“Purification is but the cleaning of the lamp-glass which hides the light.” -Annie Besant
Cleansing is essential in preparing the physical vessel to receive deep spiritual and emotional healing. Restoring balance and harmony physically creates fertile soil for germination and the growing of our seeds of desired realities.
This is why we begin our medicine journey with Kambo, the venomous secretion of Phyllomedusa bicolor (the giant leaf or monkey frog), a beautiful bright green frog indigenous to the Amazon Rainforest between Peru and Brazil. For many generations Native tribes have used the powerful substance in ceremony for healing or “clearing the pain away”. Kambo is a powerful cleanse that allows access to subconscious and energetic blockages as well as increasing the immune system and regenerating our liver and cells.
The medicine draws the impurities out of the body and ailments are eliminated though purging or other means of extraction. The experience can last between 20-45 minutes but the benefits of Kambo can last a lifetime.
When smoked or ingested, many medicinal plants have psychedelic properties that take their imbibers on transformational inner journeys of self-reflection and profound consciousness expansion that can change their lives in highly positive ways. We also practice with non-psychoactive medicines like the ancient Cacao plant, and other sacred medicines like Haritaki and Sananga .
The equinoxes are traditionally understood as the time of year when day and night appear to have the same length. It's when the solar and lunar energy share the same amount of space.
This energy translates to our spiritual and emotional bodies by creating balance and our shadow and our consciousness.
This space in time creates a bridge between intention and reality, allowing us to fully integrate the healing journey into everyday life.
Kambo was great. Going into the ceremony i set my intention to heal my specific wounds and ailments.
I ask for The Spirit of the Kambo to support me and help me throughout the treatment; i heard how uncomfortable and intense this medicine can be.
Hecka opened the gates on my leg, and and warm sensation from the medicine spread inside of my body, intensifying unto a slight burning sensation. The feeling intensified, and my head began to pulse as my heart rate climbed.
At the zenith of the discomfort i began to sway back and forth. After a few moments of what couldn't have been more than ninety seconds Hecka tells me to induce vomiting. Perhaps too much of an expert in self induced vomiting: i get right to work.
My vomit is clear from all the water i had just ingested, with a tinge of neon yellow from the very little bile extradited. And, although I had fasted 32 hours before the medicine, we discovered small debris like imperfect spheres of puffy white sand.
The tension relieved and Hecka beckoned me to take a shower to elevate my energy. Exhaustion was still prevalent for some fallowing hours, but i still felt refreshed and we conviened in the living room sharing stories of other plant medicines in laughter and tears.
Now, those might sound gross, but we're learning to read the vomit... The colors and their physical and emotional meanings. I noticed that whole others in my company released a lot of dark yellow, and even green or brown bile, with exorbitant amounts of water, my own was mostly clear except for the few grains of debris sunk to the bottom....i wonder what they mean.
I definitely feel like my other worked, and that the Kambo truly aided my experience with the medicine and greatly eased any potential further discomforts. I took the medicine with two other men, and they seemed to have very overwhelming experiences.
I'm really grateful for this medicine and this experience, i feel like we connected.
This week is all medicine for me. I don't know when, but eventually I write about my science with Xanga (changa), and why it almost put me off DMT for good.
NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.
The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.
Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true.
"If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment," Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry's most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR.
In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled.
"The proof is the dramatic amount of investment that is happening right now," Russell said. "I do understand the skepticism, because it hasn't happened in the past, but I think the pressure, the public commitments and, most important, the availability of technology is going to give us a different outcome."
Here's the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can't be reused more than once or twice.
On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It's made from oil and gas, and it's almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh.
All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties.
It could be because that's not what they were told.
Starting in the 1990s, the public saw an increasing number of commercials and messaging about recycling plastic.
"The bottle may look empty, yet it's anything but trash," says one ad from 1990 showing a plastic bottle bouncing out of a garbage truck. "It's full of potential. ... We've pioneered the country's largest, most comprehensive plastic recycling program to help plastic fill valuable uses and roles."
These commercials carried a distinct message: Plastic is special, and the consumer should recycle it.
Demand that companies stop using plastic in their products. Going plastic-free as a consumer isn’t accessible to most people, since all of the cheapest (and sometimes the only) stuff on the shelf uses plastic. And even if it were, a handful of consumers going off plastic so they can feel good about their own consumption would barely make a dent compared to all the ones who won’t pay attention + the mass amount of plastic used by big companies and industries outside of the eyes of any consumers. So start awareness campaigns, protest in front of company headquarters, form human blockades in front of factories - whatever it takes
Then, get involved with Precious Plastic if possible. It’s small-scale community-run plastic recycling, built around reducing waste rather than making profits. Even if we successfully shut down the plastic industry tomorrow, there will still be massive amounts of plastic already in the world, so we need to make sure we make the best use of that waste while also doing our best to put an end to virgin plastic use
#Aloe vera plants will bloom. However, in this case, you need to have patience. Only the adult plants, which are at least 4 years old, #blossom. Therefore, if you plant is not blooming, it may not be an adult or reached this stage in its life.
#Blooms from the #aloe vera plant emerge from an inflorescence that soars over #lovely rosettes. However, with that being said, flowers on aloe plants may not appear if the aloe plant is grown indoors. Indoor plants grown in full, yet indirect, #sun have the best chance for showing off blooms.
The chickens have made quick work of turning the mulch along with destroying the aesthetic of these no till beds.
I really needed them to do what they did though, I had used rather crude compost for the layering, and appreciate them breaking that down for me.
One bed has seeds planned, nothing has yet sprouted, the other bed had just been recently layered with cardboard, compost, and grass clippings for mulch.
According to biodynamic gardening, there's no planting seeds for another two weeks, so we'll be using that time to prepare new beds and give the chickens more time to help break everything down.
Wrapped up planting in our front garden. I've got a little experiment going on with biodynamic farming. Planting was all around the full moon, and i got seeds in the ground during Moon in Capricorn and Pisces. It seems fitting to plant during earth and water moons.
I got a bunch of squashes, melons, herb, corn, garlic and peppers. Also manged to squeeze in some papaya.
I get a lot of consistent rain and sun combos throughout the day, so I love the idea of sowing directly into the earth. I'm hoping to discover which moon sign sprouts first!
Moon in Earth Sign Capricorn- Squashes, Melons, Herb, Corn
Moon in Water Sign Pisces- Garlic, Papaya, Peppers
There's five more days of sowing left before it's time to focus on prepping other beds (new moon vibes)
Someone cut the lawn yesterday, (not the right time for cutting, wait for the new moon) BUT I'm using the trim to experiment with some no-dig beds.
Pics are of some awesome guinea bananas that are about to become smoothies.
“So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that’s not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren’t constantly berating yourself for being sad.”
