How Ayahuasca Taught Me Astrology: The Archetypes are Alive – Episode 3

Hey everyone, this is Acyuta-bhava from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Friday everybody. Today I am continuing a series that I started about a month or so ago called "How ayahuasca taught me astrology." This is the third episode of the series, and today we're going to talk about archetypes. If you have not watched this series before, you can certainly go back and watch the first two episodes though you don't have to watch them in order. The reason that I'm doing this series is that it wasn't long ago that I realized I did a series called 10/10 Out ten things I've learned in 10 years of professional astrology and 10,000 charts or something like that. And it was a chance for me to reflect on what I've learned over, you know, a decade of doing so many charts with people, and I wanted to do some similar reflecting in this series on the ways in which about a decade worth of experiences with Ayahuasca shamanism played a role in the development, especially the early most formative years of studying astrology and eventually deciding to become a professional astrologer. So much of my education came through reading, of course, great professional astrologers. And studying and looking at charts and you know, I took the same path pretty much everyone takes when it comes to learning astrology, and I still would say it's probably the, you know, been the most important part of my astrological development, through yoga has played a huge role in my life, as has about, like I said, about a decade worth of working with within the context of Ayahuasca ceremonies.

In my first years of studying astrology seriously, I was very regularly drinking ayahuasca and studying the path of plant medicine. Broadly speaking, it was a huge part of my life. It's not really a part of my life now, but it remains like it's, at the foundation of everything I've learned and done spiritually in my life, I guess you could say, and in so many ways. So the purpose of the series is to reflect on some of the different ways that ayahuasca itself, experiences within the ayahuasca community, around plant medicine became a pivotal part of teaching me astrology and some of the unique things I learned about astrology that sort of came right out of those ceremonial, sort of psychedelic experiences. So that is what we're going to look at. I'm going to talk specifically today about this idea that archetypes are not just static things. It's not just like an abstract ideal triangle existing in some ideal unmoving, static world that archetypes are alive. And I'm going to try to illustrate a number of different sorts of teachings that I received from these ayahuasca experiences that taught me about archetypes in my early days of studying astrology that are still with me today that still play a huge role in the way that I think about and practice astrology and teach it and so forth. So I hope that you will find today's talk interesting.

All right, so on to talking about ayahuasca and astrology. I've titled this talk"Archetypes are alive." The reason I am titling it in this way is because I think when you're first studying astrology, you're lucky, of course, if someone tells you that the planets are, like, living entities that they are gods, or that they are, they represent the multi-dimensional living forces of the cosmos that are like that, just like the natural events in our world, like weather fronts, you know, they're alive, that they're real. Because often, when you first start studying astrology, you're taught that these are symbols. And for the modern mind, symbols are often dead; they are just references that point to something else. And they themselves are, you know, they're just, there's just sort of empty, like a stop sign doesn't inherently mean anything, it just sort of tells you what to do. Mars doesn't really, you know, isn't really anything inherently, but you know, it's it points to like anger or willpower or something. And when you're learning astrology early on, it's very tempting, as you're learning about the archetypes, it is really tempting to start thinking of them as concepts meant just mental concepts, ideas, adjectives, maybe verbs or nouns. But like you're always thinking of them just as sort of symbolic placeholders.

Very early on, in my experience of studying astrology alongside of drinking in Ayahuasca ceremonies, if you don't know what ayahuasca is, you can certainly go back to the first episode of the series, where I kind of address it in a deeper way. But it is a ceremonially used entheogenic plant medicine, it is used in South, and Central America has been for a long time for the sake of healing and curing both physical, mental, and spiritual sickness. It produces a sort of psychedelic visionary state; it's also purgative, people often encounter repressed stuff, trauma, there's a process of healing that happens, oftentimes also involving vomiting, or it can be very scary, it can be very blissful. Very profound experiences, especially if you are in the hands of, you know, an indigenous person who's been a part of a lineage that can pass down a safe way of experiencing this. This plant sacrament, basically, so it's a tea and, and you drink it, and it doesn't taste very good. Well, you know, you develop a taste for it, but at first, it doesn't for most people. And then you have experiences that are amazing, I mean, hard to recommend, because it's not, it's not like a recommend, it's not like something you recommend. But, for those who have had the experience, you probably know what I'm talking about. For those of you who haven't, it can be highly transformative, eye-opening, breathtaking, scary, and beautiful.

In my first experiences, first years, I was studying astrology, and not thinking yet about being a professional astrologer, but studying it through many different, you know, authors, books, lectures online, you know, whatever I could get my hands on, and starting to look at charts get, you know, get your first software program, you're doing this kind of stuff. And, you know, just because it was like, you know, it's like getting bitten by a bug. And at the same time, I was drinking at least a couple of times a month in ceremonies, different places, the US and South Central America. And one of the things that I came to realize very early on as I was studying the planets, the signs, and the houses, is that all of the quote-unquote symbols of astrology are alive. They are beings. They're not just and not only that, but actually, it turns out that everything is in sold with Being. So, one of the earliest things I realized very early on was, you know, there's a lot about the modern mind that tends to objectify and strip things of ontology which means some sense of being a being. So we don't oftentimes look at a rock and think that's a being; instead, we think that it's just like dead matter. So this propensity In my own mind unconscious, I didn't know that I had the propensity to look at things as though, you know, some things are alive. And some things are just kind of like dead or inert or, you know, just sort of a waste of space, even though I wasn't looking at anything with any kind of like judgment, it's just, you know, I wouldn't think necessarily of a tree or a plant, for example, as alive in the same way that I might privilege say, a human being, or I may not look even at a piece of art as alive in the same way that I might think of, you know, a dog as alive. And I know that at first, that might sound kind of crazy. But what ayahuasca showed me early on is that absolutely everything is alive. Everything is imbued, everything is animate, even in ancient traditions all over the planet, looked at things differently than we do even objects. Objects for so many different indigenous people all around the planet are potentially imbued with meaning, or have potential meaning within them, that gives them not just an assigned symbolic conceptual value, but they can there's an actual person or something like that, is that is there like inside of objects. I was amazed by this because, you know, it turned out that ayahuasca, for example, showed me early on that many objects I had around my house or my apartment, we're alive, and not in the way that we, you know, in a different way, it's hard to explain. But I think you know; if you've ever had sacred objects on your bookshelf, there is a quality of aliveness to them and animate nature to things. And, you know, some people are fortunate enough to have never had a problem with this. I wasn't. I went into these ceremonies, thinking that a lot, I had the unfortunate notion that a lot of things were dead, that a lot of things were just objects that there was this, this very materialistic, like goggles that I was wearing, you know. And so, again, just broadly speaking, the first thing that I understood was that the chart is alive. The symbols in the chart are not just symbols, they are something like beings, and I say something like beings because I'm trying to capture how mysterious this is, you know what I mean? That things are animate. And so that was like a really just, you know, paradigm-shattering realization for me to walk around. And as a lamppost, flickers on and off, to think that there is there are spirits, in through the lamppost, that the lamppost is not just nearly a dead thing, that I could walk and in nature and a bird could land on a branch and not be just a bird, but could also be a vehicle for spirit to be speaking somehow, while also being a bird in its own right. It was this, you know, I thought I'd have an easier time expressing this, but I hope you're, you know, getting what I'm putting down here. So this was the broadly speaking, like large umbrella concept that everything is animate and alive or possible; it is possible that anything in creation can speak can be related to intimately mountains, rocks, and things that appear inanimate are actually all animate. This was, you know, and it was, it was this realization for me too, that this is something we've lost in our modern world that so many ancient civilizations and peoples, especially indigenous people who live close to the Earth, had this realization that everything was alive and that you were in right relationship with everything was very important because nothing is treated as though nothing is objectified. There's not a stone, so to speak, that isn't looked at as like a neighbor. So this was mind-blowing for me. And this very early on led me to think of planets, signs, houses, aspects, et cetera, as living things.

Okay, so that's what I mean when I say that archetypes are alive. And that was one of the most amazing things that I learned, and they're sort of like five insights that trail off from are the kind of like subcategories of that insight that I was able to write down and articulate. That came also came out of ayahuasca ceremonies, so that's where I'm gonna go next.

Number one. It is best to think of events meaning experiences or events. I'm kind of using them synonymously like weather systems. Seems like wind and waves or lightning; we tend to think, for example, of an experience as my experience. And sometimes that's true, some there is a sense in which experiences can be, has sort of possessed. But what I realized is, was a part of, again, I want to almost say like an indigenous shamanic way of knowing or experiencing, as well as just the reality of what was happening during ayahuasca ceremonies themselves was that it was events and experiences, I came to realize that we're like, wind or rain or hail or sunshine. And that they, they're passing through all the time. And we can we have some agency, you know, we have a relationship to events and experiences for sure. But it is really good to like, drop the possessive. Like, it's not just; it's not always the best thing. For me to walk around thinking, this is my experience. This is my thought; this is my emotion. This is my idea. This is my bad experience. This is my good experience. And that was pretty much what I was doing. So, of course, I'm drinking ayahuasca and starting to understand getting almost like some distance. It's like, the experiences that I was having during ayahuasca ceremonies were so profound that there was no way that the experience could be mine like it; it would have felt almost sacrilegious to some of the experiences that I had in Ayahuasca ceremonies to walk away saying, Well, what was your experience? Like? Well, my experience was blah, blah, blah, it'd be like, you know, I don't know, you know, seeing a concert or a musical performance so beautiful and overwhelming, that, you know, you can't call it your own experience. It's just, it can't be contained with the possessive, you know, and in doing so feels like it's a violation or something. So this was happening regularly for me and I ayahuasca ceremonies; I started realizing that events and experiences are like, like weather systems, they're like wind or waves or lightning, they're like, these, these beautiful experiences are like currents of different kinds of energy, color, sound, texture, touch, I mean, and it was so hard to put any of those into the personal possessive any longer.

Also, how did I come to this idea that in ceremony specifically, that it's better to think of events like weather systems, or wind or waves or lightning well, because over the course of five to seven hours worth of going through these completely other worldly experiences. And by learning to see within them these long and interconnected movements, almost like ceremonies or like symphonies with, I guess, you know, multiple movements within them. And there would be many ceremonies early on where I would get caught up in the linear space of one experience. But as I learned to let go and be less stressed out about any one thing that was happening in the context of an ayahuasca ceremony is very easy to do in the beginning because it'd be very overwhelming and scary, and you're trying to figure out how to control or manage the experience. But as I sat back and allowed the experience of the ayahuasca to just flow through me, I would start to notice patterns that were what seemed like one disconnected event in a vacuum was suddenly part of something that was much bigger and fuller, that I didn't for a while didn't really have the eyes to see or the heart to see. And so by learning to see these long, interconnected movements and patterns of experience within five to seven hour-long ceremonies, I also started to understand that it's really good to let experience and events like flow through like, really started to take that out into the world with me, and started observing events and experiences, like flowing through and all around me. Imagine my surprise when I started to figure out that astrology was like a language that ancient sages had created that allows you to track those movements, see those larger patterns, zoom in on something really immediate or zoom out into something really big.

Imagine my surprise when I'm starting to notice that the fabric of time and space and experience is all of these movements and patterns within them. And I'm starting to, like, whoa, wow, this is amazing. And then you're kidding me, and there's a language in the stars in the heavens that can actually help you relate, you know, keep track of because the other thing that's hard is that like, first of all, there's, it's not like, you have to keep track of them. You know, it's optional, you know, but you can, and part of the beauty is to notice the different rhythms and patterns of life itself. And imagine that there's a language that is actually like, like a musical, like the music that you're hearing actually has sheet music, and you can learn to read it. And there's appreciation there if you want to take that up. Imagine my surprise to find out that that's what I was actually doing with astrology; I didn't even know what I was doing with astrology until I was able to put together that astrology was a way of putting language to these large, narrative, experiential arcs that I was observing, you know, patterns that I was able to perceive in myself in the room around me in five to seven hour-long ceremonies and starting to appreciate, like, whoa, you know, I'll never forget that one. What's the Jimi Hendrix album title? Are You Experienced or something like that? I remember, like, at one point, as this stuff was happening, thinking of Jimi Hendrix, and that, that whole idea of like, Are You Experienced? and this and just like laughing, of course, because it's so absurd, but then just like, appreciating, you know, this is something that of course, many people in the 1960s it's not exclusive to ayahuasca, right. Like many people have had these same insights that listen to Alan Watts or, you know, Terrence McKenna, so many people that you work with any kind of psychedelic that you start understanding, you start having an appreciation for an experience like it's this, it's actually this moving mandala thing. It was John Moriarty, a friend who told me this lately; I loved it. It was John Moriarty, the author. He introduced me to it my friend Sean Nygaard. And he said, "Time is eternity living dangerously." I thought it was a great quote. But yeah, you get this feeling like the life and experience is like this incredibly beautiful and intelligent tapestry of patterns that are always moving and flowing. And there's, there's chaos, and there's rhythm alternating, and it's just so beautiful. And then, oh, there's a language for it. But the thing that came with the understanding that there is a language for this is that the language is alive just as much as the actual fabric of experience itself is alive. Like the language is not like in a vacuum separate that that language like, like musical language on a sheet of paper, you might say, well, that's something that's dead, and it only points to the actual music. But this was this experience during my ayahuasca ceremonies turning that on its head and saying, No, the musical notes and the actual language is also alive. Because its life begets life, it's an expression of life as well. So you have to treat the planets, the signs, the houses like they are alive; you have to have a relationship with them.

Number two, you can appreciate the experience, or I'm calling it events, you can get to know events and experiences, and you can ask them questions, all of which create intimacy and soulfulness. So the other thing that started happening was earlier on in my experience with ayahuasca; well, I realized that I can't manage these experiences. There is no way mentally for me to manage what feels like infinity just dumping out on top of my head. So, you know, my mental control was just gone. The heart, however, the heart is more like figuring out how to dance to a rhythm and the heart and the hips, you know. So as ceremonies unfolded, I realized that in these unmanageable, uncontrollable states, not only is it better to just think of them like weather patterns and sort of let them move through. But also, that if I am not just a passive, I don't want to be just like a passive, like sit in some neutral state and try to be so zen that everything flows through, like, where's my, where's me in that? You know. And ayahuasca really encouraged me to relate to events, visions, et cetera, like people, like beings rather than thinking of them as just material energies streaming through me at lightspeed that I'm just trying to be neutral enough to, like, observe and stay detached from so that I don't feel overwhelmed by.

I started realizing, oh, that's, that is in of itself a mechanism of control. I'm not here to control, because at the bottom is the desire to control whether through, it's through an active form of control, like using my mind, or it's a passive form of control, like, I'm surrendering, but I'm still doing so with like, some, there's a willful intention to surrender, you know, either way, it's like, you know, it's rooted that underneath all of that, at least for me, was rooted in the desire to not be controlled, right? So I'm going to control something, or wait, no, no, I'm going to surrender because I can't control something. But either way, both were basically a way of saying I'm not going to be controlled. It was as though ayahuasca had to take me to a place it was like, Dude, can you think of no other paradigm other than control? Can you not think? Can you think of anything you use your imagination to think of, anything other than control or be controlled? How about relationship, for example? So as I was going through these experiences, ayahuasca was like, rather than trying to manage the experience, actively or passively, why don't you ask a question of the experience? Why don't you appreciate the experience by offering it a thought? Or gratitude or a question? Or even if you want to make a judgment? I mean, not the judgment is necessarily recommended. But like, why don't you engage with the experience as though it is a person and then wait for it to respond? Like, treat what's happening? Like, it's someone visiting you. Try that. And I was like, this is mind-blowing because I will tell you right now, when I started engaging in my ayahuasca ceremonies, from that standpoint, with my experiences, or the experiences that were happening in the ceremony around me. My heart, my mind, my soul, and my life changed like very profoundly because I started realizing that experiences are something to be related to with an open heart. And it taught me how to, it's not like you just love a friend, or you love, you know, Thou shalt love the people you know. What does it mean to love? I feel like ayahuasca put the question back in my face. And it said, you have to start with the way that you think about and relate to experience itself, whether it's at Target or the gas station, or you know, with a friend or with someone you don't know, can you ask questions, stay curious, stay engaged, be present. Keep an open heart, you know, and treat whatever is in front of you like it's a visitation from the Divine. You know, you're hosting something angelic every minute of every day. Can you think like that? Can you relate to your experiences right now like that? So this was a different way to end this. Now imagine you're studying astrology concurrently. All of a sudden, I realized, oh, not only are planets not just symbols, they're living things. And they're like the systems moving through. And not only that, but I will get the most out of my relationship with them, If I treat my relationship with the planets in the same way that I was telling me to treat my relationship with everything, experience, events, people, rocks, everything. And not only that, if I think of the planets as people and treat them as such, suddenly, when the planets are passing through, these archetypal fields are passing through. I get the benefit of feeling like I'm in a relationship with them of actually being in a relationship with them, not just feeling like being in a relationship with them. And that is awesome. I just that is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. It's like meeting my wife, it meeting the planets, you know, they're like on par in terms of like, best relationships in my life. Not always easy. There's sacrifice; there's loss. There are challenging times. There are glorious times. But would you, could you put possibly trade the unspeakable adventure and mystery of intimacy for anything else. Think about it in your life, all of the people and things you've grown intimate with, that you've thrown your heart into, and you've gone through the ups and downs with. Is there anything more worthwhile? Treat the planets like that. That's what the planets are there for. That's how ayahuasca. That's something ayahuasca taught me.

Number three is intentional. This was something that everyone when I first started getting to ayahuasca; of course, I was concurrently baptized into the cult of the new age, right? And started realizing everyone around me is always throwing around the word intention, you know, like I'm, maybe I'm throwing you an elbow in a basketball game. But in the New Age court, it's I'm throwing an intention around, you know, so being intentional, I learned from ayahuasca, is not about getting things you want. It is about allowing the opportunity for intimacy to emerge from within the decisions and choices that you make. And there's a big difference between the two. Intentionality is something that a lot of people, I'm setting an intention, I'm going to manifest this or that or whatever, as though, again, there's something behind that that is very similar to the mindset that I entered into my first ayahuasca experiences, namely, in objectifying mindset, there was a mindset that says, I am going to assert, you know, what I want, and I'm here to get what I want, and what I want, not who, but what. And there's a big difference because when I'm approaching life through the lens of relationship and intimacy, it's not about what I get. It's about how well I love and who I know, who I get to know, what I get to know, not what I get to have or possess. So I had this and, you know, again, for me, this was a revelation. How did I learn this? And how does it relate to the planets?

Well, setting intentions before ceremonies was a big thing in most Ayahuasca communities that I belong to. But let me tell you that rarely, when I set an intention before a ceremony in terms of something that I wanted to address or wanted to do, or wanted to think about or wanted to achieve, or anything like that, rarely got me what I wanted, but instead it always gave me what I needed, which was an emerging sense of soulfulness, intimacy, and relationship with life, the cosmos, the divine nature, I, started feeling less and less concerned as ceremonies went on, and I set intention after intention and watched them get turned on their head, I started caring far less about getting something or getting somewhere or setting an intention to get something or get somewhere. I remember specifically in ceremony ayahuasca saying, being intentional is important, setting an intention is not. And the difference is I understood it in that ceremony was that being intentional means that we're being, you know, as conscious and as lucid and thoughtful as we can about the choices and decisions we make. But not because that means I will then get what I want. It's rather than by virtue of being thoughtful, being intentional, that we stand most ready to receive relational dialogue with the outcomes of our choices. It's like when you're intentional, the actual prize you win is not getting what you want. It's getting a response. It's reciprocation, from the fabric of reality itself being like, Oh, you're here, and you're saying something to me? Well, and let me show you love and let me give you love or let me give you mystery or inspiration or curiosity, or so many different good things. I'll give it to you back in a form of communication that you can only receive had you been intentional, mindful, and thoughtful about the way in which you made the choice. So that's what I was taught about being intentional. And it was a big difference for me; it was a huge shift in my life. And then it told me the same thing. Now, remember, I'm studying astrology at the same time. So it came along, and it said, Well, you know if you relate to the planets and transits like I'm setting an intention for this Full Moon and I'm going to Baba Baba, baba bah. Well, what are your order carriers? Are they your cosmic waiters and servers or bartenders or something? Are they going to get you the cosmic drink that you're setting your intention to, you know, drink this month, do you know what I mean? And, um, you know, I'm not generally against being intentional, but this was like, Don't treat the planets that way. Because, um, if you don't want to experience the planets as granting things, denying things, rewarding things, and punishing things, then don't talk to them that way. And one of the easiest ways to mistakenly treat the planets like this is to set intentions around transits. And that was something I was encountering a lot early on in my astrological studies, and it was like, talk to the planets, relate to them, ask them questions, give them gratitudes. Ask them to teach you something, maybe, set an intention if you want, but set it in a way that's like, I'm just curious to hear what you'll say, based on, you know, what I'm hoping for, or what I'm trying to create or something like that. It's, in other words, don't think about what you're doing and the choices you're making in terms of like whether you do or don't get something later. Think about what kind of relationship you're creating with reality, with the gods, with the people around you by virtue of the way in which you make choices.

Number four, the goal is not to clear karma, but to move from the objectification of ourselves, others God in the world to soulful relationships. This dovetails with everything I've said already. There was early on; I started hearing people say the same thing over and over, I'm purging and cleansing and healing and removing blocks and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, 50 ceremonies later, I'm still around the same motley crew. And, you know, everyone's like, Oh, you know, there's just so many layers to the onion. And honestly, like, and I'm, being cynical, right? I'm just; I'm teasing. But there might be, you know, that maybe there is a bottom to the onion. But as far as I could tell, what ayahuasca really taught me was that look, the last layer of the onion that you got to peel, so to speak. And it's not one; it doesn't just go away either. It's like always tempting us back is goal-oriented consciousness. Goal-oriented consciousness is different than relational consciousness. So you know, how did ayahuasca teach me this idea that the goal is not to clear karma? Well, because ceremony after ceremony, in the beginning, I started thinking, well, this is all about clearing karma burning off old karma, you know, there's so many layers of the onion, I've got to heal all my traumas, and so forth. And I saw people never get to the bottom of that. And I saw for myself that there was no bottom to that. That in and of itself is just as archetypal and activity as you know, practicing archery every day. It's like, Well, did I heal the trauma tonight? Because there's an infinite amount of them. And I'm not saying that there is nothing to be healed, right? It's just that there was also this realization that one of the most healing things we can possibly do for ourselves is stop thinking that there's something broken that, you know, that exists somewhere in the ancient karmic past. And if I get down deep enough, and keep clearing and cleansing layers and heal all of my ancestral problems, and you know, all of this, that eventually then, you know, then I'm pure, or then I get there or something like that. Goal-oriented consciousness within ceremonies, over time, I started to realize, perpetuated cycles of nausea and vomiting.

Whereas relational curiosity, if I started thinking about the dark shadows that I would see come up from old wounds and traumas. And we started asking them questions, treating them like visiting spirits, treating them as guides, appreciating them, loving them, and staying open to their mystery, which kept me afloat. I wouldn't get nauseous; I wouldn't puke; I wouldn't walk away feeling like I cured, healed, purged a trauma. Personally, I would describe it as getting to know something, getting to love something, and feeling loved. And that's different. For me, that was just it was just different. So again, imagine you're studying astrology at the same time. I heard a lot of people initially when I was studying astrology telling me that every astrological experience was part of my healing and cleansing of past karma. This threw that out and essentially said, No, the goal is not to clear karma. But rather to move from a consciousness that tends to objectify ourselves to stay stuck in a goal-oriented spiritual ambition. And the goal is to move into the right relationship, a good relationship, a deep relationship, a meaningful relationship with everything and everyone. That's that is an adventure that never ends. And it is its own reward. And this was teaching me this is how to relate to the planets. You know, in your chart, there's nothing to get right. There's no ultimate north node fix. It's not; don't think about it that way. In fact, ancient astrologers didn't think of it that way either.

Number Five archetypes in the birth chart do not define who we are. They give us a medium through which to develop a relationship with who we are. It's a big difference as well. Early on, I started hearing this is a blueprint for your soul. This is your soul. This is telling you the truest, most real information about who you are. Well, I learned quite early on from ayahuasca that this is not the case; at least, this is not how ayahuasca it taught me how to relate to astrology. Because in each ceremony that I went through, I was left with the impression that who we are and who I am, ultimately, every single one of us, is as much an adventure and mystery, ongoing, unfolding divine eternal, as the ongoing process of loving anyone or anything else.

I can see my guitar in the background of this image or this video. My relationship with that guitar, with guitars in general, with playing guitar is something new all the time. It goes through many seasons, there are many ups and downs, and I deeply, I'm not very good at it, but I don't care. You know, it's just that relationship with music, with the guitar, with my practice of the guitar, with you know, all of that anyone should be able to relate to this, just like, I know, it's, it sounds funny to say this, but it's like it's not very different from a spouse. It's not, I mean, you like to think, Oh, well, my, my spouse is not a guitar, you know, it's like, yeah, but, but also, it's not different in the sense that when we love someone or something, the thing that makes it lovable is that it keeps drawing us inward and onward. You know, further in further up. That's a lot of some of the closing words from the last battle in the Narnia Chronicles. There's a way in which it is only through relationships between living beings, living things, animate, alive, soulful, ongoing, reveals and then conceals, reveals and then conceals. It's only through that process that we are satisfied because we are living beings, and life is eternal. And that is what ayahuasca taught me. And so, very similarly, I'm studying astrology at the same time; it said, don't look at your birth chart as a blueprint of your who you are and the most real you; look at your birth chart as a medium through which to develop a relationship with who you are in the same way that your wife is, that your guitar is that you know anything in your life.

That has been an ongoing part of helping you learn and see who you are. One thing I'll never forget ayahuasca showed me; I made the mistake one night of going and looking in a mirror. I don't know if you guys have had psychedelic experiences before. But beware, that is a trip. So I looked into a mirror one time in the bathroom of that lodge while I was in an Ayahuasca ceremony? Yes, no, no, this was in a US-based ceremony, something that was held in a gymnasium. And I went there was like a bathroom area. And I went into it. And I looked in the mirror. And I remember thinking, walking away. And thinking there, there is a very good reason. There's a very good reason why we are not able through our eyes, while we are walking around and living to see ourselves to stand apart and see ourselves, right. Because these are faulty when it comes to really see ourselves. What we need in order to see ourselves is the mirror of other beings and have sacred things and places. Do you know what I mean? You need to go to a special place to see yourself new different, completely wholly. To see ourselves whole and complete is something that happens again and again and again in new ways in different ways because we keep loving because we keep relating to things like my guitar, like my kids, like my wife, like the dogs, like astrology. So your birth chart is like an instrument. It's an instrument through which an Oracle and oracularmantic device through which you can continue to get to know yourself. But that adventure is never-ending and eternal because life is never-ending and eternal. And so, don't think of your birth chart as who you are. Don't think of it as what you are. Think of it as a tool that is there to help you fall more deeply in love with yourself in new and inspiring ways over and over and over again.

So I hope that you have enjoyed these, you know, just reflections, I again, the whole purpose of this was for me, as I grow older, it's like, it's easy to forget things. So, you know, ten years of drinking ayahuasca, probably five of which were spent, I think it's about five of which I have to think about it, but it's probably about five of which were spent concurrently getting into astrology. So, that had an impact on me, and I, I'm just trying to capture that, like, what was that? What, you know, how did it shape me? And I think that many people have probably had the same lessons or insights from other things. So I'm certainly not saying like, Oh, you know, some chosen child because I had ayahuasca experiences while I studied astrology. I think probably lots of people are not ignorant enough to have had to have these big experiences to come to any of these insights. Probably a lot of you were just born smart, you know, are born much more sensitive and less hard-hearted, and you know, brick-headed than me. But these to me were like, these have changed my life. And so I needed that medicine. It was medicine that I certainly needed, and I'm forever thankful for it.

Anyway, that's what I've got for today. Alright, that's what I've got for today. I look forward to seeing you guys again after the weekend. Take it easy, everyone. Bye