A Process Over Time

sunset before third sacred medicine ceremony

into the darkness to encounter my light

"the parrot" yagé, liquid tobacco and rapé snuff, 

a bucket of special purge tea and a central fire 

sometimes lit, mostly not, always trance dancing its heat and light

the sweep of condor feather cleansings and mapacho smoke

icaros and fireflies, a dazzle of moon swept 
by fast-moving clouds and waves of energy

numinous visions and whispered lessons, 
outpourings of emotion and aqua de florida

a soul, once stretched, never returning to original dimensions

another eternity found in a single night

Guillaume Seignac (French 1870–1924) - "The Jewel Case"

Chiaroscuro Tenebrism and Yagé

There once was a problem that couldn't be solved. It left a mark a half a century wide through my psyche. It remained a renewing welt from a branding most intense, painful, simmering, relentless - and yet, over time, thoroughly stuffed. In effect, it was being bothered that the sky was blue. Now what could be done about that?

"Nothing!" said San Pedro. And yet San Pedro started a process to open that issue anyway. Why, if nothing could be done? It was never my intention to start down this path. It was nothing I would have asked the medicines to address. So why was the medicine taking me there so dramatically? In a frantic attempt to summarily deal with it, I took large doses of San Pedro and Ayahuasca together and that's when the hell ride into Pandora's Box began. But why, if nothing could be done? The medicine had made it clear - there was no solution for that. But was there an answer. No solution but an answer? How could that be? It seemed only Mother Ayahuasca knew.

I journeyed with Mother and Kambo twice in two days through the dark night of the soul to find her answer, to come to grips with there being no solution. She hinted she had the answer for the problem without a solution. I saw no way that was possible. Yet I went into ceremony anyway. I knew, only in medicine space would I ever be taken somewhere that entertained the possibility of a probability that such an idea might ring true. Then make it true.

Whatever the answer turned out to be, it would never be what one expected. I expected not to be able to predict the ride with Mother. I found myself correct in being clueless. And yet the entheogenic brew was inside me. I was on the ride of the soul and there was no going back. Fine with me. I didn't want to go back, not to that pain, that torment, no matter how much I worried or dreaded the unknown rushing at me. It was far better to die in medicine space trying for something to heal and transform than ever go back. I needed relief. I needed the rules of the universe reset around me.

The eternal night deepened and I fell into it, into me, into a space where to be unsolvable and transcendent at the same time doubled me over in retching sickness, emotional excess, and pangs of hope and despair. It gave me vertigo under the falling stars and startled me as I watched zooming lightning bugs carry away my poisoned thoughts. It mesmerized me with a rising moon and a ghostly light that silhouetted the demon contorts of my emotional horror projected into the endlessly branching trees. It deepened and expanded without bounds as the icaros were sung and the night grew darker. It shook the lifeforce out of me in shards of pain and turmoil as I danced before the magical fire and sang in another language with the shaman, words I felt deeply without understanding. When silence came, I collapsed back to the wavering ground. In the middle of it all, the shaman dropped down next to me with a knowing smile and a whispered offer - "I have a special tea. Do you want some? Want to try? It's a purge tea. You must drink all then purge then drink all again. Then repeat. Come, it's ready now."

It was medicine space transformation. It was reliving trauma. It was exultant and torturous. It was blissful and a desperate surrender. And so, after all, did I get the answer, my answer? Is the problem still with me, the problem that can't be solved? What does one say about the other, how does one inform the other? Where to now? Can the problem without a solution find a healing?

I have been taken apart and spun back together. Not everything fits, nor is it supposed to, not anymore. Mother showed me the dawn, brought Pacific Horneros to call insistently in my ear, she blew the acrid scent of ash and incense and glowing embers and snorts of liquid tobacco into my senses. She showed me, she implored me, ultimately she challenged me.

Being given a hard lesson is a far cry from shouldering that lesson and moving forward. That's her hardest lesson yet. As usual, Mother Ayahuasca knew exactly what she was doing. The sense of it settles clearly even if I find myself too raw to absorb it. It seems there is no other miracle than me. In the final analysis, it's the only thing I have any control over. What a thing for Mother to hit me with. It flattened me on the ground with its awesome power and terrible responsibility. It was defeat and transcendence all at once. I am the cage, the lock, the key, and the animal inside. So many new perspectives were made available during my dark night of the soul. And yet, still - the sky is blue.

In one poignant message, Mother Ayahuasca whispered to me - "On some level you will always be bothered, but you can actively establish a deeper dimension that will shine brightly and reduce that deep darkness to a mere shadow of what it was before. Your unresolved darkness will then be providing meaningful contrast, not obsessive blindness."

In my time of integration since hearing those words, I've meditated quite a lot on polarity, the highs and lows, the light and shadow aspects of life. It does seem strangely ironic that getting used to the dark makes the lights seem brighter, that dying of thirst makes that first gulp of water taste sweeter, that tragedy and catastrophes bring out the best in people. On some level, it is the shadow of life that allow the highlights of color and brilliant definition to take shape. The same is true in painting and the history of art demonstrates this very well. Carl Jung is famous for developing the notion of the shadow aspects of our unconscious motivations and projections. He insisted the shadow was not bad, it was necessary, but it could be a monster if not acknowledged and integrated well. And yet, when one studies the history of art, it's amazing to follow how this archetypal component to our makeup has developed over time. Consider this progression as summarized so well by the Oxford University Press --- (to see the photo slideshow, go here -- https://blog.oup.com/2017/11/shadows-visual-arts-timeline/)

• "The ancient Greeks were the first artists to use cast shadows, as they developed a 'geometry of the light' that located objects in relation to a consistent light source.
• Mistrusting the way that shadows helped such painters to deceive the eye, Plato insisted that shadows mislead people about the true nature of reality. In his Allegory of the Cave (375BCE), Plato set up a shadow-substance opposition that has dominated Western thinking about shadows ever since.
• As if to challenge Plato’s reasoned dismissal of shadows, the Roman historian Pliny the Elder asserted in his Natural History (79 CE) that art was born when a young woman named Dibutades traced the shadow of her lover on a wall, by the light of a lamp. Since the lover was about to leave on a long journey, the shadow image not only became the first human-made representation, it also became an almost magical substitute for his presence. While Plato thought that shadows were dangerously false, Pliny suggested that they could be romantically true, as if to capture a person’s shadow was to capture part of his vital essence.
• The story of Dibutades was highly popular in the 18th Century, when it reinforced the vogue for a new form of shadow-capture, silhouettes. In English, cut-paper silhouettes were first known as Shadowgraphs or Shades, since they were often made by tracing a person’s shadow. Silhouettes exploit one of the key features of the shadow, its dark, mysterious interior, into which viewers can project whatever details imagination can provide.
• Meanwhile, after a dormant period in medieval times, Renaissance artists returned to the Greco-Roman shadow and developed its use in relation to the emerging art of perspective. Shadows became more accurately shaped and placed, even as unwritten rules governed their use so that they would not impinge too greatly on the human figure. In Masaccio’s The Tribute Money (1425), for example, cast shadows cover the ground but never obscure the human form. 
• In the first painting to make a shadow its primary subject, Saint Peter Healing the Sick with His Shadow (1427-1428), Masaccio made sure that the transformative shadow of St. Peter falls around and under the figures that it touches with its heaven-sent power. Like many villainous shadows later to come, the holy shadow has a special power that emanates from its source, but the Renaissance painter will not let the shadow dominate the work pictorially.
• From the Renaissance onward, most painted shadows serve to make objects seem more “real” in volume and placement, but Rembrandt was a pioneer in giving the shadow psychological weight. In an early self-portrait he depicts himself with his eyes in shadow, as if to show how his very vision is embedded in the chiaroscuro that makes his paintings so dramatic.
• After the Renaissance, the Western world adapted so well to the idea that artistically rendered people need shadows that the absence of a personal shadow could cause a great commotion. Illustrated by many artists, Adelbert von Chamisso’s story of Peter Schlemiel, the man who sold his shadow (1814), became a big hit in Europe in the early nineteenth century. Since Peter’s acquaintances would have nothing to do with a man who had no shadow, it became clear from the story that having a shadow was a sign of humanity, a signal of full participation in human life.
• But only a few decades later, the first stand-alone shadows of humans appeared in art, independent of anybody to cast them. It was as if the shadow alone could now do the work of the substance-shadow couple. It was William Collins who discovered in his painting Rustic Civility (1833) just how visually effective a “mere” shadow could be, introducing a powerful narrative element at the same time. Here children open a gate for their social “betters,” in the form of a horseman who represents the English country gentry.
• The advent of photography was initially regarded as a matter of “fixing a shadow.” Henry Fox Talbot explained his process in 1839 by saying that, using chemistry, he had found a way to capture “the most transitory of all things, a shadow.” The way photographs “drew” with light connected them in the public mind with Pliny’s story of tracing shadows on a wall. The poet Elizabeth Barrett wrote to a friend in 1843, that a photograph was like “the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever!”
• As cinema developed, film directors rapidly picked up the atmospheric and dramatic shadow-vocabulary used by painters since the time of Caravaggio and Rembrandt. In classics such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, the German Expressionists made shadows into active participants in the drama. “Murder by shadow” soon became an integral part of cinematic lore.
• More recently, artists have used actual shadows made by high-powered lights to construct interactive street art in which people can encounter their own shadows in settings that reveal just how alien yet also reassuring shadows can be."

"Shadows speak about the shape, volume, location, and texture of objects, as well as about the source of light, the time of day or season, the quality of the atmosphere. But as the famous example of Peter Pan’s amputated shadow reveals, shadows depicted in artworks can be arbitrarily shaped, placed, and even cut off by their creators. Therefore, beyond offering physical information, shadows have much to tell us on a social and psychological level. Consciously or not, whenever we see shadows we 'read' them (and their creators’ intentions) in a cultural context that lends the shadows power or denies their substance, causing them to seem prophetic or threatening or willful or wispy."

A great book that fleshes out these concepts is Grasping Shadows - The Dark Side of Literature, Painting, Photography, and Film / Oxford University Press (Professor of English at Barnard College) ISBN: 9780190675271 by William Chapman  Sharpe.

"Chiaroscuro, in art, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. Tenebrism, from Italian tenebroso ("dark, gloomy, mysterious"), also occasionally called dramatic illumination, is a style of painting using profoundly pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image. Tenebrism is used only to obtain a dramatic impact while chiaroscuro is a broader term, also covering the use of less extreme contrasts of light to enhance the illusion of three-dimensionality. The word chiaroscuro is Italian for light and shadow. It's one of the classic techniques used in the works of artists like Rembrandt, da Vinci, and Caravaggio. Every shadow tells a story. Whether painted, filmed, photographed, or generated in real time, shadows provide vital information that makes a representation engaging to the eye."  http://www.heldermann-verlag.de/jgg/jgg01_05/jgg0506.pdf

Mother Ayahuasca was trying to show me - in life, as in painting, without light nothing can be seen. But without shadow, no object or subject could be realistically defined. Shadow also creates the illusion of a three dimensional space on a two dimensional surface. In some remarkable way, our shadow self, if properly integrated in correct proportion, is the contrast that allows us to access higher dimensions for ourselves here, where otherwise such higher states couldn't exist if the shadow also didn't exist. I find it particularly interesting that the first painting in history to feature a shadow as its main subject should have the shadow conducting an act of healing, simply by falling upon a person.

Mother implored me -- "You can never know for certain what's in another's heart. You can’t change the outside world into the ideal you want, but you can make yourself your own ideal. You can direct yourself towards it. You can make the attempt. Find meaning in the pursuit of that --- for it's the only thing you have control over."

In the middle of the night we danced and sang with the shaman around the fire as he repeated the words of a song over and over, each time with more emphasis and feeling. I felt he was chiming in with Mother, intuiting and modeling the feeling to be gained by this new change of perspective and meaningful pursuit. "Fly like the condor! Flying so high! Circling the universe! With wings of pure light!"

Finally, back in the teepee, the shaman told a story about a magical place where we co-create the universe, where we as a sovereign part of the infinite have the freedom to choose to redefine the rules of the universe for ourselves, thus resetting our lives. It was then I heard Mother Ayahuasca whisper one last time -- "What bothers you will fall away when you no longer want to be tortured by it."

So what about that problem without a solution?
What about the answer?

Well, the sky is still blue.
But not the clouds.
And they're up there too.
There's also the nighttime sky,
comprising half the day,
and not a hint of blue.

Ayahuasca
 -- I like hearing the before and after experiences people have had.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI3X8fqBcrQ

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBwlbayjmLw&t=6s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTiXrmDtaGo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUoaGuhA6Dg

ONE DROP

Kirlian photography has been around since 1939 when Semyon Kirlian accidentally discovered the photographic effect. Since then the subject has had its proponents and naysayers along a wide spectrum of belief, conjecture, and outright dismissal. Many scientists don't deny the effect but they are quick to explain away any paranormal implications. They often point to the fact that many factors influence the quality and intensity of the visuals produced. 

As the Wikipedia entry on the topic readily concludes -- "The coronal discharges identified as Kirlian auras are the result of stochastic electric ionization processes and are greatly affected by many factors, including the voltage and frequency of the stimulus, the pressure with which a person or object touches the imaging surface, the local humidity around the object being imaged, how well grounded the person or object is, and other local factors affecting the conductivity of the person or object being imaged. Oils, sweat, bacteria, and other ionizing contaminants found on living tissues can also affect the resulting images."

Wherever one stands on the issue, if nothing else, the Kirlian effect is a curiosity that's interesting if not thought-provoking. Analyzing patterns in the many substances tested can lead to deductive models that point to other questions, leading to more research. It can be a fun exercise to see where, if anywhere, the pursuit of inquiry takes one. I always thought that was the heart and soul of the scientific method. So what's the harm looking into the effect? It might lead somewhere, it might not. But to dismiss it out of hand in a reactionary way because some zealots jump to paranormal conclusions seems emotional, not logical (as Mr. Spock would say).

For example, here's a series of kirlian photos -- a woman's fingertip, a man's fingertip, a couple of dimes, and a leaf. Right away we can conclude that all matter exhibits the effect, not just things we've classified as "living." It may be all of matter is "living" in some regard and our way of cataloging such things is limited and inadequate. Or it may be that all of matter is actually, as the quantum folks would agree, just a form of energy. E=mc2 proved that, didn't it? Or was it the atomic bomb that demonstrated it so well? Since all of matter is energy, why shouldn't everything exhibit the kirlian effect?

Since everything has a kirlian energy signature, then the real interest shifts into how these signatures differ. Are there patterns? How do these patterns morph under different effects? Can emotions effect the patterns? Can contact with other people or objects affect the patterns? Can one's thoughts modify the patterns? What are the catalysts for change, amplification, and attenuation? So many routes of scientific inquiry have been explored.

A Kirlian Photography, female fingertip 1989

A Kirlian Photography, male fingertip 1989

Kirlian coins

Kirlian photo of a Coleus leaf

Doing science on such things can be great if the scientists remain open to their own method. It's terrific when separate studies overlap and add to each other, filling in puzzle pieces in our understanding. Modern science, over-classified and segmented into discrete disciplines and sub-specialties, often times is hampered in achieving this synthesis. Add to this the fact that each discipline produces so much data, a scientist nowadays would be hard pressed to keep up with the latest going on in their own sub-specialty, let alone study others and work on ways to combine them. The internet has helped with this, but one can't help but feel so many opportunities to put things together are missed by the sheer volume of information pouring out. Maybe someday an AI computer will help pull it all together but right now, science is racing to keep up with itself.

Since the scientists point to moisture and humidity as one of the factors that can interfere with kirlian results, it's interesting to note the work of Dr. Masaru Emoto and his bestselling research work, "The Hidden Messages in Water."  What does it say when we combine Dr. Emoto's research with findings by the Kirlian photographers? Maybe nothing. Maybe something. If nothing else, Emoto's findings add another wrinkle to proper interpretation of the kirlian effect.



In light of Dr. Emoto's work, I find it interesting that 99% of our spinal column's CSF is water, a fluid that circulates up and down the spine and bathes the pineal gland. What effect do our thoughts and emotions have on this fluid? For that matter, what effect are we having on all the cells of our bodies since they're all 70% water. There's much to read online about the CSF process from spine to brain and back, such as the following from the Science and Non Duality site:

"The third ventricle is a space in the mid-brain filled with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)...The CSF is a conveyor of energy. An adult produces 500ml of CSF daily. While the CSF is 99% water, the CSF is also rich in proteins, ions, lipids, hormones, cholesterol, glucose, and many other molecules. The CSF is home to many neurotransmitters and signaling molecules providing an elaborate range of biological functions. The CSF utilizes volume transmission and its components can potentially be dispersed quickly and target key brain regulatory centers simultaneously due to its fluid nature. Moreover, along the third ventricle, the pineal gland makes direct contact with the CSF, and releases information directly into the CSF for volume transmission to the rest of the brain. In addition, the CSF contains the ‘spirit molecule’ DMT that is released by the pineal gland."

Regardless what all the opinions are about all of this, I still found a 2012 study in Brazil quite intriguing - especially since I've participated in quite a few Ayahuasca ceremonies. The Brazil study by Krishna Madappa included Electro Photon Imaging of an Ayahuasca Ceremony. The kirlian-type devices clearly showed that energy centers along the spine of the participants (some call them chakras) were aligned after ingesting the plant medicine. 

Beyond that, a single drop of the Ayahuasca brew was analyzed by the photographic machines. The energetic signature of that single drop was recorded. For what it's worth, in this one experimental situation, a drop of Ayahuasca displayed its energy pattern. Yes, as Wikipedia would so readily point out, many factors were in play. But the signature is still there, for what it is. Having felt the Mother plant spirit within me, I can't help but also feel an intuitive affinity to the signature I see in the video. 

Yes, naysayers can easily dismiss my affinity -- and I can easily dismiss their resistance to explore in new ways the "what-if's" that surround us. The old naysaying adage, "If you can't see it, touch it, measure it, sense it, I don't believe in it" just doesn't hold its water any longer. 

Before Geiger counters, scientists walked over rocks that emitted radioactive signatures and had no idea what they were near. Before microscopes, scientists bled people to remove the "bad humors" because they couldn't detect microbes. Before wide-spectrum telescopes, scientists believed only visible light luminous stars existed - now they routinely study x-ray and gamma-burst sources in far reaches of space. Before techniques existed to study the electrical-chemical actions of brain neurons, scientists routinely lobotomized patients to relieve adverse psychiatric conditions - now they administer a pill to correct the chemical imbalance. When was the last time your local hospital down the street performed a lobotomy? 

Think about it -- these were scientists, just as sure of themselves and dismissive of new ideas as many of those plying the same profession today. What pulled progress forward were the outliers, the fringe people, the ones who at first got laughed at and ostracized. The history of science has this pattern. Does anyone really think the pattern's stopped? Yeah, today's scientists do.


AYAHUASCA KIRLIAN STUDY - SANTUARIO PALMEIRA (BRASILIA, BRAZIL - 2012)

 Chalama - "colored ribbons tied to the branches of a tree in a sacred place called 'ovaa' as a sign of reverence for the universe, the grandeur, beauty, wisdom, nature – everything that we are happy to behold around us. "
...respect and tribute for Spirits of the Land.

I dreamed I was in Asia, near the center of the continent, visiting the Tuvan People. The wide plain was aflame with sunset and I met the most curious man. He came out of nowhere with a slight smile on his face. The smile was for me. 

He could have been a walk-in, a medicine man, a ghost, a vagabond. I never did find out. But he invited me to a sacred ceremony. He pointed to the far hills and said when it was dark enough and the fire was lit, the ones who'd been called would assemble. I was intrigued but knew not how to traverse the empty plain and the great distance to attend. He assured me it didn't matter. If I felt I was called, there would be a way. 

He turned and walked into the sun. I lost sight of him but his words stayed with me. Feeling the impulse, I walked after him, not even thinking of where I might be going. By the time twilight faded into night, I saw a fire and figures moving about. I joined them in the circle. No words were said. The man with the slight smile came around to each one of us. He brought kind eyes and a cup. One by one we drank the ceremonial brew. 

The whole setting reminded me of Ayahuasca ceremonies in South America I had attended. But this was Central Asia. And the song the elder started to sing was not an icaro - but with the medicine flowing, it sounded like one. 

If icaros were sung by Tuvan wise men, I knew this is the way it would sound.
The song flowed through me. I flowed into the song.
I released into the night. And the night released into me.
By the time the song was nearly done, I had met the Spirit of the Land.
And the message was clear. 



...here's where it comes from: