Ayahuasca Retreat
In order to understand the popularity of plant medicine, shamanism and alternative approaches to health and self-improvement a great resource one can explore is the 2020 documentary “AWARE – Glimpses of Consciousness.”
It looks at the science behind consciousness. A brain scientist, a plant behaviorist, a healer, a philosophy professor, a psychedelics scientist, and a Buddhist monk each offer their perspectives on the big questions such as:
What is consciousness? Is it in all living beings? Why are we predisposed for mystical experience? And what happens when we die?
Michael Pollan is a journalist who explores the socio-cultural impacts of food.
His books focus on the places where nature and culture intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in the built environment.
More recently, his investigations have led him to research psychedelics and human consciousness, culminating in his book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. He has also released a television series based on his book.
Krishnamurti once said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
Having peered between the veil of our relationship with food, Michael went further to say:
“Normal waking consciousness feels perfectly transparent, and yet it is less a window on reality than the product of our imaginations - a kind of controlled hallucination.
You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness and you will bump into the sacred. It’s not something we generate; it’s something out there waiting to be discovered. And this reliably happens to nonbelievers as well as believers.
The usual antonym for the word “spiritual” is “material.” That at least is what I believed when I began this inquiry—that the whole issue with spirituality turned on a question of metaphysics. Now I’m inclined to think a much better and certainly more useful antonym for “spiritual” might be “egotistical.” Self and Spirit define the opposite ends of a spectrum, but that spectrum needn’t reach clear to the heavens to have meaning for us. It can stay right here on earth. When the ego dissolves, so does a bounded conception not only of our self but of our self-interest. What emerges in its place is invariably a broader, more openhearted and altruistic—that is, more spiritual—idea of what matters in life. One in which a new sense of connection, or love, however defined, seems to figure prominently.”
In 2013, Australian musician and spiritual seeker Ben Lee released his album Ayahuasca: Welcome to the Work.
That same year author Graham Hancock shared a talk at a TEDx conference called The War on Consciousness, which ironically got banned.
He spoke about how slow the evolution of consciousness has been, with 6 million years amounting to very little awareness until the emergence less than 40,000 years ago, when we became fully symbolic creatures.
Hancock went on to say that research led by professor David Lewis-Williams in South Africa, and many others, have suggested an intriguing and radical possibility, which is that this emergence into consciousness was triggered by our ancestors’ encounters with visionary plants and the beginning of shamanism.
He offered the idea that mother ayahuasca has evoked a more mainstream use of plant medicine to help people with their individual addictions and blindnesses as well as society on a collective level.
Dr. Gabor Maté, famous for his work around the area of trauma, incorporated plant medicine into his healing work until the Canadian Government intervened and stopped his healing practice on the grounds that ayahuasca itself was an illegal drug.
Ayahuasca is currently illegal in Australia also, partly due to a number of bad reactions from people with underlying mental health issues.
A number of people choose to undergo an ayahuasca ceremony in places like Peru where the pilgrimage is part of the preparation. They also tend to be more effective when conducted by dedicated shamans rather than mere enthusiasts.
One reason that psychedelics and plant medicine are increasingly explored is that while the ego sleeps, the mind plays, proposing unexpected patterns of thought and new rays of relation.
In addition to an array of experiential methods, Jungian approaches can be equally powerful, drawing on archetypes and a symbolic imagination to take us beyond the rational mind and into the soul life.
Our Life Purpose, Healing or Spiritual Retreats allow you to have a transformative encounter in a safe and supportive environment.
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