Interbeings

Through the Prismatic Sensorium

A late afternoon in mid March found me dozing amid the bustle of Los Angeles’s Union Station. Sunlight streamed through high windows in its vaulted grand chamber as the crowd hummed distractedly below. An actress and film crew captured the attention of onlookers. A curious kid made binoculars with his fingers and inspected the room through them. I sat alone, sore and tired from lying in the luggage rack on a train from Flagstaff. I looked up from my sleepy stupor, startled to see a woman standing beside me, eyeing my hands. Her tattered clothes hung loose from her body, as her skin did from her aged face.

“I saw your ring on the train. It’s really pretty.” the gypsy said.
“Thank you.”
“Do you want it? I mean… would you trade it? I figure it’s a sign cause I saw you again. I have this really heavy crystal. And I’m homeless, so I can’t keep carrying the rock around. See my problem? It’s too big. But I’d wear that ring every damn day.” She produced a large clear crystal from a dirty mauve shoulder bag and held it up to the light. “See the phantom?” she asked.

How could I miss it? This crystal held two phantom crystals in its glass womb like spectral shadows of itself. They refracted the late afternoon light into internal rainbows. My ring, a Guatemalan Jade cabochon nestled in a tangle of sterling wire, hugged my finger comfortingly. It was a sentimental reminder of recent travels. Nevertheless, the Universal law of flow was inviting me to say YES, as always. So I parted with my jewel as the gypsy dropped her heavy stone in my lap. She walked off quickly, admiring the new treasure. I may never know the history of this mineral-being nor why it chose me but, at least in my animist paradigm, it consciously did. And what perfect timing, as new Californian adventures awaited us both.

Los Angeles and San Diego spun me in a whirlwind of concerts and road trips after which my Beloved, Amani, and I set forth from Venice Beach in a quest to resolve our curiosity — “What’s the secret of Big Sur?” Neither of us had ever visited, and we’d no inkling what awaited us — be it town, beach, resort, overlook, or some other mystery. We merely recalled vague fragments of stories foretelling its beauty and restorative magic.

Spoilers: Big Sur is a world of Redwood giants who live by the ocean. They are the mighty Sequoia Simperviens, who derive their name from the Latin “ever living”. The moment we entered the forest, the temperature dropped and the light faded, creating an intimate chamber that encased us in a damp embrace. I marveled, eyes searching the high dense canopy. What mysteries must be clearer from the grand perspective of these long-lived gurus? What do subtle movements of a high breeze feel like to one who is forever planted still?

Earthy undertones scented the air. If my nose had the sensitivity of a sommelier’s palette I could have distinguished each subtle flavor — dark soil, expertly crafted oxygen, aged bark, and faint salted humidity from the nearby Pacific. We stepped into a circle of trees known as a cathedral. Though each tree stands on its own in a tight-knit ring, a cathedral is truly one tree sharing a root system beneath the floor of a tall round room. Its roots form the tangled underground palm of a hand whose fingers grow up into the clouds. Their individuality belies a sub-terrestrial unity, and the space within the ring is its hollow tree trunk.

A turkey gobbled like a tattletale just a few yards from us, echoing through the woods. “Sshh…” we giggled mischievously, disrobing each other. Amani pressed me resolutely against the largest trunk of the circle. Its presence behind me felt so alive it was nearly a menage a trois. Or perhaps a manage a tree. Our breath exchanged intimately with its, trading inhale for exhale as I leaned into the thick solid trunk, bare skin on bare bark, feeling the vitality of our treesome’s chi blessing its roots, soaring up its woody shushumna, and finally exploding into the sky at its crest of foliage. I felt these trees’ deep wisdom blessing the communion between myself and my Beloved, teaching us that although we may appear as separate beings, our hearts and roots are One.

Takoda, a kindred desert sister, recently described to me her experience of Redwoods at dawn. Early in the morning, they breathe. You can feel mist literally pulse their in- and out-breaths against your skin. Every cusp of day, thousands of ancient yogis in eternal vrksasana steep the forest in their pranayam practice, whispering their secrets into haze. Perhaps another time we will return for this sadhana, but our road trip had lain claim to the day.

The coast traveled north with us, loyally to our left. It shifted its scenic company as our conversation traveled new territories as well. Are Dzogchen and Shaivism inherently the same? Being famous is the weirdest thing. If a cow laughed, would milk come out of its nose? Soon we pulled over to enjoy the view from the perch of a large boulder. It seemed the perfect overlook from which to enjoy the beauty and immensity of the coast. We opened our rental car doors and the wind knocked us fully sideways. Humbled in human fragility by Mother Nature, we worked every muscle against its pulling and pushing. I climbed on top of the boulder and laid back into the wind, fully diagonal in its support.

Water in tumult below; Air asserted all the force it could muster; the sun shone fiery blinding radiance; cliffs of stone and earth held us. These four elements conspired together in a fractionary glimpse of their eternal power. Water, Air, Fire, Earth; The omnipresent self-sustaining ingredients of creation. The ancients understood. As do modern scientists, who name the same factors: solid, liquid, gas and plasma. When they are in balance within us, we are whole. And when they assert themselves as strongly as they did to my lover and me by the shore, we can naught but be humbled in gratitude to our five senses. These fragments of perception and creation — the five senses and the four elements — intertwine to weave the web of our existence and the very fabric of our reality in cohesion.

We thanked the elements and drove North to a small deserted beach near Monterey to cleanse, clear and charge the gypsy crystal and phantom infant in its belly. It still carried the dull cellular memories of being a mere weighted burden in a homeless woman’s satchel. Ever the nelipot, my shoes fell off before my toes even touched the ground. This beach’s sand was the giddiest texture — an intricate massage of pebbles that pressed our feet in a million reflexology points as we ran hand in hand to waters edge. I knelt at the surf to let our crystal bathe in the ocean’s baptism. Each wave sung a mantra on the mala of the beach’s lifespan. The foamy water was numbingly cold. My hands and feet were nearly frozen red. Amani added his own Buddhist blessing to the crystal and we carried it back to the car noting its marked difference. Its power and clarity were noticeably heightened. It felt happy to be honored, as though the disparate photonstreams it refracted had been harmonized into one unified frequency.

By sunset we settled at a small commune in the hills. A rainbow-clad shamanista greeted us, fresh from the Amazon, with the warmth of a family reunion. She was radiant with the memories of medicine so fresh within her beating heart and grounded them into this realm with icaro melodies hummed in the quiet spaces between words. The corners of her mouth and eyes tilted upwards as though the sides of her face yearned to defy gravity. With a coy elfish grin, she invited us to ceremony. “Join me in the spiral rainbow fractal world”, her smirk beckoned.

It is a sadhana to practice the art of YES, and this invitation begged it. Yes, we will swim through the backstage of reality, see the quantum cogs of inter-being close-up and learn from ancient-future interstellar teachers. It is our deepest cosmogyral joy; an honor and service to the collective conscience and a blessing to the lineages we care-take in our DNA. We are brothers and sisters in a clan of psychonautic pilgrims.

Our new crystal friend reflected candle light in its facets, overlooking the ceremony as an assistant shaman. It held a cohesion between the dimensions of light and corporeality. The four directions were called, ancestors angels and guides invoked. The space was cleared and protected in all three realms, Bhur Bhuva and Svaha. My shAmani sat across from me as our Shipibo goddess held space for a ritual involving three separate flights. Glass kissed my lower lip. Acrid taste, a burn harshly held in the lungs, blast off. My eyes bowed to the spacious dimension of internal vision.

How oddly fitting that every night for the following week of coastal concerts, I would dance to the following lyrics, words that utterly capture our experience. Even now, the catchy chorus continues on repeat in my brain. Once you’ve heard this song, you can never un-hear the echo of Terence McKenna’s nasally eloquence dubbed over Shpongle’s bass again and again.

“So! You take let us assume a third toke; long and slow. You vaporize and you take it in and in and in… and there is a sound like the crumpling of a plastic bread wrapper or the crackling of flame and a tone.
A MmmmMMmMmmmmMmm!!!! and there is this…There is a cheer! The gnomes have learned a new way to say hoOoOraaay!!! These walls, such they be, are crawling with geometric hallucinations.
Very brightly colored, very iridescent. Deep sheens and very highly reflective surfaces. Everything is machine-like and polished and throbbing with energy. But that is not what immediately arrests my attention.. What arrests my attention is the fact that this space is inhabited.”

Inhabited, indeed. The first trip took place in a drippy, mechanical realm. It invited the medicine into me, opened me, and showed us the essence of each other. Now that we had made our introductions, her communications began in a more organic and navigable space.

Round two seemed more familiar. Once the veil lifted, a blue entity of pure maternal love appeared. She stroked my etheric body from crown to shoulders, trailing visceral consolation. She could perceive only innocence and provide only love. She spoke wordlessly of unconditional compassion. With this simple gesture, she invoked my grace, gentleness and forgiveness towards myself, and showed me the ease of loving with boundless tenderness once illusions slip away. A blessing and curse I carry through this incarnation is my solar Virgoan nature which seeks to improve, perfect and accomplish in order to be “worthy”. To see myself as already whole, complete and deserving of love without having to earn it was deeply healing. This Divine Cosmic Mother spirit has since visited my meditations, and always arrives bearing the magnified love of every earthly mother, distilled to its core purity.

The third trip brought perspective to the depth, breadth, and ephemeral nature of this lifespan. Simultaneously, a great responsibility and sense of lightheartedness washed over me. To cultivate life with artful intentionality casts every action and every interaction in light of both synergistic honor and a playful opportunity. Everything is a miracle to celebrate with equal non-attachment and whole-heartedness. It’s a cliche, something you might scroll past as a meme. But it’s true, nevertheless, and its truth runs deep.

As the sensorium faded, I opened my eyes to find my Beloved One sitting across from me, his peaceful Buddha gaze fully radiant, present, and loving. We held each others’ hearts between the meeting of our eyes and no words were necessary to communicate the communion we felt. At some point, words like “I” and “love” and “you” become synonymous, and speaking becomes redundant to knowing.

Experiences like these provide a glimpse into the mysterious transitions of birth and of death. These are the two enigmatic events wherein the same neurochemical compound is naturally released by the brain. This simple molecule is the vehicle that catapults one past all illusion into whatever is eternal, unchanging and immutable — though quite vividly moving, wise, and alive.

“The feeling of doing DMT is as though one had been struck by noetic lightning. The ordinary world is almost instantaneously replaced, not only with a hallucination, but a hallucination whose alien character is its utter alienness. Nothing in this world can prepare one for the impressions that fill your mind when you enter the DMT sensorium.” Terence McKenna once observed.

The next day I bathed in rainbows under a tree. Sun shone through prisms by the shower casting colorful soapy spectrums to dance in. In the afternoon we rejoined our long-lived giants in the forest, our crystal companion along for the journey. As we wound through the thick bases of sequoias, my mind wonderingly wandered within a notion that every step slightly imprints into a sentient being. Its massive mycellial web stretched out in a vast network of communication through every inch of forest.

Mushroom magic occurs in silence and secrecy under and all around, co-ordinating the lifestreams of every organism. They sub-terrestrially orchestrate a symphony of living ecosystems, though they originate from spores of allegedly extra-terrestrial origin. Many mycologists attest that humans are closer in genetic similarity to these sub-terrestrial / extra-terrestrial mushrooms than to apes. Compare their interwoven mycellia to the patterns of neural pathways in our own brains and the possibility is lent some credence. Though they pop up in many little forms throughout the woods, they are one being, breathing as one. So I kissed my hidden relatives with every footstep, my co-habitant earthlings from the same star family.

We paused at a koi pond on a steep hill. It had seemingly sprung up of its own unlikely desire to be at the base of the grandest tree in sight, and to overspill a little waterfall to quench the forest below. Another meeting of mind with medicine ensued in the sweet embrace of Simperviens roots, exploring our inner nature surrounded by outer nature as God intended. I’m always curious to adventure in novel ways, and am repeatedly led to the same rediscovery: that all natural medicines connect to the same truth. There is One light, although it illuminates many, many paths.

Our chosen path on this day shone an understanding that we already exist at the central heart of Truth. We vainly use words and symbols like signposts pointing to a non-existent elsewhere. As the only things worth expressing were separate from present wholeness, and could be grasped by subjective “small mouth noises”. Again, even now, words are failing. They are mental placeholders for past experiences and concepts. Forget them. Take a moment to breathe. Be still. Notice the active listener, the observer who is present within as thoughts arise from nothing. See how they live in this space of emptiness, then die back into silence… one after another. The still container of Self this occurs within is the same quality-less consciousness dwelling still beneath the vibrations that define all of us as individuals, beneath the world as we perceive it.

But by now, words and philosophy had both slithered into the koi pond and floated far away downstream. Only the heroclidian movement of the forest remained. A big yellow slug slowly milimetered his way from one patch of brown breathing tree bark to another. We merely giggled and stretched our lungs full of life until the gnomes broke our silence by singing “hooray” in a brand new way.

In my paradigm, everything is sacred and everything is profane. Everything is profound, and everything mundane. Only the stories we tell ourselves extract any cohesion or meaning from the chaotic process of life. It’s anyone’s guess what nature’s whispers are truly hinting. I simply see that a crystal with many facets can cast one rainbow. I see that a cathedral of many trees are one organism. All the mushrooms in a forest share one body. The elements of Creation form one reality. The alchemy of myself and my partner create one Love. And the wisdom of the medicine dissolves all the separateness between these.

Such unforeseen adventures are the captivations of travel. Each moment bleeds into the next in a seamless story whose plot is ever reinventing itself. Every experience is new, and the Universe opens into infinite possibilities without the encumbrance of preconceived notions clogging moment-to-moment creation of reality. I relish the intensity of human experience, and the preciousness of odd moments. The quick exchange of a glance through trans-dimensional veils, kind words, and shared laughter are the spices that make our time in this incarnation so delectable. Even those between strangers, slugs, machine elves, and crazy people. Especially among crazy people. It’s only the craziest who so daringly shout YES to life, after all.