There are many emotional reactions to a drug-free spiritual awakening experience and a ceremonial MDMA journey. While this article focuses on empathy – both the feeling and the cognitive component – it is obvious to those who have awakened from a spiritual emergency that a variety of related emotions arise. It is one thing to imagine how another person feels. Psychopaths, despite what the general public believes, are very good at empathy on an intellectual level. Even criminal psychopaths can put themselves in another person’s position and understand their perspective. It is bigger, better, and far healthier when empathy, in its deepest sense, allows us to “feel with” other people by recognizing a sense of oneness with them, what’s called unity consciousness. To hurt others would be to hurt ourselves.

Alvin Moore, a philosopher, wrote in the spiritual journal, Parabola, about Inner Man, the Man in every man. There is no he but He, Moore wrote. He thought of the soul as being inseparably linked with the Divine, a relationship that is inescapable, even in a predicament called Hell. He wrote, “Whoever knows God becomes God.” (note use of caps) Eliezer Shore, also in Parabola, said: “The path of the soul is not simple; it travels a torturous route in this world…moving from unity to dissolution before reaching the final destination, back to wholeness.” What he is implying is that the soul begins in unity before entering our middle world existence on Earth. Prior to entering this world, it exists in a state of attachment to the Divine Source. At the moment of birth as a human being, this first-time connection may be momentarily lost, and with it what Native Americans called the Original Instructions.

Dr. Otto Sharmer, a professor at MIT, described a phenomenon he called “collective intelligence.” When our own heart is coherent (in sync with the upper brain and lungs) and we join with a group of similarly coherent people, social coherence is the result. Going from a solitary being -- an ego-system -- to a multi-being makes for a smooth running eco-system, according to HeartMath Institute researchers, raising the vibratory rate of individuals and the group’s energetic field. This group field connects all the member heart’s electromagnetic energy. The human heart generates the strongest magnetic field in the body, approximately 100 times greater than our cranial brain. And, with the help of a magnetometer, this radiating field can be detected up to ten feet away.

Compassion should be our default attitude toward relationship,” writes Christopher Andre’ in the book, In Search of Wisdom. It is a starting point from which to make genuine choices as a genuine human being. The book argues that compassion is a fundamental human duty, even with people we don’t seem to think deserve it, primarily because they have hurt us. MDMA offers us a gift, the spirit of compassion following betrayals, hurt, and suffering. The Buddha once asked, “If someone gives you a gift and you refuse it, who in the end is the owner of the gift?” The person trying to give it? The medicine itself? But in contrast, the Buddha went on, “Even your insults – I don’t accept them, thus they remain yours.” How then can we refuse the spirit of love, empathy, and concern after a fear reducing and heart opening MDMA experience that is presented at our feet?

There is a great deal of confusion about what MDMA (an empathogen) and psilocybin, LSD, and DMT (psychedelics) can do to heal a person. All of them can have near immediate effects and all can have lingering effects. But what is realistic to expect, especially from the more subtle MDMA? MDMA is thought of as a relational trauma medicine. It can often reset a person to a pre-trauma state and enhance socialization. It is notoriously effective when there has been an interpersonal trauma. And betrayal – via deception, lying, trickery, and/or gaslighting -- is at the core of these traumas. Domestic violence, sexual abuse, religious abuse, family disloyalties, and suicide are common examples.

Certainty and predictability is what all of us seek, particularly if we have come from an environment of unpredictability, chaos, and trauma. Understanding something and predicting what might occur next provides comfort. Uncertainty and mysteries can be a little unsettling. It is natural to want to grasp onto something for emotional serenity to have faith in the way things are and can be, hopefully built on visible, tangible, and measurable evidence. In the grand scheme of things, what really matters? To make the next point the important question for now will be, “What is matter?” It is regarded as a handful of elementary particles which vibrate and fluctuate constantly between existence and non-existence. Eye opening and comforting? Didn’t think so. Try this. Did you know that only 4 percent of our universe consists of ordinary matter of the kind we are familiar? The rest, 96 percent, is a complete mystery. It may be that the world is more boundless and mysterious than we can even imagine

Indigenous people, with their minds quieted living close to Nature, have noticed subtle energy fields in the atmosphere, especially when humans and animals converge. For example, the Himba of Namibia have long observed this phenomenon. They describe it like a clear bubble that surrounds each person. It holds and transmits energy. And when one person who is very calm approaches another person who is slightly agitated, the two bubbles can touch, converge as one, and the calm emotion soon pervades the whole. Calm wins out. The remote Himba, who are constantly outdoors, experience life and its nuances more fully than people closed off in buildings while playing with their electrically charged forms of technology, their modern meaning-making and decision making devices. When you ask Hadza Bushmen of Tanzania – who still reside on the land as gatherers and hunters just like they have done for tens of thousands of years -- where their communication with others comes from, they may point to their heart...

In earlier writings I have addressed the ancient, African Himba tribal idea of merging heart bubbles, when the spirit of two people becomes one. Many, many years later American scientists at the HeartMath institute rediscovered this human phenomenon and referred to it as heart resonance, other researchers calling it heart aesthesis. This brief blog submits that this “heart happening” can also be regarded as a “conversation” between humans and other animal relatives. This apportioning of heart energy and spirit naturally resulted from sharing the same habitat of our bigger heart, Earth and beyond, and with other creatures over millions of years. We have never fully disconnected from our environs, as much as our fears and insecurities have pushed us to do so, especially with today’s dependence on “communication” technologies.

Allan Hunter’s book, The Path of Synchronicity, helps us understand some of the distinctions regarding how we posture ourselves in response to trauma and pain. He asserts that if we are to get to a point of ease in living it will be necessary to relinquish some of our controlling ways. Much of our need to forcefully manage life comes from a spot of fear and trepidation. Compulsive behaviors of all kinds are attempts to manage uncertainty. In so doing, much of our spontaneity and creativity diminishes. Hunter believes that growth occurs when we get out of our brains (confined egoic thinking) and open our hearts. In doing so our soul becomes pregnant with possibilities. If we have been victimized and left feel afraid and powerless there is the tendency to see monsters out there and pray to a god outside of ourselves for safety to fix things for us. Instead Hunter suggests that we listen to the god inside us to be a guide. MDMA helps us descend into the self and awaken that which is divine and wise within.