Yesterday evening I sat in a small rapé ceremony with several friends, held by a Brazilian curandero (which is a native healer or shaman of Spanish or Latin American origin).
Rapé, for those who don't know, is a sacred plant medicine made from finely ground tobacco and ashes from various medicinal plants, used for centuries by various indigenous Amazonian tribes.
This plant medicine is received through the nasal passage, and can either be self-served, or in this case, served by the curandero.
I experienced this plant medicine for the first time in a ceremony just over 6 weeks ago, right before I left for Costa Rica, and in that experience felt called to use it more regularly in a ritualistic and meditative context.
My experience with this medicine, is that it helps to cleanse the mind on a physical and energetic level. It helps me to detach from the frantic worry and voices that can cloud my consciousness and perception to what is true on the deepest level in my heart.
Yesterday evening, the curandero described his perspective that the medicine helps to restore the pineal gland, and to help us as spiritual beings operate more clearly and freely within the Matrix of reality.
I appreciated and resonated with his description of the medicine, and felt deep gratitude and the aligned synchronicity of being in that place, at that time, with these people.
The curandero went around in the circle, serving each person individually with the medicine. When he came to me, he placed the serving pipe (also known as the "tepi") to my belly, to my heart, to my temple, and then, upon my consent, he blew the rapé into my nasal passage.
I allowed the medicine to move through me. It began in my head, a deep, pleasurable discomfort I have quickly learned to appreciate as the sacred burn that it is.
I felt myself relaxing into receiving the energy of the medicine, tingling and activating my consciousness from the chin up with its deep, ambient, smoldering alchemy.
Several minutes in, I started to feel the medicine moving down my body, flushing down me like a slow, intentional, radiant waterfall. It felt as though my whole body was dilating.
I felt my body flushing, expanding, disintegrating and reintegrating within me. The sensations were whelming. Not *over*-whelming, but whelming.
I noticed my mind starting to come online as the sensations started to touch the threshold of what my mind felt capable of being with.
My mind started to speak...
"You might get sick"...
"It feels like you might throw up"...
"This might be too much"...
"Can you handle this?"...
"Can you trust yourself?"...
I let my mind speak for a bit, and then a deeper awareness emerged in response to my mind. This voice was different. It was steady, grounded, calm, clear. It said in response to my fear...
"Well, you could get sick if you wanted to...Your fears and stories can be true, if that's the experience you desire to have...AND, that doesn't *need* to be your experience...
You could instead focus on your breath. Focus on the in and out of breath within your body. Allow these intense sensations to move through you...as opposed to allowing the fear to contract your body, your breath, and your energetic field...thus trapping and anchoring your feared experience into your physical reality...
The question is, which do you choose?"
I felt peace in my heart, and I chose my breath. I chose to bring my present awareness to my inhale and exhale. I chose to believe that the power of my choice and where I place my attention could shift my internal and external state.
I chose to stay present in the face of intense physical discomfort, and believe that I had the capacity to know and guide my ability to move through it to the other side.
I chose freedom, curiosity, and embodiment in that moment. And through that experience, I was able to realize and claim an aspect of my power and capability as a human being that I didn't necessarily have confidence in before.
This experience encapsulates so much of what I believe we as human beings are learning to navigate on our individual and collective paths of embodied spiritual awakening.
We are learning that awakening spiritually does not mean transcending our human experience, but instead deciding to fully opt into it, and become present and embodied in all the places where it has felt "easier" or "safer" to check out or dissociate.
Our true power to activate our divine potential in human form rests in our ability to find embodied, engaged, empowered relationship with the emotions, reactions, and physical sensations that have previously destabilized, immobilized, or broken us down.
In cultivating the practice of being in relationship with the inner and outer experiences that have previously limited our capacity to break free of relationships, realities, and paradigms rooted in fear, scarcity, isolation and oppression, we learn to shift out of victim consciousness and into creator consciousness.
This is how we shift out of a paradigm of finite resources, and into a paradigm of quantum embodiment--where there is limitless possibility, and timelines collapse in such a way that profound change in circumstances and identity can happen in what seems the blink of an eye.
This level of freedom, power, and spiritual embodiment is available to all of us. It is simply a matter of how willing we are to step out of what is comfortable, and into consciously relating with that which our mind fears may annihilate us.
I have found, ultimately, that our ability to expand and embody our most actualized self, is directly related to how much sensation we are willing and able to be present with in our bodies.
If you desire support along the way, you know where to find me.