The Calling – around 2013
I have been playing music in Ayahuasca and San Pedro ceremonies for around nine years. In the beginning I was taking too much medicine to be consistent with playing and would go into my journey with out being able to play. I weaned myself down to a ‘helper’ dose, a fraction of what the other were taking.
It was my first ceremony in Hawaii. It was an intense ceremony and as a group we spent a week making the Medicine before . It was an evening of Good Friday. It was also an eclipse of the moon. I had a lot of clearing and letting go and it moved the facilitator into a special place. He moved with me through some big stuff.
I had a dialog with Grandmother Aya after that. I visualized her as an older crone sitting in a rocking chair doing something busy with her hands like knitting or crocheting.
I have witnessed that some people get messages after ceremony from Grandmother of what to do or where they are going. So I asked her, “What do I do now?”
Her response was, “Well, what do you want to do?”
I was confused by this and said that’s not how I understand it. You’re supposed to tell me what to do.
Her reply again was “What do you want to do?”
So then I realized in that moment that I wanted to make a commitment to play music in ceremony with others for theirs and my healing. I’ve been doing that ever since. I was called to do this Work.
Sebastopol Around 2017
Ayahuasca working together with San Pedro in a weekend has been something that has been a lot on my healing path. This was about 7 years ago at a weekend in Sebastopol.
We usually do Ayahuasca on a Friday night, then a day off and then do San Pedro on a Sunday. Usually at some point during the night I pass out. I just have to let go.
This particular Friday night laying on my side about half way through the ceremony not able to play I became aware of a dull black sphere about the size of a golf ball located in my body. I felt it there for and tried to communicate with it. What did it have to say? Nothing, nada, it was non-responsive. I had no sense that it was even aware of me. It didn’t respond to questions I had and it had nothing to give to me. My belief was that there was something core of my NDE from so long ago, but I couldn’t find a way to communicate with it.
So all day Saturday I meditated and asked questions of others around me. What is it? What do I do? The responses I got were just emote! Just let out whatever wants to come out for your healing.
So I took all that in and my questions, thought about it late into the night on Saturday as I sat around a fire enjoying the light and heat.
Early Sunday morning was time to start the San Pedro ceremony. The black golf ball was visible after I had my first drink of Medicine. As I sat there meditating on it, it began to change and some color began to be visible. Then I began to see some separation on the surface. As the plant-like colors of greens, yellows and oranges, the separation of the surface became small leaves which began to open up and it became a bud. The bud continued to open up and it became a lotus flower that continued to open up into a full lotus flower.
My realization was that the black ball was all the negativity, intensity, and fear that was a big part of my NDE. It was created out of Love to protect me, to save this life from all the overwhelmingness of my experience. It was now safe to let it out and grow in the light.
Transition to Northern California after the Dream early 80s
It was around the early 80s and I was in my late 20s. I had tried Sufism, chanting and meditating. It didn’t work. My mother tried to get me involved in Transcendental Meditation. All sitting meditation did was make me angry. I found other ways to meditate through music and art.
In the early 80s I did a week long retreat with Robert Bly, the American Poet. Bly was also a great translator of the Persian mystical poet Hafez. At this time he had just started working with the theme of men’s transformational mythology. Wow! He changed my life. This was before he wrote the book Iron John which is basically the foundation of Mankind Project. I had just met a Vedantist Monk (Buddhananda). He was American and his mother lived in Sedona Arizona and we became friends. This was also a few years before I was to meet my second wife and leave southern CA and move up to Northern California leaving my lives behind.
Early 80s – The Dream
I was standing in a very large city central square like in an Eastern European city. They sky was gray and it was quiet. The ground was covered with cobbled gray stones and there were dull nondescript buildings around the perimeter. I was in a very long line of people who were standing doing nothing in particular, waiting for something. I could see a small booth a distance away. Another man came walking down the line and when he was within hearing distance to me he said,” I need someone who can understand what I’m saying to come with me.” I stepped forward. I was the only one who moved. He said, “I want you to come with me, I want you to show you how this all works.”
We went to one of the buildings and it was like a Hollywood movie set and the front of the building lifted up like a garage door and we walked in. All the buildings were just fronts but where we were were all these big gears and machinery everything moving. We started walking down behind the building fronts and I remember being awed by what I saw. That’s what I remember.
Dream experience around 1988
I ended up in 4th Way School (think Gurdjieff) with E.J. Gold. As we called it “The Institute.” I was going through a very stressful experience and was alone. A space opened up for me and I was able to connect with myself back when I was 18 in the Cleveland Clinic. I witnessed myself in the hospital bed out of my mind, terrified, screaming. I had no awareness of myself, just the pain and the terror. It was a space – a Chamber, as we called them back then – where a part of myself was eternally doing that.
I knew I had to do something. That is when that I came up with the responsibility to live a life that would give my young 18 year-old-self reasons to live when he (I) was so close to death. And I started doing readings for him from the American Book of the Dead. This was when it was shown to me that time isn’t always linear. That is when I came up with the idea that I wrote about on the NDE page about “Saving Private Ryan.”
Experience around 2008.
I was working Luis Diaz who works with what he calls Cellular Memory Release (CMR). He teaches a lot in Spanish-speaking countries now. At the time I met him he was getting started in Nevada City. I did some web-design work with him in trade for sessions. I took classes in all the many different modalities he offered. I also helped out when we had introductory sessions for the community.
It was towards the end of the evening and I started feeling strange and asked for help from someone to guide me through a CMR session. Through guidance I was able to go back to the time of my conception. I sensed my consciousness floating around the ovum and the sperm cells. I had this extreme sense of dread and I didn’t want to do this life.
I found out later through a session with a psychic healer that the original spirit to be connected into this body was not strong enough to be able to live this life, and so I was chosen. 10 years or so ago I found out that this spirit being had never left and was still inhabiting this body, taking this body’s lifeforce. Through a clearing at that time I was able to remove the influence of this spirit.
Around 2023
I had a dream in which I was yelling at my father at the rage I felt at the abuse I suffered from him growing up. I woke up from that dream into another dream (I realized this was happening but I wasn’t lucid) where he was sitting behind a desk. He was writing on a lined legal-sized yellow pad, like he did with all his patient notes in his office.
I then started explaining to him in a calm voice how the way he treated me as a youngster was not supportive and was detrimental to my health and my growth as a Hu-man. He was confused, he didn’t know what to write in his yellow pad.
I then woke up from that dream, to this one(?) and I understood that he just didn’t understand the language I was speaking. Yeah, that helped explain things and diffuse things down for me a bit.
I have also had dreams like one I was sitting under the shade of a tree in a park by a marina (I learned to love and enjoy sailing from my Dad). He then walked up and sat next to me in the long brown raincoat that he wore over his suit to the hospital every day with the sleeves pushed up on his arms. In the shade. It was a beautiful sunny day.