"Wear your robes lightly" is a phrase that's been repeated to me numerous times during my last two experiences with sacred plant medicine 🍵🤢🤩💫
The first time the phrase came up it was a metaphor for not getting carried away with the egoic idea of my achievements 👑 To be proud of what I've done, but know that I'm ultimately a channel for something much more than myself (as I think we all are, if we would only quieten down enough to listen).
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The second time though it told me it was referring quite literally to my body 😧 That there is a pure awareness that's being filtered through this human meat bag I like to call James 😶
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Both times this image ☝️ was prevalent and from those visions I've come to realise that this series of work, which I started over 12 years ago (before I'd taken any psychedelics), has more to it than I originally thought. The medicine told me that, as well as symbolizing the need to express the 'inner me' and let out all the potential energy that might lie dormant within, it also had to do with opening my heart. Exposing my soft core to the world. To be more open and honest, especially with regards to my feelings (as I did so in my post on Thursday).
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It's extremely hard to do this, in what often feels like a cut throat society where shielding your true emotions sometimes feels like the only way to overcome the obstacles we face. Becoming hardened to the world is very easy to do, and as a man it's often encouraged in a way that isn't properly balanced.
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But in hardening yourself you can very easily become brittle or extremely rigid. If practicing martial arts has taught me anything it's that energy, and therefore your innate lifeforce, fails to flow in such conditions. As kids we'd let this flow naturally, but over the years we learn to restrain it in order to 'grow up'.
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I've realised recently that you can never be greeted with true connection if you don't let down the shields and shed those rigid facades. Only then can the beauty of your internal landscape, from the melancholy sunsets of sadness to the fierce tsunami waves of happiness be expressed, understood by others and lead to the deeper connections that we all long for 💖