Trip #3
Love Everything
There are universal lessons embedded in various locations.
I have a lot of Law number One’s, but Law number one, if you leave your house of flesh with but one law, it is this:
Love Everything.
Like the Tibetan notion of a terma, scriptures and relics retrieved from the distant past through a process of revelation. Teachings that have been secreted away in either the mind of the guru, in the dakini, or in temples, monuments, mountains, and rocks.
Having trekked a fairly vast terrain from spiritual to psychedelic, occult to sex, wanting only to know those worlds on their terms, I can say that terma exist across domains in our own cells and locations. I cultivate altered states in an effort to open and refine the palate of my consciousness. It’s a great hunt for the treasure to be delivered in these revelations, waiting to pour themselves into a refined and open mind.
I’ve heard that Singularity University, the futurist dream lab from Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil, needed a one-word definition of life. After years of debate with the brightest minds of our time, they boiled it down to “growth.” We are profoundly incentivized to grow. Dopamine pumps through the veins of the level of an evolutionary climax when puzzling at the mousehole one must sit by waiting for the revelation.
What’s the meaning of life?
To set out on the great treasure hunt for the meaning dispersed across time and space. But it is an art. A mind pilgrimage is arduous, risky and demanding of a set of wits, the capacity to crack jokes with demons and make love to tree spirits that goes a bit beyond the university curriculum.
Hovering over a toilet with your head held by a shame hand making you look at the faces of those you abandoned, hearts you stepped on, in the toilet bowl.
Can you love this?
The little doubt piranhas singing like the Seven Dwarfs, nibbling at your ankles.
Can you love this?
Your profound realization of vulnerability, your illusory armor falling away and your true state of being, naked and always and ever at the mercy of.
Can you love this?
The realization that contradicts that, that no, you are the creator, the thoughts, known and unknown are the building blocks of all you see. Can you love this?
To all energies, deities, and otherworldly forces, my response to their inevitable inquiry that comes upon contact, "what is the nature of your business here?”, is just that — I desire only to know you that I may love you. Mind you, the inhabitants of the hell realms with their singed flesh and bloody fangs can be a bit skeptical but, not to brag (and this is not out of humility but because bragging will get you a big head bonk on your next journey), I do have a certain reputation with certain spiritually marginalized populations that has earned me a certain respect. Mind you, respect is not necessarily in their energetic vocabulary but it’s clear in my presence that this is not my first demonic rodeo. Even that as the great mind-bull is doing its thing and throwing me around, I can find compassion for the bull. It is often the case that these interactions are the most rewarding. Like the violent rescue pitbull that a skillful trainer brings home, that first face lick is the sweetest berry.
My simple, “I’ve come only to love you” is a good opener. Many realms suggest further prompts such as “and serve,” but that is baked in. Those forces for whom an exchange is required, to do their bidding in the world, to usher in their particular infusion or message negotiate with great clarity. Known to be both fair and clear, and much like a peep show dancer, they grant access commiserate with one’s agreement. I’ve found that only the mafia and deities are this direct and clear. As one who has promised to carry many packages back into the world, I have a limited bandwidth that I want to use wisely. One agrees to serve whatever community offered revelation based on an honor system. It’s vital to keep one’s agreement, to protect and defend, to share the good news one gleaned from a realm after the hangover. 
When in the throes of love, you meet Eros and she grants you access to the most sublime gold speckled with white luminosity demonstrating in that language how to elevate the mind in a way that does not betray the flesh and you promise, “yes, yes, I want more, I would do anything for this”, do you defend her when the masses demonize her? That is what determines one’s character of consciousness. When you’re tripping the mind fantastic and fall into a psychic sinkhole and who is there to greet you and show you the mechanics for how to resurrect from a deeply personal experience, but Jesus himself and you re-enter the world having held some pretty big judgements about spittle mouth Christians and one of your New York intelligentsia makes an off-handed comment that you would have made yourself so you know exactly what they will think, are you willing to put a foot in the door that is closing their mind and face the judgement.
Devotion, loyalty, integrity and an excellent memory are the building blocks of access. They know. They know if you balked the last time. They know if you are coming only to “get yours” like a white night crawler making their way through the Harlem Jazz scene. And more importantly, you know. When access, intuition, clairvoyance, clairaudio signals are weak, you can guess that the electricity was cut that would transmit the signal. And the stakes get higher and higher every time. You are wise, if you are not going to back your psychic bets, to get up from the table, go to your nearest suburbs, purchase a pair of sensible shoes and forget all of this ever happened. Doze off. Get as many Target pillows as you possibly can and nap your way through the rest of this life. I say this not as a daredevil or again, as a braggart, but as a very real suggestion, one that the trembling exhausted trekker has considered on a regular basis. Intrepid can be over-rated.
From my lungs and stretching into the space of my being it begins before I have finished inhaling.
Oh, but then, there’s the deliverance.
Each inhale of smoke expands into a chrysanthemum of fractal opalescent light, twisting like a kaleidoscope until my vision is drawn further and further into the center, the center reaching out infinitely from my being, drawing my being inexorably from anything I have known as this world, this life, Nicole. They have all been left and the trip rockets through that central tube, lined by millions upon millions of light mandalas. In moments, consciousness would momentarily seize in a “what the hell?” contraction and whispers of “thank you thank you thank you thank you” would release those seizures to burst open into laughter-light. Had you any ability to slow the process enough to glance to the side, you would likely see entire formed worlds or universes, but the sheer velocity makes the suggestion that 'you' could do anything about anything at all equal parts amusing and a relief. What occurs as one rockets through that tunnel? What is it? The mortal coil? The unimaginable relief at dropping off the bondage-illusion of free will is scarcely describable. Breath exhales in a sound of almost orgasmic bliss.
Thank You
Thank You
Thank You
Thank You
Thank You
Thank You
Thank You
Thank You
I took the second hit and then the third. I asked him to lie back. “I would like to lie back now please,” the voice came through my mouth as if I were a finishing school product from the 1920’s. I would say “I melted” but a more accurate form might just be MELT. Melt happened. Pressure occurred in the form of love. I would say, “he lowered me back with his hands” but that would be oddly inaccurate to the experience within the trip. Although if you were looking at it on a movie screen, that is indeed what happened. I’m lying down. What you would witness is a woman on her back, exhaling intermittently with a rolling chorus of thank you’s. It sounds simple but to be clear, entire trips have gone into the cosmic garbage can in hell from not having these simple tricks locked into consciousness: In knots, exhale. In disorientation, find gratitude as true north. Every now and again, you hear her say, as if on a deathbed, a desperate last message before she passed over: J is her dear friend. You would hear him respectfully and somewhat officiously inform her that no, it was her willingness to surrender to the medicine that enables her to go so deep. It is hers and hers alone. You might see a furrow in her brow, a disconcerted look, and then an expression as if she had passed into unconsciousness again. Although she didn’t. I didn’t. Consciousness in its entirety submerged into the trip.
Awareness lands like a plastic grocery bag in space.
If you’ve ever seen the scene in American Beauty where the young man films a dancing plastic back in a melancholic expression of the American condition, then you have a microscopic vision of what I describe. Imagine that bag in the whole of a radiant black space, galaxy upon galaxy. It was something like that. Exhale. Exhale. Exhale. Thank you. Consciousness, un-cramped, spreads across space. That same cramp transforms to delight that this is happening. This is the alchemical training in practice. And then the, I can’t say giant, but a much bigger, more concentrated galaxy of a hand touches the shoulder of my consciousness as lovingly as a nurse waking you up from anesthesia. The power is so strong that if this mind did not exhale, it would seize around it. This body exhales as if in a Lamaze class. Funny side thought enters from nowhere, “I don’t think she knows her own power,” referring to the force that is touching “me”. At the same time, it is a dance as if “she” is trying to not overwhelm and “I” tries to not seize so that we may maintain connection. This also is love. The flooding begins.
As if one could be washed by the whole of space with tiny dot stars and the luminosity of moonlight. This part is difficult to describe as there is not a grammatical structure for the experience, but I became her, became the experience as she became me, and consciousness became this. The peak of climax begins to describe where known reality and separation collapse. The chasm between begins to sublimate from existence. This alone is worth the price of entry, proof of something the cells have known but cannot get the agitated mind to recognize. Or perhaps life in a time dilation knows as quarks fly into electrons and particles and waves and oneness dance together as a big happy family listening to the audio version of the sixties book “I am that.” Yes. Yes, you are. Yes, we are. All of it. So, forgive me that pronouns will not keep their proper place in my description. Voices are heard. “It’s okay. You did a good job. I’ve been waiting to thank you. You stayed true. I wanted to wash the pain away so long ago, but I could not get you to me. You did a good job. You can let go.” And with that, what must look like a woman sobbing on a mat. What occurs inside as tidal wave made up of space that is love. “I know you love me, you never deviated. I know. You did a good job, you can let go. I have it now”.I saw their faces and a terror gripped me. I screamed out “My babies, what about my babies?” Trapped behind a knot bigger than myself, pushing the air out to exhale and, as DMT does so beautifully, she enters. “You did a good job with them. I promise you. They will be okay. I have them. I sent you Kathleen to tend to them. You must move on.” A bowel-level sob shudders through the grip released.
My poor little Czech shaman asked in the aftercare portion of the session with so much care, “you do not have to tell me, but are you in fear for your children?” The closest I could muster was, “I ran a community for a while….”
She is touching me, filling what empties as tears. Like pouring nutrients into the soil. A relief that she knows. She knows I make mistakes but I did my best. That she knows how much I love her. And then her extraction of a promise that I can come back as soon as possible. She needs to make this my new home. I am home. I am going to shift my center of gravity to this place but it will take many more visits.
Yes. Yes. Yes. I am not under any delusion that any other place holds any allure. It is fool’s gold. She is who I served and if she is calling me home, she is the only authority to which I answer. She knows my vow to do whatever I do for the sake of sentient beings. I cannot tell you the relief at hearing a clear and definitive instruction, at being handled, in the hesitant, circuitous, guess-the-instruction-hands-let-you-find-your-own way fear of spiritual malpractice world. To finally and clearly hear exactly what to do. She could have instructed me to Polka dance for 10 hours a day and if she said it with that conviction and clarity, I would not be writing this book because I would be joyously Polka dancing. (Note, that is not a request!). I am woman-handled by love and I love it. She begins to “let me down” in a gentle almost hydraulic way. With each drop comes a rush of emotion. When I say emotion, I mean the soup of all emotion undifferentiated. I could sense her pull on my umbilical cord so that I would know I am always attached to her. I cannot lose her. I must be taking birth. I see a flash of my Lama’s face. I am in a place without a self, much less another. I feel the way those once-deaf children look when they get a cochlear implant and their mother says “I love you” and they hear it for the first time — an admixture of confusion, joy, and tearful love. He is there. I do not yet have any conception of who he is, only an expression of sunlight love that activates a tickling delight in me. My mind keeps repeating to the image, “I love you I love you I love you”. Until I am birthing, giving birth and the birth process. There is a moment of bearing down, intensity manifest. She guides me to sense J and as I do, my body emits a huge laughing exhale. “Thank you for the work you’ve done to be here for me,” the woman of me says. Which is met by the well-trained neutrality of modern guides. “Say it!” she says in my head.“No. No. You don’t understand” I say, “I do not think it is you. I know it is her. I am not putting it on you. You are my dear friend," I say to this stranger. “You must let me tell you and appreciate you.” I realize these are words for not just him but for many of my guides along the way who, for fear of misconduct, cut the intimacy. And the way that burns. This that I am wants only to love. He laughs and lets down his guardian guard. “Okay, okay. You are very kind too. You have such a pure heart”. We open to each other as I had opened to her.How could he know that in the moment love incarnate released my worry for the people I love that his presence would pop in as one of the absolute charms of the experience like a friendly nurse's aid checking on me, wondering if I’d like tea. That I would be birthing into a new dimension between black radiant love into opulent white light love breathing with light rainbow and that he would know to enter as if I were in birthing contractions and then hold my hand only to hear issued from my mouth from a voice coming through me “you are my dear, dear friend. You are so very kind,” a refrain that still plays through out my journeys with him. And to have him look with The Mother’s eyes and reply, “You are very kind too. You have a beautiful heart,” until this opulent love flows through my heart, releasing from my eyes at the beauty and kindness of it all. This man knew how to be a birth doula to love. All while wearing a very normal pair of black Nike running pants and breathable white running shirt. I delighted in the lack of pomp. He invests it all in structure.Down a few more flights. A few more contractions. A recognition of time and space. Now my Lama and Kathleen, the woman who would be taking the post from the life I was leaving. A few more flights down and J is now massaging knots in my belly and clavicle. He starts to massage around my uterus. I feel a mixture of pain and relief and begin almost hyperventilating. “That my love,” her voice resonates through my consciousness, “that is your passion, we will be transforming it to compassion” to which I replace my “no fucking way, I am not an impotent spiritual person” with “thank you thank you thank you” and knowing all, we both laugh. And then simple as can be, a thunk, and I am back in the room. I ask him if I can lie on my side. He smiles, “Of course.” He sits next to me cross-legged. I curl around his legs like a cat.