The Down in Mexico

Written November 8th, 2021

I’ve been in a down 

Down to the soil of my being 

A down is a part of the Feminine cycle known as the emptying out time, the inner winter, void, death 

With each down, parts of me die

And I go into deeper hidden crevices of my being that require devotion to traverse in 

With each descent into a down, I also get to know myself more…the thought patterns, the little voices that run me unconsciously, the places I feel really tender and vulnerable 

There are very specific things my mind clings to when approaching a down as a way to not fully plunge

I can see it from a mile away now 

And every time it arises, I know I’m at the edge of a cliff into a vast place

Where life as I know it is going to shift

It’s a fear of losing it all, losing all my resources, family, community and literally being abandoned by society 

It’s a very primal fear and I have to be so loving and gentle with my mind to penetrate beneath it, to feel beneath it

At the bottom of it is a fear of losing it

More than the fear of the death

It is the fear of truly not living and being no-thing

This is death but a different type of death from the death of leaving this dimension

The former frightens me more

Death is exactly what the down is about 

Downs are micro deaths preparing us for the inevitable death we all will face 

It’s a letting go of my gripping to that which I cling to knowingly and unknowingly so that I may feel my eternal self beneath my human self

That in essence, is quite vulnerable to feel

And shows us where we don’t quite trust and lead with our eternal self 

Many years ago, I had a visionary experience of a spiritual crossroads 

I was deep in the throes of self loathing and substance addiction, really lost and terrified of life

I was 18, living in San Francisco, partying every day with

I had a vision of two paths in front of me 

A path of where I’d end up if I followed the path I was walking then 

And the other path, which I know see as a path of awakening 

Both actually felt difficult 

I could feel it in my bones that both were not a walk in the park

Yet there was no true escape, not even that of suicide

That one would require me to give all of me and therefore, it’d be a path of loss 

And the other would be a demolition of absolutely everything due to addiction and unfelt pain, it’d also be a path of loss 

I choose the path required me to give all of me, the path of awakening, and a path of loss simultaneously

What I now see as an alchemical spiral path

Of dying over and over again, within this life, to continue coming back to the core of my eternal self

So every time I get to the edge of my capacity to fully be inside my down or I am about to descend into a big one, I feel this bubbling primal fear: End up alone, on the streets, lost, demolished, no resources, no community or family 

And when I allow this primal fear to really have its way with me 

That is, choosing to face it as opposed to turn away

I feel a rock bottom so profound that it’s like I can finally breathe in the surrendering of it 

Right in the middle of my deepest fear lies what I actually desire more than anything else: absolute surrender to this life

The purpose of the down is to refine us 

Refine us in what it is that we build that is based in egoic falsity 

And it’s exactly why we are taught to fear the down and do what we can to stay above the waters of the down

Because so much of what we build, is actually based on our survival which is egoic

It’s compensatory action cloaking our soul bones

The ego believes this plane of existence is it, so it finds home in what’s material, what it can control, maintain and keep surviving to not feel the void of our being

The eternal self knows this is not all there is

And that when we die unto our physical death, the soul lives on 

It returns to that which it has always been and will always be 

In communion with Spirit 

So within my fear of the utter demolition of it all 

Is actually where I feel the most freedom 

Because I know deep down, only that which is true can survive when I let go entirely

The down requires me to let go 

And with this down, I am on my knees with my hands in the air asking myself: “what really fucking matters?” 

Truly, what really fucking matters

Not every down is like this 

Some are short

No big fears arise

Just acceptance of the emptied silence and noticing sensation in my body for a day or two 

It goes as soon as it comes

And other downs, come with immense grief 

Where the only way through is to feel every layer with patience 

This is exactly the place I’ve been since arriving to Mexico 

In finally surrendering to the call to move here, a voice I heard years ago, and a seed that heard the call to sprout in July while on a mountain in Northern California doing a vision quest, I’ve been in a down full of grief 

When I first arrived, I had just finished holding my first 4-day In Person Ceremonial Immersion, HOLLOWS

HOLLOWS was an immensely transformative portal for every woman who came, including myself 

And then I arrived to be held in a 4-day Ceremony, MoonDance, in Teotihuacan
It was big experience after big experience 

I hadn’t truly dropped in all the way to feel the fullness of what a move I had just made

Moving to an ancestral land, moving away from my birth land and the Redwoods I had called home for the past 4 years 

Since July, I’ve been nomadic 

From Vision Fast to Family trip to Mexico

COVID-19 and Scorpion Sting Initiation

Back to California to get ready to leave for good 

Holding a 4-Day Ceremonial Immersion before leaving 

Arrive to Mexico and boom, MoonDance 

It has been a full time 

A gorgeous unfolding of both offering the medicine I serve 

And drinking the medicine I serve 

The eros of life, death, rebirth 

The journey of the feminine soul 

All within the preciousness of the fleshy, bloody, bone filled body 

The true portal to soul

So I meet myself here in the down once again 

Fearing that if I LET go all the way, I’ll lose it all 

Lose my resources, people, and stability 

Yet when I slow down and give myself to the feeling 

I see that all that is required of me is to listen 

What I’ve been hearing…

Write, write longer pieces than you’ve ever written

Write about your journey, the stories you’ve kept in

Start a book

Be with Madre Tierra every day 

And just be still

Very different from the ideas my mind has about what I should be doing…

Right now, I am in a pueblito a couple hours outside of Mexico City 

Where the mountains and jungle meet

Yesterday, I took a homeopathic dose of psilocybin and hikuri (peyote) and hiked up a secret mountain range

I foraged hierba de San Juan (St John’s Wort) and Salvia (Sage)

At the top of a mountain, I sat down nestled between magueys (agave cactus)

Somehow in the middle of a circle of magueys, I found a cozy spot to rest in
There I finally let out a cry 

It wasn’t forced or massive, it was an unfurling

Like rose petals blooming, dearmouring 

It was so deep it was subtle 

It came from a really deep spot inside of me that had taken time to get to 

The kind of opening you say yes to with each petal unfolding 

And it was there I knew

I came to Mexico to have my down 

I came here to descend

To the bud of my rose 

To let Her mold me in new ways I can’t see 

It doesn’t make sense to my mind 

It doesn’t make sense to a lot of me

It’s not suppose to 

Do not confuse discernment with being closed, when it’s you trusting your instincts 

Sniffing out through your intuitive senses and listening beneath your mind

Domestication is the normalization of bypassing and overriding the signals of your truth-body 

Discernment is a byproduct of an unshakable internal root system that can handle chaos and stress without reactivity and getting pulled out of center yet knowing how to roar when needed 

An unshakable root system with adaptability and fluidity is our instinctual power we were born with but got compressed as we were taught to function productively 

True discernment is not to comfort to the ego’s false idea of safety, it is to preserve and stand in what is true 
It’s the difference between putting on more layers and taking them off 

When we have the clear ability to sense deep in our belly/gut what is a no and what is a yes, our primordial wisdom is intact

I work with the Wolf/Loba in my veins as a compass to life 

Everyday, I unravel the ways I function primarily from my mind and not from true instinct 

I used to think moving from instinct meant sleeping around because that’s what my hormones wanted 

And then I saw how this program itself was part of what started a trend in taking hormones to alter our own intelligent primal instincts 

But Wolf instincts are not that, they are not using s*x to avoid the creation of true intimacy 

They are knowing how to choose who we coalesce our bodies with to feed ourselves and the creation of life 

Intellect and the mind are a beautiful thing, and, they are not what I came to this life to be primarily ran by

I came to taste life through my flesh, and live from my soul and pussy and heart as my guiding forces 

I came to be a broken hearted human that loves and connects from the truest place inside of myself 

I came to listen to my body before any authority or group think informs me before I consult with my own source of truth-mi cuerpo 

I took prescription drugs beginning at the age of 7 to try and sit in a desk when I wanted to talk to trees and dance from my gut 

I am still, day by day, learning how to hold the responsibility of trusting Her to guide my life and letting die, all my fear, of being burned for walking in this way 

The thing that makes my blood heat up, is the misunderstanding and misuse of the primordial 

The ways it’s cheapened and disconnected from the Earth 

The way is stays solipsistic, and the way control plays in 

I see how this programs plays out in me, more and more subtly 

The Earth is chaos and blood 

Untamable and by no means nice 

The Earth is not here to be fetishized 

She is meant to be respected

Even when we run around thinking we know better than 

Every month when I bleed, I can hear the Earth through my womb 

I used to think I was crazy for even thinking that 

And made my womb pain all about my diet and herbs 

Until it was intergenerational and emotional 

A couple months ago, I had my first period without any cramping at all 

First one in 16 years

It came roaring loud and clear, how my own resentments towards my blood mother, were part of what kept me tangled in unbearable pain 

Then the next month, the pain came back tenfold 

And I heard through my womb “now clear your resentments towards Earth” 

My Wolf/Loba is my compass because it is my bridge to trusting the wild wisdom that runs through me, simply for being a microcosmic Earth inside this fleshy body 

It’s not because I’m chosen 

It’s because I’ve chosen to listen 

And bow before 

Womb/Belly/Pussy/Heart to the ground 

And open my ears to hear Her