Aya Yi Yi…
Frustration is met with some progress. Why wasn’t I “fixed” yet??
Welcome back! A quick recap is in order. 2019 was a pivotal year. As of April 2019, I’d been experiencing chronic pelvic pain that manifests as a burning pain in my urethra and anus since mid 2016 or so. In addition, a muscular condition approaching (but never formally diagnosed as) fibromyalgia had my muscles all knotted up. It often felt as though I was sitting on two lacrosse balls. Regular really deep tissue massage did very little to assuage the pain and stiffness for more than a day. I’d also been experiencing brain fog and chronic fatigue that required a daily 30-60 minute nap to keep at bay. Allopathic medicine to date did nothing to get to the root problem. I’d been popping ibuprofen (Vitamin I!) like M&Ms for several years, with the occasional muscle relaxant and Valium suppositories thrown in for acute spasms. High dose CBD barely touched my urethral pain. My diet could best be described as “Vegan Elimination Diet” which means I was pretty much subsisting on oatmeal, quinoa, rice, some fruit and broccoli. I found out I had an oxalate tolerance problem, which meant most vegan food is pretty much off limits as the oxalate crystals in many vegetables aggravated my urethra, which was already in pain from the referred pelvic pain. (In late 2018, in a lot of pain after shooting a concert, I took what was likely a more potent THC edible than I knew. While laying there in agony and high as a fucking kite, a voice from inside said, “It’s the beets!”. This was interesting….) I also suffered from a chronic candida infection, which at times expressed as a rash on the inside of my thighs. I was eating a LOT of chocolate. It is difficult to describe the layers of pain and to determine any sort of causative chain. Why on earth wasn’t I getting better? I was doing ALL THE THINGS!
At this point, I’d experienced powerful trips with psilocybin (magic mushrooms), MDMA (active ingredient in ecstasy), Ayahuasca and Mescaline. With the exception of the Mescaline, each trip manifested somatically as well as mentally/emotionally/psychically, with large involuntary body movements (tremors, shaking, arching, writhing, thrusting) for the duration of the experiences. Between the MDMA and the Aya, I was able to see the cause of my frozen shoulder was being spanked as a child. While I remember being spanked, I have no idea how frequent the episodes were. I do recall fearing them up until the age of 11-12. Around that time, I recall wanting to physically harm my father. There was a lot of anger there.
Woman walking in front of parking garage in the late afternoon | Chicago, Illinois, May 2019
After each psychedelic experience, I typically experienced a boost in my mood, with the depressive symptoms diminishing for several weeks to a couple months. For the first time in my life I was journaling quite extensively (to the degree that my therapist suggested I didn’t need to share my writing with them any longer. Go figure!). My taste in music also shifted substantially. Suddenly I was deeply moved by Kirtan and other Eastern / World / Devotional music. I didn’t understand it, but I went with it.
The apartment I lived in was a three bedroom garden unit. It was reasonably nice, although had a little problem with sewage backing up through the shower drain during heavy rains. It did this five or six times while I lived there and, aside from steam cleaning the rugs, the landlord did nothing to remediate the sewage soaked the baseboards and drywall near the floor. Thinking maybe there was mold, I had the air tested by an environmental consultant. Negative. My relationship with the landlord had been strained since I forced their hand on fixing the heat in winter of 2017. I was often paying my rent late because work was difficult / painful. As a result of the pain, I wasn’t really chasing work or even all that excited when the Universe lobbed a job over the transom. I was caught in a pretty vicious cycle, which at the time, appeared to me to be 100% created by forces outside my control.
Here are some excerpts from my journal in early 2019:
“I came up with a revision to the “server room” metaphor [here’s the genesis of that metaphor from a January entry: I feel like my body is a big server room that’s been powered down for years. The first journey served to kick on the power and started the messages flowing across the fiber network. Initially, there was so much data in a backlog that there was a flood and my brain was a little overwhelmed. Also, there is still some transcoding to do because the systems aren’t completely compatible due to the body being dormant for so long. The second journey has moved that process along a bit, refining the exchange by helping the brain to see and understand the information.]
Rather than the room being powered off, it would be more accurate to state that the network lines had either been cut, blocked or were in desperate need of upgrading. The messages were being generated but couldn’t go anywhere, leading to a massive backlog manifested as physical pain. The very first journey (fungus) was a sort of preview of the awesome power that exists within. It was almost as if it was blasted out, wirelessly, and saturated the whole upper mind with the reality of what exists within. The November medicine journey began the process of upgrading and repairing the network lines between the server room (lower mind) and client computer (upper mind).
Messages began to flow, rapidly, nearly overwhelming the system. Sadness, anger, pain, joy all began to flow throughout the system.
In Michiana, Michigan for the week with the girls. Early morning just after sunrise, I was sitting drinking coffee. I watched roughly half dozen deer come down the hill / yard. 10-15 minutes later a doe with a lame front right leg came from same place. I could tell from 150-200 feet and without a completely clear view that she was lame. It immediately brought up deep sadness and I began sobbing uncontrollably. Wounded deer as symbol of all the pain and those left behind. I saw myself as the deer, wounded and trying to keep up with the others. Wounded, yet determined deer symbolic of the pain we all feel. In spite of it, we persevere.”
The Beatles, my 50th birthday present, as painted by my then 16 year old daughter.
My relationship with my parents continued to be strained, if non-existent, even after all the medicine experiences. Things were beginning to become more clear in my mind as the year wore on. Here are some excerpts from early May:
“I asked myself what the deal was the other night and while I was doing yoga, the real sense that I create my own pain occurred to me. I do it because it is familiar. I do it through cravings for food - chocolate and sweets, specifically. Also through craving a partner.
I have been more mindful since of my ability to notice the cravings and not give in.
Is the pain being caused by a body so used to it that it has to do something? Or is it just a mechanism used to draw attention?
Nightly ritual of yoga/meditation very useful. Sleep better. Mind more clear. The mind still resists doing.
Sensitive to people’s comments about my weight loss [I was down from ~180 to ~150 and quite thin as a result of the restrictive diet]. Somebody asked if I had a tapeworm. Others complimentary. Others think I’m too thin. Interesting to watch how this plays on my self-image and food choices.”
After the work with the Ayahuasca, my relationship to marijuana shifted pretty dramatically. I began taking edibles with intention (I’ve never been a big fan of smoking it) and recording what I termed the “Edible Insights” that arose while high. The drug definitely helped my ego / mind to recede into the background a bit so some knowing could bubble up from my inner being. It was also useful for sleep. Here’s an Edible Insight from mid June:
“My story that my parents are fucked up and fucked me up is my excuse. That is what I am using to keep myself from really succeeding and life - really loving.
Lots of tremoring/shaking legs and body - the sense that I wasn’t able to do that before, that’s why all the grinding. The meds have loosened things up. There’s more inside.
Working the kinetic chain - waves moving up my body from Pachamama [Earth energy].
Able to see how locked up I was. Progressively being able to feel finer vibrations. The rough sex and the tennis was pounding trying to break through. MDMA broke things up - initially large grinding movements have progressed to smaller movements and finer discernment. Beginning to feel the more subtle vibrations.”
The next day:
“I’m very angry. I know I am cause of my own suffering yet I feel powerless to stop what feel like the acts of self-sabotage. Intellectually, I understand how the whole love thing is supposed to work. Practically, I have so much resistance.
Forgiveness keeps coming up. I think that finding a path to true forgiveness would alleviate so much of my suffering. Yet, the pain is so familiar, I won’t let it go.”
Chester’s Fan Club | River Forest, Illinois, June 2019
I continued to journey on my own with MDMA every six to eight weeks and was finding the insights to be very useful. The challenge was integrating the knowledge revealed into daily action. Without doing this, it was just so much information. In early August, I made an appointment with a woman who does “soul agreement clearing” work. She is very gifted and has been doing the work for more than 30 years. I arrived to the appointment early and was sitting in my car waiting. As I sat there, I had a strange, almost out-of-body experience (and I wasn’t even tripping!). It was as if another, invisible, version of my body broke away and began to shake like a dog who just emerged soaking wet from a lake. It was one of the most unusual experiences I’d had to date. I came to find out later, both from my therapist and in a book I read that this is a very common experience for people who are “waking up” to who they really are. It was as if my soul was saying, “Finally! We are getting somewhere.” (As I type this, energy is surging throughout my body and giving me the experience of rolling waves of goosebumps!)
The session with this woman, Therese, was pretty amazing. It lasted nearly two hours. She told me my soul has incarnated repeatedly in “sentinel” roles where my “tribe” has been wiped out as a result of some error on my part - in a boat, on an airplane in battle, and as a very gifted member of an indigenous tribe. In the latter case, I sensed the approaching white man, however had no concept of their intention nor capability to wipe out our tribe as I had no prior model for this behavior. I couldn’t discern the vibration of white man - it’s menacing nature. It wasn’t in line with / native to a soul. The tribe was destroyed and I felt deep guilt. She also told me I was “unusually interdimensionally connected” (whatever that meant - yet it tracked very closely with the indescribable sensations of being pulled into multiple dimensions during one of my Aya experiences). According to her, the energy in my solar plexus chakra was quite tangled (was this related to server room from my journal entry?) and I was using it to block any feeling coming from below - the result of multiple incarnations where I was party to unspeakable horrors. When I asked about my soul connection with Q, the woman with whom I had an “open” relationship that ended very badly, Therese told me that woman’s soul agreement with me was that she would “get me back into my body”. Holy shit! I guess she lived up to her half of the agreement! Because, ultimately it was the disintegration of that relationship and my longing to have her back that set me on the path I was currently on. There really was no other way to explain it. The whole experience with Therese probably requires an entry of it’s own. Suffice it to say it was incredibly powerful. She also suggested I return for another session, something she suggests extremely infrequently (this was backed up by the person who recommended her. Yay me!) At the end I was thoroughly exhausted, despite having done nothing but sit there, say a few words and shed a couple tears. I went home and slept soundly for two hours.
My brother, sister & me at my cousin’s wedding | Chicago, Illinois, July 2019
On the drive home, I was going west on North Avenue. I stopped at a light. For whatever reason, I began reflecting on gratitude and realized I need to express it more often. I thought I what I had been through to date and the fact that I was, actually feeling better. “Thank you, Ganesha, for all that you’ve done; thank you for getting me through this,” I said out loud. As I looked up, something shiny to the left caught my eye - the entire east side of the building across the street was covered with a mosaic of…an ELEPHANT of all things (the symbol for the mystical entity Ganesha, remover of obstacles; read this post for more background on this particular synchronicity). You can’t make this shit up. I was definitely getting somewhere. But where? I wasn’t yet sure.
