LIVING THE FUTURE

     I am already living the future. I have been living this future that is finally upon us for almost forty years, ever since peyote and acid first showed me the way. They both raised my consciousness and opened my heart, each in their own way. They both showed me how to live this new way that Spirit wants all of us to live.


     One vision in particular has always stayed with me. I had it while doing peyote one night in Venice, California.

     It was a very weird night. I was awake for all of it, yet for many hours I was also in a dream-like state. The images were all very clear and sharp, yet unlike anything I knew of in this world. It was more than a dream though, because I could stay with it. I could move in and out of it at will. I could wake out of it and look around and even get up and go to the bathroom; but then as soon as I closed my eyes again, I was right back in it.

     The main image was of these four groups placed around the now empty center. There was a spiritual vacuum at this center, created when the old religions had all lost their connection with Spirit. Each of these four groups surrounding the center was a different spiritual way that wanted to become the new center in the spiritual world of today. It was that time. Each wanted to be the one chosen. I was with one of the groups, the only one that was connected to our source, to Mother Earth. The other three groups were all city oriented and would lead us more and more into a debilitating dependence upon machines and towards an increasingly artificial life.

     Even after this powerful dream state ended, I still retained a depth and clarity of consciousness that I had never before experienced. Each thought, it's source and direction and all its connections, was completely clear. I realized what I had to do then. I realized who I had to be in order to follow Spirit.


     In my life since then, I have remained faithful to this vision and to the others that both peyote and acid have given me. I had already dropped out of the mainstream culture back then, seeing it for what it was and what it was becoming, seeing it's deadly future. Since then, I have been living at Edge City, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up and find their edge too.

     I realized that I had to find my own way to Spirit. The old masculine and monotheistic ways had excluded Mother Earth - which is why they died out. The other ways in my vision that were vying today for the new center also excluded the feminine and, if followed, would just as surely fail in their own time.

     I gave up my Jungian practice. I gave up trying to make money by being a healer. I stopped saving my healing energy for the healing sessions. Instead, I became healing all the time. More importantly, I also showed folks how to heal themselves.

     I lived with other folks, first in a house in Berkeley, then in Deadwood and Eugene, Oregon. None of us were ever a commune, nothing that official. Some times we didn't even live in the same house. We just enjoyed each other's company. We did trip together often though and became more open and more loving as a result. We became family, non-hierarchical, just brothers and sisters.

     I spent a lot of my time, all I could, in nature, especially in the High Sierras of California. I would usually spend a week at our camp at Dinky Creek, east of Fresno. Once I was there for three weeks. I had other camps in Southern California too. I did acid whenever I was alone in nature. This really opened me up to the natural world, to all life, to all my relatives. I came to enjoy solitude. Alone in the high country, with no one else around, I finally found a deep and lasting clarity of mind. I also finally came to understand and overcome the last of my fears, especially those that came from dying as a little boy.

     I left Dinky Creek once with a vision of living as humans have lived for most of our time here on Mother Earth. I became a wanderer. I went back to Berkeley and bought a van. Soon after, I went on the road, visiting other counterculture havens, other "last homely houses," on my way. On the road, I kept meeting wizards who told me that I was one too. I learned that magic does exist. I also learned that I don't do magic (no Harry Potter me.) I just allow the magic that is always there to flow out through me.

     It became interesting. I remember once camping alone at Dinky Creek. I was sitting around my fire late in the evening, coming down from another high acid trip and smoking my first joint of the day, when a man walked into my camp. He said hello, said he was me from a time in my future. I could see him clearly, but I knew he wasn't there in his body. I could almost see through him.

     He told me it was very cold where he had come from, where he was going back to after he watched my body while I went back in time, as he had, to help the little boy who had been me and who was still dying and freaking out. I understood and thanked him. I even handed him the joint, although I knew he wasn't there in his body. We both laughed.

     Later that night, I saved that little boy so he could grow up and became me. I told him he wasn't falling, that he was flying. He heard me and began to relax, began to feel blissful as he flew towards the White Light.

     Living on, I recognized the time when I eventually became that man who had walked into my camp at Dinky Creek. When it came, I was standing on that low ridge with Bobby and Abby and Karen and our two dogs. We were deep in the Grand Canyon then. It was winter and there was snow everywhere. It was very cold.

     Life became a magical adventure. It became play, no longer work. I stopped reading books except for the writings of Carlos Castaneda and the I Ching. My life had become enough of an adventure.

     Life became simple and easy too. I became detached from most of what people today think is important, all the things that people think they need. I also learned to share and to not take more than what I needed for my increasingly simple life. I learned that what goes around, comes around.

     I learned compassion. I learned to see the good in everyone. I saw that if I didn't like something in someone else, it was an opportunity for me to learn more about myself, about my own shadow side. I learned to follow love too, following it wherever it would lead me. I learned that I could love everyone.


     For almost forty years I have been living the future that we are now all embarking upon. I have not been alone either. There have been others who have used psychedelics and other spiritual practices to raise their consciousness to a higher and more loving level. In particular, the core members of Rainbow Family of Living Light have always maintained the values of this new way of Spirit.

     Now it is everybody's turn to live the future, which is now.

     Now it is everyone's turn, yours and mine, to give up on those old and outdated spiritual visions from centuries ago. Now it is our turn to find our own way to Spirit, recognizing that each of us has a unique path to take. Now it is our turn to honor the spiritual essence of the feminine and Mother Earth.

     Now it is our turn to stop making money off of our brothers and sisters, Now it is our turn to freely share our knowledge and skills. Now it is our turn to be kind and to help everyone who needs what we have to offer. As the I Ching says, "If in truth you have a kind heart, ask not, supreme good fortune. Truly, kindness will be recognized as your virtue." (Hexagram 42, "Increase," Line 5.)

     Now it is our turn to get out of our little houses and our little cars that have isolated us from our neighbors. Now it is our turn to reach out with love to all the folks around us. Now it is our turn to examine ourselves and our relationships with others. Now it is our turn, sitting around our kitchen tables, to share ourselves on all levels with our families and friends and neighbors.

     Now it is our turn to return to nature, leaving our radios and iPods and camera phones behind for awhile so we may hear the healing sounds of nature, so we can find our own place in nature again.

     Now it is our turn to let magic and adventure back into our lives. Now it is our turn to get out of those mental and emotional and spiritual boxes that our lives and our work have placed us within. Now it is our turn to think and feel and love outside those old boxes.

     Now it is our turn to return to basics, to live simple and fulfilling lives without needing all our things that we have used to bolster our egos and define our existence. Now it is our turn to feel compassion for all beings and to realize that if we have too much someone else has to have too little.

     Now it is our turn to follow Spirit, a renewed and powerful Spirit, not one of those old and dead beliefs in their old and dead bottles that we have long paid lip service to.

     By Eugene Marks