Learning at the Feet of the Plant Teachers: Part 4

Overview: This is the fourth of a five-part series titled “Learning at the Feet of the Plant Teachers,” Jonathan Goldman, Founder and Director of the Santo Daime-based Church of the Holy Light of the Queen in Ashland Oregon. In this series, Jonathan recounts a powerful experience with Daime (Ayahuasca) and emphasizes the importance of responsible use in spiritual ceremonies. He warns against the dangers of seeking guidance from untrained shamans, highlighting the potential for psychological harm. True healing, Goldman argues, is a long and challenging journey, not a quick fix. Goldman expresses concern over a recent surge in the popularity of plant medicine use, which has unfortunately coincided with a rise in unqualified practitioners. He worries that improper ceremonies conducted by these individuals can lead to negative experiences and damage the reputation of plant medicine as a whole. He also criticizes those who exploit this growing interest for personal gain. To address these issues, Goldman proposes the creation of a “Guild of Entheogenic Practitioners” across the upcoming parts of the series. This voluntary organization would establish ethical and safety standards, ensure proper training for practitioners, and offer a trusted resource for those seeking safe and legitimate ceremonies. The guild would respect individual autonomy and traditions while providing a certified list of qualified practitioners. Unregulated practices, Goldman argues, risk government intervention and potential bans on plant medicine use. He believes that responsible self-regulation through a guild system can protect both participants and the future of plant medicine use. Stay tuned for the following parts of the series where Goldman delves deeper into solutions and the potential benefits of this approach.

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Colonialist Fake Shamans 

If someone has gone to Peru or Colombia for a month or two, paid a materially poor shaman in the jungle a bunch of dollars or Euros for some Ayahuasca, gotten that person’s bought-blessing, returned to the United States, Mexico, or Europe and opened shop dispensing plant medicine, they are, in my estimation, committing a spiritual crime. Which has, way too many times (one or more), slid down into human-level crime when that person crosses the boundaries of sexual, financial, and life-influence that are vital for safe and noble ceremonial work. Even without the criminal violation of boundaries, that confusion plays out most commonly in the declaration of those under-trained, self-declared “shamans” that they know that they are doing in the sacred plant space. And then the promise of a safe journey and return to the seekers who come and lie down at the faux-shaman’s feet.

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The slipshod shamans are demonstrating the northern/American/European colonialist arrogance that has led to so much exploitation and damage to indigenous people and the natural world, and by rebound (what you put out returns to you 7 times over) to the northern cultures in the disease of the millions of lost souls presently floundering in the sea of our self-generated existential despair. By imagining that they can, in a short period of time, understand and perform the practices that have taken thousands of years to develop without going through the elaborate, lengthy, and difficult initiation process that any plant medicine path (actually, any true path) requires, these wannabe shamans are demonstrating utter ignorance and disregard for those they would, perhaps even sincerely, seek to help. They think they are honoring nature and the origins of the medicine because they declare it so, play indigenous music, and put some feathers and crystals and tobacco on their altar.  In some ways that makes it worse. By intention or hubris, they are creating an illusion, a facade. All of which is fine if the only person who would be affected by their ignorance is the illusionist. But when they come back home and set up shop, they are taking peoples’ inner life, mental and emotional health and, in some cases, sanity into their hubris-distorted hands. They are in over their heads, and there are some innocent and desperate ones who will come to them that they will pull under. I have met some of the ones who have gone to such ceremonies and been shattered psychologically and spiritually. They have come to my community, and I have received them in my healing practice.

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There is a network of psychotherapists in Southern California dedicated to helping the people who have been psychologically shattered by attending ceremonies led by people who had no right to administer a bottle of soda from a Seven Eleven, let alone a sacred medicine. 

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In 2015 I was invited to a meeting of people serving Ayahuasca in Los Angeles. They wanted to get my insights about the process of legalizing their practices. I had led the 10-year effort that resulted in 2009 in the legal protection for our spiritual practice in Oregon and around the US. There were 30 people at the meeting, all of whom were conducting ayahuasca ceremonies for groups of people. I was told that 20 people couldn’t make it. Among those thirty there were exactly two people to whom I would have entrusted anyone I cared about, or anyone, to be safe in their ceremony. And one of those two people was an indigenous shaman from the Brasilian Amazon. I was appalled by the ignorance, arrogance, cavalier attitude, and superficiality of the majority of the participants in the meeting.

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Basically, those of us in that meeting were an accurate mini-representation of the circle of American ayahuasca practitioners, or, really, Americans in general. We were all good people with sincere intent. And a very few of us had been willing to dive below the surface of our superficial, ego-dominated, smiley masked culture and do the hard inner work of uncovering the depths of what the plants are offering to us and asking us to heal in ourselves so we can be useful instruments.

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I concede that the occurrence of serious psychological and energetic “splitting off” as a result of participation in plant medicine ceremonies is fortunately relatively rare. But it is not rare enough to take the responsibility from us to look at why they happen and call out wrongful, avoidable causations. “Shit happens,” and “Mostly it’s ok,” are not valid excuses for not knowing how to help people who have been purposely disassembled by the power of nature. It is absolutely possible to care for people in the many states of opening that people in sacred plant medicine ceremonies can enter into. With adequate training, experience, knowledge, based in humility, we can help people seeking healing and knowledge successfully navigate the necessary inner breakdown of psychic, emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual material that is required for authentic transformation. With progressively more un-egoic connection with the spiritual forces that come through the plants (who are the real healers), and the skill of cleanly connecting with those forces, we can recognize the inner states of participants in our ceremonies and help people return from their journeys more whole and healthier than they left, not less. It can be done, and it is being done in my community and in other spaces as well. But not everywhere, and that is not OK.

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There are of course many sincere and well-trained practitioners of plant medicine. I have met some of them and heard of others from people whose discernment I trust. There is much suffering on this earth, and there are those of us called to do our part in helping to relieve it. I have respect for anyone choosing to say yes to the call to relieve suffering, in whatever arena or venue. It’s not an easy job. To do it well takes commitment and often sacrifice, at times the enduring of criticism and persecution.  It is not my place to impugn the motivations of people who are offering- as they say, “serving”- these medicines to people.  What I do question, observe, shake my head about, and pray for those innocently putting themselves in too many of these practitioners’ hands, is those who may even be sincere in intention, but are criminally lacking in their training and their own discernment.  Of which there are too many.

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A leader is not a guru, or a parent, or a lover, or even a friend. You are a space holder for Light to come and work. We need to maintain ethical boundaries for everyone’s protection and to transform ourselves to be examples of transformation for those coming for their own healing. Those boundaries need to be inviolate. The navigation of ethical boundaries can be tricky. Everyone in the medicine space is expanded energetically and psychically. Fantasy and unresolved trauma and unfulfilled needs are regularly present. And peoples’ psyches, emotions, inner children, and in some cases sanity is in our hands if we have accepted the responsibility of serving medicine. There is no legitimate excuse for violating those boundaries.