Chapter 1 “My first memory…
My first memory is one not of my own. Yet, it has stayed with me all of my life and became a little understood, but dominant riddle that has sometimes plagued, sometimes comforted me on my life’s journey.
Chapter 2 “Beginning the ascent”
My first experience with shamanic healing was through my spiritual enabler/therapist, L. A trim, raven-haired, woman with an aquiline nose, she had studied and practiced under the supervision of several founders of the psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy
Chapter 3 “First nation”
There’s an irony in that it took more than fifty years for me to better understand what I had observed in that briefest of visions of what I later knew to be native American life. I grew up with a love of forests
Chapter 4 “Reflections”
In that faraway pre-Columbian world, waters still lap the shore of cold clear lakes, as the north wind blows through pines and aspen…
Chapter 5 “The crack that…
The glimpse into my native past, whether allegory or true, whether a construct of my mind or a connection to the collective unconscious, opened a door to another world, an alternate reality…
Chapter 6 “Many me’s”
Several months after my first experience in therapy with the entheogenic medicines, L suggested that I go deeper into my current narrative and ask who I am in this life, in this incarnation – for that is what shapes the present. What is the meaning of me and who am I really, she asked?
Chapter 7 “A journey inwards”
I also experienced a reptilian world of slivering creatures with red dinosaur-like eyes and black backbone-like structures, wet and ominous. This world held no beauty nor feeling of love or compassion, and was rent of any emotion except for that of to consume or be consumed…
Chapter 8 “Sometimes I feel…”
Many have their first experiences with the psychedelics in group ceremonies, often presided over by a shaman – a facilitator steeped in the use of these medicines. One October weekend, I was invited to join just such a ceremony held in the desert with facilitators from a community of therapists from San Francisco engaged in the shamanic path of healing.
Chapter 9 “…like a motherless…
This question echoed further within me the following day, as we first pursued meditative and group connectiveness exercises, and then five hours alone in the desert, each alone with the wind and rocks, and an occasional scolding bird that paused to make itself known.
Chapter 10 “To know grief”
In truth though, I never grieved enough for her – at least not at the deepest level of the heart. She was elderly, sick, and reduced to the level of a small child being attended to by the kindly nurses and aides of the facility. As her child, I didn’t want to see that…
Chapter 11 “Past tense”
There are questions that seem to come up again and again in this odyssey, like echoes which ripple through time or perennials that cast their uplifted flowery heads each spring. Questions like, can I cast aside this veil of the false-self and just be without fear of consequence? Can I ever love myself without necessitating validation from someone else?
Chapter 12 “Spinning in infinity…
Several months after I had taken my journey into the darkness of grief and emergence into the light of forgiveness, I had an early springtime session on the beach. The day was warm and thus so the evening…
Chapter 13 “The weak ape”
The next journey began with a long stare into a lone flickering candle, whose small flame seared an imprint in my mind as the mushrooms came on quickly and rather smoothly, taking me down that path of ineffable imagery…
Chapter 14 “Through the window”
After many hours of traveling the axis of European bus-rail-taxi, I finally arrived at a secluded house in the woods outside of Köln for my next encounter with the psychedelics. So obscure was the site that even the taxi driver himself did not know of it…
Chapter 15 “The aya ceremony”
I had heard a great deal about ayahuasca, how it is a spirit vine that provides life review, spiritual rebirth, and awakening. The indigenous people of the Andean and Amazonian territories devised this slow-brewed concoction of both vine and shrub…
Chapter 16 “Eyes of the…
I unexpectedly left my earthbody-mind and became a part of everything for a few brief moments. How beautiful it was – I hope that my physical death, the death of my waking body, be so graceful and peaceful…
Chapter 17 “Cada paso que…
The cessation of I and experience of pure timeless awareness as the true reality was what I had been searching for. Yet, for all the miraculous aspects of this clarity and pure enjoyment it brought I felt that I needed more.
Chapter 18 “Primal roar”
With my eyes closed, the sunlit imagery of retinal afterglow suddenly fragmented into endless fractals of red and orange. As I exhaled and opened my eyes, the veil of vision also dissolved, turning into geometric fractals, and I began to see the world without borders of the mind – to be the world.
Chapter 19 “Thou art that”
I had awaited catharsis for a lifetime – to die and be reborn. After all those years of creating and being I, my ego-self, yet always wondering just who and what I really am – and why?
Chapter 20 “Dharma, karma, atman,…
Several months had passed since I briefly experienced dharmakaya, the universal unmanifested energetic state of consciousness, and suddenly understood the great cosmic play…
Chapter 21 “The voice within”
Most ego structures are built around self-gratification or self-punishment. The ego fears not having enough self-love and yet not having enough divine love as well. One must learn to let go of whatever pain one clings to in order to know thyself and to truly know thyself is to love thyself…
Chapter 22 “Mandala”
I was the mandala, a circular fractal of different colors and overlapping geometries, and the mandala was me. Not intricate, nor greatly detailed like Tibetan mandalas, it was quite simple yet beautiful and most pure in color…
Chapter 23 “Prison of the…
The mysterious river of life ever flows and we are carried downstream effortlessly, but never ceaselessly, and never able to grab hold of a branch or reed to stop the movement of time. Only in our dreams are we lucky enough to relive or experience that what has past…
Chapter 24 “I’ve come back”
Evolution has bred in us a consensual view of reality and purpose. Yet, our individual lives can be delusional to some extent, if they’re based upon unknowing (subconscious) choices made by a fearful ego-self early during development…
Chapter 25 “Rapture”
Suddenly, there was no self anymore and the I became a dazzling swirling ocean of color and beauty, a pure dimensionless state of consciousness that is infinite, eternal, and ineffable…
