Who Am I?
Depending on the reference point, each of us can be many things to different people. I am no different.
I will share what I perceive about myself, some key elements of my personal story, and why I decide to show up daily to the work I do.
At a core level, I experience myself, not just as an individual node of consciousness shaped in part by my experiences, but also as an open-ended ecosystem in relationship to other ecosystems (nature, others, animals, spirits, primal forces). In this way, I am more than my body/mind, and my body/mind is more than me.
My name is Ramon Castellanos. I also possess a few other names given to me during initiatory experiences.
My life has been a whirlwind.
At the core of medicine is “to liberate” - to increase the amount of freedom and choice, while unlocking the blockages stifling the flow.
I am human first, but my heritage is Cuban.
I was raised by my grandmother, who was a practicing medicine woman and Bruja.
I am married to, and still deeply in love with, my high school sweetheart.
I love trees, turtles, bodies of water, good novels, anime, nature, and learning new things.
I am disciplined, but love variety - I am a pragmatic artist.
I deeply value a life dedicated to health (wholeness) at all layers of our being.
I am playful and have a childish sense of humor. I love to laugh!
I am also serious about the important stuff and often like to get down to business.
In general, I am rebellious, and do not really let people tell me what to do.
Put in the work. Everything has a price. The question is: is it worth the reward?
Health ally, surfer of ancestral currents, practitioner, and author.
I apprehend a radical difference between fate and destiny, and it is something I am deeply interested in helping people know for themselves. I think this polarity is one of the most important we can engage with as humans.
Fate: An unconscious, sleepwalking-level acceptance of the circumstances you have been given, much like a spinning top that was wound up and released into the world. Stepping into the shoes laid out for you by others, families, base impulses, institutions, and religions. Being “fated”…
Destiny: An active process of engagement with circumstances you have been given, in perpetual devotion to aligning the deepest layers of your self with the gifts, callings, and truest desires of your soul. To live life consciously. To mine for gold in the caves and darkness. To crack ourselves open, over and over again, even as the world attempts to shut us down. To find and follow our north star.
This understanding has probably kept me alive at times.
For whatever reason, I have had a life characterized by intense initiatory experiences that have taken me off the beaten path, and have taken me to the brink of death multiple times.
I was initiated into a deeply magical, indigenous tradition that emerged out of the African diaspora when I was just an infant:
These initiations are very serious, require massive amounts of ritual work, and take a whole year of a person’s life. Initiation at such a young age is not a common occurrence, but I am told it was done in order to save my life from an early death. How such intense magical work impacted my delicate nervous system and shaped my early experience, is still a mystery to me. I grew up learning to express myself through indigenously influenced forms of magic, divination, and communion with spirits.
Due to an odd turn of events that literally came with a threat to my life, and some unexpected sudden changes, my wife moved in with me and my family when I was just 15 years old.
In essence, have been married since I was a teenager. My wife and I have grown up together and have helped shaped one another.
When I was 17, I experienced a massive, terrible, and deeply disruptive Kundalini awakening, which led to chi sickness/kundalini syndrome/dragon sickness for over a decade.
Kundalini syndrome is basically a set of interconnected, physiological, emotional, psychic, and spiritual phenomena characterized by disruption, discomfort, intensity, pain, numbness, strong seizure-like activity; and a sink-or-swim initiation that either destroys you or builds you anew. Mine nearly killed me. At the time, I was in college and had to drop out due to the sheer intensity of the experience.
My wife and I have been on our own since we were 18 years old.
There was no reprieve despite my challenges with kundalini. I grew up early. I had a job, an apartment, and the responsibilities of an adult as soon as possible.
I was initiated into “adulthood” while living and working in the wilderness, at a wolf sanctuary; I did so for about a decade.
Here, I battled the elements, learned directly from wild animals, connected deeper to my own wild core, performed over 200 animal captures, and was cracked open more times than I can count. I also grew deeply sick.
Even while sick, and struggling to survive…..I was initiated into “Becoming Magic” by a true powerhouse of a magician deeply trained in indigenous traditions; began studying to become a Kundalini Awakening Process Instructor; was attacked by land spirits; and helped raise a baby wolf.
It was here that some of my most profound lessons in what real magic and energy work is occurred. This period of my life has been perhaps the hardest.
I know what it is like to have your health completely fall apart.
Although it does not appear this way to most people, I was born with a flat pituitary gland which delayed the onset of puberty. So when I was 13 years old, I had to have testosterone replacement therapy just to jumpstart it.
Yet, the true illness came after years at the wolf sanctuary. The stress of the wilderness, intense physical labor, kundalini syndrome, deep emotional wounds, spiritual attack, and my congenitally flat pituitary gland crushed me. A cluster of symptoms characterized by extreme shutdown began: a mild form of heart failure, severe palpitations, severe insomnia, fucked gut health, tooth decay, low energy, joint pain, and more…..this was on top of having a “good diet”, “exercising”, and practicing “good sleep hygiene”. It did not matter.
Life felt listless, harsh, brutal, meaningless, and empty…..
I felt like Saturn (the planet of limitations, challenges, adversity, and loss; known for eating his children) was consuming my soul.
Yet, the gift of Saturn’s intense treatment is often mastery, skill, depth, and full commitment.
Returning to health took everything I had on every level. It was a choice of becoming fully alive, or die trying. A full commitment to health and to myself. indeed.
I put everything on the line, took a huge leap of faith, left the sanctuary, and moved to Hawai’i with no concrete plan/job/home. I love the ocean and the tropics, and I knew nothing but full commitment would let me restore my health, sense of aliveness, and love for life once again.
I believe in the power of:
Hope…Courage…Faith…Skill Development…Commitment… and the ability for our being to return to a state of health, even in some of the most challenging circumstances. It is not always easy, but learning to find ease is a gift we can give ourselves.
I hold that we can, often, radically change the circumstances we find ourselves in; that identity is highly malleable; and that you/we are so much more than most of us realize.
I went from being a really fearful and anxious little boy… having crushing anxiety by being left alone during my first days of pre-school and kindergarten, and being bullied as a kid - to propelling down the side of a cliff to rescue an animal in need.
I am a devoted husband. My relationship is perhaps one of the most meaningful aspects of my life - as both a sanctuary and a crucible. For me, the relationship is a garden, ripe for growth, and an outlet for the expression of my deeply erotic and sexual nature.
In my experience, the challenges and rewards of relationships and conscious/present sexuality are some of the most potent forces for wholeness and liberation.
To be fully present with eroticism is to be fully present with both life and death.
The modern world has deeply stifled our full sexual potential through a lack of sexual education, the deadening of our nervous system, the suppression of hormonal vitality, the imposition of religious idealizations, and mountains of ancestral karmic guilt/shame/shutdown from the last few thousand years.
I have been involved in “ancestral/primal” movements since I was a teenager. An article I read on “Paleolithic diets” completely changed my life. This led to my multi-decade devotion to understanding how the ancestral moves through us, here and now. It has been an underlying thread that has been with me through all the challenges. It has supported me through. It has carried me through.
It shows up in how we:
Eat…Move…Make Love…Fear…Relate…Perceive…Marry…Bond…Exert Power…Pray…Fight…Magic…Inhabit Nature…
And most importantly, how we share this ancestry with the rest of life on this planet. Ancestry extends beyond life itself to the elements, stars, myths, and beyond - all the way back to God…the first ancestor.
I am a student of the ancestral, wildness, freedom, aliveness, and sovereignty; and what those qualities look like in the 21st century.
I am deeply interested in ancestral magic, and I am currently in the process of creating a form of internal alchemy working in concert with ancestral forces/spirits called ‘Ancestral Alchemy’. This alchemy emerges from the intersection of ‘Primordial Alchemy’ and ancestor work.
I have a deep love for my ancestors; especially my hunter-gatherer ancestors, the medicine people in my lineage, and the sex-loving and freedom-loving allies of my line.
A special thanks to my teachers
The Ancestors…
The Ifa and Orisa Tradition…
My Grandmother (my first magic teacher)….
Mushtaq Ali Al Ansari…
Fabeku Fatumise…
Tao Semko…
Dr. Craig Wells, D.O. …
Leyton J. Cougar…
Richard Clear…
Quotes That Deeply Move Me
“We see consciousness work as the most radical form of social activism, for only through the evolution and transformation of individuals can collective consciousness rise.” - Brandt Cortright
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive.” - Tupac Shakur
“It is only with time and an erotic merging of the land and ourselves over many seasons that we can experience something real and profound.” - Britton Boyd
“When death finds you, may it find you alive.” - African Proverb
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” - Frederick Buechner
“Disobedience is an act of spiritual hygiene.” - Mushtaq Ali Al Ansari