Salvia

Safe, protected, secure, assurance, risklessness, invulnerability…
these words have cloaked us in artificial meaning and false reality.
The powers of the world have tried to establish some semblance of order and control, mostly through laws establishing separating all actions into two main categories- legal and illegal.
Where we were once connected with tribes and leaders, healers and wise elders, we are now, for the most part, small nuclear units in a larger world, held together by national borders, language, government.
The universe is still wild, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. Stars are created and burst, earthquakes open the earth, humans continue to die despite modern technology.
There is so much out of our hands.
Instead of accepting this fact, embracing beauty in an existence of chaos and moving artfully with the flow of energy- we struggle, we crave safety. Our wise leaders have no place in this society- there are simply too many people, like sheep we move and exist- the government, like punitive, cautious parents, holding tight to their rigid ideologies and morals, makes the decisions.
They decide what is good and bad for us. Laws are crafted- determining what is legal and illegal, moral and immoral.
The US government has clear definitions of what is safe. Non-safe things, whether they are substances, food, plants, etc. are illegal, supposedly to protect us.
The government has declared marijuana, LSD, opium and many other plants/drugs dangerous. Dangerous for our bodies, minds, society, children…most of these substances have been known to alter-reality, to change the user, to offer a new experience or frame of mind.
Salvia. Also known as diviner's sage, "magic mint" or "Sally D", Salvia divinorum is a white-and-blue-flowered sage plant that grows in the Oaxaca mountains in Mexico.
It has been used for centuries by the Mazatec people in shamanistic rituals and in healing.
Salvia is legal in the US, but with the increasing popularity and out-of-body experience it can offer, the government will no doubt be banning it soon- these experiences are deemed dangerous.
And perhaps they are.
Shamanistic rituals have never had a safety seal. To truly live- to be alive, to awaken is uncomfortable, scary, and dangerous.
There is danger as the machine perceives a threat, there is danger while moving against the current.
Wise leaders do not necessarily discourage danger.
Within a ritual, there are elders, knowledgeable about the plant, the effects, etc. and they can offer guidance within a specific ritual and experience.
Most of us now are alone, without this essential element, and when experiences have gone beyond our own control, when they begin to be scary, we become terrified and desire safety. The saftey of routine, the risklessness of normal life.
Salvia is touted as a legal "high."
But these plants were not traditionally used as recreation, for a "high." They were sacred, and still are, to be used with respect and fear, with clear intention.
They are powerful, and thus, in the eyes of this government, this society based on fear and image- very dangerous.
When used, perhaps one will never be the same.
But that is the purpose.

Drowning

The desire for human safety holds tightly to its delusion, struggling to look away from the edges of darkness that beg to steal us away.

Death is the end result of this body.

"Keep us safe!" they scream.
A child has drowned in a backyard pool, one of the 260 under the age of five to die in the same manner. "Keep us safe!" they scream.
The willful 4 year old managed to climb over his child-escape door gate and then over the 4 ft high fence surrounding the pool. Despite the gate, intended to prevent accidental drowning, the parents of the boy hope for new legislation; a bill that would require the installation of pool alarms. Safety advocates have accused the pool industry of downplaying hazards and resisting regulation to avoid worrying consumers.
"Every single death is preventable," said Alan Korn, the public policy director of Safe Kids Worldwide, a nonprofit group
based in Washington.When has death been preventable? Squeezing every last breath out of the elderly with medications and technology…safety features in every car and gadget, we are a country desperately seeking safety…keep us alive, we scream. Politicians oblige, milking our fears. They keep writing and passing laws, but we just can’t stop dying.
"Safety advocates recommend a variety of measures besides fences and alarms: weight-bearing pool covers, self-closing and self-latching gates, anti-entanglement and drain-release devices for hot tubs, rescue equipment and training, swimming lessons and Coast Guard-approved life preservers."And when we have covered ourselves in knee pads, wrist guards, helmets, and all the latest technology has to offer, we will still not be safe.
You are not safe…death will claim your body, pain tempts to take you under. There will never be enough legislation to prevent our humbling. All the organizations, systems, strategies, the seeming order and structure of it all…nothing is safe; and perhaps if you cannot see that now, you will understand it in the seconds after you have taken your last breath.

Reason and Fear

We work with the machine. We work with care and diligence to blend all aspects of the machine: the emotional center, the intuition, the intellectual center. All aspects have their relevance and function, lending themselves well to each other, and when all is working properly, making each aspect more finely tuned and perceptive…ripe and able to Awaken.
All our aspects can work for us. Our intellectual center has its purpose, although, like anything, it should not be allowed to take over.
In his recent book, The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore, argues the opposite: That most Americans have allowed their intellectual center to be muted and numbed…ignoring reason and logic and replacing it with blind faith. Faith in leaders and authority. Faith…trust in the military, in the president, basically, anybody but ourselves.
Gore says:
"The point of this book is that our nation is so shockingly vulnerable to such crass manipulation. Whether it’s New Orleans or Iraq or the climate crisis. And it's happening over and over again – the censorship of scientific warnings about the climate crisis; the warrantless mass eavesdropping on American citizens; the overturning of a prohibition against; and the fact that there is so little protest or outcry points to the much deeper problem not of just the culpability of those in the White House at the present moment, but at the fact that we are so vulnerable to these mistakes and that we allow them to occur with hardly any impressive outcry of resistance or protest."
The "why" of this interval is complex, but the first example is our culture of fear.
"Our systematic exposure to fear and other arousal stimuli on television can be exploited by the clever public relations specialist, advertiser, or politician."
Most Americans watch more than two hours of TV a day. Subjected to the latest news of murders, accidental deaths, terrorists, suicide bombers…a world out of control and we want safety. We have given up many rights for this image of safety…even our ability to reason has gone out the window. We are more likely to be struck by lighting than be killed by a terrorist attack, yet, despite the logic, in recent years, Americans have hardly peeped while right after right has been stripped away in the name of safety. The intellectual center has given way to the primal desire for survival, the most basic machine tendencies are now in control. The lizard brain is in command of the ship.