Huachuma Journal, July 5th

This series of writings were written in the midst of my day-long ceremony with San Pedro, Huachuma. I am unable to include sketches and drawings, to my regret, since symbolic communication became integral to my experience. What I am including below is unedited, exactly as it was written in the midst of this ecstatic journey.

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Have joined in a day of San Pedro - Huachuma. Am just beginning to feel the plant come into me. Six of us and Diego.

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Why are there words? And why can´t I always feel this immediate connection with the world around me, all other beings? What is this thin line of language in the midst of the full reality of the world? And what are the powers of these shapes of language? They keep me from really listening to the deeper rhythm of the world...and yet, they are my acknowledgement of my place within it, of my point of brightness in the midst of so many others, my sacrifice, my celebration of being alive in the whole of it all!

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I am sitting in the wet, drinking grass and a tiny, translucent worm is inching its way across my foot, and I can HEAR the earth drinking in the morning´s water offering, and...and the whole of existence is breathing, drinking, absorbing, being. None of it is in conflict. All of it is ALREADY WHOLE. I get it now. The tiniest environments mirror the biggest. This is the cosmic mandala of the wet, hot, drinking, breathing earth.

The warmth of the sun...this is the greatest pleasure...my skin is drinking it in as the earth around me slowly consumes the moisture. Water. It´s ALL water... the sun is too strong for long, though!

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I am with tears for the second time today. For all the days I have not lived with listening and sensitivity, for all the tiny lives that have gone on, unnoticed, by me...right here in the grass. I have made a cairn of tiny, fuzzy flowers, crowned with a spiral burr...and that is my day´s discovery. That this tiny world in the grass is a lacy mandala of verdant life, and even smaller and more magnificent than I could have ever imagined. The fine lines and vines and veins and pattern s, and the variation in colors, a tiny yellow flower just there...oh, this world is beautiful beyond imagining.

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It occurs to me that the whole world is a plant world! Grandmother Rosemary is close by, baking in the warm sun, her gnarly hair glistening in the sunlight with blossoms open to the sky. Dragonflies mating, sunning themselves. Flowers...oh, so many flowers! And the distant stream...the water is alive, graceful, so beautiful! How is it that I don´t spend all day everyday for my whole life just witnessing the magnficence of the world?! What more could I ever hope to know or do in this life, than to witness the grass-world? The flower-world? The water-world? The tree-world?

Silence and listening...being empty to contain silenc e...even though these words flow through, they seem to come from somewhere other than my mind! The deep silence within me is the first necessary thing! And arriving at that point...the practice to always return to this still point of silence...when this is the center of my being, then listening can begin. Listening does not take place in the spaces between making sound or speaking...listening comes as a result of being empty of all of that...silence must happen first, then listening has room to flower.

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Watching the bees in the sage...this is why I cannot spend my whole life witnessing the world...each part has its role...all of life is in right relationship with itself, and the giving and taking and receiving: this is reciprocity! How can I live with this degree of grace and balance? Living within the rhythm of the day...the cycle of light, of living and surrenderin g to the flow...dampness and water and drying and the smells of the rich earth becoming richer, drier...the smell of morning´s damp femininity is being consumed by the dry heat of afternoon. I am understanding the natural role of feminine and masculine balance...the yin and yang...the cycle of it all. I get it now! And in order to know myself, be myself, I must understand this. I must now try to feel any conflict or create any conflict within this balance! For knowing myself, embracing my whole self is the result of simply existing in the joy of watching the current of feminine life flowing through me. I am this earth! I am not a being of this earth, I AM this earth! May I always live knowing this for the rest of my whole life!!

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And in order to be in relationship, all I must do is be! Not do...it is not a matter of action. Love is not a matter of ac tion, but a presence that flows out of simply being whole.

This is the remembering. The place of simply being whole in my own skin, in my own mind, in my own heart, and also feeling the relationship of that wholeness in ever expanding concentric circles of life, all of it!!!

(sketches here...a spiral, the burr...a sand dollar like shape, and a triangular swiriling image with spirals on each corner, as well as another triangular image with loops at each point...)

The triangle image, not unlike my name... A.

What is the shape about...three...looking...edges...facing each other, flowing intersecting...it is the essence of community. And language too...

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Numbers and letters all coming too quickly, the energy of language, the seed in the infinite...breathe, slow down!!!

The code of it all, I feel it...the truth of it all, the code of life...there is no clear answer, no intersection of clarity, only a shape of knowing, of connection, and that shape is:

(more sketches...the same three sided triangle with spirals, then the three sided triangle with loops on the points, two superimposed over each other, to make six loops...)

I saw this months ago, or weeks, anyway. In my parting ceremony with my tree, this image came to me, flowing, moving triangles...no explanation, no words, only images.

This, then somehow...this way of knowing with symbols and language...how is that the same as the bee collecting his sustenance from the soft, purple sage flowers...it doesn´t seem the same at all, yet it is somehow...that my place in creation is to harvest the symbolic nectar of this divine universe?! And that is the cosmic mandala of life itself...but what does it mean, the flower, the star?

To hold the enthusiasm of childlike wonder with the stillness of an adult...that is what I feel like right now! Enough understanding to hold back a bit, not cause harm in the midst of my exploration...and isn´t that what it´s all about!

(Sketch of triangle with spiral points...)

This symbol is somehow about separation, or of meeting, but not merging.

(Sketch of double triangle with loops, superimposed...)

And this is about union, merging...whole alone, and still able to merge, to unite...and while the first symbol felt so good at first, now it brings me some sadness... and this second symbol, yes, the second symbol, union, wholeness...and it holds within it the seed of the first...a wholeness that contains all of itself, and also that is in the same concentric circles that live in this beautiful juicy man darin, in the onion, in the face of the flowers, buried within the sweet, dewy folds of the rose. The seed of life, as well as the most beautiful expression of it all...all at the same time, it´s almost too much to take!!!

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The richness is in the slow, the small, the simple. That´s also alive in this symbol (spiral triangle sketch)...the trinity...this is the Sacred Feminine.

Tendrils of afternoon shadows trailing across my skin, across the land...deep warmth giving way to coolness...the promise of night, of shadow, of darkness, and even of death. To return to this microcosm, to feel the rich grass growing up through my flesh, of the ultimate surrender...of that I am not afraid; how can I die to every moment, to surrender myself to this eternal rhythm?! I need not surrender to it, there is no activity involved that is necessary. I must only NOT INTERRUPT that surrender, that rhythm...

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I am here with all of my relations...

(sketches...)

I´m so glad that Grandmother Rosemary is here. I´ve taken a few of her leaves into my mouth, and OH! So many sensations! Sweet, pungent, sharp, sparkling...she makes me want to inhale. She brings me fully into my skin, and asks for more water. Yes, water!

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Today is a day that I have known how to make altars and to honor the beauty and life of the universe, grand and infinitesmal. My whole being has lived in full reverence. May every other day of my life reflect what I have known here, today.

(Sketch of healing hand with symbols and energy radiating out from the fingers...)