Psychedelics and Containers

In my last post, I talked about how psychedelic facilitators are taught to create containers based on an illusion of safety.  Structures are necessary because without them rituals devolve into chaos.  But if safety is an illusion, then what should the container be founded on? 

If we look at traditional shamanic initiations, safety is not what creates the container. Anyone who’s been to a rustic ayahuasca center in the jungle of Peru can attest to that!  

I think ritual containers should be based on the following
 

Personal transformation occurs within the context of the wider circle of relations.
 

Let’s break this down piece by piece. First, when I talk about transformation I mean ritualized death and dismemberment. The old self needs to die in order for the new self to be born. The Tantrik goddess Kali wears a necklace of human heads, symbolizing how she ritually (and eventually literally) destroys us.

Our hunger for psychedelics is based on a deep human need for ritual death, destruction and eventual rebirth. Many cultures throughout time have recognized this need and developed initiations around it. This process is an integral part of nature itself, one that has been covered up and hidden within the safe confines of modern society.

Though mostly empty now, we still have modern rituals like bar mitzvahs that mirror this death/rebirth process. I also went through this when I was baptized (and born again!) as a kid in my Christian fundamentalist church.

We take psychedelics because we yearn to experience this initiation. We want to get “unstuck”, free from the shackles of our past that bind us down. We hunger for the goddess to take us, to rip us apart and put us back together. But we live in a society that has taught us to avoid death at all costs, that has no ritualized container to experience death’s sanctity. Our loved ones die in hospitals and the only ceremony is the steady drip of morphine coursing through their body so they don’t have to consciously face death. Is it any wonder our rejection of death comes with a desire for safety?

Modern trainings around psychedelic facilitation are based on the idea that we can help others navigate that space by learning “about” it rather than directly going through it and knowing it in a deeply personal way.   So if you are guiding someone through a psychedelic journey and the dark goddess comes to devour them, you'd need to check your notes about what to do.

I recently went to a training on navigating psychedelic spaces held by a Lakota medicine woman named Dancing Crow. With pens and notebooks in hand, participants asked her about the steps they needed to take to create a ceremonial container. She proceeded to tell stories instead-- stories about how she met her spirits, about her relationships with them, and about how they've helped her do her healing work.

Instead of a step-by-step guide she told everyone (without actually telling them!) that creating a psychedelic container is based on relationship.

This gets to the second part of the structure— the context of the wider circle of relations.

Modern people are stuck on things like “my process”, “my story” and “my trauma”. But one important lesson from psychedelics is that our own trauma is a part of the wider circle of nature— of families, ancestors, the plant world, the animal world, gods and demons. The old traditions tell us that humans are but one aspect of an incredible deep, incredibly rich web of interconnectedness.  When we develop and deepen our relationships in those worlds we learn directly about the cycles of feeding and being fed, of dying and being reborn. We learn in a direct experiential way how Kali cuts off our head so that a new one can grow.
 

Deep relationship is the fundamental structure at the heart of the psychedelic container.
 

One relationship is between the facilitator and participant. For me, one important part of that means that we have triggered each other at some point. We’ve seen each others shadow and wounding. When that happens and we are able to work through it, we now have a depth in our relationship. If our wounds arise in ceremony (which is the point!) we have a history of working through it.

Relationship also exists between the facilitator and the plant world. What is the faciltator’s relationship with the substance they are using? I once had someone contact me for advice on facilitating with psilocybin. She told me she had taken psilocybin 3 times and wanted to be a guide for others. To me, that was like going on 3 dates with someone and then getting married. In the ayahuasca tradition, you have to spend months or years in isolation with the plants, getting to know them before you can assist others.

Relationship also exists between facilitator and the spirit world. Frequently people in those states encounter primal deities and ancestors that have been suppressed for generations. Does the facilitator know on a deep level who these spirits are? Have they reconnected with their own ancestors? Are they in a deep relationship with them?

Lastly, relationship exists between facilitator and friends/family.  My relationships in the spirit world, just like those in everyday life with my wife and kids, have demanded depth and commitment.  And that to me is the foundation of ceremonial structure.  

Psychedelics and Safety

My last two blog posts were about psychedelic integration.  This one is about safety and psychedelics.  "Safety" as it relates to psychedelics usually refers to the structure or “container” held by the psychedelic guide or facilitator during the psychedelic journey.

Before we get into what safety means in the psychedelic journey, we need to explore the greater cultural context of “safety”.

Safety exists on a spectrum.  On one end is physical safety– being in physical danger or experiencing a trauma.  On the other end of the spectrum is emotional safety– which modern research suggests triggers the same “trauma response” in people.   From the University of Maryland Medical System…
 

Trauma is “an emotional response to a distressing event or situation that breaks [a] sense of security.” Traumatic events may be life-threatening, yet any events that overwhelm or isolate can result in trauma. Trauma sets off an “alarm” that triggers the fight or flight response in your body and mind. This heightened state of arousal makes it difficult to feel calm and can be easily reactivated in other situations.

The feeling of being “unsafe” is the same whether we experience a physical trauma or an event that triggers the same emotional feeling.

In this context then, psychedelics are inherently unsafe.Psychedelics have the uncanny ability to retrigger our trauma, and that’s a reason we take them!

The current model is that when we take psychedelics within a structure that “feels safe” we reactivate the trauma to process it and heal from it.

The psychedelic guide then, is there to hold a safe container, or at least help the participants “feel safe”.  But how does the guide engender that feeling?   Before we get to that, let’s go back to our feelings of unsafety.  For many people, the trauma response and feeling unsafe originated in childhood and is related to their parents.   Even if people’s parents weren’t actively complicit in that lack of safety through direct abuse, it could be a sense that not enough was done to protect them. 

In my experience, most guides (consciously or not) adopt a role where they play some version of the “safe” mom or dad and the "safe container" stems largely from the guide adopting this role.  The client then feels safe enough to revisit and heal their trauma with a "good person."

Before I break down this dynamic I want to honor it.  I believe there is a lot of good that is done within this framework.  I’ve seen people grow and heal within it, and I’m glad that it exists to help people.
  

My critique comes from 2 places– 

1. It is dependent on the guide’s lack of integration within the therapeutic relationship

2. It provides no growth for the client outside of this framework. 

Both critiques are interrelated.

When I say “lack of integration”, I'm saying that within the relationship the guide cannot allow any parts of themselves to emerge that may make the client feel unsafe.  The guide cannot get angry, cannot be overcome with grief, cannot allow an emotion that may make the client feel judged.  The guide cannot be a real, whole, complicated person– or at least cannot bring their wholeness into the relationship.  The container is created by the guide fracturing and allowing only certain aspects of their personality to be present.

This leads to critique two– if the guide is maintaining the role of good mom or good dad, the client is stuck as the child and there is no more room for growth.  Unless the guide has a path towards a more whole relationship or the relationship ends, the client stays a child.  

Sometimes, the client sees through the guide’s mask and lashes out because the guide is "not who they thought they were".  They see the complicated human underneath and that makes them feel unsafe.  The illusion of the "safe" mom or dad has been exposed.

All of this talk about safety also misses the fundamental truth that safety is an illusion, though a useful one at times.  We as humans must live with the paradox of having strong motivations for safety and security while also coming to grips with the fact that death is the only thing guaranteed.  Isn't our desire for safety just grasping at some semblance of control in a world that feels out of control and chaotic?

However, this lack of feeling safe was always a primal teaching for me when using  psychedelics– there is a freedom when we surrender to the fact that we are not in control, and that danger is always present.  This surrender is what opens the door to spirit.

If we can’t build a container based on safety then, what can we build it on?  Containers are important– but why?  And how can we create a healthy container?  They “whys” and “hows” will be the structure of my next blog post.  

The Real Danger of Psychedelic Integration

In my last post, I talked about how psychedelic integration is more than just integrating the psychedelic experience.  It is also about integrating the “fractured” or “unintegrated” self that the psychedelic journey reveals.  I said that when we use this as our map, integrating the “fractured” self takes us to some wild places– one of those places is that when we the integrate out fractured self it will bring us into conflict with our society and culture.

The trauma centered folks do a great job of recognizing how unhealed trauma sits in our body, affecting our relationship to our self and relationships with others.  The next question I have is– why does trauma sit in our body?  Why is it such a common thing for people to dissociate from their trauma and wall it off?  Is this dissociation a natural part of the human experience or is it a byproduct of our civilized culture?  I believe that its both-- it is the only way for humans to "deal" with trauma in a culture that teaches the core values of dissociation and suppression of our "bad" side.  I say "core values" because dissociation and suppression are so ingrained in how we were “cultured” as children and continue to function as adults that it feels intrinsic to how humans function.  It is not just about trauma, though trauma is a big part of it.  This process feels so natural and automatic that it can take some time for people to see it as a part of their "learned" behaviors that they are able to shift.

Psychedelics have a wonderful (or terrible!) way of bringing these parts up to our conscious awareness, where we are then able to shift how we hold them-- this is the foundation of integration.  Buit getting back to the wild place I mentioned earlier– if we want to truly receive the gifts that psychedelics teach us, don't we have to integrate the knowledge that the dissociation and suppression themselves are sicknesses?  By integrating this knowledge, isn't the cure to this sickness the embodiment and expression of our true self internally and in our relations with others?  What does this mean practically– to be our true authentic self (as ugly as it may be sometimes)?

Before answering that question– let’s break down the normal way of doing things in our culture.  Being in a state of suppression means we go out in the world and act in the “right way” and push down the parts of us that don't conform to that. I see this as a type of (mostly unconscious) performance art, where people demonstrate to the world they are a good person.  This “good” person is dependent on the local culture.  In Portland, it means demonstrating that you are a good liberal, a good ally to the disenfranchised, care about the environment, etc.  We also get the bonus of the social contract--  by demonstrating what a “good” person we are, we receive benefits in terms of being liked and approved of socially.

I’m sure in more conservative places, there is a similar game occurring– where showing how much you care about "traditional" values, how much disdain you have for liberals, how much you support the local church, etc. you’d get the same cultural approval.  

I'm not saying that all of our behaviors are masks or games.  I'm just saying that sometimes the mask that we wear for social and cultural approval gets so wrapped up in our identity that we sometimes don't know what we think or believe.  Even connecting to what we may think or believe under the surface will feel like a threat to our survival. 

The state of “suppression” we act from also necessitates an “expression” of the bad side in some way.  At Spirit House, we say it will "come out sideways".  This “bad” side is usually built from a slow burn of resentmentcoming from many moments of silencing and suppressing ourselves.  It’s like a pressure valve that needs some kind of release.  This can be expressed in all sorts of ways– alcohol or drug use, affairs, or maybe having a private conversation with a trusted friend or therapist where you can tell them “what you really feel”. 

The key here is that we have created a side we want to show the world, that we then attach our identity onto that is only a part of our whole self.  We end up acting out this part and get so invested in our role that we can't connect to our deeper desires and feelings.  Even having those desires and feelings becomes dangerous because they usually run counter to what is acceptable in the culture.  We usually attach ourselves to people that confirm or help us act out this good side, while secretly seeking out people to play out our bad side.  

When I grew up in a fundamentalist church I knew how to show everyone I was a good Christian. Playing that part was easy. There were a set of proscribed rules and roles for me to follow. When I was finally able to get in touch with, and finally express my doubts about what I was being taught, I became an outcast from my community. If you’re a good liberal, I’m sure you’ll support this story because it confirms your idea about how messed up fundamentalist Christians are.

But I also see a similar fundamentalism at work here in Portland and in the wider left-leaning community. Although the specific rules and roles are very different from my fundamentalist church, the dangers in going against them are similar. We all know when we interact with others what parts of us are acceptable to show and what are not— what questions we are allowed to ask and what we are not. If you’re a liberal and firmly believe in liberal ideas you may not understand what I’m talking about because you don’t have to worry about the consequences of breaking the social contract. There were a lot of true believers in my old church who didn’t know what I was talking about either.

From this place, we get to see the threat psychedelics pose to culture and society when we use them to help our “self” integrate rather than the “experience”. My own integration work (and the integration work at spirit house) is based onengaging with and embodying our unintegrated parts. We do that by actively exploring what we really think, feel and want and we can only do thatby actively questioning everything– including what our culture says is “good:”. This is the real threat psychedelics pose to society.

My concern with psychedelics then, is that the people in chargewill just shove them into a pre-made box of integrating “the experience” and “resolving trauma” as a way of avoiding these deeper questions of “self”. And when this happens, psychedelics will just be another tool the powers-that-be use to uphold the status quo and keep us in a state of suppression.

What is Psychedelic Integration?

Psychedelics are blowing up!  They occupy that sweet spot of being dangerous and edgy but just mainstream enough because Michael Pollan's research shows "good results".  WIth this explosion comes a career I never thought I’d see– the psychedelic integration specialist!  I wish I had been able to talk to one of those when I was a younger person exploring psychedelic worlds.  But alas, I had to make my own way or read what the psychedelic pioneers of the 1960’s and 1970’s said.     

What does a psychedelic integration specialist do? ​​They help the psychedelic traveler “integrate” the content of their psychedelic journey.  Sounds great right?  Someone who will be there to help you“process” painful memories or traumas, or help you remember beautiful insights.  Who wouldn’t want help from someone trained in psychedelic integration? 

Here’s where I want to ask you a couple questions– why does the psychedelic journey need to be “integrated?”  What is the content of the psychedelic journey if not things that have been inside of us all along?  If this is the case, then the psychedelic journey reveals a part of our self that has been “unintegrated” or fractured. What part of us is that?  

It's the part of us that our families, culture, society and ultimately we ourselves have beensuppressing for millenia. Usually it's the “bad” part– the part that doesn’t fit in with someone else’s idea of who we should be, what we should feel, or who makes a “good” member of our family or society. In my work, “Integration” is not so much of the psychedelic experience but of thissuppressed side.

And that’s one of the main issues I have with the modern psychedelic integration framework– it’s the psychedelic “experience” they try to help people integrate rather than the big picture of thefractured self. If we start to see the integration of theselfas the goal we now pull the rug out from under many of our concepts around life, relationships and society. More questions arise, and the nature and goal of integration get wild.

One way this shows up for me in in my dialogue with integration therapists. I’m always surprised when they advocate for their owncompartmentalizationin the therapeutic space. Isn’t compartmentalization theopposite of integration? How can you help someone integrate their fractured self if you are actively fracturing your own self in your relation with them?

Within the modern therapeutic framework, compartmentalization is a key to creating a “safespace” for vulnerable people. In this model, when the therapist’s shit arises in relation to a client, the therapist should compartmentalize to minimize the effect on the client. I get it– keep your own shit separate so they can have their own journey and process. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from psychedelics it's that those compartmentalizations areillusions. Integrating the“knowledge of self”that psychedelics teach means integrating the knowledge of theinterconnected fibers and knots that weave together all of life. In this model, if you want to help someone you better have your shit together, because it will (consciously or unconsciously) come out and entangle with everyone. If you don’t have your shit together (a nebulous concept I know!) then at least you should be in a community that actively engages in exploring your wounds and making them conscious.

This is also reflected in the type of training required to help people in the shamanic model.  In this model, you don’t learn your medicine by going to a weekend workshop.  You go out in nature and take the medicines.  You fast, pray, work with the spirits, and encounter your own wounds time and time again until something breaks inside of you and a little drop of spirit emerges.  When you have that little drop of spirit, maybe you can start to be of use to people. 

This “drop of spirit” is the result of our wounds transforming into medicine. Wanna help people?  Do the internal work, transform your wounds and find your medicine. 

Spirit, Duende and Solving Trauma

What the hell is spirit and why is it so important?  For many people, the idea of “spirit” seems backward— like a relic from our primitive past that has no place in modern society. This disagreement over the presence and value of spirit shows up when I talk to people who do healing work based in the medical model.

In the medical model, the goal is to help “resolve trauma” by addressing “core wounds”.  In this model, the goal is to resolve our trauma so that we can then lead a good life.  Trauma and wounds are the obstacles getting in the way– and trauma becomes a problem to be solved. 

In the spirit model I come from, trauma and pain are seen as inherent aspects of life, as much as the “good stuff” like love, joy and compassion. In my path, spirit emerges when we embrace and embody the totality of life, including the “bad stuff” like our pain and trauma.

This intersection of trauma and spirit reveals the path of duende  

From languagemagazine.com…

Duende or tener duende (“having duende”) can be loosely translated as having soul, a heightened state of emotion, expression, and heart… It comes from inside as a physical/emotional response to music. It is what gives you chills, makes you smile or cry as a bodily reaction to an artistic performance that is particularly expressive. 

The Spanish poet Federico García Lorca offers this romantic definition: “The duende, then, is a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought… It is not a question of ability, but of true, living style, of blood, of the most ancient culture, of spontaneous creation.” He suggests, “Everything that has black sounds in it has duende [i.e., emotional ‘darkness’] 

The “black sounds” come from a deeply felt connection to our trauma, to our pain. When the artist embodies duende, they connect to their pain and sorrow and turn these things into an ecstatic work of creation.  This is different than collapsing into our trauma, or shutting down.  With duende, we are asked to surrender to our darkness and open the door to spirit.
 

From writer Jules Evans…
 

Duende means those moments in artistic activity when something else takes over, when something speaks through you. It’s similar to the Muse or the angel, but these things come from some lofty height, while duende rises up from the depths, from the body and the groin, from the darkness, from death itself.

You can never be sure if duende will turn up, or if a performance will simply be flat and mechanical. That is the mystery – it is not easily replicable in randomised controlled trials. It is most manifest in live arts like spoken poetry, music or (for Lorca) bull-fighting. 

You could be in a bar, and everything is stale and flat, and then

La Niña de Los Peines got up like a madwoman, trembling like a medieval mourner, and drank, in one gulp, a huge glass of fiery spirits, and began to sing with a scorched throat, without voice, breath, colour, but…with duende. She managed to tear down the scaffolding of the song, but allow through a furious, burning duende, friend to those winds heavy with sand, that make listeners tear at their clothes with the same rhythm as the Negroes of the Antilles in their rite, huddled before the statue of Santa Bárbara.

Suddenly the god is there:

In all Arab music, dance, song or elegy, the arrival of duende is greeted with vigorous cries of ‘Allah! Allah!’ so close to the ‘Olé!’ of the bullfight, and who knows whether they are not the same? And in all the songs of Southern Spain, the appearance of the duende is followed by sincere cries of: ‘Viva Dios!’ deep, human, tender cries of communication with God through the five senses, thanks to the duende that shakes the voice and body of the dancer.

 

I hope that when you read these lines you can feel something stirring through you.  

When I was a kid going through a traumatic childhood, I knew nothing of “trauma” or “wounds”.  Nobody talked about that stuff.  I just knew that life sucked, the world was unfair and I was miserable.  I had no future to speak of, for it looked just as miserable as the present.  

But there were certain points when duende hit me.  I had no name for it back then, but it tore through me like an infection.  It wasn't separate from my pain but it wasn’t just my pain either.  One way it showed up was through dance– I started going to underground raves and the duende came through the syncopated rhythms.  I let go, and it felt like a force took me over and started dancing me.  I felt connected to something bigger than me that was moving through me. I had no words for it at this point.  Later I would call it the kundalini, or spirit, or axé.  Once I felt that I didn’t want anything else out of life.  It stirred a hunger in me to eat this spirit and at the same time to be consumed by it.

I could feel that this spirit was not separate from my pain or trauma. It was in fact my trauma that was fueling the growth of the spirit in my body and life.  I started crying more.  I would wail, scream, cry out and all of the pain of that led to a prayer for a deeper connection to spirit.

I have a visceral agony when I feel the numbing suppression of most modern interactions, devoid of authentic connection.  I feel the same agony when I hear people sincerely tell me of their system to solve the problem of trauma and suffering. While well meaning, it feels like not just a denial of the primal force of duende, but a denial of life itself.  Sometimes people hear me say things like this and it feels like I’m minimizing their pain, or trying to tell them that being traumatized is a good thing.  Neither of those things are true, but I get where their critique is coming from.  Sometimes I’m at a loss for how to engage in constructive dialogue with people who work in a trauma based model on these things.

I sometimes ask myself “how did I get here?”-- by here I mean this time and space in our culture where duende has no place.  If my goal in life was a constant communion with duende, what force inside drove me to a culture so devoid of authentic connection to the darker aspects of spirit? 

I have to answer that authentically– that the same part of culture that seeks to solve the problem of suffering exists in me, and I came here both because it's inside of me and it exists as something for me to fight, in my own dance of creation. 

A little post about the trickster spirit

I’m going to share about my relationship with one of my favorite spirits– Exu (pronounced eh-shoo).  I encountered him first in my capoeira training and later on in my trips to Brazil to study candomblé.  I haven't discussed him in my public writings because of the complications of me being a white man talking about my relationship with the spirit of a black spiritual tradition.  Many people think I don’t belong here, that even being in this space is an act of colonization and oppression.  Maybe they’re right.  But I also feel that in discussing him and his importance in my life I am honoring and feeding him, and feeding the gods is an important part of my spiritual practice.

In our culture, we tend to see things as black and white.  Liberal/conservative, pro-vax/ anti-vax, pro-choice/pro-life… the list is endless and most people know where they are within their respective group identity.  But in talking about Exu I will talk about how an act of oppression can also be an act of honoring and respect.  

The ability to hold multiple conflicting truths is one of the most important characteristics of Exu. He is the trickster spirit that is a part of all old folk tales and old spiritual traditions, and even though our ancestors tried to eliminate his presence through organized religion and then scientific rationalism, we can never fully get rid of him.  He’s a part of human nature.  

You are undoubtedly familiar with some of his aspects from modern spirituality or psychology.  His roles encompass what is described in spiritual circles as the ego.  Defense mechanisms, emotional suppression, the ability to hide traumas from our conscious brain, compartmentalization… these are parts of what I consider aspects of a superficial relationship to Exu.  At Spirit House, we call these “Exu contracts.”  When we have a superficial relationship with Exu, we create a contract with him whereby he “tricks” us into not embodying our suppressed parts.  The contracts come in the form of “If I do (x), I won’t have to feel bad”.  They usually have an origin in childhood trauma, and they are beautifully constructed defense mechanisms that actually help us survive to some extent.  The problem is that Exu never fully holds up his end of the bargain.  Eventually the contracts fail and whatever is hidden beneath the surface rises up.

To the person coming from a psychological perspective, this is all an internal process.  Psychologists have a much better explanation than me for all the ways in which this process works inside our heads.  But the psychological system fails in explaining how our internal processes are recreated externally.  

Relating to Exu as a spiritual force is important because it allows us to understand how our internal state is recreated in the outer world.  Exu becomes the bridge between the internal “me” and the world.  In my last blog post I talked about the concept of our self being more than just our internal processes– that the “self” as we know it is actually a part of other people and the world.  Exu forms a part of that structure and connection.

When we deepen our relationship with Exu by consciously relating to him as a spiritual force, we can also begin to see him and hear him speak through other people.   In candomblé this is called the manifestação da orixá (manifestation of the orixá), when a spiritual force momentarily takes over a person to deliver a message.    In a culture that is connected to the spirit world, the presence of spirits is a felt phenomenon, and one that is sorely lacking in our “advanced” culture.  The biggest trick Exu has played on us is the way in which he’s hidden the spirit world from our conscious awareness. 

If we consider Exu’s tricks to be his teachings, then another of his teachings is what I discussed earlier– the ability to hold contradictory truths.  I grew up a fundamentalist Christian, and to Christians, Exu is the devil.   When we have a healthy relationship with the trickster spirit, we are able to see the nuance in things.  We are aware of our capacity for self-deception.  We tend not to take ourselves too seriously.  When the monotheistic religions took this primal force of nature and turned it into the devil, it made people much easier to control.  Life became black and white.  Our minds became rigid and we became susceptible to fundamentalisms that sought to alleviate our fears by presenting an overly simplified view of the world and our place in it.  We gave up knowledge of the deeper recesses of our beings in exchange for a self-satisfied sense of moral/spiritual/scientific superiority, while at the same time suppressing a hunger arising from a deeper corner of our being.

If you’ve seen me in the clinic then you know that understanding and re-negotiating our relationship with Exu is the primary focus initially.  He is the builder and maintainer of the walls we use to disconnect from both our trauma and spirit through the force of the contracts or agreements we make with him. These contracts help us maintain our “great forgetting”, the powerful dissociative tendencies that maintain the walls between our suppressed trauma and everyday life. As long as we enlist his help in this process, he will forever be our antagonist.  

This is because if our relationship with him is based on forgetting, dissociating or suppressing, he will never hold up his end of the bargain.  It’ll work temporarily, which is why his magic is so enchanting.  But those suppressed traumas and feelings are still there.  The trickster part of him reveals itself when our wounds and traumas get triggered and he shows that he hasn’t held up his end of the bargain– at these times we have the ability to instead choose to embody and integrate them.  Exu stands there, showing us how we've engaged in self-deception and again offers us a deal– more self deception or the dive off the cliff into spiritual work.

The embodiment, or mediumship, of Exu becomes a moment by moment game of awareness that leads to playfulness and mischief.  We develop a fluidity in our movements and in life.  In capoeira, this is represented by the concept of malandragem– trapping or tricking our opponent into losing their balance or flow in the roda, while at the same time keeping our own flow intact.  When we lose our flow, when life or our opponent “catches” us, we are able to adapt quickly because we have worked through our sense of how things “are supposed to be” and are able to react to things as they are.

I’ve come to believe that bringing this relationship with Exu up to the surface is one of the most important things we can do to help heal our society.  And again, I’m aware that being a white spokesman for Exu brings a lot of baggage.  All I can point to in that regard is my own relationship with him and point people to my Brazilian mentors for people with deeper questions.

We Are All Mediums

In my last blog post, I talked about my definition of spirit.  In this one, I want to talk about spirits, and how spirits relate to mediumship.  

The idea of the existence of spirits is probably more challenging to the Western rationalist than the idea of “spirit”.  Spirits have come to mean anything from fairies to demons, gods, ancestors, plant spirits and much more.  In the Western mediumship field, there are any number of “mediums” who claim to speak with dead ancestors and provide comfort to the living from beyond the grave.

To the rationalist, this is all nonsense.  To them, mediums are charlatans that prey on people’s unresolved issues with dead relatives, absolving them of guilt or relieving them of grief for a fee.

I’d like to leave this common understanding of mediums to the side for now and talk about another type of mediumship with roots deeper in our archaic past.  This type of mediumship involves embodying an energy (or spirit) that we do not identify with in the “limited I” sense.  Most people view themselves in this “limited I” sense.  Our entire culture is predicated on constructing and maintaining this identity.  Some people call this the ego.  In this sense of self, there are strict boundaries around what “I” am and what “I” am not.  For most people in our culture, this self-sense is a fact of life.  But this “fact'' is a relatively recent phenomenon.  In many cultures, the “I” is more inter-relational.  People experience their identity within an interrelated structure of family, tribe or nation. The ego is still there, with just a looser definition.

In tantric Spiritual practices, gnostic forms of Christianity and shamanic practices one goal of the practice is to merge one’s sense of self or even replace one’s “limited I” self with another “higher” spirit.  I believe the reason many people have difficult experiences with plant medicines is because these medicines take the “limited I” sense of self and begin to smash it apart.  Our culturally-reinforced “I” self tries to resist this process and this resistance causes an immense amount of suffering.

In some wisdom traditions, the goal is the ultimate realization that none of this is actually “real” (including any sense of “self'')  but that truth is so terrifying to our ego-mind that it has to be approached in steps.  Those “steps” involve gradually replacing our individual consciousness with other spirits– this is the mediumship that interests me.  Before I get into a discussion of my own relationship with some of these spirits (coming soon!) I want to talk about how we are all mediums.

The mediumship most people practice every day is a mediumship of all the stories we learned about ourselves and the world as children.  In addition, we are also mediums for all of the stories and unhealed pains of our ancestors.  These stories are imprinted into us through family and cultural relationships and we then play them out in our everyday life.  Sometimes in a moment of clarity, people have the thought– “how did I get here?”-- into this relationship, into this job, into this way of being or thinking that just seemed to happen on its own.   It is because that independent self we desperately hold onto is nothing more than a vessel for stories.  These stories are the spirits of our ancestors, old relationships and childhood imprinting that we continue playing out in the world.  I like to talk about them as spirits because that makes them alive, and it creates a setting where we are able to play with them as entities that we can engage with and ultimately change.

The process of tracking that we use in Kundalini Mediumship is to reveal who these spirits are and what they are doing inside of us.  You can begin this process by being curious about what spirits are alive inside of you.  Who are they? What are they saying?  Where did they come from?  What emotionally impactful experiences in your life (or your ancestors’ lives) imprinted them into your body/mind/spirit?

Trauma is not the focus and its not at the core

There’s a lot of talk lately about the importance of having trauma-centered or trauma focused care. These therapies are based on the idea that the traumas we experience (especially as children) create lasting impressions on us and impact the way we interact with ourselves and the world. Coupled with this concept comes the idea of using therapy to address our “core wounds”.

While I agree wholeheartedly with much of this, I come at it from a different perspective that changes the whole dynamic. I don’t believe that trauma is the “center”. I don’t believe it should be the focus and I don’t believe we have wounds at our core. Though I do believe we must be trauma informed if we are going to be good caregivers.

My experience is that at our core or center is spirit. The disagreement about the nature and even the existence of spirit forms much of the conflict between Western materialist approaches to healing and shamanic/spiritual approaches.

Spirit is not something that can be measured in a lab or tested in a double blind placebo controlled study. For the Western materialists that means it’s not real. For them, truth is something that can be measured objectively and the presence and power of spirit is a purely subjective experience.

In the shamanic and spiritual worlds, the idea that everything is related to spirit means that everything is conscious to some degree and everything is in communication with everything else. There is an integrated whole-ness or holism at play. Disease or disharmony is viewed as an imbalance with spirit or the illusion of separateness— in some way the patient has blocked themselves from spirit and the disease or disharmony is expressing that disharmony to draw our attention to it so that it can be embodied and integrated.

Our society has mostly forgotten how to somatically process trauma, and due to that forgetting we have no other choice but to try to dissociate from it. We can only try to escape it, and then pass that repressed trauma onto our children. The scientists have already “discovered” this ancient truth— they call it epigenetics. The dissociation then creates another layer of sickness as we wall off the traumatized parts of us. We then unconsciously play out these repressed traumas in the wider world.

What the spirit-centered model posits is that there is a wholeness at our core, that as we integrate the wounded parts we re-establish the communication between the lost parts of ourselves. Interestingly, when we re-integrate those parts we can also enter into a deeper level of communion with the plant, animal and spirit worlds.

At the core of Kundalini Mediumship and Spirit House is that all of us can experience the ecstatic union with spirit that comes when we integrate the wounded parts of ourselves. This is at the heart of the spirit centered model of healing.

Interestingly, the imprints of this ecstatic union do show up on randomized clinical trials. That’s what’s so amazing about spirit! Anecdotal evidence from psilocybin trials shows people having a sense of euphoria, connection and compassion months or years after their dose. The scientists don’t call it spirit, they call it rewiring brain chemistry or releasing endorphins.

As long as the scientists just view the process internally, they will miss a deeper part of this process. I once knew a psychiatrist who described his work as holistic. What I came to understand was that he viewed his patients as a whole and treated them as a whole being, but separate from him. He was missing out on the deeper threads of spirit and trauma that connected him, his patients, and the world.

I’ll talk about my own experience of those deeper threads in another blog post!

Authenticity and the curse of the empath

Have you ever lost a relationship because you started showing someone the real you and they couldn't handle it? It's easy to feel like your job is to dance around someone else's wounds and unintentionally triggering someone means you did something wrong.

Our emotionally backwards society teaches us how to be inauthentic in our relationships, how to show an acceptable face to the world and to the people close to us. How to maintain the illusion of being a "good" person. The repercussions of this are devastating.

In Kundalini Mediumship, we use a technique called "tracking" to uncover how this inauthenticity is physically, emotionally and energetically wired into our body and how this plays out in our relationships with others.

Our entanglements with other people can be seen as cords of energy with 3 distinct layers. The innermost layer is spirit, which is the place of love and compassion we have towards others. The next layer out is our wound. The wound is made of all of our unhealed karmas and trauma, and it is filled with unembodied rage, shame, fear, grief, etc. Many of us get entangled with others from our wound. This entanglement happens because our wound is trying to get our attention, to get us to integrate and embody it. The reason we do not integrate and embody is because of the protective actions of the outermost layer of our cord-- the wall.

The wall is one of the most intriguing, complicated and nuanced energetic structures in existence. Its function is the unending, impossible task of separation. All the wisdom traditions speak of inter-connection and unity as the primary structure of the universe, and yet the function of the wall is to help us feel as if we can disconnect. When we use the wall to disconnect, we are trying to escape the pain in our wound. For many people, it (unfortunately) works just well enough to allow them to function in our unembodied society. Many people are stuck in a daily cycle of wound triggering and dissociation.

It's only when we hit rock bottom, when we get sick and tired of our defense mechanisms and wall maintenance, that the true spiritual work of wound embodiment begins.

When this happens, we begin to see how our entanglements with others are an expression of our wound/wall structure. This structure is held together by contracts or agreements we make with our wall, in the form of what I call the empath contract and the narcissist contract. These contracts form the basis of many of our relationships with others.

• The empath contract says "If I take care of/manage/fix the wound in someone else I won't have to deal with my wound".

• The narcissist contract says "If someone else takes care of/manages/fixes my wound I won't have to deal with my wound".

Many people reading this probably identify with the empath contract, but I'll tell you this. They are the same damn contract! The empath who spends their life trying to fix or please other people will eventually resent those who don't do the same for them, who don't play the game. Eventually the resentment will build up enough to create a pole switch whereby our accepted and rejected identities switch (more on that in another blog post!). Either way, both contracts guide us to become a victim in pursuit of a perpetrator.

In Kundalini Mediumship, we try not to use the language of fixing, because there is nothing broken. We use the word "embodiment" because we believe the goal is not to fix our wound but to embody it, to give it a voice by feeling into the darkest corners of our being.

Where does this all lead and why am I writing this?

Integrating the skill of tracking in the real world means being authentic in our intimate relationships. It means telling others what we want and how we feel. It means cutting through empath/narcissist games that are the enemy of intimacy and connection. We do this not to get something from others, not even to get them to listen to us or understand us, but to embody the parts of ourselves we've cut off. But time and time again I've seen the same dynamic arise. I'll walk you through it...

1. You start being real about your (difficult, painful) feelings with someone close to you.
2. By revealing your wound (instead of hiding it under the wound/wall game) it will activate the other person's wound. If the other person is willing to go with you on this journey, congratulations! You will now have a deeper, more meaningful relationship. However, if that person is not willing to enter into this space...
3. The other person will feel attacked and it will feel as if you are hurting them. They will try to get you to stop by using the narcissist's contract-- "I am hurt and it is your fault. You are not managing my wound, you are doing the wrong thing!"
4. At this point your own empath contract will be activated. The people closest to you have the deepest insight into your wounds and triggers. If they are deep in the game, they will use everything they know about pushing your buttons to get you to stop pushing on their wound. They may use truths, lies or half-truths-- anything and everything to get you to stop activating their wound when revealing yours. In the shamanic view, this is a case of the poison being the medicine. A person deep in the narcissist contract can show you where your wounds lie, and if you can keep embodying them with someone who is playing out the narcissist contract, you'll eventually get to...
5. They will cut you out of their life, and they'll blame you.

For me, this has been the most difficult place to be. I have a deep hunger for intimate connection, and at the same time I have no patience for playing games around wounds, by putting on a little face or pretending things are the way someone wants them to be.

This type of work is risky. In order to get more meaningful relationships, we risk superficial ones that may also give us other benefits like companionship, money, safety or security...

I've also seen that these changes don't usually happen overnight, and many times I've seen people tear down their walls only to see new ones come up in their place.

If you want to see what this looks like in a (relatively) safe way, this is one of the things we do in the Foundations Classes!

Psychedelics and our Bipolar Culture

In my last post, I addressed some of my concerns about how our cultural sickness impacts how we use psychedelics. In this post, I want to talk about a related issue.

It revolves around the bipolar nature of our culture. Before I describe what I mean by that, let me just say it is related to but not specifically about what is known as bipolar disorder in modern psychiatry. In psychiatry, bipolar disorder is a diagnosis applied to people with severe mood swings that oscillate between intense mania and depression. There's a whole set of diagnostic criteria that trained psychiatrists use to diagnose someone with that disorder, and it's not my goal to discuss the specifics of that here.

Our culture tends to view people with psychiatric disorders as experiencing their illness solely within the confines of their own individual bodies. This reflects the modern Western notion that individuals exist independently as distinct and autonomous "selves." However, many indigenous cultures view the self in a more expansive way. In such worldviews, there are many layers of the "self", ranging from the purely personal self (as we see ourselves in Western culture) to extended "selves" that connects us to the wider human community, the earth, and even to the spirit world and ancestral world. In this way, the interior, personal "self" reflects and reveals structures from the outer "selves". If we view sickness in this holistic context, an emotionally or spiritually sick person is also manifesting a cultural or societal illness.

When I say that we live in a bipolar culture, I'm referring to the "sickness" that manifests as a lack of nuanced understanding and hence compassion for ourselves. Most people have a "good" side of the self that they want to reveal to the world-- this is the side they fervently hope represents the truth of who they are at their deepest level. But the effort of maintaining and projecting this "good" side necessarily walls off their "bad" side. This "bad" side is the part of us that most of us learned at an early age to repress and cut off. This bad side eventually "acts out" and then becomes suppressed again in a cycle of shame. This process creates the foundation for many types of emotional, spiritual and physical diseases. The basis of tracking work in Kundalini Mediumship is therefore to uncover and embody the bad self, and then to integrate it with the "good self".

This "bipolar sickness" is a form of rigid fundamentalism. In the fundamentalist church I grew up in, they taught us a clear set of rules based on this kind of bipolarity. A favorite saying in my church was "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak". They taught us to strive for a type of unattainable spiritual perfection. To be like Jesus meant to deny and even hate the body, as its sinful desires would lead us to hell. I see the same thing playing out in our culture right now, but instead of trying to be like the unattainable Jesus, the emphasis is on always doing or saying the right thing according to one's cultural group, or socio/political identity. This entails suppressing the "bad" self that has thoughts or ideas that run counter to the feelings of the "good" self.

So how does all this relate to our current relationship to psychedelics? Right now, there is a lot of corporate money flowing into psychedelics as "the next big thing". These interests have a financial incentive to create a narrative around these substances as incredible miracle drugs-- to prop up their "good side". And of course they have a "good side", like we all do.

But psychedelics are nuanced and complicated beings, just like us. They have the potential to do harm as well as to do good, especially in the hands of well-meaning but untrained facilitators. The darker side of these substances will eventually reveal themselves and here's my take on how it will go:

At some point the media machine will take notice of the harm, and realize there is money to be made selling the narrative of the "bad side" of psychedelics. The media loves to use fear to sell itself.

There is a pretty predictable way these news stories are written...

Jane was an intelligent, mature 30-something woman who had read about using psychedelics to treat her periodic anxiety [Jane of course is the real life everywoman that the news reader can identify with and project themselves onto]. She signed up for a session with her psychedelic therapist and began taking regular doses of psilocybin. After a few psilocybin "trips" Jane went through a psychotic break, hearing voices telling her that life was not worth living. She had never experienced something like that before. She was in and out of psychiatric hospitals for 6 months and she appeared to become stable, eventually returning to normal family life. Then one day, out of the blue, she killed herself.

There will of course be more nuance and detail in the story, so that the everywoman reader can emotionally connect herself even more deeply with Jane.

But the point is this: the media/cultural message currently surrounding psychedelics will change. It will be "discovered" that psychedelics are not the wonder drugs that solve all our problems. They will once again be associated with dark forces that threaten our sanity. But the truth is somewhere in the middle of these extremes, and sometimes encompasses both ends. And until we acknowledge the complicated truths of our human experience, we will not be ready to understand the depths of what psychedelics can teach us.

The Psychedelic Boom

Psychedelics are getting big, and they're poised to get even bigger. I wanted to share with you a little about my own journey with them, and some of my internal struggles with them that are now being played out in the wider world.

First off, I owe a great deal to them for my own emotional, spiritual and even physical development. By "them" I am referring to mushrooms, ayahuasca and even marijuana. When I was a teenager, they helped me crack open some doors and experience something beyond the daily misery I was immersed in. Most of my experimental friends were interested in them to get high. I can't deny that I loved the high too! But for me there was something more. Something I couldn't name. Anyone who has experienced psychedelics knows that language (especially the english language) is poor at describing the experience.

Not only was the English language unhelpful, so was the culture I grew up in. My friends who were using these substances to "get high" or escape couldn't relate to the experiences I was talking about. Amongst people In the "respectable" world like teachers, preachers and other authority figures, drugs were for losers who had no other options in life. According to them, anything I experienced with these substances was a "hallucination" with no connection to the real world. Any transformations or revelations I experienced with them were viewed as mental distortions or psychosis.

What I was coming face to face with, though I had no concept for it, was the lack of a socio/cultural framework for processing and interpreting my experiences with these substances. Our culture has no tradition to rely on, no wisdom passed down from grandmothers and grandfathers about how to use these substances safely and productively. I had no mentors to talk to about what I was experiencing. So as I set off on my healing journey I became like a ship at sea trying to navigate treacherous waters without a map.

Eventually I found some guidance. The first pieces of guidance I received were from the major figures of the 60's counterculture. Notably-- Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and Richard Alpert (better known as Ram Das). I don't have the time or space to dive into who these people were and what all that they meant to me (that'll have to be another blog post!)-- but I will say I devoured everything about them I could get my hands on. Their writings became the first pieces of the map being constructed in my soul.

Though both the Pranksters and Ram Das took different journeys, they both started out at the same place-- expanding their mind with LSD. They also ended up at the same place-- that mind-altering substances, while incredibly helpful, could become a crutch. People could become dependent on a substance for a "peak experience" and could spend their life trying to recreate that peak experience. Instead of opening the door to the spirit world over and over again with psychedelics, they came to the conclusion that the most important lesson from psychedelics was to teach us about the structure of the door itself.

Nowadays, amongst people in the "medicine" community, the goal revolves around "integration". Instead of chasing after the "peak experience", the goal is to bring something back for ourselves and our community. This frequently involves processing and releasing trauma-- individual, familial and collective. In this sense, processing our repressed trauma is the door that leads to a fuller life.

In the vein of my own process of integration, I want to discuss the trauma of our societal disconnect from spirit, and how that trauma is perpetuated in the current psychedelic climate.

Nowadays, the people dominating the discussion are psychiatrists, academics and researchers. With them come the corporations and pharmaceutical companies. On the opposing side are what podcaster Tim Ferris calls the "drum and feather crowd.", of which I would claim as my tribe!

For the psychiatrists and academics, these substances are used to "treat disorders"-- things like depression and anxiety. That is a wonderful effect of psychedelic use, but there is a bigger point being missed. The deeper potential of psychedelics is that they can help us uncover what author Martín Prechtel calls the "indigenous self". The indigenous self is what is buried underneath all the layers of culturally-bound dissociation and ancestral trauma. It is the deeply felt knowledge of the interconnectedness of all things and is the gateway to spirit. Spirit is the felt sense of divine intelligence, wisdom and compassion, and for those of us in the "drum and feather" crowd, spirit is the force behind all healing.

Unfortunately spirit cannot be measured, and if it can't be measured or studied then it has no relevance for the academic crowd. I feel that much of the sickness in our world is due to our individual and collective traumatic disconnect from spirit. And this becomes problematic when the academics treat people without treating their own spiritual disconnect. This disconnect is itself a layer of trauma, unwittingly transmitted by the guides in our current psychedelic culture.

I had a vision about this from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. There's a temple room where if one holds up the staff of Ra at the right time of day, the sun's light will hit the headpiece of the staff and illuminate where the ark is buried. There's a medallion that instructs how high the staff should be-- 6 kadams high. The nazis construct the staff, and start digging where the light illuminates.

In this context, the medallion and staff are the psychedelics. The light is the healing power of spirit. The temple is our ceremonial space, and the place the light illuminates is the wounded part of our body/mind/spirit matrix.

However, there is a problem! Indiana Jones knows that the nazis don't have all of the information. On the other side of the medallion, it says to remove one kadam from the height of the staff to honor God. When Indiana Jones goes to the the temple room with the staff of the correct height and realizes where the ark is buried, he exclaims that the nazis are "digging in the wrong place!" In this context, Indiana Jones has access to knowledge of God and Spirit, and because of that he knows the correct place to dig (in the unconscious) to find the treasure.

Unfortunately, though I don't believe that academics are nazis, I do believe that they are digging in the wrong place. Without the "respect for God" or spirit they will not find the treasure they are looking for.

To be fair, I also believe that those of us in the "drum and feather" crowd have much to learn from the researchers and academics. We also have our issues! What needs to happen is a synergy and co-operation between our 2 worlds. But right now, my concern is that the researchers have the money and the megaphone and are dictating the way this current revolution is happening.

Tracking Portland's Chaos

I live in Portland, the epicenter of one of the current conflicts gripping our civilization. It's very interesting that there are 2 totally opposing views of "what's happening in downtown Portland".

On one side, the feds are instigating brutality on peaceful protestors. On the other side, the federal government is finally trying to instill law and order in a place of violent anarchy.

What's most interesting to me, and how we try to make sense of things from the Kundalini Mediumship point of view is not to try to figure out which point of view is "right". What we try to do (through tracking) is understand the personal and cultural wounds and myths that lead a person to adopt their particular view of things. 

When tracking, we pay attention to the 3 levels (wall, wound and spirit) and try to understand which level a person is speaking from. The wall is the outermost level. It speaks in externalities, generalities and polarities. The arguments being had are mostly wall arguments-- The problem in the world is because of that other person (externality) or I'm on the side of righteousness and truth and the other side is wrong, misled, stupid, etc. (polarity).

As long as we engage with others through the wall, and try to change their mind by engaging with their external view, we'll be caught in a never ending loop.

For anyone reading this, I'm going to give you a challenge! Find someone who has a completely different point of view on this topic (or any other topic). Talk to them and try to go within and underneath the external issue.

What we're listening for, and trying to feel into is the underlying wound that is informing their view. What pain or hurt is the external issue pressing on for them? What pain or hurt is being pressed on for you as you listen to them? Underneath and within that wound is their story-- the rich terrain that encompasses their personal karma, ancestral stories and much more. When we get into arguments at the wall level, what people interpret from others is that their story is wrong. That's why we get defensive. Stories are never wrong, but they do limit us and keep us in boxes.

When we get emotionally triggered by another person, it can be seen as an unhealed and unintegrated aspect of ourselves reaching out to them to wake us up. In a sense, the box we've created starts falling apart.

This tracking work is very tricky! But it's an essential component of Kundalini Mediumship. 

A tracking class is coming very soon. Until then, good luck!

Why I'll Never Be a Guru

When I was a teenager, I started having strange experiences I couldn’t understand. I later learned that those experiences were the kundalini energy waking up inside me. Those experiences were the birth of what became Kundalini Mediumship.

Because the energy is primal and energetic and works at levels beyond everyday consciousness, its necessary to have a structure or framework for processing it. When I first experienced it, I had no idea what was happening! No teachers or mentors had an explanation. I desperately wanted to construct meaning, purpose and clarity around it. Much of that structure I learned (at least initially) from Siddha Yoga— the organization started by my guru Swami Mutktanada. I can’t stress how important it was for me to have that organization and his teachings. I was able to find a lot of clarity and guidance around something that was incredibly powerful but also very unstable.

I also can’t stress enough how destroyed I was when I learned about his abuse of power (along with the organization’s cover-ups). Its pretty easy to read accounts of both Muktananda’s intense spiritual power and his horrific abuse. If you’re so inclined I encourage you to read about it. There’s lots of info online.

Muktananda’s teachings are rooted in Kashmir Shaivism and Tantra— two intertwined spiritual sects of what most people in our country simply refer to as Hinduism. The traditions, knowledge and spirit within these traditions run very very deep! I’m not going to try to explain much beyond a tiny fragment of them. Again, if you want to learn, much of the info is available online.

The one piece I do want to address is the guru-disciple relationship. In this tradition, the disciple is encouraged to surrender his ego and his being to the guru, so that the guru can aid the disciple in transforming his karma— all the patterns of behavior and thought that prevent him from fulfilling the goal of liberation from the cosmic wheel of suffering.

In this model, the disciple is limited by his lack of self-knowledge. He doesn’t know what is holding him back. He is trapped repeating karmic patterns like a hamster on a wheel. The guru, who is more advanced spiritually, understands the disciple’s limitations far better. To follow the guru’s command to the letter is the highest, most pure act a disciple can perform. It’s somewhat analogous to the precepts of Alcoholics Anonymous. First, the alcoholic (or disciple) has to recognize they are powerless to change their situation, then they have to surrender to a higher power. In this case, the higher power is the guru.

It doesn’t take a genius to see what happened when the guru movement came to America in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Watch the netflix doc Wild Wild Country and you can get a taste of it. That show is about Osho, not my guru Muktananda, but there are similar themes.

When I encountered Muktananda’s teachings I jumped in 100%. I bought the whole package. I was in! His teachings explained everything that was happening to me. It gave me a structure to process the kundalini energy and it gave me a roadmap for how to move forward. A huge part of that was my surrender and devotion to the guru.

When I heard about his abuses I was destroyed. I felt abandoned. It took me years to reconcile all the good I had received with all the bad I knew what was happening. A part of reconciling those two things was that I gave up the guru model. I kept the devotion and surrender— but for me it is a devotion and surrender to Spirit or God rather than a human.

So it was surprising to me that I recently became intrigued with a guru within that tradition! He spoke very eloquently about deeper things within that tradition that I felt I had missed or only skimmed my first time through. He seemed open to questions. I was hooked! I wanted to learn more. And yet the guru issue still nagged at me, and I felt an internal conflict.

One thing that I have encountered over and over again is that no matter how clear a teacher is, no matter how open a vessel for spirit they are, they are still bound by their own perceptions and biases. There have been many times when a teacher corrected me about something and I knew inside that they were right. It felt like they blasted through my walls and connected me to an internal truth I was hiding from myself.

But here have been many other times when I felt that their “truth” about my issues was twisted up around their own wound or belief system— what Carl Jung would call a shadow projection. I can’t tell you how many times I have internalized someone else’s truth as my own when it wasn’t. When we are disconnected from our own truth it is so easy to accept someone else’s words as true especially when they are in a position of power over us. It can be hard to evaluate what is our thought and what is theirs. At this level our cords, energies, thoughts and beliefs are entangled with another’s.

When I encountered this guru from the Tantric/Shaivite tradition, I brought up my issues with the guru model and he did the same things I’m now familiar with when I bring up issues to a guru. He didn’t really answer my questions— instead turning them back on me and pointing to my issues. This is the classic response from someone in that model. There is no issue within the guru, it is only in the disciple. To them there is no entanglement.

I wholeheartedly believe that at other times and other places this model worked. But in my heart I know it doesn’t work (at least for me) and a different model is emerging.

A fundamental premise of Kundalini Mediumship is that we are all interwoven. When I teach Kundalini Mediumship bodywork and tracking I start with the premise that any issue a client brings up has to be felt and understood inside the practitioner. We have to see other people as reflections of ourselves. We have to listen with an open heart— ready to speak uncomfortable things as much as listen to uncomfortable things. And above all, we have to approach each person from this place of interwoven cords.

Swami Muktananda

The proper attitude of a disciple to his Guru

Our shadow is a distorted projection of our internal wounds and beliefs

Coronavirus, Death and Doorways

In this post, I want to define and discuss several inter-related concepts

The first is our indigenous self, something that is a part of every human.   The most common definition of indigeous refers to the native peoples whose ancestors were here in the Americas before European colonizers came. Before I discuss a different definition, I want to honor and acknowledge that I come from the dominator European culture.  My goal is not to change the definition of indigenous, but to add to its meaning.  To do that is tricky, because of the history of people in my position appropriating things from those my culture has colonized.  But I believe that in order to truly heal and make reparations towards the native people in this land, my people have to remember the indigenous nature inside of us.  

The term indigenous at its core means belonging to a particular place, and in this case I'm referring to the indigenous identity we all share as a child of the earth, born from spirit and now inhabiting flesh, bone and blood.  This indigenous-ness is an intuitive knowledge that we are intricately connected to this planet, each other and all things.  When our ancestors started the process of forgetting the knowledge of the interconnecting web, they started the process of othering.  At the deepest level, othering creates a psychopathic "me" who is the only person that exists.  This crafty illusion is what permits us to harm each other, the planet and ultimately ourselves.  

There are 2 more inter-related concepts that are connected to indigenous knowledge.  The first involves ancestors, and the second involves relationship.

Right now, the coronavirus is creating many ancestors.

Many people are dying, especially in the older generation.  They are dying alone.  If there's one thing that wisdom traditions around the world agree on, its that death is a very important time energetically.  The way we engage with death has repercussions not just for ourselves but for our family and the world.  Most people in our culture (under the illusion of separateness) try to forget about death.  They build walls up around it to try to numb or suppress the fact that death is coming.  Then nature throws something like the coronavirus in our face!

When approaching death, many people come face to face with unhealed and unresolved issues.  If they are unable to resolve those things at death, those issues manifest in their descendants. Indigenous cultures understand the links between ancestors, those in the present day, and those yet to come.  All of those beings are seen as woven into a living matrix.  Scientists have discovered this same thing.  They call it epigenetics.

Our culture is very individualistic, and we tend to think we succeed or fail on our own.  Indigenous cultures recognize the interdependence among living people, ancestors and other spirits, plants and animals and the earth herself.  In order for people and society to be in good health, we must be in right relationship with these other beings.

Right now, spirit is calling us to work with our ancestors.

Even if you have not been affected personally by the coronavirus, I'm going to ask you to set up some time each day to connect with your ancestors.  If you look inside yourself, I'm sure you can see aspects of the trauma they carried.  If you can't see it, think about some of the unresolved issues you're still dealing with and find out if your parents or grandparents dealt with the same thing.  If you don't know much about your parents or grandparents, ask other relatives to tell you some stories.

This may be difficult, as our culture tells us to let go of old stories.  But whatever we hide from or try to escape from will eventually come back to us.  If you do manage to uncover old family stories, I'll encourage you to listen to what they are trying to teach you about yourself and what you are going through in the present moment.

Lastly I will encourage you to incorporate the indigenous methods of ceremony and prayer.

Ceremony can be personal or communal.  For this ceremony, I'll encourage you to spend some time alone speaking to and listening to your ancestors.  If you can, take some time in the morning when you can just be by yourself.  Sit by your altar if you have one.  Light a candle.  Ask your ancestors if there are any unresolved issues still haunting your family that you can help with.  Ask them if they need forgiveness, or if you need to forgive them.  If you don't hear anything back, don't worry.  It takes time to learn how to do this if you've never done it before. 

If you don't resonate with this at the familial level, I'll encourage you to do this at the mythic level.  I come from a mixed heritage of Jews and Irish Catholics.  There are plenty of cultural myths passed down from each side regarding suffering, but also of survival and resilience.  

If you can't connect on either the familial or mythic level, I'll encourage you to do this on the collective level.  There are many people dying alone and scared right now.  Reach out to them in your ceremony.  Tell them they matter.  Listen to the grudges they had, and also what gave their life meaning and filled them with love.  Let them teach you about death and forgiveness.  

On the deepest level, what we feel or resonate with when doing this ceremony for others reflects our relationship with ourselves.  At the heart of indigenous knowledge is this-- our relationship with others is a mirror for our relationship with ourselves.  This is a complicated idea in practice, and it doesn't mean we need to avoid conflict. It means taking an honest look at our external relationships as a mirror of our internal self.

Please reach out with any thoughts or questions!

Leaving Kwan Yin Healing Arts Center

After 9 years, I'm leaving Kwan Yin Healing Arts Center for good.

As of July 20th 2020, I will be working only at my new place-- Spirit House.  I've really loved being at Kwan Yin.  I'll miss my co-workers and the beautiful community, but opening up my own place has been a dream of mine for many years.   

This is obviously an intense time for our country and the planet, and that's a part of the reason why the full move to Spirit House is occurring now.  The type of healing we are being asked to do requires a deep dive into our karmic cords and patterns.  That type of work requires a lot of space and time.  

Individual sessions at Spirit House are designed for that.  Each session will last from 90 minutes to 2 hours.  You will have access to a meditation room for as long as you like after sessions, and I will work with you on developing your meditation practice.  You will be able to work with hapé (tobacco snuff).  

We'll also have classes, where you can learn about the tracking techniques we use to understand the karmic patterns we've inherited from our karma and our ancestors.  You'll be able to learn music, rhythms and movement and bodywork techniques.  All of this is so that you develop your own relationship to spirit, so that you are able to transform the patterns that are holding you back and engage with a spirit-led life path.

Lastly, we'll continue to work with the practitioners of the indigenous traditions that make up the roots of Kundalini Mediumship.  That means trips to Brazil and Peru, as well as bringing people up here.  Obviously, much of that will have to wait until travel restrictions are relaxed.

One major change is that I will no longer be directly billing insurance.  I recognize that will be a challenge for some people, but this type of work does not fit into the standard 45-minute insurance model.  Acknowledging the reality of this has been the toughest part of my decision.

But, there is a work-around!  If you have out-of-network acupuncture benefits with your insurance company you can be reimbursed for a portion of the visit.  If you're unsure about this process, I can discuss it with you.

Don't forget to visit out Facebook page for more info and deeper discussions.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts or questions and I hope to see you there!

Working with my Ancestors: A Story of Support

By Elaina McCormick, BS 

As a child I was aware the western culture in the USA honored those who passed away at funerals and memorials. As a young adult I learned that East Asian cultures have rituals for honoring their ancestors on a regular basis, as do many other cultures. In January of 2011, I was introduced to the healing field of Family Constellation by Michael Gurevich, MD. I discovered at his Family Constellation workshop that humans could work with their ancestors to heal past and present day wounds from traumatic events. Wounds experienced by humans can be metaphorically understood as knots. Unknotted string is quite easy to work with, in comparison, knotted string must first be unknotted before it can be placed into a desired shape or direction. Wounds act as knots, or magnetic roadblocks, something that must be healed before a person can move forward in the direction of their happiest and greatest potential. I use magnetic roadblock as a metaphor as well because we cannot simply take a detour around the roadblock, it stays in front of us (in a variety of physical shapes and forms, but linked to the same knot) no matter how many times we jump over it and stumble. The magnetic roadblock knotted wound will dissolve when given the healing it needs. In Family Constellation work, often one wound (one knot) is worked with at a time. 

In 2019, during my own constellation with Family Constellation Facilitator, Suzi Tucker, I was introduced to a powerful way of being supported by my ancestors. My lineage includes Jewish, Irish, English, and a small percentage of East Asian heritages. This constellation was for a knot (wound) connected to my Jewish ancestry. As we observed and felt the awareness of my knot, we learned that my knot was connected to an event that traumatized my great grandmother on the North American Continent. My great grandmother was the first of my Jewish grandmother’s lineage to immigrate from Eastern Europe to North America. All of my ancestors older than my great grandmother finished their lives in Eastern Europe.  

Thus, when a representative for my great-great grandmother (she lived out her entire life in Eastern Europe) was present in the field, she was whole and unaffected by the pain myself, my mother, my grandmother, and my great grandmother were all feeling. A huge part of healing is remembering. As defined in The Apple Dictionary, “[To] Remember” means “[to] be able to bring to one’s mind an awareness of someone or something that one has seen, known, or experienced in the past.” There are brilliant, strong, and supportive memories in our ancestors, and it is our opportunity to remember them. My great-great grandmother holds within her the powerful knowing of what it feels like to be a woman who is respected by all genders around her and feels safe in her own home. This particular positive strength within was forgotten in my maternal Jewish linage during a traumatic event on the North American continent. 

By looking into the eyes of the representative for my great-great grandmother, I saw the ocean in her eyes. I saw the strength, flexibility, vast greatness, and unyielding power of the ocean and the infinite access the ocean provides. I witnessed support stronger than any human alive, a support that showed up in nature and in my ancestors. For my great-great grandmother’s specific strings on this very topic were no knotted at all, they were straight, mobile, and free to function at their greatest potential. To help heal my own emotional pain (of which included intense fears related to less intense experiences I had in my own lifetime, this added intensity to my fears came from those before me who were not aware of the healing avenues that were brought to my attention in 2011) I look above to my great-great grandmother anytime I need to remember what it feels like to be safe and supported with an abundance of self confidence and self respect. 

More specifically, I have some exercises I do to continue the healing process that was ignited during my family constellation: When interacting with my mom, I look above her head, as well as beyond her (even on the phone), to see my great-great grandmother there, always and forever a strong supporter of her descendants. Whenever I look to my great-great grandmother I remember what it feels like to be healthy, safe, and whole, for she has always held that memory in her being, and always will. At times, I also call upon her support when speaking with my dad, too, because I have observed that he has found great comfort in being my mom’s husband, as well as my grandparent’s son-in-law. To honor and remember my great-great grandmother’s Russian heritage, I found a beautiful porcelain painted doll, a traditional piece of art in Russia, which I keep by my computer as a lovely visual reminder of the support I have from my great-great grandmother. 

I continue to remember the tool of following one of my ancestral lines back to the relative who was unaffected by the specific trauma that started in one of their descendants. Anytime I am doing a healing practice of my own, sitting at my alter in my home, if I stumble upon a trauma pattern that I share with my ancestors, I first ask spirit how much of the lineage is affected by the trauma. Once an answer is received, I go an additional generation further back in my lineage and ask those healthy, strong, unaffected ancestors to support me and all my ancestors who are affected by the knotted pain of the respective past trauma. This layer of support adds leverage to the journey of healing that can feel lonely or dark, even though it is a path to our inner light. Journeying through the darkness to the light feels much more manageable when I remember the support myself and my ancestors have from the older generations who came before the specific traumatic event that happened in my linage. May the journey to global healing through the direct path of inner healing be fraught with beauty and connection.      

Many blessings to all. 

Thank you. 

Treatments during coronavirus

As of today, I will continue seeing people for healing work at Kwan Yin and at Spirit House (spirithousepdx.com).

We are taking strict measure at both places regarding social distancing and hygiene.

The reason I'm staying open is that during times of panic and fear the door to the spirit world is wide open.  The (mostly unconscious) defense mechanisms that prevent us from accessing spirit have literally been stripped away.  

When the fear of death and the potential loss of what we hold dear is near, we have a tremendous opportunity to grow into areas we didn't even know were there.  The walls we build to get away from death start crumbling, and underneath those walls is our spirit calling out to us!

This is why I'll be working for now, until there's a mandate to close up shop.

Of course if you have any risk factors I'll encourage you to stay home.

Please reach out if you have any thoughts or questions.

"Letting go" doesn't work

When a new patient comes to see me in the clinic, they frequently say they want to “let go” of negative thoughts patterns or unpleasant emotions. These thoughts and feelings are seen by most people as things that get in the way of living the life they want to lead. And a lot of pop-psychology and pop-spirituality encourages this “letting go”. But as nice as it would be to just let those things go, in the long run it doesn’t work.

In the short term it can work, and it certainly helps people get through their day without having to a lot of emotional heavy lifting. But it is a mechanism of dissociation, and whatever we’ve dissociated from is never truly gone. “Letting go” creates an illusion of separation that prevents us from fully going into our feelings, which is the only way we can work really work through them. There are many ways we try to deflect or avoid our feelings, but “letting them go” is unfortunately very prevalent in a lot of spiritual communities and I believe it needs attention.

Here’s how “letting go” works. Someone or some thing triggers a painful memory or difficult feeling. And then our defense mechanism kicks in (what I usually refer to as the wall). The wall is the mechanism we’ve constructed to shield us from our wounded self. It encompasses the many dissociative processes we’ve developed to avoid feeling our inner wounds. The “letting go” voice is a particularly devious dissociative process. It sometimes appears to be a “spiritually advanced” inner voice that tells us we should not be bothered by such things, that we should we spiritually or emotionally evolved enough to just let go of the pain we’re feeling. Sometimes it tells us there’s no good reason to be upset, or angry, so just breathe and let it go. A lot of times it says that anger or other uncomfortable feelings don’t do anything positive, and we only want to cultivate positivity, right? Maybe after some practice we get better at “letting go” and after an emotional flare-up we get back to our emotionally balanced self.

But this is a mask and we are deceiving ourselves. The main thing I’ve been taught over and over again by my mentors is that whatever we react to externally is really only shining a light on an internal process. If we choose to “let go” of an emotion that arises during conflict we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to heal the internal wound that is being triggered. In fact, our internal wounding will consistently bring about external situations to trigger us. Every triggering interaction we have is our own wound crying out for us to notice and be present with it. By “letting go” of emotions that arise during these episodes we are only pushing off their resolution till another day. Eventually a situation will come up again that triggers those same emotions, and then we’ll have to calm ourselves down again and “let them go.” It’s a vicious cycle.

The function of our wall is to prevent us from feeling the wound that is triggered by external situations. From the wall’s perspective, the problem is always outside of us. “There’s no need to get angry at my boss, that’s her issue” is what the wall may say when our boss yells at us and we get angry back at her. Paradoxically, it functions in the same way as a voice that says “My boss is the reason I’m so miserable” when she yells at us. In both cases, the wall is deflecting us from the internal work necessary to work through the internal wound that the boss is triggering. Even though they look radically different, each response is a manifestation of dissociation. This is why the wall is so tricky. It may bring us to radically different places, but it’s ultimate goal is to get us to avoid our internal self.

This is not to say that there are not external problems, far from it. But when we cannot understand the internal process that is arising in conjunction with the external issue then we are doomed to repeat the situation.

Instead of “letting go”, there is another way. If we take what we are feeling and go as deeply as possible with it, we can explore and eventually start healing our internal wounding.

From the earlier example— When your boss yells at you and for a split second you get angry at her, maybe you sit with it and feel into the anger instead of “letting go”. Maybe when you sit with it, you start to recognize that the pattern you have with your boss is similar to the one you have with your significant other, or one of your parents. Maybe you realize you shut down your anger with your boss in the same way you do with others. Maybe within that process you realize you’ve accepted a situation of not getting your needs met or your voice heard, and you recognize this pattern is present in many areas of your life. Then you realize that actually speaking up is really really scary and painful, and brings up all sorts of other issues. Maybe if you speak up to your boss, you’re afraid you’ll lose your job and then how will you survive?

This is just a theoretical example, which may or may not be applicable to you. But even if the exact scenario doesn’t fit you, I hope you can see that there is a very rich and deep emotional landscape hiding beneath your triggers.

But as long as we dissociate and disconnect from what is happening when we’re triggered we’ll never be able to explore the ways in which the triggers are reflecting back the parts of ourselves that need to be healed and integrated. When the healing and integration starts, we may even see glimpses of the harmony and beauty that exist within and beyond our wounds. But that is for another blog post!

This is why the “letting go” philosophy is so nefarious. It pretends to be an aspect of our spiritually evolved self yet in reality is based on fragmentation and dissociation.

This is what Kundalini Mediumship practitioners do when we’re tracking people during a personal session or workshop. We feel into and work with our clients’ wounds as if they are our own— because in a sense, they are. We have to be present with whatever our clients bring to us, no matter how painful. We have to know our client’s wounding and wall as aspects of our own wounds and walls. And in doing that we learn even more about ourselves and the human condition, propelling us deeper into our own personal healing.

I believe anyone can learn this type of tracking, but it takes real dedication to work through our walls and find the gods hiding within them.

Capoeira and Candomblé

The first time I played in a capoeira (1) roda (2) was after 6 months of training as a beginner. Even though I was scared to go in and play with the big boys, I felt pretty good about my performance. As soon as I jumped out however, I found Mestre Almiro (3) waiting for me. He brought me out of the circle completely and told me when I performed the negativa (4) I was staring at the ground instead of my opponent. “Do it correctly!” He shouted over the music. So I did it, watching him as if he was my opponent. Then he shouted “Do it on the other side!” So I performed the negativa going the other direction, never taking my eyes off him.. Then he said “Good! Don’t forget this.” And went back to the roda.

I can’t state how humbling this experience was. I had never seen him bring someone out of the roda before and correct them, and I haven’t seen him do it since. But from that point on I knew I had to work with him. I knew he was telling me this not to be mean but because he wanted me to be safe and stay focused. In capoeira, you never take your eyes off of your opponent. But it took me years to understand the spiritual truth at the heart of this lesson— total awareness of everything that is happening around you. When you are looking at the ground, you are unaware of what your opponent is doing. But more than that, a capoerista (5) must also be aware of the rhythms and music being played. He must be aware of the energetic flow in the roda, and how each person’s game affects that flow. He must be aware of his own obstacles, the obstacles within his opponent and the way each of us use those obstacles to gain an advantage— known as malandragem (6) . Above all, he must be aware of his own contribution to the dynamic flow— he must be aware that the spirit of the game demands his focus, attention and passion to create a jogo bonito (7).

I learned later that these same lessons can be applied to life, as how we play the game of capoeira reflects our interaction with the world. And the lessons I learned from capoeira taught me a lot about life.

My capoeira training started in 2002. At the time I wasn’t necessarily looking for spiritual guidance, but I was hypnotized by capoeira’s grace, beauty and power.

The first 6 months of capoeira under Mestre Almiro is all about learning and repeating the basics— the ginga (8), a few kicks, the cartwheel, negativa, and how to buy the game (9). Beginners practice these fundamentals over and over and at the end of class, we got to watch the advanced students in the roda. The roda is where the real action and beauty are. Musicians play their instruments, and everyone else is required to sing the songs and clap. Then, two participants play the game. When buying the game, one capoeirista jumps in and faces another capoeirista while the third capoeirista exits quickly, never taking his eyes of the action.

To do this requires a lot of discipline and dedication.  Mestre Almiro’s uncompromising style came from a dedication and respect to the art of capoeira. When he corrected us, it came from a respectful place but some people took Almiro’s criticism personally. If you could work through taking his criticism personally, and you could really devote yourself to learning from him, then you were in luck! We really did learn how to play a beautiful game, and his training allowed us to play with anyone

A lot of modern capoeira looks like two people breakdancing next to each other. There’s a lot of cool moves and acrobatics but frequently the interaction between the participants is lacking. This is not the capoeira that Mestro Almiro mastered in his youth. In Almiro’s class, we learned to have a lively conversation in the roda. This conversation was only possible when the participants spent the time and energy learning the structures and practicing them over and over.  The same concept exists in music; in order to play with others, you must first master the fundamentals of rhythm and melody. Without this formal knowledge, music devolves into a cacophony of individuals making noise rather than a concerted group of musicians influencing one another to create harmony. In this same way, the formal precision of every movement that Mestro Almiro insisted upon ultimately provided us the freedom to improvise with each other in the roda.

This improvisational game involves understanding your strengths and weaknesses and your habits and desires. You also have to understand those characteristics in the people you are playing with. The goal is to trap, trick and confuse your opponent, to get them out of their rhythm while maintaining your own joyous balance. This is a metaphor for life, where our “opponent” is the challenges and difficulties we face. When we understand how to respond to life’s challenges by staying in the flow of things, we can play our own beautiful game in this world.

The more I trained with him, the more I asked Mestre Almiro about his spiritual tradition of candomblé (10). I knew that candomblé was interwoven with capoeira in the rich tapestry of Afro-Brazilian culture.  I wanted to learn more and experience it for myself, but Almiro maintained an unwavering refusal to discuss it with me. He kept a stone wall around candomblé, and would consistently shoot down my repeated attempts to learn more. Just as he anticipated and deflected the moves of his opponents with mastery in the jogo of capoeira, he never let his guard down when it came to candomblé. And as I had learned to appreciate the reasons behind his strict capoeira, I later came to understand the reasons behind his intensely protective stance toward candomblé.

In Brazil, the white Brazilian authorities spent hundreds of years, thousands of lives, and millions of real (11) trying to destroy candomblé. This fight is not over. The desecration of temples is a common occurrence that rarely makes headlines even today. We have seen this same pattern with many other indigenous spiritual practices across the globe. And when the spiritual practices survive these attempts at destruction, we arrive at the finality of colonialism: exploitation. We eventually co-opt and re-sell the practices to ourselves, frequently by stripping them of their native identity and bypassing the traditional roots. This has happened to a lot of yoga in America, and its currently happening in the ayahuasca community.

By 2015 I was rarely training with Almiro anymore, but I began talking to him about how capoeira had influenced me, and how his teaching had shaped my healing work. With these conversations, his wall began to crack. When I asked him again about candomblé, he finally opened the door for me and invited me to go to Brazil and meet with a candomblé priestess named Dona Val.

That very summer I flew to Salvador, the birthplace and spiritual home of both capoeira and candomblé. Much of what happened during that trip is not appropriate to discuss here, but I learned something about myself that turned out to be critical to the trip I just took in December of 2018.  When I visited her, Dona Val told me that I had a negative entity attached to me called an egun (12) and she made it clear that this was a very serious matter, one that she wasn’t able to solve right then and there. Although I had a translator along to help overcome the language barrier, the vast cultural and spiritual differences prevented me from understanding exactly how and why this situation was so serious. But I felt the gravity of her words without question.

What I did not feel, however, was the presence of the egun itself. I had spent years cultivating a relationship with spirits as part of my healing practice - the concept and impact of spiritual forces was neither new nor lost on me. But I had no awareness of the malicious entity that Dona Val said was inside of me. Although I did not dismiss her assessment, I am not the type to accept the words of another without question. I have always needed to see and feel truth for myself, and this was no exception.  When I discussed this issue with Almiro, he insisted with characteristic passion that I take care of this problem, and soon. He warned that the egun are spirits of violence that would bring harm to me and my family if left unhealed. And again, I listened with respectful skepticism, but could not personally feel feel this egun’s presence.

Just as I didn’t understand the presence of the egun, I couldn’t possibly understand Almiro’s experience as a black man in America.   One thing that happened as we started preparing for this trip last summer was that he started to open up to me about some of his experiences being black in this country.  There was one conversation in particular during which Almiro described a racist experience he had and concluded abruptly with the assertion “I’m telling you this, Justin, but you can’t understand it.” And I knew that this was true. As a white man, I could listen with respect but could not truly understand his experience as a black man in America.

Amidst preparations for this trip I participated in a separate healing retreat where I had a deeply troubling vision. As I sat in meditation, I found myself replaying the conversation with Almiro and his closing remark.  Almiro’s last sentence about me not understanding his experience stabbed through my being like a dagger in my gut. With the dagger’s plunge came a vision, as clear as day, of a white man strangling and killing an African man on a slave ship. During the struggle their eyes met, and in that moment of intense violent connection, the spirit of the African man entered the white man. This was no metaphor. This was real, and I could feel it within me. My intuition told me that the murderer was my ancestor, and the victim was the egun that Dona Val had seen. This was the personal experience I had needed; I could now feel the egun for myself, within myself.  I began to speak to the egun, and to listen to him.  He told me that he wanted to end this generational curse, he wanted to be free of this cycle of violence.  He told me that to do that I would have to go to Brazil and let his people do their work, that they knew how to remove him from my being. And in that moment I promised the egun and myself that I would do whatever I could to make the trip happen..

This experience had many levels-- one being personal and familial.  I could now reflect back on how the egun had negatively affected my life at specific points, as well as my family’s. This sad realization opened my eyes and my heart to the effects of karma both within a family and over generations. And yet another level to this is societal. I began to see the egun that exist throughout our country. Our founding fathers spoke beautifully about freedom and human rights, while at the same time establishing our country upon the backs of African slaves and through the genocide of indigenous people. The egun are violent because they are borne of violence, and I now could see the reality of this spiritual vengeance.  Even if you can’t see the egun themselves, anyone can see their effect on our society— I believe that much of the current random violence as well as many people’s self hatred are two current egun-related issues.

And more layers are revealed through modern science. The study of epigenetics has demonstrated that trauma persists across generations through alterations in the expression of our DNA. Geneticists are rediscovering what indigenous spiritual practitioners have known for thousands of years: we inevitably reap ancestral karma in our own lifetimes, both positive and negative.

I met the candomblé priest Pai Edvaldo in the trip this past December and he confirmed my vision. He saw the same egun that Dona Val had seen and was willing to perform the ceremony to remove the egun - for a price. This price revealed more layers to the karmic knot. Any action towards another— positive or negative— creates a karmic debt. My ancestor created a debt through his violence that I felt called to repay. By paying money to this priest of an African religion I started to help pay the debt.  Through continuing the support of this spiritual practice I hope to continue the process. While the issue of cultural appropriation still concerns me, the topic of how to work with candomblé as an outsider is an ongoing discussion I have with Mestre Almiro and the priests and priestesses in Brazil.

My experience in Brazil represents a huge personal shift for me, and I feel a great deal of gratitude for the people in the terreiro (13) for opening their doors to me. Underlying my experience with the egun is an understanding that we are all connected to divine energies called orixás (14).  The orixás are divine spirits that are here for everyone. Instead of wanting violence and suffering (like the egun) the orixás want us to live a live of health, happiness and prosperity. The priests all stressed one important point - that everyone has a relationship with the orixás, regardless of race or belief. They are divine aspects of the natural world that are here for everyone. Behind my tragedy with the egun is actually my divine connection to my orixás, and I believe the deeper purpose in all this is for me to be a bridge to help others in my culture connect to these spirits. Underneath and interwoven with our karmic knots is a beautiful connection to the divine.

I am forever thankful to the orixás for showing me this truth, and for connecting me with Almiro, Pai Edvaldo, and all others within the tradition of Candomblé.

These trips into the depths of Candomble will be ongoing. I invite anyone that resonates with these words to reach out, and I hope you will join me as I continue my journey.

Glossary

1— Capoeira: the fighting method disguised as a dance created by enslaved Africans and their descendants to hide their martial training

2— Roda: literally “circle”. When playing capoeira, all the participants form a circle. Two participants play the game with each other in the roda. Every participant outside the roda must sing and clap.

3— Mestre: literally “master”. The highest rank in capoeira.

4— Negativa: a capoeira ground movement.

5— Capoeirista: someone who plays capoeira.

6— Malanadragem: trickery or deceit. Within Brazilian culture it has a negative connotation, referring to hustling or conning other people by playing on their weaknesses. Within capoeira, it refers to tricking or deceiving your opponent by understanding and capitalizing on their habits, personalities and how they play the game.

7— Jogo bonito: literally “beautiful game”.

8— Ginga: literally “to sway”. The fundamental movement of capoeira. It looks simple, but Mestre Almiro calls it the most difficult movement in capoeira.

9— Buy the game: entering the game of capoeira is called buying it.

10— Candomblé: the African based spiritual tradition with roots in Salvador, Bahia. It is a direct descendant of the West African Yoruba tradition, among others. It is related to the Cuban tradition of Santería and Haitian Vodou.

11— Real: Brazilian currency.

12— Egun: a malevolent entity. Egun frequently die from a violent act, and attach themselves to their karmic relations to encourage more violence.

13— Terreiro: temple

14— Orixás: Gods and Goddesses. Everyone has specific orixás that guide, protect and challenge them. An important part of life from the candomblé perspective is to get in the proper relationship with one’s orixás.

The Roots of Kundalini Mediumship

This work is called Kundalini Mediumship for a couple of reasons.  One is to honor the tradition of my first teacher Baba Muktananda, whose tradition was the direct transmission of kundalini from guru to disciple.  That transmission happened to me when I was a kid.

I added the word “mediumship” because I at a certain point I realized that working with spirits and energies was also something that happened at the same time that the kundalini started opening.  Working with spirits and energies was not really a part of his tradition, and I had to learn about that aspect from other teachers.

Some Hindu teachers talk about the difference between God with form and the formless God.  The formless God is pure infinite energy and consciousness.  It is beyond any of our understanding and incorporates past, present and future all at once. The God with form is all the spirits, gods and goddesses that are energy but also have characteristics, emotions, and personalities. The story is that because the formless God is so hard to relate to as a human, God has also chosen to appear to us in forms that we can relate to. These are the beings at the basis of many religions— the Hindu gods and goddesses, even Jesus. These gods and goddesses occupy a middle ground between our limited human self and the infinite God that exists beyond everything.  They are like a bridge that help us to remember that we are connected to and a part of the infinite.

Mediumship allows us to embody the gods and goddesses. To work with them, we have to begin working through our personal, family and cultural traumas and repressed emotions.  What started happening to me as a teenager was that the kundalini started clearing out some of my personal and family karma and allowed me to connect to theses higher vibrational energies. It was never a one shot deal though— it’s not like I had a couple of spiritual experiences and then all my work was done. Far from it. The process of clearing out the debris and then connecting to these gods and goddesses is a pattern that continues to this day.

Another part of my process was that I recognized that my personal healing was connected to others’ healing. I started getting the message that if I was going to grow and heal, I had to do healing work on other people. Kundalini Mediumship was born from that message.

The word kundalini can be uncomfortable for people. There are many misconceptions and issues around kundalini work and they fall into two distinct categories.  

First, there is the fact that kundalini transmission comes out of the guru/disciple relationship. Within that relationship (especially here in America) there has been a tremendous power imbalance and a lot of abuse from that imbalance.  This happened with my guru Muktananda, but it happened with a lot of other gurus as well.  The guru is someone you obey without question. He (or she) is God incarnate.  How are you going to say no to a guru’s demand?  How are you going to call out a guru who abuses his power?  If you look at what happened within Muktananda's tradition (called Siddha Yoga) it took some really courageous people to speak out. His institution responded in the same way as the Catholic church and other powerful institutions that protected abusers— deny, cover it up and intimidate those speaking out.

When I started doing healing work on people and could feel the kundalini moving through me and into other people I went through a crisis.  I didn't know how to handle it because the only template I had for kundalini transmission was the guru/disciple relationship and I knew I wasn't a guru or perfect being.  But there was something else I relied on for guidance— what Muktananda called the guru principle.  The guru principle is the force inside of us that guides the process of the kundalini awakening. It’s our own internal compass and our guide.

It’s taken me many years of self work and inquiry to get to this point. When I really started diving into Siddha Yoga, I thought I had found the answer, the TRUTH. Then when I heard about Siddha Yoga’s dark side I thought I had to throw everything out. But what I really discovered was that there were certain elements of the Siddha Yoga philosophy that resonated with me and some that didn’t. My job was to take what I needed and throw out the rest.

I believe that the guru worship in Siddha Yoga was in many ways a test— a test from God to see if I would really devote myself to finding my own internal guru or if I would give away my power and self knowledge to someone else. It can be really hard sometimes to really trust myself, especially when my ideas go against culturally accepted norms. But that trust is what allowed me to work with this energy on other people. Instead of a guru, I view myself as a facilitator. I share my journey and struggle and I want to help people connect with their own guru principle.  There is a tremendous empowerment that happens when we connect to our own internal guidance— when we recognize that there is no authority outside of ourselves that we have to obey.  But to do that we really have to examine our own wounds and shadow— all the places we’ve hidden and suppressed inside of us.

The second issue around the kundalini is the warning that the energy is inherently destabilizing and can cause all sorts of problems like demonic possession, mental illness and things like that.  While I agree that the kundalini is a tremendously powerful force I don't think its accurate to say that it causes any of that.  Mental/emotional/spiritual issues are caused by our own karma-- the kundalini may accelerate things that are already there but it won't cause them to arise from nowhere.  It will definitely find and open up the darkness we have inside of us, but as long as we are prepared to face our own demons and we’re really willing to heal then we have nothing to worry about.  That's a big commitment though.  For most people it takes something like a healing crisis or spiritual emergency to really force them on this path.  But of course these kinds of crises are exactly what the spirit uses to bring us back into alignment.  Sickness is really just a message from our spirit that we need to address our emotional, energetic and physical issues. Eventually whatever demons we are trying to avoid will come after us anyway. So my philosophy is to confront them now rather than later.