Keith Cleversley and His Pea Brain

After several years of intense contemplation, I felt it was time to merge my spiritual-self known in the community as Bodhi with the self that everyone else knows as Keith Cleversley.  I have very deep-set belief in my mission on this planet, and part of it is who I feel I truly am in relation to this world around me.  Bodhi is short for Bodhisat; a name that my mentor and spiritual guru (John Morley) gave me years ago when I began the spiritual path I will most-likely be on until I leave this frame and wondrous planet long behind.  John was more than an inspiration and spiritual guru; he helped me along a path that has become the whole of my life.

I worked in a recording studio since I was 15, I spent most of my adult years as a record producer (see The Playground for details), and was completely content with my business world and life.  But, I have always yearned to reach beyond, to find connection with God in ways that were tangible and irrefutable to me.  In the midst of this seeking, I first looked to my Roman Catholic roots, and was absolutely shocked and appalled at what I found.  Then, one day, while in deep meditation, I had an extremely vivid vision that changed the path of my life forever.

This epiphany is described in detail in my “Salvia Diaries“ section of my Bodhi Blog, but the message was clear: I remembered, without question, who I was before I entered this fragile human frame.  From that moment on, I was moved to discover as much about my true nature, while seeking a way to help raise consciousness in relation to sacred plant teachers known as entheogens from that point on.  I touched the hand of the Divine; I met my own consciousness which stretched far beyond this human frame, and I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt, what Shamans, mystics, gurus, medicine men, Christian heretics, Sufis, and many others throughout history spoke of.  I come from the firm belief that Entheogens Are Far More Then Chemical Reactions, and the more research I do, the more connections I make, and the more time I spend working with my plant ally; Salvia divinorum, the more I am convinced that we all have the power to touch the hand of God within ourselves (See below for a short description.)

I wanted to see how many others knew of this incredible place that I called “The Void”.  I set up a beacon in the form of a forum with a simple intent: To find others who felt they had touched the hand of the Divine through the aid of plant teachers just as I had with Salvia divinorum.  Salvia is just one of many sacred plant allies (a term wonderfully explained in “The Teachings of Don Juan“ by Carlos Castaneda and described in detail in “The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants” by Christian Ratsch). The first tangible manifestation of this passion was the forum called “Entheology“; a term I made up for the study of entheogens from a religious and historical perspective.  It had a nice ring to it.

Although members varied greatly in their beliefs, one thing that always united us was the idea that no one has the right to limit the contents of our own minds.  Those who wish to have such freedom, no matter how responsibly, have been demonized by media hype, government propaganda, and narrow minds blindly following false facts to form irrational opinions.  Part of this surely is because of people like Timothy Leary who took it to an extreme, but there is a blanket, irrational fear against entheogens that existed long before he entered the scene.  When a forum chooses to discuss the exploration of consciousness through the use of teacher plants, there are the inevitable elements who try to infiltrate, disrupt, and “expose” members of the forums and their identities in hopes of destroying their lives.

The media has also done a stellar job of equating entheogens with the highly addictive illicit drugs that plague our society today.  Little could be further from the truth:  Entheogens have been used safely by mystics, shaman, and spiritual explorers for thousands of years and are responsible for virtually no deaths, unlike the vast number of deaths caused by the true villains of our society today as outlined in the “Annual Causes of Death in America“ chart, showing the true killers facing us today.   There truly is a vast chasm of difference between highly abused illicit drugs and the sacred plant medicine used for Divinatory purposes by Shamans, priests, and mystics like myself. See my ”Entheogens are NOT Drugs” article for details on this topic.

So, my mystical Bodhi-self became my layer of protection as I learned my place and how to navigate this unfamiliar territory that somehow felt like home to me.

My curiosity grew logarithmically, as did my research, and I saw the world and all its injustice in a way I never had before.  I saw governments and corporations destroying countless indigenous cultures throughout history and into the present (as seen in “The Charcoal People“ and countless other documentaries), blindly destroying generations of human knowledge right along with it.  The American Indians are an easy example, but they are simply part of a pattern that has existed throughout history.  The Mayans were an extraordinarily people with a highly advanced culture, but their entire written history was burned by a Christian missionary as punishment for the crime of not worshipping the God of the Bible.

I wanted to know why such a fear existed when it came to exploring our individual consciousnesses.  And as fear of the unknown advances at an alarming rate, sacred teaching plants are succumbing to the pressure of narrow minds and hypocrisy in degrees we have never known.  But there are many, including myself, doing their best to reverse this trend to restore teacher plants to their proper place in our mutual human history and our quest for god and the Divine.  Peering out from our forum, I was also deeply troubled by the way most vendors presented the entheogens and ethnobotanicals they offered and we talked about; they made references to similarities in effects of illegal drugs, they sold them as “party aids” or “happy pills”, which was completely destroying any chance of spreading the historical significance and importance of so many of these ancient and sacred Shamanistic plants.

In one response, I spent a determined 6 months perfecting extraction process to release and isolate key alkaloids from Salvia divinorum as a real alternative to the commercial, usually inactive crude extracts being peddled by vendors who cared far more about making money than offering genuine plant medicines.  Much to the anger of several key vendors at the time, I then offered my standardized Salvia extraction to members of my forum for free.  I wanted as many as possible to have the opportunity to learn about this teacher plant the way I knew it, while encouraging responsible use by any adult seeking out spiritual tools such as this one.

The idea went over far better than I ever imagined, and soon I couldn’t keep up with the demand.  It instantly catapulted my forum into the spotlight and everything seemed to explode overnight.  It quickly became too costly for me to offer my extracts for free, so I had to make a decision:  Should I offer my sacred plant ally for sale, in order to spread the word of this sacred plant to as many as possible, or, do I find a way to keep making it only for members of the forum, which was now over 1,000 members strong and still growing?

After much soul-searching, discussion, and debate, John Morley helped me to make the decision to offer my Salvia Extracts to a wider audience, and IAmShaman (in honor of Nisargadatta Maharaj’s “I AM THAT”) was born.  This meant was that I had to abandon my Church of the Divine Sage as well as my Entheology Forum, for the simple and unfortunate reason that discussing the use of Salvia was incompatible with offering it for sale in the United States.  The forum was my family in a lot of ways; I had forged deeply meaningful relationships that offered me guidance and support in ways I never knew, but I couldn’t deny the path that was laid out before me in such vivid detail.

And that decision was only the beginning:  I could then help get this plant and many others get into the mass consciousness, I could help to shape how the plant is presented, helping to spread the word that it’s a sacred plant teacher and NOT the latest “legal party drug” that unscrupulous vendors and the media would like to have us believe.  Once this vision got underway, I dreamt of helping to make a political difference in relation to entheogens and the perception of them just as M.A.P.S., the Council on Spiritual Practices, Drug Policy Alliance, and others are doing.  The possibilities seem endless.  As of this writing, we’re working on all those things as well as reviving the Salvia Defense Fund; something that died because of inadequate funding a while back.

So, the little money I made from the shop went right back into my still-growing shop as it still does.  It allowed me to invest in causes I believed in, into research for more plants, and it allowed me to start forging relationships with the indigenous cultures I longed to work with and protect, it allowed me to buy products directly from them, which, in turn, empowered them to save their land from the corporations trying to exploit it or the government trying to take it.  Our Peruvian Cooperative is perhaps my proudest example of my vision in action; a vision that would not be possible with every one of our 350,000 customers and counting, as well as others who have joined our fight against ignorance in relation to sacred plant medicines.

That desire has since expanded into far more than I ever imagined as explained in my Mission Statement, and it continues to expand and unfold before me to this day.  My websites grew as quickly as my passion, expanding to over 80, with thousands of products related to meditation, mysticism, and Shamanism, and over 1,000 personally authored articles acting as my memory banks for topics of Shamanism (Entheology.com), sacred botanicals (Shaman’s Garden), herbal supplements like Kava (Kona Kava Farm), as well as individual websites on individual entheogens such as Kanna (The Kanna Shop), Blue Lotus (The Lotus Shop), and many others.

Every chance I could get, I wrote another article, I researched plant after plant, I went to Shamanism conferences, spoke at Shamanism conferences, visited the jungles of the Amazon, the mountains of Peru, climbed to the top of Machu Picchu, and explored several other places where mysticism and Shamanic traditions still were an integral part of the culture.

In those travels, I met with Shamans, Witch Doctors, Curanderos, indigenous peoples, and small farmers, all who shared a common tradition of using Mother Nature and her vast storehouse of plants for everything from food, to medicine, to facilitating entrance into mystical realms that have the power to put one in direct contact with the Divine.  It made it even more apparent that our real-world ethnobotanical encyclopedia is disappearing at an alarming rate right along with indigenous peoples, and both are dire need of preserving and protecting.  My websites and shops are the vehicle to enable this work to happen, and customer helps our cause by simply making a purchase.  But we hope to also serve as inspiration in hopes that by shining as brightly as we can, it will encourage others to do the same.

Many have joined this fight, and it’s incredible to see the progress that is being made against the blind ignorance in this country.  Ayahuasca is now protected under the Freedom of religion Act and medical marijuana has been approved for use in multiple states, including Illinois.  Unfortunately, Illinois also blindly made Salvia divinorum illegal in January of 2008.  This sacred healing plant, used safely for thousands of years by the Mazatec Indians, is now a Schedule I drug in Illinois, right next to things like cocaine and heroin.  Preventing that kind of heinous legislation is only further inspiration for my fight. Salvia divinorum and all of the plant teachers are more sacred to me than any religion, and my freedom to work with the plant was taken away from me in the state I reside in as of this writing.  Perhaps this is why there’s such a blanket, irrational fear of entheogens; they may offer a more effective path to the Divine than the single-most effective control system in history; The Bible.

Instead of accepting defeat and just packing it in, though, I worked even harder to spread the word of as many Shamanistic plants as possible, finding new ways of using the massive voice that my network of websites have become.  We now get millions of visitors each year, and we have never strayed from our original philosophy of properly presenting these sacred plants responsibly, while offering the best customer service than anyone has ever offered, while using our profits for investing in saving this planet (we’re carbon neutral), encouraging research (see our $5,000 earth Grant for more), and getting the critically important message out about Shamanism.  And I can’t help feeling that this is still just the beginning of something far larger.

But, the louder we get in our vision and our mission, the more difficult the battle grows on all fronts, and the more blind rage is directed towards us for a ghost; a problem that is nothing more than the direct result of indoctrination, of fear of the unknown, of government propaganda, of the need to find a scapegoat and diversion from what the true villains of these modern times are.

Mine is a thankless venture, often wrought with more difficulty, danger, paperwork, and the constant attempt at derailment by the Federal Government, Homeland Security, Customs, the Post Office, pharmaceutical companies, the FDA and others, than I ever thought possible.  If I didn’t believe so deeply in my mission, there is no way I would go through the great effort to bring the entheogens and ethnobotanicals I believe so deeply in to the people who seek them out.  But an ever-increasing number of agencies and groups want to take the freedom to explore our own minds taken away from us, so a critical part of my personal battle is to do everything possible to make others aware of the vast difference between teaching plants and sacred botanicals used by spiritual explorers, Shamans, and mystics, and the illegal and/or addictive drugs that plague our society today.

Read “Entheogens Are NOT Drugs“ for a in-depth discussion of this critical issue.  Read my “Entheogens: More Than Chemical Reactions” for a more scientific description of the mechanism of entheogens (psychedelics) and how they physically affect our bodies.

And this is why there has been Keith Cleversley and Bodhi for several years.  It helped me to get my message out without any baggage or questions attached to it.  I didn’t have to be the producer of bands like the Flaming Lips who also happened to have a deeply-felt passion for teaching plants; I was simply Bodhi”¦the anonymous and passionate person who owns a number of websites devoted to changing attitudes, raising consciousness, and helping to offset government and corporate propaganda.  It also offered a layer of protection for those closest to me as I grew into my new clothing.  But, I’m comfortable in my clothes, and am even more passionate than ever about bringing as many natural tools for consciousness expansion to as many as possible.

Once I reveal these details about the double life I’ve been living, the most popular red herring; the blind, knee-jerk response to my words above is this; “If you’re not ashamed of what you do, then why do you feel the need to hide it?”  Ask any homosexual or pro choice activist that question (or even an atheist who George W. Bush feels shouldn’t even be counted as a citizen of the United States) and the answer is obvious.

And since my beliefs are based on something that is so intrinsically true for me, I shall remain long after people’s opinions and long after any hate mail and threats.  I have no choice but to trust that my path is unfolding just the way it was intended to, and with all that it has brought me and continues to bring me, I don’t question that my choices were wise ones.

As with the music I’ve made, I believe that the positive energy generated from this ongoing project will allow our customers to be inspired by it, to apply it in their life, or to put their own energy in the plant or seeds they have purchased, adding to the “ripple effect” and helping us all to retain the freedom to explore these plants, to explore the contents of our own minds, and respect each other a little more than we did before our paths crossed.

This project has since brought me things I never thought possible, it’s given me connections to people and the world in ways I had never imagined, and it has enabled me to do that which I have always dreamed most of doing.  I’m confident that I helped spread the word about the sacred teacher plant from Oaxaca, Mexico as effectively as I was able to while I was able to, and I can now only hope that others join us in preserving and spreading this sacred knowledge responsibly, realizing and understanding that we’re all actually on the same side, as we mutually forge ahead in an increasingly oppressive world.

MY BREAKTHROUGH EXPERIENCE IN A NUTSHELL:

I became the center of a consciousness that no longer had anything to do with my body except for my breathing. A vibrant, blissful energy engulfed every part of my body and being, melting it away, allowing my consciousness to unfold and expand into a place that felt like home; a place that had nothing whatsoever to do with the material world we know, but consisted only of unfolding layers of consciousness that unfolded deeper and deeper the more I relaxed, cleared my mind, and simply let go. It’s a vivid sensation of non-locality and constant expansion: I am all places at once and can see with eyes that have nothing to do with my physical eyes; a place of pure energy, flowing, unfolding, cascading, constantly moving, and all-enveloping. As fear creeps in because of my human frame, I have learned to embrace it, and I continue the unfolding into deeper and more expansive layers. Most recently, I could sense energies all around me that kept assuring me to not be afraid, assuring me that this is a good place, a beautiful, safe, loving place, a place that I have always known and have been a part of since the beginning of time.

This undeniably religious experience is one that I can repeat whenever I take the time and effort to enter a state of deep meditation. This sacred altered state of consciousness takes practice and discipline, but once I reach that place, I then ingest my personal sacrament of Salvia divinorum to instantly release me into the void; to that non-body state of pure energy, love, and joy that I know is my direct contact with the Divine, with my own Creator, with the origin of the Universe, and connection to the mass consciousness that we all belong to as human beings.

2 Responses to “Living This Double Life”