Out of Your Mind and Off Your Head

Conscious awareness, as we understand it, is seen as the crowning jewel of animal evolution. It developed in the human species as our brains generated the kind of complexity needed to support such a capacity. As men devised elaborate hunting strategies and women taught themselves how to find and cultivate plants for food, tens of thousands of years ago, people first created art on walls and deep inside caves. At the same time, a curious trick was also discovered – the ability to switch off the conscious state in favour of an altered state.

Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend

No, I am not afraid to delve into the void. I accept the gnarled shapes and twisted forms of all my shadows. I truly appreciate my darkness. It has every right to exist. The most important lesson the realm of the medicine delivered to me was never to ignore the so-called “low-vibrational” field as it may create an emotional dissonance, making suppressed, unwanted and often misunderstood, yet extremely powerful emotions, like fear, sadness or grief, difficult or even impossible to tame. As a result, a division between the inner light and the inner shadow may intensify leading to possible imbalance and even mental and physical symptoms such as bipolarity, depression, psychosis or anhedonia, to name just a few.

Just a Family Meeting

¿Que hora es? – asks our Maestra Juana, as the day slowly changes into the night.

– Son las ocho. – somebody replies and, as with the touch of a magic wand, the rainforest starts its cacophonic concert of buzzes, pings, and rustles of hundreds of insects, birds, reptiles, and mammals. The jungle never sleeps.

Nature opens its portal. Permission to enter is given.
The night is about to unfold.