Tag: Start With Plant Medicine

Tantric Maps for Working with Plant Medicine

Awakening is the movement of consciousness becoming conscious of itself. Psychedelics and plant medicines do not offer a path for awakening but they can serve as powerful accelerators along the journey. This article examines the path to awakening as described by Dzogchen, Mahamudra, and Shaiva Shakta Tantra and the role that plant medicines can play in it all.

#014: Talking Psychedelics with Dennis McKenna, PhD

The professional and personal interests of Dennis McKenna, Ph.D are centered on the interdisciplinary study of ethnopharmacology and plant hallucinogens. This podcast episode discusses ayahuasca, comparative consideration of psychedelics and their respective benefits and challenges, scientific knowledge and its limitations, the difference between Eastern and Western modes of thought, organized religion, and more…

Ayahuasca: Divine Doorway or Augmented Reality?

Since participating in my first Ayahuasca retreat in Peru in May I keep returning to a simple question: What exactly is Ayahuasca? Is it truly a “plant teacher?” What does that even mean? Is it a plant with consciousness? Is it a spirit? In other words: does Ayahuasca grant us access to something outside of ourselves? Or is Ayahuasca best conceived of as a tool of Augmented Reality that merges with our consciousness to give us this wildly magical, seemingly revelatory experience? This episode discusses Ayahuasca and what it has to offer as an aid in awakening.

#003: Healing Trauma with Ayahuasca & other Plant Medicines with Ian Benouis

Ian Benouis is a graduate of the prestigious West Point Military Academy who flew Blackhawk Helicopters for the US Army. After leaving the military, Ian worked as a sales representative in the pharmaceutical industry. Eventually, he bumped up against the limitations of what the Western medical model had to offer. This episode discusses working with plant medicines for trauma, reframing the discussion of psychedelics/entheogens as medicinal, the history of how psychedelics were socially constructed in the US and more…