N.O.S.C. - Non-Ordinary States of Conciousness

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Rev. Dr. Jessica Rochester is the Madrinha and President of Céu do Montréal, a Santo Daime (Ayahuasca) Church she founded in 1997 in Montréal, Canada.
She is a transpersonal counselor, she trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Assagioli and trained with Dr. Stanislav Grof.
She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017 to achieve an Section 56 Exemption to import and serve the Santo Daime
Sacrament (Ayahuasca).
She is an ordained Interfaith Minister with a Doctorate in Divinity.
From 1986 to 2018 she has been a workshop leader, teacher, and in private practice.
She is the author of Ayahuasca Awakening A Guide to Self-Discovery, Self-Mastery and Self-Care, Volume One and Two.
She continues to lecture on consciousness, non-ordinary states of consciousness, self-discovery, spiritual development, health and well-being and personal transformation

https://www.revdrjessicarochester.com/

https://psychedelicscene.com/2024/06/20/entheogens-psychedelics-nosc-and-the-search-for-wholeness/

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Host

George Monty

My name is George Monty. I am the Owner of TrueLife (Podcast/media/ Channel) I’ve spent the last three in years building from the ground up an independent social media brandy that includes communications, content creation, community engagement, online classes in NLP, Graphic Design, Video Editing, and Content creation. I feel so blessed to have reached the following milestones, over 81K hours of watch time, 5 million views, 8K subscribers, & over 60K downloads on the podcast!

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Life Podcast. I hope everybody's having a beautiful day. I hope the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and the wind is at your back. I have with me today Reverend Dr. Jessica Rochester. She is the Madrina and President of the Sioux de Montreal, a Santo Daime ayahuasca church she founded in 1997 in Montreal, Canada. She's a transpersonal counselor. She trained in the work of Dr. Roberto Asagioli and trained with Dr. Stanislav Roth. She worked with Health Canada from 2000 until 2017 to achieve a Section 56 exemption to import and serve the Santo Daime Sacrament ayahuasca. She's an ordained interfaith minister with a doctorate in divinity. From 1986 to 2018, she has been a workshop leader, a teacher, and in private practice. She is also the author of Ayahuasca Awakening, a guide to self-discovery, self-mastery, and self-care, Volumes 1 and 2. She continues to lecture on consciousness, non-ordinary states of consciousness, self-discovery, spiritual development, health and well-being, and personal transformation. And she is here with us on the True Life Podcast at least once a month, and we are so happy she's here today with us again. Dr. Jessica, how are you? I'm very well. Sorry if I have to do this. I was out watering the plants on my balcony. And it's finally summer in Montreal. You know, I mean, we have long, dark winters. I know you don't feel very sorry for us down there in Hawaii. It's so hard. And then it fills the air with all the pollen and the dandelions, you know, and the trees are all and blooming and everything is just absolutely glorious. Yeah, it's alive. You know what's so interesting? I know we're going to be talking about something else today, but I just want to toss this out as a thought because it's so interesting. Because of my work with the South of Miami and the last 30 years going to Brazil and doing the North-South experience, one thing that I really noticed is You know, and they would tell me and us, us Nordiners, they would say, wow, you guys are all so uptight. You know, and someone said, you know, it's like you're like always scurrying. And I said, you know, you come and live through our winter, six months of long, dark, cold, you know, and and. You can't just swing in a hammock and the difference. And if we step back and look at where we live and the geography of it and the place, you know, the place that it has in our lives. And if we know and if we're Northerners, then we have to understand that piece, that it has to be part of our perspective on our health and well-being in our life, is how do we fold that into us? And not just become like squirrels. Storing away madly. And that's for the winter. And get into that energy. So I just thought. That would be something interesting. To share with you. Because you live in the sun. Just like we have. And that allows you. I'm guessing. Because I've never lived south. Visited sure lots of times. But I've never lived there. And so. Is it true that you just slow down, that there's a greater sense of ease, that there's less sense of, you know, winter's coming and you have to make sure you have to have everything all stored up. And it's just a different way of working. It's a different way of being in the rhythm of life, you know? I think so. And I think there's, you know, if we look at some of the, the stereotypes that, you know, stereotypes are stereotypes, but sometimes people say people from the islands are lazy, you know, but food literally falls from the trees over here. You know, it's warm. There's a lot of people around the United States that send their homeless people to Hawaii because of the weather. You know, on some level, the ways in which you can live over here the conditions are easy like you don't have to go out and shovel snow you don't have to be worried if you have to go out to the pump house and figure out how to get heat because your family's freezing or your water pipes are all frozen like those are real situations that have real consequences that could probably be life or death in some situations and you don't have those over here right we have people who die of hypothermia yes you know especially street people who You know, even though we have shelters and we have places where they can go for the night and when there's a really tough time, they set up extra shelters. You know, we have a stretch of minus 35 or something. No. Minus 35. Yeah. We did that in the summer, too. We had a very wild thing. And so, you know, it is a reality. It is a reality. You have to think about we have a power failure in the middle of the winter. That's serious. Yep. You know, it's very serious. I mean, people laugh when they come from the south and they see, you know, I have to explain to them that we have four kinds of winter boots, you know. They think it's bizarre, you know, and different levels of winter clothing because it goes kind of cool and then it goes cold and then it goes colder and then it goes really cold. And you have wet snow. You have wet snow and you have dry snow and you have the freezing, freezing weather. And then you have the it's still dry and it hasn't snowed too much. You know, I mean, it goes on and on with the winter clothing and the space it takes and our cars. And we have special tires and we have to have our cars built, you know, and people don't understand that where you live plays such a huge role in how you how you how you organize yourself. with career and studies in education. And the little ticking thing, the little survival instinct that's inside of you, where you know that you're gonna need training or apprenticeship or education or certification in something to be able to, you're not gonna be able to just pull the fruit off the trees and sleep in a hammock and be okay. You won't, you know? Anyway, today, you know, it's such an always interesting speaking with you. It's always lovely. Thank you so much for having me visit. What is it? The first Tuesday of every month. That's right. This last year, it's been a real joy. And today we're going to talk about, um, you know, the search for homes. And what, what is that about? And, you know, I want to do a little chapeau over to the editor-in-chief, Jason, over at Psychedelic Scene. He published an article that I had written on this. And originally they were going to review my books, and the person who was going to do it was so bogged down. And I said, well, I can write an article if you want. Oh, yeah, yeah, do that instead. So that's how that happened. And so a little chapeau to the magazine. Sure. And, you know, basically it was talking about anti-gens, psychedelics, non-ordinary states of consciousness, and the search for wholeness. And the question that I ask, as you know, I ask it in my book, you know, this self-discovery part. What is that really about? It is the search for wholeness. And so, George, what do you think wholeness for a human means? I am For me, I think wholeness is a glimpse of the idea that you're part of something bigger than yourself. Like maybe getting to hear a non-localized consciousness call your name. Like understanding that you can see yourself in other people. And I don't thoroughly understand it. I catch glimpses of it from time to time, but it's slippery for me. I grab it and then it's gone. Yeah, well, you know, I'm always dating myself here. Back in the 70s, we called that getting it and losing it. Okay. And we knew exactly what we meant when we were saying that. We have this inspiration of whatever, cosmic consciousness, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And then we promptly lose it. Okay. And get back into this small way of being in life. Now, what's so fascinating is what you said. Because you talked about the awareness of wholeness as being something of recognition. Okay, tell me if I got it wrong. A recognition of something larger than us. A recognition of something above and beyond just our small humanity. And that's absolutely perfect. And here's the interesting thing. is we have to now turn that around and look at it within ourselves. And so we come to this experience of it feels like something's missing. How many people go through life? I'm not counting teenagers. I need my own car. I need an iPhone 15. I'm not talking about that something's missing. I'm talking about the feeling that something inside feels empty or missing or something. And so the end of the understanding, if there is an end, or the larger understanding is that that sense of wholeness around us and outside of us and unity and oneness is exactly what's reflected within us when we don't feel all of that inside of us. and the capacity to feel it inside of us. What does that look like? Now I'm going to go all Joseph Campbell on you, of course, and one of my favorite guys, and talk about the hero's journey because the adventure of self-discovery, the hero's journey, that's what I write about, the adventure of self-discovery that becomes self-care and self-mastery because that's what that journey leads us to. Joseph Campbell called that the hero's journey. And how he describes the stages that it takes. And it always begins with a hero who doesn't know they're a hero, okay? Who's just a small, ordinary person. You know, Luke Skywalker, just a regular guy, you know, feeling bummed out on this boring planet, okay? And then you have Frodo, the hobbit, okay? And an ordinary, another ordinary little guy. And, you know, Dorothy, Wizard of Oz. So you see these very ordinary people. They're not spectacular in any way. They're just regular folks like you and me. Just regular human beings living a life, doing their best at whatever it is that they're doing. And then something happens that either triggers their interest, their curiosity, their intuition. Something inside starts tingling. Okay? Or something comes along and smacks them on the side of the head. Okay, because that's the only way these two things happen. You know, whack, the doctor says, by the way, I'm not happy with your blood tests or some other thing. Or your husband, wife, partner comes to you and says, by the way, we're done. Okay, I found Fred. Okay, I'm going off with Fred. So whatever it is that smacks us on the side of the head or that tingles in curiosity inside of us, You know, we begin our journey. And so sometimes the journey can begin because of trauma, because of heartache, because of loss or grief, but not always. Sometimes it can just be curiosity. Sometimes it can be noticing that there's some breadcrumbs leading on a trail and we begin to follow them. Somebody says, oh, you should read this book or you should see this documentary or listen to this podcast or meet this person or you know, or we go into the library or the bookstore or some equivalent, and our hand reaches for the book. Have you ever had that experience? It's like we're watching our hand reach for something. Something catches our eye, you know, or there's a phrase, a saying, and we say, who's that person who said that? And we go on a search. And before we know it, we're on the journey, right? Now, how many of us understand that one of the main motivations in that journey is because we're searching for homeless. That something feels like it's missing inside. We don't know what it is, but it just feels like there's something, you know? Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes perfect sense. It's that longing or that emptiness, you know, that the... The search. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I think most people feel it. Maybe that's what leads to depression is not answering that call. You know, I heard a good quote that I think that leads up to this is you should be afraid to take a risk and do something meaningful, but you should be even more afraid to stay in the same spot if you're miserable. Yes. Kind of leads to that, right? The emptiness and wholeness. Yes. And there's so many different ways of saying that and getting that, you know. It's better to be alone than badly accompanied is one of my favorites. You know, the 40 years in private practice, I lost track of how many people I told that to, you know, stuck in situations at work or in a marriage or in a commitment or in something and not knowing how to get out, okay? And, you know, the chick has to peck its way out of the egg. And so sometimes it takes courage and effort and determination and faith to pick your way out of that egg and to get started on your journey. The chick doesn't really know what's going to happen on the other side of the egg, do they? That's right, they don't know. So it becomes a hero's journey. And each person has their own set of circumstances and their own individuality and their own character to do that journey with. And there's some things that always You can count on happening. That's what Joseph Campbell mapped out. There's the call. There's the initiations. Okay, there's the challenges. So we're always going to face challenges. There's always going to be, let's call them initiations. And there's going to be traveling companions. Okay, it may not necessarily be as glamorous as C-3PO, R2-D2, or the Tin Man and the Lion and what have you. okay but we will have we will have traveling companions and we need to kind of recognize them when they arrive they actually when we first meet them we may not like them you know this is old brady cat flying you know why do I want to hang out with him you know so at first and that's really surprising because people I I'm you know I always have to have a bit of a giggle inside myself because people think of traveling It's going to be, you know, when you think of all these great, you know, guides and sorcerers and wizards and things like that, and you think it's going to be magical. And sometimes it's a scared old lion, you know, and that's your traveling companion. Get on with it. So we need to learn to recognize our traveling companion. And a colleague once said to me, you just have to pay attention to who God sent, you know, and what the universe sent us and and even if we go really what are we supposed to do with this well we find out what we're going to do with this so the search for wholeness let's talk a little bit more about kind of how that's fitting in with what's going on right now if we if we kind of look at the history of the human species we're going to see it was always there and and that's people thought that if they got on a ship and went exploring or if they climbed mountains or you know that they would do an outward discovery and that would be important and then there would be people who would follow spiritual pathways and so they would find a great teacher and they would follow the great teacher and they would go through all those initiations and and whatever it is that would be asked from them at the ashram or the monastery or you know the temple and they'd follow that And that would be an important part of their search for meaning, their search for wholeness, because those two things travel together. We can't have one, forget the other. It's like the coin. Wholeness is on one side, meaning is on the other. What meaning does life have for us? What meaning do we add to it? What meaning do we take from it? It's all connected to that sense inside of us. If we have an Einsteinian view that we're all connected, we're all one Okay. What? Alone. What did he write? What? Alone. I'm never alone. I'm surrounded by the collective unconscious. I love that one. I'm never alone. I'm surrounded by the collective unconscious, you know? And then, but if we feel alone and there's something missing, then how do we begin the journey? And so if we look at, and for James and psychedelics, okay, and let's put psychedelics respectfully on one side for a moment, because psychedelics In my dialogues, antigens are sacred plants that have been used, as far as we're aware, for millennia, if not longer, within the human species in rituals, rites of passage, and initiations. Psychedelics are a more recent introduction, and they are usually laboratory-grade substances. Just making a distinction between the two. One has long-term historical relevance, and use than the other more recent. Easier to research probably, you know, and use clinically because you can measure and all the things that science and medicine like to do, right? Whereas entheogens are relationships with plants. Very different. They're creating a relationship with the plant, the plant teachers, the lineage, the whole thing. It's not just an experience. And so we look and we see, okay, Here's these sacred plants being used in rites of passages and initiations. Okay, so maybe they were a really important part. The non-ordinary state of consciousness was a really important part of human development and that the elders would administer these or introduce these sacred plants and rituals and they would have a deep knowing and inner knowingness of when and what and how much and and how to support the person going through the rite of passage or the initiation okay and so if we look at it we see non-ordinary states of consciousness are a really really important part of the human story now not all of them are precipitated by sacred plants fasting transcending trans dancing sensory deprivation, solitude, vision quests. There's many ways in which we can, meditation, all the meditation practices, there's many ways we can achieve non-ordinary state of consciousness. And yes, of course, sometimes, for some people more easily so than others, it's spontaneous. People can have spontaneous non-ordinary states of consciousness. This is very much the shaman's walk. This is what the older cultures would tell you. If that door is open for you easily, it means you're meant to have one foot there and one foot here. And that's a form of calling that needs to be respected and understood. So if we look at more modern life, what do we see is Western civilization does not have a non-ordinary state of consciousness in its culture. That's a key problem. It doesn't exist. If you look at European culture and society for the last few hundred years or more, where's the non-ordinary state? It doesn't exist. The initiations and everything got shrunken and shrunk and shrunk and shrunk until they almost don't exist anymore. Is that part of the popularity, the current part of the popularity of entheogens and psychedelics? The fact that part of us knows something is missing, and what's missing is the non-ordinary state of consciousness done in, and yes, of course, I'm heavily favoring ritual. That's my belief and my training and everything else, and historically evident okay? That ritual and community play a huge role in this. Yes, there would be the shaman who would say to an apprentice, I want you to go and spend a week in the forest, and here's what you do, you eat this, and I'll be checking on you, but you eat this, and you take this plant, and you, you know, and this is what you need to be doing, okay? And so there's that kind of initiation, yes, but a lot of them are done with community. And if we look around, where is the ritual-based, community-based, non-ordinary state of consciousness in Western civilization? That's a question, George. I'm looking for an answer. Yeah. It's... It's around, but it's devoid of meaning. It's your 21st birthday and getting wasted. It is a sweet 16 party without any of the wisdom of the community around you talking about what to expect when you become an adult. There's echoes of it, I think, but there seem to be, and almost none in my life. When I look at it, those are all that I can really think of. Fighting my dad might've been one, but... The important initiation is standing up and not like a three-year-old saying no. That's the first go around where we practice saying no. If you have children, you understand that two to three-year-old first rush at individualism. No. That's my favorite word. Okay, that's the first go around at it. Exercising their will and finding their willpower and their individuality. And then in teenage years, it comes out full blown because now they're coping with hormones and serious body changes. I mean, it's not just getting a larger shoe size and taller. OK, all of a sudden there's massive transformation. It's caterpillar or butterfly going on, you know. And so the adolescent, you know, these are rites of passages that have been honored for possibly hundreds of thousands of years in which. a young man or a young woman entering into young adulthood, making that child to adult transition would have specific rituals and tasks and experiences to be able to support and assist them in that passage, understanding how important it would be. Okay. But those things that they, as you say, they shrank and disappeared. So we are Western civilization doesn't have elders. And you know what I mean by elders. Okay? The role models are movie stars and TikTok stars and Hollywood stars and music stars. You know, a million people will go get tickets for Taylor Swift. Okay? And that's fine. She's a great lady and God bless her for her talent and may she have a healthy, happy, prosperous life. It's not a fault or criticism of her or her activities. Not at all. Okay? All I'm saying is, where's the elders? Those are the role models for our young people. They're not seeing elders, wise, wisdom or knowledge keepers. Okay, so this is the first thing. We're talking about what's missing. This is the first thing. Wisdom keepers and elders. The second thing that's missing are meaningful rituals and rites of passage. Yes, there's I remember I was baptized and I was raised Anglican. Okay, this was my first introduction in this lifetime to religious studies was being raised in the anglican church and so I was baptized I don't basically remember that because I was a baby but I remember my first confirmation okay when you go through you do all this you sit in a little you know in the church study with the rector and and and you have to learn the catechisms of the anglican church and you have a couple of other you know children the same age with you and about to wear a white dress with little white gloves and a little white thing in my hair and no shoes. And, you know, I took my first communion age 11, somewhere I have a photograph of me with a family dog and a little white outfit. Okay. But was it a non-ordinary state of consciousness? Was it profoundly moving? No, I had a little dry wafer and a drop of wine put in my mouth and it was like, that was it. Okay. I didn't feel any, transformation of anything I didn't feel anything profound it was just the rite of passage just shrunk down you know just shrunk down I had you know throughout all the years I've had people of different faith traditions talk about let's say their bar mitzvahs and say basically yeah learn some scriptures and then people pin envelopes with money it's a party you know And so that's what our social, cultural, you know, tendency towards is, is towards materialism, money, power, position, acquisitions, right? And so no wisdom keepers or elders, or very few, okay? And then rites of passages and rituals. Non-ordinary state of consciousness. These are the things that are missing from our culture and our society. So how could we not feel what is missing inside of us? So here's that wonderful thing where we started. Something outside of us is missing in our culture and society. We can sense it. We can feel it. All of the people, students and workshop participants and clients that I've worked with over 40 years, Most of them or many of them came to me because of my transversal slant on things. And a lot of them would say I didn't realize how spiritual I was because there was nothing around me to affirm it. And so we can say what's missing is a sense of spirituality in our culture and our society. So you see they're starting to stack up and yet they're all connected. Not spirituality, non-ordinary states of consciousness, rites of passages and rituals, wisdom keepers and elders. These are all things that are just deeply entwined into the human experience. Now, God bless the East-West joining or bridge between, of which I had the immense privilege and joy to be part of when that door blew open. Okay, in the 60s and 70s. And some of us were so hungry and thirsty for it. It was a blast. Ah, meditation, yoga, and chanting, chanting into silence with a bliss. Okay. And a sense of community spirituality was starting to emerge where people could sit together and meditate and chant. And this was all okay. And also there was this introduction, and here's another piece, the introduction of the divine feminine was coming in through the Eastern traditions, which is sorely lacking in the patriarchal religions. Don't get me started on that. We have to have Dr. David back so we can have a conversation about the Shekinah glory and how that became, which is the divine feminine force of the male Holy Spirit, like Who did that and why and how has it affected us? Yeah, it's coming back. Good. Okay. Well, fingers crossed we could have that conversation in the future. Yes, absolutely. And so, so many things started to open, you know, and then the North and the South and the great gift of the South. Anybody who goes into South America says, well, there's spirituality everywhere. Everybody has some kind of spiritual practices. It isn't just going to church and putting, I mean, I was raised to put your hat and your gloves on, you go to church, you come home, you have a nice roast lunch, okay? And then the men go and watch the sports on TV and the women do whatever the women do, okay? But that was the 1950s into the 60s way of living. You know, Sunday was really about, well, you don't really pay attention too much to the sermon unless it's something that you kind of sort of liked, you just sort of bore through it, hope that some of the hymns were your favorites, right? And mumbled the prayers, and that's it. Head home for a nice lunch. And where's the spirituality? Where's the spirituality? So we can say all these things are missing, not just inside of us. First of all, they're missing in our culture and society. Yeah. And so what happens? What happens is part of the reason why our society, like help me talk this one out, okay? are part of the reasons our society has so much addictions, has so much kind of, I mean, the whole society seems to be in post-traumatic stress disorder. How is that possible, you know? I mean, yes, it's difficult, but I'm sorry, let's peel it back to before washing machines and dryers and cars and everything else. you know, and social insurance and welfare and food banks and all the things that we've got going now and Medicare and everything. Let's peel that one back. I mean, I think of the first settlers who came to Canada from Europe, you know, and they lived in sod houses. You know what sod is, right? Like an adobe? A sod house is, they had nothing to build with really, is they would cut out earth with the grass on it and they would It's sod. And that's what it's called. And so they cut it about this thick, okay? And that's what they would make these kind of houses from, with a hole in the middle for the smoke from the fire to go. Imagine living through a Canadian winter in a sod house with a little fire in the middle. It's unimaginable. And washing clothes and drying clothes and finding food and cooking and surviving and everything else. If you want to get depressed, try going through a Canadian winter with that. I mean, we have to look and say we have all of these things that are supposed to make our life easier and more simple and our survival better and everything else. Why are we all so seemingly unhappy? Like, what's actually happening here? What is happening? Is it some of this that's missing? Is that part of it? Yeah, I think it's the realization that in times of crisis, we need each other. We depend on each other. And that's when we learn to love each other. And without those crises. We tend to think we can do it on our own. And that's the sense of abandonment that comes in. Hey, I'm doing it on my own. Well, why do I feel so lonely? I thought this was an achievement by making it on my own. I should fill it with a giant boat or a new car. I should fill this void because I'm doing it on my own. And it's awesome. Like it's a sense of abandonment on some level. We've abandoned ourselves and our community. Yes. That's a good way of describing it. And at the same time, that is deeply unconscious here and here. not recognizing that walking alone is a very important part of it. Every, every one of us has to go through a period where it feels like we have to walk alone. Now it may be a short period. It may be slightly longer, but that's where we learn what we're made of inside. And that's where we learn to ask for help, which for some people is really hard. Yeah. That's where we, realize that we need to connect with people. We need to shift something in our life. And so that's a really important part of the initiation. But if we don't have a wisdom keeper, an elder guiding us, if we don't have some set of principles or beliefs or some kind of structure in which to do the journey, then one can feel very lost, very alone, very confused. And not realize, hey, wake up. You're on a journey. This is, let's say, the George life. You're in the George life. Wake up. What do you need to go forward? And in waking up, okay, the grand awakening, which we're going to promptly fall asleep again five minutes later, right? And then we have to wake up again. Hopefully too much time hasn't passed. And It is essential. And what wakes us up? As we've said, sometimes it's a smack on the head with bad news. And sometimes it's just a curiosity, like, wow, something, I need to do something different. I need to find something. I need to go forward with this. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. It's, I can feel it in my own life. And I, I, it's hard to be on a journey by yourself and not see the teacher that's trying to help you, or maybe not be able to ask for help. And there is an absence of that. You know, I, I see it with people that I talk to and, you know, I, I don't, I'm sure there's plenty of blame to go around, but, If we had the wisdom keepers, if we had the people that were not, just like there's a transition from childhood to adulthood, there has to be a transition for a middle-aged person to go into being the elder person. We don't know how to do that. I don't know how to do that. Yeah, people don't know how to do it because we downgraded or got rid of wisdom keeping and elders. And all of a sudden, people who could be elders in training, being elders, are obsessed with looking 30 years younger and Botoxing their face. Nothing wrong with that. It's a great sport. I don't do it, but God bless all of you who do. And it's all about looking younger and owning it and doing these things that don't help. It's like, hey, I live my life and now it's their turn and I love them and I make Friday night dinners or Sunday lunches or something. And the whole thing shifted. You know, and instead of, and here's another important piece that I think just needs to be put out there, is on some level, we are now reaping the consequences of the results of the damage that we've done to the environment through industry. Industry is great. We need it. I'm the first in line to love science and support it. And at the same time, we have to look at the damage that we've done through industry. We've basically poisoned our water, our air, and our food source. We've denuded a lot of our food from its basic ingredients that give us health and well-being, right? You can read all the statistics, whether it's from the Heart Association, the Cancer Association, or any association you want, and doctors, and they will be saying, Nutrition, exercise, lifestyle changes, and you can either prevent these things. Type 2 diabetes is epidemic. You can prevent these things. Well, on the flip side of that, all the earlier work I did shows me that it is the same for emotional and mental health challenges. If our body is not well, we will not feel well in our souls. And if we have a lifestyle that does not include that, you don't need money. Put on a pair of shoes and go for a walk. Research says if you walk 20 minutes every day and do some stretching, you don't need fancy equipment for that. Just a decent pair of walking shoes, which I think is pretty much within everybody's realm to acquire. Go for a walk. Learn some stretches. Join a class. Join a group. You know, start simple. Start where you're at. Look at the ingredients on the stuff that you're buying. I'm sorry that a bag of carrots is still cheaper than a package of pre-made high fat, high cholesterol, high sugar, high salt, manufactured, refined in 400 different ways. And so if we start looking for wholeness, we have to look at our body. and say, what am I doing for my body to be as well as it possibly can be? What am I doing for my soul, for my soul to be as well as it possibly can be? And so it's within us, the decisions to make as to the choices that we make about nutrition and exercise and lifestyle. And then back to non-ordinary state of consciousness. is one of the reasons that people are looking for psychedelics and entheogens. Is this part of the... I'm missing something. I don't know I'm searching for wholeness. I just want to feel better. Because I've heard that a lot. As you can imagine, I and our center get contacted a lot. I mean, I've got a standard reply for people who try to, you know... get to me to get to that. How many people write to me? I think we need ayahuasca. I have a, you know, tick off, whatever it is they're experiencing from addictions to depression and what have you. And I have to explain over and over again, we're a spiritual organization. We meditate, sing hymns and pray. We're not a clinic. You know, we're not, we're not. We're a spiritual organization. That's what we're doing. This is sort of like calling up the rabbi. and asking him for something. He's like, hey, I'm in the synagogue singing and chanting and praying. So it's like people have got really confused about that. They now want to have the substance. They've got attached to the substance, forgetting that what in our world the sacrament is, is the sacrament is the bridge to the non-ordinary state of consciousness, the bridge to the inner world and the kind of universal consciousness. And so people are seeking psychedelics and how it looks. A lot of people are simply seeking psychedelics or entheogens because they want to feel better. And I get that. No one wants to feel depressed or unhappy or anxious. and lots of compassion for that, and send lots of light for everybody on their journey. But how good if that was shifted to, I'm looking for wholeness, and maybe these things can help me. And if so, what's my role in it? Because a lot of people also just want an instant fix. What's your thoughts on that? I think it's evident in some of the trials that are happening. You know, we're trying to measure all these things without thoroughly understand what it is we're seeking. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Well done. Another gold star. Okay. That's the problem. It's not like, you see, here's where a lot of it is falling down. is first of all, with no wisdom keepers or elders, hardly any involved in the process. And so you have very well-intentioned nurses, psychotherapists, and other trained personnel, you know, very, you know, well-intentioned, I think is the best word for most of the people who are in the field and doing research and wanting to train and study it and everything else. Okay. And what they're missing is, understanding what the non-ordinary state of consciousness is and not realizing it's not like aspirin, okay, or an anti-inflammatory or even an antidepressant or, you know, where you give X milligrams, okay, you have an ouchie, doctor writes a prescription, you take this pain medication three times a day or once a day or once a week or whatever it is, and you find, oh, my ouchie is a lot better. And people kind of want that psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually without realizing that these substances, all they're doing is opening a big door into the collective unconscious, including your own unconscious. And you may have to face, this may kick off your hero's journey. Another frequent chapeau to Jules Evans, who's really trained in research, the downside, the difficult, the shadow side of this, you know, renaissance of psychedelics and stuff and say, hey guys, wake up, wake up. You know, what is this that's happening? People are going, wanting to feel better and often have listened and read the hype in social media about, oh, and I met this, I saw these colors and I met this light. And so a lot of people write about all these fabulous, wonderful experiences they have, you know, and then other people are saying, I went to a place of darkness and I haven't come back from it. Yeah, well, that's your hero's journey that got kicked off. And somehow you landed in the middle of the dark forest and you hit a dragon in the face. And unless you have somebody who knows how to guide you on that journey, you could get stuck in that forest, you know? And here I want to just keep directing everyone to Stan Groff's work, which is, you know, really... You know, in my books, which describe this, especially Volume 1, we talk about this whole of the maps of the unconscious and along the journey what people might be experiencing and how best to try and deal with these things. And everybody's talking integration, integration, integration. Well, how can you integrate, help people integrate something if you don't have the right maps to even help them integrate? You know, I'm seeing psychopathology being spiritualized and spiritual experiences being pathologized. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Where do we go with this? The search for wholeness. We all want to feel whole inside. To recognize that, we need to recognize that we are one with everything. You and I are one with the tree, with the stars, with the cosmos, with each other. Life is finite. We arrive, we live it, we're gone. How do we live this life? This is the important one, the one we're in. Never mind the past ones or the future ones. You know? The one we're in. What we're doing today, here and now. Right? Yeah. So what do you see happening in this search for wholeness and people longing to be relieved of trauma, suffering, pain. Why is there so much of it? We're saying because something's missing outside, is that part of it? Or is there something else happening? And if so, what is that something else that's happening? I'm looking for the third gold star. Yeah. I don't know. I feel it's sort of the ordeal by labyrinth on some level. I don't see the wisdom keepers showing themselves. I see the continued use of trying to search for the fountain of youth. Maybe that's always happened on some level, but it's almost like we have a new group of people that are being initiated into an older school where there weren't a whole lot of masters, which allows for new sort of the malleability of the rules on some level. It seems that the older... From my position, it seems to me that the older generation... for whatever reason are not passing down the wisdom. So it's beholden to the people that are approaching middle age to find a new way. And there's, it's messy, it's empty. We don't know how to do it. Maybe that's how to become an adult. You know what I mean? Maybe you have to find a way and guess what? It's not going to be perfect. So you just have to figure it out. And hopefully you can pass down the wisdom that you learned that maybe you didn't get. I don't know. That's kind of out there, but I'm still working on that one. I don't know. Okay. So what I'm hearing you say is, is that because we don't have wisdom keepers and elders plentiful in our society, our society and culture is not geared for that, okay? They're all, as you say, looking for the fountain of youth or struggling with illness. Yeah. Rampant or being shoved in old age homes, okay? And so there's a lot of ageism in our society. Okay. And instead of seeing it as a possibility that we're all going to go through and learning about it, because we're all going to get old. Okay. I mean, other than those who die young, but I mean, most of us will get old and we'll certainly get older than we are today, you know, and, and what can we learn from that? So what I'm hearing you say is that maybe, maybe you were way past middle-aged. Okay. So maybe the, Middle-aged folks who recognize that they didn't have wisdom, because that's the first thing that needs to happen. Yeah. You have to recognize, wait a minute, that wasn't, you know, that didn't exist. It's sort of like women didn't have the vote. It just didn't exist, you know? And then women got the vote, right? Women fought and fought and fought and finally got the vote. And a lot of good men helped the women fight to get it, right? Yes. then women had the vote and then women's next battle was try and get equality once we got the vote we're still working on that one okay and so when you recognize that there's something that's possible that you don't have right it's possible to have that in our society in our culture it's possible okay and and so how do we make space for it And then, you know, in this little article that I published, which I encourage people to read if they're interested, I talk about the kind of risks for the seeker and the guide and how, you know, the seeker has to be really paying attention, okay, and how anyone seeking wholeness, seeking healing, seeking growth, seeking something that feels like it's missing, what they need to be looking for how careful they need to be. I have these guidelines. You know, I have them in my books. I can review them very quickly here for those of you interested. And soon you can find on LinkedIn, you'll find the reference to the article for those of you who might be interested in reading it. And I list up what the secret is to really paying attention. You know, pay attention where you're going, who you're with, how they're credentialed or trained or accredited, what they're serving you, how they manage preparation, how they manage aftercare or integration. And here's the really important part is what their beliefs. This is something that I'm finding very bizarre is all of these people who are trumping off to do works with shamans because somehow if they think it's a shaman from, I don't know, Costa Rica or Mexico or somewhere, Because somehow it's going to be more authentic. It may be if they're doing an authentic ritual to their heritage, tradition, and training. If they are a recognized elder in their tradition and training. But have you checked in what they believe? And who they're talking to in the ritual? And what they're calling? And is that in alignment with what you believe? I look and I go, wow. You know, people are panting off after all these retreats and stuff and they want it to be more authentic. So if somebody's smudging and waving some feathers around, somehow it's more authentic, you know. It is if it's genuinely a true apprenticed elder in a heritage tradition, by all means. But you know what? It's beholden to the seeker to ensure that they understand what these people believe. And if that's in alignment with your beliefs. I can't, because these people are also, many of them are, you know, people don't understand this. The Santo Daime, my tradition, the Santo Daime grew out of ayahuasca, shamanic, amazonic practices. Master O'Neill, the founder of the Santo Daime, he apprenticed for years, okay, with the Ashkenin people, the true ayahuasqueras in the forest, and did his initiations, and learned how to do the paparo, the fichi, or the making of, learned the plants, learned the calls, et cetera, learned them, okay, until he got given this mission to turn it into what became the Santa Plana. And he felt very clearly, and what I feel the sacrament shows us, is the need for, to move away from the medicinal, which was, it was a more medicinal use, And the beliefs, a lot of which contain forced sorcery. And people don't understand that. They don't even know what forced sorcery is. And I think it's a good warning for people. Find out who's going to be serving you, what they actually believe about what they're serving you, what will happen to you, their beliefs about their tradition, and really check to see if that's in alignment with what you believe yourself or what you're willing to be open to. And so those are some of the risks of what can happen in these situations, in these settings. Do you understand what I'm saying? Or is it a little... Yeah. No, I get it. When I think of wholeness, I think of a circle. And when I think of all the other shapes out there and how things shape you, you should be consciously aware of that which is shaping you, right? Like the circle of wholeness is a nice round structure that contains a perfect circle. It's balanced. But if you have like a rhombus in there, all of a sudden you might be really out of alignment on a lot of different levels. So who is shaping you? Where are you getting your... Which wisdom keeper is handing down knowledge and which kind of knowledge are they handing it to you? And how is it shaping you? That's another state of awareness. Are you aware of how it's shaping you? Exactly. And these are, you know, anyway, people who are interested in reading my books, you know, I've been spent the last six months on the circle of wholeness and all the factors that play into our experience of wholeness. And that's why we're talking about the search today. Yeah. is how do people find that wholeness? And can you recognize that there's many parts to it that needs to be addressed? It's not just, you know, what we may find is when we go into, if we're willing to sit with what we consider to be the emptiness inside of us, we will actually find out that it's not empty. It may feel empty and that there's something missing, but actually what it ends off, ends up being often is blocked grief. Blocked grief will feel for some people like an emptiness, a longing. Okay. It'll be grief based on abandonment. It can be grief based on engulfment. Things I cover in part one of book one, volume one. And these core experiences that any of us can have, you know, And so we have this internal experience that when we are willing to sit with it and go into it and face whatever our deepest fears are, to go into our vulnerabilities, we find that our vulnerabilities actually, the most vulnerable place becomes the place of greatest strength. And that's hard for people to accept. There's no, I don't want to go and feel that sad, lonely, weak, frightened, inadequate something feeling. Yeah, but by going there and understanding that it's not you, it's an experience that you have. And that's the important distinction in understanding I was never not whole. I've been whole all along. It's just how I've been seeing myself. What Stan Grof calls the false image of yourself and of the world and how that has to go through a death-rebirth process. of this false image of the self, that I'm not whole, that I'm missing something. In the end, yes, we are missing things. We've just discussed our society, our culture is definitely missing some things. And it's full of other things that we didn't have before. And we just have to understand the meaning and value to us of those other things that it has. But when we recognize that we've never not been whole, And that when we're willing to either grieve or embrace or transform these parts of us that have felt lonely, needy, vulnerable, etc., etc., traumatized, abandoned, invaded, etc., when we're willing to really transform those, we find that they've been there inside of us waiting to be transformed all along. They've been knocking at our inner door. Hello, I'm here. Hello, I'm here. I'm the part of you that's missing. And so we gather up. In shamanic language, they call it soul retrieval, where we draw them, call back. We call back the parts of ourselves. And this is very much kind of the shamanic view. I don't know if you know Michael Harner's work, a very dear old friend of Stan Groff's and, you know, very... who worked together in alignment about things. And he was one of the first. It was the ayahuasca that set him off down the shamanic trail. And he developed a set of trainings and practices that were in alignment with what he learned that wasn't serving the entheogen because he knew it was illegal and all of those things. So he developed just a simple shamanic training in which You know, an important part of what he learned was what is called soul retrieval. And in that, it's recognizing that when as young, when we're young, that we can send away parts of ourselves. You know, a clinical psychologist would call it dissociating, right? And so we dissociate because we're angry and we can't express anger. We're lonely. We're tired. We're hurting or something. And we kind of send away that part. We can also send away parts of ourselves that have been disapproved. You know, I'm in Quebec. As you can imagine, many of my clients are recovering Catholics. They went to convent schools or monastery schools where lots of things were beaten out of them. Creativity, sensuality, sexuality. We were taught this was all wrong and sinful, et cetera, et cetera. And they have to call back. They have to drum back and call back and open the door to the parts of themselves that they sent away to survive. And so that's a key piece of what's missing. So what's missing outside cultural society? What's missing inside of me? Maybe parts of me that I sent away for survival. And now I'm ready to call them back and receive them. Now, if those parts... had difficult, really, really difficult experience, we're going to need help doing that. We're going to need a support group. We're going to need a good therapist. We're going to need a good process to work with. Holotropic breath work or deep inner processing work is going to be needed to process all the feelings in you. Now that can show up in dreams. I often find my clients would dream that they went on a journey and they go and they discover And often it shows up like some kind of mistreated animal, hungry and dirty animal that they have to take care of or maybe neglect. And the classic one is a baby. Going and finding a baby and vaguely remembering that it's their baby. Okay, wait a minute. This was my baby I left here in this house way, way up on the top of the mountain. Okay? And so the ways of refining these parts and what shape they come in, you know, is always a very fascinating part of the journey. So we can have that sense something's missing inside of us, a part of us that's longing to be brought back into our wholeness. We can recognize, okay, our society and culture is missing stuff. Now I can either sit here and, you know, bitch and complain. Oh, can I say that? Yeah, of course. I'll use a naughty word. I'll have my congregation after me later. Okay, so we can either sit and complain about how I don't have this, or we can say, okay, this is something I need. Can I find it by reading books, by meditation group, by seeking out good teachers? There's quite a lot of good teachers, as long as we pay attention to what they learned, how they're transmitting it. I've had the great gift of having some wonderful teachers. Yeah. Stan Groffs and Jack Kornfields and, you know, my Santo Daime teachers and elders who have supported me and many others, you know. And so we can find them. They are there. The good teachers are there. They may have a different form now. They may have a different degree hanging off their neck. But they can still be a wisdom keeper and they can be an elder and they can be an excellent teacher for us and they can accompany us on our journey. even if they only accompany us in the book that they've written. Most of the women I've worked with, I always recommended many women listening to this podcast. I highly recommend Clarissa Pinkola Estes' book, Women Who Run With the Wolves. This remarkable book, okay, is you can read and reread. You can read a chapter here and a chapter there if you want. But it is an awakening book. And she takes the reader through calling back. She uses stories and mythologies to help us call back the parts. And she has one wonderful chapter called The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. And she tells stories, old, old, old stories about the hungry heart and how the hungry heart seeks And eventually the transformation that the hungry heart has to undergo, you know. So it's all around us if we look for it. If we look for it, we will find it. When the student is ready, the teacher is ready. Yeah, it's well said. It's always a pleasure. I should address some of these comments that we got coming up here. I know we're coming up on time, but let's just take a moment to come through. Our friend Clint Kiles, Psychedelic Christian Podcast, he has made multiple comments here, and he started off in the beginning, and he was talking about, I think already in our conversation, we were talking about the spontaneous experiences that come from maybe people that are searching for wholeness. And he's, I think he's, he's talking about the, as with many biblical figures having spontaneous experiences, which, yeah. And that's what set many on their journey. I have to say, and you know, hi Clint. And I'd have to say that as a, as a teenager going through my own, you know, child to adult passage with like no guides, nothing in the Anglican church to guide me, nothing in, in society to guide me. And, and what I did do, you know, that an Aldous Huxley book falls into my head. Okay. And when I find myself, you know, I was a student of the Bible and, and I read many times the old Testament and I realized I was looking for something in the old Testament. And then I realized what I was looking for. And I was looking for the stories of all the great prophets and the prophets, major and minor prophets, and the experiences they had. And I went, wow, I'm having stuff like that happen to me. Maybe not as spectacular as that. But I'm having, like, the heavens part. And I'm sensing beings and presences. And I understand what they say. You fall at their feet as if dead. You know? And I understand. You know, when standing in the cave and calling out for God and then listening and the wind comes and the fire comes. And I understand. They really spoke to me. You know, for me, they were part of my wisdom keepers. And so we can find it. I know it's difficult perhaps for today's more modern, you know, young people. They're not going to go rummaging around in the Old Testament trying to find it. you know, inspiration there, but it is, it is there. It is there. And of course there are people, you know, who are writing about spontaneous, you know, the near death experiences for Dr. Kenneth Fring, you know, his research in the near death experience and many other people in the field who have researched this and written wonderful books about it. So it's there, but we have to look for it. You know, we really have to look for it. Was there another question? I have a follow-up question that kind of leads back to the idea of, that gets back to maybe some of the trials and apprenticeship and Huxley. I believe in some of Huxley's later writings, he was a big advocate for psychedelics being, maybe psychedelic substances being only for an elite group of leadership people. you know, and if you, might that, might that have been a way to keep some of these problems that like Jules or Neche are talking about from happening? Like, you know, I don't know what's right or wrong, but is that a different area that could be explored? Well, you know, I think, I mean, I happen to be advisor to, to Canadian universities, to their graduate programs and studies and, And it's quite a few years that these discussions and conversations have been happening. What's the grandfathering in this? Who has the ability to work in non-ordinary states of consciousness? Who has the background, the training, the credentialing, the apprenticeship in whatever field? And what is needed? And I've always been, you know, with my bullhorn yelling, the non-ordinary states of consciousness, you know, if you don't have the understanding about the non-ordinary states, everything else is just conversation, as far as I'm concerned. And so, you know, it's such a key piece, understanding, not just what LSE does, okay, but non-ordinary states of consciousness and the MAPs. what people can it's sort of like you know you're going to go hiking and you come to the big map at the trail and it shows you that there's three directions that you can go in for example one is an easy hike that most people can do and all you need is a little bottle of water and you're good and it takes three hours and then you'll see each the other two hikes might become progressively more difficult okay and one of them you know, maybe quite difficult where you need to be an experienced hiker, maybe a technical part where there's drilled ropes onto a rock face, for example. Okay. So there's your map and then you get to choose, you know, which hike you're going to take. And if you're an experienced hiker, you might choose one of the more difficult ones, but you'd be a fool if you're not an experienced hiker. Okay. And, and you're going to go tromping off alone. Okay, or with another inexperienced hiker on the difficult trail. I mean, you know, this is Canada. Every year we have people getting helicopter recovered out of very difficult hiking trails. You know, a year doesn't pass where we're not doing many helicopter recoveries, you know, where they have specialist people who know how to recover people from mountain trails and mountainsides. people get stopped and et cetera, et cetera. Let's not even talk about the avalanches and the Rockies. Okay. That's a whole other, a whole other conversation. And so, but people don't understand you can't, some people seem to be able to just be, what do they call them? Psychonauts, you know, the terms McKenna's. They didn't need an elder. They didn't need to guide. They didn't need an integration. They just went off like a rocket to the moon. Okay. And so, And that's it. That's Terrence McKenna for you. Okay. But no one should ever, or Timothy Leary, you know, Stanley Kroc tells a story about Timothy Leary when he says, damn, how many times do you have to take LSD? You know, and he says, well, the houses or the rooms in the collective unconscious are limitless. Okay. So you have people who are just simply explorers and they don't seem to have any trouble letting go and expanding and losing the self and then coming back down into being me again. But that's a very, very small percentage. And I wouldn't necessarily consider them an elder or a guide or a wisdom keeper because they only know their experience. Whereas a true wisdom keeper has to know how to hold someone's hand. They have to know when to tell them you're going to take the easy hike. Here's where you're going to start. You do that first. It's like the great meditation. It's like the great meditation teachers who will, you know, and I had some good meditation teachers. Thank you. And the great meditation teachers, they'll give you one thing to do and they'll say, go and work with that and come back and see me in three months and let me know how you're doing. Okay. They'll give them one exercise to do in meditations. or in their breath work, or in their posture or something. And to work with that and work with that. The wonderful story that Jack Kornfield tells, and I may have told it before, about the young trainee who's worked with his teacher for years now, and he feels that he's ready to ask if he can now train the teacher's teacher, because that's how you grow up. You go from the teacher to the teacher's teacher. The teacher's teacher won't take you until you've been a teacher, you see. They don't want to go back to the ABCs. They want to know. It's sort of like people who are supervising doctoral work don't want to go back down into high school. Thank you very much. I'll stay where my expertise is going to do the best work. And so he arrives one day and he goes in and he takes his position and he asks his teacher if his teacher thinks that he's ready to be taught by the teacher's teacher. And his teacher said to him, it's raining today, isn't it? He says, yes, it is. And he says, which side of your shoes did you place your umbrella on? He couldn't answer. He trained with him. He worked with him for another 16 years. So you see, we think we know more than we know. We grasp a couple of things before we think we've got it. We're real hot stuff now, aren't we? And that's what's happening in this field. People get a few things and they think they know it. Guess what? There's always more. Yeah. There's always more. It's like that wonderful another Jack Kornfield story about a couple of members of a congregation at the temple and they decide to go for a walk in the woods and they go further and they've realized They realize they're a bit lost and not quite sure which is the way back. Then they stumble across a rabbi. Oh, we're saved. The rabbi's here. Okay. Rabbi, I'll get us out of the woods. And he said, wait a minute. I'm also lost in the woods. But my time spent in the woods, I've learned quite a few ways that do not lead in. And so that's the level of humility that we have to have. We have to have that level. Not I know it all. Why do the people in, let's say, in the Himalayas, before they go and climb the mountain, why do they set out their prayer flags and go to the prayer wheel and look at the winds and talk to the sky and the clouds? Why would they do all of that? Because they know that's what the mountain asks. Mountain asks us. They need to be in tune with the mountain. They need to be in tune with the winds and the clouds and everything. be able to say, no, we don't climb today. Or yes, we do climb today. And they need to know the mountain and everything that affects the mountain. And that's how it is going to have to be in entheogens and psychedelics. Otherwise, we're just going to keep seeing more of what we're seeing. The enthusiasts are going to say everything's fabulous. The people who have concerns are going to, like, Jules Evans and other people like him are going to be saying, wait a minute, what about all of this? Well, hello, what about this? You're going to have governments saying, we still think it's dangerous, okay? There's too many people that are having difficult things afterwards, and we're not sure how all of these pieces are going to work together, right? So right now it's very uncertain how things will go forward. Let's hope that wisdom prevails. So just to close up for today, in this particular article, I talk about the risks and the challenges for the guide. And we've already chatted about next month, we're going to talk about transference, counter transference and projections. And this is one of the biggest risks. We have to know ourselves. We have to know our vulnerabilities. This is the first thing every psychology student has to learn. It's like, uh-oh, something just got plugged, twigged, and hooked inside of me working with somebody. Right? Yeah. It's something every minister, we all have to learn this, how to be centered, how to be calm, how to stay in our ethics when things are rattling. And so the challenge is for the guide. Are you credentialed? Have you studied? What are your ethics? What are your principles? How much do you know about non-ordinary states of consciousness if you're going to be working on them? Yeah, it's a... I'm looking forward to the conversation. I think it's very timely, and I think that we are about to see. Is this what happened in the last go-around when things got put back into the bottle? Was this incredible uncertainty of how to deal with this? We don't know, so let's just put it back on the shelf. Yes, that's exactly what happened. First of all, you had people who say, we should put LSD in the water. So you had the fanatics, and you got them too now. Okay, you're always going to have fanatics. They have great experiences, or they think they do, or they go into a narcissistic bubble, whatever, pick, okay? And who think it's for everyone, okay? And then you have the people who thought they could fly on LSD and walked out of windows and off roofs because there was no container. Then you had the people who had flashbacks that felt like psychosis. There's people who had years of anxiety attacks whatever it was they experienced they didn't realize that they ended up walking in you know the valley of the shadow of death or next to the sea of lost souls or in the dark forest facing the dragon and so they entered into some internal difficult material that connects to an external well it's not external it's all internal anyways but to something in the collective unconscious a dark realm in the collective unconscious now I write about this anybody interested you're going to find it in volume one are too, you know, especially the dark realms and the collective unconscious. They're difficult and dark. And if you feed into them, then, you know, you're going to feel it ricochet inside of you and how to manage all of that. And so we had a society that had no non-ordinary state of consciousness, had no wisdom keepers or elders who understood non-ordinary states of consciousness, right? It had cut itself off and away from any roots that it had in heritage traditions, right? And it had all been cut off and discarded. And now you have people entering intense non-ordinary states of consciousness, and you have absolutely no idea what's going on. And some of these people are either accidentally dying or thinking they can fly, which, of course, could be considered an accidental death. Very, very, very tragic, all these things that were happening. And so the good work, like Stan Grof's work, very careful and palliative care, all of that got closed down. The mistake the government made was it should have permitted research and very serious clinical work to continue. That's the mistake they made then. Because if they would have allowed it, we would then have a, what, 60-year body of research to work with. But because they closed it all down, it was impossible to do research. And so we don't have the same body of evidence that we could have had. And so that's the first thing the governments have to do, is they have to commit research. And with very clear guidelines on what that research is. So that's why it failed then. And is it going to fail again now? We still don't have an ordinary state of consciousness. At least we have greater access, thank you, to the Eastern traditions. We have much more in our society based on the East-West meeting. And so people who went through that and learned some of the Eastern traditions, and learn to meditate or do yoga or tai chi or any other practice that will help them breathe and center and understand some things about the nature of life, then they're much better positioned to be able to understand and integrate. So that's the challenge right now. Or we may repeat the whole thing again. It just seems like such a Western way to be like, this is too scary. Let's just shut it down and pretend it didn't happen. You know what I mean? Like, it's just what we do. Like, look, it's too much. Put it over here. You know, and, and, and thank goodness, right. You know, for the Canadian government. Yeah. Long time. Okay. Yep. You know, but they looked at all the research and they, I just want to say thank you to the office of substances. I have a problem with people who kind of hate the government and don't want to be regulated. and think they should just want to do whatever they want, kind of like cowboys get on their course and ride off into the sunset or something and do whatever the heck they want. But they don't understand if we work with the government, which is what I did, and give them the science and the research and the principles and the ethics and give them all of that, they have something to work with. Instead of up yours, I just want to do what I want to do. Okay? That's not what I go for. But meet them. Meet them, you know. Wonderful people, wonderful people, all of them that I met and spoke with and sat with in meetings and, you know, over the 17 years and ongoing. I have a 24-year relationship. I just sent off information for them this morning. And, you know, wonderful people, completely open to dialogue when it's serious science and serious intent, when it's heritage tradition, when it's historically relevant. They're very available to sit and eat. If it's just some law law person just wanting to do what they want to do, then no. All right. Door closed. Well, it's been grand. Always is. And see you next month. Maybe you can, where can people find the books and where can they find your website? And maybe you could just throw out one more time, the site where people can go and reach out to you if they're curious. That's fine. Thank you. www.revdrjessicarochester.com That's my website. You will find lots of publications and links to podcasts and lectures and conferences and things like that. They're all free for educational purposes. The only thing you have to pay for is my books because I don't sell them. You can access them through the link on my website or find them on Amazon. And it's my, as I said, I do this for educational purposes. That's the only reason I'm really maintaining the website is to try and get all this information out into the community. And so that people have a sense of, oh, okay, there is stuff. And both of my books are extremely well resourced and referenced. So you'll find lots of references in there where to, if one particular thing strikes you as being interesting or meaningful, then you'll know who else to look for, what other authors or papers or what have you to go looking for. So always a pleasure. Yeah. And to everybody listening out there, the books, Dr. Jessica is like a cartographer. Like the maps in that book are mind blowing. The understanding the landscape, I think you are hands down. It's a beautiful set of books and cartography is amazing. And shout out to Jason at Psychedelic Scene where they can look at your article and a lot of other great articles and a lot of other great people that are doing it. Thank you, Jason. Those links will be in the show notes as well. People go check out Dr. Jessica and Jason and we'll be back next week. I hope everybody has a beautiful day. Aloha.