it's funny....time has certainly passed and life has certainly changed...but in my new state of being, it all seems like yesterday. literally.
the Seicoya elders have a strong belief that one should strive with great effort to be the EMBODIMENT of their journeys...not the ORATOR. that to talk about your visions is to 'give them away' , losing the potential of allowing the lessons to absorb into the very DNA of the traveler. 'talk is cheap', in a thick jungle spanish dialect that resounds through me to this day. 'wait at least a year before you speak to anyone about what you were shown'.
and so...
for the past year i have not been around here much. it has been very hard for me. i have been overwhelmed. to see so much and not be able to tell a soul....ugh...i didn't realize until this experience how much i NEEDED to share my journeys as a way of letting off the excess steam i couldn't handle. even if it meant i didn't absorb as much of the wisdom, perhaps others would gain from my words and i wouldn't toy with madness the way i have for some time now. just imagine the single-most profound experience of your life. now imagine being sworn to never speak a word of it to anyone. we as humans are, as a whole, not good about keeping things for ourselves alone. we are social in nearly every facet of our existence....including our spiritual growth. we want to look to our side and connect with another as we journey into the void just to say, "are you seeing this man? this is INTENSE!!" i have been forced to learn the art of self-validation for the past year. it's been harder than anything to date.
anyways...i digress...
what happened that final night in the jungle:
for those of you who read my account of my time spent with the Seicoya, this was the last of 6 journeys i took with these profound masters. the 'grand finale' if you will. i knew from the previous expereinces it was going to be huge and...well...it dwarfed my expectations into obscurity.
Don Tintin and Don Rogelio painted my face like theirs that night. they made me a ceremonial crown. they gave me a hammock made by their most venerable elder. i had been taught so much during my time with them..cooking, singing, understanding 'pinta' and, most importantly, that my perception of the world limited me from things that were forever just beyond my self-imposed grasp. that last night of cooking changed my life forever.
in a clearing in the dense forest, i sat in the dark and watched the rythmic brightening of the cherry-end of Don Tintin's mapacho cigarette. his gravely voice rolling out nearly incomprehensible spanish/jungle Seicoya hybrid sentences of profundity. it was like sifting through a bin of rice to find little rice-grain-shaped pieces of gold. it was actually rapturous and between stoking the fire and adding more wood to it, i would sit in my hammock beside these masters and just bask in gratitude. i took part in the cooking as i had for all the ceremonies and i could attest that THIS brew was stronger than anything i had ever considered making ever. only the brightest, youngest tips of the chaliponga. same for the chacruna. large-node caapi vine with the bark removed. pieces of indigenous iboga...this brew was life-changing brew. i knew it.
SUPERNATURALas the time grew near to transfer the yage from the cooking pot into the cermonial pot, i was asked to lend my strong back to this task. on one side of the fire i stood and grabbed the enormous handle of a pot with at least 150 sloshing pounds of weight. as the pouring began, there was a bobble and a shift in balance and a choice was presented: spill this holy of holy brews OR step squarely into the center of glowing embers that had been burning for 12+ hours.
not only did i step into the fire, but i remained in that position for at least 5-6 seconds until the pot was back under control. i felt the severe damage to my foot as it took place. i closed my eyes and prayed for protection. but it was beyond me...
when the transfer was complete, the shamans helped carry me to the stream that surrounded the cooking area. i placed my charred foot into the water and pain washed over me almost to the point of making me pass out. after a minute of this, my foot was removed and a head-lamp was shone on it to assess...
if i had been anywhere near my home i would have probably gone into shock, called an ambulance, friend, whatever, and gone straight to the emergency room. my foot was completely 3rd-degree charred and the pain was almost unbearable. a stabbing sensation in my chest began simply from the pain and i thought i was having a heart-attack or would have one soon. i have never felt pain like that....
Don Rodrigo conferred with the other Shamans and without blinking, lifted up his ceremonial robe and began to urinate on my injured foot...all the while singing lowly an icaro i had not heard before. i was told by all three that, though i was physically in pain, it was more important than ever that i proceed with this ceremony. i had done something that happens only once in an age in their culture. i had been called by the yage. i had left a 'trampa' in the yage fire. a print of my foot that the yage could follow. the elders told me that the yage was going to travel through me into the others. i was the lightening rod. i was to channel it all...
i braced myself on tiny shoulders and hobbled the path to the ceremonial space. the room was set like a pyramid and i was the cap stone. the pot of yage simmered on a low fire at my (throbbing) feet. both shamans on either side of me. i knew in my soul that i would not leave this place the same person. that this sentiment was not just words. i tried to make my peace with the life i had lived up to that point but....how can you REALLY do that?..
the ceremony began...
my whole body throbbing by now, i stood on one foot and drank my first bowl. a half-hour later my second. third...fourth....fifth...
at about 21/2 hours in and more yage than i had ever consumed (strongest as well). i was gone. there was no me...there was nothing....except....
fear.
i have smoked DMT close to 2,000 times now. i have drank ayahuasca hundreds of times (lived in a santo daime community for a few months at one point). every single experience i have had
put together could not touch where i was now....and for the first time ever, i was being completely consumed by fear.
Don Rodrigo must have seen this and what happened next has me trembling as i write this STILL. he picked me up out of my hammock and put me on the floor and told me to drink another gourd. this was why my soul was here. i came to metamorphosize....for a REAL transformation. it was to happen now.
i couldn't move my body. i was a pile of gelatinous meat. i don't know how, but tiny micro movements saw me slowly crawl, like a dying lizard toward Don Tintin who sat like a pillar of cosmic conveyance singing an eternal icaro over a bowl that was filled to the top (up to this point, they were all about 1/2 full). what was left of my conscious mind was reeling with fear on a scale i never knew existed. "i can't.....but i can't refuse... i'll try to throw it up right after i drink it...i'm not going to survive this....i....".
i couldn't even lift my hand to receive the bowl. one shaman held my hand and the other my head as what felt like 10 gallons of transformation filled my stomach.
i was lifted back into my hammock and everything went black.
i have no idea how much time went by but i know it was enough to absorb everything....all i remember is being lifted out of my hammock and thrown onto the lawn outside of the space where i began the most sacred purge of my life. bear in mind, this came at the end of six days of minimal food with great purging every night and then fasting for the last three days with more purging. with this final release, i was pure. a pure vessel. i simply remember looking at my left hand down on the moist grass as i wretched. with each contraction, i saw my hand become more and more translucent. with the final twist, i was invisible. crystal clear. i was ready...
for what?
and that is when it happened. all i know is what i
felt. what actually happened was told to me long after by the shaman. i was struck by lightening. on the very crown of my head. lightening out of my eyes, my fingers, my feet. i went farther than i will ever go again in my life. i went THROUGH the blackness, the fear, the complete, perfect madness that few will know and fewer will ever find words to describe. i lost my life...the life i knew...forever and i knew it. in every journey i had ever taken up to that point, i had always left a couple atoms of myself up on the shelf to return to....now, those were lost as well. antony galvan was dead and whatever came next was something i had no choice but to make peace with....or risk going insane forever...
at one point i do remember being in an impossibly large "bird cage" that was made of the most beautiful gold. gold with rainbow. angels with golden wings and armor so detailed as to surpass language flew with me, beside me...holding my hand and leaping from golden bars into an ether of rainbow smoke that passed through us and became us. i was told that everything i had ever done in my life was for this. every fart, blink. toss of my hair, heroic deed, lamentable fuckup....all of it. my life before was now 'complete'. it was all for 'this' and everything that came after this would be new and not rooted in this past. it was done and i didn't have it as a background to paint my new life on anymore. the safety net of my past (good, bad, familiar) was lost to me forever....
one by one, i visited every person i had ever interacted with in this, and countless other lifetimes. one by one i made my peace and wept with gratitude at how they had played their part in my story and i in theirs. i suppose you could call it an "akashic catharsis"...
for 14 hours i was gone. couldn't speak. couldn't think. couldn't see myself living past that very moment. i was a butterfly that was struck by lightening and now i had to somehow HOLD that inside of me? it was too much. more than i could ever manage. for countless hours i convulsed wildly....like a grand-mal seizure but lasting at least 8 hours. like a cat doing one of those big stretch-yawns, my body was pulled continuously into these bizarre positions and then 'wrung-out'. tears literally shot out of my eyes and poured down my face the entire time.
i sincerely believe that if i hadn't been a former pro athlete, ate a perfect diet my whole life, was a deeply experienced psychedelics user, etc. i would have never physically survived that ordeal. i used to compete in ironman triathlons, man!! but this...this was the equivalent of about 6 of them back to back. to say i was 'spent' is laughable...
for the next day, i was under the guidance of the shamans...being retaught basic language and cognitive skills. i had lived a thousand lifetimes....this was just one more....how did i know that it wasn't about to end and give way to another? i didn't even know my own name. i was born anew in the deepest meaning of the words.
and my foot was completely healed!! not even the slightest trace of trauma. i cannot express how supernatural this fact is....i had a blister the size of my entire sole by the time i first reached the ceremony space and after the journey of all journeys, not even the slightest evidence that anything had ever happened...
for the following months (and even occassionally still) i was having major panic attacks every half-hour or so.
i saw no hope. i felt that i had been enlightened and that i wasn't prepared. my old life was no longer available to me and there was nothing i wanted more than to lose myself back in the familiar. i just wanted this experience to be something i could reflect back on from the comfort of the old and familiar world i hated but knew.
"this is too much. i saw too much. how can i ever come back?" i cried to don Tintin. deep tears. tears from my soul's heart. for days i cried and cried and said this very statement over and over to the shamans. every time, i was met with a profound compassion in their eyes that i knew was reserved for me and what i had gone through.
"even in our own culture", he said somberly, "few have gone as far into the spirit world as you just did. and of those that have, even fewer come back with their mind. for you to do this, you are meant to walk the healer's path, for now you have a compassion for all souls...because all souls must go through what you just went through. the journey through the blackness into the light. you carry the jaguar on a chain now. as long as you look forward and devote yourself to this path, the jaguar will remove all obstacles and give you strength. but...if you try to deny what you are and return to a life that is no longer there for you anyway, the jaguar will turn and devour you. it will never be easy for you from now on. you must forever let go in every moment and this is not easy."
these words echo in my head every moment of every day. sometimes i feel like i really fucked up and that i would give ANYTHING to undo what i did. other times i feel surrender and a peace in this surrender. i never in my life would have dreamed it would go like this....never....
as i walked around my place for the first time since returning from the jungle, i knew i had to change everything. i had the memory of my former life, but (and this is hard to explain) it was no longer
available to me. i couldn't use ANY of my past as an excuse for what would happen next. i stood and stared into nothingness....whatever was to be, had to be created from there. scary feeling....i had a jaguar on a chain now and i felt like it was growing impatient...
i retired from pro cycling. ended a relationship that wasn't working. put my life savings into one of the rooms in my place and became a sound/chakra healer. it has been rewarding and amazing to be sure and i am grateful to have found something that feels like a genuine 'calling'. but there are times....times when i just don't want to be responsible for EVERY minute of my life....when i just want to go back to those old, familiar patterns of behavior...no matter how stagnant they might be. it's hard. very hard. guess you gotta be careful what you ask for, eh?
so, there it is my beautiful brothers and sisters. if any of you find yourself in the los angeles area and would like to meet me/experience some of my work, it would be my great honor to share this with you. you can see more about it here:
www.athunderoussilence.com .
it's funny....people come to these medicines for various reasons. some simply want little insights that they can incorporate smoothly into their life. some want guidance. some want answers (good luck with that one).
and others are truly looking for transformation.
i always knew i was in that last camp....just never prepared fully for what that would really be like.
hell...how CAN you?
with the deepest love and gratitude
"Rise above the illusion of time and you will have tomorrow's
wisdom today."