Heirosgamos.
Involution and Evolution.
Heart of the Earth and Heart of the Sky.
Oversoul Chakras.
The Ascent and Descent of Kundalini…
OH! There are so many thoughts and concepts and principles swirling around– they’re all dancing. They weave a beautiful design together; it’s hard to know how to combine which things where with what words so you can read what I’m seeing.
Here goes…
A tree is like a mirror of the energetic system of a human being– it’s a vertical inverse image of us in many ways. Can you imagine your head being plugged into the Earth Mother and your reproductive parts exposed to and reaching towards the Cosmos? What an experience that must be!
Generating life directly from the Cosmos itself. Utterly primordial.
The sentience of trees (and all plants) is beyond what we can even imagine, though we catch brilliant glimpses of it– just what a human being can endure– in dieta and in ceremony.
I’m sensing I don’t need to argue the point of plant sentience to this audience, so I won’t go on… but I could!
But really, what is similar between trees and human beings that you wouldn’t find anywhere else in nature?
{{{{{{ Verticality.}}}}}}
I challenge you to think of creatures besides human beings and plants that exhibit verticality. One could argue prairie dogs and meerkats, I suppose, but it’s not their primary way of being.
Bonobos? Perhaps… and they are also very sentient. Sasquatch? Totally.
Certain whales have even been known to rest in vertical positions. Meditation?
My premise…
More verticality = more conscious awareness.
In The Posture of Meditation, Will Johnson tells us that by entering the correct posture– the posture of pure awareness (as put forth in the 7 points of Vairocana)– meditation has no choice but to occur.
It’s like being plugged into an electrical current. When one finds the posture, it’s very clear– it feels like a magnet snaps your spine (and therefore your central channel) into place, and it’s often accompanied by the gentle rushing of chills up and down the spine, body vibrations, or even the immediate feeling that the Medicine is coming on. (This is especially so in meditations before ceremony.)
In this posture, meditation becomes easy because having the central channel fully aligned to the Heart of the Earth and the Heart of the Sky produces immediate consciousness expansion.
Does that mean our monkey minds shut down immediately also? Nope. Yet another topic to muse on another day.
Okay. Is that a lot to unpack? Maybe. Let’s try.
What I said:
- Verticality produces expanded consciousness
- The center of our energetic bodies (the central channel) in aligned verticality relative to the Heart of the Earth and the Heart of the Sky creates the conditions for expansion of consciousness.
- Trees are a vertical and inverse image of human beings.
Questions to answer:
- What is the central channel?
- What is the Heart of the Earth? The Heart of the Sky?
- Why is it important that trees are the vertical inverse image of human beings?
What is the central channel?
If you have participated in ceremony with us, you will be very familiar with the central channel as I give a brief overview of energetic anatomy and we attend to these energetic fields and channels in our pre-ceremony meditations. Very likely, if you have sat with the Medicine, even if you didn’t have any prior meditation experience, you had a direct experience of these channels and energy fields (AKA nadis and chakras).
Your central channel is a tube of energy that runs just in front of the spine from root (perineum) to crown. And that’s just where it lies within the physical body. What many are not aware of is that this tube also extends below your root chakra into the Earth, and extends out from your crown into space.
In most people, the size of the central channel is about the width of a sharpie, analogous to the spinal cord. The extent to which it reaches down into the Earth and up into the Cosmos varies from person to person. Ever meet a very earthy person? How about the airy faeries? You know who you are.
So, does size matter? Can we affect the width and length of our central channels?! Or are we just born with what we got???
In almost every single tradition and lineage I’ve studied in, there are discrete methods for widening and extending the central channel. They are all strikingly similar, even identical.
- Kagyü Lineage (Mahayana and Vajrayana) – Alternate breathing up from the earth into the heart, circulating on the exhale, and breathing down through the crown into the heart, circulating on the exhale.
- Hathor Lineage (Egyptian, Sound Healing)- Alternate breathing up from the earth into the heart, circulating on the exhale, and breathing down through the crown into the heart, circulating on the exhale. Additionally there is a process to bring the oversoul chakras (chakras that are normally seated outside our physical bodies) down into the physical body by expanding the central channel to about the width of the torso. This is called Anchoring the Unity Chakra System.
- Mamacunawa Lineage (Tobacco)– One of the steps in the meditation to be performed directly after drinking dieta tea calls for inhaling light up through the perineum through the central channel and exhaling from the crown, then inhaling light into the crown, through the central channel and exhaling from the perineum.
Expanding the central channel allows one to integrate more energy from the Heart of the Earth and the Heart of the Sky, as well as from the environment. This increases the capacity for and speed of consciousness expansion, and also provides stability and lucidity in non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Enter the Shamanic Tree Dieta.
What is a tree if not a huge, constantly vertical central channel? A tree is a constant direct channel between the heart of the earth and the heart of the sky. Universally, shamans refer to the world tree, or the tree of life, which is the connection between all three worlds: the lower, the middle, and the upper. When we diet trees, we are asking for more than simply a relationship and an alliance; we are asking them to merge their spirit with ours, to live in our bodies and to endow us with the medicinal and spiritual elements of their beings so that we may serve the greatest and highest destiny of ALL BEINGS. Dieting trees allows us to also embody a constant channel connecting all worlds; to be a conduit for the energies of evolution and involution.
My teacher, Ernesto García Torres, taught me that trees and plants are like our older brothers and sisters in this world, and they are here to help. Trees in particular enhance our connection both to Earth and Cosmos, and therefore give us great strength for rapid spiritual evolution (consciousness expansion beyond the physical– connected to the Upper World), as well as spiritual involution (embodied awareness in connection with “los ancestros”, the small plants, and with animal spirits.) On the Plant Medicine path, the importance of evolution and involution in tandem cannot be overstated. (Not to worry… I will say more as we continue down this rabbit hole).
When I asked why his primary focus when initiating new Tabaqueros was dietas with trees rather than the small plants, Ernesto told me that without the connections and teachings of trees first, one cannot understand the small plants, which are much more ancient and speak a different language (i.e., require a certain energetic circuitry for interaction). Trees gift us the “language” – or spiritual infrastructure– necessary to work with these powerful and ancient beings.
I realize I have not answered all the questions we put forth here… but what fun would that be? I am stopping here because if I don’t, this will become a book and I can’t send an entire book out as an update.
… Or Can I? 🤔
The next update installment will cover:
- The Heart of the Earth and the Heart of the Sky: Involution and Evolution
- The Ascent (and Descent) of Kundalini
- Oversoul Chakras
- … And I will weave all those things together with the thread of shamanic tree dietas <3
