How Mercury Poisoning Nearly Killed Me (by Josh Macin)

June 21 2016 –

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I have, at many times in my life, thought that I was the saddest person on the planet.

I gathered that no other being on the face of the Earth could possibly be feeling this tormented, distraught, and doomed. Many of those times, those were just thoughts. However, there was one very distinct night, not too long ago, where those thoughts may have held some truth.

The morning of was no different than any other morning. Upon waking, if I was lucky enough to ever fall asleep, a gut-wrenching, debilitating anxiety clawed at my insides. Incessant fearful thinking and neuroses about completely irrational things plagued me. The anxiety never came because of circumstances; it existed completely independent of external structures.

I had extreme physical pain and inflammation all over my body, as if I had the flu. The first two hours of the day, I would drink a gallon of distilled water, stretch to binaural beats, and sing lullabies or a mantra over and over again to distract myself from dark thoughts. I would then do the five Tibetan rites. In order to have a bowel movement, I had to massage my colon with a lacrosse ball as taught in the Tao, and drink two laxative teas the night prior.

Any interruption in this 2+ hour dance, and I would not poop, and the physical matter that represented the previous day’s energy, would stagnate in my body and my clenched and fearful gut would prevent it from being released. When this happened, neither enemas nor colonics could come to my rescue. It was a guaranteed day of torment. I cannot speak of the symptoms that came when the previous day’s energy remained inside of me, for I would lose many readers too early in this story. But I will tell you that on this day in particular, I was not able to poop, for I truly had too much on my mind.

During the night, I met my father and sister for sushi at our favorite spot in the area.

Normally, I would have canceled because of how awful I felt, but I had to be there. I ordered the usual; two Tuna rolls and a seaweed salad. I always made sure to use the low-salt soy sauce. I sat there as we conversed about their work days, a new watch, the food, and things that normal people talk about.

The world’s pain was inside of me, and I was holding in tears every second. I truly didn’t know if this would be the last time that I ever saw them. My father politely begged me to go on anti-depressants, for he knew the severity of the situation and desperately wanted his son back.

I hugged them goodbye and then broke down in my basement as I had done hundreds of times before. This despair felt different. It was the deepest depths of despair that the human spirit is capable of entering. I thought about not leaving over and over. I couldn’t bear the thought that if I didn’t make it, my father would have lost his dad and his son in an eight month window.

I had to go. I couldn’t stand my life anymore; I was at my wit's end. A human being can only withstand so much torture. I already paid for the non-refundable trip and burned the boats. Only God could stop me now.

Let’s rewind 2.5 years.

I had it great in the external realm. I had a great sales job paying me 70k, a beautiful girlfriend, an apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and I had spent the previous four years traveling around the world competing in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, winning the world and Pan-American championships.

At times, I felt unstoppable. If I heard the words “spirit” or “detox” or any “metaphysical” conversation, I would laugh in pity for those people were too weak to chase the true jewels in this world; money, fame, women, and power. Things only existed if I could experience it or measure them. Everything else was dumb.

Despite all this ego strength, something just wasn’t quite right on the inside.

My existential unrest became a fire that burned out of control. Uneasiness bubbled inside of me. Who am I? What are we doing here on this planet? Why is everybody so unhappy? Why am I so unhappy? Who is everybody listening to all the time? Why am I always rushing to get somewhere?

These were the questions I would ruminate on while staring at my computer screen in my cubicle. Over the months, the darkness grew at an alarming rate, and I fell into deep despair and panic. The poisonous narration of life that I was experiencing was eating at my body and mind. My daily existence became a panic attack that would not subside for even a moment. I had nightmares, night terrors, ground my teeth down to close to the roots, and I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror.

Like any normal 23 year old, I turned to my parents, and to the Western psychiatric system, where I was placed on many medications for bipolar, anxiety, and major depressive disorder.

Through the months of guess and check, I had tried Lexapro, Zoloft, Latuda, Klonopin, and many others which I don’t care to remember. Taking these pills felt like spiritual suicide, and I was becoming a numb zombie floating around in a broken state. I would mindlessly watch television for 24 hours straight, and my friends no longer recognized me. I saw no healing potential in this system.

After three months of these “medications” I had experienced enough of the Western mental health system. I had seen right through their tricks, games and manipulation. This was clearly the system in place to further keep people sick, broke, needy, and weak, so that they could never realize their true godliness.

I started thinking outside the box. Was there a meaning behind all of this?

Is mental health more complex than all of these neurotransmitters and chemicals?

Perhaps this is an initiation of sorts?

I began listening to alternative podcasts and studying spirituality.

I became very interested in de-conditioning my mind, and exploring other realms with plant medicines. These blueprints I was constructing my life with were faulty at best. To change the movie on the screen, you don’t run up to the vinyl and start covering shit up. You have to go to the projector and examine the reel. After reading about miracle stories, I was certain that these medicines could be the way into my subconscious and out of my despair.

I quit my new sales job, promised my family I would come home a new man, and flew to the Amazon. I left the Amazon one ceremony and three days later, 11 days earlier than expected, in a state of shock and terror. I created a commotion on the plane with my panic, and they had to make an announcement for a doctor and for benzos. I sat in the back of the plane screaming in panic while an American firefighter and Columbian nurse aided me.

There were no doctors on that flight. Upon landing, there were police and sniffing dogs that escorted me off of the plane first. The foreign Peruvian flight attendants must have suspected that I was smuggling drugs and that I had caved under the pressure. In their country, this level of unprovoked panic is very rare.

I explained the situation to the police and after a thorough rectal search, I left the airport.

My father drove me to the psych hospital because after three days of not sleeping, I was suicidal. I rested and woke up determined to revisit the Amazon one day. As frightening as the experience had been, I knew there was massive potential in the sacred medicine that is Ayahuasca.

I was certain that if I was to make it in this life, there had to be a lot more prep work before returning to the medicine. As spirituality had taught me, I now believed that the only way out of this pain was through it.

I could not run away from it. And this plant medicine had a way of making pain impossible to run away from. In hindsight, I was so very right and so very wrong at the same time.

Fighting for my life, I found a clinic in New York that administers legal ketamine injections for those who are experiencing suicidal despair.

My best friend, who has saved my life financially and emotionally on numerous occasions, supported me.

I got two of those, and with the first one being therapeutic, I saw a glimmer of light and learned the importance of choices. I became very serious about diet, cleansing, fasting, enemas, trophology (the Chinese art of food combining), vipassana retreats, yoga, swimming, meditation, supplements, and herbs.

In a six-month period, while caddying to make money, I built up enough stability and confidence in my being to return to the medicine. This time I would make a leap and stay at an Ayahuasca center for four months as part of a volunteer program.

I wrote at length about my experience in the jungle, about mental health and the medicine here, so I won’t go into too much detail now. Suffice to say that staying at the center was truly a self-initiated spiritual boot camp. I engaged in 5+ hours a day of spiritual work just to stay afloat.

Most of my meals were spent alone, focusing on my breath and my chewing. Every single ceremony was excruciatingly difficult, as I had some serious demons to slay, but the lessons and gifts in 21 Ayahuasca ceremonies and four months living isolated in the jungle were astounding, and it has changed me forever. Ayahuasca is truly a magical medicine that allows you to see how powerful we are, and how we all manifest our reality.

In the simplest terms, Ayahuasca forces you to look at your own shit and teaches you how to connect to the ever-present witnessing self that exists underneath all of the chaos.

The lessons and teachings come differently for everybody.

She (the spirit of Ayahuasca) knows how to give you experiences that provide you with the maximum potential for growth. Some people get visions, audible teachings, and love while others will be brought into the depths of hell depending on how toxic their bodies are and what needs to be revealed and cleared. It is also an extremely intense physical purge of toxins and old fecal matter.

Physical toxins in the body are ALWAYS connected to negative thought patterns and dark emotions. Through this purging, peeling off layers, and re-wiring faulty neural pathways, Ayahuasca connected me to my heart and showed me the magnificence of life.

It showed me who I really am and how far away from living in harmony with nature we have gone as a collective.

However, even after all the work and ceremonies, I could not seem to get to the root of my grief and unrest.

Non-stop spiritual work, focusing on being present, concentrating on the breath, mantras of self-love, self-massage, clean eating, fasting, being around beautiful souls, having an extremely special woman by my side, and submerging myself in nature provided relief from despair, and connected me to the universe and to the wonder of life for certain, but I had this crippling anxiety and fear that ran amuck.

I was certain I must have been molested as a baby and these fear programs were just continuously playing in my mind. I had gone so deep, and had explored every corner of my mind, but still couldn’t fully understand the pain.

At the end of my stay there, the shamans had all told me that I needed a dieta (apprenticeship) for this grande problemo and insisted that I dieta with Huairacaspi in isolation.

Huairacaspi is a very, very powerful tree used to treat gastrointestinal ailments and for protection against bad spirits; a tree that even the most experienced Ayahuasca westerners knew nothing about. A tree that indigenous shamans take at a young age to prove their devotion to nature.

Although I wanted to jump right into it, the time wasn’t right and I needed to come home to see my family and make some more money. From those days on, I couldn’t go 10 minutes without thinking about that tree, and how it could liberate me from this nightmare. I would do everything in my power to make this dieta a reality. Nine long months later, and even deeper in the Amazon, I would be wishing that I had never heard of it.

After the four months in the Amazon, and two months of travel, I came back home to New Jersey feeling like Brooks from The Shawshank Redemption after he gets out of prison. In the scene he narrates, “Dear fellas, I can't believe how fast things move on the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid, but now they're everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.”

Everything and everyone seemed to be moving so fast to me.

It was like a time warp where I went back in time to my innocent inner child, yet everyone was still so angry and yelling all the time.

I felt incredibly gentle and fragile.

Everybody was still doing these awful things to their body, mind, and soul and everyone still believed all the thoughts that ran through their head. Knowing the laws of manifestation, I was overly conscious of how important it was to speak slowly and choose my words mindfully, yet those around me vomited continuously from the mouth. Speech felt like a multi-edged weapon and the sword-bearers around me had no training, direction or awareness.

I felt like an alien and I wanted to go home. To my real home, wherever that may be. In my life, I was making every effort in the human well of strength to not fall into the pits of despair and panic.

It took every second of waking life and every ounce of Chi to stay alive. I literally went 3-4 months at a time without ejaculation to keep my energy levels as high as possible.

Hundreds of times a day I would touch my heart, and as if speaking to a newborn baby, repeat my mantra, “I love you Josh, I love you brother. Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay, you are a beautiful man. You didn’t do anything wrong buddy. I love you brother.”

I would stand in front of the mirror for 15 minutes at a time, multiple times a day, and stare deep into my tired eyes and convince myself that I loved myself. To come home and see how people literally throw themselves, dive, dance, and swim in the sea of pain and darkness that I was so desperately clawing myself out of was utterly disturbing.

Every conversation I listened to felt more like an argument.

I could no longer listen to anybody, I could only feel them. It was like laser vision straight through to what they were actually saying. I would instantly and involuntarily decipher people’s words into desperate shouts of insecurity, fear, and sadness. In one of Dr. Gabor Mate’s books, I remember him writing about a group of Oliver Sachs’ patients who had aphasia, a disease that sometimes follows a stroke, that causes people to be unable to process spoken language.

These patients were all watching President Reagan's famous speech on the television and all hysterically laughing in amusement. They could not understand or process the words, but they could see the massive discrepancy and inauthenticity in his being. Just as the blind learn how to pay extra close attention to sound, the aphasiac’s do so to body language and feel.

I never had aphasia, but responding to people in social interactions became a very hard game to play. It was always a dance between which version of them I needed to answer. As a caddy at a prestigious country club, dealing with mega-wealthy macho guys, this was certainly no Cha-Cha.

Despite the low vibrational energies and massively pained humanity back home, I gathered strength and re-focused.

I needed to make money for the next step in my journey so I had no option but to be stable. I did multiple 5, 7, and 9 day fasts. Sometimes I would go to work while fasting and walk 9 miles with 50-60 pounds of golf bags on my shoulders. I was walking at least 80 miles a week with golf bags on my shoulders.

It was grounding to say the least. My life became juicing, self-massage, self-love, meditation, vipassana, chanting, swimming, Tibetan rites, yoga, colonics, essential oils, mega doses of supplements, more reading and studying spirituality, herbalism, blessing my food and myself, sun-gazing, earthing, and every other imaginable healing modality known to man. I often woke up at four am to begin my two-hour morning routine before work.

I had virtually no sugar, I never masturbated so as to keep my chi, and I ate obsessively clean.

I cut out Facebook, television and pornography, limited my cell phone use, rarely drank and never smoked anything. A guilty pleasure for me was a half-glass of extra-dry sake and some dark chocolate that I would have one time a week. And I want to emphasize the guilty in that pleasure.

I had gone so far into my spiritual practice, that a “poor” decision for me was checking my cell phone before my morning yoga. Just to put things into perspective, some years prior, a poor decision was drinking until near comatose, eating several pastries and then having unprotected sex with a stranger.

If I wasn’t lucky enough for the grand finale, you would have likely found me in a street fight with other toxic and frustrated males who found themselves asleep earlier than expected on the cold and filthy concrete of Ludlow Street.

In almost the same way that I would wake up thinking “Damn I can’t believe I did that” back then, is how I would think about checking my fucking cell phone before my yoga practice.

Those were the types of decisions that I would need to “work on” and improve because there was simply nowhere else where I could focus my discipline. It seemed that the only things left for me were to live in a cave and meditate or to join the Buddhist monks in East Asia.

Before eating, the only chance at digestion was to stretch for forty minutes, meditate, and then sit somewhere quiet while listening to binaural beats. I took digestive enzymes, chewed until my food was the consistency of baby food, ate small portions, and then took digestive bitters after. I had to remain still and breathe in the chair for at least twenty minutes afterwards. If I got up too early or was anxious to get somewhere, or decided to use my cell phone, I would get excruciating pains in my stomach and the food would ferment resulting in panic attacks.

I did everything in my human and spiritual power to make the right choices, to escape the suffering, and to see the light; to no avail.

A deep part of me believed that this was simply a shamanic warrior’s path, and that I must keep going. Another part of me believed that I was a doomed and tortured soul, with my sole purpose being to suffer for many lifetimes. I felt like Sméagol from The Lord of the Rings.

Despite my efforts, the gut-wrenching anxiety, pain, and unrest lingered.

My heart was hurting and my body was tired and I knew my only options were western medications, an institution, suicide, or the dieta. I could not keep traveling down my current day to day for much longer.

Many of my symptoms will simply not be believable depending on an individual’s metaphysical beliefs or personal experiences. I will do my best to explain as many as possible, given the limitation of language.

Physically, I had crippling headaches and body aches in every waking moment. Stretching for hours a day was absolutely essential just to keep a resemblance of homeostasis and loosen the golf-ball sized knots in my neck and shoulders. Unless I followed a perfect pre and post-meal protocol, which many “insignificant” circumstances could easily disrupt, I would have serious gut pains for hours to follow.

Mentally, (these words don’t do the experience justice) there was crippling anxiety, panic attacks, inability to concentrate (severe ADD), unbelievable mood swings from second to second, a cloud of doom and gloom, crying and yelling spells and an ever present tormenting internal voice.

The speed and intensity at which my internal voices argued with each other is not comprehensible unless you have experienced it.

Imagine being in a room with surround sound speakers.

They are always playing. Each speaker is playing something different and the remote is nowhere to be found. Imagine, at times, the volume going up to the max level. It is not music that is playing.

It is the demonic narration of a horror story. It’s the chilling scream of somebody about to be murdered. It’s somebody begging for their life. It’s a very disturbed man repeating his thoughts over and over again. Each event is playing in a different speaker. How long could you stay in the room? What if the door was bolted shut and you couldn’t leave the room? What then? The only option is to lay and breathe, and listen to these speakers. How long could you listen to it before snapping?

The way that I felt inside my body 80-90% of the time I was awake was the way I imagine somebody would feel if they had a gun pointed at their head. Adrenaline pumping, full body sweats, and internal chaos.

I was tormented with thoughts about death, violence, hatred, rage, and indecision. Thoughts that couldn’t be more opposite of who I am and what I represent.

I was literally terrified of the simplest things. A cabinet or door closing hard or somebody speaking too quickly or loudly would literally hurt. Physically hurt. I would involuntarily hold my breath when I was around other people because of how scared I was that they would trigger something in me or touch me.

I was petrified of people touching me. I would catch myself going for 1-2 minutes at a clip without breathing when in a grocery store or someplace busy.

Very often, and this could quite possibly be the worst of the symptoms, I would spiral into a crippling mania. If I was cooking for instance, and had other things to do right afterwards, I would ruminate and have looping thoughts about the other things and completely lose focus on what I was doing.

The thoughts “take garbage out, do laundry” would repeat over and over again in my head. Uncontrollably. I would start knocking over dishes, burning myself, dropping things repeatedly, and if somebody was watching me, they would think I was on crystal meth.

I would eventually get to the point where I no longer could see anything because my thoughts were so intense that it clouded my vision. It’s not like I went blind per-se, but I just couldn’t process my surroundings anymore. I partially separated from this reality. The only option at that point was to stop whatever I was doing, go lay down on my carpet, listen to binaural beats and breathe.

Metaphysically, is where things got especially funky.

Because my physical body was in such chaos, in the astral and spirit worlds, I was an open vessel. I had no protection, or sense of self. If I sat next to somebody, I could literally feel exactly what they were feeling inside.

When I shook somebody’s hand, (while caddying) if they were carrying a heaviness or funkiness, I would instantly feel pains in my stomach as if something flew down there to take residence.

The stomach pains were a Swedish massage compared to what would happen inside my mind for the rest of the day. Especially if I spent too much time with somebody, I would start to hear that person’s voice playing as a tape recorder inside my head. I truly cannot describe this in words, but it was like I became that person for several hours.

If I was really clogged up, I would lose the ability to hear my own voice in my head. I could imitate that person, feel like that person, and feel their energy all over my body. It was like I became smothered and pancaked by their energy and no matter how much breathing, stretching, or praying I did the energy wouldn’t leave me. One day after work, a few months after first experiencing this, I figured out how to solve the problem.

I would literally go into my bathroom and command the person’s energy to leave my body. With my hands, I would gently press on my stomach, while commanding the energy to leave, and I would violently throw up. It was always yellow/green vomit no matter what I ate.

No fingers down my throat, no purgatives, simply a gentle press on my stomach and the desire of the world.

In my dream space, I was completely tormented.

Despite a short few month break from from daily nightmares while in the jungle, they returned with a vengeance when I got home. They were always the same. I was fighting and/or running away from somebody who was trying to kill me. My opponent was always bigger, stronger, uglier, tougher, and meaner than me. I never had weapons, and they were loaded with rifles and shotguns.

I would sneak and maneuver my way into striking distance and land the most intense blows with murderous intent, but there was never any damage done. They would brush off the blows and come back at me. I have run many marathons in a night, and have woken up feeling the exhaustion accordingly.

Every day became a full focused effort on my breath, heart, or the task at hand in order to stay sane.

Picture the way a NBA player concentrates seconds before a free-throw shot, attempting to get in the zone and be in the present moment. That was my day, every day, EVERY single waking moment of the day.

I could not see the hex to this curse coming from the Western world. I knew that no diet or amount of meditation could put out this fire. I was borderline emaciated and had detoxified every single possible physical contributor to dis-ease. (or so I thought). Perhaps I had to go as deep as man is capable, and explore even deeper into the realms of the unconscious, and the realms of spirit, where I could transmute this.

Perhaps I had to go so deep that I would have an Eckhart Tolle-like dissolving of the ego, where I would experience a rebirth of sorts. So after seven months of my ridiculous life and routine, combined with a full-time job caddying, I prepared to fly back to the Amazon for a third time.

This time, I was flying to Contamana, Peru; a seriously isolated and poor island in the Amazon.

Once on the island, I would have a special dieta Tambo (wooden house) deeper into the jungle away from everybody else at this family Ayahuasca center.

A dieta, in Ayahuasca shamanism, is where an individual eats a very specific diet and learns from a particular plant or tree depending on their illness or desire. With strict dietas, only fish and starchy plantains can be eaten. Zero sugar, salt, oil, or vegetables are allowed at this level of dieta. I was to only eat grilled fish and boiled plantains for every meal. The purpose of these particular rules, according to the shamans, is to make way for maximum potential absorption of the essence of whatever tree or plant that an individual also ingests.

I am going to assume many readers haven’t had experience with Ayahuasca, and am going to explain a dieta in its simplest terms. Basically, every plant, flower or tree carries a spirit.

In the Western world, that sounds insane and crazy and we just can’t seem to wrap our minds around this because of our cultural conditioning. But if you asked a native about spirits, there would be no understanding that a person could NOT believe in them.

They wouldn’t even have in their vocabulary or language a way to defend themselves if you told them spirits weren’t real. They would think you were messing with them and laugh. These plants and spirits also hold valuable lessons and ancient wisdom for humanity. Sometimes the lesson can be learned from simply watching the plants physical behavior during its life cycle in nature.

Sometimes a plant has incredible healing properties (anti-parasitic, anti-bacterial etc.) Other times, when a being is extremely energetically open and aware (drinking Ayahuasca, living in the jungle), that same plant’s spirit can come to an individual for aid and teaching. Whether it comes subtly, directly through voice and imagery, or in the dreamspace, is entirely up to the divine. Now on a dieta, one ingests a liquid concentration of said plant or tree and allows the spirit of the plant to live inside their bodies for maximum potential connection. The shamans have dieted with hundreds of different plants, and receive an icaros (healing song) from each plant that they dieta with.

Truthfully, you can do a shamanistic diet with anything.

Right now, as a general population, we are dieting cheeseburgers, French fries, ice cream, reality television and pharmaceutical drugs. Considering the dire state of the world, I believe we have already learned enough of the deep, intricate, and delicate lessons that these holy foods and spirits are here to bless us with.

For my dieta, I was to be in isolation with no physical contact for three months, while drinking Ayahuasca three times a week, and drinking the Huairacaspi-brew four times the first week only.

The only contact I was to have with people was with the shamans during ceremonies, and when a helper brought me my food three times a day. As crazy as this all seems from the outside, to me, it made sense.

I could not relate to or find any information about any of the symptoms I was dealing with online.

I felt that even people who spoke about suicidal despair and panic did not experience this level of torment. I was jealous of those who used the words “depression” and “anxiety.”

Those labels could never do this justice. I was in full body electrocution almost every second of the day, that I didn’t even have space to be depressed. Severe depression felt like a beautiful rest for me as I could only feel that space when the electrocution subsided. At times, I would pray for cancer because I did not want to live yet I did not want to kill myself. I had some type of curse, bug, or virus.

I read about shamanic initiations in other cultures, and how the shaman enters what is known as “shamanic sickness” before accepting the call and apprenticing.

These shamans were chosen by the divine and would basically be crippled, bedridden, tormented with voices and spirits, and would remain sick for years until they finally surrendered and began to learn the way of a healer.

I was surrendering to the call. My symptoms were so bizarre that the only thing that I could resonate with was that of a chosen shaman. Also, the shamans were all telling me that I needed to learn, making clear to me the possibility of it.

Of everybody I knew, I trusted the shamans more with my life than anyone. The wisdom and intensity that a true, genuine, and indigenous shaman carries inside their eyes is unlike anything we have ever seen in the Western world. Thousands of years of universal knowledge and secrets packed into that one vessel. You simply cannot hide that level of wisdom. Furthermore, I felt that no westerner, even some of the best and brightest, had an idea of what I was dealing with. I too, could see it in their eyes.

I have done a lot of crazy shit in my life.

I have fought some of the toughest people on the planet on the mat. I have fought some of the drunkest people on the planet in the street.

I have physically trained for hours upon hours a day, every day, for years to learn how to be a fighting machine.

I have snuck into the most “elite” nightclubs in NYC on a weekly basis with my friend.

I spent years approaching random women on the street in utter terror and fear.

I have been tormented by my mind for years. I have laid in the fetal position in mental anguish and panic in my bathroom with guided meditations, downing entire two-ounce tinctures of calming herbs, and a space heater blowing at my legs for fourteen hours straight. However, the levels of pain and fear I experienced deep in the Amazon, with only the cockroaches and monkeys as witnesses, trumps everything I have ever experienced or imagined. In hindsight knowing the root issue at play, it makes perfect sense, but at the time it did not.

Alone in my Tambo, miles and miles away from civilization, I would fight the battles of my life. Drinking the sap of this tree was equivalent, or stronger, than taking 75 Nyquil, assuming that the Nyquil would not kill you from toxicity. About 30 minutes after taking it, I could do nothing but lay on my makeshift bed.

I could not lift my head, or reach for the bottle of water despite my desperate dehydration. This lasted for four hours. Although falling asleep was impossible because the tree was mentally stimulating, occasionally I would drift off into daydreams and experience seconds of peace.

The diet of thick foods, no vegetables, and no laxative teas proved impossible for my sanity. I could not take good bowel movements, and I was experiencing severe symptoms as a result. During the day, I would pace around the jungle naked, talking to myself in Spanish and taking deep breaths.

Most of my day was spent doing naked walking meditation, where I would breathe and concentrate on each step, walking one step every ten seconds or so. When you are isolated like that, you realize that clothes are very silly.

(That’s me in my undies (that I put on for the picture) in the Amazon with my beautiful Tambo in the background. This was about 3 days after arriving. I lost about twenty more pounds before leaving.

(Here is me three years earlier, and close to twenty pounds heavier at fighting weight)

Ceremonies were agonizing, and the loneliness was levels above what I previously thought imaginable. In this small family village where ceremonies were held, there was a female dog with five puppies that were only weeks old. In this part of the world, dogs are treated like rats.

People hardly had enough food for themselves, so there was no space for the dogs. They were starving, cold, slept in the dirt, and had full-body ringworm. The mother was malnourished and couldn’t produce enough milk for the young. The father was nowhere to be found. Ceremony after ceremony I would hear the desperate screams of these newborn puppies and it ripped into my heart. At the end of one ceremony, I felt obligated to do something. I could only take one dog, but the choice was made for me.

I could tell that three puppies had no chance, even with the most modern of veterinary equipment. One puppy seemed healthy and that he would make it regardless. The mother knew this and only gave him the limited supply of milk, while refusing and growling to the others. Another little guy seemed like he had a fighting chance, but he needed some help. I vowed to myself and promised him that I would help him get through this.

That we would get through this together. He was no more than two pounds, and had a severe case of tumbling drunken puppy syndrome. He couldn’t make it more than a few steps without falling over and re-infecting his wounds with the lively jungle soil. I took him into my home, and he took to me.

He was a fighter, so I gave him a fighters name; Rocky. I created a makeshift milk with oatmeal, banana, maca and water and finger-fed him.

We took bucket showers together and he loved the water.

I cleaned his wounds and ringworm, and put my precious tea tree oil (a must have in the jungle) on his entire body. I made a bed for him and he slept next to me.

Every night he tried to come onto my bed, but I wouldn’t let him because his skin infections were so intense. His cries kept me awake every night, but I never gave up on him. He was my best friend in that jungle. I talked to him like I would my buddies from high school.

One day I noticed a different look in his eyes. They were glossed over, and a hopelessness overtook him. There was something funky going on in his intestines, and his cries grew with internal agony and fear. Something was eating him from the inside-out. I tried everything in my holistic arsenal.

I frantically gave him every antibacterial, anti-parasitic plant that I could find in the jungle or that I brought with me. Coconut oil, tea tree oil, goldenseal, and lemongrass. To no avail. I kneeled next to the little guy, and promised him that his next life was going to be easier. The look in his eyes is something that I never want to see again, for the rest of my life.

As he took his last breaths, I prayed for his little soul, wondered if my fate would be similar, and wept like a lost child. A week later, I almost joined him.

Now, the thing to know about Ayahuasca is that barring any chemical interactions (anti-depressants, Rx medications, pre-existing heart conditions) it is really impossible or near-impossible to die in a ceremony.

If the right precautions are taken, it is extremely safe. Also, some people will talk about how it felt like they were about to die in an Ayahuasca ceremony. They had trouble breathing, felt like they were dying, and then realized the next day that it was all for lessons, to shed layers, and was the universe teaching them to be grateful for what they have. THIS was very, very different. It started like any normal, difficult ceremony for me, but it was extremely mild. For the first time in my medicine career, (about 26 ceremonies at this point) I drank a second cup of medicine.

About 20 minutes later, whatever energies I had been fighting with my entire life were in that molocca to kill me. Some type of spirit or demon or whatever you want to call it. I began violently, violently purging and it wouldn’t stop. Purging out of both ends. For what seemed like 10 minutes I was just non-stop purging out of both ends, and eventually I had to ask the shamans for help. “Ayuda me Ayuda me Celestina.” They immediately recognized the severity of the situation and came over to me to help with these energies. They were doing everything they can to help move the energy through me.

After a few more minutes, I truly believed that I was going to die in that molocca.

I reached my limit of purging, of fighting for the past few years, and I laid down and began crying, purging, and convulsing. It felt like the grim reaper was in that ceremony with me, and was waiting to take me, waiting for me to give up on the light and go into the darkness. Something or somebody wanted me dead.

I was beyond exhausted and I truly thought I was ready to go. My family flashed before my mind’s eye but the pain in my body trumped my feelings of love for them. As I gave up, every ounce of pain (both physical and mental) had vanished. It was pure bliss, light, and freedom and I was no longer in my body. I was a few feet above it, looking down at myself, and I was dying. A coldness like I have never experienced took over my entire body.

My heart rate dropped. The more I gave up on my dream of true peace, the better I felt, but I knew it was a trap.

I did not know what the shamans were doing in energetic form, and I will probably never know, but in physical form, they were yelling at me to breathe, and to “come back” in Spanish. I could hear them when I was out of my body. The shamans were taking their blankets and as hard as they can, fanning my body and fanning the air around me (things that are normally not done in ceremony).

Thirty more minutes of intense energy clearing, and calming down, and some level of stability was reached. I was alive, not well, but alive, and I looked at the shamans and we all laughed. I asked them in my poor Spanish “circa de muerte?” (near to death?) , and in an instant their laughs turned into intense Native American looks of conviction. “Si. No mas Ayahuasca para tu.” (Yes. No more Ayahuasca for you)

Call it stupidity, call it whatever you want, but not even that night stopped me from continuing the dieta. Where else was I to turn? I had tried the slow walk towards freedom; I had tried every single healing modality imaginable. Was I to go home and go back to the mental hospital? I would rather die.

For the next couple of weeks, I would drink teaspoon doses of Ayahuasca (normal dose is anywhere between one and three shot glasses), and attempt to continue along this excruciating path. The isolation was agonizing. More pain, more suffering. Re-traumatizing.

It had been almost two years of non-stop spiritual work, and I was even deeper in the labyrinth of lost souls. The spiritual adages of “you have everything you need right now in this moment” and “you have the power to change your life” were torturing me.

No matter how many times I tried to bring the spirit of the self to attention, I would fall hard and was tormented with obsessive dark thoughts.

My digestion was completely 100% non-functional. Everything I ate would ferment, rot in my stomach, and I was poisoning myself. Fight or flight every moment of the day. I plummeted further down the pit of despair with thoughts of my lifetime of night terrors and a life-threatening autoimmune condition when I was six years old. I was doomed.

Eventually, after several days of not moving off of my wooden floor, not eating or drinking water, not sleeping, and not even going to the bathroom, I walked to the shaman’s house, laid on their floor and told them in Spanish that I could not continue. I was tapping out.

They were very disappointed, but understood the agony I was in. We closed the dieta around day 30, and I felt defeated in every sense of the word. I could not fathom what my next steps were to be and I felt like, after more than two years of intense work, I was back to square one.

In the days of traveling back to the states, I ate 15-20 pastries, cried, threw up, and prayed. I couldn’t bear the thought of my family seeing me like this, nor bear the thought of another New Jersey winter, so I asked my best friend if I could go stay with him in Miami.

The same friend who paid for my ketamine injections. He gave up his bedroom for me, paid for massages, float tanks, acupuncture sessions, and his mom paid for all of my groceries. True angels.

I cried to him almost daily with my head in his lap. I taught him how to do a triangle choke (jiu-jitsu move) and I had him choke me unconscious multiple times when I was afraid that I would jump off of his 21st floor balcony. Rain or shine, I would ride my bike to the ocean, and swim until hallucination and exhaustion. Miles. At the end, when I was exhausted, I would swim straight out, perpendicular to shore, and swim until I thought I was too tired to make it back.

Away from all lifeguards, I prayed to get eaten by a shark, or to get a cramp and drown; anything to bypass the spiritual laws of suicide. I would scream at the top of my lungs, “I have given you everything God! What now?! What else can I do?! You have given me a game that I cannot win at! What the fuck!” Some force, as in my everyday life, always overcame me.

A DESIRE and WILL to survive trumped all. No matter how tired I was, or how far away I was from shore, an energy of conviction and determination washed over me as I cried my way to shore. I was to make it in this lifetime. I was to reverse the curse for future generations to come. I was to shift the direction of this wave, and I was going to go to my last breath if I had to. Never underestimate somebody who is fighting for their life.

I couldn’t get to any resemblance of stability so I went back home to my family.

Walking the slow walk towards health and transmutation was torturous and things got worse.

My money was running out, and so too were my options.

Every day felt like a year, my mission was to just get through each day, and sometimes to just get through an hour. I would steal tinctures of chamomile, valerian, passionflower, and kava from health stores and sometimes finish an entire tincture in a day. My right eyelid began drooping as if early stage Multiple Sclerosis was manifesting.

I started hearing more voices, imagining sounds, and seeing distorted and disturbing images everywhere. I was scared of being in public, afraid of talking to anyone, even those closest to me, and yet I was terrified of being by myself. I would faint three to five times a week, and convulse on the ground, only to wake up even more distraught that I was still alive.

The portals of schizophrenia were opening and I was separating from reality. I couldn’t told a soul out of extreme fear for being locked up in a ward. I just felt so incredibly ill. Mentally, physically, and spiritually diseased. I saw a few local healers, kept trying new supplements as well as my old pharmaceutical tranquilizers, but eventually I broke. I was ready to move on and ready to check out. Before checking out, there was one last thing I promised myself I would do if it ever got to this point.

I was to take Iboga, a root bark that grows in West Africa that has been gaining popularity for its magnificent ability to cure heroin withdrawal and addiction. Iboga is known as the grandfather of all hallucinogens, the most powerful plant medicine in the world. It is generally a 36 hour experience, sometimes lasting as long as four days, with intense physical purging and a general inability to move.

I had also read stories online of people, who at their wits end had experienced a rebirth. I had to do it before giving up. I spoke with an Iboga center in Costa Rica about coming there, but they didn’t have a shaman on site. I knew because of my close encounters with Ayahuasca, that I needed a shaman to guide me through a hallucinogenic experience.

I was too raw, sensitive, and vulnerable to be under the influence of Iboga with only Westerners to guide and reassure me. This was a BIG spiritual problem, and I was close to getting lost in the sauce on a DAILY basis without the influence of any mind altering substances.

The Iboga Center gave me the number of the shaman that taught them; a 10th Generation Bwiti shaman named Moughenda. I called him in Africa and explained my situation. He thought he could help, and suggested I come to the jungles of Gabon for treatment.

I quietly and cautiously planned my trip, something that turned out to be one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. With my mental state, figuring out logistics, getting the necessary paperwork, and figuring out where the money would come from was near impossible. It took me six hours to fill out a form that would normally take minutes. I had to pay $4,000 for treatment upfront, buy my flight, and pay for a visa for Gabon.

Desperate, I sent an email out to every one of my closest friends, basically begging for money and explaining my situation. The range of responses was massive, some sending me large sums of money within minutes while others, rightfully so, thought I had gone too far off the deep end and believed I needed serious psychiatric help.

Being my final attempt to save my life, I realized that the best way to deal with the situation was to open as many credit cards as possible and cash advance. I was lucky enough that my credit was perfect, as I was a master of juggling my worlds of pain and suffering, with the world of society.

That juggling act had now ended abruptly. Money became pixels on a computer screen. I bought my $1,000 flight for Feb 19 2016. I paid the shaman $4,000 via western union. I got my Gabonese Visa. Before leaving, I prepared the email to send to my best friend that I would send minutes before getting on the plane. It would contain a letter to my family, and the passwords to my computer, social media, bank account, and email addresses. A book had to be written, and I would make him promise that he would write it if I was to move on.

(Here is my Gabonese Visa)

If Iboga was not to work, I would quietly and calmly go somewhere deep in the wilderness, away from everybody, where I would fast and pray until I transitioned into the next life. When flying to Peru for the dieta, I truly thought that I was ready to die.

That I had given it my all, and if the dieta didn’t pan out, I was ready to move on. The discrepancy between thinking that, feeling it, and now TRULY being there was astronomical. It was also quite relieving. The suffering I had to endure for four more months was agonizing, and ultimately led to me feeling what a true broken spirit was. A truly, defeated, broken heart and soul.

This brings us back to the final supper. Minutes felt like years leading up to my departure. I didn’t know how it would be possible for me to get through the 24 hour flight.

Every time I saw somebody I would silently cry inside thinking that one day they would be thinking of this moment as the last time they saw me. I didn’t tell anybody that I was leaving because I was simply too weak and insecure to defend myself through conversation or argument. I couldn’t bare the expressions on my family’s faces if I told them in person that I was going to Africa.

As distraught as I was, I had to remain strong in my truth. I refused to get psychiatric help, and nobody was going to stop me. When my mind was set on something, I was a fucking freight train and nobody could get in my way. My bags were packed and only god could stop me now.

He did.

For some reason, about 48 hours before leaving for Africa, the words “mercury” kept coming to me. Hour after hour I would ruminate on and touch my “silver” fillings that invaded the right side of my mouth. I would stare at them in the mirror for hours.

Could these fillings have been placed around the same time as my breakdown? I would answer these thoughts with some reassurance that there is no way some metal in my mouth could do this to me. This was surely a spiritual problem, this was a shaman’s path, and I had some bad karma to work out.

Mercury was not helping my cause, but there is no way it could be killing me. I wanted no unnecessary variables in my last ditch effort for life nor any interference with the connection to this sacred plant. I was going to do this right.

I opened up a medical credit card, and had my fillings removed by a holistic dentist the next day. I came home from the dentist, and immediately started scouring the internet for mercury poisoning stories to occupy my obsessive ruminating mind.  Here is where I found the most important article I have ever read in my life:

I found an article titled Mercury Madness.Connie Fox is a woman in Florida who had been tortured for years before realizing that her mercury fillings were poisoning her to death.

Reading this story was one of the most intense experiences of my entire life. I read it 10 times over and over again and cried, laughed, and screamed. Up to this point in my life I had not heard of ONE other human being that had the bizarre and disturbing symptoms that I was experiencing.

Her experience was identical to mine and it made me think that it was very possible that mercury and/or other metals were causing this insanity all along. She shifted my perspective on metals and detoxification and allowed me to understand that I had not done any of the important measures required for a true and deep detoxification of metals.

She helped me understand that my New Age “herbs, juices, and love can cure all” and “spirit-before-physical” mindset was faulty. The pendulum of collective health has been swung so far in the opposite direction of vibrancy, that a hybrid of western science and ancient medicine is necessary. The Native American’s predicted this time, calling it the merging of The Eagle and The Condor.

Reading this article was one of the most intense experiences of my life.

I was in my room screaming in tears, crying at the top of my lungs. The most chilling screams you could ever imagine. My mom came down in a panic. “Mom I was going to go to Africa tomorrow but I can’t do it. I need help. Call Dad.” My dad came over later that day and I told him everything. I cried to him for hours.

He didn’t know much about mercury, but he believed me. He was going to pay for anything and everything, assuming that mercury was the issue. Whereas before I may have been viewed as the crazy son doing drugs in the Amazon (and I had to make my own money to support that path); now there was a potentially serious medical issue at play. My father, an engineer and brilliant man, would now have something logical, medical, and scientific to look at.

Another merging of The Eagle and the Condor. I don’t know for sure, but I believe I would have passed into the next world, an incredibly lonely and painful death, deep in the jungles of Gabon, and potentially at night, under the influence of the world’s strongest hallucinogen, had I not found these articles.

My mercury levels in my hair measured .489 mg/% (5ppm). Off the charts. With my body being in shambles, to have 5ppm in my hair could only mean that my true levels in my body were upwards of 7ppm.

Also considering that Mercury is generally difficult to spot in the hair, as it collects in the brain and kidneys, the true levels could be significantly higher. The woman representing the hair test company, who happened to be my friend, told me the only other person she had seen with levels as high as mine had a grand mal seizure.

I started on a strict and intense gut renewal program and parasite detox before even attempting to remove metals from my body.

With extreme mercury toxicity, the mucosal layer in the gut becomes compromised. This leads to bad bug overgrowth, AND leaky gut syndrome, where everything you eat gets treated as an invader by your body and your immune system goes frantic. When removing Mercury from the body, if the gut is compromised, it will get reabsorbed into the bloodstream and create massive complications, so the first step is always gut healing.

Many foods that I thought were strange or rare have become my main source of nutrition. Ghee, Colostrum, Bone Broth, Raw Milk Kefir, and raw nut milks. Taking care of my body with the right supplements (at least 20) and foods has become a full-time job.

A few weeks after starting Connie's program my endlessly researching mind lead me to suppository world. I started taking almost every supplement both orally, and via suppository. As Dr. Klinghardt explains, people with toxicity have impaired guts, and the expensive supplements and foods are being wasted via oral use.

Within weeks of starting a hybrid plan between Connie and the rest of my research, love and light started beaming into and out of me. Food started digesting, I started gaining weight, and my gray complexion turned to a golden light. I went from my lowest (150lbs) to about 180lbs in 7 weeks.

I also started doing essential oil parasite suppositories.

Now, as with this entire journey, I am always a skeptic first.

Just as I had to radically convince myself that mercury was the culprit (which was difficult because I couldn’t see the mercury), I had to see visible parasites to believe that they exist.

I had been eating clean for so many years, that I couldn’t fathom worms or parasites existing inside of me. I truly believed that worms were only something that starving children in Africa get. The truth is, that with heavy metal poisoning, the gut becomes a haven for bugs.

I started shoving essential oil suppositories up my arse every day. It has been the best thing that has ever happened to me. I released hundreds, fucking HUNDREDS of worms and worm-like creatures.

We are talking about 10-14 inch ropeworms daily. 5-7 different species of visible parasites daily. I mean the shit you see in horror movies. I looked them up; I’ve had roundworms, ropeworms, liver flukes, alien-looking things, and tons of parasite eggs.

Now if you are thinking that these came from the jungle, you should know that I did research based on the sizes and growth rates, and most of my worms were many years old. Cover your eyes and scroll past if you do not want to see the madness. For the sake of not ruining this story with appalling photos yet still appealing to the non-believers, I am only going to show a picture of two different individual parasites, while keeping in mind that hundreds have come out, and are still coming out, and these are the mild pictures.

I am still detoxing hardcore, but considering it’s only been 12 weeks since beginning the program and being in the worst pain of my life, I am a happy camper.

My anxiety is down to the lowest levels in three years. Suicidal despair, my unwelcome travel companion, and I have gone our separate ways. The schizophrenic symptoms are completely gone. I don’t faint or throw up anymore and the crippling mania is almost entirely gone. Food is digesting beautifully.

I have cried for joy and can feel my heart again. I am no longer scared of being around people, touching people, or going to the grocery store. It feels as if I am slowly waking up from a bad dream, and life has become an overall enjoyable experience. Just the fact that I am able to concentrate and write this piece is miraculous.

I haven’t even started true chelation (removal) of mercury yet because I have so much gut healing to do and believe I still have more parasites to kill.

I can only imagine the beautiful state I will be in when all the parasites are gone and I remove all of the mercury. I used to think that my problem was too big for me to ever be normal without a full hallucinogenic reset, or a full dissolving overnight of my ego like Eckhart Tolle. I have to say, that suppositories may be the missing link for those with severe, severe issues. For they are powerful enough to make massive shifts in someone, despite how strong the momentum of darkness is.

Where did all the mercury come from?

I believe that to some degree, I have been mercury toxic from a very young age. My mother had many amalgam fillings and it is proven that mercury travels through the placenta.

Throughout my life, I thought that the auto-immune disease I got when I was five, which nearly killed me, (Guillian-Barre) was random. Considering the destructive effect of mercury, a substance that is is injected into us during vaccinations in the form of thimerosal, on the body, particularly the myelin sheath, I am certain that it played a large role in my illness.

I also had two massive fillings in my teeth (one of them practically covered an entire tooth), and drank hot tea all day, every day for years. Hot beverages increase the amount of mercury vapor released. Little did I know that my nine-day tea fasts were killing me.

Also, from the ages of 18-23 my diet consisted of massive quantities of tuna fish, other seafood, and sushi. (A lot of it was low quality all-you-can-eat sushi). Combining this with even more fish during the dieta, and an inability to excrete toxins effectively created a death spiral. Also, I have been a very sensitive soul, both physically and emotionally my entire life.

I believe that metal toxicity affects sensitive people in more drastic ways.

On a side, note I don’t want to leave you thinking that the dieta was a total failure. There are some very personal/spiritual issues that would not have been cured if it wasn’t for the dieta and the resulting downfall afterwards. This entire journey has been one cumulative experience, I do not view any part of it as a poor decision.

The Real Human Experience

The greatest people I know have shed all paradigms of previous conditioned knowledge.

I believe we are supposed to learn from experience, not listen to the structured rules, laws, limitations and contingencies in our head. We cannot grow without questioning where they came from.

I see a lot of people, many of whom are grown men, who have an inability to think for themselves. Their conditioned and taught mind is running the show, and the strength of the self and soul is non-existent. We all have an incredible medicine, an incredible gift to bring to the world. Whether it’s something simple as making a beautiful bracelet with love, or being a coach for the severely mercury toxic, or an acupuncturist, it really doesn’t matter. We all have a purpose, a greater purpose than making money, or working a corporate job, or being a slave.

That purpose can only be deeply felt when we connect with our highest and clearest selves. There is literally generations, and generations, hundreds, maybe thousands of years of faulty blueprints, painful living and toxicity that we must reverse if we are to survive as a species. If you are reading this, and feel something while reading it, chances are you too, have chosen to be a warrior of light in this lifetime.

We are here to restore the human condition back to what nature intended of us. The mind-associated, toxic, and materialistic paradigm needs to STOP. We are in this together and we are all made of LOVE and LIGHT.

What is the difference between someone who becomes schizophrenic and someone who becomes a shaman?

A thin, but crucial line of love, acceptance, support, and context. When the incredibly “ill” of our universe are given the space of love and immersed in healing and detox, we will see exponential shifts towards the light. Mental health is infinitely more complex than what we are taught.

There are so many irritants in the air, water, soil, and food that create degeneration in the human mind and body. Through my crippling illness, I can see that mental illness comes from cellular damage, brain degeneration, and gut degeneration from the toxins that the body is overloaded with. It is important to know that these toxins, particularly metals, can strongly alter the concept of free-will.

With this knowledge, we must treat addicts with compassion, for it is only an attempt at soothing mental and emotional pain, and of something larger at play.

Although there are also serious spiritual obstacles that can impact someone (that I have personally delt with but not yet shared), I believe that even the most serious of conditions (schizophrenia) are reversible.

To me, schizophrenia seems like a tuning disorder, where the mind is attune to a different realm, some place foreign to this physical planet and reality. The antennae are not working correctly, and a being is drowning in the same waters that mystics and shamans swim in. Some shamans say that with schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses, the soul comes in and out of the body to protect itself from the torment inside that vessel. Some say that the sickness means “good news from the other side.”

The person going through the crisis has been chosen as a medium for a message to the community from the spirit worlds. The person is not crazy, insane, useless, or doomed.

They are TOXIC, incredibly special, and the things they are seeing, feeling, and hearing are most likely actually happening, just on a radio station that the normal person isn’t set up for. I can only speculate, but I believe children with autism are ultra-sensitive, brilliant beings that are not prepared to handle the levels of toxicity on this planet and they hit their body burden in the womb or shortly after. This toxicity creates a haven for parasites, and the being becomes overwhelmed with dark, crippling energy.

Without the right protocol, these brilliant beings will continue their lives in prisons instead of unleashing the magnificent light and wisdom that they have hiding deep inside of them.

It is also important to know that heavy metals create discrepancies in spiritual truths. This entire journey, I have had deep knowledge of the power of the human and soul. I’ve had glimpses of it, insights of it.

I knew that we were all mini-gods with the world’s knowledge, mystery, and wonder inside each of us. I knew that the power of the self had the ability to transcend all. I knew that one day, with enough work; we could all live like an avatar, understanding the impermanence of these vessels and the magic of the soul. I knew deep down, that whether we believe something or we don’t, we will prove ourselves right.

I knew that many external conditions are merely reflections of our internal states. I knew that we have been living in a world of infinity, while only seeing the bottom half of the 8.

Conventional Western medical science tries to master this lower half of the infinity, only to chase its own tail and waste money and time. I KNEW all of this to be true, but these concepts and states of being were simply not available for me to experience. Heavy metal, parasite, and chemical toxicity creates an environment which toes these lines of spiritual truths.

Knowing deep spiritual truths, yet not being able to live them caused me to waste so much time and energy on spiritual work.

I used to go entire days criticizing myself and analyzing whether or not something came from my ego or from my heart, whether I was being conscious enough of every single thought and action. I used to convince myself that my pain was coming from the universe as a lesson because I was too attached to my ego, or as punishment for not being aware enough or from causing pain to others.

Every spiritual book I read discussed at length the importance of the ego, disassociating from it, and connecting to the ever-present witness. I read about and practiced this theme over and over again. Any negative thought I had and anytime that I didn’t act in 100% purity or perfection I would beat myself up over it.

Learning the importance of radical acceptance, I tried having self-compassion and self-acceptance for these crippling and disturbing ego thoughts; to no avail. This overactive, and sometimes disturbing, ego-mind was a RESULT of my toxicity. Living a pure life with integrity, and working with the light will just naturally happen as a side effect of cleaning the vessel. That’s who we are.

We are MADE OF LIGHT.

I am not saying that we don’t need to work on our egos, and be conscious of where our actions come from, but I AM saying that that work needs to be met with a serious detoxification protocol. Some people will truthfully be able to become vessels of love and joy with spiritual work alone. I have seen it.

This may be possible because of the power of serious meditation, the detoxifying effect of love, and healing power in positive thoughts and emotions.

It could be from having a less traumatic or less toxic childhood. But with levels of severe or even moderate toxicity, and especially once the body has reached its burden level, if a detox program is not in order on the journey, we are walking to and from spiritual school uphill; both ways.

In order to live a fulfilling and loving life, we MUST clean these vessels.

These receivers of consciousness will forever be attuned to lower vibrational frequencies unless we dump all of the junk. Heaven and hell are states of consciousness that we experience in this lifetime.

The junk I speak of is impacted fecal matter in the colon, and cleaning the body and brain of pesticides, estrogens, plastics, chemicals, and metals. Through a deep and intensive cleansing process, a being can feel who they truly are, and what the human experience actually is, without boundary and with limitless love and joy. This, my friends, is the real life’s work.

As a collective, we have to stop giving CONSENT to limiting beliefs and diagnoses.

We are regularly giving consent to aging and disease. Time and time again I hear the labels, diagnoses, and beliefs that will keep people in their cage of hell for the rest of their lifetime. There is no way we can transcend illness, by labeling and then attacking the symptoms.

We are not ‘supposed’ to get sick, weak, tired, and fragile at 40, 50, and 60.

When people say “It’s because I am getting old,” What I really hear is, “my body cannot handle this level of toxicity for this many years. My body is giving me these signals that I need to change, but I am not listening because the sounds of my bills, women, and beer are too loud.”

This life thing. We can spend it with our conditioned minds as the narrator and conductor, walking along perfectly groomed trails, never truly drumming our own individual thoughts.

The mysteries of life and the universe remain untouched mysteries. On this trail we never truly recognize our power and never truly know our unique and distinct internal voice. Our insecurities, fears, repressed desires and wonders get stuffed deep into our mental closets and manifest as an ever-growing shadow that we refuse to look at.

The end goals are material possessions, money in the bank account, a fancy car, a big house, luxurious vacations, health insurance, and the elusive happiness.

We concentrate with a ferocious intent and fearful motivation on sacrificing it all to make money, to be safe, and to “have it all,” and then once we have it, we will need to spend it all to recover our health that has been lost over the years of living unharmoniously with nature’s intent.

Being a caddy, I have spent hundreds of hours walking alongside the wealthiest people in New Jersey. Even in their most relaxed hours of leisure, most of them reek of misery, anger, loneliness, and a desire for more. The money, the riches, the nice cars, and the superficial spouses are the BOOBY prize.

This game that the world is playing, and killing each other over, is a game where the winners takes SECOND PLACE.

Why the fuck would we play that game?

The grand prize, that nobody wants you to know about, is a deep buzz of love that hums inside of your belly. You can hear it and feel it, and nobody can take it away from you.

The frequency of LOVE transcends all.

It is a deep connection to the divine, to source, and to the universe where existential unrest and desire simply melts away. The fretting over the next deal or the girl who didn’t text you back, the getting into a fight, stealing, or screaming at your family member all becomes an impossibility when you are connected to the love vibration in your body.

With this deep love connection, you realize that planet EARTH is a massive DNA seed bank with the most beautiful creatures, trees, and plants in existence all here to co-exist. It is a fucking playground and a PARADISE and we are messing it all up.

This massive-scale government sleight of hand is over. Their hands are pudgy, and their movements are slow and calculable. Pay close attention to movies and television shows, especially the big feature films: Avatar, Blood Diamond, The Matrix, K-Pax, What Dreams May Come, V for Vendetta, Star Trek, Fight Club, Inception, Life of Pi, Mr. Robot.

These movies and TV shows (among hundreds of others) have DEEP, subtle messages that hint to the Limitless (yes that movie too), yet presently controlled, possibilities of a human experience.

They hint towards the unfathomable magnitude of evil and greed that is in the position of control. Some of these movies are works of brilliant directors and creative geniuses, working for the side of good, to get people to wake up to the truth.

Others, working on the side of power, and under rule of some dark forces; almost laughing in our faces, knowing that these concepts will create multi-million dollar blockbusters that appeal to our deepest emotions, dreams, and soul desires for mental and spiritual liberation.

The severity of the metal, chemical, emotional, and psychological ONSLAUGHT that we are experiencing is reaching an all-time high. It is time for us to stand up, and reverse the curse. When big shifts happen at the individual level, the entire planet changes in magnificent ways.

The big changes don’t happen from preaching or teaching, they happen from individual shifts of consciousness, into the love vibration, and then every single being in your presence feels it. Do not worry about anyone else or anything else. Be the change that you want to see. Get involved with the real life’s work.

I am talking to each and every one of you.

Yes you; with your mediocre life and mediocre job.

You always felt that you were destined for greatness. But now, you drink coffee during the week to get by the monotonous work day, and drink alcohol on the weekends to forget it all. You have accepted the lie that dreams are for children. Yes you; who lives a peaceful life but always felt that there is more.

Yes you; who in the depths of despair have tried everything in your power to heal and your only wish is that the anguish would end already.

Every time you are on a bridge, or the roof of a building, you think about how easy it would be to end it all. Yes you; with your fancy car, expensive watches, and big house who still doesn’t feel comfortable in your own skin.

And yes you; the beautiful, boundless, gentle, and traumatized soul buried deep inside the walls of hurt and pain. It is not your fault. There is more. You are Beautiful. You are Powerful. You are God. You are Light.

I sit here at Greenwood Gardens, on a beautiful sunny day in New Jersey. I am here; actually here. I live in this reality now. I can feel the buzz in my belly and the warmth in my heart. I can feel the grass living and breathing below me. The wind whispers to me through the dense forest and the soft piano music that fuels my writing sounds crisper and clearer. My bank account is empty and my credit cards are maxed out.

I’ve never felt so rich. I feel wise and disciplined beyond my years.

I do not fear death, for I have already died many times. My mind feels sharp and strong, though my body is tired. Exhausted. As if World War III has been fought inside of this vessel. The classic war of the Light vs. Dark. and Pain vs. Love.

As a sign of surrender, the soldiers of the darkness have waved their bright, white flags. The light will prevail; at least in this body.

I can assure you, with all my heart and soul, that what Rumi once said holds true:

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

Sincerely,

Josh Macin

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