I’ve been tagged.

The lovely babyknitter has tagged me with a series of questions, thus shaking me out of a 6 month hiatus from this blog. I just spent two hours and one coffee on this post. It was fun, and now I am inspired to write more. Thank you!

What conversation are you dreading MOST about having to have with your kid?

I don’t necessarily dread having any conversations with Lilah, but there are going to be a few that will be difficult. There are some topics that even as grown adults, we just don’t have answers for them. Death is one of those topics. How do you explain to a child that someone is gone forever? As an adult it is also difficult to comprehend that fully, but we feel the weight of it as we grieve. Where do people go when they die? Who knows. We will never know. I would be surprised if the answer is ever fully revealed, because to me it seems like one of those permanent mysteries. However, the idea of reincarnation is prevalent. It makes sense because our bodies are biodegradable and are nutrients for the earth to keep growing. Who is to say that consciousness isn’t also reincarnated in some way? Nature is very efficient at recycling everything.

The circle of life. And it moves us all. Thank you, Lion King.

What is your favorite holiday to spend with your kid and why?

Thanksgiving. I might end up gaining 10 pounds from food in one day, but I also gain 10 pounds of love from all of my family getting together under one roof. Lilah is also the center of attention during this event, and I love seeing people dote on her.

Thanksgiving 2012. Lilah going in for the kill.

What food do you wish more than anything your kid would eat?

Lilah eats pretty much anything. She even loves broccoli. I have not run into this issue yet, but I will say that there are food items she probably shouldn’t like as much as she does: crackers and cookies. I have to spell out certain food words now, because if you say them out loud she will perk up and ask for them.

If you could go back to school for anything at all, A) would you want to, and B) what would you study?

Funny you ask, because I actually did go back to school last fall. I started going to college five years after graduating high school, and I am very glad that I decided to wait. Being a student again made me realize that I can do anything I set my mind to. I am currently going for a Bachelor of Arts degree, and I love the classes I have been taking so far. I do have a soft spot for my drawing classes. They are very challenging and I feel like my art has evolved a lot from them.

Intermediate Drawing class final. Based on the golden ratio/spiral.

You have won a fabulous prize of a one week’s vacation to your dream destination – anywhere in the world.  The only catch is you have to go alone (no spouse/kids).  Where does your ticket take you and do you go?

This question is very difficult to answer, because there are a lot of places I would like to go. However, you mention the aspect that I have to go alone, so that would leave Japan and Amsterdam out of the question. I would have to say Peru. It would be scary to go alone, and I also don’t know the native language so that would also pose a challenge. That in and of itself would be a very beneficial learning experience. I pick Peru because of its history with the medicinal plant brew called ayahuasca.

The ayahuasca being brewed.

You have 1 paragraph to describe your neighbors.  Do it.

I hardly know my neighbors. I live in a duplex, however, and the older couple that live next to us are our landlords. As far as I know, they are nice people, but they do not support the smoking of medicinal herbs.

Reefer madness was a lie. Let’s move on, people.

What do you do when someone gives you or your kid a Xmas gift that you just fundamentally HATE?

I open up the fireplace conveniently placed next to me, and chuck the gift into the fire while laughing maniacally! In all seriousness, I have never gotten a gift that I hate, and Lilah doesn’t seem to hate any of her gifts. I will mention for ‘reasons’ that I have no interest in receiving beauty products, *cough* bath sets *cough*, or watches.

If you could drastically make-over one thing about yourself, what would it be?  Answers do not have to be merely physical attributes.

Drastically make-over something about myself? Well, I’ve been a very shy person most of my life. Speaking to strangers used to be such a fear to me, but since I started going to college last fall I have come out of my shell a lot. I can now force myself to speak to people I don’t know without much hassle, and every time I feel a little tiny percent more comfortable too. In a way, I have already made over part of my personality, but I still worry too much what other people think of me to a degree. It isn’t paralyzing, but I still think about it. I hope that over time I can gain more confidence, and I feel like I can if I stay on this path. Having a few close friends helps a lot.

If you could bring back to life one dead famous person as an attempt to impact the world today, who would it be and why?

Terence McKenna. He isn’t exactly a household name, but he was helping make progress for the psychedelic community before he passed away in April 2000. What made him different from all the other people who were delving into the intricacies of the psychedelic experience, was that he was a very well spoken and eloquent with his words. He was obviously a very smart person with a lot of life experience that helped form his opinions. Some people thought he was a kook, but he was just willing to let his mind analyze all sorts of possibilities, leaving no stone unturned. He published several books on the subjects of psychedelics and promoted the theory of mushroom panspermia, the stoned ape theory (in a nutshell: humans evolved language and intelligence by consuming psilocybin mushrooms when foraging for food), and the novelty theory. I could go on about it more, but that should be for another post entirely. If he were still alive today, he would still be coming up with new and interesting ways of looking at reality, and would surely still be making headway for the psychedelic community. I realize how taboo that subject must be for a lot of people, but he was helping to eradicate the taboo status.

Terence McKenna: November 1946 – April 2000.

What’s your dream superpower to have as a parent?

This doesn’t count as a superpower, but if anyone has seen the film The Dark Crystal they will probably remember how the skeksis had camera bat creatures flying around everywhere, keeping an eye on the gelflings during their journey to restore the dark crystal. If I had some sort of technology like that, I would use it to check up on my daughter when she is not with me. Creepiness factor while utilizing the bat droids? Hopefully not as high as the skeksis themselves…

Skeksis must smell like rotting chicken dumped in vinegar.

What’s the strangest example you’ve personally experienced of “multi-tasking?”

I do have an answer for this one, and the answer is so TMI that I think people would cry from the mental image. I will give a hint, however. It involves keeping a newborn Lilah from crying… and me having to go to the bathroom… oh I have already said too much.

From awake to dreaming.

As far as I am concerned, no one gives dreaming enough credit. For as long as I can remember, dreams have always been important to me, and I feel like I have to talk about them, to get them out of me, to ponder them. I believe that this has a lot to do with the realness of the dreaming experience. There is a theory that DMT, a very powerful hallucinogen, which is already present in our brains in small doses, secretes while we are in REM sleep. If you have ever read about a DMT experience in which it is smoked, or had the experience yourself, then you would know that it is described as feeling “more real than real”, and there is a fast transition from being in this reality, in which the person experiencing it feels like they are being pulled out of their bodies.

The thing about hallucinogens, is that I do not believe they trick the mind. Some people think of hallucinating as something fake, as an experience that is not a real or valid one. I heavily disagree with this. The mind perceives an extraordinary event through the application of a substance that alters the brain chemistry temporarily. How can this be a fake experience? This is definitely a part of a valid experience of reality.

Dreaming, you could say, is like having a psychedelic experience, and because it happens everyday, it’s novelty can wear off, and a person can easily begin to dismiss their dreams. I believe that whatever happens in dreams is just as valid as being awake.

Ever have one of those dreams that you just can’t shake as soon as you wake up? I’ve experienced that a lot. I will wake up crying sometimes, or in shock at the contents and the feels of the dream I had been having. I will quickly go write these dreams down, because I believe that whatever I was made to feel, was for a purpose. I try to decode my dream experiences, to understand why it happened as it did.

Of course there are dreams that I have that appear to have no valid narrative, that seem to be a string of randomness sewed together. Then there are dreams that have a lot to do with my awake reality. I’ve had dreams in which I took a shower multiple times, because before I fell asleep it really bothered me that my hair was so oily.

Who can say that what we experience when we dream is not valid enough to be looked at as seriously as we look at our own lives while we are awake. If it is a natural state that occurs, then it has a purpose.

I used to be an atheist, and while I was, I was extremely depressed. I convinced myself that the concept of god is a delusion. I was very depressed and would have panic attacks, all because when I closed my eyes, I could only see darkness, because I could not see purpose to this life when there was no spirit for me to acknowledge.

Then I had an experience, one with DMT, in the form of a brew called Ayahuasca (this word means “vine of the soul”). It is a much less powerful, but longer-lasting version of smoking DMT. Ayahuasca has been brewed and drunk in South American for a long time, and it is used by shamans to cure disease of the soul, or of the mind.

In my experience, I felt as if I was seeing myself for the very first time. I examined my self, my actions, my thoughts, my whole life, and I could see all the mistakes that I had made. How hating myself for most of my life caused me so much harm, and I hated myself for what? What reason did I have to cause myself so much pain?

It was like years and years of self-therapy in one night. After my experience, I felt a glow, like I could understand so much more about my experience of reality, like a gloom was wiped away. I listened for what felt like the first time, really listened to what people around me had to say. Most importantly, I felt like there was a life about everything, every moment, every tree, every thought, every person, every object, everything. I could sense the energy of the earth, and it is a lot less hard to do than you could imagine. I could see how everything was inter-connected, and how no one is alone. What a wonderful revelation, to finally know that I am not alone, when I had made myself alone, told myself I was alone for so many years of my life.

I could see that “god” was not what I thought it was. God is all that is, all that is to become, and all that ever was. We are a part of god, and god is a part of us. God is not a man, nor a woman. God is much more than we can perceive, and it is the mystery. God is not limited to one religious view, and god has no rules. God is love, understanding, and creativity. God is meaning.

I do not align myself to any one religion, but I feel more attuned to this basic truth: Reality is not cut from a simple shape. Reality is in the eye of every person, and every person sees reality in their own way. Therefore, alternate realities co-exist in almost seven billion different ways. We all have our life narrative, we are all striving for a purpose. There is something very special about this, and to simply be materialistic, and base all of reality simply on what we see, and less with what we feel, is like being asleep.

This is why I see dreams as so important to our functioning. This daily experience, lucid as it is, becomes concrete through our emotions. If one were to pay more attention to their dreams, what would they end up learning? I am very curious to find out.