Writings - Book I Archives - Metaformity

Chapter 1 “My first memory is not my own”

JG — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 12:14:49 +0000

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.

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Chapter 2 “Beginning the ascent”

JG — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 12:15:17 +0000

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

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Chapter 3 “First nation”

JG — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 12:15:43 +0000

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

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Chapter 4 “Reflections”

JG — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 11:43:09 +0000

In that faraway pre-Columbian world, waters still lap the shore of cold clear lakes, as the north wind blows through pines and aspen...

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Chapter 5 “The crack that lets the light in”

JG — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 11:54:41 +0000

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...

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Chapter 6 “Many me’s”

JG — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 12:07:21 +0000

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?

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Chapter 7 “A journey inwards”

JG — Wed, 10 Mar 2021 14:30:45 +0000

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...

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Chapter 8 “Sometimes I feel…”

JG — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 09:53:05 +0000

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.

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Chapter 9 “…like a motherless child”

JG — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 10:23:55 +0000

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.

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Chapter 10 “To know grief”

JG — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 10:47:24 +0000

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...

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Chapter 11 “Past tense”

JG — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 11:50:07 +0000

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?

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Chapter 12 “Spinning in infinity on the sands of time”

JG — Sun, 14 Mar 2021 15:02:09 +0000

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...

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Chapter 13 “The weak ape”

JG — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 13:13:34 +0000

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...

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Chapter 14 “Through the window”

JG — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 13:41:16 +0000

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...

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Chapter 15 “The aya ceremony”

JG — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 10:51:56 +0000

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...

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