Our Deepest Fear is not that we are Inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our Darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented & fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God, your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing Enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us, it is in every one.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Words by MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

Given that there is so much stress, over-consumption and people freaking out about what’s going on in our planet & culture – there is a lot of negative energy to combat to stay sane & healthy. We are living in energetically frazzled times, with the news & facebook feeds serving to support freaking out over everything. Coupled with that, there’s financial losses that are popping up on the radar and I am seeing desperation both locally, close to home, as well as in the distance – on the news. My heart goes out to everybody that is going through it, and I pray that everybody find their inner peace and gratitude for what is, in the process.

Personally, I am grateful that I live in an extremely safe community, in a safe home, living very simply & frugally, and have very little stress in my life. I have no partner / boyfriend, no children, no real job (I freelance) and thus it has gratefully given me a lot of freedom to commit to my own inner work & self-love-healing-cultivation. I know that it’s difficult to commit to yourself and cultivating your tools for self-nurturing when there is so much stress, obligations and overwhelm in your life, but that is when it is even MORE CRUCIAL to have tools to move & clear stressful / negative energy in your field. And instead of actually dealing with the energy by using tools to clear the energetic field and arriving at balance, they instead numb themselves so they don’t have to fully feel or deal with how overwhelmed they feel – this is called addiction. And it does not work to clear or heal underlying issues, it creates less clarity & is a tool of disintegrating the psyche rather than integrating back into wholeness.

Thus it is so important that we all cultivate self-love & self-nurturing, and do our inner work of energetic re-balancing so that we may stay sane & balanced during these transformational times. So, in the name of frugality and economy, I offer you a list of 7 Self-Healing Tools that will always be free. Perhaps you can find 10 minutes in your day to commit to arriving back into stillness. It’s easier than you think; you probably spend 10 minutes a day (or more) on Facebook, reading the news, watching TV or youtube videos, drinking & other distractions from yourself. But it takes commitment to love yourself and bring your attention back within yourself, especially with so much clamboring for our attention from externals.

So here’s my list of 7 (FREE) Self-Healing Tools: 

1) Meditation

Meditation really is the most important tool that any of us have; we can use it anywhere, under any circumstance, and it will always be free. Stillness. Dropping into silence. Allowing external stimuli to quiet. Bringing our attention into our bodies. There are different teachings on how to meditate, but I’ve been really inspired by the teachings of QiGong and Dantien Breathing recently – check out Deborah Davis’s book Women’s Qigong. It’s helping me focus and notice when I’m distracted versus when I have total focus to go deep within. The essence of Dantien Breathing is to sit comfortably upright in a quiet, relaxing environment, keep your tongue attached to the roof of your mouth as you breathe. As you inhale, you let your lower abdominal belly expand, fill and relax. As you exhale, you squeeze your perineum (your kegels), and contract / pull your lower abdominal belly in. Keep your mouth closed and breathe through the nose. I usually put my hands over my lower belly and allow myself to enjoy the warmth from my hands to fill my lower belly, and focus on bringing life force / Qi into my lower belly energy center – the Dantien. I use a singing bowl album by Karma Moffett (Golden Bowls of Compassion) to help me meditate, and the luminous singing bowl vibrations perfectly compliment the work of stillness.

2) Breath

I think of Breathwork as the foundational bedrock of all meditation, self-cultivation, energy work practices. There are seemingly endless teachings, ranging from Fire Breath in Kundalini Yoga to the Vipassana breath practice. What I usually do is just focus on the sensations of the body as the breath moves in and out, rises and falls. Bring the attention into the sensations of the breath, the expansion and relaxation of the lungs, the rising and falling of the abdomen.

3) Mantra

I went to a concert with Deva Premal a few months ago, and was inspired to get into doing a mantra practice based on her album “Mantras for Precarious Times” – Click Here for Album. Over the last few months, I’ve been breaking out my mala beads, sitting in front of my altar (or even out in nature), and reciting mantras 108 times. My favorite is “Om Shree Mahalakshmiyei Namaha”. Once you get used to sitting and chanting a mantra for 10 minutes, the repetitiveness becomes an opportunity for you to totally relax and melt, until you suddenly you have come to the final mala bead.

4) Creative Writing / Poetry

I’ve been writing poetry since I was a child. Writing has been a very important part of my life as long as I can remember. Journals are like time capsules of the Soul. I encourage everyone to spend time alone and let the mind explore itself in its creativity; play with words, no matter how trite or deep.. Just give yourself to the outpouring of your inner expression. My journal is an important part of life and my creative process.

5) Exercise

I’ll be honest, exercise is where I struggle the most. However, it’s obviously one of the most important tools we have for self-healing & transformation. I primarily do QiGong and Yin Yoga right now, and have spent time with Pilates and Yoga over the years. Right now, I’ve decided to focus on not straining the body, and to pay attention to strain in the body when it happens, and focus consciously on relaxing habitual patterns that cause strain. But really, exercise – it’s obvious we all need to do it to feel our best and most vitalized.

6) Chanting / Singing

Chanting & Singing is for the Soul what food is for the body. To me, singing is the highest pleasure, the deepest joy, the ultimate purpose in life. It’s the only thing I want to forever devote myself to, and I know that other vocalists feel the same way. Singing has always been used in every culture around the planet for practices related to spirituality, religion and mysticism. It is the universal expression of the heart and the soul. Open up and tap in to the creative energy of your soul; let your songs be a way to carry your prayers and invocations to the highest.

7) Creating Sacred Space – Altars / Shrines

Clear away funky / stagnant energy in your home, make your house a temple! But begin by creating an altar, use the things that you love and bring you inspiration; whether they are crystals, photographs of beloveds, plants, feathers, animal totems, vases filled with flowers or deities. My altar is my power station; it is the source of my daily practice. I meditate and do all my inner work in front of my Altar every day. I light a candle first thing every morning, light incense, and activate the life force every day. It is the source of creative energy from which emanates the rest of my life and work.

Blessings to you all and I hope that everyone out there feels at peace, centered & relaxed, connected to to their community, and Safe. May these transformational times and winter hibernation months provide the necessary space for everyone’s self-nourishment.

Gratitude to All & Thank you for sharing my offerings & expressions with your friends!!!!

This Latest Video was a collaboration with Nature Dreamweaver (Find Nature on Facebook) - an amazing artist who creates nature installations & visionary mandalas using natural elements local to each environment. Inspired by Andy Goldsworthy, Q’ero Despacho mesas & Tibetan Sand Painting Mandalas, Nature’s Mandalas are a unique, prayerful expression of spirit.

The Background music was provided by Elijah Ray (Find Elijah on Bandcamp) - an Amazing songwriter, vocalist & sound healer from Kauai.

If you would like to download the track – GETTIN LAID BY INSPIRATION – you will have to sign up for the newsletter RIGHT HERE at WahkeenaSitka.com – Sign up in the Sidebar to the left or Below at the bottom of the site. It’s only available via my newsletter.

Gettin Laid by Inspiration, Written by Wahkeena Sitka, 2011 ©

Poem Below:

Creativity is a drug
and I am walking the street
looking for my next fix.

I am a Whore for Song.
If I said – I’m getting Sanged,
It’s my Soul’s way of saying
I’m gettin Laid by Inspiration.

When did you last get laid
by the light of your soul’s
exquisite longing for beauty?

There is no greater throb
than the pulse of poetry
in your veins.

There is no greater penetration
than rhythmic waves of
bass pulsations echoing
in every cellular celebration of life.

There is no greater ecstasy
than the explosion of Yes
as the Heart exposes
its deepest vulnerability..
The orgasmic electricity flowing
from Soul to Soil
as seeds of creation are planted
& bloom in the spring light
of creative fertility.

This Song
This Dance
This Painting
These Photographs
These Words
This Nature
Are but the Muse
Intoxicated with Life
Drunk on Spirit
Inebriated by Song
Gettin Fixed by Funk

There is no Greater Love
Than this perfect moment exposed
in Total Joyful Drunken YES with
Creative Life Force Longing for Expression!

Are You Saying YES?

1) Akara • Extradimensional Ethnography

Akara’s debut album is my favorite of 2011; its cinematic, orchestral, transcendental downtempo electronica breaks genres and creates its own world – unlike anything I’ve heard before. As an artistic statement, the album is completely cohesive and creates a cinematic sonic realm that is at once both totally unique & yet soulfully familiar. I urge you to take a listen to this amazing work of art! My favorite live music performance this year was seeing Akara perform at Beloved festival; it was pure magic. Check out this interview with Joshua Penman!

Find it Here: http://akaraproject.com/

2) Bluetech • Rainforest Reverberations

I’ve been an ecstatically obsessed fan of Bluetech since 2005, and every album he’s put out has been pretty much amazing. His latest release, Rainforest Reverberations, showcases some of my favorite tracks of his yet, and he co-created several tracks with other producers including Kilowatts & Kalya Scintilla, and featured the voices of both Eve LadyApples & Katrina Blackstone. Personally, I’m completely obsessed with the tracks 667 & Emerald Epiphytes, and I adore the poetic invocations of LadyApples that begin & complete the album. Additionally, this album is part of the Critical Beats series, so proceeds of this album go towards supporting the Amazon Rainforest.

Find it Here: http://criticalbeats.bandcamp.com/album/bluetech-rainforest-reverberation

3) Lady Gaga • Born This Way

The current Queen of Pop has obviously completely won my heart, and her latest album – Born This Way – is her best album to date (and hopefully a sign of her future artistic direction). This is what pop should be: emotional, inspiring, soul-stirring, ecstatic, liberatory, freakish, sexy & booty shaking. The electronic production work for every song is produced & mastered to perfection. Gaga’s videos for Born This Way have been among her best too, with the video for Marry the Night taking the cake for her most epic & powerful music video to date. Even if you don’t get pop music, or have some sort of judgment against Gaga due to your superficial understanding of her, there is no arguing that she is the planet’s current reigning princess of pop. Her music is laden with so many deeply infectious grooves, it’s a pity you’re not loving on Gaga. Have an open mind and step into her Electric Chapel.

Find it Here: Lady Gaga – Born This Way @ Amazon.com

4) Ishq • And Awake

Ahhhh, finally! The follow-up to the most mesmerizing ambient downtempo album ever, Orchid, put out by UK artist Ishq. The new album, And Awake, is similarly transcendental, but takes us to a new plane – possibly even more expansive and nectarlicious than its predecessor. The ocean of sonic expanse is euphoric, blissful, heart-opening and deeply relaxing. An amazing, celestial listen. Dive in!

Find it Here: http://interchill.bandcamp.com/releases

5) PJ Harvey • Let England Shake

As a long time PJ Harvey fan, I was really excited to discover Harvey’s latest album, Let England Shake. It really is her best album in 10 years, and marks a significantly new direction for Ms. Polly Jean. This album is possibly her most emotionally raw, her highest vibe, her most transcendental. I immediately fell in love with this album and put it on repeated listens for weeks. Her vocal styling and her songwriting have dramatically evolved from the years of Dry & To Bring You My Love – and Let England Shake is among her finest albums to date.

Find it Here: PJ Harvey – Let England Shake @ Amazon.com

6) Kaminanda • Year of the Golden Tiger

Ummmmm, can we say Holy Shit, this wins the sexiest electronica album of the year award? Stephen Kaminanda won my heart & my bootay this year at Beloved, and this album is really juicy. I’ve listened to this on repeat for months and only grown more comfortable with the sick polyrhythms and layers of psychedelica. This is music to listen to if you want to float into the ethers of mind-blown ecstasy, which apparently I want to float there all the time!!! Funky, sexy, hot.

Find it Here: http://kaminanda.bandcamp.com/album/year-of-the-golden-tiger

8 ) Kyrstyn Pixton • Embyrs

I randomly met Kyrstyn Pixton in 2002 in Ann Arbor, MI – she was just dropping out of the U of M’s music program and preparing to migrate to Portland, OR. Little did I know that over the years I would run into her hither & thither all around Portland, in different circles & parties. But nothing prepared me for what I witnessed when I saw her perform at Emrg’n'See in 2009 with a keyboard, a looping pedal and an amp on a wheelbarrow. She fucking blew my mind. Kyrstyn is one of the most creative vocalists & innovative pop-electronica artists on the West Coast scene currently. Her debut album, Embyrs, is truly beautiful and features some great collaborations with Auditory Canvas, Lynx, & Eve LadyApples. She is an honest & emotional songwriter, a soulfully luminous vocalist, and a really great live performer. She is up & coming, and I swear she will get BIG. Pay attention now, you’ll be stoked to say you knew her when.

Find it Here: http://kyrstynsong.com/

9) Deya Dova • Remixed

Futuristic Tribal Electronic Dance Music infused with Primordial Ecstatic Chant; perfect for the Dance Dlub or an underground Electronic Rave. This album features the voice of Deya Dova, with her unique celestial tribal polyrhythmic style. Her 2009 album, Burst, has been remixed by a handfull of amazing electronic producers including: Kalya Scintilla, Adham Shaikh, Desert Dwellers, An-ten-nae, & Juno Reactor. This is an album to break out if you want to crack open your Booty Chakra and Bust a move!

Find it Here: http://music.deyadova.com/

9) Azam Ali • From Night to the Edge of Day

Azam Ali has been one of my favorite vocalists for years, and I pretty much own every album she’s released since Vas. Azam’s latest album is perhaps her most meditative to date. Her signature modern Persian fusion album is showcased her in an otherworldly ambient form that is both sedating & uplifting. As a vocalist, she is one of my highest inspirations.

Find it Here: Azam Ali – From Night to the Edge of Day @ Amazon.com

10) Rafe Pearlman • Random Cuts, Unfinished Demos

Possibly one of the most transcendental live music moments of my last year was the first five minutes of Rafe Pearlman’s set at Beloved Festival this summer. His soaring, sweepingly cinematic voice eclipsed everything all at once. Nearly everyone had to drop what they were doing to come sit down and listen to this vocalist explode his visionary soundscapes across the airwaves. We sat there with our jaws dropped and hearts melting. His bandcamp release of “Random Cuts & Unfinished Demos” isn’t a coherent album, but there are some sincerely magical gems & exquisite songs worth melting to – and his voice reminds me of Antony & the Johnsons. Listen to “Morninglight”, “Fly My Sadness” & “Aramaic Prayer”. Looking forward to his new album due out next year.

Find it Here: http://music.rafepearlman.com/

I am launching a series of Videos on my Youtube Channel, sharing my stories about Entheogenic / Psychedelic experiences.. Most of these stories are not recent at all, but took place between 2003-2006.. I do not advocate the use of entheogens, but am simply sharing my personal, intimate & deeply subjective experiences.

Check Out VISIONARY STORIES on Youtube!

Download “Total Permission – to Say Yes to Life” @ Bandcamp for FREE ::::

Click READ MORE to read the Lyrics & More

Written by Wahkeena Sitka, 2011

I give myself TOTAL PERMISSION TO FOLLOW MY HEART
to listen to my desires
to love myself completely
to make myself happy & joyful
to be deeply fulfilled
and live in purposeful ecstasy.

My body is an Open & Receptive temple for Divinity, Joy, Bliss, Fulfillment & Soulful Purpose to embody within.

I give myself COMPLETE PERMISSION to turn myself on
to bathe in love
& to embody the grace & wisdom of feminine divinity.

I am an activated Goddess overflowing with an abundance of Love, Joy, Bliss, Self-Love, Wisdom, Life Force Energy & Soulful Healing Creativity.

I say YES to Fulfillment
I say YES to Heart Wisdom
I say YES to Authentic Desire
I say YES to Joy
I say YES to Creativity
I say YES to Sensuality
I say YES to My Soul’s Purpose
I say YES to Sexuality
I say YES to Abundance
I say YES to Freedom & Liberation
I say YES to LIFE.

The Great Quilt • A Special Unreleased Track • by Kembwe

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE MP3 of THE GREAT QUILT FOR FREE

Click Read More to View Lyrics

Lyrics Written in 2007 – Song recorded in 2008

Lyrics:

The Great Quilt

by Wahkeena Sitka

Our souls are the fabric of woven memory

Weaving dreams into the hemlines

of the stories

that skirt our ankles

Where our feet tip-toe through meadows

where once a flock of thunder buffalo

laid waste to an ocean of sweetgrass standing

beneath the grey sky looming

over the warp and weft

of a tribe and its land

Burying their hearts in ashes

& smoke of a mass grave

Stinking and rotting

like two thousand corpses

Spread out like pick up sticks

that once picked up their villages;

tipi poles, blankets & horses -

moving yet again

to another barren land

where children die of starvation,

typhoid or forced Christian education -

to become what we are now..

A people without memories -

walking amnesiacs -

a plague of zombie locusts.

Without a land our ancestors cherished

Without stories of myth & meaning

Without dreams because we can’t sleep -

a million zombie insomniacs

Who never take responsibility

for the hordes of lives stripped short

of purpose, community, myth & ancestral land.

We are the souls enslaved by four walls

four walls per person

enthroned in our solitude

Forgetting our wounded knees

and crippled wrists..

Buying the myth of greed

Seduced by unquenchable thirst of more,

enslaved by accumulation..

Entombed in acculturated myths of self-glorification,

ego-pampering, intoxicated snacking..

Lacking who we are…

Lacking who we are,

Lacking wholeness

We need more distractions

to remind us of what we don’t own:

our Power

Our Power to Love

Our Power to Care for Community

Our Power to CHERISH THE LAND

like our ancestors once did..

To cherish the Life Force Land

The blood that runs in our veins land

the water and earth in our hearts land,

that entire tribal nations fought to cherish

Because they worshipped that which nourished them.

The Life Force Spirit

That which Nourished them..

The Life Force Spirit

That which Unites all things,

Binds all things in reality

in a webwork of woven threads..

Filaments of stars, sinews of sunlight,

Yarn of Stone, Hair of Water,

Dyes of Cedar and Oak.

Song of You & I & Every Friend

The magic maker sits looming

over time & space

weaving memories, stories & songs

into the essence of every soul

and We are a Patchwork Quilt

Sewn together by Pachamama’s breath…

And each patch in the Great Quilt

is our Heart Song

Dyed with the colour of our essence

Sharing the Splendor of our Dancing Thread

Sewn into the edges of our neighbors

Our Heart spills over

into the perimeter of our community

We are the Tribe Renewed by OUR LOVE

Walking the Pilgrimage route

Back to the Land

Where our children will cherish

The ecosystem quilt

We are all wrapped up in;

Sharing Pachamama

This year at Beloved Festival, on Sunday morning we were blessed to experience the first full orchestral performance by Akara to date. They played the entire album from beginning to end, with live orchestral instrumentation. The entire night had been an unbelievable journey of ecstasy, but when Akara went on at 5:30 in the morning, while some of us sat huddled together in blankets staying warm and others danced, we were collectively bathed in transcendentally celestial music that lifted us all to a state of blissful rapture.

Honestly, witnessing Akara live at Beloved was one of my favorite musical moments of the last year, and for most that was present – it was a moment to treasure forever. I immediately bought the then unreleased album and listened to it on repeat for days when I returned home. I soaked up that blissful transcendence and stored it in my cells to return to every day since then.

After repeated listens, I can honestly say that this is one of my favorite albums to come out in 2011, and it deserves to receive the attention and recognition by as many people as possible. 

The tracks on Extradimensional Ethnography are soaring, gently rhythmic celestial odes to love, bliss and peace. The album is meditative, yet permeated with an uplifting joy that is totally soulful. Joshua Penman, the primary visionary and songwriter of the album, spent 9 years dreaming up this album – it was his life dream to birth this album. In fact, it was his ecstatic dream come true to present his first live orchestral performance at Beloved; a festival devoted to sacred music and unity consciousness.

On a practical level, this is a brilliant downtempo electronica album filled with gorgeous instrumentation, exquisite non-linguistic vocals, soaring melodies and meditative moments to savor in stillness. Yet the feeling that I receive from this unique album is that it is sourced in the peace and heart-felt bliss of unity consciousness.

I highly encourage any & all to preview this album on Bandcamp and download the album. Support Independent Artists & Get This Album! It is a Must Have!!

One of the things that keeps coming back to my mind is the idea that the people who own the banks, who own the big multi-national corporations and the people who own the government are like selfish children who forgot how to play nice and share with others. These are humans who have forgotten how to be human and have forgotten what a responsibility it is to gather massive resources. These people have fallen under the idea-spell that the purpose of life is to gain wealth, and that gaining wealth is to acquire more and more, to endlessly hoarde that wealth and keep living in an isolated bubble of wealth and elitist aristocracy far away from the real lives of down to earth working class people everywhere. These people have billions and trillions of dollars worth of assets that they are holding onto, whilst countless others around the planet are struggling to survive. It is truly on their conscience and it is their responsibility to start giving back to the rest of humanity, beyond feel-good donations to charities. It is time that they develop a conscience & compassion and level the playing field and give back to their fellow citizens and show how truly selflessly they can give and share.

I am not naive, and I know that these people have no intention of sharing with others or releasing their insatiable hunger to hoard more wealth and resources. And I know that these people probably think they are above the law and can get away with anything they want; that’s what bribing the NYPD with 4.6 million dollars is for. At this point, the pyramid scheme of the American Government & Financial Sector is so transparent that it’s beyond fake, and the tipping point in American consciousness is nearly arriving. My only hope is that more and more people drop their skepticism and really look at the truth with wide open eyes and see the clouds for the rain.

One of the biggest challenges, however, to this shifting of consciousness in America is that we are all collectively inspired and programmed to be successful according to an image of affluence that is unrealistic, unsustainable & inspired by the wealthy elite. The problem with that, is that in order to attain that level of affluence that we are programmed to aspire to, we must become so detached from other humans and our impact on the environment that we lose touch with what it means to be really human. Instead, we become just another elitist marching along with the social programming enforced upon us by the pyramid scheme of the top 1%.

AXIS MUNDI painting by David Heskin & Aloria Weaver

In my recent viewing of the film, Vision, which is a film adaptation of the life story of the great female Christian Mystic, Hildegard Von Bingen, I am reminded yet again of the importance of heretics in Christianity. Indeed, Christianity was founded by one of history’s greatest heretics, and began as a spiritual revolution by a visionary. Throughout Christianity’s history, there have been special visionaries that have continued the original flame of Christianity’s founding; the mystics that sought direct communion with Spirit, with God rather than blind obedience to hierarchical religious structures of dogma – and Hildegard Von Bingen was but one of them. Indeed, the entire Anabaptist wing of Christianity began as a heretic religion, and growing up in Ohio in the Church of the Brethren, I was constantly reminded of this left-wing, conscientious-objector, progressive source of our founding. It’s funny how progressive, visionary heretic sects evolve and begin to embody the very same qualities of hierarchy and structured dogmatic control that they originally rebelled against. I guess it’s the metaphor of a young teenage boy rebelling against the controlling patriarchal father, only to mature into manhood and becoming the same authoritarian father that he rebelled against. But it is this essence of rebelliousness and spiritual inquiry, of seeking direct communion with the spiritual source – of God, that excited me and spurred me to be a heretic against my entire family and Church, to find out for myself what is spiritual truth from direct experience rather than from what is handed to me in religious propaganda. When I was 17, It was a friend at a Youth Conference at Manchester College that triggered me to begin asking questions – like ‘What is God?’, and ‘What’s wrong with drugs and sex and nudity?’ rather than just accepting what I was told. Thus I left my home and my Church as I entered college and began my spiritual quest of mysticism and seeking God in the many paths to enlightenment.

After many years of exploring Quaker meeting houses, Zen buddhist temples, Yoga classes, Tai Chi, Rumi poetry, the Tao Te Ching, New Age Psychic Channelling, Reiki, Sufism and Islamic Mosques, I found myself on the West Coast living out of my backpack. I wandered around homeless with but pennies to my name and the universe providing daily miracles to support & prove to me that reality is imbued with consciousness. What began as a quest to find God, to find Enlightenment and to be guided by synchronicity, inspired largely by the Mayan shaman author, Martin Prechtel, found me one day in June of 2003 in Salt Lake City, Utah, having my first great mystical breakthrough experience. Earlier that week, I’d been in Seattle and had discovered my new best friend, Mira, on the sidewalks of Seattle, bumming for change on the street. She’d just arrived in Seattle days before and had been sleeping underneath bushes, on a journey to heal herself of bulimia, seeking Ayahuasca as a means to heal herself of her bulimic curse. I’d never heard of Ayahuasca and had no idea what that was, but I told Mira that I would help her find Ayahuasca because I had faith in magic and miracles. Days later, we were hitch-hiking through rural Idaho on our way to a Rainbow Gathering in Utah, and had been blessed with a string of really sweet rides offered by lovely and kind drivers, but had suddenly found ourself on the side of a highway for 50 minutes unable to lure anyone to stop for us. As I carried the gigantic pack on my back, weighed down by the exhausting weight and the heat from the sun, I began praying for help. I cried out for God to open the heart of some kind person on the highway, someone with a really good heart. Nearly moments later a driver pulled onto the side of the highway, with Mira jumping up and down, her arms waving excitedly. We had found a ride!

Our driver explained his story. He was an ex-military man that had found a lucrative job doing what he’d been trained to do in the military; working on helicoptors. He would drive to some station in any given state somewhere on the West coast, work a week long shift, and then drive home to Salt Lake City, arrive in his furniture-less bachelor pad house and take every psychedelic known to mankind for several days before driving back to work for another week long shift. Right as we entered Utah, he asked Mira and I if we’d like to join him and do Ayahuasca that evening! Our jaws dropped and hit the floor at the same time as we stared at each other in wide eyed disbelief! At that time, I was completely oblivious to the tradition of Amazonian Ayahuasca ceremonies and had never seen it, smelled it or tasted it before – so I was totally wide eyed, innocent and said Yes. Mira wanted to join us but was terrified of finally having an opportunity to partake of the Ayahuasca, plus she wanted to make it to a PsyTrance party out in the woods an hour away from Salt Lake City, so we dropped her off in the middle of nowhere, the contents of her backpack splayed out on the ground, with an enormous storm system approaching from the West and only a tiny bit of raw veggies to sustain her. When I arrived at my driver’s house, we entered the kitchen and he opened up the cabinet, exposing shelves containing nearly every psychedelic drug known to man. He prepared the chacruna leaves and the syrian rue pills and I prepared an altar of all my sacred items in the empty living room. When the bowls of Chacruna tea were ready, we downed it, and he sat down to watch movies and play video games – meanwhile I sat in the living room and began meditating and praying to God. I had no idea what this would possibly do to me; I was a psychedelic baby.

It began with gorgeous fractal mandalas opening in the sky above me; a sensation moved through my body that felt like I was an empty vessel and God was being poured into me. I was reminded of my favorite Christian hymn, “Have Thine Own Way, Lord”, the lyrics of – ‘Thou Art the Potter, I am the Clay, Mold me and Make me after thy Will, as I am waiting, Yielded and Still.’ I felt that stillness and yielding within me, opening to the heavens, experiencing my first true mystic awakening of God pouring into me like a waterfall. I began weeping in bliss. I looked into a mirror and began watching all the faces from all my past lives and past incarnations wash over me and I wept, and then a realization swept over me in its awe-inspiring totality – that everything that exists is the flesh of God. We are literally standing on God; this street is God, this front Porch is God, this sky is God, this lawn is God; everything is God. The ecstasy of this realization prompted me to leave the house and begin wandering barefoot through the streets in pure awe of the Divinity of everything surrounding me. I wandered for several blocks and found a man waiting at a bus stop for a bus. As I approached him, his face was one of complete and utter fear and revulsion – his first words to me were “Are you an Angel?” I explained that I wasn’t an angel, I was just awakened by the Light of God. I asked him why he was waiting for a bus, when he is surrounded by God, and that God is waiting for him. I sat with him for almost an hour as he poured his heart out and listened to him gush about his challenges with his wife, their child, his job, everything. I sat there with him and reminded him that God is everywhere and everything, and that God is waiting for him to open his heart and receive. As I left, I felt as though I’d just experienced the most important experience of my entire life up to that moment.

I believe that every one of us needs to personally experience the transcendent presence of God, of the Divine, in some way in one’s life in order to truly know that there is a Divine hand at work in reality and in our lives, in order to cultivate a faith based on a real connection, rather than a blind faith enforced by some external belief system. And truly, every single one of us deeply deserves to experience this relationship with what we could call “God” so that we may know in the depths of our Soul, our connection to the universal mystery that is much larger than any one religion. It is this concept that birthed initiations and vision quests in Native American and Indigenous cultures, where the youth were put into situations where they had to open up to the wider girth of awareness that reality can envelope when one is prayerfully in connection to this “holy spirit” wisdom emergent in reality. It is these kinds of direct experiences of the Divine, of God, that inspired the Christian mystic, Hildegard Von Bingen. As a Benedictine nun, she sought to express her uncontrived and unconventional visionary experiences of God with others through Song, through writings, through Art, and through herbal medicine. Despite her unconventional spiritual expressions, and especially as an empowered woman expressing an almost pagan facet of Christianity, she is still revered for her spiritual wisdom as one of the greatest Christian mystics in history.

I will never understand why Christianity evolved in such a way as to make narrowly defined belief systems and structures more important to the basic tenets of it, rather than the kind of heart-centered, community-centric, Love and Forgiveness is the way to the Kingdom of Heaven concepts that Jesus taught. It has always seemed to me to be history’s greatest irony that the most liberated, visionary mystic man who walked the planet spurred the creation of the most dogmatic religion history has ever seen, due to the fact that it was co-opted by the Roman powers for their own selfish purposes of elitist control over their empire. The very empire that Jesus spoke against took his cross and turned it into the most authoritarian, controlling religious empire in history. And it is this very Roman Catholic empire that the Anabaptists were spurning a heretic religion against.

So I ask you, my fellow Brothers and Sisters of the Church of the Brethren, the German Baptists, the Mennonites, the Dunkards, the Amish; where is your inner heretic? Have you had a direct experience of God? Have you sought your own personal redemption, have you awakened your soul to your own divinity? Have you done your own deep work of transforming yourself from a programmed slave to a hierarchical system of oppression, have you found your liberation? If you haven’t, have you read the history of your own church? Do you know that the Anabaptists were started by rebels, in revolt to both the Roman Catholic Church and Lutheranism? There is something I’ve always treasured and valued about the Anabaptist concept of choosing ones own baptism when one actually has cultivated true faith and belief, coming to the faith from oneself rather than being baptised at birth because that’s what everyone did.

I have long admired the Anabaptists for living on the fringes of society, for the Amish living simply and traditionally, for the ‘Salt of the Earth’ people that I grew up surrounded by – the rural farming communities that I grew up around in Ohio. But, largely prompted by my mom, I also admired the women’s liberation movement and the history of women’s empowerment in the church, such as the suffragette movement that grew out of Quaker meeting houses in Philadelphia, and the empowerment of early German Baptist Brethren women like Sarah Righter Major. Growing up in a congregation with two pastors – a married couple sharing the reigns, I grew up believing that progressive values were morally right and questioned the accepted standards of society, and had to push the envelope beyond what is traditionally accepted true, by aligning more and more with what morally feels right in one’s spirit, such as empowering women even though it broke conventions of traditional patriarchal religious institutions. In fact, when I went to a German Baptist church with my family near Covington Ohio, it felt more oppressively male-centric and utterly patriarchal than any other experience in my entire life, even more so than my dabbling experiences with Islamic Mosques. This one experience helped give me a clearer understanding of the karmic lineage of my family than any other before or since; since that time I have sought to completely extract all aspects of this harsh hard wood floored, patriarchal, hierarchical, anti-dancing, anti-freedom, anti-sensuality religion from my soul. And thus I have been a heretic ever since, essentially shunned in not so many words from my family and religion of birth.

I have had to find a whole new family, a whole new community, a whole new spirituality out here on the West Coast. We are a spiritual community of misfits, freaks, artists, hippies, musicians, mystics, massage therapists, tantrikas, psychonauts; devoid of the structured hierarchy and control that is endemic to spiritual communities that are structured around strict belief systems and churches. We may all be self-obsessed fanatical new age weirdos, but we’ve all come together based on common energetic patternings, lifestyles of freedom and creativity, and have tried to find ways to be mutually supportive of each other while living on the fringes of the mainstream society, outside of any dogma. Our spirituality seems to be self-created through our own process of awakening and liberation, and is something each of us has had to discover on our own via parties, ceremonies, drugs, sexuality, our journey away from our Church of birth, and life. Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense to me, sometimes I miss the support of a blood family, but most of the time I am just in awe of the stunningly gorgeous earth-centered community of freaks that I am surrounded by.

But despite this, I keep discovering new layers to the Anabaptist in my skin – I keep finding new layers to peel away that reveal more and more an inherent quality of the heretic christian mystic within myself. It is only just now that I’ve realized that I was born in a counter-culture fringe religion, that I was born to never fit into mainstream society. I was born programmed to give a middle finger to war, military, law enforcement and the global elite. I’ve long wondered why down deep in the root of my soul I just can’t accept the social conventions of this American society – like buying cars, paying taxes, using credit cards, working a regular “job”, shopping in malls, supporting the endless wars, and I cannot seem to fit into it in any way, no matter how much I have tried and struggled. It’s been an absolutely maddening and infinitely confusing schism within myself; to try to fit into the mainstream and follow its program or give it a big middle finger and follow my heart and live as a mystic rebel. But it’s what my ancestors have been doing for hundreds of years; living outside of the mainstream society, struggling as conscientious objectors against every single war, refusing to wear anything but modest clothes, driving horses and buggies, living simply within their means, gardening and absolutely refusing to get intoxicated.

After several years as a total stoner, It has shown up as a need for sobriety and mental clarity, for a need for living simply, for a need to live in a spiritual community of kindred spirits, for a need to participate in spiritual community events that bring us together to sing on a consistent basis, for a need to live in small towns connected to the Earth surrounded by gardens. The container looks very different than the gardens, churches, tractors, hymns, services and passover bread of my ancestors, but in its actual day to day actualization, it often feels like the next level of the same paradigm, simply a more modern free-spirited version of a similar lifestyle. And I am grateful for the safe container I grew up in, but I will be forever dedicated to stripping away all the layers of repression of joy, creativity and sensuality that were instilled in me as a child.

Thus I am always seeking communion with my brothers and sisters, those kindred spirits of the heretic religion of the heart.