080 - Adventures of an Urban Shaman

Program Notes

Guest speaker: Matt Pallamary

(Minutes : Seconds into program)
12:18 Matt provides some background information about his wild youth.

20:37 Some thoughts about what at what age it is best to begin deeply exploring one’s consciousness through the use of sacred medicines.

21:31 “This is one of the key tenants of shamanism, all you can ultimately go on is your own experience.”

23:40 “I want to stress that there are a lot of substances that are not good. Crystal meth, bad. Obviously, heroin, bad. Crack cocaine, bad.”

30:30 The discussion turns to shamanism.

32:33 “The medicines teach you to learn how to connect with your heart, and to follow your heart instead of your head, because your heart is actually a superior ‘brain’.”

34:23 Matt talks about the course of shamanism study he has been pursuing.

37:44 “The absolute best thing you can do for yourself, and for everybody, for the universe, for the cosmos, for the race, for humanity, truly the absolute best thing you can do for everybody, is to work on yourself and heal yourself. Because when you heal yourself you heal part of the collective, and you begin to realize that everybody around you is a mirror. Because we are all one”

39:28 Matt explains the difference between shamanism and organized religion… . “Shamanism, on the other hand, is based on experiential knowledge. Period.”

43:31 “Ayahuasca has a way of finding your deepest fears and bringing them out. So when you do it within a sacred circle that’s protected with a good intention, then those parts of you that you’ve been terrified of will come out, and you can deal with them more on your own terms.”

Matt Palamary’s Web site (mattpallamary.com)
Books mentioned in this podcast:

Land Without Evil

Food of the Gods

Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:21 ►

This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here at the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:26 ►

So, how are you doing today?

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Hope you’re not having withdrawal symptoms from not having a trialogue to listen to.

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Before long, I’ll be playing some more of the trialogue series, as well as a few other talks by Terrence McKenna.

00:00:41 ►

But in the meantime, I thought it would be interesting to hear from a few other people who

00:00:45 ►

are on what Castaneda’s Don Juan called a path with heart. And one of those people is a good

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friend of mine, Matt Palomary. And what you’re about to hear is a recording of a conversation

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I had with Matt a few days ago when I stopped by his place for one of our morning chats over a cup of tea.

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And one of the problems that I’ve found with interviewing people I know really well is that

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it’s hard to go over territory that we’ve already covered more times than we care to remember.

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I know that during the recording of our conversation, there were a few points where I wanted to go off

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in another direction because I knew there’d be an interesting story that spun off the one being told.

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But like a lot of tripping tales, they aren’t nearly as interesting as we like to think they are.

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So I did my best to keep this interview in focus, but mainly what you’re going to hear is not that much different from any of our regular conversations.

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But enough of me talking about what I’m about to play for you.

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Why don’t we just take a listen and you can hear for yourself what kinds of ideas are

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on the mind of my good friend, Matt Pellimeri.

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I guess maybe it’s kind of difficult to interview you because we know each other so well and

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we know each other’s stories and which ones have been exaggerated and which ones haven’t.

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But I think back to all the miles that we’ve traveled since we’ve met at that little ayahuasca circle

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that a Peruvian shaman was leading, and lo and behold, I sit down next to you

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and start making my little space, and I see this book called Land Without Evil

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and the only other time I’d seen that was in the hands about 10 days earlier of Terrence McKenna

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over in Hawaii and he was carrying that around the conference and reading through it and I know

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Mary C and I kept trying to figure out what was he reading what is that book and we wrote it down

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and we planned to look it up on Amazon when we got back.

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Anyhow, I get to the session, and lo and behold, there’s this book.

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And I ask you where you got a copy of it.

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And I guess I’ll let you pick up from there and tell me where you found a copy of Land Without Evil.

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Well, I found a copy from my publisher because it was my first published novel,

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which was the fifth novel that I had written at the time.

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And I had met Terrence previously down in Mexico at the Entheobotany Seminars in Uxmal.

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And we connected.

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I wonder if I should get into the story about how I…

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I suppose I should because it all ties in with the writing.

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Okay.

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I’ve been attending major writers’ conferences

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for a number of years.

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I’ve been actually teaching now for 18, I believe.

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And I was at a conference, a major conference,

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and I wrote a short story about

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a young man who

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had gotten some hallucinogenic substances

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from a shaman and he did not heed the warnings

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that the shaman gave him. Now way back, I’m talking 35 years ago when I first encountered

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LSD and it was in the Boston area and it used to be incredibly powerful back then.

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I mean, the doses were Jurassic.

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It was a normal dose.

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They were four-way hits.

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It wasn’t the light doses that are floating. No, this stuff is like, I don’t even want to go there.

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But this stuff was being made at MIT,

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which everybody knows is Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

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but we always called it Mental Institute for the Touched.

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And we used to get it from a guy named My Favorite Martian.

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I won’t go any further into that, but the point is, during those first experiences,

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I always was very fearful of losing my mind because then when the LSD would peak, you

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wouldn’t know if you were ever going to come back.

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And it was a big fear that you weren’t.

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So that was the essence of this story,

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is that this guy takes a step, he doesn’t listen,

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and he starts to peek and peek and peek,

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and he doesn’t come back.

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He ends up dying and killing his girlfriend.

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And he checks out.

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It was a straightforward horror story.

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So I was at this conference where there were romances

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and children’s books and kind of literary things.

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There wasn’t anything dark being written.

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And I went into a workshop, and this woman there who ran the workshop,

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she would take your story

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and then she would read it.

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So nobody would know who wrote it.

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And then you’d get honest criticism.

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So she read this story

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and it got a standing ovation.

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And it ended up winning a fiction award.

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And after that,

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when people found out I read it,

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all these old acid heads came swarming out of the woodwork and they were all over me. At the conference? Yeah, at the conference. I ended up winning a fiction award. And after that, when people found out I read it,

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all these old acid heads came swarming out of the woodwork,

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and they were all over me.

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At the conference?

00:05:29 ►

Yeah, at the conference.

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It was really amazing.

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You know, this might be a good point to interject,

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that I know a lot of people out there that listen to these podcasts think they might be the only one in their town doing these things,

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but I think the evidence is such that there’s a lot more people involved

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in these psychedelic medicines than me, CI.

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Way more, but the thing is, with the way our government is, and there’s a lot of fear that

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people aren’t walking around advertising because then you’re looking for trouble, so you don’t

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want to advertise, and I’m not advertising.

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Mind you, I’m talking about years ago here.

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Right.

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Anyway, after all this, this little old lady came to me.

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She was 78 years old, and she had the brightest eyes I’ve ever seen.

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And she said to me, I did some of the original SD experiments in the 50s.

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And I’m a psychologist, and I had this article published in a Hawaiian medical journal.

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And she wanted me to have it.

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And she wanted my story, so of course I gave it to her.

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Well, lo and behold, about three weeks later,

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I get a little package in the mail of cassette tapes.

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And I look at it, and it says Terrence McKenna.

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And I’m like, well, who the hell is Terrence McKenna?

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Because I didn’t know.

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So I put this tape in, and I hear this voice.

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Well, you know, he’s down in a psychedelic state.

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The stoned Mr. Rogers voice.

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Yeah, and I’m like, who is this weirdo?

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And I started listening to what he was saying.

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And I was like, oh, my God.

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This guy’s got something to say.

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And I ended up listening to the tapes over and over again.

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And this lady, Marjorie, kept sending me the tapes until she died.

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And she was going on

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about how she couldn’t

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relate to anybody

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in her generation at all

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because they had no conception

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of what was going on.

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And she’d obviously done

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some deep LSD experiments.

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Oh, very deep

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and from a psychological standpoint.

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I mean, it was this big

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Hawaiian medical journal

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she was published in.

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So after that,

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I started reading Terrence.

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And to me, Food of the Gods was his best, absolute, seminal, brilliant work.

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And then I got the opportunity to meet him in Ushmal there.

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And I gave him a copy of a short story collection I had published at the time

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and told him the story I just told you.

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Let me just interrupt one second.

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The Ushmal conference is really also the famous Palenque Conference.

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One year they held it outside of Palenque, although you and I have been to Palenque together,

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but that was the Ushmal year.

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That’s right.

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And so I told Terrence that story that I just said, and he really got a kick out of that, and we connected.

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So I got to go down there a few times and meet with him.

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So during this time I was working on my novel, Land Without Evil,

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which has to do with first contact between Jesuit missionaries and Indians in the rainforest in Paraguay.

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But I told it from the Indian’s point of view, which was a perspective I hadn’t seen done.

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And I worked and worked at it.

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So at the time the book was getting ready to go into print, that’s the time frame where we found out about Terrence’s illness, which once everybody found out, it was really rapid when he was gone.

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So I had a celebration with my publisher.

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The books came back from the printer.

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I left work.

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We had a celebration, and we cracked the palette and got the first books. And I went home that

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night, and I’m sitting there at 10 o’clock at night, and I get a phone call. It’s from

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a good friend of mine.

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Actually, the members of the salon know Jacques because his music.

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Okay, that’s my bro. That’s my hom homie that’s the big major Terrence connection there

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Jacques

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calls me

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and he says

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I’m going to the

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all chemical arts

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conference

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in Hawaii

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are you going

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and I said

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man I can’t

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I’m buried

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because my book’s coming on

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I just got the book

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from the printer

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and I said

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when are you leaving

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he says

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I’m leaving tomorrow morning

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I said

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when are you going to bed

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he says

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I’m not

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so this is 10 o’clock at night so I grabbed the very first book from my printing And I said, when are you leaving? He says, I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I said, when are you going to bed? He says, I’m not.

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So this is 10 o’clock at night.

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So I grabbed the very first book from my printing, the absolute very first book, signed it to Terrence, and put together a care package for him.

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Because I knew, and I believe Alchemical was his last conference.

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It was. And so, I mean, I knew.

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And I drove two and a half hours to Jacques’ up north of L.A.

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and gave him the book.

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We hung out for a while and shared some medicine.

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Some memories.

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Some memories.

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We smoked some memories.

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And gave him the book for Terrence.

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Because Terrence knew Jacques very well.

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And I thought if he got it, I could have FedExed it,

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but I wanted to personally hand it from my bro. So he did. And Terrence knew Jacques very well, and I thought if he got it, I could have FedExed it, but I wanted to personally hand it from my bro.

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So he did, and Terrence got it.

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And lo and behold, a few weeks later, I think it was two weeks later maybe, I’m going to this Peruvian ayahuasca session, and in comes Lorenzo.

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And he’s talking about Terrence McKenna and this book

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and I’m just getting more excited

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and more excited and he’s going on about the book

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and all of a sudden I popped out with the book

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and his jaw dropped and he’s like

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where’d that come from

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and I told him the story

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so that’s how we met

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I don’t know if I’ve ever told you that

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and I hope to play this in the salon one day

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if I can get a better recording of it

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there was a

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part of the workshop there

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Terrence McKenna and Tom Robbins

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did a session together

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and it’s really a wonderful session

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it’s just the copy I have of the sound

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you can hear the air conditioning so loud

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I’ll eventually find a good copy of it I’m sure

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but after that

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we all decided we wanted to send some positive energy to Terrence.

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So we rearranged the room, put a chair in the middle, Terrence sat on the chair,

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and all of us, I guess there must have been 50 of us,

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we laid on the floor with our heads toward Terrence,

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and then we did a meditation with some music.

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And the whole time, Terrence is sitting there holding your book.

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Oh, wow.

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That’s one of my favorite images of Terrence sitting there with all these people.

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And, of course, poor Terrence.

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He didn’t quite know what to do.

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You’ve got 50 people laying there with their heads at you.

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You probably feel a little awkward.

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I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t flip through the book a little.

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But I have a good memory of your book and Terrence.

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So when you pulled out that book that night, I don’t think I had to take

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any ayahuasca that night to get a high. I mean, that just sent me off. And I have to

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be honest. I’ve told you this before. The audience out in the salon here might get to

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meet you someday. And I guess the best compliment a friend of mine gave you is that you’re somebody

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he’d like to walk through a dark alley with because you’d cover his back.

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You want to give a little background before we get to the shamanism part?

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Sure.

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A little background of from whence you have come.

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Thank you.

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I was born a poor black child.

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No, just kidding.

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I still have him, Steve Martin.

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But I did grow up in an Irish Catholic ghetto.

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My friends were all car thieves.

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My father was a coding addict, quite nutty. And I grew up with lots of violence, and I’ve

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been through lots of dark, dark places. And so I’ve realized over time that the darkness

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has been my path. And as a matter of fact, my first published works was called The Small

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Dark Room of the Soul, which is a short story collection.

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It has to do with the darkness.

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And I’ve done a lot of healing work with people in different modes with different things.

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And one of my favorite sayings, and I do this to date, is I tell people that I’ll go anywhere in the dark with you if you want to go.

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Because I’ve been in some real hells myself and I know what it’s like and having been in the

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territory I’ve learned how to navigate those spaces and it hasn’t been easy and

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even I’ve discovered that even when I decide that I don’t necessarily need to go into the dark

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sometimes comes to me anyway.

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I have a kamikaze approach.

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Most people try things

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small amounts at a time

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and they build up.

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Whether I want to or not, I always

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seem to take the Jurassic hardhead

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megadose in the beginning.

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Then it’s harder for me to learn the subtleties of things.

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That always

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seems to have been my path.

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And I’m thankful for it.

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I’m still alive here as far as I know.

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Well, you’ve also done the safety precautions too.

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Let’s circle back to the MIT days.

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How old were you when you first found psychedelics

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and what was that all about?

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How did that happen?

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I was, let me think a moment.

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I was 17. And back then, it was just recently illegal then. And this is the aftermath of Tim

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Leary and Harvard. And I was really tapped in because the people I knew were people I grew up with. And I mean, criminal element was part of where I grew up.

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So it was kind of a natural thing.

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But then we used to get those, God, those four-way hits.

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It was $90 f or$ 100.

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Was that orange sunshine?

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There was orange barrel, orange sunshine, blue cheer.

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God, yellow sunshine, Blue Cheer, God, Yellow Sunshine, Purple Microdot.

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There was God and then the blotters.

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There was Green Frog.

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There was Mr. Natural.

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It’s what Terrence would call the glory days.

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Truly, the glory days.

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Yeah, the windowpane.

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That was amazing stuff.

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Oh, windowpane was good.

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Yeah. truly the glory days yeah the window pane that was amazing stuff oh window pane was good yeah and you know

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it took

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then

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I must have done it

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eight or nine times

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before I could handle

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the whole hit

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and of course

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the first time

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I had my

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full blown experience

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was with some major

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drug dealer types

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I found out later

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one of them was a murderer

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and he was threatening me

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with a knife

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and I was laughing at him

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because

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I didn’t think he was serious

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I found out later he was him and his friends had thrown and I was laughing at him because I didn’t think he was serious.

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I found out later he was.

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Him and his friends had thrown a guy in front of a train.

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That’s kind of like what I’d call a bad trip is to take acid with a murderer.

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Yeah, it was pretty terrifying.

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Pretty terrifying.

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But for some reason, I kept going back.

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You know, that’s the interesting thing. I don’t know if we can make a generality here,

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but I know in my own case, I first came to these substances really for the recreational use.

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And I guess I maybe came back because even the heavy-duty trips had some kind of an upside,

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and I didn’t realize I was learning as I went along. But for those that get the calling,

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it seems like eventually this recreational use

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turns into something more dedicated and serious,

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which it obviously has for you.

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Yeah, that’s a good point

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because this is going to bring us to a direction

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that I think is important.

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And that is, in my case, growing up,

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I grew up in a tough place and i was always looking

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for a way out one way or the other and i’ve uh written a memoir about this which is going to be

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out in a couple of years and that’ll unfold the way it’s supposed to so a lot of these things are

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in there but you know i started out when a kid we would um put our hands behind our knees and

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squat down and squat up into do deep breaths about ten times.

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And then hold your breath and somebody would squeeze you and you’d pass out.

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That’s when you were a little kid.

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Yeah, that was cool.

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I did that as much as I could until I found glue.

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And then I went through a period of sniffing glue until that started getting really out of hand.

00:17:00 ►

And it was interesting because I always have this sense that I’ve been protected.

00:17:04 ►

And all my friends,

00:17:06 ►

one day,

00:17:06 ►

were going down

00:17:06 ►

to have a big glue sniffing party

00:17:08 ►

down by the subway station.

00:17:10 ►

And I had decided at that point

00:17:12 ►

that I was getting out of it

00:17:13 ►

because I had done

00:17:14 ►

too many weird things.

00:17:15 ►

And I didn’t go.

00:17:16 ►

And they all got busted

00:17:17 ►

by the cops.

00:17:19 ►

And so,

00:17:20 ►

I got out of that.

00:17:21 ►

But when I started getting into

00:17:24 ►

LSD, I had already sort of had a primer by sniffing glue.

00:17:30 ►

But I went, you know, growing up, all of my parents, not my parents necessarily.

00:17:34 ►

Well, my dad was a codeine, but my friend’s parents were alcoholics.

00:17:38 ►

Alcohol was everywhere.

00:17:39 ►

So, you know, I used to steal the big kid’s beer and I would drink like a beer or two when I was like seven or eight,

00:17:45 ►

which is, by the way, I started smoking cigarettes when I was seven.

00:17:48 ►

I’m way done with that for years.

00:17:50 ►

But just to give you an idea of the environment.

00:17:53 ►

In fact, you’re a vaporizer man, I might say.

00:17:55 ►

It’s the best, most ecologically way of ingesting all around in more ways than I can even begin to tell you.

00:18:04 ►

ingesting all around in more ways than I can even begin to tell you.

00:18:10 ►

So then, you know, the alcohol was there and I found cannabis very soon after that.

00:18:12 ►

And I actually always had more of an inclination toward the cannabis.

00:18:17 ►

No matter how much cannabis I smoked, I could remember what I did the next day, you know,

00:18:18 ►

for the most part.

00:18:21 ►

I mean, there might have been patches, but, you know, overall.

00:18:26 ►

But, you know, and then I started working up, and I did lots.

00:18:28 ►

There was a period when I was doing LSD every other day because as anybody who’s worked with it knows,

00:18:31 ►

you can’t really do it two days in a row unless you want to, like, quadruple the dose.

00:18:35 ►

It’s a diminishing effect rapidly.

00:18:38 ►

Well, I’ve got another procedure for that, but that’s for another day.

00:18:41 ►

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:18:41 ►

Go ahead.

00:18:42 ►

But the point is I was doing it every other day for months.

00:18:54 ►

How old were you then then 17 18 um mostly when i was 17 i’d say and you know god getting attacked by snakes coming out of the grounds and

00:18:58 ►

getting grabbed by the cops one time shining a flashlight in eyes, and I had a carload of beer. But you were on acid.

00:19:06 ►

Peeking.

00:19:07 ►

And worried about the beer.

00:19:09 ►

Oh, God.

00:19:10 ►

I won’t get into the details, but they had found the car in the parking lot and dragged me out of a high school dance.

00:19:17 ►

Two cops came in.

00:19:18 ►

I’m peeking, and they just dragged me out, put the flashlight in my eyes, and I’m just like.

00:19:22 ►

But my instincts were on, and said to him i don’t know

00:19:25 ►

what you’re talking about i don’t know where this beer came from i never saw it before you’re here

00:19:29 ►

with my car doors open for all i know you put it there and you can have it for all i care because

00:19:32 ►

i don’t know anything about it and they let me go but the rest of the night man the trees were

00:19:37 ►

melting the earth was ending it was pretty cataclysmic let me uh ask you uh this is the

00:19:43 ►

thought just popped in my head that I’d never really

00:19:46 ►

paid much attention to this.

00:19:48 ►

You know,

00:19:48 ►

I found these medicines,

00:19:49 ►

I was quite old.

00:19:50 ►

I was 42 years old

00:19:51 ►

before I had

00:19:52 ►

my first psychedelic experience.

00:19:54 ►

And a few months back,

00:19:57 ►

I remember on

00:19:57 ►

The Dope Fiend

00:19:58 ►

on his podcast

00:19:59 ►

talked about

00:20:00 ►

young people under 25

00:20:02 ►

and having a lot of cannabis could affect the brain.

00:20:06 ►

And then just a couple weeks ago, there was a big article in the local paper,

00:20:12 ►

I think it was a book review, about the fact that physically,

00:20:16 ►

until we’re in our mid-20s, there’s still a lot going on in brain development.

00:20:21 ►

And I don’t want to encourage

00:20:25 ►

a lot of 17-year-old kids

00:20:27 ►

to take your path

00:20:27 ►

because, quite frankly,

00:20:28 ►

your path has not been

00:20:29 ►

a joyous, bountiful path up until now.

00:20:33 ►

That’s a good point.

00:20:33 ►

So I don’t know what your thoughts are

00:20:35 ►

about age groups.

00:20:36 ►

Yeah, well, let me share this.

00:20:37 ►

A lot of my friends…

00:20:37 ►

And I don’t want to get preaching here, too.

00:20:39 ►

No, no, no, no.

00:20:40 ►

That’s a very good point

00:20:41 ►

because I make it in my book.

00:20:42 ►

A lot of my friends are dead.

00:20:45 ►

A lot of them, if they’re not dead, they’re doing hard time.

00:20:49 ►

And the ones who aren’t dead and aren’t doing hard time,

00:20:53 ►

there’s a few remaining who have the bar stools with their names stitched on them.

00:20:57 ►

And maybe the rest are in AA.

00:21:01 ►

My path and what I took was absolutely totally 100%

00:21:05 ►

the wrong way to do it

00:21:06 ►

but I had no guidance

00:21:07 ►

right

00:21:08 ►

no guidance whatsoever

00:21:09 ►

that’s the problem

00:21:10 ►

with the war on drugs

00:21:11 ►

nobody’s training people

00:21:12 ►

how to do this

00:21:13 ►

because there’s so much

00:21:14 ►

misconception

00:21:14 ►

god all this stuff

00:21:15 ►

about LSD

00:21:16 ►

screwing up your

00:21:17 ►

your chromosomes

00:21:19 ►

you know

00:21:20 ►

and the lies

00:21:20 ►

the whole

00:21:21 ►

can I swear here

00:21:22 ►

yeah sure

00:21:23 ►

the whole bullshit

00:21:24 ►

ecstasy campaign

00:21:24 ►

about holes in your brain.

00:21:26 ►

I mean, that’s all lies.

00:21:27 ►

Give me a break.

00:21:27 ►

So you don’t know what to believe.

00:21:30 ►

And all you can ultimately go on,

00:21:31 ►

and this is one of the key tenets of shamanism,

00:21:33 ►

all you can ultimately go on is your own experience.

00:21:36 ►

Yeah.

00:21:36 ►

So these ways I’m telling you,

00:21:39 ►

and these adventures and thrills and chills and spills and horror stories,

00:21:42 ►

don’t do this at home.

00:21:44 ►

Well, you know what this article about the brain development made,

00:21:48 ►

the point they made is that not that the cognitive ability

00:21:52 ►

isn’t as good as somebody twice, three times their age,

00:21:56 ►

it’s that the emotional circuits take over too often.

00:22:00 ►

And that’s why you see young kids banging walls and stuff like that.

00:22:05 ►

And I know a lot of people under 20 who are just ready to go down and smoke dope in front of the police station because it should be allowed.

00:22:13 ►

Well, emotionally, I can sync with that.

00:22:16 ►

But the reason you’re not in jail and your friends are is that they were so young, I think, that probably they let their emotions take hold.

00:22:23 ►

Yeah, I’m a firm believer in certain experiences shouldn’t be had until a certain age

00:22:26 ►

because one of the things, people joke about it with me,

00:22:30 ►

but one of the things is I’ve done so many things now that on one level I don’t have to do anything anymore

00:22:34 ►

because I’m so out there, but I don’t consider myself out there.

00:22:39 ►

I mean, I consider myself to be expanded because this gets off,

00:22:45 ►

and I’m a little tangential here,

00:22:47 ►

but I think it applies.

00:22:49 ►

One of the things that Terrence said that struck me

00:22:50 ►

is that your brain is like a radio receiver.

00:22:54 ►

And so people, the mundanes,

00:22:56 ►

as the science fiction people call them,

00:22:58 ►

or the normal people,

00:22:58 ►

are tuned into one mode of consensual reality.

00:23:01 ►

If you’re really into Jesus and the Bible

00:23:04 ►

and all that good stuff,

00:23:06 ►

then you’re tuned into that,

00:23:07 ►

but you’re not open to anything else.

00:23:09 ►

So what different experiences will bring

00:23:13 ►

is the fact that you can get off that station

00:23:15 ►

and move your dial around.

00:23:17 ►

So you can take a substance like psilocybin or ayahuasca

00:23:21 ►

and change your radio station

00:23:23 ►

and get way off the dial.

00:23:25 ►

And then you can take something else and get way off the dial. And then you can take something else

00:23:27 ►

and get way off the dial.

00:23:29 ►

So if you keep getting way off the dial,

00:23:30 ►

what happens is eventually you break that lock

00:23:33 ►

and then you’re actually starting to gain real freedom.

00:23:38 ►

But having said that,

00:23:40 ►

I want to stress that there’s a lot of substances

00:23:43 ►

that are not good.

00:23:45 ►

Crystal meth, bad. I want to stress that there’s a lot of substances that are not good.

00:23:47 ►

Crystal meth, bad.

00:23:50 ►

Obviously heroin, bad.

00:23:52 ►

Cocaine, crack cocaine, bad.

00:23:59 ►

Matter of fact, I’ve worked with the coca plant in Peru extensively in sacred traditions.

00:24:05 ►

And what they say is that when you have crack and heart attacks and all the stuff that goes on with cocaine,

00:24:10 ►

the reason is because you’re disrespecting the spirit of that plant.

00:24:14 ►

And that’s the price you pay because you’re not paying it the respect that it’s due.

00:24:19 ►

When it’s used in its natural form in the ancient tradition, it’s a very, very healthy plant.

00:24:21 ►

It’s one of the best foods in the world for you.

00:24:26 ►

It’s high in vitamins, minerals, calcium, potassium, vitamin A, C. It’s a very complete food. It suppresses your appetite. It’s good for you.

00:24:28 ►

Used in the right way.

00:24:30 ►

But in the wrong way, abusively,

00:24:32 ►

it’s bad.

00:24:34 ►

During my journeys and the

00:24:36 ►

things that I’ve done, I went through my period with the

00:24:37 ►

speed, with the crystal meth

00:24:40 ►

and the speed and all that.

00:24:42 ►

I have to say, and I’m not just saying

00:24:43 ►

this, those are the ones I had truly sort of, for lack of better words,

00:24:48 ►

there’s no lack of better words,

00:24:49 ►

I truly had direct satanic experiences.

00:24:51 ►

Really?

00:24:52 ►

I mean, I tapped into satanic energies in a big way,

00:24:54 ►

in really hairy and scary ways.

00:24:57 ►

And it was always with the speed.

00:24:59 ►

Because one of the things I’ve been learning all along is that

00:25:02 ►

whatever you do, there’s always a price to pay.

00:25:06 ►

Right.

00:25:07 ►

I mean, even if you smoke a joint, you know, or the vaporizer.

00:25:11 ►

Okay.

00:25:11 ►

I know if I would happen to smoke a certain amount, I’ll feel a little slow the next morning.

00:25:20 ►

There’s nothing wrong with doing something.

00:25:22 ►

It’s like, yeah, you want to go out and have a drink, go have a drink.

00:25:24 ►

But if you’re going to go out and have a drink every day

00:25:26 ►

from 9 o’clock in the morning until 9 o’clock at night

00:25:27 ►

you got a problem and you’re not along for this world

00:25:29 ►

and you’re deadening your awareness and you’re dulling your awareness

00:25:32 ►

so you know

00:25:33 ►

the whole thing with crystal

00:25:35 ►

is that you’re

00:25:37 ►

putting into this thing

00:25:40 ►

and you’re creating a deficit

00:25:41 ►

and the more you put in the more the deficit comes

00:25:43 ►

and I’ve seen people get schizophrenic and really whacked out and dissociated from doing

00:25:48 ►

it because it’s bad news.

00:25:49 ►

Yeah.

00:25:50 ►

Just like…

00:25:51 ►

Well, it’s not psychedelic either.

00:25:52 ►

No, it’s not.

00:25:53 ►

It’s not.

00:25:54 ►

And incidentally, MDMA is an amphetamine, but it’s different.

00:26:00 ►

But regardless, there’s great potential for abuse there.

00:26:04 ►

You can use it too much

00:26:06 ►

and you’re going to deplete your brain

00:26:08 ►

and you’re going to load down your liver

00:26:09 ►

you need to use your head

00:26:11 ►

use common sense with these things

00:26:13 ►

and that is what I’ve come to learn

00:26:14 ►

is that a lot of these things

00:26:16 ►

and a lot of these substances

00:26:17 ►

are sacred

00:26:18 ►

especially when you get into the realm of the plants

00:26:21 ►

and they have to be treated with the highest respect

00:26:23 ►

during my journey and all my insanity when i got into my very very early 20s i think it was 21

00:26:31 ►

or 22 i made a decision to stop everything and i went out on new year’s eve and i took two hits

00:26:37 ►

of acid this is years and years and years ago mind you and i’m looking at a gray beard right

00:26:42 ►

yeah okay i smoked a whole lot of weed and I stopped doing everything

00:26:46 ►

and I had also been a vegetarian

00:26:49 ►

and so

00:26:51 ►

I was a vegetarian for 23 years

00:26:54 ►

and I stopped

00:26:55 ►

all manner of substances for 13

00:26:57 ►

and I mean I wouldn’t drink Coca-Cola

00:26:59 ►

I wouldn’t take aspirin if I had a headache

00:27:01 ►

I took nothing for 13 years

00:27:03 ►

and for 13 years I searched and I read and I meditated and I did yoga and I did martial arts and I did lots of things.

00:27:11 ►

And I came full circle back to the plants.

00:27:14 ►

Really?

00:27:14 ►

Yes.

00:27:15 ►

And Terrence McKenna had a lot to do with that.

00:27:18 ►

So what did you come back to?

00:27:20 ►

And then let’s lead into your shamanism apprentice studies

00:27:25 ►

that you’ve been doing the last several years.

00:27:27 ►

How did you get back into it after?

00:27:30 ►

Obviously, you were still searching.

00:27:31 ►

Yeah, and I kept getting asked from time to time

00:27:35 ►

by some people to smoke cannabis.

00:27:38 ►

Now, when I stopped smoking cannabis,

00:27:42 ►

the biggest and the best was Colombian was it.

00:27:45 ►

Colombian for

00:27:46 ►

40 bucks an ounce.

00:27:47 ►

And then if you’re

00:27:48 ►

on a budget

00:27:48 ►

you get the Mexican

00:27:49 ►

for 15.

00:27:50 ►

You know every once

00:27:51 ►

in a while

00:27:51 ►

if you got lucky

00:27:52 ►

you might get some

00:27:52 ►

Jamaican for 20 and 25

00:27:54 ►

but like that was a rarity.

00:27:56 ►

And then

00:27:58 ►

you’d start to see

00:27:59 ►

every once in a while

00:27:59 ►

you’d get the Thai stick.

00:28:01 ►

But that was like

00:28:02 ►

very exotic.

00:28:03 ►

Expensive, exotic

00:28:04 ►

you know high quality stuff. But that’s what very exotic, expensive, exotic, you know, high quality stuff.

00:28:06 ►

But that’s what there was.

00:28:08 ►

So after all these years,

00:28:09 ►

I come back

00:28:09 ►

and then I get all

00:28:10 ►

this domestic crops,

00:28:11 ►

which way,

00:28:12 ►

you know,

00:28:12 ►

the Humboldt stuff,

00:28:13 ►

and I mean,

00:28:14 ►

it,

00:28:15 ►

I mean,

00:28:16 ►

it doesn’t,

00:28:17 ►

stuff never even came close

00:28:18 ►

to what they got now.

00:28:19 ►

And I was like,

00:28:20 ►

God,

00:28:20 ►

all this whole new exotic world.

00:28:21 ►

So I kept getting bugged and bugged.

00:28:23 ►

And I was dealing with stress

00:28:24 ►

in different ways.

00:28:26 ►

And I finally came to a conclusion that,

00:28:28 ►

well, if I’m stressed out in this way and that way,

00:28:30 ►

and I’m trying to do this, that, and the other thing,

00:28:33 ►

maybe if I smoked a little cannabis, it might.

00:28:36 ►

And I did.

00:28:37 ►

And I liked it.

00:28:39 ►

Especially the new stuff.

00:28:40 ►

Now you’re making it sound like a gateway drug here.

00:28:43 ►

Well, I got my own dealings with that, so i hope to touch on here but um i um rediscovered it and started using

00:28:52 ►

it occasionally and then i got more drawn into it and i realized that every once in a while like

00:28:59 ►

that it’s a natural thing and it may not necessarily be a bad thing because I had some positive effects for it.

00:29:07 ►

And then,

00:29:08 ►

about a year and a half after that decision,

00:29:11 ►

when I was occasional,

00:29:13 ►

a guy I knew who was a firefighter,

00:29:16 ►

who was in his 50s,

00:29:18 ►

came to me.

00:29:20 ►

And his son, who was in his 20s,

00:29:22 ►

came to me within a week of each other,

00:29:23 ►

individually,

00:29:23 ►

and neither one knew the other one was coming to me.

00:29:26 ►

Both of them were saying that they had experimented with LSD

00:29:28 ►

and had weird experiences, and they wanted me to guide them.

00:29:32 ►

So I thought about it for a while,

00:29:36 ►

and then I set it up, and they got the stuff,

00:29:38 ►

and we went out to this place out in the middle of nowhere

00:29:40 ►

and had an amazing time.

00:29:43 ►

And I was starting to look at it from a sacred spiritual

00:29:48 ►

aspect i never had before everything i ever did was like i’ll try anything once you know i mean

00:29:53 ►

some things i want i don’t want to you know experience like getting a cactus shoved up my

00:29:59 ►

behind you know some things i’m not but i mean in terms of altered states, there’s a lot of things I always wanted to try.

00:30:07 ►

Some things I won’t try now.

00:30:09 ►

I won’t try crack.

00:30:10 ►

I already know.

00:30:12 ►

I don’t need to.

00:30:13 ►

Don’t need to go there.

00:30:15 ►

But I started just dabbling a little bit.

00:30:20 ►

And then when I read what Terrence had to say and the common sense of it and the fact that plants

00:30:25 ►

were here and were primitives

00:30:26 ►

and we’re trying them

00:30:27 ►

and had these experiences

00:30:28 ►

and starting to do it with then,

00:30:31 ►

now it’s huge,

00:30:32 ►

but then what I started to realize

00:30:34 ►

is forming an intention.

00:30:36 ►

Putting an intention

00:30:37 ►

behind what you do

00:30:38 ►

and starting to do things

00:30:41 ►

in more of a ceremonial way

00:30:43 ►

as opposed to,

00:30:44 ►

well, let’s try this

00:30:44 ►

and see what happens

00:30:45 ►

in my brain

00:30:45 ►

kind of thing.

00:30:47 ►

And I started getting

00:30:48 ►

more into that

00:30:49 ►

which drew me deeper

00:30:50 ►

and deeper

00:30:50 ►

into the shamanism.

00:30:53 ►

And in the shamanism

00:30:54 ►

I started to learn

00:30:56 ►

tried true

00:30:57 ►

and ancient ways

00:30:58 ►

of partaking of plants

00:31:00 ►

which are part of creation

00:31:02 ►

which are here for a reason

00:31:03 ►

which are our,

00:31:08 ►

I was just watching Carl Sagan the other night and he talked about our cousins

00:31:09 ►

cousins are plants

00:31:11 ►

and who’s been around here longer

00:31:13 ►

right

00:31:14 ►

and if a plant can talk to you how does a plant talk to you

00:31:17 ►

well how it looks

00:31:19 ►

how it smells

00:31:20 ►

how it grows

00:31:22 ►

and then if you ingest it in the right way

00:31:24 ►

what you experience is how it smells, how it grows. And then if you ingest it in the right way,

00:31:31 ►

what you experience is a shared language of the plant that’s not rational.

00:31:33 ►

And non-rational learning is what shamanism is really all about,

00:31:38 ►

among other things.

00:31:38 ►

And non-rational learning is what our society is in dire need of.

00:31:43 ►

I agree.

00:31:43 ►

In a big way.

00:31:44 ►

I agree.

00:31:44 ►

You know, we’re male-dominated, and we’re in all these, I can swear this is great,

00:31:50 ►

all these fucked-up wars, and all these things that are bad

00:31:55 ►

because we’re overly testosterone-loaded, and it’s all based on fear.

00:32:02 ►

And, you know, the feminine is repressed.

00:32:05 ►

So our job and what the plants do, what the plants have done for me is to help me reconnect with my feminine side.

00:32:11 ►

And I say feminine, I mean sensitivity.

00:32:14 ►

I’m not talking sexual orientation.

00:32:16 ►

I’m talking feminine intuition, the heart.

00:32:20 ►

And so in this male-dominated bullshit left-brain society that we’re in right now, we’re led by the brain and it’s a losing proposition because it’s way out of balance.

00:32:29 ►

Just look around and it’s rather obvious.

00:32:32 ►

And the medicines teach you to learn how to connect with your heart and to follow your heart instead of your head because your heart is actually a superior brain.

00:32:43 ►

Because the heart is the seat

00:32:45 ►

of intuition and intuition is superior to logic because logic is straight and linear and you can

00:32:53 ►

take a logic you can take a logical process and turn it upon itself and come out with something

00:32:58 ►

that makes sense and it can still be wrong whereas if you truly get into intuition and your heart

00:33:03 ►

and intuition it can grab like numerous things at once

00:33:06 ►

and give you a flash

00:33:07 ►

you get a flash of intuition

00:33:08 ►

you get a flash of insight

00:33:09 ►

it’s because you have the ability to

00:33:11 ►

it’s even beyond parallel processing

00:33:13 ►

it’s multifaceted

00:33:14 ►

where you can grab numerous things

00:33:17 ►

that seem to be disconnected

00:33:20 ►

and find the connecting thing in all of them

00:33:22 ►

and you do it all in a flash

00:33:23 ►

so it’s actually superior disconnected and find the connecting thing in all of them. And you’ll do it all in a flash.

00:33:26 ►

So it’s actually superior.

00:33:30 ►

So in terms of being balanced individuals,

00:33:33 ►

we’re bass-ackwards now as a society.

00:33:34 ►

We’re following our heads,

00:33:38 ►

and our poor hearts are getting dragged in the muck behind it.

00:33:43 ►

But we can learn more to lead with our hearts in the right way.

00:33:46 ►

And actually, our heads should follow our hearts.

00:33:48 ►

That’s actually the proper way.

00:33:50 ►

And ultimately, it should be a balance between the two and a synergistic communication and connection

00:33:53 ►

in order to really use your brain to its fullest capacities.

00:34:00 ►

You know, we’ve been talking about you studying shamanism,

00:34:03 ►

and I think that maybe some people are thinking you’ve just been sitting around reading a lot of books about shamanism.

00:34:10 ►

Why don’t you give us a – I know the last couple of years have been pretty intense.

00:34:14 ►

You’ve been traveling all over the world studying shamanism.

00:34:16 ►

So give us a little overview of what’s been going on in that pursuit.

00:34:20 ►

Okay.

00:34:21 ►

Thank you.

00:34:22 ►

One thing is I used to be – when Lorenzo and I met, I was deep in the

00:34:26 ►

bowels of corporate America. And shamanism is the ability to live in two worlds at the same time,

00:34:33 ►

or actually more than many worlds at the same time, and be able to function in all of them.

00:34:37 ►

I always like to think of it as being in the worlds, but not of the worlds.

00:34:41 ►

So at the time I was in corporate America, and the more I got into the shamanism, the more

00:34:45 ►

I was freaking them out because I was getting results for things and they couldn’t figure it

00:34:48 ►

out. And to make a long story short, my energy became increasingly incompatible with theirs

00:34:53 ►

until they finally threw me out, which was one of the best things in the world that ever happened

00:34:57 ►

to me because it allowed me the ability to take a detailed course of shamanic study.

00:35:04 ►

to take a detailed course of shamanic study.

00:35:06 ►

I’ve been going to Peru,

00:35:08 ►

I think I’ve gone ten times in the past seven years.

00:35:11 ►

One group I went seven years in a row straight doing extended plant dietas in the diet,

00:35:16 ►

primarily with ayahuasca

00:35:17 ►

and also other plants with it

00:35:20 ►

in a very restricted diet.

00:35:24 ►

And I also joined up with another group.

00:35:26 ►

And so I spent extended time in the jungles of the Amazon,

00:35:31 ►

working primarily with ayahuasca and other plants.

00:35:34 ►

I spent time in the Andes working in Inca traditions with San Pedro.

00:35:38 ►

I spent time down in the Mexican deserts doing the Huichol peyote rituals.

00:35:44 ►

I’ve gone throughout the southwestern United States

00:35:48 ►

and also up into Canada doing a lot of American Indian rituals.

00:35:53 ►

So I’ve been really seeking out as many ancient plants as I can

00:35:59 ►

and learning the traditions

00:36:00 ►

and learning the historical traditions that they’ve been worked in and

00:36:06 ►

then, of course, working it into modern day life because things change and the world as

00:36:12 ►

we know it changes and so you have to be able to adapt and that’s one of the keys to survival

00:36:16 ►

is adaptability.

00:36:19 ►

So in the past few years, there was a period there where I was in three different groups.

00:36:23 ►

I was working with Peruvian shamans and and then I was working with Shipibo Indians,

00:36:28 ►

which are Peruvian Indians, but they’re not quite the same tradition as these other shamans.

00:36:35 ►

And then I was working with another group who uses a lot of American Indian and Weetro traditions,

00:36:41 ►

along with the ayahuasca so there was a couple of years there what I

00:36:48 ►

was doing like I did like I was counting them I did like 30 ayahuasca sessions in

00:36:53 ►

a year also lots of San Pedro sessions and then other medicine healing sessions

00:37:02 ►

sometimes with smaller groups sometimes Sometimes I was leading,

00:37:05 ►

sometimes I was participating.

00:37:08 ►

And it got pretty wild and intense,

00:37:10 ►

but it was a really steep learning curve.

00:37:14 ►

Very difficult at points.

00:37:16 ►

And certainly not something for everybody.

00:37:20 ►

But one of the things I realized,

00:37:22 ►

and people told me this,

00:37:23 ►

is they would say to me,

00:37:24 ►

you’re going down there for us, or you’re doing this for us. And the implications of that are

00:37:28 ►

now hitting me pretty heavily. There’s a lot of truth to it, because I’ve been really tying into

00:37:34 ►

some ancient healing modalities and psychotherapies. And if you don’t get anything else from this

00:37:40 ►

podcast, here’s the thing. The absolute best thing

00:37:46 ►

you can do

00:37:46 ►

for yourself

00:37:48 ►

and for everybody,

00:37:50 ►

for the universe,

00:37:51 ►

for the cosmos,

00:37:51 ►

for the race,

00:37:52 ►

for humanity,

00:37:53 ►

truly the absolute best thing

00:37:55 ►

you can do

00:37:56 ►

for everybody

00:37:57 ►

is to work on yourself

00:37:59 ►

and heal yourself

00:38:01 ►

because when you heal yourself,

00:38:03 ►

you heal part of the collective

00:38:05 ►

and you begin to realize

00:38:07 ►

that everybody around you is a mirror

00:38:09 ►

because we’re all one.

00:38:12 ►

So when you see somebody

00:38:14 ►

and they may irk you in whatever way,

00:38:17 ►

that’s a part of yourself

00:38:18 ►

that you need to look at

00:38:20 ►

because that’s that part of them

00:38:21 ►

that’s mirroring you

00:38:22 ►

and the energy in them

00:38:23 ►

is resonating to the energy in you.

00:38:26 ►

So this took me years and years to grasp

00:38:28 ►

and I’m finally now getting a handle on it

00:38:30 ►

that the best thing I can do for everybody else

00:38:32 ►

is to heal myself

00:38:34 ►

because how in the hell can you ever love anybody else

00:38:38 ►

if you can’t love yourself first?

00:38:40 ►

Really good point.

00:38:41 ►

Really good point.

00:38:42 ►

Thank you.

00:38:43 ►

You know, I’ve noticed that

00:38:44 ►

just in the time that we’ve been alive,

00:38:48 ►

essentially since R. Gordon Lawson and Maria Sabina had their famous meeting in the 50s,

00:38:54 ►

and the mushroom came into Western consciousness more,

00:38:58 ►

it seems like more and more shamanistic practices have been seeping into the Western world.

00:39:06 ►

Have the shamans that you worked with in Peru, for example, spoken about that?

00:39:11 ►

Or is it just, what’s going on here?

00:39:14 ►

How come it’s coming out now?

00:39:16 ►

Numerous reasons.

00:39:17 ►

One of the main ones is that organized religion basically sucks.

00:39:22 ►

Amen.

00:39:23 ►

Amen.

00:39:23 ►

Amen.

00:39:25 ►

They’ve been really seduced by power.

00:39:28 ►

And so one of the major tenets,

00:39:30 ►

so to speak,

00:39:31 ►

for lack of better words,

00:39:32 ►

between shamanism

00:39:33 ►

and organized religion,

00:39:35 ►

this is the difference.

00:39:36 ►

Organized religion is based on

00:39:38 ►

the words of a prophet or prophets.

00:39:40 ►

So you have the prophet

00:39:41 ►

who has the experience,

00:39:42 ►

who speaks the words.

00:39:43 ►

He tells somebody.

00:39:44 ►

Somebody else writes it down

00:39:45 ►

somebody else translates it

00:39:47 ►

somebody else reads it and interprets it for somebody else

00:39:49 ►

I mean it’s way screwed over and diluted

00:39:53 ►

shamanism on the other hand

00:39:56 ►

is based on experiential knowledge

00:39:59 ►

period

00:40:00 ►

if you have a divine rapturous experience with the Creator,

00:40:06 ►

it’s going to be deeply personal.

00:40:08 ►

And other people aren’t even going to be able to relate to it.

00:40:12 ►

There’s Plato’s myth of the cave,

00:40:14 ►

which I’ll just say really briefly.

00:40:16 ►

The myth of the cave is there’s a bunch of people chained to a cave wall.

00:40:20 ►

And all they see are shadows passing on the wall in front of them.

00:40:23 ►

That’s all they know. That’s their reality.

00:40:25 ►

One day, somebody breaks the chains and goes outside

00:40:28 ►

and sees a world full of color and sunlight and beauty

00:40:30 ►

and animals and plants and all that

00:40:32 ►

and they’re just thrilled beyond imagining.

00:40:34 ►

And they’ll go back and try to tell everybody else

00:40:36 ►

who’s still chained to the wall of the cave

00:40:37 ►

and they don’t get it

00:40:38 ►

because they’ve got nothing to relate to.

00:40:42 ►

So shamanism is based on direct personal experience.

00:40:46 ►

And so one of the big core things

00:40:47 ►

of shamanism is that

00:40:49 ►

you make it up as you go.

00:40:51 ►

But you have to be careful

00:40:51 ►

because some people make it up

00:40:52 ►

and they’ll make up

00:40:53 ►

some pretty wild stuff

00:40:54 ►

that doesn’t really apply.

00:40:56 ►

And that’s a whole other animal

00:40:57 ►

where you can get into trouble.

00:40:59 ►

And that’s where

00:41:00 ►

following these traditions

00:41:01 ►

and learning their traditions

00:41:02 ►

gives you the foundation

00:41:04 ►

to start making up your own

00:41:06 ►

that are based on tried and true practices.

00:41:08 ►

Yeah.

00:41:09 ►

Because

00:41:10 ►

for any religion to survive regardless,

00:41:16 ►

it needs to adapt.

00:41:19 ►

For any organism to survive,

00:41:21 ►

it needs to adapt.

00:41:23 ►

Adaptation is the key to survival.

00:41:29 ►

So shamanism is based on experiential knowledge as opposed to organized religions. And one

00:41:35 ►

of the interesting things that fascinates me about organized religions is that if you

00:41:39 ►

go to your preacher or your minister or your church, then you can kind of put it all off on them.

00:41:46 ►

And if you do everything that they say,

00:41:48 ►

maybe you’ll get saved.

00:41:50 ►

But it’s a fascinating thing that the ego does

00:41:53 ►

because it’s a way of not taking responsibility for yourself.

00:41:57 ►

And truly, we must all take responsibility for ourselves.

00:42:01 ►

That’s the key because what everybody does

00:42:03 ►

is try not to take responsibility.

00:42:04 ►

And if

00:42:05 ►

you can just go to church every Sunday and give them your money and do what the preacher says

00:42:10 ►

and say your Hail Marys or whatever you, whatever happened, church happened to be and whatever you’re

00:42:13 ►

supposed to do for penance, that you’re going to be cured. Well, that’s a really good way of not

00:42:17 ►

looking at what you really need to look at because ultimately nobody really wants to look at what

00:42:22 ►

they want to look at within themselves. Those are all the things that we project onto other people.

00:42:28 ►

This segues into a form of psychotherapy that is quite ancient,

00:42:34 ►

that many of the ancients knew,

00:42:35 ►

and modern psychiatry has missed to a large degree,

00:42:39 ►

although now it’s coming more and more.

00:42:41 ►

People like Stan Grof, even Ralph Metzner,

00:42:45 ►

people who have been doing some kind of cutting-edge things,

00:42:48 ►

have brought more into play.

00:42:51 ►

And it has to do with, it’s a Jungian concept of individuation,

00:42:56 ►

which is basically confronting all the hidden, forgotten,

00:43:01 ►

suppressed and lost aspects of yourself and bringing them home.

00:43:06 ►

Because the more you bring them home,

00:43:08 ►

the more unified you become.

00:43:10 ►

And the more you come into your personal power.

00:43:13 ►

And that’s what really this is all about.

00:43:16 ►

In shamanism, they call it the power path.

00:43:19 ►

Because it’s a process of psychological integration.

00:43:23 ►

And when you take certain things,

00:43:29 ►

particularly the best top one, in my humble opinion, is ayahuasca.

00:43:36 ►

Ayahuasca has a way of finding your deepest fears and bringing them out.

00:43:41 ►

So when you do it within a sacred circle that’s protected with a good intention,

00:43:45 ►

then those parts of you that you’ve been terrified of will come out

00:43:45 ►

and you can deal with them

00:43:47 ►

00:43:50 ►

So the more you get

00:43:52 ►

all the instruments in the symphony

00:43:55 ►

to play together

00:43:56 ►

instead of competing,

00:43:57 ►

what happens is you become

00:43:59 ►

quieter and more peaceful

00:44:01 ►

over time within.

00:44:03 ►

And you really start getting into power.

00:44:05 ►

And it comes down to the differences of power and force.

00:44:09 ►

It’s like I was saying earlier about

00:44:10 ►

no matter what you do, you’re always going to pay a price.

00:44:14 ►

When you’re forceful with something in some way,

00:44:17 ►

it’s always trying to swing back to the center.

00:44:20 ►

So as much as you push in one direction

00:44:22 ►

is as much as it’s going to swing back to that center

00:44:26 ►

and the more you become aware of it

00:44:28 ►

and the more you grow in awareness

00:44:30 ►

the more you become the eye of the storm

00:44:32 ►

and you think real hard about the eye of the storm

00:44:36 ►

and you look at these horrendous hurricanes

00:44:39 ►

and you go right in the middle of them

00:44:41 ►

and it’s just peaceful

00:44:42 ►

and there’s birds flying

00:44:44 ►

and it’s like a beautiful day.

00:44:45 ►

Right?

00:44:46 ►

And all around, chaos and high-powered winds and destruction.

00:44:52 ►

So the journey really is toward becoming more whole.

00:44:57 ►

Not perfect, mind you.

00:44:59 ►

Whole.

00:45:00 ►

Because in the wholeness is completion.

00:45:02 ►

And that’s one of the underlying themes of shamanism.

00:45:04 ►

But shamanism goes where most are terrified to go.

00:45:09 ►

And that’s why it’s had such a bad rap.

00:45:11 ►

And when these European explorers would come over in the beginning and,

00:45:14 ►

oh, they’re possessed by devils and blah, blah, blah.

00:45:16 ►

Well, they were their own personal devils.

00:45:19 ►

But they were nothing like the devils that was possessing the conquerors, right?

00:45:24 ►

Who was afraid, you know, to look at that.

00:45:28 ►

So it is about coming into your power and rediscovering yourself.

00:45:33 ►

And the big thing that we’re rediscovering as a society is our feminine sides.

00:45:43 ►

And Terrence brought it up really well.

00:45:45 ►

In the beginning,

00:45:46 ►

there were the goddess religions.

00:45:48 ►

Mother Earth, Gaia,

00:45:50 ►

mushroom cults,

00:45:51 ►

things of that nature.

00:45:53 ►

And the way Terrence described it,

00:45:55 ►

and I tend to think that

00:45:56 ►

I believe this to be true,

00:45:58 ►

is that we were female-dominated,

00:46:02 ►

for lack of a better word,

00:46:04 ►

and the women screwed it up.

00:46:06 ►

So the guys took over and said,

00:46:08 ►

well, I’m going to take over.

00:46:09 ►

I’m going to take charge.

00:46:10 ►

Well, look where the hell they brought us, right?

00:46:13 ►

And I say hell, right?

00:46:14 ►

Because it’s worse, right?

00:46:16 ►

So now we’re going back and bringing back the feminine.

00:46:19 ►

Not to take over, but to be equal.

00:46:23 ►

And that’s the ascension of the goddess and the rise of the feminine and the heart that’s coming out.

00:46:30 ►

And then when we’re more balanced as individuals and our intellect and our emotions are balanced,

00:46:35 ►

then we can deal with things from a more effective, balanced perspective.

00:46:41 ►

And that’s very important.

00:46:43 ►

I’ve studied a lot about sacred geometry

00:46:46 ►

which ties in with crop circles

00:46:47 ►

and also ancient Egypt

00:46:50 ►

and there were talks of even

00:46:52 ►

which I tend to believe now from all that I’ve read

00:46:55 ►

about Atlantean civilizations

00:46:56 ►

who were the precursors to the Egyptians

00:46:58 ►

and they would talk about the fact that

00:47:01 ►

why didn’t they find more written language

00:47:04 ►

and what I read which really rung true to me And they would talk about the fact that why didn’t they find more written language?

00:47:13 ►

And what I read, which really rung true to me, is that they were communicating with their hearts and not their minds.

00:47:22 ►

And if anybody’s ever had any experience with ayahuasca, when they first discovered it, they said that the active ingredient, they called it telepathy.

00:47:25 ►

And when you get into an ayahuasca space and a good group of people

00:47:26 ►

and you’re really in sacred space together,

00:47:28 ►

your hearts are connected

00:47:29 ►

and the telepathy starts to happen.

00:47:32 ►

You start to have telepathic experiences.

00:47:34 ►

So I believe that the more we’re leading with our heart

00:47:36 ►

instead of our brains,

00:47:38 ►

the more we will transcend the intellect

00:47:40 ►

and the written language and the confusion

00:47:42 ►

and even the Tower of Babel

00:47:44 ►

and all the different languages in the world,

00:47:45 ►

it doesn’t matter what language you speak.

00:47:48 ►

If you’re coming from your heart,

00:47:49 ►

you will connect with somebody

00:47:50 ►

because it’s an energetic and it’s from spirit

00:47:52 ►

which is beyond the rational,

00:47:55 ►

the material as we know it.

00:47:57 ►

So thinking of the heart

00:48:00 ►

as a superior method of communication

00:48:01 ►

would explain why there wasn’t a lot of written language

00:48:03 ►

in the past

00:48:04 ►

and why those

00:48:05 ►

advanced societies didn’t because they were

00:48:07 ►

communicating with their hearts because the heart

00:48:09 ►

is what has been

00:48:11 ►

left behind or trampled

00:48:13 ►

over in the world today

00:48:15 ►

as we know it with all the chaos

00:48:17 ►

and the war and the bombs

00:48:19 ►

and all that stuff.

00:48:21 ►

As you were just talking

00:48:23 ►

I was thinking how

00:48:24 ►

the West has really infiltrated every place.

00:48:30 ►

You know, there’s McDonald’s everywhere you go,

00:48:31 ►

and our ways have kind of made it down into the jungle,

00:48:35 ►

so there’s no really pure society that’s untouched by this now.

00:48:41 ►

But in the cultures where they’re still practicing shamans, how do they bring

00:48:46 ►

the youth in?

00:48:47 ►

How do they initiate the younger people?

00:48:50 ►

At what age and how is that done?

00:48:52 ►

Because it seems like now the shamanistic practices are seeping into the West, so we’re

00:48:57 ►

kind of cross-pollinating.

00:48:59 ►

How are they handling it in a Western world, a dominated world?

00:49:07 ►

they handling it in a western world, a dominated world? It’s kind of a sad subject, because what I’ve seen down in the Amazon is that the missionaries will come in, particularly

00:49:14 ►

with the Shipibo Indians. I’ve seen it. Well, they’ll come in, and they will say, oh, hey,

00:49:19 ►

look, we’ve got electric guitars and musical instruments and all this cool stuff.

00:49:26 ►

And you can play with them,

00:49:27 ►

but you’ve got to come to church every day first.

00:49:30 ►

And there’s a bit of bribery going on.

00:49:35 ►

And a lot of these preliterate cultures who haven’t had a lot of Western exposure

00:49:37 ►

see things like a boombox and stuff like that,

00:49:40 ►

and they just go bonkers over them because it’s new.

00:49:43 ►

And so there’s been a bit of a gap um between the um youth in the old age one of the reasons i’ve been embraced by different

00:49:53 ►

cultures when i get on explorers because i’m not coming down here saying here here’s how it is and

00:49:57 ►

here’s what you need to do and here’s how you learn i’m going down there saying hey i don’t

00:50:01 ►

know shit what can you show me because i’m’m here to learn. So they love that.

00:50:06 ►

But they do tend to, I know typically like in the Shipibos and things,

00:50:10 ►

somebody’s going to get initiated into ayahuasca.

00:50:13 ►

They may be around 14 years old.

00:50:15 ►

And they also tend to marry earlier because you tend to grow up quicker

00:50:19 ►

because life is shorter and harder.

00:50:22 ►

So they do bring in young people to apprentice.

00:50:20 ►

shorter and harder.

00:50:24 ►

So they do bring in young people to apprentice,

00:50:27 ►

but a lot of them are really distracted by all the pomp and circumstance,

00:50:31 ►

for lack of better words,

00:50:32 ►

of Western civilization.

00:50:35 ►

So they’re always looking for people

00:50:37 ►

to pass on traditions to.

00:50:40 ►

And some of the people I’ve worked with

00:50:42 ►

have worked with the Shipibo Indians

00:50:45 ►

and they have these patterns

00:50:46 ►

that are woven into cloth

00:50:49 ►

and put on pottery and things like that

00:50:51 ►

and they’re actually songs that are sung in.

00:50:54 ►

And if you go to Shipibo Villages in the Amazon,

00:50:56 ►

you can buy lots of these things,

00:50:57 ►

but a lot of the people don’t even know what they are.

00:51:00 ►

They’re just copying these patterns

00:51:01 ►

that were shown to them.

00:51:02 ►

So the people I know will say to them,

00:51:08 ►

I need you to sing me this song that’s in this cloth and if you don’t know the song i don’t want to buy your cloth you know as a way of keeping the tradition alive and the other thing that uh

00:51:14 ►

some people that i know are doing are um they’re getting people to come in and get pay the money

00:51:20 ►

to get the shipibos certified by the federal government of Peru so they can come and teach in their own

00:51:25 ►

schools. So they can

00:51:27 ►

teach a tradition in the history that’s getting

00:51:29 ►

eroded and faded away. Because, you know,

00:51:32 ►

there’s visions of Indians in the jungle running around

00:51:33 ►

with feathers in their heads and all that, and there

00:51:35 ►

is some of that, but

00:51:37 ►

for the most part,

00:51:39 ►

because of the history, there’s the mestizo population,

00:51:42 ►

there’s lots of mixed races, and there’s been all

00:51:43 ►

this movement going on.

00:51:46 ►

So there aren’t as many pure Indian traditions left.

00:51:49 ►

They’re diminishing rapidly.

00:51:51 ►

But regardless,

00:51:52 ►

the traditions themselves are living on,

00:51:54 ►

even though the people may not be pure of blood,

00:51:56 ►

the traditions are living on.

00:51:57 ►

That’s good.

00:51:58 ►

Yeah.

00:51:59 ►

So is that a good…

00:52:00 ►

Yeah, that answers that question.

00:52:02 ►

It’s not a happy answer necessarily.

00:52:05 ►

No, unfortunately, no. But it sounds like they’re trying to compensate as best they can,

00:52:09 ►

given the conditions, getting into the schools themselves

00:52:11 ►

and teaching the traditional methods.

00:52:14 ►

Yeah, I had another eye-opening experience some years back in Peru

00:52:18 ►

where I had been out in the pristine jungle for ten days,

00:52:23 ►

and we came back

00:52:25 ►

down river by canoes

00:52:26 ►

for you know

00:52:26 ►

a couple hours

00:52:27 ►

and got to the first village

00:52:28 ►

and we’re all just like

00:52:30 ►

blissed out

00:52:31 ►

and wide eyed

00:52:32 ►

from this intense

00:52:33 ►

jumble experiences

00:52:33 ►

with plants and all that

00:52:35 ►

and we get off the boat

00:52:36 ►

and there’s these kids

00:52:37 ►

at this village

00:52:37 ►

and they’re drinking

00:52:38 ►

their water

00:52:39 ►

from the plastic bottles

00:52:39 ►

and throwing them

00:52:40 ►

in the river

00:52:40 ►

and we’re just about

00:52:42 ►

had a heart attack

00:52:43 ►

I mean

00:52:44 ►

what are you doing?

00:52:45 ►

They don’t know any better.

00:52:46 ►

And that’s what’s been given to them.

00:52:48 ►

And they’re,

00:52:48 ►

you know,

00:52:48 ►

they’re,

00:52:49 ►

where I’ve gone,

00:52:50 ►

there are mahogany poachers.

00:52:53 ►

And it’s not a good thing,

00:52:54 ►

but you realize

00:52:55 ►

that these people are struggling

00:52:56 ►

just to survive

00:52:57 ►

and just to exist.

00:52:58 ►

And they’ve been inundated

00:52:59 ►

with Western culture

00:53:00 ►

and society

00:53:01 ►

and ways

00:53:01 ►

that throws their ways

00:53:02 ►

out of balance.

00:53:03 ►

So they’re just struggling

00:53:04 ►

to survive. So even though you can think on one level okay you got all the you know standard oil

00:53:09 ►

and shell and exxon and mobile and all that right and enron all that i mean yeah there are rapers

00:53:14 ►

and pillagers but um it’s also happening on a lower level with people who are truly ignorant

00:53:20 ►

who don’t know the bigger picture and they’re struggling just to survive just to have a meal for the next day so it’s kind of a sad thing yeah it is well you know we’re we’re uh

00:53:30 ►

i’d like to sit here and and keep going but uh we’re going to uh have a file size a little too

00:53:35 ►

large to download but one of the uh uh and definitely uh i’ll i’ll obviously be back uh

00:53:43 ►

well i’ll be back a lot of times. You’ll be back.

00:53:46 ►

To do another recording, and perhaps we’ll get some feedback from some of our listeners,

00:53:50 ►

some questions they’d like to give you, too.

00:53:52 ►

But, you know, we’ve got a very, the audience is just like the tribe.

00:53:55 ►

You know, there are 60-year-old men and women who have and haven’t done psychoactives.

00:54:01 ►

There are 17-year-old young men and women who have or haven’t,

00:54:05 ►

but it’s a big, broad range.

00:54:07 ►

A lot of people are feeling pretty isolated, pretty alone,

00:54:11 ►

because I know before I kind of connected with the tribe,

00:54:15 ►

I was the same way, and I was in a situation where at the time

00:54:19 ►

my partner didn’t approve of all this stuff,

00:54:21 ►

and your friends, relatives, neighbors, coworkers,

00:54:25 ►

you can’t really talk to them about it.

00:54:27 ►

And I don’t know if you’ve got any words of wisdom

00:54:29 ►

for the lonely traveler out there

00:54:31 ►

who’s trying to answer these questions,

00:54:33 ►

but if you have any words of wisdom,

00:54:35 ►

I’d sure love to hear them.

00:54:37 ►

Well, for starters,

00:54:39 ►

I don’t know how this will come out in the right way,

00:54:42 ►

but keep your mouth shut,

00:54:44 ►

because on one level, we’re in a snitch society.

00:54:49 ►

So if you don’t know somebody, don’t deal with them.

00:54:53 ►

And be careful if somebody approaches you, too.

00:54:55 ►

There have been stories of they send out squads at Burning Man,

00:55:00 ►

and they’ll dress a certain way, and you’ll get this babelicious come up to you

00:55:05 ►

or doodlicious if you’re a babe yourself

00:55:07 ►

and approach you

00:55:10 ►

to want to do certain things

00:55:11 ►

that are not legal

00:55:12 ►

and you can get yourself into some deep doo-doo.

00:55:17 ►

So unless you really know somebody

00:55:18 ►

really well, don’t.

00:55:20 ►

Better safe than sorry.

00:55:22 ►

And along with that,

00:55:24 ►

if you keep your mouth shut

00:55:25 ►

they can’t read your mind

00:55:27 ►

so don’t say anything

00:55:30 ►

you know

00:55:31 ►

that could be recorded in any way

00:55:32 ►

whether it’s on your cell phone

00:55:34 ►

or if you’re doing something on email

00:55:35 ►

whatever

00:55:35 ►

be careful

00:55:38 ►

because you just don’t know

00:55:40 ►

and there’s all this really sick things going on in our society

00:55:43 ►

so be careful.

00:55:45 ►

And I guess as sort of a final note,

00:55:47 ►

I want to mention, I mentioned this a couple of times

00:55:49 ►

I think, that what you do

00:55:51 ►

with these

00:55:53 ►

medicines, the

00:55:55 ►

intention you put behind it is what’s important.

00:55:58 ►

And so if you put a healing intention

00:56:00 ►

behind it, and you really

00:56:01 ►

do some good ceremony

00:56:03 ►

and some really good pure intention

00:56:06 ►

for healing yourself

00:56:07 ►

and the earth

00:56:07 ►

after all this chaos

00:56:09 ►

I’ve been through

00:56:10 ►

that’s the best approach

00:56:11 ►

and that’s the shamanic approach

00:56:13 ►

and that’s an ancient approach

00:56:14 ►

that has gone on

00:56:14 ►

since before

00:56:16 ►

history as we know it

00:56:18 ►

since prehistoric times

00:56:19 ►

there’s a sacredness to it all

00:56:21 ►

so if you keep that in mind

00:56:23 ►

and

00:56:24 ►

careful what you get and be careful who you deal with, you’ll do okay.

00:56:30 ►

About the only thing I’d add is, hey, don’t take yourself too seriously either.

00:56:34 ►

That’s right.

00:56:35 ►

And with that, I think we’ll call this a day and we’ll return for more.

00:56:42 ►

Thank you for indulging me, because I sure enjoyed it.

00:56:48 ►

Well, it took a little while for us to get up to speed,

00:56:52 ►

but as you can tell,

00:56:54 ►

Matteo has not only been to the edge quite a few times,

00:56:57 ►

he’s also brought back a lot of valuable information.

00:57:01 ►

While it isn’t obvious to someone who hasn’t known Matt for a long time, the

00:57:06 ►

changes that he’s made in his approach to life and in his attitude about life since

00:57:11 ►

beginning in earnest to follow a shamanic path have really been quite obvious to his

00:57:16 ►

friends and family, and very remarkable. You know, I know a lot of urban shaman who talk a good talk, but Mateo, as his friends call him, he also walks the walk.

00:57:29 ►

And believe me, he has gone through more than anyone’s allocated share of ordeals, both physical and extra-dimensional.

00:57:38 ►

And to tell you the truth, his training put him through a lot more intensive work than I’m willing to do myself.

00:57:43 ►

His training put him through a lot more intensive work than I’m willing to do myself.

00:57:52 ►

So just like in any indigenous tribe, we rely on our shaman to go out there to the far, far edge of reality and come back with something we can use in our own lives

00:57:55 ►

and do it without the risk and hassle involved in doing such intensive work ourselves.

00:58:01 ►

But if you do discover such a calling for yourself,

00:58:05 ►

you might want to contact Mateo directly to learn more

00:58:08 ►

about shamanic apprenticeships.

00:58:10 ►

And I’ve placed a link to his

00:58:12 ►

website on our page with the program notes

00:58:14 ►

to this podcast, which is

00:58:15 ►

number 80, by the way.

00:58:17 ►

And you can find links to this and all

00:58:20 ►

of our program notes via our

00:58:21 ►

main podcast page, which is at

00:58:23 ►

www.matrixmasters.com slash

00:58:28 ►

podcasts.

00:58:29 ►

And there you’ll find a link to the notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog, where you

00:58:33 ►

can also comment on these podcasts and on other items of interest if you want.

00:58:38 ►

Speaking of items of interest, I wish I had time to mention all of the email I’ve received

00:58:43 ►

in the past month.

00:58:44 ►

And if I haven’t replied to you personally, that isn’t because I don’t appreciate the great thoughts and comments that you’re sending.

00:58:51 ►

For example, Casper writes from Denmark to say, among other things,

00:58:57 ►

Now, I didn’t even know about Terrence McKenna, MindStates Conferences, or your psychedelic salon at the start of 2006.

00:59:04 ►

But this all changed in what feels like 50 years reduced to one year. Mind States conferences or your psychedelic salon at the start of 2006.

00:59:09 ►

But this all changed in what feels like 50 years reduced to one year.

00:59:13 ►

Now, one would be a newbie in this game with only one year experience,

00:59:19 ►

but that’s not what it seems like when you can learn more in one day than what it used to take one year.

00:59:24 ►

The psychedelic experience changed my whole life so fast that I can’t believe it myself.

00:59:27 ►

Well, I sure do know what you mean, Casper.

00:59:32 ►

At times I’ve felt the same way and wondered where all this was leading.

00:59:37 ►

And then I’d have a little setback of some kind and seem to lose the plot again,

00:59:41 ►

which is something they don’t teach you in Psychedelics 101, by the way.

00:59:45 ►

And that is that while these sacred medicines can help you make enormous strides in your personal growth, it’s still up to you to do the hard work of bringing

00:59:51 ►

what you discovered during one of those profound experiences back into your everyday life.

00:59:56 ►

And once you get to know a lot of people who are also on this path, one of the first things

01:00:01 ►

that will strike you most likely is that even with the help of these wonderful medicines,

01:00:06 ►

there are still a lot of really screwed up people in the tribe.

01:00:11 ►

You know, in the final analysis, these medicines that we call entheogens or psychedelics,

01:00:17 ►

well, there’s something like money.

01:00:19 ►

You know, they don’t really change you.

01:00:21 ►

They just make you more of what you already are.

01:00:24 ►

You know, I’ve got to mention just one more thing from Casper’s email

01:00:27 ►

that brought a real smile to my lips. He was saying how

01:00:31 ►

he and some of his trusted friends were working to make stronger

01:00:35 ►

connections to the ever-growing sense of global consciousness that is now

01:00:39 ►

taking hold, and that they’ve discovered several websites to help them along.

01:00:44 ►

And then he said that after finding so many resources on the internet that, and I quote,

01:00:50 ►

my learning intake rose to a level only aliens would be able to handle.

01:00:56 ►

Don’t you really love that?

01:00:58 ►

A level only aliens would be able to handle.

01:01:02 ►

And since I’m sure that I’m not the only one who feels like an alien during the family holiday dinners,

01:01:09 ►

I’m going to recommend that we all begin to think of ourselves as best learning aliens.

01:01:14 ►

You know, then we can say things like, did you see what those humans in America are doing now?

01:01:20 ►

You know, compared to those jerks in Washington, we are aliens.

01:01:26 ►

Because I can’t think of a single person who wants to be like them.

01:01:29 ►

Can you?

01:01:30 ►

And I guess maybe this would be a good time to thank our listeners from outside the U.S.

01:01:35 ►

who join us each week.

01:01:37 ►

I don’t mean to imply that you’re aliens.

01:01:39 ►

I know that if I had the good fortune to be living outside the states right now,

01:01:43 ►

I probably wouldn’t be very inclined to listen to or read anything that comes out of here.

01:01:49 ►

But fortunately, the tribe is everywhere, and they’re very understanding.

01:01:53 ►

So even if you think you’re out there all alone at the end of the psychedelic line,

01:01:58 ►

you can be sure that there’s someone not too far away who thinks and feels very much like you do.

01:02:03 ►

Just to give you an idea of how widespread the interest in psychedelic topics is,

01:02:08 ►

I just now went out and took a look at our weblogs to see what countries people were from

01:02:12 ►

who had downloaded a podcast in the past 24 hours.

01:02:16 ►

And here’s a partial list of those countries.

01:02:19 ►

The UK, Sweden, Canada, Australia, Mauritius, Indonesia, Israel, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Hong Kong, Poland, Italy, France, Norway, Germany, South Africa, Japan, China, Mexico, Hungary, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Argentina, Brazil, India, Austria, New Zealand, Czech Republic, and the Russian Federation.

01:02:41 ►

I might have said a couple twice, and I think there are probably a few more, but you get the idea.

01:02:45 ►

I don’t know how we’re all going to find one another,

01:02:49 ►

but the good news is that there probably isn’t a place on this planet

01:02:52 ►

that doesn’t have someone who’s interested in the same things we are.

01:02:56 ►

And eventually we’re all going to have to come out of the closet,

01:02:59 ►

because, my friends, the closet is really getting crowded.

01:03:03 ►

And actually, there are already a lot of ways to find one another.

01:03:08 ►

I did it by meeting people at conferences like John Hanna’s Mind State series.

01:03:13 ►

And by the way, John’s agreed to do an interview for the salon,

01:03:17 ►

and I hope to do that in the next couple of weeks.

01:03:19 ►

So if you have any questions for him, please send them along to Lorenzo at MatrixMasters.com,

01:03:25 ►

and I’ll ask him for you.

01:03:27 ►

Some of you have suggested ways we can connect with others here in the salon,

01:03:32 ►

and I’ve tried a couple of things, like the wiki and the new salon blog.

01:03:36 ►

And in the past, I sent out a newsletter each month,

01:03:39 ►

but for those of you who are wondering why you haven’t received one lately,

01:03:43 ►

well, it’s been about a year now since I sent one out.

01:03:47 ►

But I do plan on gearing that back up in a few months, at least after I’ve completed a couple of other projects.

01:03:54 ►

So if you’ve signed up for our mailing list, I apologize for not sending anything out.

01:03:59 ►

But I do have your email address, and I’ll let you know when it’s active again.

01:04:03 ►

Right now, I want to keep focused on creating new content each week, and thanks to several very generous donors, my worries about paying our hosting bills have faded into the background for a while.

01:04:15 ►

I think last week I mentioned that Michael sent a generous donation, but I didn’t have a chance to comment on something he said in an email that I really liked.

01:04:22 ►

on something he said in an email that I really liked.

01:04:25 ►

He said, I’ve been listening to your podcast,

01:04:27 ►

and funny enough, The Dope Fiend,

01:04:30 ►

since about the 10th or so episode and only have great things to say about it.

01:04:32 ►

I plan on going to my first Burning Man this year

01:04:34 ►

and hope to say a quick cheer in person.

01:04:37 ►

And he goes on to say,

01:04:39 ►

I’m 22 and, like you, grew up brainwashed.

01:04:42 ►

Fortunately, without being raised in religion,

01:04:45 ►

well, you’re certainly lucky not to have had organized religion shoved down your throat when you’re little, Michael.

01:04:51 ►

He says,

01:04:52 ►

Only after high school did my very sane and caring parents offer me a toke.

01:04:57 ►

Soon I began reading some Don Juan and found an interest in psychedelic thinking

01:05:01 ►

and how it seemed in synchronicity with my beloved quantum physics and Buddhism.

01:05:07 ►

I have since introduced my parents and drummer to your salon.

01:05:11 ►

Well, I’m looking forward to meeting you at the burn this year, Michael.

01:05:14 ►

I hope you make it,

01:05:15 ►

and I hope your drummer and parents will be there, too.

01:05:18 ►

They really sound like my kind of people.

01:05:21 ►

Also, I want to send a very big thank you to Corey and to Robert. Robert, I think, is from the UK, Thank you. which frees me up to begin planning some more in-person interviews.

01:05:49 ►

And if all goes well, I hope to be back up in the Santa Cruz area in a month or so to interview some of the merry pranksters of 60s fame.

01:05:53 ►

Also, I hope to borrow that mysterious missing trilogue tape from Ralph Abraham

01:05:58 ►

when I get up there and get it digitized for a future podcast.

01:06:02 ►

In the email I just read from Michael, he mentioned the Dope Fiend,

01:06:06 ►

and I want to give him another plug in case you aren’t familiar with the Dope Fiend

01:06:10 ►

and his wonderful cannabis podcast network.

01:06:13 ►

Now, you might think that with a name like Dope Fiend,

01:06:16 ►

his show would be a wild and out-of-control romp like Are You Serious does,

01:06:20 ►

but it’s not like that at all.

01:06:23 ►

Although this is a fun program to listen to, but it

01:06:26 ►

also is a serious show with a

01:06:28 ►

highly intelligent host, and I

01:06:30 ►

highly recommend it and all of the other

01:06:32 ►

programs on their network, like

01:06:34 ►

The Sounds of Worldwide Weed, which

01:06:36 ►

is one of the best world music podcasts

01:06:38 ►

around, and on their network

01:06:40 ►

you’ll also find the most excellent

01:06:42 ►

Grow Report by Zandor,

01:06:44 ►

Stories from Lefty,

01:06:46 ►

and a new program called Psychonautica with KMO and Max Freakout.

01:06:51 ►

In fact, I hope to be joining them for a Psychonautica program

01:06:54 ►

in the not-too-distant future.

01:06:57 ►

And while I’m at it, I also want to mention KMO’s regular podcast

01:07:00 ►

from the sea realm, the consciousness realm.

01:07:03 ►

He’s had some really fascinating interviews over there,

01:07:06 ►

and it’s a program I look forward to listening to each week.

01:07:09 ►

So if you don’t yet have your podcast listening time already filled,

01:07:13 ►

well, you can find links to KMO, The Dope Fiend,

01:07:16 ►

and a couple other interesting podcasts on our salon’s main web page,

01:07:20 ►

which you can find at www.matrixmasters.com

01:07:25 ►

slash podcast.

01:07:27 ►

Well, I’d like to go on and read a few more

01:07:30 ►

emails, but the hour is late

01:07:32 ►

and I’ve still got to get this posted

01:07:34 ►

so I can start working on next week’s

01:07:36 ►

program, which is one I’m

01:07:38 ►

sure you’re going to enjoy.

01:07:39 ►

It’s another interview, and it’s on

01:07:42 ►

a topic that I’ve been hearing a lot about

01:07:43 ►

on other podcasts lately.

01:07:46 ►

Salvia Divinorum.

01:07:48 ►

And my interview is with Daniel Siebert,

01:07:51 ►

who has probably been more instrumental in educating the world about salvia than anyone else you can name.

01:07:57 ►

His website is www.sagewisdom.org

01:08:05 ►

And it should always be your first stop before you venture into the world of Salvia Divinorum.

01:08:12 ►

I know that I’ve said the same thing about arrowid.org when it comes to psychedelics,

01:08:16 ►

but Salvia is the one exception I’d make about starting every trip at Arrowid.

01:08:21 ►

Sagewisdom.org is definitely the place to go and find out information about that divine plant, and you’ll hear a lot more about it next week. Thank you. license. And if you have any questions about that, you can click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage

01:08:45 ►

or send me an email

01:08:48 ►

to Lorenzo at MatrixMasters.com

01:08:50 ►

if you have any questions.

01:08:52 ►

Thanks again to Jacques,

01:08:54 ►

who you heard Matt mention

01:08:56 ►

in his interview today,

01:08:58 ►

as well as to Cordell and Wells

01:09:00 ►

who collectively are known as

01:09:02 ►

Chateau Hayouk, whose music

01:09:04 ►

we are using here in the

01:09:05 ►

Psychedelic Salon.

01:09:07 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from cyberdelic space.

01:09:12 ►

Be well, my friends. Thank you.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

080 - Adventures of an Urban Shaman

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Program Notes

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Transcript

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