As psychedelics are embraced back into the medical model, the media has created the term “The Psychedelic Renaissance.” In this hour-long conversation with Beth Weinstein from her show, The Psychedelic Entrepreneur, we discuss the booming marketplace of the Psychedelic Renaissance and the vision for psychedelic therapists to facilitate healing legally by 2023. We also discuss the dangers of psychedelics (made in a lab, substances that assist to “open the mind” or psyche) and entheogens (grown in nature, substances which “invoke the Divine within”) being absorbed into the capitalist marketplace and the stresses and dynamics which may dilute and commodify their mystical, sacred potential.
The path towards healing
In the 1960s psychedelics promised we could have a revolution of the paradigm and live in a more equitable and sustainable way. In today’s hyper-capitalist model psychedelics are on a fast track to replace SSRIs and pharmaceuticals for depression, anxiety, PTSD and other illnesses of the mind.
Back in the 1960s, the motivations behind using psychedelics were different, for sure. They promised a psychedelic revolution in the way we thought, in our connection to each other and to the earth. In the last couple of years, I have seen a big change in mentality and motivations: we are more inclined to seek deep, meaningful healing for us primarily, and then for the entire planet.
What does that have to do with psychedelics? They are, now, a means through which we’re dissolving the ego, by helping us bypass the Default Mode Network (DMN), a cluster of brain functionality that in essence creates a sense of this ‘channel’ of reality, and feel for ourselves how it is to be one with everything and everyone. In short, they allow us to reconnect with the universe at large by facilitating what is often termed a ‘mystical’ experience.
A new perspective
Are psychedelics a tool for our spiritual awakening? Yes, I am sure of this. They are a wonderful tool that can profoundly impact our healing by increasing our sense of purpose, our connectedness with all that is and our ability to see each other in a peaceful light, as travelers with different learning journeys.
I have faith and hope that what we’re going through with these [psychedelic] experiences is just the first step. There’s something bigger that is coming. We’re being prepped and potentially healed so we can respond from a place of wholeness and sovereignty and make the decisions we need to make moving forward. I have big hopes!
Are psychedelics the only way in which we can connect to Mother Nature and heal? Obviously, no. I think that they are a great first step we can take towards experiencing higher degrees of personal, social and ecological awareness, but they are not, for sure, the only way to achieve mass awakening. And yet, science has shown that doing psychedelics in nature creates a long-term bonding and appreciation of the energy and aliveness of Mother Earth.
More than anything else, psychedelics can help us all remember our deep roots and that we are embedded in an alive and intelligent ecosystem in our home planet and in the universe itself. We belong here. We are connected to all life and we affect all life. We thus have a responsibility to respond from a place of care and to use our power wisely. This is why it is so important to understand who and what we really are, so our impact will be positive on the world around us.
Through the mystical experiences facilitated by psychedelics, we are now closer and closer to our internal nature – which is peaceful, joyful and whole. At some point, if we can integrate this new perspective individually, and if enough people share this experience, then the collective itself will change as well. And by doing so, we are slowly, but firmly creating a new way of being. In time, this can entirely change our world.
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One of the biggest issues is that psychedelics and entheogens healing has been proven to relieve stresses and anxieties, trauma, even PTSD and rigid closed off thinking. But they do this through reducing the ego mind and allowing our consciousness to merge into the larger dimension of consciousness all around. This letting go of the conscious mind engenders a mystical experience, and capitalism is yet to believe in, much less find a place for the mystical experience.
Other ways of taking psychedelics and entheogens exist. Shamanic cultures have a ceremonial structure, often done in groups, where they take mind-altering psychedelic plants and fungi. That sense of community entering into ego-dissolving states together is a counterpoint to the medical therapist model being promoted by the Psychedelic Renaissance. Both are very powerful, and all these pathways can reconnect you to yourself and Mother Nature, to know and feel what it means to be fully alive.
Whether they’re made in a lab or from Mother Nature, [the psychedelics] are all training wheels. You can do this too. YOU are the medicine. But we’ve forgotten. We’re learning from an external source how to activate this capacity in our internal nature.
Key takeaways
- Psychedelics help us bypass the Default Mode Network (DMN), facilitating a deeper connection with ourselves
- We have to reduce the ego, the gate of the mind – and that’s what psychedelics are helping us to do.
- Through the mystical experiences we have while on psychedelics, we dissolve our ego and we gain a deep sense of connectedness with everything around us;
- Psychedelics are a powerful tool that can help us connect to our higher self, our deep, ancestral roots and, eventually, our true internal nature;
- By increasing our spiritual awareness, psychedelics can represent the first step in healing ourselves and Mother Nature;
- Integration is about harnessing who you are and what you’re connected to and putting it into practice every day.
