Plant Medicine as Spiritual Crypto

There’s a lot of hype around plant medicine work, and it’s good to be careful. Plant Medicine has become spiritual crypto: promises of huge returns with no work. Or like weight-loss drugs: a single pill will solve it with no work besides swallowing. Our culture is fundamentally ill, so we should question anything that becomes buzzy and hip. It’s good to remember that our culture is fundamentally ill in many ways, so it’s wise to question anything that becomes buzzy and exciting in this culture.

I suppose I have “done” my share of plant medicine ceremonies—maybe about 100 over the last eleven years, mostly ayahuasca and mushrooms. I’ve also experienced fifteen longer plant “dietas” in the Amazon Jungle. (These are intensive and sometimes grueling week-long ceremonies that involve ingesting powerful, though not necessarily hallucinogenic plants.) Some ceremonies had a huge impact on me. Some were merely nice. In some, I twiddled my thumbs in irritation all night long. Too many others included much vomiting and diarrhea, and the fear I was going to die. I learned from each of them, and none of these saved my life, cured my childhood, or made me more spiritual. All of them—together with prayer work, shamanic training, and disciplined spiritual practice—refined many energies in me.

There are innumerable ways that people approach plant medicine work. Some people become psychonauts with the idea that the more frequent the ceremonies, the more healing there is, or the larger the dose, the better the work. Some think doing every kind of medicine makes them bigger and better humans. More people are mixing different indigenous plant medicines simultaneously, believing it makes the work (and the person) even more spiritual. Some leaders make their ceremonies into mini-concerts, with a slew of global instruments and all kinds of songs, and sometimes even a carnival with fire-spinners.

That being said, I love the simplicity my teachers bring. They use song and rattle, and that’s it. They sing to praise the plants spirits, and to remind the medicine why we’re here. They sing to protect the attendees, keep the ceremonial container strong, bless life in all its amazing, generous forms, and humbly ask for healing. It doesn’t matter if their voices are pretty. What matters is if the prayers are coming from the humbled heart, and from a solid relationship with the plant spirits.

"Many people are pouring ayahuasca nowadays. Some of them have been trained to manage the many energies in sacred ceremonies, some have not. Some have a lot of shamanic training, and some have little more than a fervent belief that they can and should do this work. Some of them vet attendees, and some let anyone attend. If you participate in these ceremonies, it’s good and smart to ask the leaders how they were trained. If you went to a knee surgeon, you’d want to know they were trained. A teacher I spoke with said he didn’t pour ayahuasca until after having 10,000 hours of ceremony with his South American teacher. That works out to about 1200 ceremonies. A shaman’s apprentice from Colombia I spoke with once said his teacher didn’t give him permission to pour medicine until twelve years of study.

Some people order medicine rather anonymously from the internet, often without knowing who made it, what other plants are in it, or what energies (like prayers or emotions from the maker) are embedded in the medicine. It’s good to know what’s in the medicine you’re taking. Some people who are looking to increase the potency of ayahuasca add in other plants that do increase the potency—and the danger. I think about the constant “improvement” in mushroom growing, where the goal is to increase the percentage of the active compound, and then give a totally great name to your new mushroom, like “Jedi Mind-F**k.” I’ve seen more and more people advertising ayahuasca ceremonies on Facebook. The folks leading them feel secure that their relationship with a church makes it free of legal danger, or perhaps they just are betting that the law is busy with other things.

It’s not for me to judge anyone’s spiritual quest or decisions, because ultimately everything is between each of us and Spirit. But I do get nervous about what happens when our culture gets hold of anything “spiritual.” We see it again and again, in all kinds of traditions and practices—the core gets lost, replaced by “bigger, better, more dramatic, cooler, more fun” with the idea that it’s an improvement on that old “core.” I’ve spoken with yoga and Buddhist teachers who carry the same concerns.

All of what I’m describing here may be, as so many say, “an evolution in spiritualty” that adapts to the needs and cultures of the present. But the phrase “chasing the high” comes to mind. And the line: “My material desires put on a spiritual mask.”

I think about Maria Sabina, the Mazatec shaman from Mexico, who is credited with introducing mushrooms to the western world through meeting Gordon Wasson, a banker from New York. He wrote an article for Life magazine in 1955 that exploded mushrooms into American consciousness. Sabina’s traditional ceremonies were for healing someone's fading eyesight, or their alcoholism, or their bodily pain. Her songs and prayers asked God, Mother Maria, Jesus, the ancestors, and the mushroom for that healing, not to “blow the doors off my ego.”

Spiritual work is always about the relationship between the ego—our lower, "ME-preoccupied" self—and the boundless, incomprehensible Source. The ego wants nothing more than to keep us from accessing this larger Self (or "no-self"). It does this in two primary ways. First, it fills us with fear and skepticism to keep us from stepping onto a spiritual path in the first place.

But if we do step onto a spiritual path, things get harder and we need to be careful. The ego co-opts our spiritual experiences, folding them back into its small world of fear and status-seeking. It convinces us we are wiser, purer, or more advanced than others because of the experiences we’ve had. It may be ego itself telling us plant medicine work needs to be exciting and absolutely mind blowing.

A common hope for people working with plant medicine is to “see God.” The thing is, you can see God when you look into anyone’s eyes; you can see God when you smell the lavender bloom, you can see God whenever kindness emerges when unkindness would be easier or more satisfying. No one needs plant medicine to see God. The task, the hardest work, is to actually see God everywhere, every day, without medicine. The impossible yet crucial work is becoming as loving and as non-judgmental as you believe God is.

One of my teachers says that plant medicine acts merely as a mirror, showing us what energy is operating in us, and giving us the opportunity to decide what to do with energy.

fter her village was turned into a hallucinogen tourist center by Wasson, the Beatles, Bob Dylan and countless others, Maria Sabina said: "Before Wasson nobody used the 'children' (the Mushrooms) simply to find God. They were always used to cure the sick. From the moment the foreigners arrived, the 'children' lost their purity. They lost their force; the foreigners spoiled them. From then on they didn’t work anymore." Her life ended in profound regret and sorrow, and her house was burned down, perhaps by angry or envious villagers. This is the paradox of her legacy: In some ways her life was wrecked, but the world received an immense gift. How we use that gift is up to us—and our ego, and whether we are seeking MORE, better, or higher, drama; or if we are humbly asking earth-medicine to heal and actually teach us how to live.

Our culture of convenience breeds impatience and entitlement. But spiritual work is never convenient or fast. Every spiritual teacher I’ve met has emphasized “poco a poco,” slow and steady, building small upon previous small. This is true universally, not just in shamanic work. So, if people “do” medicine for the whopper transformation, but don’t take on a spiritual practice along with it—a compassion practice, a gratitude and prayer practice—practices that expand them out of their self-preoccupation—they may have a dramatic story to tell, but nothing has changed.  

I wish everyone true abundance, safety, warmth, and blessing on your journeys, no matter what shape they take.