Ross Tayler: Hello, I'm Ross Tayler, your host and guide for Sacred Sundays, a space to slow down, tune in, and return to what's sacred within and around you. I'm also a life coach walking alongside those who are ready to come home to who they actually are. These conversations are part of fulfilling that purpose, a collective exploration of what it means to live in connection with the sacred. Some weeks you'll hear a sound-based offering to open the space. Other times we'll simply begin in conversation. As it unfolds, this is an invitation into presence, connection, and the beauty of the unseen. If these conversations find you, please subscribe, rate, and share so others can find their way here. Pour a cup of tea, settle in, and let's begin.

Ross Tayler: Today on Sacred Sundays, our guest is Mark Lewis. Mark is a good friend of mine. We've known each other for, I think, about ten years now. Mark and I used to sit in Men's Circle together. We've also facilitated Men's Circle together. We've sat in many medicine ceremonies over the years, and most recently I sat with Mark in an ayahuasca ceremony. Mark holds a very dear place in my heart. He is someone who has gone through his own rites of passage and really done the work in very deep ways, whether it be learning the processes of sweat lodge or going through other indigenous ceremonies that are very clear, powerful rites of passage that require years of commitment and years of hard work. The same goes for his relationship to plant medicines, how those came to be, and the work he did to share those medicines. I have a lot of respect for the way Mark has gone through those rites of passage and integrated and aligned with these medicines in order to bring them into the world in a good way.

Welcome, Mark, to the podcast. It's so good to have you here and to have this conversation. The other thing I want to add is that Mark was actually the impetus for Sacred Sundays. He was the one who planted the seed and said, "Hey Ross, what do you think about doing this twenty-minute podcast once a week on Sundays?" I think it was maybe once a month to start with, but it became weekly right away. So it was Mark's idea that made Sacred Sundays happen, and I'm forever grateful for that, because it was definitely a leap into something I might not have done without the prompt. So glad you're here, and thank you, Mark, for that inspiration.

Mark Lewis: Very welcome. It's a privilege to be here. It's interesting being on the other side of the podcast experience, being a guest. I'm happy to go along for the ride, and I'll let you take the lead. I'm so used to doing that. I'm happy to be on the show and happy to talk about these topics. I think they're really important. For me, the topic of ceremony and working in indigenous ceremonies as someone who's ostensibly, through a certain lens, a settler, is a big deal. It's not easy to navigate, and it hasn't been easy. To be honest with you, it's been eleven years of doing that work and being a part of that process and different ceremonies, different communities. And I haven't had a green light to share publicly a lot of the scenarios and stories and experiences that I've had. I'm not saying I'm going to be an open book, there will be discretion, but that light is now green. It's changed in my experience with the guidance of spirit, and I feel it in my heart. So I'm happy to go down that pathway if we're called to do that, in whatever way makes sense.

There's a song that I'm going to share, which is why I think it's a good fit. It's really a calling to be on your show. It wasn't because we're friends. It was because it was time, and it was time because I have something to share that I'm okay to share now, which is a song that has an indigenous origin. It's Shipibo in its origin, so it's different from the local traditions. With learning the songs, and where and how you share them, there's a lot of protocol that comes with that, and you learn it over time. With the Shipibo it's very different. You want to feel like the time's right, you want to feel the call, and you want to feel that green light very clearly, in my experience, out of respect for the sacredness of the origin of the songs. There's a sacredness to life too, so we want to be going with the rhythm of life in a good way. I just wanted to share that the time is now. There's a door that's been opening, and I'm beginning to walk through it with you, with one of my closest friends, somebody with whom I've created these expressions through the podcast, and we supported each other a little over a year ago. Now it's time for a new window to open.

Ross Tayler: Amazing. This song that we're going to listen to is for me, and it's part of an integration from the ceremony we did together.

Mark Lewis: That was the intention when I sang it. Just to be clear, with the Shipibo, there are exceptions, but generally you go into the jungle and work with somebody who's carried this tradition in a good way. The Icaros that are sung to people aren't rehearsed. The closest comparison I can think of in our culture is jazz, because you're not doing something that's been rehearsed. There's time to practice, to learn the language and the words, but when you enter the ceremony and you're aligned with the spirit of ayahuasca, you're channeling whatever's coming through in a co-creation. For me to do that outside of ceremony, where I don't have the assistance of the real maestro in the room, which is the spirit of ayahuasca, is a very different thing. You go by memory, but sometimes you can attune to the vibration. When I started, I did one recording and I didn't really attune to it. It was okay, it kind of sounded like the thing. But the second time I really felt I attuned to that vibration and that spirit. My mind is thinking of the words and what I'm saying, because I do have an intention, and the intention combined with that spirit and that vibration is really a collaboration of all those things. I just wanted to clarify that it was an intention, and I didn't know where I was going to go. I don't know the tune, because there are so many different expressions of the Icaros: the music, and the aspects of the song that come in and out as a pattern, like music does. You're jumping on your surfboard and riding the wave of whatever's coming through. The more you practice and work with that spirit, the better you get at riding the wave. I'm pretty early on, really, but I've been training, and training in a good way.

Ross Tayler: Before we play the song, one more thing to clarify for anyone who hasn't heard the term Icaros before. How would you define or explain that?

Mark Lewis: Icaros is Spanish for healing, I believe. It's specifically a healing song, a song designed for healing. We did a ceremony together, and I was able to sing you a couple of songs during that ceremony. There was intention, but there was also a spirit in the room that was very powerful in my experience, and a lot of guidance. I have some recollection of what those two songs were about. With that intention of summarizing it and giving you something tangible to work with, this song really is for you to listen to as many times as you want. By the end of it, I felt it did accomplish what I set out to do, which was to make a song that summarized and augmented the experience of that ceremony, and gives you something to tap into should you want to go deeper into it.

Ross Tayler: Amazing. I appreciate that with gratitude. Let's press play. I'm going to connect with my breath, close my eyes, and receive as we listen to this song.

[Icaro song plays, about six minutes]

Ross Tayler: Wow. That was an interesting journey, to hear the song without the medicine. It was also funny, because I remember after the ceremony making a comment to you about how you learned to sing these songs. I think that still comes through as a question, and it's probably a good one to talk about. But at the same time, I can feel a simplicity to the songs, and also a very powerful energy that comes with them. I can see how the medicine and the songs work so beautifully together. It's one of those things where my mind just has to take the back seat and receive. At some point my body took a bit of a downshift, and I was like, "Ahh," because it takes a while to slow down in our everyday. I kind of felt that. I appreciate being able to listen to it in this context, and to know I can re-listen to it and reconnect to the medicine. I did have an experience of reconnecting to the songs that were sung to me at the ceremony. There were certain words that I remembered, and I appreciate that recognition. So thank you for the gift, and for sharing it with me and the listeners. I think it's a very special experience.

Mark Lewis: You're very welcome. You never really know what's on the path, so when you get to share something that's been learned through a great deal of time, patience, adversity, and also blessings that have come through the process, you don't know when the green light will be. It feels really nice to be ready to share it without a lot of attachment, relatively speaking, because that's a big part of it too. If you think, "I want to share it," well, then you can't share, because you want to. You kind of outgrow that, not entirely but mostly, enough to have the humility that's needed to go with it, and then you share it. I'm really glad I was able to summon the energy. Like I said, that song is not something I can listen to or look at a song sheet for. The first version was very different, and I just wasn't tapped in. Then I was able to find another level of connection, and I was happy to share something that's quite authentic. When I listened back, I thought, "That's not quite the word I wanted there." When you're in the medicine, for me at least, it's like you're reading a teleprompter. I'm Dumbo without the feather when I do this and then share it. It's a metaphor that really works.

Ross Tayler: I'm curious why you think the green light is now. I felt there's an importance to asking that question. What makes it important to share this now?

Mark Lewis: I don't know. That's above my pay grade. It's just the timing. I just feel the energy of it. It's like a swell, like water beneath the surface that's been wanting to be released for quite some time, but you have to wait until it reaches the surface. You have to wait for Mother Earth and Father Sky. You need to follow their lead. So I can't really say why now. There's the synchronicity of having been on the path for eleven years. Two months ago was the eleven-year anniversary of the very first ceremony I did, and that lined up with being able to provide ceremony for people at the same time. One of the very first spiritual experiences that happened to me was 11:11, where I started to really understand that synchronicity existed. It was a great entry point. That never really ends. The human experience is a little baffling. I can't really say the present moment is any different than it was eight thousand years ago. The present moment is combined with our soul, at the intersection of soul and present moment, and then there's a collective. We can try to understand it, we can see the patterns and feel it in our heart, we see synchronicities and alignment, but it's above everyone's pay grade. Anyone who tells you different is lying, in this human realm. Unless you're the second coming of Christ, you're lying. A lot of people like to believe they're God, that they have the ability to be God because we're all God, but that begins to break down through a different lens. There's truth to that, but you have to hold the other lens, of it not being true, of there being humility, and of just being human being okay.

Ross Tayler: I definitely don't have the answer either. But it seems there's an importance to these medicines. I was recently listening to a podcast with Graham Hancock, who is a prolific person in terms of his perspective on the world. He looks at the history of different places and geography, and he tries to show a story that perhaps other scientists haven't seen. I share that because he did this interview because he's about to have heart surgery and thought he might not come out the other side, and there's a piece coming out that was basically not favorable towards him. He said, "I don't want that to be the last word on me." At the end of the interview, he spoke about ayahuasca specifically and how he had done it so many times throughout his life. He said, "If every politician were to sit in ceremony, we would be living in a different world." I thought that was quite powerful and important. It speaks to me about why this medicine and other medicines are important at this time. As he said, it helps accelerate our growth and where we can get to, and we need that more than ever if we're going to evolve.

Mark Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. For me, unequivocally and without question, the medicine is aligned with the love of creation, with the highest vibration of awareness, consciousness, and love. That is esoteric until you begin to discern the difference between light and dark, shadow and consciousness. Consciousness in its purest form is aligned with love. That doesn't mean you're the nice person who's doting and accommodating. If you're a politician in a place of power, you're going to experience adversity and have people who don't like you, even if you're aligned with a vibration, because it's so complicated. In my opinion, it's fully out of alignment to be the leader of a free world or the leader of an unfree world, whatever the position, because you're leading people you don't know. Until we have that type of leadership, with a broader council that doesn't impact our people unless our people choose for that impact to be felt, and this aligns with indigenous teachings but I would say with human teachings too, there may be exceptions, but I'm not sure there needs to be. The point is not creating a utopia, because I don't really know the building blocks necessary to create that experience of leadership being internal. What happens is you have elders, people you know, who look at you as an individual because that's how they've been groomed, through the medicine and the teachings. The medicine doesn't have to be plant medicine. There are other teachings. Fasting is a powerful medicine. If you put every leader in the world out to fast for four days, you'd have a much better world at the end of those four days, with people coming up with ideas. And fasting for four days is only a stepping stone, so then the question is how long it really takes us to get to that place. It's a beautiful notion, and I love that somebody in his position is saying something like that, because I think it's very valid. People need to cross thresholds that scare them, the things we're afraid to lose. We need to face those fears, understand them, deconstruct them, and lose them in order to rebuild something more heart-centered and more centered in humility. There are lots of fundamentals around that, and it's really obvious, but how do we actually get there as a planet? The present moment isn't any different now than it was eighty thousand years ago, or in the eighties when rock and roll was at its worst and in some ways at its best. The present moment is this ever-present thing that we connect to as individuals, so the global problems have to be put into perspective from the point of view of the individual.

Ross Tayler: I like what you said about leadership being internal. That makes me think of so many things. I believe that as a culture we tend to focus outwards so much. We give our authority outward to systems and people, and we're losing connection with ourselves, with the inner part of us that knows the direction we're meant to be going. It also makes me think about the plant medicine I've intentionally used. I always get shown the duality, the dark and the light, and the beauty in that, and how both are so necessary to have a deeper understanding. Sometimes the struggle we go through can become the greatest gift once we get there and realize it, but when we're in it, it's really hard. Medicine journeys mirror that in some ways. Sometimes it's really hard to drop into the medicine and let go. When I first did plant medicine, the hardest part was letting go of my ego and surrendering. All of that is such a powerful metaphor for what we can do in our everyday life.

Mark Lewis: Exactly. When we talk about the global stuff, it's relevant, but the emphasis really does have to be on what you just said: our own journey, our own experience. If I'm distracted and not in my heart, not in my body, things come up to remind me, whether I bump my head or have an argument with my partner, whatever is lurking and ready to remind me that this is a heart-centered journey and I need to be taking it from that feeling perspective. If that's the fundamental, everything else becomes secondary. It has to. Looking at the world and how difficult it is, how bad a place we're all in, if we get into a fixing energy that is no longer aligned with our heart, then what are we really doing? That's such an important question for everybody who is seemingly part of the solution: what's the energy behind it? What are the things in the present moment reminding us, through the adversity we're experiencing, that we're not in our heart? Gently, or not so gently, reminding us to come back to our priorities, back to our body, back to the connection we feel with the people closest to us, the families, the building blocks of family, community, and culture. It's looking from the inside out, leading from within. When I said that, it didn't occur to me that I was saying two things at once: leading from within ourselves, and leading from within our community. It can grow, but you have to nurture the seed first. The seed, the smallest and most vulnerable aspect of life, has to be the priority. And the medicine teaches me that every time. If I go in there with any shadow, I don't have any issue. I start to feel things are going a little too well in the relationship, or that person perceives me to be this or that, and I feel these very human reactions, whether it's oxytocin or whatever, our body and brain resisting, releasing in order to feel calm in the situation, whatever the Darwinian perspective might be. All of that's fine. It's okay to feel that comfort, even a sense of pride. But the medicine cleans that thoroughly every single time I go back, and I'm grateful for it, because I don't want to rely on something that's no longer real. Whatever that achievement was, it's fine to bask in it for a period of time, but you want to feel it and let it go. You don't want to hang on to it and store it in some part of your body as what is really stored trauma, even though it's something good that happened. If you're not willing to let go of it, it becomes a blockage of energy, of the present moment, of your heart, of what's true and aligned in the here and now. It'll get in the way of your relationships and your ability to care, even if it's the greatest thing that ever happened to you. It's stored emotion, so we have to be on our toes.

Ross Tayler: That's the thing, bringing these teachings and experiences into our everyday and integrating them. I had a moment just this week where a situation happened, there was communication, and I just felt deflated. I went quiet, and I could very quickly realize what it was. It was the same old pattern that's played out for so many years. I was aware of it, and I could immediately pinpoint it: this is the energy that reminds me of my mother, and here it is again. I still spoke my truth, and I did it calmly. Years ago I would have been much more reactive. It still didn't feel good, and I walked away from the situation. One of the other people who was there walked up to me and said, "Ross, are you okay? It seemed like something happened there for you, and I just wanted to check in." I got to say to this person, "Wow, thank you for checking in. Thank you for noticing, because that was actually the medicine. That was the thing that was missing." It was real-time healing that happened very quickly, without the guilt and shame, because I didn't react. I just noticed. That's what we're being asked to do in our everyday lives. We're still here having this human experience, trying to remember these teachings and ways of being. What would you add to that?

Mark Lewis: There's a book called The Presence Process that you know about. It often talks about the negative things that will happen in the present moment to remind us we're not in the present moment, whether it's a trigger or bumping into something or stubbing your toe. But what you just described is the present moment doing the opposite. You remained in the present moment through the adversity, and you needed a little bit of support, and in comes the wing of spirit, just to give you a little extra support and acknowledgement: you're doing it. It's not easy, but you're doing it. That's the spiritual lens, I guess, seeing things through the glass lightly, not darkly. I used to be obsessed with the cinema of Ingmar Bergman, and boy, that guy was cynical. A lot of those guys were the intellectuals of that era, super smart, but almost caught in their own labyrinth of self-deprecation and negativity. There are always different paradigms, different ways to look at things. But to address it from our heart and from what's real, sometimes we're going to get into challenging situations, but it doesn't mean we need to look at it through a glass darkly.

Ross Tayler: I want to bring up something that I think you're going to laugh at. I did a podcast interview this morning, and that person said something you said in our ceremony on day one. You worded it a little differently, but the theme is the same: this idea of shining our light and letting our light shine. When this person brought it up, I laughed, because here's this theme. I would love to hear you speak to it, because this idea of shining our light brightly is so important, and there was an element you shared about voice as well. I do believe we're all here to be ourselves in the simplest form, to let the distortion fall away and whatever's left be that. But I'd love to hear from you. What would you say about shining your light? And if you want to tweak that phrase, please do.

Mark Lewis: For me, it's actually not perfectly clear what that means, if I'm being honest, but it is something to strive for. It means striving through the heart to do what you did in that situation you described: to ignore the distortion, the cortisol, the different things that come up in the form of adversity, trying to keep the heart closed or repress our voice. That can be the nervous system reacting to a situation, but the nervous system is attuned to traumatizing experiences from a time we don't even remember. Mostly, I would say, the first seven years of our lives form so much of the framework of who we are, how we express ourselves, and how we identify ourselves in the world as good enough or not good enough. It's a combination of being authentic and channeling your highest self, channeling the love of God, the light of God, the voice of God, without making it conceptual, because as soon as you turn it into something conceptual in your mind, you're no longer doing it. It's a practice of being very nurturing and kind to your nervous system, giving yourself space within the context of your life. Even if your partner needs you or your children need you, that might come first sometimes, but it can't come first all the time. It's all these fundamentals, and yet it's something else. It's being centered, but not being stoic because that's what we think we should be. Not being a spiritual person, or grounded, because that's what's expected from some perception outside ourselves, even though it feels internal. It's a very fine line, in my experience, knowing the difference by not being special. We know the teaching that we're not special, but we also need to know what it means to choose not to be special, because what's special about us doesn't need to be seen, because it's personal. That's true in some cases, but there are other cases where we're actually protecting ourselves from being vulnerable. In my experience, these teachings go very deep, even into some of the most experienced spiritual practitioners on this planet. There's still a striving to turn the sacred into something private all the time, as opposed to allowing it to shine through in a way that's authentic. It's a razor's edge of discernment, until it's not anymore, until you're so aligned with your heart and trusting of your heart in the present moment that you're okay not talking for ten days and you're okay talking for ten days, whatever feels right, without scrutinizing it, without being concerned about whether it's on social media or not. There's a level of being upwardly mobile in an authentic way, which is a very high bar in my experience. It's very difficult to achieve that level of beingness. To shine is such a beautiful thing. When I'm in my heart, I feel the energy of it and I feel more alive, and I realize the artifice, the untruth, of there being rules to being spiritual.

Ross Tayler: I really think it's more about beingness than it is about what we do, and that's where we get caught up in these questions. It's like, "What do I need to do to shine my light?" But it's really about being in alignment with your inner truth and just unapologetically being you without the distortion. Last night I was facilitating a circle. Actually, it was more of a triangle. There was this sharing that occurred, and I spoke, and I could just feel the peace in it all. It was effortless. It was me not judging myself and not trying. I think my higher self was able to just speak cleanly. I've had those moments before, but in the context of what we're talking about, I can reflect back and say, yeah, it's that.

Mark Lewis: A hundred percent. To speak about shining is really just to say, let's do what you just said and do it a little bit more. What's the next level of achieving that? Whatever that is for an individual, it's going to be different for everybody. It's not about comparison. It's the opposite of comparison. There's no hierarchy around shining, around being authentic and being in our light. For me, it's come up really significantly in the last month, and it came up at the men's retreat. So it's also about timing. We can't begin our path and think we're going to be shining at the highest level overnight. It doesn't work that way. There has to be a relationship with spirit, with our spirit, with our heart, that has to be cultivated and tended to. There has to be maturation and responsibility. But who am I to tell anybody else what it means to shine? All I can do is be in that headspace, which is to bring a positive energy, love, and light into my day as much as I can, to be channeling that without overthinking it, or if I do think about it, to get out of my head as quickly as possible and into my body. Then I'm prepared to have boundaries when I need to, with people who think they're shining but aren't, or who aren't even bothering to shine and just want to channel whatever's going on in their body and their life in your direction. That might be somebody coming for help in a sincere way, and I still have to be mindful of boundaries and know when I need to walk away from that work, that support, to recharge for myself. So there are lots of different aspects. It's acrobatics all over the place.

Ross Tayler: The journey of life.

Mark Lewis: The journey of life, and less and less acrobatics the more you do it, because you realize it was all an illusion.

Ross Tayler: I wanted to quickly flag something that I noticed. I wish I could remember the other one, because you and I had a conversation where you brought up the eleven years and 11:11. I saw something the other day that said there's another eleven in your life, but I can't remember what it is right now. I wanted to flag that today is 9/11, a number I see often, and this episode is scheduled to be published on 10/11. So there's eleven again, twice, which I thought was interesting.

Mark Lewis: Nice. It's reframing.

Ross Tayler: The other question I wanted to ask is this. You've experienced your eleven-year journey with this medicine, and I've asked you some questions, but what is it that you want people to know about these medicines, about ceremony? What is really important to be said?

Mark Lewis: That's a really good question, and I think every practitioner has to grapple with it. When I finally arrive at a ceremony, after the organization and getting the word out to the people, it's always the right people who show up. The synchronicities are just endless. Did I have to do anything? Yes, I played a part in getting the people here who were meant to be here, who were called to be here. But I really didn't need to be concerned at any point. There's always a bit of concern, because through spirit you often get tested. The right people don't show up until the eleventh hour, and it's like, how did that all come together just in time? It was actually just to make me crawl out of my skin, worrying that I'd have to cancel the ceremony for the people who had signed up. There's the wanting to succeed, to do something good, for external approval, and all of that has to get clean and get tested. It's a really beautiful path, but a really difficult one. I look at other people too, and everyone has their challenges, so I don't really know how to compare them. But it is trying, in order to stay centered. Going back to your question, I don't really know if there's anything to say other than to listen to your heart. For me, I'm really close with the spirit of ayahuasca, and from my point of view she's very safe. Ayahuasca may not be for everyone, but she is for anyone. What does that mean? If it's someone with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia who's heard they can't do ayahuasca, I'm saying she's for anyone, I think, under certain circumstances, with the right practitioner, the right support, and the right intention. It could be that a person who feels called but can't go there because of certain dangers, due to whatever condition they might have, doesn't drink the medicine. For years that was the case. Only the shaman drank the medicine. Whether he sat alone or with the people, as the stories go, the people of his village didn't drink, and he was still able to do energetic work for the village, for himself, for his family, for the people of the community. I'm seeing more and more evidence of that all the time. This is a spirit that's aligned with the love of God, unequivocally. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind or body or heart or soul of the truth of that, as neutral as the spirit of ayahuasca may appear to be. To some people, creation also appears to be neutral, so neutral that we have to make up ideas about it: don't go over there because that's bad and not aligned with God, come over here, I have the answers that will keep you safe, and by the way, we're going to pass around the tip jar, or whatever it is that creates the power structures. All of a sudden the human aspects and the darkness have entered the church, all because we said the darkness we see out there isn't affiliated with our church, with God. No, God is everything, everywhere, all at once. That's how powerful he or she is. The spirit of ayahuasca is attuned to that. It has that same texture where you can look into the dark and you can look into the light. But the healing is happening whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not. Even with practitioners who have the darkest of agendas, who practice sorcery and attack other villages or other shamans, and it seems nefarious, they're all light workers. It just depends on our perspective, and we have to be very careful not to align with the darkness out of fear, out of ego, out of lust, out of longing to be something. Maybe through the light of God it seems like we're not going to get what we want, but if we align with this person over here, for twenty-five thousand dollars they can give us what we want. So we go down that path, and now we're of service to the dark, but it's still under the same altar. It also needs to be cleaned and has no place in my ceremony, and we work on that. That's a very important part of the lineage, with Ricardo [Emeringo?] and the [Niwe Rao?] lineage. He's very aligned with ayahuasca in the light of God, unequivocally. He's human and he makes mistakes, but he has a beautiful soul and a beautiful heart. I see that, and I test him all the time. I'm not an easy student to have. By virtue of the fact that I show up in a way that I'm guided, and for whatever reason the guides have made me a difficult student, at the pace I'm working through the different rites of passage and diets and the challenges the medicine tests other individuals with, I see people failing that test left, right, and center, but not my teacher. He looks at it, and you can see that it's unexpected. Instead of feeling fear, or not feeling safe about something that's not normal, he smiles. He gets this big, mischievous grin on his face, like, "Whoa, what's this? This is exciting, this is new." He enjoys that aspect of life, the light in the challenge.

Ross Tayler: Humility is really important, isn't it, in terms of growth?

Mark Lewis: Yeah, exactly.

Ross Tayler: I had a moment of humility the other day. Someone came to buy something where I work, a table from Facebook Marketplace, and they drove up in a very small car, and my head said, "This isn't going to fit in that car." The woman said, "Yes, it is. I know my car." Sure enough, she made it fit. Immediately I said, "I'm corrected. I was wrong. You were right." And she said, "What? What are those words you just spoke?" I said, "You were right." It was an interesting moment, because I was humbled. But I think being humbled, either by the medicine or by being able to show our humility, is a powerful expression of the work we've done.

Mark Lewis: Yeah, and all you're doing is naming what's true, what's factual. People pervasively seem to think that what's factual is dangerous, so they have to invent stories for themselves and others that make them feel safe. When we understand that it's all held in love, there's absolutely nothing factual that's not of service to the greater good. It's the avoidance of what's factual, believing it's not of service to our good, that gets us into trouble. If we really went with what's factual, there would be a lot more handshakes, a lot more discernment, and a lot more letting go of concern about finances and the gross domestic product, and about what will happen if the voters don't vote for me. Then it becomes a whole other matrix. That's what it is, a matrix of the mind.

Ross Tayler: So Mark, the biggest challenge on this podcast is having to press pause on the conversation, because I think it's important to create episodes that are digestible, and there are many questions that have been left unanswered. But we can always do part two. So I'm going to pause here and close with a question I always ask at the end: what is one simple way someone could connect with the sacred today?

Mark Lewis: Having been through many very difficult ceremonies and rites of passage, I still come back to my breath. I'm sure I'm not the first person to say that, but in my experience it's the most important aspect of being human: a relationship with the breath. It's like a spiritual anchor. Focusing on the breath, whatever decision or choice needs to be made in the moment, brings us back to the present moment. My nervous system gets regulated through the breath, and the medicine has taught me that over and over again. It reminds me of the importance of breath and the importance of prayer, and the connection of those two, being attuned to my breath when I pray.

Ross Tayler: I really appreciate that. Others may have said that, but no one said it like you did.

Mark Lewis: Thanks, Ross.

Ross Tayler: Mark, thank you so much for making the time for this conversation. I think it was long overdue, and the timing is perfect. I can feel and sense that for many reasons. As I said at the beginning, I respect the work you're doing in the world and the work you've done to bring it out into the world, and I think it shows in the conversation we just had. Where can people find out more about you and your offerings?

Mark Lewis: We have a retreat in the Yucatan starting in January, January 4th, and we're going to be doing them weekly for eleven weeks. Our website is poponiwe.com, and that tells you all the information you need if you're called to do this work in a good way. There can be challenges, but in my experience good things are happening. In your song, Ross, there's a name, [Soicano?], which to me, loosely, I define as the divine feminine. There's also the voice of the grandmothers, [Ianbo?], which also came into your song. These are the grandmothers, the divine feminine spirits, not all women, not all human. It's a whole orchestration of unique celestial beings who are supporting us, and they're very present in these ceremonies and very aligned with what we're doing. My co-creator Tara is in that space too. It's not as hard as it once was. That's not a rule of thumb, and I'm not going to write that down and sign my name beside it, but that's what I'm noticing. There's more happening for people, more growth happening, and it's not coming as difficult as it once was through the medicine of ayahuasca.

Ross Tayler: Thank you, Mark. I'll make sure those links are in the show notes, including your Instagram link.

Mark Lewis: Great. Thank you.

Ross Tayler: Awesome. You're welcome. Thanks again for being here.

Mark Lewis: My pleasure. I love you.

Ross Tayler: I love you too, brother.

Mark Lewis: I almost didn't say that, and then I wouldn't have been in all the alignment we've been talking about today. There's still some vulnerability around sharing those feelings when they come up authentically, especially. I can say it from a place of subtle expectation or just being affable, but when it comes to the heart, there's vulnerability that comes with that.

Ross Tayler: What a beautiful way to close. Thank you.

Mark Lewis: Okay, man. Talk to you later. Like tomorrow, probably.

Ross Tayler: Thank you for joining us on Sacred Sundays. I hope something in today's offering spoke to your spirit, stirred something true, or simply gave you a moment to breathe. If this conversation resonated, please subscribe, rate, or share. It truly helps this work reach the people who are meant to find it. Until next time, may your day be slow and sacred.