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28 January, 2014

lost & tripping with shamans in NYC


Aya: Awakenings - Trailer from Rak Razam on Vimeo.

For all those seeds the vine has touched, and for those yet to sprout....   


Rushing through the cold streets of drizzly New York City after a couple of mis-directions on the subway, I finally arrived at the cinema. I looked around “is this the right place” I asked myself as I mopped my sweaty brow and took in a deep centering breath. While according to my friend Kyle, getting lost may arguably be my forte, being late is something I constantly work with in the land of time especially since my watch strap decided to snap (and not having a phone etc.) 

The scent of sage filled my nostrils and soothed my nerves while affirming that despite being a little late for the showing; I had arrived at the right place. This was the evening I was going on a trip to the Amazon and thanks to my tardiness, my friend and I (sorry Pablo!) were forcibly sat on the front row for some airborne journeys of Pacha Mamma spirit through shamanic medicines in Rak Razam’s latest documentary; AYA Awakenings.

While personally, I advocate meditation; it did become very clear to me that there are medicines out there for those searching for that heart opening experience of oneness. I asked Rak some questions after what was a wonderfully insightful experience. 

1. For those who do not know about Ayahuasca can you describe its qualities?

Ayahuasca is an indigenous plant medicine from the Amazon that combines MAO-inhibiting vine with DMT-containing plants for a hallucinogenic (visionary healing modality. You can feel the vine seeping through your blood and body as it locks onto your vibrational frequency and starts clearing and healing blockages and supressions, ills and hurts. It can be a bitter earthy medicine, or sometimes neutral, thick or syrupy, and like most medicines it usually tastes awful. But it is the most powerful tool in the Amazonian shaman's medicine cabinet. It's been proven to scientifically relink up the synapses of the brain flushing it clean, and you purge and vomit up any sicknesses within you, whilst simultaneously being thrust into a world of geometric visions, sometimes spirits, entities, and multi-dimensional reality!

2. In the documentary, one of the most powerful shots was sharing your experience during the Ayahuasca ritual. In as far as words can describe, what was that like?

I liken it to a connection to the web of life, but a visceral, real, immediate and emotional connection. Ayahuasca opened up my heart chakra, my ability to feel, my intellectual-empathic pathways to feel the fact that there are no negative spaces separating us from everything... we are all connected in the Great Green Womb where we are all one, the atomic sea of vibrational consciousness itself. To feel the wind and the breath of mother nature, to hear the frogs and insects and know with a certainty they are talking with one another and pouring through spirit in the sounds, connecting and cascading the other species in the web, to feel that connection and the intimacy of life itself is transforming.

3. Has that changed the way you perceive and interact with the world?

I think so. I'm in the baseline world most of the time, but with an overlay memory of that interconnection and awareness of the larger matrix of nature and us as one species strand in the collective, interdependent whole. Every thought, word, action and deed ripples through the web of becoming and that remembrance reminds me to be as present, loving and understanding as I can in each moment. Sometimes that 'holographic awareness' can see the causal domino effect as certain events and things interact and connect to the larger whole, and sometimes I can see those strands and how they connect with an empathic knowing. The world is alive and aware and we are but one layer of Gaia's never endings in matter...!

4. One of your panelists mentioned the power of one's imagination. What are your thoughts on the mainstream media's impact on this in our present world?

The imagination has become ensconced in the mind forg'd manacles Blake wrote about in our modern age. Imagination has at once been commodified down to a narrow bandwidth of possibility, and the cultural dreamings we once had in our tribal mythologies are erased, or worst, co-opted and turned into saccharine Hollywood films. The heroic archetype has similarly been commodified by Hollywood like a virus that has taken control of the host body and is used to tap into this deep longing the human race has to express its imagination, which for me is linked to intuition and can be used as a valuable psychic tool to carve out the imaginal realm, to make manifest what we dream amongst an infinite sea of morphing probability. Imagination can be our GPS to survive, to dream in a better world, to improve the human condition, to think outside the box and to magically make real probability streams to anchor the thing we dream. Imagination is our anchor to the infinite, more than its come to mean in the denuded western entertainment complex: I-mage-i-nation is a holy, spiritual act where we overlap with Great Spirit and know and become.

5. What is your vision for the future of mankind and our planet?

Well let's talk sustainability - what does that mean? Ditching hierarchies, power (or revealing power has always been about the collective, the tribe, the majority) and collecting and connecting in networks, tribes, extended family structures that understand needs and wants, taking only what they need, and feeding the web of life around in all directions. Letting go of the old world of division, loving and caring for all our fellow being and species as interdependent units in a greater whole, working together for maximum connection and meaning.

Plant entheogens can reveal our own divinity, our soul, and at the same time reveal the frequency of soul we are embedded in, the existence of an ecology of souls and sentience that extends far beyond the physical. I feel the plants are tuning us back into these potentials as training wheels, and the medicine helps us remember our full beings as galactic citizens, and sometime soon we won't need the medicines, but will step forth with the ability to engage with the greater whole. 

2 comments:

Charles Edward Frith said...

Superb.

JAH said...

Connecting with the dreamscape shocks us into reality. Thank you!

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