titled,
01:03:33 ►
Relationships with People Who Are Against the Use of Psychedelics.
01:03:38 ►
And I’ll bet that’s something that many of our fellow saunters can relate to.
01:03:42 ►
So if you get a chance, please join us on the Find the Others forum.
01:03:45 ►
You can try it out for a year for free in case you’re interested.
01:03:49 ►
And after that, the nominal charge of $1 per month will hopefully cover our expenses here in the salon
01:03:52 ►
and eliminate any donation buttons or annual pledge drives,
01:03:56 ►
which is something that I’m sure we can all rally around.
01:04:01 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:00:00 ►
Be careful out there my friends Thank you.