The last stop on the Karma Express
The death waves grow shorter and shorter, until they crash together into the eerie silence of zero point. Here, nothing is prescribed; we are tabla rasa in physical form for the first time.
Jesus the cosmic shaman for our times
In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says: “I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I’m guarding it until it blazes.” Why Christ is guarding us still as we finally awaken into rapturous flame.
The guru is dead. Long live the guru!
If consciousness is always revealing itself to itself across never-ending frontiers of awareness, then there is no final point to awakening.
Who are we to be gods?
Claiming our own light overturns an ancient superstition set up by the myth of original sin. Are we fallen, or falling into Grace?
The Tower of Babel: The finale
In the old spiritual paradigm, we attempted to surrender to a larger will. In the new spiritual paradigm, we participate in a larger will. Not “Thy will be done” but Thy will be One.
World chaos and death’s last stand
When the very template of reality breaks down, we know we are approaching the end of history.
How would the Buddha sort out this mess?
Only a very domesticated version of Buddha, sitting idly on the mantelpiece, would argue for mere peace.
Apokalupsis and the triumph of defeat
We asked for this: the freedom to choose as sovereign beings, to create genuinely new basins of experience, to wake from the recurring nightmare.
Why losing hope is part of the plan
Amid the global lockdown, it’s easy to lose heart. But what if the loss of faith is actually a sign that the new world has already been born?
Disclosure
When is revelation a form of intimacy, when is disclosure oversharing, and when is a personal story an invitation to collusion?
Trigger-happy healers
In defence of denial, and in praise of projection.
Why we are all absolute goners
To bastardize a Buddhist saying, it’s not so much the finger pointing at the moon, as much as all fingers pointing back at me.
Entering the economy of grace
We don’t have to be mid-level bureaucrats over life any more. No more paper pushing or passing the buck.
The poison of comparison in the Instagram age
Failing to measure up to those shiny images trapped under glass could be the catalyst to integrate both light and dark and make neither our master.
Knot
Knot asks us not to try and break self-defeating patterns with reason or effort. the descriptionThe Knot cardThe Knot represents a longstanding issue resistant to unraveling. The threads are bound tight. It seems to have dark magic and power, a perverse...
Hope and the Wounded Healer
This is the first of my exploration of individual cards from the 78-card divination deck I created to assist people in the spiritual awakening process and to facilitate the integration of plant-spirit experiences, such as with ayahuasca or iboga. The first card is...
Finding beauty in the dark night of the soul
The medieval Spanish mystic John of the Cross could never have guessed that, over 400 years after he coined the phrase Dark Night of the Soul, it would come to represent an awakening rite of passage in a modern world scarcely recognisable from his own. The medieval...
Black ayahuasca, Job and the mountains
"Can black ayahuasca be healing? I would suggest it’s for the things most profoundly rooted, covered over by layers and layers of wild growth; where what is most dense, humid and cloying can outlast time, or at least a parent’s bones. Black ayahuasca is...
What’s the difference between medicine and poison?
Perhaps this joke is old, but it still strikes me as an acute observation. When does ‘medicine’ become co-opted to merely reinforce pre-existing identities and beliefs? When does the use of medicine turn into mis-use or even abuse? When does healing itself become a...
Francis: The radical renunciate
Francis of Assisi is often depicted as a lover of animals and nature, an innocent figure of child-like enthusiasms at stark odds with the credos of a spiritual revolutionary. He became the model for first card I created, signifying, above all else, the renunciation of...
Transition, crisis and surrender
It can be hard to appreciate the silver lining of opportunity when the foundations are moving under our feet. Crisis is not for the faint-hearted, no matter how it’s dressed. Yet – like death – it seems to come for us all sooner or later, ready or not.
Moses: A man for troubled times
A reinterpretation of the age-old story of Moses and his exclusion from the Promised Land, just when the new world appeared so unbearably close, offers a potent symbol for our chaotic times.
Prisoner of hope
I have been a prisoner of hope for too long. Hope as the promise of redemption. Hope as the last virtue standing. The stringy vestige of hope, apparently made of unbreakable sinew, that wouldn’t let me give up on my life and my dreams.
Dark side of the moon
I have to confess a certain discomfort with the word healing, and frankly it’s steeped in cultural bias. Compared to the hard science of allopathic medicine, compared to the heft of practice and discipline, it always felt soft and enfeebled.
