I'm at a figurative, slightly literal crossroads in Bocas del Toro, Panama right now debating what to do with the next few days of my life. And depending on the decision, it can be the last few days of my life. I'm looking to get to the mystical land of the Kogi people in the Sierra Nevada on the northern Caribbean Coast of Colombia, but the concept of a "road" no longer exists past the shoddy Panamanian border-like town of Yaviza. Take a couple of southern-bound steps past the town of Yaviza and you'll be greeted by the lush, tumultuous shores of green, unadulterated wilderness. And perhaps on this 99-mile dense jungle-trek to Colombia you'll be fortunate to find a hungry jaguar (or two), preying pumas, hissing snakes, trigger-happy members of the cartel, jungle bandits, guerilla rebels, parasitic insects and ransom-seeking members of the FARC (although, they agreed to stop doing that so I could confidently cross that off my list). Welcome to the Darién Gap. 

So, welcome to the new epoch... How are you feeling? How are you breathing? Have you made your shift, yet? ZOOMDOUT up into those higher dimensions, yet? Ripped through the maya and became one with the ephermerally ineffable Eternal Everything, yet?

If you haven´t done any of that yet, don´t worry, you´re in luck... I´m providing you with some thoroughly medicinal music today. Some music to start off your new epoch on the holy note of ¨OM¨. Below is a beautifully aesthetic music video for the Apache/ Puerto Rican/ Filipino acoustic singer/ songwriter Nahko Bear´s song ¨Aloha Ke Akua¨ (the Hawaiian way of saying God is Love).  It´s complete with soul-shaking lyrics and inspiringly beautiful imagery gorgeously expressing the creative potential a truly harmonious relationship between (wo)man and nature has to offer. Just the auditory/ visual gift your soul is most likely hoping for this holy day season.

The images below are all from the Aloha Ke Akua music video. Some of the video was filmed in both Tulum and Palenque, two places I recently had the pleasure of experiencing. I´m actually writing this blog from Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico!

When I asked the shaman what these figures were all about, he responded that they were types of maps. These maps can represent something as simple as geographic information, or something as complicated as the life of an individual. For example, one of the shamans told me he was able to see his own death embedded in one of these "breath-taking" Shipibo Ayahuasca maps.

These ZOOMDOUT tees are, as always, freshly screen-printed in Brooklyn, NY. And just in case you're just now tuning into the Trip, the luxurious-feeling drape you see is due to the fact that our t-shirts are made of ecologically-sustainable Bamboo and Organic (Non-GMO) cotton!

Check out the ZOOMDOUT Smart Shop and welcome the 2012 Ayahuasca-consciousness into your life...

Exactly one month left for the new Aeon/ Epoch (12.21.12). So make sure you rock into it ZOOMDOUT.

In this dreamy parable, the ancient Chinese sage, Chuang-Tzu, conveys to the reader the meteorite-like impact dreams can have on our lives.  The wandering carpenter in this parable is rudely awakened by a giant, "useless" oak tree in a life-changing, perspective-shifting dream.

A wandering carpenter, called Stone, saw on his travels a gigantic old oak tree standing in a field near an earth-altar. The carpenter said to his apprentice, who was admiring the oak: "This is a useless tree. If you wanted to make a ship, it would soon rot; if you wanted to make tools, they would break. You can't do anything useful with this tree, and that's why it has become so old."

But in an inn, that same evening, when the carpenter went to sleep, the old oak tree appeared to him in his dream and said: "Why do you compare me to your cultivated trees such as white-thorn, pear, orange, and apple trees, and all the others that bear fruit? Even before they can ripen their fruit, people attack and violate them. Their branches are broken, their twigs are torn. Their own gifts bring harm to them, and they cannot live out their natural span. That is what happens everywhere, and that is why I have long since tried to become completely useless. You poor mortal! Imagine if I had been useful in any way, would I have reached this size? Furthermore, you and I are both creatures, and how can one creature set himself so high as to judge another creature? You useless mortal man, what do you know about useless trees?"

The carpenter woke up and meditated upon his dream, and later, when his apprentice asked him why just this one tree served to protect the earth-altar, he answered: "Keep your mouth shut! Let's hear no more about it! The tree grew here on purpose because anywhere else people would have ill-treated it. If it were not the tree of the earth-altar, it might have been chopped down."

I first heard of doasone.com about two years ago. It was while taking a Wisdom University telecourse taught by Stan and Christina Grof. Every Tuesday before listening to the Grof's Holotropic words of wisdom it was suggested we go into this online breathing room in order for us to enter into a more receptive and synchronized group-frequency. I found the idea of this Universal Breathing Room (UBR) to be absolutely mind-expanding. An online "room" that people from anywhere in the world can enter in order to just sit and breathe together for a minute or ten. Upon entering the room, you're briefly greeted by a slow, welcoming, meditative voice:

         Welcome to the Universal Breathing Room, where you can log in daily and breathe with people from all around the world, synchronously.
         I invite you to check in that your posture is excellent, your spine is straight, that all your muscles are relaxed, your shoulders are down,
        and with your mouth closed, tongue touching the roof of your mouth, prepare to exhale the air from your lungs...

The breathing pace is set to five breathing cycles per minute. Six seconds worth of inhale, six seconds worth of exhale... A much slower, conscious breathing pace than your average rush-hour traffic, over-crowded subway-riding, sporadic breathing rhythm. Breathing at this healing pace for a sustained period of time slowly begins to open doors into the deeper, transcendental states of meditation. When I've entered into these Holotropic states, whether plant-induced or not, I am reminded of the sacred relationship we have with our breathing. In those Holotropic states of consciousness, I've come to realize that the breath is like a thin thread connecting us in the material world to the realm of the divine. It's, perhaps, the most apparent connection we have with the divine.

Back to the Breathing Room. There's also a Google map pin-pointing all of the active UBR Breathers from all over the globe. There's usually in average of about twenty Breathers spread across the globe all breathing synchronously. The people at Do As One have started a new global holiday on 11/11 celebrating oneness. Their goal might sound just a little ambitious, but imagine if it were possible. They're trying to get not one thousand, one hundred thousand, or one million people to enter the breathing room and all breathe together synchronously. They're trying to get not 10 million, or 100 million... But one BILLION people to all breathe together for eleven minutes. I'm sure their servers would crash if they manage to get 10,000 people on board to go on that crazy trip. But who cares? They've planted a global seed of breathing consciousness. And that's all that matters.

Check out the three simple steps of how to celebrate one day. Breathing starts at 5 PM east coast (NYC) time.

Happy 11/11.

And happy breathing.

Teachings From Hyperspace

Inside the infinite circle of the Divine Presence which completely surrounds me, I affirm: there is only one Presence here, it is Harmony, which makes all hearts vibrate with Joy and Happiness. Those who choose to enter here will feel the vibration of the Divine Harmony.

The consecration of the space.

I entered hyperspace and saw demons. Their skin was hard like a shell, they were dark, opaque. They were interested in the angry emotions someone in my social life felt towards me and fed on those emotions. Now they came after me, either trying to scare me, or maybe searching for angry or dark emotions on my part. I was afraid. There were angelic beings, white and transparent. They explained to me how these demons connect to the emotions of humans. They instructed me how to encounter them without fear. First I had to connect deeply to the experience of the living light at the center of the Universe, the radiating source of love. I could feel this source, I saw it radiating light. Then they instructed me to make my heart a mirror, reflecting this love, this source of light. With this reflection in my heart I encountered the demons. My soul, my heart radiated love and light. The demons were not able to come closer and went away.

Entrei numa batalha
Vi meu povo esmorecer
Temos que vencer
Com o poder do Senhor Deus

I entered in the Battle
Saw my people discouraged
We have to overcome
with the power of God

Mestre Irineu, O Cruzeiro, Batalha hymn 115

I was in the Salão and during the work the weather started to become stormy. Wind blew violently against the building, rain lashed against the windows. I perceived the weather as a conscious being, resonating on the battle going on in our souls. Inside and outside merged in a continuum, reflecting each other.

I was in the Salão and opened my eyes. I saw the Evil attack a fellow traveler and trying to disturb the ritual. The traveler vomited and stumbled. Another traveler started to shout, he was angry. I was afraid and did not know where to find peace now that we were being attacked. Everyone kept on singing hymns, which was probably best thing I could have done, as well. After the ritual I felt like I missed the incarnation in my body due to this fear, like I walked half a meter next to my body.

I entered hyperspace and stayed connected to the consciousness of my fellow travelers in the Salão. To me it was obvious that the whole group was struggling in an intense spiritual battle. Everyone had to work hard to maintain a connection with the Light, the center of the Salão. A being present explained to me that the spiritual battle of mankind can be condensed, reflected, for a short moment, in a smaller group. He told me that because we transcended space and time, we entered this nonlocal human process of balancing Dark and Light, Good and Evil. Our group was, for a moment, a representation of this larger process.

I entered hyperspace and met a group of benevolent beings. They told me they wanted to show me what a psychosis looked like. They wanted me to know this, because it could help me understand people better that went through psychotic episodes. They told me to let them guide me and not to panic, like a guide preparing me for a trip through a jungle with potential dangerous animals. We entered something that looked like a maze. It was a place, made of thought constructs. They explained to me that our thoughts, our concepts, our idea’s become something like a building. Yet this building had loopholes in it. It had grown into a maze, where one could walk in circles forever. I could deeply feel how frightening and trapped someone would feel if they would have lost the way out. At the same time I was very happy with my guides and felt safe with there presence, guiding me through this experience.

I entered hyperspace and was witnessing some awesome colors and patterns. Then some fellow traveler started vomiting during the silence. Instead of disturbing my vision, the sound of vomiting transformed into colors and splattered like Day-Glo colors through my vision, merging and transforming into my vision. The harmony I perceived refused to be disturbed and incorporated the sounds like a perfect creative impulse.

After several occasions where I met the Source of All Light I started to realize that this source could be given a face if we desired to do so: the face of Christ or maybe Buddha, depending on our preferences. During the works I experimented with imaginations I consciously constructed of the face of Christ. At a certain moment I was at home, the day after a long 10 hour work on White Thursday . I started to feel tense, energized and restless when I decided to sit and meditate on the feeling, a bright light started to emerge from inside, overwhelmingly bright. I felt the resurrection of Christ was an inner experience, happening inside my soul.

Setting: Santo Daime Ceremony
Age: 34 (31-34 during experiences)
Sex: Male
Duration: 2.5 hours (Santa Misa ceremonies) - 14 hours (longest dance works)
Shulgin Rating Scale: +++ / ++++

Inside the infinite circle of the Divine Presence which completely surrounds me, I affirm: there is only one Presence here, it is Harmony, which makes all hearts vibrate with Joy and Happiness. Those who choose to enter here will feel the vibration of the Divine Harmony.

The consecration of the space.

…

Reintroduction

Raimundo Irineu Serra was born in Brazil in 1892 and migrated to the Western Amazon region in 1912 to work in the rubber tapping industry. He was introduced by local shamans in the 1920s to the brew Ayahuasca, an entheogenic tea from the vine Banisteriopsis Caapi and the leaf Psychotria Viridis. During a period of eight days in solitude in the forest he received visions of the Queen of the Wood, the ‘Rainha da Floresta’ which he recognized as the Virgin Mary. He received the instructions to start a spiritual doctrine, founded in 1930 as the ‘Santo Daime’. Irineu named the Ayahuasca ‘Daime’, which is Portuguese for ‘Give me’.

During rituals, that last several hours, the Daime is served to the participants. Rituals are performed in a hexagonal mandala structure, women on one side, men on the other. In the middle the musicians are seated. Some rituals are healing rituals, others concentration and meditation rituals, some are dancing rituals. The rituals take up to 14 hours.

The Santo Daime is an eclectic religion, mixing elements from Christianity with Brazilian, African and Indian spiritual traditions. The doctrine is transmitted through the singing of hymns; they posses guidelines to receive personal and first hand religious experiences. The following document is a report of these religious or spiritual experiences after my own ingestion of the Daime during a three year period. I wrote them down, as close to the experience as possible, even though most experiences are far beyond words.

This is part two of a three part series as written by @kairon and released via ZOOMDOUT.COM in three parts.

Sou Luz, dou Luz
E faço tudo iluminar

I am Light, I give Light
And illuminate everything

Padrinho Sebastião, O Justiceiro, Sou Luz hymn 100


…

XIX.

I entered hyperspace and passed a threshold, beyond which there was only light. A gigantic source of light, bright and radiating. I stopped and gazed in absolute awe. The light was radiating, moving, flowing. It was everywhere and the source of all light. My mind stood still. When my mind moved, the movement reflected in the light and created millions of ripples in the light. Then I entered again a state of stillness. I watched and watched in pure awe. The light was beautiful. It included everything. It knew everything. At that moment I thought ‘God is Light, God is Light’.

I entered hyperspace and received a vision about the connection between the eyes and the soul. We can see in each other the potential present deep inside. When I was very young, someone looked at me and I saw reflected in his eyes my potential force. We do this all the time when we look at each other. Through the light in the eyes we transmit to the other what potential we see, for the better or the worse. This information is transmitted literally in the blink of an eye. For someone to see the deep potential reflected in the eyes of the other can be a lifelong orientation and support.

I entered hyperspace and saw the brilliant light. After some time I saw the light explode and clouds of light wrapped itself around my body, clothing me in light. The light exploded several times, every explosion adding another layer to my emerging light-body.

I was amazed by several things happening during the ritual. At some point I said to myself ‘This can not be, laws of nature are being violated’. Some beings started making jokes with me: ‘Who are you going to sue, now that the laws of nature are being violated?’ They continued laughing and after some time I began to see the humor of it all. I started to realize how preposterous the whole notion of unbreakable laws of nature was and that there is no court for such cases. The only thing shattered was my image of the world.

I entered hyperspace and realized that every time I do, I feel like I’m coming home. At the same time, there is this realization: I have totally forgotten this place. Even since the last work, I totally forgot how this place feels, looks. And at the same moment, this feels so deeply as my home, as my true home. But how come I always forget this place? How can something so weird at the same time be so familiar?

Emmanuel accompanied me to hyperspace and showed me hierarchies within hierarchies of beings. All devoted to healing the travelers present at that moment. I saw how there were personal guides for some travelers, helping them with their personal issues. I saw greater beings, lighter, with a more transpersonal kind of work. They gathered themes for healing among the travelers and healed these themes in a more archetypal way. There were volunteers, sharing their consciousness in the process of carrying these archetypical traumas. I saw someone being murdered. Someone along the fellow travelers carried this trauma of seeing someone murdered in his soul, so we just witnessed the event and carried it in pure consciousness. The blood dripping, the suffering in the soul. This is what human beings do to each other. By witnessing it, carrying the event in our consciousness, we can heal it, bringing light where darkness lives.

While entering hyperspace, time starts to slow down. The sense with which I perceive time begins to perceive that time isn’t flowing as it used to. It slows down, then it stops. I thought, ‘I just fell off the calendar’. Hyperspace seems to be a timeless realm in which everything is present. When leaving hyperspace, the sense with which I perceive time slowly begins to work again. Yet, for some period time seemed to be running backwards before my sense of time became normal again.

I entered hyperspace and benevolent beings explained to me what happened when I use acupuncture. I saw a body and it was made of light. At the moment I entered an acupuncture needle the light moved. The body was transparent and the light moved like the water of the sea. At another occasion they explained to me how I could heal someone by tapping a point with my finger and listening to the song that would emit from the point. By singing the song I would feel emerge, while tapping the point on the body, the person would heal.

I was in the Salão and watched the structure of our ritual. The travelers are structured in a hexagonal pattern, in the middle there is a table with a double cross and flowers. I saw how we created a collective consciousness by staying together in this structure. It was as if in the empty space in the middle a seventh aspect, the sum of our collective consciousness and intentions, arose. I perceived this seventh aspect as a radiating light, a pillar of light, vibrating and radiating. I noticed the resemblance with the Hexagonal Consciousness on Saturn.

I was in the Salão and opened my eyes. I saw my fellow travelers and they were shape-shifting. Some travelers looked like angels, radiating light. One traveler was a lizard, someone else looked like a Nazi. Some were reptiles, others were space travelers. A being explained to me that we all exist in multiple dimensions at the same time, yet in common reality we are normally tuned in to just one appearance.

I entered hyperspace and met benevolent beings that started to teach me about sexuality. They showed me that when two people embrace each other, their energetic systems could become totally open. The one person could possess the ability to be totally open in the belly, for example, while the other might be totally open in the throat, meaning that they would be free and unblocked in that area, physically as well as psychologically. When they would embrace in a sexual way, their energetic systems would become one, transmitting the free and open state of a part of the body and soul to the other. In some way, the information about how to be open in that area, the state of being open and free, is directly transmitted in the embrace. When the lovers separate again, after their encounter, they would have to process the openness that they received in their body and soul. This is the cause, they showed me, of a lot of emotional struggle in relationships: we received the gift of being open in a certain area of our body, soul and spirit, after which we would have to process this openness. We have to allow ourselves to be touched, to become conscious again as to why we once decided to block these areas. This transmitting of energetic openness is also a part of how and what we can learn in a sexual relationship.

I entered hyperspace and asked a question about a situation in my life. The beings I met told me they first had something else, more important, to share. So I listened. They showed me how life exists, dimension in dimension, hierarchy in hierarchy, system within system. At a smaller level something can seem to be evil. Yet, there is a higher level, a higher hierarchy or system in which the situation is embedded. In this higher system the situation finds meaning and fits into the scheme of the Universe. Everything that seemed evil turns out to be part of this bigger scheme where it turns out to be a good cause. Nothing can escape this. Everything is good, ultimately. It is just a matter of expanding our consciousness. I rested in the feeling that everything is all right; there are no mistakes. After that the question I had asked when entering hyperspace lost meaning and turned out to be answered by this deeper lesson.

END OF PART II.

Inside the infinite circle of the Divine Presence which completely surrounds me, I affirm: there is only one Presence here, it is Harmony, which makes all hearts vibrate with Joy and Happiness. Those who choose to enter here will feel the vibration of the Divine Harmony.

The consecration of the space.

…

Introduction

Raimundo Irineu Serra was born in Brazil in 1892 and migrated to the Western Amazon region in 1912 to work in the rubber tapping industry. He was introduced by local shamans in the 1920s to the brew Ayahuasca, an entheogenic tea from the vine Banisteriopsis Caapi and the leaf Psychotria Viridis. During a period of eight days in solitude in the forest he received visions of the Queen of the Wood, the ‘Rainha da Floresta’ which he recognized as the Virgin Mary. He received the instructions to start a spiritual doctrine, founded in 1930 as the ‘Santo Daime’. Irineu named the Ayahuasca ‘Daime’, which is Portuguese for ‘Give me’.

During rituals, that last several hours, the Daime is served to the participants. Rituals are performed in a hexagonal mandala structure, women on one side, men on the other. In the middle the musicians are seated. Some rituals are healing rituals, others concentration and meditation rituals, some are dancing rituals. The rituals take up to 14 hours.

The Santo Daime is an eclectic religion, mixing elements from Christianity with Brazilian, African and Indian spiritual traditions. The doctrine is transmitted through the singing of hymns; they posses guidelines to receive personal and first hand religious experiences. The following document is a report of these religious or spiritual experiences after my own ingestion of the Daime during a three year period. I wrote them down, as close to the experience as possible, even though most experiences are far beyond words.

This is part one of a three part series as written by @kairon and released via ZOOMDOUT.COM in three parts.

Enjoy.

twitter handle: @kairon

15th of September, 2012

Eu tomo Daime, Eu tomo Daime
Tomo para viajar

I drink Daime, I drink Daime
I drink it to travel

Tetéo, O Assessor, Tomo Daime hymn 44


…

It was in the spring of the year 2009 that I first met the Daime. I encountered the Daime with great respect and fear and was happy to receive teachings from hyperspace during three years, which I am about to share in this document.
                                                                                           

I've been 'pinteresting' or, rather, 'pinning' on Pinterest recently. Approximately two years late, but I guess that's how I roll. It took a couple of extremely forced tries over the past six months to finally get past the layers of Pinterest disinterest, but after thoroughly exterminating the layers of resistance I've finally developed an actual interest in Pinterest. Alright, but enough with the euphonious burbling...

Below are some favorite images I've come across on that post-it picture note of a site (along with some FB, blog and twitter-link images). It took a while, but I finally understand the addicting aspect of Pinterest. And, I must admit, I dig what the creators of Pinterest have done. They've managed to create an internet company catering to the distracted, channel-surfing mindset of the television and internet generations. In fact, I think we've reached maximum surfing speed. There's only so fast a digital tidal-wave can travel. And I think Pinterest has reached the pinnacle of the human frequency-surfing experience. In fact, it's reached the extreme edge of the tipping point between 'surfing' and 'streaming'.

This is an evolution from 'surfing' to 'streaming'. We've gone from turning dials on staticky radios and black-and-white televisions to XM satellite radio-surfing in our cars and HDTV thousand-channel channel-surfing on our living room couch. But of course it didn't stop there, we're in the age of two-thousand twelve for God's sake! So we went from surfing to streaming. We've now shifted from satellite radio-listening in our cars to Spotify, Last.fm and Pandora streaming straight into our minds (basically). We're going from Direct TV, Comcast and Fios network channel-surfing to streaming movies, shows and other content on our Smart TV's Netflix, Amazon, Youtube and Vimeo widgets. Networks are becoming stations within stations. And we've gone from surfing the web on Dig It, Reddit and StumbleUpon to streaming the web on pioneer-type internet services such as "Pinterest". This company allows the user to absorb more image-related information per minute than the amount of light the lens of the Hubble Space Telescope has ever been exposed to.  Oh no wait, I'm confusing Pinterest with psychedelics, again.

I'm just kidding. But Pinterst is kind of fun.

Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
~Ken Kesey~