Down and Up

From up to down, from down to humble, from humble to strong, from strong to flying

Hello, world. Or hello, those of you who read my nonsense. How have you been? How have I been? I suppose it’s been a while. I could catch you up via many excruciating details, or I could simply catch you up via the broad strokes up and down. Here, I’ll do a bit of both.

Down

In the past year I’ve been up and down, but I’ve been down more than I’ve been up:

• 20 days up, 45 days down. (January - March, 2023)

• 30 days up, 60 days down. (March - June, 2023)

• 25 days up, 36 days down. (June - August, 2023)

• 14 days up, 19 days down. (August - September, 2023)

• 12 days up, 13 days down. (September - October, 2023)

• 22 days up, 22 days down. (October - November, 2023)

• 20 days up, 38 days down. (November, 2023 - January, 2024)

Grand total: 143 days up, 233 days down — nearly five months sober, and nearly eight months buried under smoke.

I hope this will be the last time I write about addiction, but I just smoked what I intend to be the last roll of tobacco while “down,” and more than anything, I write about this torturous dance to clarify that it’s time to go “up” and to stay “up.” There’s something at least emotionally sobering about seeing your pattern laid out before you and trying to explain it. It’s challenging enough for me to explain it to myself, let alone to explain it to you, but the explanation invites clarity and resolve. The data above comprise only the past year; add a 2022 of tobacco + cannabis addiction and a 2019-2021 of cannabis addiction, and it’s plain to see that the pattern has gone on long enough.

It’s time to step out of this cycle for more than just a few weeks or a month, since this cycle has come to include periods of 3-4 weeks “up” within an overall trend that still points “down.” I even stopped smoking for six months from fall 2021 - spring 2022, and still, here we are. It’s time to leave behind this holding pattern that’s stopped me from building up my own energy too much, from flying too high, and it’s also time to forget about time. Since 2020 I’ve sought some magical date that would mark “day 1” in a perfect new chapter of sober life, imagining some numerical, time-based prophesy was on my side. This is why I can remember precise numbers of days over the past year despite having been stoned over half the time; I remember the days that were supposed to be special — January 1, March 7, June 7ish, August 8, September 10, October 5, November 18. Relative to the countless other days when I tried swimming “up” and failed, these days were special on some level, but no day has been been special enough to transform the pattern as a whole. Time-based prophesies are a scam, especially when dreamed up in the mind of a man. Neither a day nor a number nor anything outside of me can save me from myself; my only salvation is learning what I must learn.

Humility

Hubris was my undoing every single time I let an “up” fade into a “down.” I’d reason that I had developed the self-control I needed to smoke just once or twice, and I’d be wrong, over and over. How many times can a guy be wrong about the same thing and repeat the same mistake? Dozens if not hundreds, apparently. Ridiculous.

Ridiculous is the name of the ego’s game, though — an absurd paradigm of wanting or “needing” things as a result of not feeling whole, even though our being can only ever be whole. The absurdity actually used to feel like fun and games back when my mindfulness was strong and I could still speak well, edit podcasts, do grad school work or even be social while sky-high. This ability bolstered the growing hubris of a “spiritual gangster” who thought he could do anything. He could put the peace pipe down and do three months of silent vipassanā, pick it back up the next month and process his dad’s death, put it down the next month and face his own death on Ayahuasca, pick it up the next month and move across the country a week before Covid started. Then, he could be high nearly every day of lockdown, put the ganga down in 2021 and start a new life in the most batshit crazy town in the Andes of Ecuador.

Living where I live has necessarily taught me humility, because I’ve struggled mightily to stay here and stick with life while learning a new language and culture, while having my body and mind broken down. Whereas it would have been easy to continue coasting through a privileged existence in the U.S., never becoming aware of my inability to listen and never taking full stock of my arrogance, being nothing and making a new life in a foreign land has been hard. It’s been orders of magnitude harder than I arrogantly assumed it would be in 2021, yet it’s also been orders of magnitude more growing. As I’ve carried on past countless mistakes, continued forward despite questioning my decision to live here nearly every day, resolve has grown.

It was certainly easy to question where I live, though, and to be down on Vilcabamba this past dry season. As I continued struggling with purpose and addiction a couple months after writing my last post on Light & Shadows in June, enormous fires ravaged wildlife around where I live. I remember driving near the next town south, Yangana, at 3am (don’t ask me why) and encountering the biggest fire I’d ever personally witnessed. The municipio’s help and the help of many volunteers from around town weren’t enough to stop devastation, and the whole community felt it. I felt particularly bad about the whole thing given I wasn’t one of those volunteers; I was too high. I was too high to even go to the home of Maya Choi, probably the person here to whom I’m the closest, as flames spread dangerously close to her (she and her home were fine, thankfully). I was no good to anyone, and I needed to get out — out of Vilcabamba, and out of my patterns of self-destruction.

So I did. I got “up” out of the bullshit and left town, realizing that leaving Vilcabamba is very strongly correlated with an ability to step outside of self-destructive habits. I traveled for a month before returning to Vilca and returning “down,” as I’d done after escaping to the jungle in June, as I’d done after escaping to Maya’s mountain in July and as I’d done after escaping to a Goenka vipassanā retreat in August. Whether because my brain was craving novelty or because Vilcabamba energetically speeds up one’s karma (as the hippies say), getting away always seemed to help. Getting away to Maya’s was by far my easiest climb up and out of the smoky hole, as I could sleep like a bear, journaling for hours with nothing asked of me, facing zero temptation. Getting away to the Goenka retreat, on the other hand, was by far the most brutal climb up.

Thirty minutes before arriving with my then-girlfriend to the Cuenca church that was hosting this 10-day meditation bootcamp, I was smoking the last tobacco, still a little high from cannabis in the morning and still a little tipsy from whisky in the afternoon. After three and a half years off from meditation retreats, I stumbled into one of the world’s most rigid vipassanā traditions with the looseness of Corey Worthington.

THC slowly eased its grip on the tapped-out receptors in my brain as the chants of S.N. Goenka marked the beginning of the most hellish withdrawal ever. After the retreat and its noble silence had begun, I lied in bed knowing that sleep couldn’t find me. The wake-up bell would ring at 4am every morning, and the very uptight gerente (manager) of the retreat would be knocking on doors at 4:05am, making sure we were meditating according to the retreat’s militaristic timetable. I cried five or six times the first day or two, unsure I could go through withdrawal this way, and I fantasized about taking off and driving the five hours home to Vilcabamba and its feel-good herbs. As often happens when giving up cannabis, sleep was a disaster, and despite our days starting at 4am and ending at 9pm, I wouldn’t fall asleep until 12am, 1am, 2am. On one of the early days I tried to sneak in a “lying down practice” (nap) during the meditation period just before lunch. Pretending to meditate was going great, and I was nearly in the angelic realms of the snooze after twenty minutes, when:

My door opened, I looked up sleepily, and my gaze met that of our zealous retreat gerente, whose eyes were alight not with nibbāna, but with the call of duty (to bust me). He just stared for a moment, maybe taken aback by the flagrancy of my napping ways. I stared back, awaiting his…

“Necesitas seguir meditando!!”

I breathed deep and paused, abstaining from the urge to say “fuck this” and instead saying, “ok.”

I didn’t dare attempt another nap, so what was I to do? Meditate all day every day, lie in bed awake until around 1am, somehow wake up at 4am, and continue averaging three hours of sleep for the first seven nights. By day seven I was in a fugue state. My mind had so little energy that no train of thought could cohere, and the dissociative feeling was reminiscent of how I felt a year prior when I got zero sleep after an ayahuasca ceremony and went straight into an aguacolla (san pedro cactus) ceremony, running through whole days on fumes, or on spirit. It wasn’t a nice way to be, feeling too run-down to think, whether on the heels of drinking psychoactive plants or on the heels of smoking them. Feeling these lows, though, was what I needed to find humility regarding the power of the master plants whose energies I’d been relating to so cavalierly.

The sobriety from the Goenka retreat didn’t last, probably because it was too humbling and hard-won, and afterward I felt I deserved a break. The sobriety from my time on Maya’s mountain also didn’t last, probably because it was too easy, and afterward I forgot how serious a problem smoking had been. Now I approach sobriety from my own home, aware of how deep a challenge it’s been, yet gentle toward myself, giving myself the rest I need, yet continuing relentlessly with my work and with my series, Light & Shadows.

My team has grown to seven and is still growing; as I fight through shit feels and minimize how shittily I’m writing these words, I message with my producer about the editing of our five filming days thus far. As I resist the urge to go get more tobacco, worlds away from my A-game, I message with my business partner about our ventures composting and bottling water. This is around where I found myself when I wrote you last in June — striving to see through the smoke and embrace responsibility — except now the projects are blooming, and life no longer offers me the option to hide in the hole. To do what must be done for clean food and water in southern Ecuador and to stick to a production schedule, I have no choice but to emerge. I must get clean without the help of a retreat’s structure or of a friend like Maya, and I must dig into myself until I find something to replace what the plants were giving me.

Strength

The upshot of humility is that it leads to strength — just as soon as the bedrock of True Self is unearthed from beneath all the layers of ego getting humbled away. Once we’ve burned through our dark karmas and incinerated every part of us wanting to reign in hell, what’s left is the version of us devoid of bullshit, empowered by universe to serve in heaven, strong. I’ve been humbled enough to see the shape of this guy — the Reiman who has let go of his spiritual ego and is working every day, with discipline, toward the betterment of the world — but not enough to feel like I am Him. To finally feel that and embody the “leveled-up” Reiman who’s been eluding me for months, I need the humility to decide month after month, again and again, that I’m not ready for a healthy relationship with tobacco and cannabis. I won’t be ready in a month, and I won’t be ready in a few months. Because I’ve failed hundreds of times to relate healthily rather than abusively, my only tenable choice is to not relate at all.

Former addicts often leave it here. They take lifelong sobriety as their only choice, and view every day as “day 1” in the never-ending battle against their demons.

Fuck that.

Granted, I just procured and then smoked a little more tobacco, so I’m not one to talk, but I say that the most empowered endgame isn’t simply swapping an old plant-centric identity (which roared with resistance during my Goenka retreat, but was ultimately dismantled) for a new sobriety-centric identity. The endgame of any relationship — to a plant, a partner, a culture or any energy — is to be in right relation. Tobacco can be a powerful medicine in the right forms (drinking liquid tobacco, or working with the snuff tobacco called Rapé), and our ancestors’ right relation with the master plant helped them to be present. Cannabis can also be a powerful medicine when used occasionally, for good reason (to connect abstract creative dots, to process grief or to chill the fuck out) and in right relation. My problems have never been characterized by either plant; they’ve always been characterized by relationships.

Even in my “up” moments the past year, I’ve found that the energy of my problematic relationships has simply gravitated toward new objects. When I wasn’t overusing cannabis and killing my lungs with tobacco, I was often overusing social media and hype-up music, or killing my energy with workaholism. From November 18 to December 8, I was launching my creative work spastically, aggressively making filming days happen and naturally waking up at or before sunrise every morning. In the eleven years since I went through the final rounds of Survivor casting in December 2012, I had never woken up like that — naturally, by dawn, day after day — and at the start of December 2023, my hubris once again deluded me into believing I’d “arrived.” My work was finally my new drug, I was on fire to create Light & Shadows, I’d met a woman to whom I felt more attraction than I’d ever felt before, and I was on fire to be the man who’s worthy of and ready for it all.

The rub: I wasn’t that man. I’m still not. I was high and barely able to stand when my team’s third and most important filming day rolled around, I was struggling like the half-baked guy I still am, and I still think daily about the woman whose attraction to me died from a weeklong blitzkrieg of try-hard romantic blunders. Even now, I’m still trying too hard to write well, even though I can’t write well, because I haven’t tried hard at what actually matters — breathing, living my days mindfully and feeling well.

So, while I carry intimations of where I’m going, I’m not there now, and I need the humility to accept that and to accept myself. Humility only leads to strength upon actually being embraced now and embodied rather than being spiritually bypassed. It may ultimately lead to Light & Shadows changing the world, to providing water and compost for millions, to an actualized man, to right relations with all the plants and to… damnit. Humility. How fast we forget. Right now, humility leads nowhere but to the daily grind, to a confrontation with the parts of me that remain insecure and lost, to sobriety. Here is where I am, and here is where I must make peace. I’ve had enough of magical dates and time-based prophesies, and so the commitments with which I make peace now are based instead on action:

• Starting today, I’ll imbibe zero cannabis until we’ve finished a cut of the first episode of Light & Shadows, which will be this summer at the earliest.

• Starting tomorrow, I’ll imbibe zero tobacco (other than ceremonially, i.e. if I go to the jungle) until the tobacco garden I’m starting is mature, which will also take many months.

• No matter what, I meditate every day.

The feeling of creating that first episode will be bliss, and now that I know we’ll get there, faith will keep me grinding with the balance I was missing in December. I have many uncomfortable feelings to face these next few days, and by meditating and moving into the daily rhythm that makes me feel well, I’ll face them. I’ll sweat through the heat flashes, journal the shit out of the REM-snapback nightmares and wake up excited to create Light & Shadows. I’ll wake up early and settle into my own healthy rhythm, moving forward rather than hiding on Maya’s mountain, yet I’ll also allow myself the freedom that was missing from Goenka’s meditation prison. In this climb out of the smoky hole — a hole I wish to never revisit — I’ll find the middle way upward. It’s evening now, and I need only stay home, eat, smoke two more rolls of tobacco, find a way to relax and breathe and then sleep. With no ganga. Fuck.

Up

I’m up on day two of this blog post, day two free from cannabis, day one free from tobacco and day one of throwing all these “day one” declarations to the wind. Beyond time or anything of the mind, my heart is ready for freedom.

I actually slept well last night from around 1am to around 9am. While the peak of physiological withdrawal may still be ahead of me, there’s something very empowering about having decided, having committed to sobering up and having begun. I feel stronger coming out of the hole than in climbs past, slowly becoming the drug version of Alex Honnold and an expert at unfucking myself. In seriousness though, I’ve needed that strength today. I kid you not, this is how my morning began:

Once I was ready to get out of bed, I stretched, stood, pseudo-made the bed by centering the sheets, and then… about 1/4 of a doobie fell to the ground at the foot of the bed. I still kid you not, I’m a tidy and orderly guy, and this has literally never happened before. I still don’t know which faded night the joint wound up in my bed, but here it was. I smelled it and confirmed that it was cannabis. I confirmed that it was smokable. Indeed, I could have gotten decently high, and if this had happened yesterday morning I probably would have. Yet today, already 36 hours out of the weeds, I decidedly ripped the quarter-joint into unsmokable bits and threw them away. As I tossed them in the trash, I saw a leftover roll of tobacco that could have offered me a single puff. Sadly, it would have been far from my first dumpster dive for drugs. Again, though, I made the decision aligned with my will and ripped apart the temptation. I really don’t feel very tempted in general at the moment; I feel decided.

Thank God this happened in the morning. My will tends to be strongest in the morning, and to slowly cede to barrages of “downward” thoughts as the day unfolds. A good night’s sleep is the most restorative medicine in the world, and when our eyes first open in the morning, for at least a moment, we are in the moment — free of all the external dramas, mental barrages and ego reactions that inevitably fill the days of we who aren’t monks. Because we find our easiest access to presence first thing in the morning, it’s the most impactful time to meditate, to make decisions with our will, to expand our presence. The stronger I keep my will in the morning, the more immune it is to withering over the course of a day, and the more days I keep it standing, the stronger it stands. Structures standing longer generally stand stronger, too, until they don’t. While I believe all I’ve written above, I also believe that everything has its time. If the Roman empire could collapse as swiftly as it did, there’s all the hope in the world that now is the collapse of the gross ganga and tricky tobacco structures that colonized my mind for five years and for two years, respectively. I’ve seen that decolonizing my mind from the plants can leave it susceptible to recolonization by a woman, but I’m nonetheless committed to winning my freedom, one attachment at a time. I decide: It’s a new dawn.

I use lowercase letters for ganga and tobacco and call them gross and tricky not because I’ve lost my reverence for them, but because I’m coming to see them with balance. My previous view erred on the plant-centric side, and so by writing and thinking like a sober twat with a stick up his ass, I’m effectively taking a bent stick and stretching it in the other direction so as to leave it straight. It helps that until age 28, I thought anyone addicted to tobacco was an idiot, having internalized the demonization of the plant that’s so common in the U.S. Of course you’ll view tobacco extremely negatively when your only reference for its use is seeing cigarette smokers losing at life. When I realized the plant is sacred and can be medicine in many different forms, I nearly completely abandoned the U.S. programming (which was easy to justify doing, since that programming gets so much wrong) around the start of 2021. When a paradigm shifts, it’s a slippery slope toward adopting an opposite yet equally stupid paradigm. Many Vilcabambans saw through the lies of the Covid era, for example, but then went way too far: all of modern medicine is a scam, everyone getting the Covid vaccines will be dead in a year, Covid isn’t a real thing, all the governments are reptilians, etc. Another example is myopic scientific-materialist atheists becoming dogmatic born-again Christians, and vice-versa. Paradigms swing as pendulums swing, until like my metaphorical stick, they find the integrative middle.

Right now the U.S. is going through a shift regarding cannabis that’s similar to my shift regarding tobacco. Gone are the days of absurd demonization, and here are the days of brushing negative consequences under the rug. Cannabis can’t be addictive, right? Cannabis used to be bad, but you can smoke cannabis and still do things, still function in the society, so now it’s good. It helps you sleep. Never mind that you can’t sleep without it… cannabis = good. Psychedelics = good. Okay, maybe cannabis can be a little bit addictive, maybe, but psychedelics are not addictive in any way, shape or form. Look at all this Johns Hopkins research. Look at all these famous people tripping. Look at Tim Ferriss and Nicole Kidman and all these successful people sucking psychedelics’ dick. Don’t worry about the fact that in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the government gave psychedelics to the slave class of humans so they’d have something to do. Psychedelic = good. It is not drugs. It’s medicine. It’s good.

Here’s a transitory sentence to stop being sarcastic and start being sincere.

Nothing is good, and nothing is bad. Anything can be good, and anything can be bad. The goodness or badness isn’t about the thing; it’s about your relationship and your awareness. Anything — cannabis and psychedelics certainly included — can be deadly, tricky, addictive.

Indeed, I’d argue that today cannabis and psychedelics are addictive in how we’re relating to them. When we think of addiction we think of cigarette smokers, alcoholics and people depending on cocaine — addicts chained to a habit on a short time-frame that impedes daily life. We don’t think about my former shaman in the jungle saying he feels weak if he goes a month or more without drinking ayahuasca. We don’t think about my friend Kim, who compulsively obsesses about mushrooms for hours every day without being totally sure why. Kim once told me that he used to be more into meditation and pursuing Truth, more like me in a sense, until he eventually just got tired of feeling confused (awakening is the ultimate ‘not knowing’) and decided that mushrooms were his thing. My first psychedelic experience was with mushrooms, and after something like 20-30 trips, I love mushrooms. I love them as much as I love ayahuasca, which I’ve drunk 57 times. Both teachers are absolutely awesome, yet I don’t conflate either with my Truth.

“If you don’t have a plan, you become a part of somebody else’s plan.”

Terrence McKenna reported the mushroom telling him this — an unnerving message, really, because it’s true. We live in a space of many egos (human, plant, fungi, whatever — they’re all egos insofar as they’re particular beings) with many visions and many plans. My egoic plan is to create Light & Shadows, distribute compost and deliver water to people. Ayahuasca’s egoic plan is to heal humans, find humans who want to call themselves shamans and make those humans vessels through which she can succeed. Her plan isn’t bad. I’d even say I (mostly) support it. It seems more plant-centric, medicine-centric and female-centric than my own plan, but Aya and I are much more aligned than we are at odds. I’d much rather be the vessel of ayahuasca than the vessel of, say, big oil or capitalism. Yet, something I’ve learned in my years swimming through seas of medicine (or drugs; I could use either word) is to love myself so damn much that I honor my plan, my vision and yes, my ego, above all that isn’t God. I will be a vessel for no one other than The One. I serve the Dao, the God, the great spirit, nature. Teachers of many species can help me better understand God, but they aren’t God. I’m not God either, and thus I’m always open to my plans being changed by God, as they have been. Whatever change is necessary for me to reconnect with source, I’m in. And then, beginning from that connection to source revealing my ego’s purpose, I create with clear vision, with Reiman’s vision.

Psychedelics won’t kill you like tobacco; they’re powerful tools for our healing, and powerful teachers in our pursuit of Truth. Far from being strictly good, though, they take over minds and hearts in lieu of taking over lungs. They “take over” in the most respectful and loving of ways, connecting you to the parts of yourself that genuinely align with their plan, but they still take over. As a woman delivers a man immense pleasure and validation while slowly convincing him that his highest good is devoting himself to helping her poop out babies and then paying for all their shit, psychedelics make the fate of servitude as appealing as it possibly could be. And, given we’re all moving toward a future of serving in heaven anyway, I repeat that such a fate isn’t bad. God is everyone and everything, so if serving something or someone in particular is your best route to serving God, I say go for it. For me, though, serving anything in particular over time feels limiting. Wholeheartedly, I can only really serve this moment and its unique presentation of God.

Every energy wants to spread and every ego with a plan wants to find its worker bees. It’s obvious to see tobacco succeeding at that via chainsmokers, and it’s quite subtle to see ayahuasca succeeding at that via medicine men and medicine women. Ayahuasca lingers energetically in a body long after being imbibed (as does cannabis, another plant of feminine energy), and fosters attachment in a much subtler way than does tobacco, a plant of masculine energy. Addiction to ayahuasca (or psychedelics generally) is supremely subtle, super slow and on a very long timescale. Rather than impeding your daily life and energy, psychedelics repurpose your life and fill you with supportive energy with which to carry out the plan — their plan.

Knowing many shamans, whether mushroom growers or ayahuasqueros, and seeing these shamans serving all kinds of plant-based, fungi-based, galactic or non-human plans, has ultimately led me to conclude that I don’t believe in shamanism. I do believe in humanity. I believe in shamanism as a phase of human development — the revelation that spirit underlies materiality, the growing awareness of the spirit world and the ability to perceive both it and the material human realm simultaneously — but I don’t believe in shamanism as an identity or as an end destination. It can seem like the endgame, especially to shamans with their shamanic egos, because so little of humanity has ascended beyond it. One can easily think being shamanic means being awake, looking down on the 99.9% of our species who remain preoccupied with material success and human shit. Being shamanic isn’t being awake, though, especially in the context of serving “medicine” to the “sick.” To conceive of some people as sick and of other people as shamanic wisdom-bearers, occulting our collective wisdom and doling it out, is a dualistic conception estranged from awake consciousness. Our awakening is incomplete until we’re all awake, because rather than being something an individual does, awakening is of unity consciousness. Our freedom is incomplete until we’re all free, because we’re all in this together.

I’m in this together with cannabis, who saved me from panic attacks in grad school, opened my mind and paved the way for me to change my life. I’m in this together with ayahuasca, who encouraged me to take action and made the life changes possible. She helped me move to Ecuador and stay in Ecuador. She woke me up in many ways. I may even be in this together with ayahuasca to the degree that I drink ayahuasca again in late February, when a friend is coming to the jungle here. I feel gratitude that my relationship with Aya was never abusive, and so with her, I don’t really need the hard boundary that I currently need with cannabis and tobacco.

I’m in this together with tobacco, whose withdrawal I’m now feeling palpably after 21 hours, who hurt my health, but who also helped my understanding. Tobacco, jungle legend has it, originated as a sacred plant that wanted to have the qualities of all the plants simultaneously. And while tobacco addiction is most obvious in the first 24-48 hours, I feel that tobacco works simultaneously on the subtle level whereby ayahuasca can be addictive over the course of months. People often power through that first day or two reminiscent of heroin withdrawal only to find themselves consumed by tobacco yet again, months or even years later. I feel that by getting addicted to tobacco (which my soul, in its infinite wisdom, apparently allowed), I’ve learned about addiction generally, on a much more fundamental level than I could previously apprehend. The same compulsiveness that would have me smoke right now (I won’t) could have me reaching for tobacco in months, and in fact, it’s that compulsiveness that would have me reaching for anything I don’t actually need. It’s that compulsiveness that would have me abandon my power in any way I ever abandon my power.

I’m in this together with you, sharing what I’m sharing to support your own empowerment, but also sharing to support myself, feeling that support in your decision to read this. Knowing you’ll read, I’ve felt the motivation yesterday and today to write instead of smoke, and I have to thank you for helping me out of the hole I was in. To do creative work and speak to you is a blessing I never want to take for granted. Thank you. Thank you for deciding to make me heard.

To Decide

I feel strength in the decision to which humility led — to stick to the three commitments above, and allow my own energy to arise and fly — insofar as I’m decided. Ultimately, who really cares where we go? We’re just exploring consciousness here. My plan, your plan, Donald Trump’s plan, Aya’s plan… whatever. Obviously “I” do care. It isn’t “whatever” at all as I see it, but it’s always absolutely perfect as God sees it. Wherever you decide to go and whomever you decide to journey with, you’re empowered on your path insofar as that’s the path you’ve decided to walk, insofar as you are a decided person.

You can always make a new decision and change the plan, but to have a plan and to decide is to be alive as an individual.

I once had a dream in which I arrived at the doctor-like office of a shamanic woman I’d met in the jungle. I lied on her massage table, and she assessed pains and issues in my left leg, especially in the knee. She identified that the issues were related to my love life. At this time in early 2022, I was still hung up on Kailey, the girlfriend of three years with whom I’d envisioned all of it — family, kids and serving her as my queen. Yet, those visions were falling apart, because while she was attached to a life in the U.S., I had decided to create a new life in Ecuador. The shamanic woman asked:

“Why would you put so much energy into something that only has, like, a 10% chance of being real?”

I know why; I’m the ‘never say die’ guy. I don’t give up even when I should, and I’m tragically romantic. I still think every day about this woman I connected with for six days in late November - early December, even though I now haven’t seen her in-person for forty-four days. I don’t like being this way, and as multiple other women come into my life simultaneously, I feel myself becoming less this way, but still to some extent, I am this way. I could bemoan the blue-pilled culture that made me this way, or I could make a new decision and grow into a new man.

After hearing the shamanic woman’s question, the dream continued into a new space with my former Kichwa shaman. As he always did when coming to me in dreams, he spoke not only in the English language but also in an English accent, I guess to connect with my being’s deeper ancestral layers.

“You have two voices. You have a wispy voice that’s high and comes from up here [he gestured toward the head]. But then there’s this other voice. You have this deep, authoritative voice. Where does that voice come from?”

In the dream I could feel that this voice comes from down low in the body, from the gut, and intuitively I knew how to answer my shaman’s question.

“Decisiveness.”

He nodded knowingly.

Our power lies in two places at once. As potential, it lies in holding our decisions loosely and remaining present. As manifest reality, on the other hand, our power lies in deciding.

Right now I could go back to smoking and make myself small. That’s a comfortable place for my personality, but it’s become an impossible place for my spirit. And it’s my spirit, I know, that I choose as my guide through life. I know my spirit is my choice because I’ve chosen spirit countless times, from impossible places, amidst my ego kicking and screaming in resistance. More than I’ve decided to create Light & Shadows or to do anything in particular, I’ve decided to always come back to my spirit. No matter how many annoying people my spirit is called to face and help, no matter how much my personality would prefer a simple life to myself and a family, I’ll show up to my spirit’s calling, to why I really came here. It wasn’t to smoke my days away or hide. I came to help humans, to show a way, to live in harmony with nature, to be free, to expand, to be still, to take action and to live a big life. I choose that life.