Search the Community

Why yes, it was an entire 3 days of speakers about Entheogns. If you are wondering what entheogens are (as most of my friends didn't know the term either), think ayahuasca or peyote and you are most of the way there. For all the times I tell people dabbling isn't good, it is sort of funny that I come to such things as a dabbler . One only has so much free time to take a few days off for a proper working with such things. However if we include all my experimentation over the years (lots in my early years lol) I guess it would add up to a lot. Scary was when I had more information on many things and was able to answer some questions. These days I only do such journeys about once per year. They are rather intense, sometimes take some physical recuperation time and just don't fit as well into my schedule these days. Damn I must be getting old . The first thing I learned, and prepared beforehand, was to be even more open minded to all things and all people. Just because I had met some folks who had brought themselves to some very not good life situations in the past with such practices, didn't mean that was always the case, or perhaps ever the case, they could have just been the exceptions to the rule. I was quite amazed at the quality of the speakers and the information they shared. About 20 different PHD folks, who have been doing such practices quite seriously for 40 plus years. Well this was most of the speakers anyways. What fun, doing a doctoral thesis about the ayahuasca practices in the jungles of Peru, but having to live there for a few years and participate in their ceremonies to do so. Apparently these folks also have quite a strong magical culture as well as most definitely utilize it quite a bit, with and without aya. I also learned that in most of the indigenous cultures that folks start using the various plants in ceremony at a very young age. Anywhere from right away, to their teenagehood rite of passage. Then onwards throughout their life. I also learned some really unfortunate things such as ayahuasca tourism and popularity really killing off the vines and in the future likely not leaving enough for the traditional folks there to be able to use it. Fortunately they are now cultivating it as well as the admixture plants in Hawaii. I don't recall how many tonnes they export each year, but enough that there are organizations taking steps to try to fix matters there. Also the corporations who are completely obliterating large areas to grow palm trees are completely devastating the natural vegetation. The growth of soy is also a problem (it's used to feed cattle so much of it is grown). What I enjoyed most about the conference was an entire few hundred folks who have figured out how to work with such things, but also able to lead a functional and coherent life. Unfortunately throughout the decades I have met far to many "urban shamans" who were so completely non-functional that they could no longer be active in the regular mundane world if they wished to, but also could not practice magic in any healthy for them way, due to having messed up their energy bodies so severely . This unfortunately is far to prevalent. Enough so that I tend to avoid all such gatherings. However the speakers and their topics looked interesting enough I thought I would give it a go. Glad I did. I also learned quite a bit about the studies being done, and had been done over the decades about the use of various entheogens in therapy (by Psychiatrists and psychologists). There has been much research about lsd in therapy, some good and some bad depending on the approach. Some of the government experiments didn't go so well... setting is important. But also such things as iboga to eliminate cravings and addictions is quite interesting. Some folks have also been working with ayahuasca (done in a proper traditional ceremonial context) in such scenerios, in studies with small communities. They found quite positive results with this. The catch being is that the plants take over during the journey and bring out the internal things the person needs to most work on, for 6-12 hours straight. Most definitely not for everyone (even if they were more legal in all countries). I also have learned that with ayahuasca (and some others to some extent) tourism, there aren't always awesome outcomes either. Of course 99% of the time it turns out well, but there is that 1% where shamans have been known to have sex with a participant during the ceremony. Definitely not cool in a group, not agreed on beforehand, setting. Also not everyone has the means or the patience to thoroughly checkout the good and legit shamans vs the not so awesome ones. I also learned more about the importance of the setting and rituals with these things. This part is pretty obvious, but perhaps not for newer folks. Interesting was that most of the folks there do not partake of such things, even weed in some cases, in a mundane setting ever. This makes perfect sense to me. I don't tend to bring my altar accouterments out to parties either . It was really neat to see so many folks working so closely with plants in a major way .