It's All You Man

'You haven't met yourself yet. But the advantage to meeting others in the meantime is that one of them may present you to yourself' — Waking Life

It's the summer of 2019. I'm at Small World festival and it's a hot summers day. It's peaking in the 30s. Me and my friends are hyped about smoking some DMT. I have never experienced DMT. My only knowledge around it was through the teachings of Terence Mckenna. I'm part way through reading the book DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman. Our friend arrives with the medicine and the pipe. We all go to our little section where we've pitched up our tents. One by one each friend takes a few hits and then enters some unimaginable kind of realm. One friend sounds like he's having a multidimensional orgasm. Another friend is in hysterics. This feels peaceful and fun. I think I'm in the right kind of environment to be embarking on a new psychedelic experience.

It is now my turn. My friend with the medicine says to me, 'I don't want to ruin the surprise but it's all you man'. That's a cool thing to say, I think to myself. I put the pipe to my mouth and he sparks it up. I take a few small tokes, tip toeing into my experience. I decide that's enough as I can feel my ego is feeling slightly challenged by my experience. I lay back but sadly all the space sheltered from the sun is taken up by half naked bodies so I have to lay back into a sunny patch which is also exposed to people potentially peering in. It's so hot and I'm melting. The sun rays penetrating through my eye lids start to form sacred geometry. It ebbs and flows and it morphs until suddenly I am witnessing a dancing six armed Goddess wearing barely any clothes. She's so beautiful and sexy. The wind blowing her hair and silky clothes, and the water sliding off her smooth and golden skin. So infinite and exquisite. She beckons me to take her by the hand and join her in blissful ecstasy while we dance in union. I don't know how. I'm trying. All I can do is lay here and watch. How do I interact with this experience? I try and latch on to her with my mind but I sense my cognitive faculties starting to take over. I gradually forget my experience as my mind starts to think that it must be impossible. The trip subsides and I'm brought back to normality. She was a bit like something you'd imagine depicted by the Hindus.

What did my friend mean when he said 'it's all you man'. I've been going through a really deep and beautiful journey with my anima and inner child. The feminine in her many forms and her union with the child in me. Self and beauty. Growing up semi institutionalised facing heavy indoctrinations from boarding school the inner child was shunned away. The boys learned it was ugly to reveal his innocence and playfulness. Emotions were not welcome. These things were seen as weaknesses. We were taught to shun anyone who revealed such sacredness. I didn't want to be mean to anyone because I knew how much it hurts and because I thought I was the weakest. I pleaded so much make it stop! Boarding schools don't 'build character' or 'make the man', they break the child, and replace it with a coat of armour filled with fear, loneliness and alienation. I remember being so envious of girls. They were so beautiful, and they had full creative license to be themselves, or so I thought at the time, not realising they had their own version of pain. I remember when I was about 13 wishing I could be a girl. I just wanted people to be nice to me. I wanted to feel beautiful. Today whenever I see beautiful women who want to interact with me I seek their validation. Do you think I'm beautiful, I think to myself, too afraid to ask outload in case they say no or laugh at me for asking such a silly question in the first place. It's ironic because some women want me to be more in my masculine. I just want to be whole.

It's January 2020. I'm in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest. We're settling down to begin our first Ayahuasca retreat of a 10 day dieta at the Mother's house. I am second of about 30 ish people to go up when called by the shaman Don Gino to take a sip of the medicine. I go and sit down. I'm told it can take up to 40 minutes for something to kick in. Within 5 minutes I'm already at one with the universe. I realise that ultimately the foundation to which all of life rests upon is unconditional love. I am home. This is my purpose. To devote my life to coming home, to cultivating her teachings, and sharing them with the world so that others may feel this same feeling.

It's January the 4th 2024. Something weird is happening in my energy field. I feel like I need to put up a protective bubble around me. I feel like some deep and intimate energy wants to be birthed within me. So I take the day off. Realising the emptiness of my fridge, my empty White Spring water bottles, my overflowing bins and my lack of clean clothes I run around like a headless chicken organising myself in preparation for the journey ahead. My spaceship is in order. I take some medicines. I'm initiated into a deep and profound medicine journey. I load up Old School RuneScape which is a game I used to play back in 2005. I was 9. I start wondering around the game and I remember how much childhood fun I've had levelling up my character. In the game I climb down the dungeon trap door of Edgeville. I proceed to run north past some level 3 mice and giant spiders. Having ran past several level 21 skeletons I walk through the gate to my right. I keep going East past Vannaka the slayer master. I squeeze through a pipe in the wall and find myself surrounded by level 42 moss giants. I start attacking them with my Abyssal Whip and Dragon Defender. In real life, or irl as we'd say in game, I'm listening to the likes of Shlohmo, Harris Cole, Wun Two, Stumbleine and Sun Glitters. Lofi hip hop beats and glitterwave music. It's all vibing and I cannot shake off this feeling of wanting to dance. So I surrender into it. I light an incense and I start to chant the Hari Krishna mantra on my mala beads. The energies start picking up. I start thinking about people I love, but more specifically the feelings of love that they invoke within me. I realise my union with the feels. I realise I am the beauty I seek externally. It's like I'm astral projecting out of my body while feeling fully lucid and in control, if not a little wobbly and intoxicated. I'm sensing myself around the room and how it feels. I can sense my union with the smell of the incense, I can sense my union with my childhood desk in my bedroom. I realise this part of me wants a clean. I can sense my union with my Old School RuneScape character wearing his full Void Knight armour acquired from the Pest Control minigame. I can sense this part of me wants to level up its attack skill. I can sense my union with the guitar. I can sense this part of me wants to be played and that my voice and heart wants to sing along. And then it dawns on me. We are all the many faces of God. But more so that we are all shards of the same stained glass. We're all seeking union and it's why we're attracted to people. Because they're another me and another you. I am you and you are me. And the people I'm attracted to are externally symbolising a part of me which I'm yet to fully cultivated in me. All I have to do is realise and embody my union with all the things that light me up. I am the incense, I am RuneScape, I am the guitar, I am the singing, I am my childhood desk, I am the beauty I seek, I am the 6 armed Goddess, I am Ayahuasca and I am ultimately Unconditional Love.

But wait, it doesn't stop there. I realise nothing really dies. My cat Coco never died. Her shard dances away in eternal love. My childhood house that was recently sold isn't gone forever. My childhood was never robbed of me from the institutions, but only temporarily left aside. It's all here right now. We are the waves, and we are the ocean. We are the droughts and we are the rain. The cycle continues. What does it mean to miss you? It means you remind me of a raindrop that wants to be reintegrated into my embodiment of the ocean. It means that your presence makes me ache for union with it.

Maybe this could be along the lines of what my friend said to me when he said 'it's all you man', before blasting me off to meet my maker. Perhaps I am made in the eye of beauty.

It's around 10pm now. I decide to brave the outside world. I must have done around 20 rounds on the mala beads. That's 2000 ish chants. I feel like a rabbit who's stepping out from his hole under the tree for the first time after his long hibernation. I feel like the early snowdrops blooming. Oh yeah I am the snowdrops and they are me. I walk all wobbly with my beads in my right hand, and an incense in my left hand. I feel a sense of awe. I realise my union with all of life. Life is trying to find its way through a shocking wave of societal cataclysmic events. All things intimate and sacred blossoming all around me. I sit by the white spring and dance in the night for a bit. I wonder around the lanes surrounding the Tor as I watch as my incense slowly fades away. I sit in reverence of it all by the Queen tree of the Avalon Orchard where I first sat with Grandfather Huachuma and rolled around in the grass. I smell mother nature's fragrance. I realise my union with her. I am so blessed. We are all so blessed. We are all one.