At first, there is the identification,
"I am the body."
As the mechanism of surrender continues, it becomes quite obvious that,
"I am the mind that experiences the body, not the body."
As more feelings and belief systems are surrendered, there eventually comes the awareness,
"I am not the mind either, but that which witnesses and experiences the mind, emotions, and body."
p. 254
Eleven
Sitting on a wooden deck next to a tambo, serenaded by the deep amazon rain, I turned the pages of a book that I could only truly understand at that point in my journey. Every day that goes by, I realize more how perfectly it all fit together. Letting Go was the accidental theme, but it has been lingering since I first sat with Kambô, which just defined a feeling I had been struggling with for years that culminated in finding my father's body. Bufo crammed me into an existential nightmare that led to me abandoning my work altogether. Tepe pulled me out of the nightmare, but left me in a new question mark, especially with my work. Sitting with Aya in the Peruvian Amazon left me with more questions than answers, and I still don't even know how to articulate those questions, or what in this universe would understand what I'm asking... but I walked away from that inspired to really do the work that I love and know I'm meant to do, which was primarily inspired by spending so much time with
Gabe..... all divine integration.
At this point in my journey I am left with a kind of futile emptiness, which is really just what life is, and our journey is finding beauty in that. I got all those experiences that I longed for my entire life, but I have once again circled back to this, feeling like the life that I long for is drowning in an ocean of egos. That's it. That's my light bulb. These amazing plant medicines aren't cheap, nor are they as readily available as they should be for the betterment of humanity and this world that we are destroying, which is all starting to feel like the Catholic Church charging the masses for salvation. I hear so many stories about beautiful healing journeys with these plants, and I feel like I exist to document and appreciate those stories, while coming to terms with the fact that I'm not actually supposed to have one of my own, because mine doesn't look or feel like any of that which is described. My biggest conundrum in all of this is realizing that there is nothing to heal. All the traumas and pains that everyone is wallowing in and trying to heal don't exist anymore, but in our memories of them. Everything happened exactly how it was supposed to in order for us to become what we're supposed to be. By holding on to and thinking we need to heal something that only exists in our memory, we are really negating our own existence. If you could go back in time and delete or change an experience, you would return to a completely different reality, and the only guarantee is that your new life won't be any better or worse, it will only be different. You can keep doing that for all eternity, searching for the perfect existence, until one day you'll realize that you truly appreciate and miss the original story, and you'll understand how much precious time and energy you wasted searching for something different, thinking it would be better.
It is not our experiences, or at worst, traumas, that we need to heal from, but our own thinking that those experiences and traumas are important enough to keep us from thriving in our best possible existence. It could also be argued that our greatest trauma is thinking itself. It is our egos, in their inflated selfishness, having all of those silly experiences. We are the everything and nothing that is watching the ego flounder with all of the ego-made problems and issues. The plants are trying to show you something past the ego, often times by smashing you in the face with it. I'm not saying that anyone should stop doing the work, or stop trying to heal what they think is holding them back. I'm just saying that I hope one day you also realize that it is not healing what you've been through that is holding you back; it is the you who needs to be healed that is keeping you from living your best possible life.
I recently read that it is incorrect to say that we create abundance. Abundance is already there. We create limitations.
