If you have a strong ego and don’t acknowledge the shadow that you cast then stay the fuck away from plant medicines. In fact, all psychedelics can be hazards to your sense of self importance and therefore should be considered off limits. If you have a strong ego and go into plant medicine ceremonies with an intention to understand your place in existence then be prepared to let your ego die only for it resurrect like a prizefighting Lazarus smashing you with combinations of emotionally laden head and body blows. Each punch stinging in its veracity, screaming how worthless you are even when the medicine has shown you the glory of your true nature. Yes, I’m speaking from personal experience. The first time I had plant medicine (magic mushrooms) in Motueka, Aotearoa/New Zealand in a ceremonial dose I had the intention to know, please show me what I REALLY am. My ego died that night and my awareness left the lens of my body and returned to an ocean of consciousness where I was held, accepted, and loved in a way that no language, human, or otherwise can describe. In this tranquil oceanic mass I perceived individual consciousness all around me, but also felt part of this being that was infinite in mass and potential. It was a limitlessness that could give rise to anything I could imagine. Coming back into my body was like being stuffed into a lamp. The genie had gotten out, but been called back. My ego went into overdrive when I was forced back into my holographic genetic spacesuit. What are you going to do with your life? Who do you think you are? Do you realise that you have to get up and go to work in 5 hours? You’re a loser. What were you thinking? On and on it went, the levels of traumatic psychosis it put me through were torturous. I had been a petulant child, and all those years of conditioning through my life that had gone into creating my sense of self made sure that I knew who was really in charge of my thought processes, and emotional reactions, beliefs, and patterns.
That experience changed me forever. I became more fearless, more compassionate, and less reactionary. I became more observant, patient, and mindful of the games of the ego and its fervent desire to have control over my life. I allowed it to do for many moments after that experience, but also reeled it in when I knew that the real self, the infinite self needed to step up. I haven’t been that deep on plant medicine since, as Alan Watts once said:
If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.
I got the message with plant medicine, it was loud and clear for me, but I have been called to it on numerous occasions since as an instrument to alter my consciousness to facilitate healing, connection, and understanding of my place in the multiverse. The medicine talks to me instructing me and meets me in a place where we can feel comfortable with one another. I haven’t gone deep again, there is no need. Nor is it my choice. My deepening of awareness comes incrementally allowing me to integrate into a more permanent expression that only greater awareness and application in life can bring. Plant medicine has taught me how to be more humble, grateful, and interconnected to forces imperceptible to the human body’s senses, and acknowledge their presence with reverence, gratitude and good humour. Plant medicine has aligned me with a sense of purpose and strength in conviction in a day and age when apathy and fear have overridden critical thinking in the global populace. How can I be afraid of death when there is only life? Plant medicine’s spirit has opened my heart to guide me through the maze of distraction and led me to integrity, authenticity and strength to see that whatever I chose to give meaning to has power over me.
In 2020 I was isolated by those closest to me as fear gripped many who were buying into the health crisis scare. I knew that it only held power over one if power was surrendered to fear. I didn’t fear anything and so was left alone, a bubble with my neighbours and a friend who I had met only in January 2020, everyone I had known shunning me. When we were told by our government that we were safe and we could return to what was deemed the ‘new normal’ those friends and I did not resonate, there was a severance, we had lost the valuable ground we had gained over experiences together and time. I spent most of 2020 in a state of work and discovery of new people who resonated with the person I had become. Many a Friday night in nature after ingesting a communicated dose (from the magic mushrooms themselves as to how much) of magic mushrooms in late winter/early spring brought into a sense of expansion and ease with my new position in life. I spent many a late night walking along Lyall Bay laughing hysterically at the beauty and serenity about me, not feeling solitude, but a deep connection with the unseen, trusting that as my heart was opening, I was safe, protected and guided. In order to move forward, I needed to let go of the past, so the new could enter. This was the message for me that came through those playful nights walking barefoot along the beach, or strolling in the bush on Wright’s Hill, Karori.
The medicine in 2020 would also assure me to speak my truth creatively, throughout my blog posts. I became fearless in my content publishing, exposing the narrative often daily as information flowed to me, and I shone a light on those who bravery I admired, whose courage gave me strength and whose knowledge gave me choices. I would spend most of 2020 and some of 2021 writing about this narrative and exposing it to the point that it was becoming draining of my energy, and it would be plant medicine again that would instruct me to stop and realign elsewhere. I would never tell anyone to take plant medicine due to the lack of reverential awareness, instruction and the dosage of some of those medicines available to the global population. In most countries these sacred plants have been made illegal, which stands to reason that the risk can outweigh the benefits if one was to be caught. The nature of the control system is set up to offer the most destructive of drugs, petrochemical pharmaceuticals and alcohol are big players on the scene. I’ve lived through the destructive nature of the last of those legal drugs, and was addicted to it for a time in my life, and know its wrath all too well. I haven’t drunk alcohol since 2003. Won’t go near it ever again. No thanks.
Nature doesn’t make mistakes, humans give meaning to experience, and give our power away daily to those that wish to subjugate us into fear where we are easier to control. I’ll leave you with a quote from Bill Hicks, a man who understood that plant medicines are sacred and should be revered, and knew we live in a sick society, one where we are not taught about what we truly are. We are eternal beings having a temporary human experience, there is no death, and we have nothing to fear… ever.
This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart.
https://www.wakingtimes.com/how-to-be-less-full-of-sht/ One of my favourite websites, www.wakingtimes.com How to be less full of shit. Perfect.
https://www.wakingtimes.com/bravery-and-risk-in-the-age-of-truth/ Expressing your fearlessness in truth.
https://www.wakingtimes.com/controlling-your-perception-of-reality-the-real-reason-psychedelics-are-illegal/ The Bill Hicks quote is watered down, but still it’s a great quote.
https://www.wakingtimes.com/heart-medicine-how-iboga-helped-overcome-addiction/ I wrote a short story in 2008 with Pablo Wairua in The Light Guides the Way about an alcoholic curing himself of his addiction after taking Iboga.
https://www.wakingtimes.com/3-questions-youre-not-supposed-ask-life-sick-society/ Say no more.