Plant Medicines During Political Upheaval
I experienced what I called a Christmas miracle this last Christmas — my mom asked me about Ayahuasca.
I’ve always felt myself to be the “odd one” in the family. Having left the typical 9–5 routine a decade ago, not married, no children, always on a plane living in some foreign country, not to mention drinking a “tea” that makes you throw up all the time. My family has never asked too many questions.
So when my mom started asking me questions about Ayahuasca, my own personal love language, I was stoked.
“How many more times do you need to drink this?”
Her question and the many other questions that come from inquiring minds, have been with me on my own journey of inquiry as the world has been changing in a seriously different direction.
“I know someone who has drank Ayahuasca and they’re still miserable. Why didn’t it work for them?”
“Why do you keep drinking it?”
“I know it’s changed your life, but is it for everyone?”
“Is it cultural appropriation? Am I allowed to drink it if I’m not from that culture?”
“What if it changes me?”
For the last six months, as the U.S. was getting ready for all that was to come, I stored my things in a friends basement and took off on a journey asking myself, “Why have I dedicated my life to plant medicine? Do I want to keep dedicating my life to it? Where is its place in this current political upheaval?”
I went to meet two teachers in Peru from different lineages of practice. I helped facilitate a group in their 10 day / 8 ceremony process. I actually made Ayahuasca — cutting the vine, harvesting the Chacruna, to everything after. Soon to be another week in a retreat I’ll go to assist. From the outside, one would say my whole life is devoted to it.
In my own lived experience since my first cup of Ayahuasca in 2014, my happiness, connection, relationships, fulfillment, joy, purpose, spiritual, energetic, emotional, and physical health went from very low numbers to 10’s on my scale and they’ve all gotten there by way of plant medicine, mainly Ayahuasca and Iboga. And then from firsthand, secondhand, and many degrees away of stories that travel back from the hundreds of people i’ve seen come through, I see lives transformed - sometimes from one experience and sometimes with continual practice.
One friend told me, “Teresa, this is your service to the world.” She was right in a way. It’s my love language. For Chinese elders, their way of telling you they love you is by saying, “Have you eaten?” For me, it’s, “have you tried plant medicine?”
At the same time, I’ll share a curious contradiction about me. Anyone who knows me, from my deepest closest friends to people I meet for one second at the post office, on a subway, in any country, in any language, will know rather quickly that I am a plant medicine fan and that it saved my life. And yet, through the 10 years of my relating with Ayahuasca there hasn’t been one ceremony where I haven’t thought, “This is nuts, what am I doing here, what’s actually happening?” It’s a contradiction I can’t seem to get away from and I’m still wondering, “Why this way?”
To quote my mother again, “Mei, sometimes there is no ‘why’.”
What I have landed on after this last half year of exploration is that the unquenchable thirst of ‘why’ that I’ve had since I was a little girl is what I actually realize is my intuition. It’s been my intuition continuously guiding my in all the moments of my struggling unknown. And what I have been met with is an infinite mystery of knowledge, wisdom, possibility, and hope that I could ever dream of finding in these plant teachers. I found my perfect teacher.
I find plant medicines more pertinent, significant, and timely now more than ever. I see how they hold major keys for the health and survival of our species, culture, society, and planet — past, future, now.
On an individual level, it unlocks our sense of victimhood, helplessness and aloneness into agency, sovereignty, responsibility, and freedom. This is everything and we won’t get anywhere without this.
On the intra- and inter personal level, they help illuminate and awaken the communication and understanding between the inner and outer worlds which is absolutely necessary for relating, communicating, and co-existing in harmony. Not to mention it unlocks our ability to understand reality as you create your experience of it.
The micro-unit of finding choice and agency is what unlocks and opens the bridge from the possible trap in the infinite swirl of healing trauma forever and spiritual bypassing self-development obsession into real-world and creative collective action. It is the key that fits both sides of the door. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, in fact they mirror each other and are inter-dependent.
On a community and collective level, this brings us into physical and emotional safety, togetherness, collaboration, emergence, and creative solutions built on new foundations of safety, possibility, harmony, and abundance (instead of fear, scarcity, competition).
From a healthcare perspective, it shifts our health and treatment orientation from passive “take something” arm chair, give power away and, symptom-level treatment to active “do something, take part of, create a relationship with” more integrated all systems approach.
From a cultural perspective, we remember, respect, and integrate and benefit with all cultures — the northern, rationality, science, technology, intellectual with the southern, indigenous, intuitive, nature, emotions and spiritual. See the Eagle / Condor prophecy shared by the Quechua, Hopi, Maya and Lakota traditions.
From a planetary perspective, we align into right relationship with the planet, reciprocity, and honor our right place and participation within the wider ecosystem
From a spiritual level, we tend and develop our spiritual practice, being, and health and heal the ailments that originate from disconnection.
It’s not the answer to everything, but it has surely answered a lot for me and continues to do so with each day.
And if all that feels like its too much, I’ll boil it down to this. Wherever we go, there we are. Get curious about the operative consistent thing in that equation — you. Our attention is exhaustingly drawn outwards, overly unbalanced in the direction out. We must learn how to balance and become proficient in the interchange.
Plant medicines work on our state of consciousness. When we pause for a moment in trying to change everything around us, which invariably will always be changing, and instead put effort into developing the one very essence of life that is forever — our consciousness — the pressure will shift from needing the world around us to change instead to finding our agency in changing our experience of the world. And when the experience of our world is shifted from victim to empowered, our thoughts, solutions, and ability to act on it is a whole new game — and it becomes fun.
True lasting happiness is realized through this internal transcendence.
It seems like this next four years will be tough. All that is happening is a lot, uncertain, scary. And what I’ve seen is that in times of great struggle, there’s an even more important role in balance.
It is said in nature when there is a poisonous plant nearby, you’ll also find its antidote close by. Plants have been here long before us and they will be here long after us. And they’ve got a lot to teach us.
I hope as many people as possible (with all the right considerations and questions asked around medical, safety, culture, etc.) will know there are parallel paths that exist and are here to help support us. There are people who have been walking them for thousands of years. There are ancient systems and “institutions” that have existed long before the ones that are crumbling today that hold something for us. We are not without hope. In fact, it is with so much embodied and experienced hope in my heart that I share and encourage this way.
So I know i’ve pitched long and hard about plant medicine and if it’s not for you, also cool. You can still benefit. I always revisit Fleet Maull’s recommendations in his book “Radical Responsibility,” written in his 14 year prison sentence where he takes full responsibility for his life despite external limitations. Interestingly, I found many of his lessons to be the same lesson Ive learned over and over again from plants — responsibility and agency, with the focus on the inner transcendence.
Victim to Empowerment: Take a proactive approach to life’s challenges — “Am I going to let a situation take me down? Or am I going to find the most creative way I can respond to a circumstance to move my life forward, however unjust or tragic or horrible it may be?
Transcending Blame: Radical responsibility is a trans-blame model — its not about blaming oneself (we’re not here to shame or blame ourselves, or invite the negative critic in) but recognize our role in situations.
Choice: The moment you attribute the causation of something to someone outside of yourself, you’ve just given your power away. This is not to deny the real uncontrollable circumstances that happen outside of us, but about how do we choose to consciously or unconsciously perceive, think, and feel about the external circumstances we encounter everyday.
“The empowerment zone is life context defined by a responsive relational mode of being and interacting that creates limitless possibility and authentic relationship. In contrast reacting that creates in contrast the drams zone is a characterized by a reactive survival mode that creates endless constriction, conflict, and suffering.” — Maull
Possibility Mindset: Ask yourself, “what can I do?” Asking this question immediately shifts you from being a victim to being in a mindset of creativity and possibility, there is always something you can do to move from freeze to forward.