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.
