All things enjoy ecstatic union with nature. Life without ecstasy is not true life and not worth living. Without ecstasy, the soul becomes shriveled and perverted, the mind becomes corrupt, and the body suffers pain. Ecstatic union with nature is necessary for normal health; it is necessary for survival. And to think that plants are mere dumb creatures that do not know ecstasy is ignorance or tragic, arrogant folly.”
― Eliot Cowan, Plant Spirit Medicine
Medicine from the Earth
When we consider ways to connect to our highest self, consciousness-altering tools can be used recreationally or as tools of self-discovery. When they are used recreationally, they are typically used to take pressure off or even avoid or numb our lives.
Let’s look at an easy crossover: alcohol. Alcohol is a depressant. We know it as a “social lubricant.” A way to drop (or depress) inhibitions and connect more deeply to those around us. There are pitfalls with that method, as anyone who’s had a nasty hangover knows. But the same drug can also be used as sacred medicine to elevate us. Mongolian shamans use vodka in their rituals—both to cleanse shamanic tools as well as to drink during ceremonies in order to honor the spirits of nature.
Other earth medicines like cannabis, psilocybin, peyote, 5-MeO-DMT, Ayahuasca, or San Pedro have been used in rituals for centuries to incite ego death and connect us to the great continuum. But they, too, can also be used as an escape from the deeper self-work we need to do to become our highest selves.
Sometimes no earth medicine is necessary to achieve deep connection. In shamanic practice, we also use sonic driving, which is a regular drumbeat at around three beats per second. This has been proven to take one into a shamanic state of consciousness or trance state in order to access deeper realms of thinking and being. These regular, sustained drum beats have also been proven to boost our immune system.
I am not advocating nor am I condemning whatever process one needs in order to access higher states of consciousness—or at the very least altered states of consciousness—toward connecting deeply to the cosmic continuum. What I am saying is that it matters how we use them and how often and heavily we rely on them.
What matters most of all is that we stay aware of our choices, and that we understand that no one medicine can solve our problems.
I have clients who feel compelled to use a particular earth medicine or consult a plant medicine as though that will fix their problems. It will not. What is needed is processing and integration. And that can happen in many ways.
Plant or earth medicines are just that: Medicine. They help us to heal. But they themselves do not always heal us. For example, in the medical world, psilocybin can eliminate a migraine, but it can’t prevent it from happening again. Recent studies have shown that cannabis can reduce seizures in epileptic children by over 60%, but it does not eliminate epilepsy. Cannabis can also reduce pain in those with arthritis. But it doesn’t make the arthritis go away entirely.
Spiritually speaking, if we are using these medicines to go deep into our psyches and mine dysfunctions and blockages, remove ego so we can reconnect with Source and remember our place within primal unified awareness, we may find that the earth medicines can help us do that. Eliot Cowen says, “There is only one active ingredient in plant medicines: friendship. A plant spirit heals a patient as a favor to its friend-in-dreaming, the doctor.”
We will certainly be shown where our blocks are and perhaps even be given the gifts of ways to adjust our lives in ordinary consciousness to deal with those blocks. But if we don’t to the additional work of processing and integrating the information we receive, we cannot expect that we will be healed. It takes awareness, intention, being open to receive the gifts the medicine gives us, and then processing and integration in order to truly heal ourselves.
What is Processing and Integration?
Processing means that we make note of the lessons or visions or images we receive while working with the medicines. We can do this by discussing our experiences with others who have journeyed with us, as in a ceremonial setting. We can speak with a trained guide—a curandero, shamanic practitioner, or therapist who is familiar with the workings of the medicine. Sometimes what the medicine gives us is scary or confusing.
The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which he tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.
—Aldous Huxley
We need to understand the deeper teachings. Those trained guides can help us do that. Here’s what Cary Grant had to say after he processed his experiences with psychedelics in the late 1950s:
I have been born again. I have been through a psychiatric experience which has completely changed me. I was horrendous. I had to face things about myself which I never admitted, which I didn’t know were there. Now I know that I hurt every woman I ever loved. I was an utter fake, a self-opinionated bore, a know-all who knew very little. I found I was hiding behind all kinds of defenses, hypocrisies, and vanities. I had to get rid of them layer by layer. The moment when your conscious meets your subconscious is a hell of a wrench. With me, there came a day when I saw the light.
—Cary Grant
What else can we do to process? We can write in our journals. We can sketch or draw what we’ve seen. All these acts are offerings of gratitude. It means we took the gifts with a sense of reverence and honor.
Integration means working those findings into our daily lives. Whatever our intentions were—to move past trauma or understand ourselves more deeply or remind ourselves of our interconnectedness with everything around us—we take the gifts we received on our journey and apply them to how we live from that point on. This takes practice, but that’s part of being on the path. Even the act of integration is one of gratitude. We make an offering by living the gifts. By incorporating the lessons we receive.
Honestly, I am thrilled that marijuana has been legalized in New York State where I live. And, slowly, across the globe. I believe that all earth medicine should be accessible to our world family. That’s why it is here in the first place, and it’s time for us to begin speaking with it—with nature—again. As medicines like marijuana or psilocybin become legalized, my hope is that we will use those sacred tools as they are meant to be used—toward healing, not toward checking out further from our holy lives. It’s time for us to elevate. To become our highest selves.
How we get there is up to us. Whatever your calling is, that is where you should go. Stay on the path. We need you to come home to your true self and to share that true self with us, your family.