Ancient Wisdom and Modern Spirituality with Acacea Lewis

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'll just kind of pour myself casually a cup of
chai in the background.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
I saw you got some new tea right.
You got some new tea in themail.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Oh, my friend from Ukraine, like, of all the places
to get really good tea from,wow, I just feel really spoiled,
you know, especially because ofso much challenges are
happening in Ukraine.
You know, I feel like I didn'texpect one of my friends to send
me some of the best tea I'veever had.
You know, uh, from such a placethat's going through so many

(00:29):
political and you know, war,challenges and struggles and um,
for me it's kind of like abeacon.
You know, it's kind of likelike a story of like Noah's Ark,
when the dove comes back withthe olive branch.
You know, things are gettingbetter.
Like, for me, it's kind of likea symbol of hope.
You know, like we're able tobond and connect over tea, even

(00:50):
though the world is like justcrumbling.
We were able to share tea andI'm going to send him a package
back.
So this is going to be fun, tobuild bridges, you know, for our
love of tea.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
I love that.
I love that and for all of ourlisteners.
You just have heard a littlebit of our next guest of Hope
Dealer, and this is Acacia Lewis, who is the founder of Divine
Master Alchemy School.
She is also a Buddhist, ageologist.
She is also a Buddhist, ageologist, an astrophysicist.

(01:26):
I like to call her as myspiritual nerd friend, somebody
that I got to know online, andI'm really happy that going to
deepen our relationship in thisconversation and I think this is

(01:50):
a very timely conversation, asyou heard of speaking that right
now, the world is going througha tremendous amount of despair.
We know that we just ended acycle and are in the beginning
of a new cycle, and for me tointroduce her to you is that I

(02:10):
also believe that this is a timewhere we are called to return
to ourselves, are called toreturn to a community where our
rituals and our practices arevalued, and then also a call to
return to our spiritual selvesthat are way beyond our physical
selves.
You know one of the things thatI've heard Acacia say recently

(02:31):
that oftentimes we need toremember that we are beyond our
simple human body.
She said we need to rememberthat we are grander in our
spirit and we have infinitepower because we are infinite
spirits, and I love when yousaid that, acacia.
It just was a great reminder tome, and I hope it's a great

(02:53):
reminder to our listeners thatthis is a time for us to
remember that and to be able tomake sure that we are guided by
love.
So I want be able to welcomeyou and we'll love for you to
introduce yourself.
Tell us a little bit about whoyou are.
I love when people say not justwho they are in the titles and

(03:16):
the descriptions, but also whereyou're from and anything that
you think that we should knowabout you.
That will help us understand,as we move through this
conversation, where you caughtme from.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Okay, wow, thank you so much.
This is such a beautifulintroduction.
Where am I from?
My dad always tells me.
When people ask me the question, where are you from?
He said always tell them you'refrom the future.
He's serious, you know, likethis, and it's like, yeah,

(03:55):
because you're about for yourtime.
You know, he sent me this thingtoday about quantum jumping.
Okay, and I was like, well, whatdo you think about this new
science, dad?
You know, like, like you knowthe, the, the olds, you know
they, they get brought into.

(04:15):
You know the quantum scienceswith all the ads.
You know, like graham hancockand stuff, and like I like some
of that stuff.
But I don't ever expect my dadto send me stuff like that, you
know, and I love it when he doesbecause it's just like a sign
for me like, oh, my goodness,you know, uh, the world is now
saturated with magic, you know.

(04:35):
And, um, when I say magic, Imean like a lot of the quantum
physics I was studying college.
Now some of the theories I had.
You know there's whole podcasts, there's gaya network.
You know quantum consciousness.
Quantum consciousness was sucha dirty word 15 years ago, you
know, when I was in collegestudying astrophysics.

(04:56):
They were afraid of me.
They were like, yeah, she'strying to apply for an engaged
learning apprenticeship withsomebody from theology.
Yeah, and she's in HamiltonSchool of Science and
Engineering.
We don't-.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
We don't do theology we don't do that.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
You know we don't mess with those guys over there.
We let them in their priesthoodlibrary of nonsense and
pseudoscience.
You know they're allpseudoscience people.
You know they believe in a god.
You know Like how crazy is that.
You know.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
And now they're studying the god source, or the
quantum, the god particles,right Now.
That's the new, best thing.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
That's the new thing, you know, and I remember the
guy who was doing that.
His name was ReisnardStronowski.
We were like you know that kindof name, reisnard Stronowski,
you know, like he'd walk into aroom and we'd be like there goes
the most brilliant, worstphysics teacher we've ever had.
Nobody could understand him andhis daughter, thortha, was

(06:01):
obsessed with Toads.
And, sir, if you're watchingthis with all due respect, thank
you for flunking me in introphysics, because if you hadn't
have done that, I would havecontinued on that path and I
would have been a suckyastrophysicist.
I really would have.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
So I want to get back a little bit to your origin
story, acacia, because I want totell you that I came across you
while you were in Mexico, whileyou were in Oaxaca, and this
was during the pandemic, when Iwas just starting to in my

(06:39):
Buddhist journey.
I had just started learningabout Buddhism.
This is before I went to myfirst Buddhist retreat and I
don't know how I came across you, but I just saw that you, I
took one of your classes, youronline classes, when you were in
Oaxaca, and I was justfascinated by two things.
One that you, for me, was oneof the first people that I saw

(07:03):
talk about plant medicine, butfrom the historical uses and the
citing of texts and sources ofwhat plant medicine is referred
to in now while in my in historyand in my spirituality, and
when I heard that and when I wastaking your class, I was like I

(07:24):
knew there was a connectionthere, but I never understood
what it was.
And then, obviously, youbrought in other religious and
theological texts, like Buddhism, into the conversation.
So tell us, how did you get toMexico and what was?
How was it that you, that yougot there and you started your

(07:45):
spiritual transformation?

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Well, you know it's a long story, but I'm going 2015,
2016,.
First time, and I went toCancun with a medicine man named

(08:11):
Chahecha.
Now this guy, you know he callshimself a poet, mystic, you
know but he's studied with someLakota elders and a lot of
people respect him kind of as aLakota elder, even though you
know he does a lot of stuff.
But he was a student of MrGorman who wrote the book Sapo

(08:34):
in my soul.
If you don't know about thatbook, it's about Cambo medicina
and I had a lot of challengesand the way I met Cha was
through a friend of a friend andhe happened to be in Arizona at
the same time as me.
And you ever get a call likethere's a ceremony going down,

(08:55):
it's going to be three days it'sin the caves.
You know you're going to be bythe river on the beach, let's go
, let's go, let's go.
And so I got the call.
I was like, oh, oh, it's myfirst, it's my first big
medicine gathering, oh my God.
So I get in my car week of getthere, and there's no signal.
We're out in the middle ofnowhere, right?
And I get there and I'm calling.

(09:17):
I'm calling this guy.
He's not picking up his phone,my on my phone's like sim, not
found whatever.
And then all of a sudden I seethis like clown car going down
the street and there's thisgiant man in this tiny little
car and he skids and he pullsback around.
He, I kid you not, he skid, hedid a ue in the middle of the
road on this empty, dead,deserted road in the desert.

(09:39):
And he's like are you?
He rolls down his window Areyou, acacia Lewis?
I'm like yeah.
He's like, oh, I'm Cha.
I knew that was you and it wascrazy time.
I was like.
He was like, yeah, if I didn'tsee you, we were just going to
start without you.
But now that we found you, thisis perfect.
And then I drive, I drive down,I'm following him in my car and

(10:00):
my little Ford Focus, you know,looking all normal, normal
following this clown car downthe street and we get to this
beach right, and there are these, these cliffs that have these
ancient looking glyphs, likelike they already look like
faces, they already look likethey got moss hanging in front
of them, like long beards andlike world, looking like ancient
chief cow, like features in therocks.

(10:22):
And I'm like this is wherewe're going to trip what we did
three days of medicine out there, three days straight, hardcore.
We got hit with the Wachuma.
First we had a Wachumero outthere helping teach us about how
to work with San Pedro.
We had a guy who was into thefinest grades of LSD.

(10:45):
We had, you know, a dmt makerout there.
We had all sorts of differenttypes of medicine, from the
super serious, super spiritualto the you know, kind of just
does everything kind of types,and we all.
It was like a feast.
We all took multiple types ofmedicines at once and that was
my first time doing anythinglike that, where I had mushrooms

(11:07):
with, with lsd, with mescaline.
I was like if cha wasn't here Iwouldn't be doing this because
he was the elder who was likethe spiritual elder, like the,
the chief, basically, you know,of this group of ragtag medicine
people, and so we trusted thatwe weren't going to take the

(11:28):
wrong things together and wejust kind of let him say oh well
, so we're going to do 4-ACO.
Okay, it's like, yeah.
Maria Sabina tried 4-ACO, yeah,it's safe.
She said it's like mushrooms myfirst time trying synthetic
mushrooms, you know and itactually didn't turn out bad.
And I was shocked, you know,because I was like I got to

(11:51):
experience what it was like tokind of feel kind of like
protected around some seriouselders who were very experienced
with combining plant medicineand we did prayers and we did a
lot of healing work.
And we did prayers and we did alot of healing work.
I watched a lot of my friendstransform and develop an
understanding of themselves, butwe were all connected.

(12:12):
That's the one thing that Iknow is we were all connected.
When we got in a car togetherit was like we were like the
legs of a spider.
Each person's mind wasconnected to the other person's
mind.
Each person's prayer and eachperson's intention affected the
other leg.
How fast we could move if wemake a mistake.
We drove our car over the rocksand got stuck on a rock in the

(12:33):
middle of the night while onmultiple cups of Huachuma and
LSD and we got stuck there andwe dug ourselves out while under
the medicine and we and weweren't together so seamlessly.
We got dug out within withinminutes, okay, and the girl who
owned the car was only like fourfoot five, like a hundred

(12:56):
pounds.
We're still friends to this day.
It's like you, you can't makethis stuff up.
And it was like we all had theclairsentience to know where to
dig, where to live, and we livedthis car.
You know it's like an suv offof this sharp rock.
You know boulder, that was inthe middle of the beach and I
don't know how we did it to thisday.
I don't understand the physics.

(13:19):
The physics are questionable,very questionable there.
And that was like you know what?
I want to learn more.
How do I, how do I get into thegroup?
How do I, you know, how do Istay connected?
And they're like well, we'regoing to Mexico and we're going
to do Cambo and Changa and thenwe're going to teach people how
to administer Cambo and Sanangaand stuff.

(13:40):
I was like, well, I don't knowanything about that.
Well, he's like well, do youhave anything you know health
wise you need help with?
I'm like, oh yes, I do.
And that's how I got invited togo to Mexico and work with Cambo
Saposito and we sang songs.
I learned my first 10 peyotesongs or Lakota medicine songs.

(14:04):
I only really I think I onlylearned one of them while I was
out there.
I heard about the rest and Iheard them singing the rest.
But I can't even pretend like Igot the gift of that voice at
that time, you know, cause it isa gift, it is a blessing, you
know, to get to get permissionto sing that, to sing those
songs in lodge or outside oflodge.

(14:25):
But yeah, it's my first time inMexico and I was dodging the
medicine like crazy, you know, Iwas afraid to take frog poison,
you know.
And I looked at my chest todayand I'm like, well, how much
cambo have I done?
And I was like you know enough.
You know this is all.
This is actually all serpentvenom.

(14:45):
But now my arms I have likegauntlets of gates, you know,
when I was learning to train, towork with the medicine, you
know, because it has to get toknow you, it has to get
comfortable with you, you haveto get comfortable with it, a
body, so that it can learn moreabout the human sickness mental,
physical, psychologicalsickness that exists and find

(15:08):
solutions, how to clear thoseblockages inside of the human
body.
And what's interesting is whenyou train a specific cambo,
because it's living medicine.
This is what people don'tunderstand about cambo Each frog
learns as you're administeringit.
So you could have one, one Cambostick, and by the time you get

(15:30):
to the end of that Cambo stickthe medicine is so much more
potent than when you first usedit, because every person you
administered it to theirconnection with that toad or
that not a toad, but that frogtaught it a new thing, taught it
a new way to heal a newperson's life story.
And so we like to keep onestick from that same frog in the

(15:52):
same family.
So my students would come backto me.
I'd give them more Campbellfrom that same stick, from that
same frog that had that samerelationship, because it's a
living medicine.
So that means they go back outinto the jungle and harvest from
that same frog.
That frog is clear sentient ofhow it's medicines being used,
and so it's spirit becomes moreand more intelligent, generation

(16:15):
after generation.
And so you know that was myfirst time coming into contact
with something like that, whereit's like you take it and you
put it on your skin and you feelit scanning your body and it's
like looking right through you,you know, and anything that

(16:36):
needs to come out will be pushedout by the force of the
movements, like the wind in yourbody speeds up and starts
blowing out all of the sicknessand you're vomiting it out.
But you know there's a force.
You know there's a force behindit and, uh, I realized quickly

(16:58):
that a lot of people don't wantto go to that extent to find out
.
You know, uh, what healing islike and so, so there are other
medicines, but I realized thatthere's a similar pushing effect
happening with the mushroom.
A similar pushing effect thathappens, energy and motion that

(17:21):
is present in your body comingto life.
And I think sometimes, becausewe're growing up in the United
States and we're not in the wild, we don't really know how to
deal with that force of energythat can transform.
You know, it's kind of, it'skind of like we're taming it.
You know we're taming ourchildren.

(17:42):
We're taming it.
You know we're taming ourchildren.
We're taming the wild inside.
You know, and we have to get toknow that animal body, energy,
force, uh, and respect it, andrespect the nature of what's
happening inside of ourselves.
And I think that's when peoplemeet the jaguar, that's what
happens when people meet thefalcon.

(18:03):
They meet these differentaspects of the animal and the
human that are our ancestors, aswell as what our ancestors
learned from their naturalenvironment, the wisdom from the
animal spirits that exist, andthat wisdom is a literal type of

(18:24):
thing.
It's like if you look at allthe stages a zygote goes through
in the human womb, you know itgoes through so many different
stages.
It looks like an alien, itlooks like a reptile, it's got a
tail.
You know what I'm saying.
Like we humans go through thisprocess of gestation that puts
us through some of our origins,from being a multicellular

(18:49):
organism to being a human.
You have to go through so manydifferent transformations and
then, once you're a human, youthink that you're at your final
form.
You know and you don't realizethat you're still in
transformation.
You know and thattransformation never stops and
your mind is what is pluggedinto the transformation.

(19:10):
And when you take some of thesemedicines that expand your
consciousness and make you awareof your mind, you get to see
really what's behind theframework of you.
You know of your soul, yourspirit, your, your ancestors,
and the quality of changes thatcan take place.
And I know I'm speaking kind ofcryptically, but I want to

(19:32):
respect the process.
Yeah, some people like to berushed to label it
shape-shifting, some people getrushed to label it tantra, but
really I think it boils down toum, transformation and the
stages that we go through whenwe come into contact with
something new.
It can reveal a natural abilitythat we have, all humans have,

(20:00):
and I think that these medicinesare really shining a light on
that.
And a lot of people get scaredand I think it's important that
they have that fear.
I think that it's importantthat they have that respect and
that reverence and thatsensitivity to their power.
You know, before they go justmessing with it and doing
anything with it, you know doinganything with it.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
You know, yeah, yeah, and you're absolutely right and
I want to get into thattransformation and your quote
where you talk about, you know,the spiritual enlightenment and
the multi-dimensionaldimensionality of our spirit.
We'll love to go there, butfirst I would like you know,
right now, as you know, in theStates, where everybody's, you

(20:52):
know, talking about microdosingor getting all these different
types of plant medicines andcommodifying these things, I
would like for you to take usmore into the actual purpose
that these plant medicines havein the cultures that you have

(21:15):
studied.
I know you have studied inGhana.
I know you have studied inMexico.
I know you have also have somestudied of different medicines
in Asia.
Would love for you to thinkabout the theology or the
spiritual role.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
You mean the philosophy?

Speaker 2 (21:32):
The philosophy of the plant medicines.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, you know, and there's so much misinformation
out there, so many peopleappropriating Maria Sabina,
appropriating even Mazatecculture.
You know Mazateca lineage andhistory.
You know I meet with differentscholars from Mexico a lot and I

(21:56):
really value especially OsirisGonzalez, two Osiris Gonzalez,
there's an older and there's ayounger, and I like them both.
One is a master scholar, youknow, who has like a PhD in
sociology, and another one is,uh, an Osiris, uh, I think
actually his name is isdifferent, his name, his last

(22:17):
name isn't Gonzalez, his lastname is different, but he's my
friend from Vancouver.
We did a conference and he wasthere.
I was there and I was talkingto him about Teot, you know, and
the importance ofself-awareness and developing
self-understanding through thepoetry, the Aztec, mexica poetry

(22:40):
, poetry.
And you know there's elders outthere who are Caucasian or who
are other races, who I feel likedon't understand how much of a
privilege they had to go andlive with Maria Sabina when they
did, you know, and I think thattheir messages aren't always
well received, but they do speaka lot of truth in regards to

(23:03):
how Maria Sabina really was inreal life, you know, and how she
carried herself.
And one of those such elders isTomlin, and I oftentimes wonder
, you know, there's like IntiGarcia who's preserving a lot of
Mazatec history and MariaSabina's tapes and archives.

(23:28):
But we have to recognize thatshe was not the only cuaderno,
she was not the only healer inthe town that Gordon R Wasson
went to.
She was the one that thefederal authorities told to
teach Gordon R Watson.
And so there are many, manydifferent ways that people

(23:50):
worked with the mushroom as atool, some good ways, some not
so good ways.
There was medicine, healing andthere was sorcery, and this
goes back to a very diversehistory and I don't think that a
lot of people understand howdeep even the tip of the iceberg
goes when it comes to what theAztecs utilized, and not just

(24:11):
the Aztec, but just Mexicatribes from the Olmec Toltec
time period, even since a lot ofpeople think Aztec is a people
but they don't realize that itrefers to a people and a time
and a location.
And so, time and location wise,you have Zapotec, you have
Mazatec, you have Nahual, butthey're not a separate.

(24:33):
They're distinctly different bydifferent philosophical values,
but there are a lot ofcommonalities.
There's still one quote unquotepeople, I feel, that are
brought together and united bytheir connectedness with each
other and the land.

(24:54):
And I think that when you're inhigh school in America and you
see the appropriation ofascetics holding a human heart
and sacrifice being brought up,people start to demonize this
type of culture and they don'tunderstand that it's better to
sacrifice one person than it isto kill an entire group or race

(25:15):
of people.
And there was a fairness evenin the way that people conquer
different groups.
Because of this teototal idea,this teotal knowledge, this
self-knowledge was when Iconquer another group, I make
them my family.
And even the conquering was notas the Western Europeans did,
which meant wiping out.

(25:36):
You know, wiping out raping,pillaging and murdering.
You know it's not the same Warwas not the same
pre-colonization times.
I feel like there was morehumanity in it back then.
And so people get and one ofthe poets that I has with the
essence of the primordial thatexists inside of every being,

(26:45):
and do you want me to read youone?

Speaker 2 (26:47):
I would love.
I would love to hear a poem.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
Here.
I'm going to give you just ajust one, and it doesn't take
much.
You look up Nahas Coyoto.
The flower songs is what it'scalled Ancient Nahua poetry.
I'm going to give you theflower tree poem.

(27:10):
Okay, yeah, thank you.
Begin the song in pleasure,singer and joy.
Give pleasure to all, even tolife giver.
Yeo, ayohui, ohuya and joy.
Give pleasure to all, even tolife giver.
The light for life giver adornsus All.
The flower bracelets, yourflowers are dancing, our songs

(27:31):
are strewn in this jewel house,this golden house.
The flower tree grows and shakes.
Already it scatters.
The quetzal breathes honey.
The golden flamingo breatheshoney.
Ohuya, ohuya.
You have transformed into aflower tree.
You have emerged, you bend andscatter.

(27:53):
You have appeared before God'sface as multicolored flowers,
ohuya, ohuya, before God's face,as multicolored flowers.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Live here on earth, blossom asyou move and shake.
Flowers fall.
My flowers are eternal, mysongs are forever.
I raise them, I a singer, Iscatter them, I spill them.

(28:14):
The flowers become gold.
They are carried inside thisgolden palace.
Flowers of raven, flowers, youscatter, you let them fall in
the house of flowers.
Ah, yes, I am happy.
I Prince Nahasquayoto, gatheringjewels, wide plumes of quetzal.
I contemplate the faces ofjades.

(28:36):
They are the princes.
I gaze into the faces of eaglesand jaguars and behold the
faces of jades and jewels.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah, we willpass away.
I Nehez Coyoto say enjoy.
Do we really live on the earth?
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Not forever on earth.
Ojo ya, ojo ya.
Not forever on earth.

(28:58):
Only a brief time here.
Even jades fracture, even goldruptures, even quetzal plumes
tear.
Not forever on earth, only abrief time here.
Ojo ya, ojo ya.
Conterres mexicanos.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
Wow, wow.
I mean such a beautiful poemabout the permanence of life but
the impermanence of the body.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
You know, and this is also you know I'm going to draw
the parallel, not same, similar.
When we do a mandala offeringin Buddhism, we immediately
visualize the golden groundstrewn with flowers, the golden
ground strewn with flowers andoffering, the four continents,
the precious umbrella, theprecious horse, the precious

(29:49):
general, the moon, the sun, thesky, the stars, the goddess of
incense, the goddess of flowers,the goddess of precious stones,
all of these types of things weoffer to the nature of mind.
And I see echoes of thattransformation in the words of
poetry.
When you read the poetry, ittransforms your mind into a
beautiful landscape, helping youto appreciate and develop

(30:10):
gratitude for the beauty thatexists around you and make your
mind into like a palace.
You know that is offering tothe most primordial spiritual
essence of love that exists.
You know.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Yeah, so what would you say was the most beautiful
poetry that you created inMexico, and poetry in every
sense, not just literal butrelational.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
I met a man in Oaxaca , in my town in San Jose del
Pacifico, named Maui, and thisguy was adopted by a 90-year-old
cuaderno who lived in themountain and was raised and
spoke the language A curandera,right A curandera.

Speaker 2 (31:00):
Curandera yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (31:01):
I'm sorry lived in the mountain and was raised and
spoke the language A curanderaCurandera.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Yeah, go ahead.
I'm sorry, who was raised andspoke the language?

Speaker 1 (31:10):
And he spoke and he sang.
He sang in Nahuatl to me and hewas praying, and I believe a
friend actually helped me deducewhat plant it was.
He gave me, I think, a piece ofsalvia divinorum that was
growing on the ground near hismother's house.
And I've never felt moreprimordially alive in my life

(31:37):
than I did when I spent timewalking through the forest of
the Magwes and seeing.
I heard the birds sing.
There's this one bird that theysay is a Quetzal bird and her
call is like this way stainedglass looks.

(31:59):
It's so clear and so crisp andso intricate that everyone kind
of just stops when you hear it.
And I think I heard it maybetwice that day, which was
unusual.
You maybe heard it once everycouple of months because this
bird and it would be like noteson hollow crystal chimes in the

(32:20):
forest and I made friends.
I made friends with Maui, buthe, he knew what my issue was.
You know, when I met him, I was, I had nothing.
You know, I lived out there andI was picking up old cigarette
butts and lighting them becauseI had no money for tobacco, and

(32:43):
he brought me fresh greentobacco.
He'd grown.
He just walked out of a taxicab.
Like I'd known him for 50 years.
He was like, would you likesome green tobacco?
And I was like, what's that?
And he handed it to me.
And he handed me a bamboo pipeand I lit the pipe.
He was like, is that better?
I'm like, yeah, that's better,thank you.

(33:06):
He handed me like a grip ofgreen tobacco.
He's like I grow green tobacco,you know.
And so I came to my mom'sbirthday.
I brought her some chapulinesand we're going to go take it to
her.
You want to come with me?
And this guy was a blonde, itwas.
So it took me so far of what Ithought I knew about Mashika
culture.
He looked like a Dutch guy, youknow, but he had long dreads
and he had magwe thorns in hisdreads and they were like knives

(33:29):
and he taught me how to takethe tip of the magwe.
He was like, yeah, you take thetip of the magwe when it's
really hard and tough.
You can use that to cut rope todefend yourself.
Always have this with you.
You know, you're a womantraveling alone.
Always have this piece with you.
This will protect you, you know.
And he had like a jade loopsaround his, his blonde matted

(33:50):
hair, you know.
And uh, I just remember feelingtransported.
He took me to all the people Iwas afraid to talk to.
Apparently he had gone to highschool with some of the um, the
grandfathers, the padres of thetown, who were like marijuana
farmers and grew opium and stuff, you know, like the, the head
guys, you know, and he was liketalking to them in Spanish and

(34:14):
he, he introduced me to them.
Basically he was like yes,she's a medicine woman and she's
here to help you all.
You know, I hope you treat herwell.
And when he reintroduced me toall of these guys, they looked
at me differently.
After that, you know, theylooked at me like I was someone
beneficial, not just some gringodressed up brown, like

(34:35):
basically a good brown gringo,you know, that's.
That's how they saw me when Igot there.
I don't blame them, you know, Iam a brown gringo and you know,
from america, even though Ihave, you know, spanish ancestry
.
And you know I I was looking atmy grandmother's ancestry.
It turns out we, our last namewas santa maria, a couple
generations ago, you know, andI'm like wow, we spent like

(34:59):
seven generations in Panama, youknow, and before that, who
knows where else, you know,spain, mexico, and so, um, for
me personally, uh, being in thatforest, on Salvia, and walking
in the forest and seeing for thefirst time the language come to
life, like when you you'd seein different books, like the

(35:22):
codices that the spaniards tookfrom the temples of zoshicalico,
and you see the books and itwould show like spoke, like,
like like thought bubbles comingout of people's mouths, and we
think that that's a metaphor.
Until you work with the salviaand you see it and it's just
like a literal oh, that'sliterally the word comes out

(35:45):
like a, like a snake, you know,like a co-op comes out like that
and it's a prayer and theprayer is taken, you know, and
there's this hidden pyramidthat's in the forest I'm not
going to say where, becausetourists have already started
trying to desecrate it and so Ikind of want to protect it, but

(36:06):
you know, it's not recognized bythe Mexican government.
But there's this pyramid withconcentric circles.
It's not square and boxy likesome of the recent pyramids,
it's older, it's megalithic, andthere's this altar on top of
that mound of concentric circlestones and it's huge, it's like
a mountain within a mountain.
It's the size of maybe athree-story apartment building.

(36:29):
It's a big pyramid, it's notsome tiny little thing and it's
hidden and it'll trip you outbecause you'll find one
megalithic stone and then youwon't find anything else.
So you really have to followlike the wind.
It has to tell you and whisperto you where to go.
You know, and then you find it.
And there's this altar on topthat's also built of stones and
there was a bee shaman carvedinto it, like it looked like a

(36:52):
thousand year old tree on top ofthat mound, and it tells you
where to sit, like you can'tjust sit around the altar how
you want to sit.
We tried doing a ceremony upthere and the spirit in that
tree came to life and it waslike Keisha.
No, you sit to the north, yousit to the west, you sit to the
east, you sit to the south.
You know different people inour group and we arranged

(37:15):
ourselves.
And when we arranged ourselves,then we lit the Chinupawa and
we shared the sacrament together.
I remember what felt like myspirit split into four
dimensions of myself, thisportal, and I could see multiple

(37:41):
places, multiple mountains allover the world that people could
have traveled through from thatspace, and I was in shock, you
know, first.
First my elder came down causeI wasn't sure if she was going
to make it.
That year she was sick and shetold me how to access the portal
.
It was my friend, mama Lynn.
She came down and she was ashe's a native American elder

(38:02):
who made me my first medicinedrum.
So, since I had my drum and Iwas beating my drum, then she
came, the energy of her cameinto the ceremonial space at
that time and, uh, she's stilldoing good, thankfully.
And, um, I split into four, likeliterally four holographic
forms of myself, and the fifthwas like just pure light in the

(38:27):
center, and then I was able toteleport other places from that
place, but I was afraid to goanywhere, I didn't know what I
was doing and and so I just kindof came back, you know, into my
body and I was like, oh, sothis is where.
This is where the portal ishere, because everyone talks
about a portal being on themountain and one of my friends,

(38:49):
you know, he was like I think Iknow where it is, you know.
And then we took medicine there, we, we found it.
Of course he was crying becausehe met his ancestors at the
portal and when they camethrough they were dark people
and they were tall and theydidn't look like regular human
people.
You know, to him he was likejust hung up on the fact that

(39:11):
they were dark skinned.
He was like I knew it, myancestors were black.
We don't let jaime leave thisdown to this day.
He's my best friend.
You know, we lived there in oneroom.
It's like five hippies and we'devacuate the room and sell it
out to tourists just so we couldsurvive on the mountain making
jewelry and selling jewelry inthe streets.
You know, like vagabonds.

(39:32):
You know we lived like that andthat's how you really get to
know a place.
You don't get to know a placeas a tourist.
You get to know a place as theguy who sells earrings you made
out of pop cans, that's right.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
They know all the places right.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah, you know all the places.
You know all the secrets too.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
So it's interesting you bring up portals.
I've been thinking about that alot recently and again.
You know, thinking about thismoment in time and history, that
we are not just in the UnitedStates right with people who are
in despair you know what mayhappen but also around the world

(40:17):
, there's a lot of, there's alot of changes and transitions
that are also happening andstarted to happen earlier this
year.
From your perspective, fromyour vantage point, from your
travels, what do you thinkpeople need to know, not just
about the physical world thatwe're in right now?

Speaker 1 (40:41):
It's all blown open.
You know, not just about thephysical world that we're in
right now, it's all blown open.
You know, I think in 2012, wewere thinking that all the
shifts coming, all the shiftscoming.
You know everybody's like thegolden wave.
You know, like talking aboutthe mind calendar, you know like
it's open, every opportunitythat you thought you might have
for enlightenment is alreadyhere.
Anything that you thought in2010, 2012, you were waiting for

(41:06):
is here.
Any kind of support you need,it's here.
Any kind of resource you need,it's here.
You have to do the work to makeit useful.
You have to start now.
You have to use what's outthere.
It's not hard.
If you follow good instructions, if you follow good teaching,

(41:26):
it's not hard to take fulladvantage of the benefits that
you have access to.
We're in the age of information.
We're in the age of spiritualinformation and esoteric and
hidden information and wisdomteachings and compassion
teachings and poetry.
We're in the age wheresomething that someone would

(41:46):
have to take a whole lifetime tofind one piece or shred of, you
have the whole book, the wholebook, the whole ocean and
treasury of wisdom is handheld.
It's in your ebook, it's inyour Kindle, and your ancestors
want you to use it.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
And what do you?

Speaker 1 (42:05):
say, is the work when people say, well, what's the
work that I need to do?
Well, anything that getscarried beyond the flesh is the
good work, you know.
And so you've got to thinkabout what are you going to
leave behind first, to answerthat question, you know, so many
people get caught up on whatthey need as provisions here,
and the earth is our provisionthat we have not cared for.

(42:27):
You know, the earth has ourfood, has our water, has our
shelter.
Many people don't see it thatway.
They see it as we need money asour provision, and so people
chase material wealth, theychase sex, they chase, you know,
having the right girlfriend orboyfriend, they chase having the

(42:49):
nice house and nice car, butthey don't chase knowledge of
self.
And so, if you think about it,the provisions that were given
to your ancestors are yourbirthright.
Buy a land, build a house, getit over with and then start
self-cultivation, cultivatingthe qualities that will live on

(43:13):
beyond your physical flesh,incarnation, your eternal
provisions.
Incarnation, your eternalprovisions.
And to understand what eternityis, in the Aztec, mexica sense
or in the Buddhist sense, youhave to first understand that
you are infinite.
You've been here infinitely.
You weren't born, you're notgoing to die.

(43:35):
What you are cannot bedestroyed.
You that, your awareness, is aborrowed thing.
It lives in your body, but it'sgoing to outlive your body and
so your relationship with others, your relationship with

(43:57):
yourself, needs to be refinedfrom the illusion that we create
of self that is limited, thatlimited self that we keep
stumbling over.
We got a body and we got a face, and we got our likes and our
dislikes, and and our colors andour tastes and our textures.
We have to to get over that inorder to expand and really get

(44:19):
to know the qualities ofdivinity, or the qualities of
how Teotlum moves in disguise.
We are the universe in disguiseof a human is how it's said in
Aztec philosophy.
We wear the human body as anahal, like a shaman wears a

(44:41):
jaguar's mask.
It's a mask.
The time Place of the universeArrived when you were born In
your form.
This is just the universe Intime place as Acacia.
This is just the universe Intime place as Joseose rico.
It is not the ultimate truth.

(45:04):
You're going to die.
You're going to become ash.
Who you are and what you are isgoing to outlive the physical
manifestation that you take onand it will enter the underworld
, which is also the rivers, thetrees, the stars, the sun.
You will join them when you die, and so that's why it's so

(45:28):
important to recognizeimpermanence, and impermanence
is something that was taught tobe appreciated in Nahua poetry.
We just read the poet, butevery single one has these
reminders to be grateful, tocreate beauty, to appreciate
beauty and also understand itsillusory nature that is also

(45:49):
going to be transformed by time.
Yeah, and so inside of thatgratitude and appreciation, we
get to a point where weunderstand the preciousness of
this life and the preciousnessof the opportunity that we have
and also how suffering takesplace.
Is our attachment to jade andgold you know, in this case,

(46:09):
cars and women or cars and moneyor money and houses our
attachment to those material,worldly like things as stumbling
blocks for our eternalexperience to be understood.
And even Christians understandthis.
They say that finding wisdom isworth more than gold.
You know, when I was a kid, mymom would say I'd rather have

(46:32):
Jesus than silver or gold.
But even inside of that, thelove and compassion that Jesus
represents in my mom'sperspective also matches up with
the nature that exists, thatcreated everything and that
exists in everything.
And I won't say created,because there is no end or

(46:56):
beginning to it.
It's like a serpent eating itstail.
It's infinite process, it'sinfinite activity, is out of
compassion, is the original wombthrough which it's self-created
, self-annihilated, self-created, self-annihilated again and
again, and again and again.
And so, as a part of thisprocess, the connecting point in

(47:20):
a lot of these major traditions, including Aztec mysticism,
aztec philosophy, is themovement, the energy and motion,
how it moves in a bouncing way,in a combining way, in a
twisting way Nefantli energy,malini energy, olin.

(47:41):
And then also it's preciousness,and I think that preciousness
gets mistaken for love.
Love is not preciousness, it'snot the essence of preciousness.
The essence of preciousness iswisdom and compassion together.

(48:01):
It's its expression of orderand chaos and the alternation of
those forces of dark and light.
Duality, good, evil, whateverideas we have of these sort of
things are kind of our illusionthat we create to deal with this

(48:23):
impermanent preciousness thatwe're given, that we're gifted.
And when the preciousness isgone, then darkness takes its
place naturally, and that'sdarkness and light, that's
duality.
But it doesn't mean that becausethe darkness comes in, the

(48:44):
preciousness is not also stillthere.
It simply means that it's emptyof a certain characteristic and
anything can be born out of thatdarkness, including
preciousness again.
And so it's like thisalternating force of energy, and
there is good and there is bad,and there is just nature inside

(49:09):
of it.
And part of that nature is, youknow, what Buddhists call
samsara, which is thisendlessness of good, bad and
ugly just happening again andagain and again and again, and
it's not in any specific orderof perfective order.
You know, we want to say, yes,perfection exists, but that's

(49:31):
not all that exists, you know.
And so there's the force oftyioto and Ome Tioto and
Tetzkatli Polka.
That exists, and TetzkatliPolka is the night and the
jaguar and the dark and death,you know.

(49:52):
And so I feel like it's veryimportant that we not get so
caught up on love and light thatwe forget to reverence that
this is also a quality that itcan possess, this is an infinite
quality that it can possess ofdarkness, and that that even has
its benefits because, the kingsgo by Akbalam, the jaguar king,

(50:14):
to protect.
The ability to protect comesfrom that darkness, you know,
and in Buddhism a lot of peopleget hung up.
Darkness, that's right, you know, and in buddhism a lot of
people get hung up on the buddha, you know, being also bright
and shiny, but they forgetmahakala also exists, you know.
Mahakala is the controller ofall demons and cannibals and has

(50:37):
a retinue, you know of, ofanimals that come from the hell
realms that protect all of thebuddhas and benevolent beings
and vow keepers and, you know,destroy all of the the negative
ones who would approach uh totry and harm beings that are

(50:58):
beneficial beings, you know, aredharma like beings, and so
there's an order there.
You know are dharma-like beings, and so there's an order there.
You know, even inside ofBuddhism, of forms of the Buddha
that are also darkness, thatare also pure darkness, empty of
any sort of good or bad or uglycharacteristic, but totally
empty, totally naked forms, bador ugly characteristic, but

(51:22):
totally empty, totally nakedforms.
And then from that comesdakinis and from that comes
mahakala and and vajra, bairavaand all the protectors that look
terrifying, you know, and soeven the buddhists have this
notion of darkness and lighttogether, you know, and so it's
understanding how this worksinside of the human.

(51:44):
That is the work yeah like, howcan we be like the meme that
keeps going around, the guy with3000?
I am sparta on the buddhistbody.
You know how can I be both?
You know at the same time.
You know, and there is no.
There is no both really.
There.
It's really just recognition ofthe qualities that are inside of

(52:07):
our awareness, inside of ourminds, that are fertile ground,
and whatever you're planting inthat fertile ground, you need to
understand its primordialcharacteristics.
Earth, air, water, fire areeverything that exists really,

(52:27):
and so the elements themselvesthat make up the fabric of our
world, even empty space, areinherently considered to be
infinite or teothilizingcreative energy.
And because it's infinite andcreative, we call it precious,

(52:50):
the precious elements, theprecious substances, the five
Buddha kings.
We call it that, and we see allover the world the honoring of
the water, the honoring of thefire, the honoring of the water,
the honoring of the fire, thehonoring of the earth, the
honoring of the in the emptyspace, the honoring of the wind.
We see this, you know, and Ithink the reason for that is

(53:16):
that we can break ourselves downinto those five characteristics
and there be nothing left,literally nothing left.
And so if we are nothing, if weare that empty space in between
that holds us together, if ourawareness is that space, then we

(53:39):
need to also understand that ithas no limits, and so we should
be thinking about the bestpossible scenario.
What can we do with infinitelimits positively, if we
understand that if we donegative things to people, we
create more negative drama andbaggage.
This idea of karma exists inthe Aztec teotlizing terminology

(54:04):
because, like begets, like youdo something negative, it's
going to create another negativeaction.
You do something to harm someone.
In Lakesh Alekin, the light inme respects and honors the light
in you.
But if I take you and I dosomething bad to you that's
hurting me, there's no you tohurt.

(54:25):
I'm hurting something sacred,and this also is the notion of
karma.
It's that if you're hurtingsomeone else, you're hurting
yourself.
You're hurting something sacredthat is part of you
Intrinsically, is part of youintrinsically.
You are the same intrinsically.
When you boil it all down, youtake two humans together.

(54:50):
The difference between thosehumans is who they think they
are in their minds, and if theyboth think that they are divine
beings, then they are connectedinside of that sacred agreement.
That sacred energy connectsthem to each other.

(55:13):
And a lot of people say well, Idon't believe in equality
because oppression exists, and Isay that true oppression is the
suppression of freedom, and sowe have become programmed to
self-oppress.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
And I say we have become programmed to
self-oppress because the notionof true freedom that liberates
is averse to us.
We don't want to give it toothers.
Therefore, we cannot give it toourselves yeah, yeah, we're not
being entangled in that pushingand pulling of having if we give

(55:49):
them freedom, then we imprisonourselves type mentality is a
lie that was sold to us to keepus in this loop, and the lie
that we keep selling is a lie inour minds.
It's not a lie that thegovernment's telling us.
It's a lie that we'veperpetuated from our ancestors
who were traumatized.
It's an assumption and it's afalse assumption, yeah, that in

(56:12):
order to move forward, we mustkeep everyone in the past.

Speaker 2 (56:16):
Yeah, yeah, and it's a lie.
That's you know that is soeffective and holy Right, it
hurts us.
And you know, and I see that somuch, you know, one of the
things that I do is I takepeople on healing retreats to
Mexico, to the jungle um inQuintana Roo, mostly Black and

(56:40):
brown folks, because you knowfor many Go ahead.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
Can I say something?
Black and brown folks talkabout decolonization a lot, and
that's why I'm always tellingthem decolonize your minds.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Right.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Because when we take them back to these places,
that's where these trauma woundsare open and ripped open in
front of them and like well, ifI'm so powerful.
There's all this anger, andthat anger creates more
suffering for themselves andothers and they feel entitled to
holding on to the colonizer'sanger.
The anger comes fromdisconnectedness and it

(57:20):
perpetuates moredisconnectedness.
It's like I want revenge.
Forgiveness is indigenous, butwe've been disconnected from it.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
And what have I experienced is I have not
experienced that anger per seagainst the oppressor, the
oppressor.
What I have experienced withpeople when they go there is
they realize, like many of us,like you myself, that the

(58:02):
institutions that we thoughtcared for us and were going to
provide for us actually don'tlove us and harm us.
And a lot of what gets revealedis grief that these places that
they have given, ofenlightenment, of belonging, are

(58:24):
the trees, the sun, theirspirits, those around them that
are also on this journey.
And so we have been, you know,basically sold a bag of goods
that is not fulfilling what theysay they were going to do with

(58:46):
these institutions.
And so now we have to rely theStates and have not experienced
another place, another culture,another relationship.

(59:06):
That is about all the thingsthat you just mentioned.
They could only see that or getthat oftentimes when you go to
Oaxaca or when you go to Ghanaor you go I was just in Sierra
Leone, I returned from SierraLeone when you go to Ghana or
you go I was just in SierraLeone, I returned from Sierra
Leone when you were in Ghana,and I was able to see how that

(59:29):
community and the people thatshare the rituals and share a
culture and, frankly it's just,they share a spiritual respect
with each other.
That's what it really came downto in my point of view.
That's what people started torealize.
This is really about myself-work and how I'm going to

(59:53):
connect more with other people,but, more importantly, with my
spirit and with myself.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Can I mention something really quick that you
brought that was important.
So you said, sold a bill ofgoods.
You know, and my dad used tohave a term no good deal goes
unpunished, you know, and thisis the punishment of
colonization.
The punishment of colonizationis we are being brought and sold

(01:00:22):
ideas like goods.
We are to get behind people'sideas and promises and trust
them.
But originally trust was wassomething that came from mutual
respect and understanding of howreality works.

(01:00:44):
Is that you trusted someone whounderstood the philosophy of
nature, the philosophy of givingand receiving naturally,
without control, being a part ofthe relationship.
To decolonize the relationshipswith others, we have to

(01:01:06):
decolonize our minds, becausethis is the problem.
People stop being good, forgoodness sakes, they start being
good expecting things in return.
And that's not goodness, that'scapitalism.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
And so, in order to decolonize our minds from
capitalism on the medicine, wehave to be able to willing to
give genuinely, withoutexpecting anything in return,
and not to do things with themotivation of benefiting just
ourselves, but to benefitourselves by doing the reverse,

(01:01:45):
by giving genuinely and knowingthat because of the universal
law of nature, it's going tocome back to us because we gave
without attachment, genuinely.
You know, and a lot of peopleunderstand, it's a universal law
of nature.
You know what I mean.
Like, if I give to you or Igive to a homeless man and I

(01:02:12):
forget that I gave, the universeis going to take my intention
and multiply it because myawareness is infinite.
It's going to come back to meanother way, an inconceivable
way, not from that homeless man.
And we give oftentimes tohomeless people but not to each
other, not to our own people.
We join co-ops, ourmanifestation groups and

(01:02:35):
abundance groups.
We don't understand how the lawreally works because the law is
attached to attraction, it'sattached to capitalism, attached
to attachment to having andgetting something immediately,
instant gratification kind of.
This is not decolonization atall, but it's super popular in
the medicine spaces.

(01:02:55):
Is I go to the medicine andsomebody is telling me I'm going
to get something from themedicine and that limits what I
can receive from the medicine.
And so many of these ceremoniesset people up for a disaster
because they're told you'recoming here to heal something in
your body and that's such atransactional relationship

(01:03:16):
between that person and a livingthing, a living spirit.
And that's when you have theissue of the person feeling like
they haven't completely met themedicine yet and so they keep
going back and they keep goingback and the medicine kind of
keep hiding from them.
And it's because they're comingwith a gimme attitude instead
of what can I do for themedicine spirit?

(01:03:37):
What can I do for the communitythat grew them?
What can I do to support beforeI have the ceremony?
You know, I have one thing I'mthankful for my first teachers.
They always said you know, youneed to chop the wood for the
fire for the ceremony Right.
You need to help get us thespace.
You know, put up the tents.
Being involved in thepreparation for the ceremony

(01:03:59):
will make that experiencedperson have a much better
experience.
Why?
Because they get back what theyput in.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
It's the reciprocity principle.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
It's the reciprocity, and the problem that we have
with ayahuasca and withmushrooms is that these plant
medicines are not gettingreciprocity from the people who
are being set up to receive themand those people are not being
told that that needs to be apart of the ceremony itself.
Your benefit rests hugely onyour relationship with the land

(01:04:30):
and the medicine itself whetheryou've grown the medicine and
you've given back.
You've spoken about themedicine and you've given back.
You've helped others and you'vegiven back, and a lot of people
are like well, I can't giveback because I'm just drowning
in misery.
I've gone through so muchtrauma, I don't know what to do,
and the problem is thatperson's mind is not able to

(01:04:54):
find peace because that persondoesn't practice peace in their
everyday life.
They don't practice goingoutside in their everyday life.
They don't practice goingoutside in their everyday life.
They wait till they get to aforeign country before they
respect the ground that theystand on.
They treat like the ground,that where they stand is not
sacred, and then they go overthere and they have a bad
experience because they realize,oh, I've been treating my

(01:05:15):
family that is a sacred thingbadly.
I've been treating my mother,who's a sacred being and I came
out of her womb and she's such agoddess and she gave me so much
love.
They don't give love to thepeople who are around them.
They wait to go to a foreigncountry to learn how to love and
to learn how to treat theground as sacred so they don't
get to live free.
They live in bondage whenthey're here and they live free

(01:05:37):
over there.
But that's not correct.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
That's right.
That's right.
Those are Pekisha.
Those are powerful lessons forpeople that are interested in
partaking in plant medicine andthen often don't understand, not
only why it doesn't work.
And, as you know, then peoplesay well, I probably need to

(01:06:03):
take more Right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:06):
And that kills me, because it's like your
grandmother giving you money totithe for church and you go and
you spend it on candy.

Speaker 2 (01:06:16):
You know bad little kid type stuff, you know it
really is Bad, little kid typestuff, you know it really is Bad
little kid type stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
You know it's bad, little kids.
They come and they take amicrodose.
They're like, ah, that didn'tdo anything.
You know they're not willing tosit and breathe, you know, for
five minutes with their eyesclosed, to get a relationship
built, they're not willing to.
They harvest the gifts ofgratitude that exist for their
breath, for their waking up.
They woke up, they're alive.
Oh my God, that's the spiritualrealization right there.

(01:06:43):
They won't do what they'relittle that they have, and so
they want the big.
They want $100,000 so they canbuy that church Right, so they
can have that retreat center,right center.
But they can't do anything withthe small little apartment
where five or 10 people couldgather and they could work with

(01:07:04):
the people that they know.
No, they want to attract peoplefrom other countries.
They want to attract that bigmoney and stuff to do what they
love.
Well, what they love has beentainted by their materialist
attitude, and so it's not goingto ever look the way that they
think, because they're alwaysgoing to need more and more and
more and more.
And so it's important todevelop a foundation of peace
and contentment and appreciationfor what you've got right now,

(01:07:26):
before you can receive more intoyour cup, and that's something
that Buddhism taught me, thatall these other places and going
to all these other peoplereally did not.
And the reason why is becausehad the elders survived and not
been wiped out, they would havebeen here to teach those kinds
of values.
Those weren't consideredreligious values.

(01:07:47):
Those are considered humanwisdom and the elders would
teach that.
But they killed a lot of eldersduring colonization and a lot
of people just died naturally.
And if you talk to the peoplewho grew up in mazatec areas,
you, they tell us about elderswho can read your whole life.
By the way a condor calls theygot those elders, osiris circata

(01:08:11):
yeah, he's the one who saidthat.
And it's important that youspend time with people who are
two or three times your age, whocan connect with the earth and
who can connect with the naturalelements and can teach you to
pray and can teach you to dowith what?
The little that you got.
But during COVID it wiped out alot of medicine elders yeah,

(01:08:34):
lindy died, you know so many.
Clifford Stewart died the yearafter that.
My partner died and I thinkthat first we have to start
collectively acknowledging whatthey value.
Truthfully, they didn't valuedosage.
Everybody talk about Kalindi.
Oh, you did work with Kalindi,you're the high dose girl.

(01:08:56):
Kalindi was trying to teachwarriorship.
He wasn't trying to teach highdose mushroom use.
That's what people heard,that's what people got him
popular for.
But if you really listen to whathe's saying, he was teaching
cultural anthropology and hewanted people to really respect

(01:09:16):
the values of the traditionsthat he highlighted.
And people glazed over that.
And rather than look at theEgyptians for more than just a
glamorous society and look atMaat and look at the warriorship
traditions or more than lookingat the Bhagavad Gita as a
collection of superhero skillsand really honor the

(01:09:43):
relationship between Krishna andArjuna and the nature of this
human soul that that lesson,that story, can teach, they
looked at him as somebody whowas trying to compare dosage and
he wanted people to take a highenough dose to overcome their
demons and to recognize thatthey have them in the first
place and that they're notperfect and that they have work
to do.
But you got a minority of peoplewho became proud of their
demons and became prideful ofthe challenges that they had, so

(01:10:08):
much so that you got peopledoing 30 grams and pooping their
pants and bragging about it andthey have no shame, and he
would have have just been like Ithink you should stop for a
little while.
He told a lot of people thatyou should stop for a little
while and go back and start atone you know and work your way
up slowly so that you can findout spiritually where you're

(01:10:32):
going wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
Yeah, yeah, I think I think what you mentioned, you
mentioned I don't think we docollectively and even, you know,
in our communities.
Obviously the spiritualcommunity is a little bit
different, where we honor ourelders and honor them in a way

(01:10:54):
that's not just ceremonial, Notwith just lips, here Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:11:00):
By carrying on their values Exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
By living their values, because those values and
that wisdom that they spendtheir whole life creating and
developing is basically a giftto us.

Speaker 1 (01:11:17):
It's not.
Basically, it is the ultimategift that somebody spent their
whole life studying somethingand giving love to their elders
and being a student so that youwouldn't have to go and live
their whole life to figure outthe basics.

Speaker 2 (01:11:33):
The basics.

Speaker 1 (01:11:34):
You know, yeah.
And that's such a great thing.
It's such a great thing, youknow.
You know, yeah, and that's sucha great thing, it's such a great
thing, you know, and I, I feelreally bad for the psychedelic
community because, um, with thiswhole microdosing movement, uh,
you got people who want to bethe next, uh, you know, the next
celebrity apprentice.

(01:11:55):
You, you know, out here holdingconferences and bringing people
on to their programs, includingme, and holding these
superficial networking meetingsabout something that is
mysterious and is sacred andcannot be explained away by your

(01:12:16):
experience.
With 0.15 or 150 milligrams ofa dose that you put in a capsule
, to say that the mushroomexperience should all be boiled
down to a microdosing experience, or to boil it all down even to
a macrodosing experience, takesaway from the indigenous,
specific tradition of using themfresh, of using them grown from

(01:12:41):
the land on the bones of theancestors.
You know, with the, the soundsof, of joy and prayers from that
tradition, uh, missing thesacramental offerings of the
incense, uh, and the copal to topurify that person's body and
spirit.

(01:13:01):
You take out the purification,you take out the gratitude and
you've got a drug.
You're drugifying everythingyeah by removing the essential
core ethical fundamentals thatwere put there to benefit people
.
Purifying the mushroom overcopal is a safety measure.

(01:13:26):
It's a raw mushroom fruit.
The copal can kill bacteria onthe surface.
It can kill viruses on thesurface.
What you're doing over here,chewing mushrooms and telling me
they taste like shit howdisrespectful can you be.
You know what I mean.
If you use the copal, the copal, make it taste good, right,
make it taste like oranges.
They taste like pine.

(01:13:46):
Oh well, I am not digesting itproperly.
Oh well, you forgot.
We use sacred wasp honey, ohyeah.
And you also put in your eyesso we can open up the windows of
your soul to receivehyperdimensional information.
That's six-sided geometry, likea crystal.
You know that there'stechnologies that go along with
the sacramental and sacred herbsand you know it's like going to

(01:14:10):
a place and saying, oh, youguys grow saffron, that's all I
care about hearing about, andnot like looking at all the
other ingredients in the soup.
You know you look at the mostvaluable extractivist thing that
you can appreciate aboutsociety and you're gonna miss
the whole, the beauty of theentire group.
And that's what I feel likewith the mushroom.
We took mushrooms from mexicoand now we miss the chapuline,

(01:14:33):
now we miss the sacred wasphoney, now we miss the tortillas
and the magic of making groundmaize and the magic of making
mezcal.
There's so many different artforms that are interrelated to
healing that exist in Mexico,from the Mayan trumpet for sound
healing.
A lot of people taking crystalbowls down to Mexico don't even

(01:14:56):
know that you can go and get aMayan trumpet that's built from
the leaf of an agave, you know,or a magway, not a leaf, a stem,
the stem from the century plant, and they're going to
didgeridoo.
Basically, that's how it sounds.
This base vibration is going toshake up all the molecules in
your body and clear all thenegative energy.

(01:15:16):
While they use the copulero toclear the energy off of you, why
not learn about the traditionsthat exist down there instead of
trying to take westernappropriate systems into mexico
to hold space for something thatyou could never really
appreciate fully because youdidn't.
You didn't talk to people aboutit?
You know there were noceremonies for the mushroom in

(01:15:39):
the Zapotec area, so I was inbecause you didn't do mushrooms
just when you were sick.
The ceremonies were for sickpeople, so the healer could ask
the spirit what made you sickand intercede and be your
intercessor and pray to God topurify you.
Pray to Jesus, pray to MotherMary, because those are divine

(01:16:01):
forms of healing that comethrough the body.
That was part of the practicefor Maria.
Sabina Bless my hands and shewas able to integrate
Catholicism into her ownfoundational beliefs.
But a lot of people have so muchjudgment against her methods
that it's like they want to runthe other way from even systems

(01:16:25):
that could be used to benefit,because they don't understand
that beyond dogma there's actualunderstanding.
There's actual knowledge,spiritual knowledge of who you
are, and the of jesus is justone dimension of it.
That brings in the infinitelove and compassion capacity of
the infinite awareness thatexists inside of you.

(01:16:46):
You know, and so when you layhands and you are visualizing
this, you have faith in yourvisualization and belief.
That is going to take place,that energy is permitted to come
out of you and to affect theother person and you can lay
hands and become like a helper.
You know that person still gotto agree to let go of what made

(01:17:06):
them sick.
That's why you're not the onehealing them.
That person still has tosurrender to the Holy Spirit in
that moment and receive thathealing in their hearts and
forgive themselves and let goand break down.
But the healer and ceremony wasa part of the guide.
But outside of that, manypeople would take it on their

(01:17:27):
own in the dark In cabins, andthat was part of being in San
Jose del Pacifico.
There were no mushroomcuadernos or cuadernas cuanderas
who were going to be there tohold you in this dimension,
because it was a journey ofgetting to know yourself.
It was a journey of going deepand when there's someone there,

(01:17:50):
you're always going to bedistracted.
You're always going to bemaking an excuse as to why
you're not going to deal withyour emotions, why you're not
going to recognize the spiritualdouble exists and you see this
on the Stellas of Zosia Calicoall the time the part of you
that has these demonic, terriblequalities.
Every human being has it.
You've got to let it go.

(01:18:12):
There's a spiritual double thatgoes to hell, literally On the
Stellas you see this guy fallingout of the person and their
heart becoming deified.
In order for your heart tobecome deified, you have to let
go of the habits and thebehaviors that made you sick,
and that is a core element andaspect in every single theme
I've studied.
That's related to mushroom useand also to non-dual

(01:18:34):
spirituality.
You have to let go of what madeyou sick to get well, and that
also includes all the pettiness.
That also includes all the lietelling and gossiping and
extractive attachingness that welike to grasp and hold on to
what someone did and whatsomebody said as to why we won't
let it go and why we want tojustify our anger and why we

(01:18:56):
don't want to help each other.
All this kind of sickness isits own entity and just like a
placenta breaks away, you got tocut the cord.
You got into this world.
Now you have to let go of whatneeds to be buried.
It gave you life, it gave you areason to develop your wisdom.
Now you need to respect it andlet it go.

(01:19:21):
And a lot of people were nevertaught how to let go and they
were never given the tools tolet go.
They were never given thecopolero, they were never given
the cleansing and purification,they were never given the egg
and the feather.
They were never given any sortof tools that gave them an
inkling of an idea that theyneed to transform these habits

(01:19:42):
that are making them sick and toremove the traces and the
shrapnel inside the human bodyby changing the way you speak,
changing the way you think,changing the way you encounter
people.
And these rituals were agateway for that process to get
placed.
And because the rituals areunder attack and the rituals are
being replaced by veggiecapsules and chocolate bars,

(01:20:05):
which are never part of theAztec tradition, everybody wants
to claim Mayan cacao ceremony.
There was no cacao ceremony.
There was the honoring,respecting of the sacred world
of the cacao spirit and honoringthe sacred process of grinding
the cacao and brewing the cacao.
And you drank that before youtook the mushroom hours before,

(01:20:29):
because it activated joy andhappiness and purified your body
and got you really healthy.
So you have enough strength togo into the mushroom experience.
But the whole chocolate barnonsense, nonsense is cacahuate
wow, wow, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
So that was, that was amazing.
That was a great, great riff.
There's so much I'm gonna takefrom that, but I, what I would
love to do is because, again, II just feel you know that you
came into my life learning aboutteas and now you know also,
you're better than me.

(01:21:10):
I don't know nothing.
Oh, you know, I did a littlebit about teas.

(01:21:36):
I went to the monastery andspent some time and became
initiated in the order ofinterbeing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
Oh, that's a tradition I've never studied.
Chinese tea ceremony is acompletely separate lineage.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
Yeah, yeah, I've you know I'm going to say Chinese
tea ceremony, you and I haveexchanged jade, and I also just
got my jade ring from Mexico andI also have the jade pendant
that you and I have exchangedand do my meditation with food.
That I love, that I love, thatI absolutely love.

(01:22:12):
So all of these things are inbeing in relationship with you.
Just want you to know that andthat has been transformative to
me.
So what I would love to knowfrom you right now is what is it
that you are planting, seedingand watering at this moment for

(01:22:33):
you, at this moment?
Because I know for me, thismoment is a time for you know,
being introspective, planningand just being still for
something to emerge in thespring.
I don't know what that is yet,but wondering what is it that
you're planting and watering atthis moment to emerge later?

Speaker 1 (01:22:53):
well, it's multiple things, you know, um, I am an
ordained upasika in the karmakagyu tradition of buddhism.
My teacher, my root lama, islama mike crowley and lama wang
chun rimpoche in the shangpakagyu tradition buddhism, and
I'm going to do my 50-dayretreat again this year.
The whole time and my silentand fasting retreat is my life,

(01:23:18):
it's my everything, and it iswhat gives me the ability to go
and dive deep without mushroomsand to bring back what's
beneficial for the community.
And what's been on my heart isto have a center that is
dedicated to providing supportto individuals in plant medicine

(01:23:39):
who are interested in learningmy technique from my school,
divine Master, alchemy, but moreimportantly, buddhist teachings
from my lineage, and so I'm onthe path of becoming a teacher
inside of the Buddhist tradition, which is kind of.
There's not very manyAfrican-American women,
african-latino-american womeninside of Buddhism at all who

(01:24:02):
are ordained lamas, and so I'mpraying that my parents, who are
very Christian and veryPentecostal, are willing to give
me the support to do howeverlong of a spiritual retreat I
need to do to get ordained as ateacher eventually in my lineage

(01:24:22):
, and if I have to wait untilthey're gone away, then that's
what I got to do, but my callinghas been to share Nygma Yoga,
which is a non-dual Tibetanyogic tradition illusory body,
spirit and mind taught by Kerand poche on wisdom publications
, is one of the best course youcan invest in.

(01:24:43):
Naguma dream yoga.
These are the highest tantricpractices of our lineage, for
the first time being taught tothe public, and this is history
making, because naguma herselfforbid the teachings to be
shared to anyone but directlineage holders for seven
generations.
And this practice started athousand years ago.
Buddha was here 1500 years ago.

(01:25:04):
This is.
This is almost 900 plus yearold practice, and so to be able
to do this practice and itactivates so much dmt in the
body and it gives you so muchclarity.
I've seen people heal as ifthey've taken five to ten cups
of ayahuasca without anysubstances being involved.
And not everyone can takesubstances and not everyone can

(01:25:25):
get over their judgment ofsubstances.
People will walk into aBuddhist temple on Xanax and
judge people for doing mushrooms.
People say I don't do any drugsand they go in and eat
processed foods every day andsugars for breakfast and then
come out of the Buddhist templeand judge people for doing
mushrooms and say I'm not ondrugs.

(01:25:46):
You have sex three times a weekand you say I'm not on drugs.
Yes, you are.
Yes, you are, you're a drugaddict, and so I am also
somebody who works withintoxicants for specific
purposes.
But the key word is I do notget intoxicated on purpose.

(01:26:08):
I'm not using the mushrooms toget high, not using them to get
out of something.
Get out of something.
And psychedelic Buddhism andsecret drug of Buddhism it's two
books that break down exactlywhy Buddhists work with
sacraments If they don't needanything, then why would we do
mantras?
If we don't need anything, whydo we have incense with

(01:26:30):
different types ofantidepressant herbs?
We all need something, andthat's the truth, and we can't
sit here and develop some sortof high horse mentality that sex
is an impurity and thatmushrooms are an impurity when
we are all filled withimpurities.
That's samsara, that's thisreality, and so we've got to use
what we've got to get out ofthe illusion stability, if it's

(01:27:00):
used responsibly andpurposefully, in alignment with
actual spiritual practices, tohelp mentally dissolve our
confusion and obscurations.
And a lot of times people need ashift to get into making a
practice that does not involvemushrooms.
They need to get into a shiftto get out of alcoholism.
They need to get into a shiftto get out of depression.
To get out of alcoholism, theyneed to get into a shift to get
out of depression.
And shifting out of those old,stuck ways of being is something

(01:27:23):
that happens when your braingrows, and so we need to shift
the judgment from it being adrug to being a growth formula
for the mind, because,chemically and neurologically,
that's what the studies areproving it does, that's what
it's actually doing.
You have things that areinhibitors, you have things that
are exaggerators, but themushroom, and specifically when

(01:27:43):
it plugs into your neurologicalreceptors, grows neurons, it
grows and developsneuroplasticity.
You are doing the practice andyou are growing dendrites that

(01:28:09):
are related to that specificpractice and that specific
technique to help you learn morethoroughly and integrate the
information more deeply.
But we have to popularizemeditation and mushrooms and
chest and mushrooms and notparty and mushrooms, because
party and mushrooms is a defaultthat society has pushed ever
since we took the sacrament awayfrom its ritual tradition, and
we have to popularize bringingritual back into ceremony in a
safe and ethical and honorableway that is not appropriative,
by giving the people the torchto carry whose culture it

(01:28:32):
belongs to, instead of justhiring whoever to come and do
whatever.
Instead of just hiring whoeverto come and do whatever, you
know, really honoring theprocess that it takes to develop
a practitioner who is, who isvetted by their elders and
respected by their peers andit's not, you know,

(01:28:53):
capitalistically, even trying touse their indigeneity to to get
some sort of psychological,psychological, um, ego trip.
You know, because you have a lotof people who will do that, who
are even indigenous, who comefrom these traditions, who maybe
spent five minutes in it andnow, all of a sudden, they're
shaman, and that's not righteither, you know.
And so we need individuals whohave good ethics and who are

(01:29:16):
about the right things, who areselected to do certain kinds of
work.
We need to support those kindof individuals.
When ceremony is called for,but outside of that, building
ceremony means developingoneself and purifying negative
qualities and becoming betterevery day, and if that intention
is there, then that intentionwill help you connect further

(01:29:37):
and deeper to things that willsupport you.
Whether it looks like a ritualor it looks like meditation,
you're going to find a way tobridge the gap and bring healing
into your life that integratesthe truth of reality and the
truth of your inner naturethat's available to you and
available to all beings, tobenefit our societies and to

(01:29:58):
benefit each other and availableto all beings to benefit our
societies and to benefit eachother.

Speaker 2 (01:30:03):
Great and Acacia, this is exactly why I wanted you
to speak with us.
Is that that is just a reallyclear and succinct way to
explain another aspect ofhealing that's done responsibly,
another aspect of healingthat's done responsibly and that

(01:30:26):
is done with a lot of attentionto the inner work and the
self-work that is away from thelike, the jugification of this
and and a foundation ofspiritual practice.
So really want to thank you forthat, really want to thank you
for that.
Really want to thank you foryour time with us.
The last thing I do want to askyou is I know that you had a

(01:30:47):
campaign to help with yourretreat center, but I would love
for you to share how peoplecould sign up to your classes I
know you have a website how theycould get a hold of you and
follow you to continue to beable to carry on this
conversation with you beyondtoday.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):
So I have a sub stack coming out called Underground
Tea, and it looks likeunderground, and so the sub
stack should be ready by thetime you air this.
I'm working on it this week,and underground is to provide
articles that are written bymyself and reviewed by my peers
to help give people more accessto some of these philosophies

(01:31:33):
and traditions are a little bitobscure in the medicine
community and cited research,because that's what I do in my
school and in my classes, and soI'll be available, you know,
for free and also at a premium,for a small subscription fee.
And then also I have a websitecalled Acacia Lewis
A-C-A-C-E-A-L-E-W-I-Scom, andI'm working with my web team to

(01:31:56):
update my website, but it has alink to my school there where,
if you want to take three monthlong class on Aztec philosophy,
there's a recording alreadyavailable and the recordings are
about 20 hours to 30 hours long, and I will break down every
single concept from JamesMaffey's book Aztec Philosophy

(01:32:18):
and a lot of themes from TomLane's book Sacred Mushroom
Ceremonies and my ownexperiences to give you a more
fleshed out idea of how toactually engage with the aspects
of teodolization andtransformation that are inside
of Aztec philosophy and Aztecpoetry, and I'm also working on

(01:32:39):
a Mighty Networks page.
I have 500 plus students at myschool Divine Master, alchemy
and so on the Mighty Networkspage I'll give the invite link
to Jose, and my vision is thatby the end of the year we have a
retreat center, basically onreserve.
There's a city that has an old,condemned house.

(01:33:00):
You know the story.
We want to fix it up, we want tomake it a library, we want to
make it a meditation center, andso I'll put a donation link on
how to support funding aphysical location in Arizona and
also in Oaxaca, on land thatwas given to me, even though you
know you say you paid forsomething, but the people in

(01:33:21):
Oaxaca entrusted me with therights to a small part of land
the cloud forest, where themushrooms grow, and I feel like
I'm a steward.
I don't own the land, I'm asteward of the land and I want
to build a center there that hasa defibrillator, because my
partner died in that townbecause there was no
defibrillator in the entire townand the nearest town was two
hours away, and so we need somebasic medical tools as well as a

(01:33:44):
center for people who arerecovering drug addicted
individuals who are coming toOaxaca and pestering the elders.
We need, as people who areexperienced to chaperone
sometimes, individuals who havechallenges and give them a
private area so that they canwork out some of those
challenges with like-mindedpeople who are not going to harm

(01:34:06):
, abuse or attack them for whatthey're going through, and
create a safe space for peoplewho need help, who are looking
to use the mushroom andsacraments in Mexico.
And so that's my goal and myvision and also to, in the next
five years, hopefully completemy Shesedra ordination as a nun

(01:34:30):
or as a yogin in my lineage.

Speaker 2 (01:34:35):
Great.
Well, there's a lot to lookforward with you, acacia, and
there's a lot of ways for peopleto be a part of and to be
connected with you.
I want to thank you again mysincerest thanks and gratitude
and looking forward for this tocome out and, obviously, looking
forward for our continuedconversation and relationship.

(01:34:56):
Thank you so much, thank you.

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