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:
