3000 Nights
Receiving a Mystery Gift in Oaxaca, Mexico
By Hillary Keeney
Every October, we build a new reality. This annual construction project began a little over eight years ago when Brad and I launched the Sacred Ecstatics Guild. We say “guild” because mystical living is a creative art and hallowed skill. It must be grown, nurtured, and cultivated. So together every year we gather online to construct fresh roly-poly worlds, weave irreverent metaphors into unexpected chains of reverence, stir up the life force in our bodies, perform uncommon numinous experiments, make visionary folk art, tease rather than ease our trickster minds, and practice robust ecstatic spiritual engineering, among other pursuits. Perhaps most importantly, we devote ourselves to the ongoing craft of softening the heart to be pierced by arrows of sacred emotion.
Since we started in 2014, Brad and I have dreamed the new themes, teachings, practices, stories, songs, movements, symbols, and rituals that surprise and comprise each year’s adventure. The further along we travel into the Guild season, the more challenging it is to share publicly what’s taking place. It’s like plunking you into the middle of a twelve-act play or epic novel, or dropping you into the middle of a dream. Our outskirts “inside vocabulary” builds quickly. Ask a Guild member what it is we’ve been doing so far this season and they might answer, “Melting the ice and softening the rice!” Another might say, “learning to tremble like autumn leaves.” And most of us would joyfully shout, “Mezcal, that’s all!”
But it’s only November, still early in the dawn of our new world. So I’m going to tell you something of our adventure thus far. Pack your spiritual suitcase—we’re headed to Oaxaca, Mexico.
Many years ago, Brad was in Oaxaca meeting with traditional healers in various towns and villages. (This was real life, not a dream). He spent the day with the leading curandero whom other healers personally went to for help. This man made a surprising recommendation—take Brad to meet the head priest at one of the Roman Catholic churches in the city.
The next day an examination was arranged at Templo de San Felipe Neri. They seated Brad in the front pew while the priest and his colleagues questioned him for hours. Brad prayed and sang inside himself to calm his nerves. At one point the men left the room to confer with one another. Upon their return, the head priest declared:
After praying about these things, I am certain that I know what you are. You are a prophet like the prophets of the Old Testament. We give you our blessing and pray that you continue following God’s calling for your life. May this be a blessing to others as it has been to us today.
Brad was shocked, having assumed he was more likely going to be deemed a witch. Afterward, he joked that he had been named the Tequila Prophet of Mexico. Brad later reflected on the story:
It was too much to take too seriously, and a bit of absurdity helped my humanity reckon with something much bigger than my capacity to understand. If pressed to say what I thought had taken place, I would say that others could simply discern that I was not alone. The numinous light I had received when I was 19 was around me, beside me, and inside my heart. This was my biggest truth, and others who carried that light could see it.1
Many years later, Brad and I were regularly conducting creative therapy workshops in Mexico, doing our best to dismantle the iatrogenic tenets of psychology and psychiatric diagnosis. We do this by conducting live sessions in front of the audience and then discussing them afterward, keeping abstract theoretical exposition to a minimum (to spare the audience, mainly). But also because we regard therapy/healing/coaching/whatever as an improvisational performing art. (Read all about that here.)
Somewhere along the way we started ending our workshops with a collective rallying cry, “Mezcaaaaaaal! That’s aaaaaaall!” Of course, “mezcal, that’s all” only rhymes in English. Nevertheless, our Mexican friends and colleagues began gifting us with bottles of mezcal, and Brad and I became Co-Prophets and Co-Presidents of the “Mezcal, that’s All” Association of Mexico.
Mezcal-that’s-all was thus initially born as a metaphor for embracing the big room of mystery and conjuring soul-lifting creativity among people-helpers, including those who address a lot of impossible suffering every day.
Here we are with some of our colleagues:
And here we are a little later that same evening:
The reason I’m telling you this story is because last summer, Brad dreamed he was back in Oaxaca in the same church, greeted again by the same priest:
This time Hillary was by my side and the entire Guild was sitting in the pews behind us to witness what would take place. It felt like another assessment had been made since my last visit. This time the priest was holding a rectangular object, and as he came nearer it was clear that he was giving us a gift. To our surprise the object was a license plate with the number 3000 on it. Upon closer examination, there were two letters in front of that number – “RV.” But the number “3000” was more dominant and its vibrant radiance shook me in the dream. As I slowly came out of the dream, I wondered whether this was our latest ticket of admission and license to drive the spiritual highways for our upcoming Guild season.
I laughed because the letters “RV” are the initials of “recreational vehicle,” though we pronounce it re-creational vehicle. Our favorite recreation is re-creation, traveling to the spiritual classrooms to receive marching orders for the ongoing re-creation of Sacred Ecstatics. “RV” are also the initials of Hillary’s Buddhist name, “Radiant Vow,” granted to her by her former Zen teacher. Whenever she has Buddhist-themed dreams, I often call her “RV” (and so did many people at the Zen Center of Los Angeles where she was named.)
In the dream and afterward, I was clueless as to what “3000” meant. Yet it was the most potent message of the dream. The next morning I googled “Oaxaca 3000” and the first result led me to a mezcal distillery in the Oaxacan countryside. This reminded me that my former evaluation at the church in the city had been preceded by a visit to a small village. Local curanderos took me there because they wanted me to meet their strongest healer and spiritual advisor. Again, it was that man who conducted the traditional diagnostic rituals to conclude that I must be taken to meet the senior priest in the city.
The full name of the mezcal brand is “Mezcal Ancestral 3000 Noches.” Its name refers to the number of nights it takes for some species of agave or maguey to mature before being made into mezcal. 3000 nights corresponds to about eight years, and we soon realized that Brad’s vision came just a few weeks after we had finished our eighth year of hosting the Guild. We, like the agave plants, had reached a maximal point of maturity. Our work had ripened, and us along with it. We knew it was now time to distill Sacred Ecstatics into a more concentrated form and serve its special spirit to others.
Brad and I, along with the Guild, are still discovering all the rippling implications of this visionary directive.
We knew right away, however, that it was time for mezcal, that’s all to return in full force. That line was born among border-crossing therapists longing to awaken our healing hearts. And now after several years it has matured, ready to be harvested and distilled into a more concentrated form.
During the first weekend of the Guild season this October, we each made an RV 3000 license plate and placed it under our mattresses. Why? Because it’s a license to travel the visionary dream highways in our re-creational vehicle. Before going to sleep each night we remind ourselves aloud of our mission this season and ‘til the end of time: “I am here to become mezcal, that’s all.”
What is mezcal? Mezcal is concentrated spirit. Mezcal is also seiki, the Japanese word for the vital life force that makes the body move. Mezcal is n/om, the Kalahari Bushman name for the vibratory energy of creation that heals and cooks the soul. Mezcal is the holy spirit, the liquid light that pours from the healing fountain of extreme love. Mezcal is also the potion of sacred emotion, the divine elixir that feels like fire-water as it ignites the heart and quenches all spiritual thirst. We are here to produce mezcal, to drink mezcal, to dream mezcal. More than anything, we’re here on earth to become mezcal, that’s all.
Brad and I discovered that the steps of mezcal production correspond beautifully to the process of ecstatic spiritual transformation. I’ll share more of that with you soon. For now, I invite you to let this potent prayer line bring welcome distillation and concentration to your life, as it has to ours: I am here to become mezcal, that’s all. Feel free to make your own RV 3000 license plate and slip it under your mattress.
We’ll see you on the visionary highways of the Oaxacan dreamscape on the other side. They will lead us to the agave fields and mountain palenques (distilleries). But also to many more unexpected places not yet imagined. Until then: Mezcaaaaaaal, that’s aaaaaaaaal!
- Hillary (R.V.)
P.S.
Welcome to all our new subscribers! And for more about the Guild, go here.
This whole experiment began with Brad’s big spiritual experience in a Missouri chapel when he was 19 years old. He has told that story several times in books. You can read it most recently in Sacred Ecstatics: The Recipe for Setting Your Soul on Fire and Climbing the Rope to God: Mystical Testimony and Teaching (the latter book, the first in a series of three, also contains the “Tequila Prophet” story.) Find them here: https://sacredecstatics.com/featured-books/