Thank You

Thank You

Expressing gratitude is the most reality transforming practice I’ve discovered. For, “it is not happy people who are grateful, but grateful people who are happy.” 

I just had the second most profound meditation of my life (the first being during my third Ayahuasca ceremony in Peru earlier this year). I expressed thanks to all of you: my family, my friends, the shamans I’ve worked with, my colleagues, the people who I don’t necessarily share a strong connection with, all the people of the world who I’ve yet to meet, all the people who have come before me, and all the people who will come after me. I expressed thanks to the animals, plants and other life forms on our planet. I thanked Mother Earth, Mother Ayahuasca, our universe, the multiverse, the beings of different dimensions, and the different dimensions themselves. I thanked space, time, and existence itself. . .

Staring at the Sun: Excerpt from the Burning Man Book

Staring at the Sun: Excerpt from the Burning Man Book

This excerpt is from a Burning Man Book that Sidney Smith and I created. Below recounts our Wednesday morning from Burning Man 2013:

 

A heart glows in the sky and a colourful Robot glows next to it. We pedal towards over a thousand bouncing bodies on a desert in space. We park our bikes amongst the others, lock them up and run into the place we’ve been looking for. The music enters through our ears and slides past the drums, creeps into and envelops our minds, pours down our neck and floods our heart, caressing it in robotic sounds, symbiotic with our biology, we are cyborgs: plugged into these electronic noises to power our legs, our hips, our knees, our feet, all our extremities. The sounds blast and the bass thumps, and every once in a while, we thrust and we jump. We grind and we move, we shift and we slide, and it’s all, ALL about the groove. We fly with capes, steer with driving gloves, bob with top hats, and see with hearts in and on our eyes. Extrapolate the four of us to include the thousands more, and the variety, the creativity, the energy, the expression is a sight to behold, and with everything we do, there is no reason to withhold. . .

Meditation

Meditation

Unintentionally, I started visualizing microorganisms dividing and spreading, then evolving into grass and other plants. Then, I saw buffalo eating the grass and the slaughter of the bison I have in my freezer. I then saw the bison integrating with my body to help me grow via my digestive tract and other organs. I watched as I ate numerous bison (and other animals) throughout my life before dying and decomposing in the earth, and then my cells redistributed like microorganisms dividing and spreading before they evolved into grass, and a bison started eating them. . .

Old Coats

So misty

I could not see.

Fog that looked like old coats hanging between trees.

 

My feet stepped one after another

along the gray path I arbitrarily chose.

 

A tree would pass

with rough brown bark penetrating the mist –

a sword through flesh.

 

My stride’s lullaby began rolling like a rock

and the coats, heavy as concrete,

crashed into the ground.

Experiencing Dave's Death in Koh-Phagnan, Thailand

Experiencing Dave's Death in Koh-Phagnan, Thailand

. . . As he approached within a few feet of me, Dave’s face became illuminated with white light. He said, “hey man,” extended his hand, I grabbed it, and then I felt a gripping paralysis come over me. I felt imbued with the soul of another as though two spirits were contained within my one body. My thoughts ceased, my body remained motionless, the wind on my back was fast and cool, and I felt cold beads of sweat streaming down my spine. An all-encompassing white light engulfed my surroundings—brilliant, infinite white light—before darkness started creeping in, and I felt a touch of vertigo and the sensation of falling . . .

Disappearing Flowers

Disappearing Flowers

The girl who I had been noticing all week at the hotel had, by some divine miracle, decided to attend this bash as well. I sipped my shitty American beer, trying to possess an air of nonchalance, but her caramilky skin, wavy long brown hair, and the flowery orange dress she wore made me forget what cool was. She sat down on the off-white cushion next to mine and we started talking. I had originally thought she must have been in her mid-twenties, but was somewhat relieved (at least now I could relate) and somewhat disappointed (every heterosexual teenage guy lusts for older women) to learn that she too crawled from the womb in 1987. Her voice came to life when I told her I was turning eighteen in just over an hour. . .

The Evolution of Relationship

The Evolution of Relationship

Dark. Purple Night. I stood on an empty street corner beneath a lonely, cheerful street lamp. A bottle in my hand, a freshly fallen snowflake on my head. I looked up to see the winter precipitation spawning toward me; there were no pink roses.

Without moving my feet I began floating down the street. I felt like infinity trapped within an anecdote. I felt as though a bear in a birdcage must have felt, but with the glimmering ray of hope that the door would soon burst open. Dry cereal had taken control of my thoughts; however, the beer promptly washed that away. . .