DatingGod

My #MeToo

I began writing this last year but couldn't bring myself to post it. Watching Dr. Ford testify during the Kavanaugh hearing, listening to Kavanaugh's disgusting testimony, though, brought it all up again. I'm feeling that maybe if I add to the growing narrative of so many brave women, I can also find more peace around it all. 

I'm 100% sure that Kavanaugh is a bad man. I recognize him as a man without capacity to see women as anything other than slaves, something they use without conscience, who feel no remorse because they perceive a woman as a thing, and why would they feel badly for the object they just used, it's only a receptacle, and though when it cries it's so funny, why won't it just be quiet? 

I can't stop thinking about how the climate, the landscape of sexual abuse has shifted, what that's been bringing up for me. The part that's had me crying dozens of times is the realization that to live with it all, I lied to myself about it all. I had to tell myself a different story about what happened to me, how it was just the way things were. How some guys were assholes so best to stay out their way as much as possible. And the worst self-lie: it's kind of a good thing, it must mean I'm pretty, wanted. 

At 14, at a barbecue when I went into the house to go to the bathroom, my best friend's father held me by my arm with one hand, while ramming the other hand down my pants, shoved fingers inside me and quickly pulled his hand back up, his laughing face inches from mine, a look I can still remember. When I told my friend, she just shrugged and said, he's an old horndog.

The rape at 17 was the first time I'd had sex. It was at a vacation beach house, my brother in the next room. I pounded on the guy's chest and cried no, no, no, you're hurting me, but he didn't even pause. I cried until I fell asleep, curled in a ball as he lay there beside me, passed out. For a few weeks I was full of rage, mean to everyone. Anyone I told said some variation of "you asked for it". Later, I'd shrug and call it date rape, remembering how drunk I was, and he was an ex-boyfriend, and he tried to buy me breakfast the next morning, so it wasn't a big deal, right? 

The countless times male family members grabbed my ass, tweaked my breasts, or said something to me like girl, you sure are filling out aren't you as they stared at my breasts. The creepy feeling I'd get, so sick to my stomach I'd have to walk away.

The near rape at age 22 by the guru in the ashram. "Near" rape because by then I'd learned what predators looked like, what their faces revealed about their true intentions, the shock of energy that would run through my body right before bad things would start to happen. I'd learned by that time how to get away. I'd learned by then not to talk, just run. 

But here's the thing - you'd think this was the worst of it but it's not. What's really had me crying has been the mental and emotional abuse. How I'd come to see it all as normal, just a hard aspect of life women had to deal with.

When I was 28, the boss who hounded me, saying at least give him a peek, sit on his face, give him a taste. The contempt he openly displayed when he finally got that even though I acted like it was all hilarious, I wasn't going to have any variation of the sex act with him. My job turned into a nightmare and I had to quit.

When I was 26, a manager at the restaurant I tended bar at came up behind me and picked me up, pinning my arms, grinding himself against me. I fought so hard he dropped me and I fell into a metal shelving rack. I lay on the floor, unable to breathe. My ribs were so bruised I couldn't work for a week. When I called corporate to ask about worker's comp they threatened me with legal action for trying to extort them, ruin a good man's reputation. 

When I was 32, the department director who said you may wear baggy clothes but we all know what a hot body you have. It was my first month on the job so I did my best to avoid him. The male deputy director I told shrugged and said "after a certain age for a woman it's not sexual harassment, it's a compliment". 

The 60-something year old well-loved theater professor who kept asking me to have drinks with him at his house, have dinner at his house, come to his house so we could talk about the play he was casting, see if there’s a role for me. I didn't go to his house, and I didn't get the role. He didn't like me very much when he finally got no would be the only answer I'd give him, and he wasn't afraid to show it. The other students began to roll their eyes, say sneering things to me like how's that casting couch working for you? I transferred to another college for the next school year.

By my early 20s, when it wasn't around someone who held power over me, my response began to morph into rage. When a family member grabbed me, I punched them, hard, in the chest, said leave me alone you asshole, then hit him again. I never walked the streets of NYC without headphones on to drown out the catcalls, unless late at night, when I carried mace, my keys interlaced between my fingers, pointed outward like spiked brass knuckles. Once I whirled around and faced a guy who seemed to be creeping up on me. With fury and balled fists I screamed what the fuck is your problem? He looked terrified and walked the other way.

Spending my 30s meditating helped with the rage, which had bled into all areas of my life and was causing real problems. But my core teachers taught a kind of passivity, a surrender of any kind of wanting. It worked magic, clearing out tons of psychic trash. But it once again rendered me helpless in the face of predatory men. I'd weeded out the physically abusive, but the emotional and mental abuse continued.

I'd let these men into my life and the abuse would destroy me because I'd refuse to let myself walk away, telling myself over and over that I just needed to be strong inside myself, be gentler, more loving to the boyfriend. Just like my spiritual teacher taught us. How even though her husband broke her arm and blackened her eye they loved one another and it was truly helping her evolve, really, and it would for me, too.

At 40, something shifted. I lost faith that men could be good. That they could be kind. After that, no dating, no sex, no boyfriends, nothing. No online dating or going to parties or clubs or bars or allowing someone to set me up. It helped that I weighed over 190 pounds, became reclusive. When I had shamanic healing work done to help lose the weight I was told: it won't go, it's protective.

But here's the next thing: hearing so many women's stories the past year, and now Dr. Ford's, has triggered another wave of remembering. This time it's about the good guys. The Helpers. The ones who cared for me, listened to me, held me gently while I cried, an undefined terror ripping through me. The guys I didn't know who saw me drunk at a party and got me safely home. The ones who saw a predator at a party working me, intervening so sharply that the guys slunk away. 

Some of these men are still friends of mine. Tommy spent hundreds of hours listening to me, comforting me, trying to help. Michael showed me how gentle, loving, non-aggressive a man could be, a revelation. So many more.

Most I don't even remember names or even faces of. But I remember the feeling of safety, of being protected against the sexual predators in our tribe. If you're one of these guys, thank you. I know you're out there right now showing love and support as the women (and men) around you tell their horrible stories, and you feel your own rage, wishing you'd been there to help. 

Okay. That's all I've got for now. It's 11 am and I don't feel the need to daydrink or cry. In fact, even though I've just exited a shit-ton of psychic trash, I don't feel bad at all. I actually feel good. Powerful.

Because fuck the predators.

They don't define my life, how I feel, how I live. As they're hunted down and forced to own up to what they've done, I'll cheer and raise a fist. And also say a prayer of gratitude - thank you Life, thank you for so many brave women and men stepping forward and telling the truth. 

Because the truth? The truth sets us all free. . . 

Active Surrender

We leave the mountains in a few days, moving back to the Raleigh area, a rental home with a huge fenced yard, time to be back amongst other humans.

No sadness or fear this go around. So surrendered, so ready, so willing. Relaxed and easy flow.

This body is mostly healed. Still deeper to go and that's okay. Because the surrender thing works well across the board.

The remote commuting job, so fun, easy, enjoyable, creative, super lucrative, will help us transition to whatever shows up next as fun and cashy means of support. And it's healing work, on a grand public health scale, which always stimulates passion and drive.

Five days before my house closed in Durham a year ago, this log cabin surrounded by a million trees showed up and was mine for some cash and a 4 hour drive to sign the lease. Now three App State students will show up to help me clean, move, and have a few laughs as we transport our Stuff to another square to live in and on. 

The key to all of this is not to care so much about what other people think or feel. As an empath this has been an ongoing challenge. Trust in the process of Life has been essential. Staying focused on folks that are fun and openhearted has made it enjoyable.

Knowing that no matter where we are, gaia is also - rural, urban, suburban, she's always bringing greenery and furry and feathery love. And that the next landing pad is more of a trampoline that will bounce us to the next place.  

Tennessee holler I will miss you. Your resilience and beauty in the face of the awfulness of man has shown me who my real tribe is. I love you. I love you. And I know you love me and I'm so grateful. 

Shamanic Interactive Theater

Some of you have been reading these since the blog started back in 2003. Some of you I know irl, but most I've only met digitally. This blog showed me how we can transcend space and time, share our beautiful twisty radiant interiors together - proof that there's no such thing as separation.  

Some of you know that I've experienced another big transition with lots of the usual transformation. This one came with a 40-lb. weight loss, a move to a cabin in the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains of NC, with me and the fuzzy guys deep in shamanic hijinks. 

It also comes with the fruition of a project I've been working on since 2012 - Shamanic Interactive Theater, offered in the live streaming webcast space. And as always, I invite you all first. Because you've seen the progression over time - you're the original Integral Shamanics tribe.

It's hosted at Patreon, which is set up like a digital version of the Medicis, the Italian patrons who essentially funded the Renaissance. Patrons agree to offer monthly pledges and the artist offers them rewards. It's sort of like blogging, but with deeper ways to connect, interact.

How this has freed me is that high quality, professional shamanic journeying weekly webcasts for creativity, vision, and respite can be offered. I can write for a tribe that is as hungry for edge consciousness ebooks as I am - sending out monthly content about the shamanic process, ranging through non-fiction shamanic tool materials, shamanic magical fiction, psychonaut travelogues, and collected tribe journeying experiences. 

I've explored and practiced with a wide array of access points into the interior. Experiential tribe is the way to travel. After many years of nomadic solo travels, I'm pouring all my energy and resources into digital shamanic tribe, so we can explore the liminal places in tribe with other open-hearted travelers. 

Come journey, drift, read, dream, create, dance, sing, snooze with us. No previous shamanic experience needed. 

I so hope to see you there . . . may this find you delightfully inside your own shamanic groove, loving life and so glad for the beauty and brilliance of being alive . . . 

Much love as always,  xoxo Kaye Soleil

 

The Greenery Is Holding Us

So yes, the magic did arrive. And it came with funding and transformation and a f*ckton of feng shui-ing and perfection my mind could barely wrap its awareness around.

We're in the Appalachian Mountains now, about a half hour drive from Boone, NC which is like stepping back into my hippie days circa 1987. It feels so dang good to be around friendly people and bright blue skies and light so pure it hurts my eyes a little.

We're snuggled safe in a holler, on the southern side of a mountain, tons of light streaming in through the dozens of huge windows. It's peaceful and quiet, billions of birds, afternoon rain, cool night breezes, 70 acres of hiking trails right behind the house.

Woodrow is a happy puppy. We walk several times a day, up in the forest, down country lanes. Creeks and springs are everywhere and he gets a daily mud roll followed by a refreshing cool off in the clear mountain stream.

And the plants. Oh sweet Pan dancing on a flower - the plants! I felt them calling to me. The trees holding us. Surrounded by wildflowers and evergreens and blackberries and lush grasses and all sorts of viney whatnot we'll get to know soon.

I keep looking around and thinking: how the heck did we get here? One day I felt: this party is over, time to go. And within three months the house had been prepped and sold, we'd found this miraculous place that is every single thing I'd envisioned, and had driven high up into the mountains, Durham just a memory now. 

I got everything I asked for. All of it. And now it's time to go back to creating and building and pattern recognition and following the rhythms of my bodies as they dance with gaia and beyond. Time for shamanic hijinks.

I'm ready. I faced everything the vine showed me was making me sick. That I was living in a cage in that house, in that lifestyle, with those sorts of jobs and interactions. How I was 189 lbs. and needed to get down below 154.

I hit 154 three days ago. I've lost 35 pounds in the past two years. I'm finally off the one pharmaceutical, the anti-inflammatory that kept me in motion the past three years. I'm rebuilding my health with clean food, water, air, motion, and company.

I totally understand that none of it matters. That's the hilarious thing, the joke. We really can have whatever story we want. Sure, there's the life path. Some sort of carved out set of energetic levels and neural organization and nature-nurture collectables that are a being's trajectory and a total f*cking mystery.

Maybe you can change it if you really want, but once you clue in to what's really going on, it's so fantastic and perfect, why would you want to?

There's a perfection going on every single moment, and the trick is to adjust the eyes a bit so that it can be seen. It'll work either way - perfection is simply that of course. But Chauncey and I like to watch, and then I like to to tell you about it.

Okay. Off to do stuff. Who knows what or how. The key is to follow the flow. And make some gluten-free toast.

And a bonus - my new office:

 

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Velvety Port O Call

I can't f*ckin believe I have to go back to work tomorrow in that gdam velvety cage. Private office with picture window. Swanky office tower within global medical mecca. 64K, plus eight weeks PTO, bangin health insurance, and a retirement fund that ensures that the velvety life will likely last long into the twilight before the grave.

For a public health worker like me, it's a frakkin boon. But it sux.

Let me put it another way: death by acronym, PA to a PI, work that appears super helpful on the outside but is bs and arrogance on the inside, those sort of folks who smile like a celebrity but the glare in their eye sez go away freaky person, a bureaucracy the likes of which I've never tried to survive before (and I worked for an urban school district so I know of what I speak).

Is any of this really true? Probably not. It's just my inner wild thing is APPALLED that we are where we are. The hippie chick is having an existential meltdown (again). The 10-year public health professional is so bored that the mind dulls to wet confetti. There are no fellow freaky people anywhere and my inner weirdo, my true default, misses my freaky people. 

And all of hate us being in a closed box all day, breathing recycled, dry air, sitting, sitting, sitting (the standup desk they gave me is broken and no one will fix it and i tried really really hard but couldn't fix it myself so now it's just an annoying sit down desk that is ergonomically janked). 

I could take a xanax, or any one of the half dozen such moody assistants that I've collected over the past decade from stints with western medicine. But that sort of stuff is only fun the first couple of times you take it. Then it just makes you tired, and what's the point in that?

I've discovered that I'm no longer really a shamanic practitioner. Only to the small handful of folks I feel to keep working with. Most I've faded away from, removing the auto booking from the website. Because I've moved beyond it somehow. Not in an arrogant I'm Too Good For This sort of way. More just witnessing that the gig is morphing into something else, something whose funding buoyancy is only now just coming into focus.

So the twenty year old me would have just walked out the door, taking a few souvenirs with me. The thirty year old would have stirred up all sorts of nonsense and drama. The forty year old me would have just taken it. But I'm 50, and so I go in every day as they ask me to, breathe in breathe out, yoga stretch at least a few times, try and be pleasant, even when someone is shrieking and shaking their finger in my face, and then come home to greenery and grainery and vinery and silky carnivores and a 60-lb. pitbull spoon-master named Woodrow.

And keep saying my prayers: thank you Life, for bringing me what I don't, yet again, understand, but know that you do, and that soon enough another majestic wave will come and carry us to the next port. Magic is here, I can feel it, and it's hilarious and as awe inspiring and perfect as ever. Thanks for the ride. Thanks for the love. Thanks for the cash. Thanks for the velvet.  

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Holiday Lies

I lie more during the holidays than I do at any other time of the year. I can't help it. It's the only way I've found to survive it with my sanity intact.

But it isn't because holidays themselves hold any meaning or celebration for me - I'm not a Christian, not a big consumer of anything (other than dog treats, permaculture toys, and Vegan Flava), and not currently part of a tribe that wants to get nekkid and dance in the frosty moonlight while candy-colored visions dance through our heads.

The sticky wicket is that everyone around me flips out. So really, the following is just geared to not further inciting the few humans I come into contact with.

The first lie I usually tell is about where I'll be spending it. I try and keep it vague for the handful of people who'll be asking.

"I'll be with my family," I say.

They don't know that my family is three cats and a dog and our land. If they ask specific questions about my family, Plan B is to mention my sister and mother on the coast. There is never a need for a plan C.

That's usually enough because I literally have no more humans in a personal sphere around me (other than my sister, but that's better explained in another post, seriously) and so it's all just people who only sorta know me, so mostly they are just being polite.

The second lie is about what I'll be doing. You'd think it would be pretty straightforward. But it's really not. Because I don't know what I'll be doing. So I say:

"Spending time with family, you know," and then smile and shrug.

They usually just sort of nod and then say what they'll be doing, something with their husband or wife or kids and/or extended family. I don't really know what any of those mean - it always sounds like something that would make me want to take Xanax for or perhaps run away to a life of crime - so I also just sort of nod and smile. And usually that's the end of the interaction.

But really, I don't know. And the truth of it is so subversive. So delightful and delicious and wonderful. So perfect that I don't dare tell anyone.

 

I can do anything I want.

 

I can do anything anytime for any reason. I can day drink and lay in the garden and watch the clouds. Because what I want these days is super low key and internal.

Sleep for three days and record it all in my shamanic reality journal? Dance with greenery and Disaronno? Curl up with all the NetflixPirateHuluAmazonprime you'll need but you'll feel good about being alive instead of wanting to wander into the woods and lay down and not get up, called in this instance: https://www.conscious2.com/transforming-shadows/?

 

Maybe a wild hair like last year where I go to downtown Durham with Woodrow and hit bars where they let in dogs, and do shots of whiskey and laugh as young hotties pet my dog? Plan the next phase of the whole "income" thing because in the next week or so I'm gonna quit Towerville and give them the finger or maybe film it while I sing "I Ain't Your Mama"? 

Today anyway, I happily spoon snuggled with my pack til way after dawn, wrote in my shamanic logbook (snowy owl visits!), did a little yoga, wrote a bunch of writing-as-laxative, hassled the kitties, did the dishes, went for a long walk, and am getting ready to make some vegan chili mac for me and the dog, though it will give him truly stunning farts. Probably an aromatherapy bath. Probably some sort of hijinks in the living room aka room with no furniture where I do hijinks that require space. Definitely more poetry written on the walls in rainbow sharpies.

Because I am a fifty-year old zoftig single chick who knows what she wants: to spend the holidays with her three cats, her dog, and her land. And life is so very very good . . .

So that's my December 25th. How was yours?

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The Magical Life

All my life, seeming chaos whips through my world, upending relationships, work, financial flow, living situations. And each time, something in me trusts the process. Even as existential terror rips through heart and mind - how will I live? who will love me? how will i survive? - something in me knows that magic is moving behind the scenes. And that a wild and beautiful new life setup is coming.

As I get older and more intensely independent, when these wild winds kick in every couple/few years, the terror gets sharper, more acute, even as the old chronic fears flare up, too. And yet so does the knowing that magic is rising, coming through in waves, soon to be big enough, strong enough for me to feel them, see them.

This last go around has been no different. And now that I've landed on shore again, I look around and laugh. Who plans these scenarios? Who dreamt up this miraculous happening?

I still have my home. The garden is full of wonders. Kitties and Puppy are all happy, healthy. I'm healthy again, running around and full of energy. And the latest job? In clinical behavioral research with one of the top medical schools in the world. Benefits package like riding on a lush magic carpet, cushioning all the bumps and sharp angles that life brings. Eight weeks of paid time off a year. A five minute commute. A team that is really warm and friendly. A workload that will be happily manageable.

I look at myself in the mirror this morning and ask: how did I get here? And the answers flow. I keep showing up. I keep trusting that The Stuff of Duality will happen. Remembering that my real job in life, the one that never changes, is to keep moving toward having a dang good time. To acknowledge and indulge in deliciousness wherever it shows it many-petaled face.

When the hurricane hits, sometimes all the preparations in the world can't save you. Sometimes you know ahead of time that the hurricane is coming, but something in you says: stay, don't run. And so you stay, and watch even some of the things that were nailed down splinter into a million pieces.

And the wind roars. And the water floods. Electricity goes out. You gather together your fuzzy loved ones and snuggle together under the blankets. Toasty. Sharing snacks.

Maybe the bed is a life raft. Maybe a pyre. You're here. You knew not to run. You knew to stay and stand your ground. You're afraid. But not really.

You know that this thing called My Life is something akin to a amusement park ride. You pays the money, you takes the ride. You surrender and as you reach the top of the ferris wheel you see how gorgeous the view is, you fill with wonder, delight making you laugh out loud and squeeze a fuzzy brother and he squeaks.

And when the winds die down, and the sun comes out, brilliant, bright, sparkling on your skin, and the waters recede, you see that your life has been cleaned of everything you don't need for the next leg of the journey. And if you need to mourn, you do that, and then you go for a walk in the sun, and look at the destruction, the rubble. You feel a little shaky, and realize it's because yet again, you are a newborn.

And in a week, you see those green shoots of new life that always come in the wake of a big clearing. And all sorts of stuff starts to bloom. Your legs get stronger, the landscape  becomes more familiar, and the exploration phase of the new life begins.

Who knows what's next for you? It's going to be gorgeous. Can you feel it?

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Energy Dance

I just did a reading for someone. Via skype. First time in many many many months I've read like that for someone.

There's another few long-time clients who have me do readings ever so often for them, but it's mostly listening. This one was a full-out, all hands on deck reading complete with energy clearing and moving - a real healing - one of the brightest in all my years of doing readings. 

An enormous part of it was the person I read for. She and her new man. Both of them high energy, thoughtful, accomplished, compassionate. They didn't come with inflated ideas of witchery psychic whatnot. They just let the energy flow.

When she reached out and asked, it took me two days to respond. Because I don't do readings any more. I was told during that first vine session back in 2012 not to charge for sessions, and then was told in another to stop doing client sessions altogether.

So I went and got a public health govt job, and now I work for a start up on a mental health app. And though they have both been good jobs that I've learned a lot from, they never even approached the edge of the beauty and expansive Yes I experienced this morning.

It's what I was built to do. This complex moving of energy. This assisting others in their healing process. Sure, I do it in my current job, but not like this. Not even close.

And the folks that I still do readings-lite for never feels very good. I'm not charging anything, so there isn't an energy return, just giving. Most requests I simply don't respond to. But the ones I feel to, I tell them about the vine's directive, and they say okay, but can we still do a session?

I keep thinking that these folks will realize that the lack of true exchange cheats them out of any real healing. That they'll send a gift or something. But they can't see what's happening. Just ask for more when they want a fill up.

So my real job has been to slowly back away, to remove myself from these folks, one at a time. A process that's been going on for about eight years now. And so a lot of people are pissed off at me. Ex clients, ex friends, ex family, ex bosses, ex boyfriends, ex neighbors. Which as an empath kind of sux.

But that's the point isn't it? To move away from the sux, and toward the radiant.

How long would you keep going to work if they stopped paying you? Or stay in a relationship so one-sided? Wouldn't the real issue be that you keep showing up to that sort of work, that sort of relationship? It better be dang good of the rarefied kind for that to energetically work out. 

And so I get up at 6 am every morning and go to a job where they like my work, but they find me weird and actually don't like me very much so my days are surely numbered. But I get paid pretty well so will stay until it's time to move on. So yeah, what most of the working world deals with.

And then I have a session like this morning. And remember the sort of real healing work I can create and be a part of. Radical truth telling, received. The dance I love so much.

When she first reached out, she asked about pre-paying (as I took down all the payment stuff from the website which is still up which is very telling). I said that if she found the reading helpful she could paypal whatever she felt to afterward.

I'm curious how the energy exchange will pan out as these are folks highly attuned. Whatever they choose to do will be very telling for me. Light up a small path forward for me perhaps with healing work. 

Because hearing Mother Ayahuasca tell me to stop charging or seeing clients was a blow, but I'd been struggling since the beginning around making a living from the work. I've come to see that in general, being in business for yourself means that one common aspect is that people will try to cheat you out of cash, or at least get the price down as low as they can. It's a cultural disease focused on hoarding resources.

But the rage that's been leveled my way, the lies and weirdness, the hammering belief that healing work, spiritual work, should be for free, given from a pure and loving heart with no expectation of remuneration of any sort, and my inability to untangle the knot of it, meant that I could never make a living from it. I made three heroic attempts. But there is healing work. And then there is the business of it.

My new personal practice is to look for places I can give freely. Where I genuinely expect nothing in return. It's educating me around what this feels like, what the boundaries are, how people receive. So that I can better know what to ask for and when, because most people just want to take. They don't know any better. They believe they're drowning, but the water is only 6 inches deep.

So now I'm coming down from the energy dance of the session. Coming back to my life, and the work that I do.

What work do I really want to do? What work can I do that I can make a living from?

Vortex of Now

The energy behind them boils up from cauldron of heart, fills my mind, explodes out of finger tips into garden, kitty fur, dinner. They thrum and vibrate out into the chill dawn riding inside om and shamanic yaup.

So many words. Encapsulated images. The alive and on the move stories created out of the raw data of experience. 

They used to only fall here, in this online record of a living. Or in epic emails winging back and forth between me and the latest soulmate. Or in conversations with people passing through.

Now they dance all through my living. And I surf the tide, ecstatic, wrought, brilliance of problem solved, surrender to action, release into release from action.

I know that we are all so blessed. Even with the spells and curses laid upon us.

See through. Look through the veil. There is life on the other side. Even as there is no here or there. Only Life. Only Now.

Your moment. My moment. You read this even as I write it minutes, hours, days in between. Still only Now.

The praises rise up. The blessings come down.

In this moment your inner space is open wide, a conduit of blessings flowing mad and wild and ecstatic into your heart, mind, life. Filling you so completely that magic overflows your eyes, so that everything and everyone you gaze upon feels the rain of blessings too.

 

The Little Doctors and the Rainbow Serpent

The seven ayahuasca launches I took were devastating. They changed everything. Who I knew I was. What this place is. How to survive. The final remnants of the happy happy joy joy holistic shaman were flushed. The explosions and implosions continue. But there's also this new hilarious through-line.

My new job? I'm in content development for a tech start up. Designing and writing for a mobile health app focused on depression and anxiety. Working from home a few days a week. Genuinely liking the folks I work with.

Woodrow is hilarious. He's my bff and I take him everywhere I can. On New Year's Eve he and I went into downtown Durham and barhopped. He's an awesome wingman.

The kitties are as snugly and weaselly as ever. I woke up this morning at 3 am and spent the next couple of hours hanging out with them, pure joy with fur.

The permaculture garden is beginning to reveal its secrets. The past few years of hard work that seemed to simply fall apart now shows itself as a super unique map of exactly what the micro-climates are, the flow of water, how to satiate the hungry beings who congregate here.

I'm learning so much. It all makes me so happy, so full of gratitude. Even as 110 condos are put into the 17 acres of woods across the street. All is well. Perfect. There are no weeds. Or pests. Only life. What a ride . . .

The Outsider

Ausadi: Dancing In Apogee

Eleven days ago, I returned from a week-long trip to Spain. Ibiza, an island off the coast, shot through with a barely hidden magic. The architecture, sweeping swirls of adobe. The plants, outrageously thorned, twisty, and still blooming, tough survivors of hot, dry summers that turn freezing over wet winters. 

But I didn't go for the greenery. At least not that kind of greenery. I went for the DMT. The liquid DMT. Orally available, totally pure ayahuasca/pharmahuasca called Akasha, created by two alchemists that call their non-traditional, culturally emancipated adventures Ausadi.

(One of the alchemists, that I'd come to refer to as the Thai Mage, had found me back in 2013. Cruising the net during one of his syntax searches for Jed McKenna. Following the hits down one by one, reading, seeing if the syntax matched content. He really thought he'd found Jed, thought Jed was a woman. It took him a handful of emails exchanges with me to realize I wasn't him. Because would Jed admit he was Jed? Of course she wouldn't. Because there is no Jed. )

So May 8-16 was the inaugural Ausadi offering. Seven participants from around the world gathered at a surreal villa on the northwest coast of the island.

I was the only American amongst folks from Thailand, Australia, Great Britain, Bahrain, Lithuania, Croatia, Ibiza. The only female participant. Three people led the group- the two alchemists who also doubled as healers,  teachers, plus a radiant woman who did a lot of things - yoga, energy work - but mostly radiated her tantric brand of "isn't this AMAZING?" no matter what was occurring. An Argentinian chef prepared the cleanest, most delicious, healing food I've ever had the delight to partake of.

I arrived really ill, had a very difficult week. I'm not a traveler. Don't enjoy being away from my home, the land, my fuzzy tribe. But mostly it was the accumulation of the past decade of imbalance, vibrated to critical from the past two and a half years in a cubicle in an anteroom of a hell of our own making. No need to catalogue everything. Suffice it to say that digestive, endocrine and nervous systems were shot.   

I did four doses of DMT over five days. With the first two doses, my body did a time lapse series of explosions, a morass exodus of negative emotion, thought and toxic sludge. (This was no dis to the Akasha. The DMT elixir is pure - none of that horrific end to end roto-rooter that is the traditional ayahuasca experience.) 

Then a one-day break to give my body-mind-heart a rest. Then the third dose, which brought on twenty four hours of what can only be described as the sweetest, most gentle lifting up/into/through to the space known as enlightenment. It encompassed a tour of some basic high level energy moving skills, a conversation with what we generally call God, a tutorial of dozens of different aspects of how God Awareness moves in the world and how this being over here can flow with it. (I'm laughing as I write this. How small the words. How enormous the concepts. How all-encompassing the experience. How pitiful the attempt to share the unsharable.)

Then the fourth dose of Akasha, the last for the week, that appeared as a sort of tour of the first three doses, but also a kind of shaking loose of more toxicity that had the last couple of days show up as shaky, precarious, difficult to navigate. 

I don't imagine that I was much fun to be around. And probably won't be for a while. I'm back in Durham, NC. With my fuzzy loves. And all I'm doing is permaculture gardening. Which in itself is amazing. There is still a lot of imbalance going on, toxicity flowing and likely will for a while. But since Ausadi, my body now has the strength and vibrancy to do four or five hours of strenuous plant and soil work each day, (which hasn't been even close to possible in over a decade). The body is 10 pounds lighter, and getting strong again, muscles building, spine strengthening. Cracks in the mind where the Awareness shines through are still on the move. A baseline stability of mind and heart that often flows right into joy, awe, heart achingly beautiful gratefulness.

Maybe once the farm is at flow level - all the seedlings  in the ground, all the new beds designed and in place - maybe I'll begin writing again.

I want to write about DMT. About the experiences of it. Which is impossible of course. But writing about it was also the thread that kept asserting itself all during the Ausadi week, how impossible it is, and also how I must. How it's fine if I don't. Okay to remain consumed with the fear, but such happiness chorusing through the rainbow serpent when an ape breaks through to the angel with the help of a keyboard (or any other method of creation in this world as artist, artisan or conscious movement of energy in any capacity which covers pretty much everything, so yeah, divine expressions of love via the brushing of teeth, a walk to the mailbox, watching the rain sans resistance to the droplets, etc. etc. etc.).

It feels like the past three years has been about jettisoning everything that stands in the way of nutting up to launch and write. To finally face annihilation, death. To put down the sword and let the flow of nature take me. And to write about it as best I can until I can write no more.

But who knows? It's all just story. Just the monkey trying to make sense of things the monkey mind can't fully comprehend. The monkey desire to tell the story of its own death as it makes way for the angel being born out of the top of its head. It whimpers in fear, pain, but shifts its body, surrenders its mind, opens its heart, breathes deep, exhales and is jettisoned into the night sky, eyes bright and wide with awe, wonder at what this place really is, of who and what it really is. 

All I know for sure is that Now is about permaculture flow. Of water, borage, vermiculture casting, teeming microbial soil. Of ladybug, nematode, canid, perennial, feline. Of cucurbit, human, tomato, wood chips, bamboo, purposefully placed chunks of downed trees.

I'm all in. The 5K insurance settlement funded the trip to Ibiza. Savings, retirement, health insurance, credit - all cashed in to buy the monkey 10 months of freedom.

I've known for several years that this life was forfeit. How in essence this being is conscious, walking dead. The knowledge of it has been carried with resistance, pain, anger, grief. But now? There is enough of a crack in the monkey mind to experience the stream of light, awareness that pushes it forward onto a different path. 

I wake up in the morning covered in snoring kitties, being spooned by a 60-pound pitbull. I lay for a while and just take it all in. The swamp-paste of Woodrow's canine morning smooches. The silky down of Malcolm's belly fur. The birds trilling wake-up in the forest surrounding the land. The easy stretch of a sore yet supple body. Then it's arise, feed everyone, splash some icy water on my face. Sneakers on, grab a quart of iced coffee and crusty work gloves, tie on a bandana and head out to inspect what's gone on overnight with the growing plants and the tribe of nature, discover how I can assist in that day's dance toward apogee.  

A ~7 minute video taken at Can Verru. A bit of the essence of the villa, some of the folks that were there:

  

 

From Pollution to Yield

My house was broken into a few weeks ago. They kicked in the door, stole the jewelry box, and hightailed it out in approximately 2 minutes, or so says the local cops who came to investigate when I called it in. They called it a grab and smash - only easily pawnable jewelry - not computers, tvs or other such traceable, serial numbered stuff.

It took a few days to see the beauty in it all. The retired, constantly home neighbors who texted me that a strange car was in my driveway while I was a work, then that my door was left open. Another neighbor who called a carpenter friend who sent his crew over in less than an hour to nail the door casing back into place so that I wasn't in a house with a front door that wouldn't close. The young hottie beautiful neighbor who called me over that night to hang out and drink and smoke greenery and compare stories past of stolen stuff. A super friendly agent and super efficient insurance company that paid the claim in less than 24 hours of filing. But mostly it was about the deeper permaculture of it all. 

One of the aspects of permaculture that I love the most is how it uses everything. There is no such thing as waste. Or rather, if you have waste, you're not doing it right. 

Permaculture looks for loops, circles, spirals instead of lines. If something is being carted off your land, out of your life, this is a line, and it's because the stuff is viewed as pollution that needs to be removed. Sure, one person's trash is another's treasure, and there is absolutely value in this (I have a friend who's a freegan who is going to teach me the fine art of dumpster diving and show me this principal in motion, which is awesome). But at the microcosm level, it is likely a signal that a loop needs to be closed. 

For example, in my backyard, which is set on a slope, rainwater rushes from the highpoint on the northeast, erodes the soil in a direct path all the way down to the southwest, where overflow then floods my neighbor's yard. Also, my annual beds, planted in the southmost area of the yard - the only area that gets ample sunlight - needed to be watered from the municipal water supply fed hose last year, and because I didn't have the time and energy to put in a drip line, was watered from the top which contributed to the powdery mildew that took over the melons and squash.

So to get water from where it is "pollution" to where it is "yield" I researched and then created a diversionary swale with a ~1 foot berm. It cuts diagonally across the land, using gravity to push it along, until it hits small breaks in the swale with smaller berms directing it into several points along the length of the annual beds, with the far end opening into the woods at the edge of my land so that any big excesses don't flood the annual beds but go into the forest which will happily lap it up. 

This is the raw, newly created diversionary swale and berm:

With two days of solid rain coming, it'll soon be easy to see how much water is moving and where so the swales and berms can be tweaked if necessary. Then the berm can be filled with and the swale covered in wood chips to help with the safety of a trench running through the middle of the yard, as well as keeping the water channel open and moving.

So, see? From pollution to yield. 

The thing with jewelry is that most everyone sees it as "yield". But in fact, my jewelry had identified itself as "pollution" just a few months ago. All of it except for one necklace and one pair of earrings, both of which I had on when the burglary occurred, so are now the only pieces of jewelry that I have. 

So, yeah, the jewelry was taken, along with the big wooden music box it was all stored in. And also, Calhoon and Cassidy's ashes, which were likely taken because they were in a silk jewelry pouch next to the jewelry box, although maybe the last earthly remains of Grandma Booty and The Hoon were snorted that night alongside some shots of Thunderbird, a sort of new age feline cocaine to add weaselly love to the party.

Also gone were the diamond earrings and ring, heirlooms from my great grandmother from when my ancestors had homes and servants and an island. Plus earrings, rings and bracelets from girlfriends and boyfriends and clients long gone past. Crystal pendant and stone stuff I'd bought myself over the years. Random bits of saved metal and crystal. All of it: pollution.

Even the ashes were pollution, because half of them had been sprinkled across the garden beds last year, and the half that remained only served as a focal point for the occasional lament of loved ones gone. And who needs that when the truth is that all stuff - animal, vegetable, mineral, mental, emotional or spiritual - is on its way to somewhere else and we are dang lucky if some love stuff stops and hangs with us for a while? 

One of my favorite things to do is smoke greenery, drink homegrown wine coolers (wine, fresh fruit, club soda run through the vitamix, then topped with lime squeezings) and walk around my house and land until some sort of art/permaculture/hijinks occurs. Sometimes I dance in the mostly empty living room, sometimes naked running through the rain in the backyard. Other times I move furniture in a feng shui frenzy. About six months ago, I put dozens of holes in my bathroom walls, inserted decorative nails and hooks, then emptied my jewelry box out onto them. 

I thought it would be beautiful, all sorts of sparkly things surrounding me whenever I took another aromatherapy bath or brushed my teeth or peed with the ever present kitty sitting on my lap. But instead, it was just a bunch of memories of folks come and gone, because I never wore any of it anymore, not in years. So a couple months ago, I took it all down, replaced it with some odd twisty branches, some colored headbands, and a fox skull found while out in the forest.

For a few weeks, I made myself wear some of the rings, put on a necklace for a few hours. But it all felt uncomfortable, as if it imprisoned me in some visceral way. And so I shut the jewelry box lid and only kept out the one jade pendent and green glass earrings that I always wore on the few times a week I felt like wearing something.

And a couple of months later the door was kicked in, the stuff was made off with, the cops came, a report was filed, an insurance claim was submitted, and the pollution transformed itself into yield with the arrival of a large claim settlement check, enough to live on for two months. Considering the fact that I just quit my job, to me this was proof that the beauty of pollution to yield was Life saying: hey, girl, I still got your back. 

Permaculture is transforming my land, and along with it, my living. Who knows what will bloom this season?