The medicine was supposed to clear my vision.
And I was instantly blinded.
My eyes sealed shut. The veins on my forehead bulged edging on explosion.
An acid-drenched, liquid drill bored into my eyes and seeped into my soul. Whatever life I believed to have been living was erased. My new reality in this moment was pain.
I felt the loving terror of my mother as she hopelessly watched. Tears streamed from her eyes as my body seized in its chair.
I was a patient of a cruel experiment, and resistance was impossible. The pain controlled every part of me. There was no way out.
Until I remembered the one element I could control: My breath. Let the breath do the work.
To be in a state to receive its lesson.
Because “If you get in your head, you’re dead.”
The pain subsided and I spoke to the group: “The lesson is to accept the pain. To move from the head and into the heart.”
“Yes. He is a smart man.” My guide replied.
After 15 minutes I was able to open my eyes. The pain subsided and was replaced by a centeredness one might feel after weeks of meditation.
My vision was cleared as if a pair of fogged goggles had been lifted from my eyes to reveal a renewed clarity of reality.
The teacher plant was Sananga, a gift from Amazonian Shamans, and its lesson of acceptance was as clear as its pain.
NUMBING THE PAIN
With ease we can avoid pain with symptom-fighting and problem-avoiding painkillers. Our doctors listen for key words like an internet search box, then prescribe the requisite pill.
It seems peace is just a pill away. And then another pill. And another.
We are inoculated to the pill-pushing pharmaceutical machine that coldly prescribes its medicine to keep us from the pain of looking inward.
What if instead of undergoing years of pill usage and unsuccessful sessions with a xanax-prescribing therapist there was another way?
A ROCKET SHIP TO INNER SPACE
Teacher plants like Psilocybin, Ayahuasca and Sananga, invite us into the shadows of our mind that we have fed with lies, deference, degradation and self-deception.
We are at once invited into a classroom that exists beyond the material world that defiantly poses as all there is. Once class is in session, the subject becomes ourselves. Sudden realizations of the impact of our actions, words and emotions occur. Suppressed traumas are surfaced and beg for examination and acceptation.
And if you attempts to ignore the lesson presented, you will find there is nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. The only way out, is in.
True healing begins when we invite the storm to pass through, dance in its rains, and reflect upon its change.
Teacher plants have helped me to face myself, invited me home, and encouraged me to help others.
I cried in laughter and in sadness as dammed lakes of emotion emptied.
I witnessed how my self-destructive habits were negatively impacting the people in my life, and I immediately changed course.
I had instant compassion for friends and family who face their own daily battles of self.
With psilocybin, I supported a friend to curb his incessant hunger by showing that what he craves is within him, and always available.
There are people who have suffered from depression and have spent thousands of dollars on medication and clinical therapy who have healed after one session with Ayahuasca.
But, it’s not for everyone.
CONTRAINDICATION
Teacher plants must be treated with sacred respect, rather than demonized or used as a party-drug.
Without this respect, a student of the plant becomes another jackass resident of Pleasure Island desecrating the sacred for the sake of partying. And the results can be traumatic.
In a world that seems as though everything has been explored, it is our inner space that is the final frontier.
And our capacity for expansion in the world – whether business, personal, or emotional – grows in a direct proportion to our courage to explore our own inner space.
See you on the other side.
Visit www.timoway.com for the podcast and more.