Geral Blanchard, LPC, is a psychotherapist who is university trained in psychology and anthropology. Formerly of Wyoming and currently residing in Iowa, Geral travels the world in search of ancient secrets that can augment the art and science of healing. From Western neuroscience to Amazonian shamanism, he has developed an understanding of how to combine old and new healing strategies to optimize recovery, whether from psychological or physical maladies.
MDMA and Sensory Anesthesia
Geral T. Blanchard • December 5, 2021
According to a Nielsen study, Americans spend 90 percent of their lives indoors
On average we spend eleven hours per day on all our phones, entertainment, and education devices and seven hours trying to sleep. Previous blogs have documented the mental health declines – especially in social isolation, attentive presence, depression, anxiety, insomnia, addiction, and suicidal ideation – that have been linked to all our dopamine enhancing distraction devices.
In a recent book, Rewilding, by Micah Mortali, introduces us to the concept of sensory anesthesia. This is similar to the sensorial atrophy I have observed and written about after contrasting modern and “primitive” cultures. Both concepts refer to the loss of formerly robust sensory abilities from our indoor, technologically-addicted culture. Both of us suggest that not only are our senses less keen (e.g., hearing, taste, smell, navigation, and sight) but we actually have fewer senses than were present in our “undeveloped” pre-modern state. Any authentic shaman will display far more than the traditional five senses western healers acknowledge.
In my book,
Awakening the Healing Soul: Indigenous Wisdom for Today’s World, I quoted the research of Chilton Pearce who detailed how we are currently experiencing a dramatic reduction in the ability to distinguish sounds, plummeting from three thousand to one hundred discernable sounds over a fifteen year period! Previously we could detect 350 shades of colors; today the average westerner can see about 130! Interestingly, indigenous Mayan children of rural Guatemala showed far more sensory receptivity than children in technologically based cultures.
Many MDMA “graduates” report significant change in their sensory awareness that goes beyond momentary (or protracted) expanded consciousness. Some hear enhanced or even distant sounds, and smell more intensely. Others seem to understand and communicate with animals better, and vice versa.
Others, (like tribal healers of the Amazon and northern Canada) with the help of an activated pineal gland (third eye), see the internal organs and activities of the human body, activate visionary perceptions of ancestors and other environmental relatives, and still other traditional healers transcend earthly life and sense the existence that extends beyond what our external eyes can decipher. These are only anecdotal accounts that stop short of scientific evidence, but they raise the lighthearted question regularly heard on Saturday Night Live, “What’s up with that?”
By spending time on Mother Earth, before and during MDMA ceremonies, we can start to see Nature as more than an abstraction, something not just “out there,” but rather an extension of ourselves. And many plants and creatures in Nature have countless collective sensory abilities that we are all coupled with at some level. MDMA patients report how Nature feels closer and more alive after their cognitive reboots. It comports with the astute philosophy of Joseph Campbell who asserted that when we merge our inner being with the physical plane, we can actually feel more, what he called “the rapture of being alive.”
Mortali wrote, “Without the medicine of streams, forests, and other natural ecosystems, people turn to TV, food, alcohol, and other sedatives and stimulants to fill their emptiness or to alleviate boredom.” Our big sensory explosions come from rock concerts, movies, pyrotechnics, orgasms, and big screen displays. If isn’t very intense, we often miss it.
MDMA awakens bodies and minds but, post-medicine, one must keep the energy moving by frequently returning to Nature. One way to do this is for us to walk barefoot on Mother with an awareness of each step, not being so concerned with where we are headed, but where we are currently footed. Mortali encourages us to walk as if we are blessing Earth with every step. Thich Nhat Hahn suggests walking meditations that, with every plant of our feet, plants a gentle kiss on our Mother.
Feeling safe after trauma begins with feeling comfortable with the planet itself, with different environments, the weather, and other living relatives…even “distant” interstellar energies. This familiarity sets the stage for a sense of belonging and connection which can lead to a more positive outlook on life. With a strong bond to place (like Native Americans experience), all our relationships can become stronger too, more alive, and with that we develop a more positive outlook on life.
Recall, MDMA is a relational medicine that connects us with everything that is around us and inside us. And sometimes as a result of an entheogen journey to outer places we can better see our inner space, mystical realms of consciousness that assist us in developing our human potential. Edgar Mitchell, an Apollo 14 astronaut who walked on the moon, made some drug-free observations on his return home. He said: “I realized that matter in our universe was created in star systems, and the molecules in my body and the molecules in the spacecraft, and the molecules in my partner’s body were prototypes, or manufactured, in some ancient generation of stars, and the recognition then that we’re all a part of the same stuff. We’re all one.”
Sometimes MDMA creates a lofty new perspective that re-roots us in our ancient past and gives us a steadier grounding on Earth. Staying close to Nature, in fact recalling we are part of Her (which is easier to do outdoors), continues the psychonavigational reset this wonderful medicinal treatment triggered.
Remember, our biology has not changed since we moved indoors. Our love for open spaces, quiet, water, mountain top perspectives, is baked into our physiology. Go in, go out, go in, go out……….be everywhere at once.
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“I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.”
- John Muir
“The Amazonian Shipibo believe their bodies are covered with normally invisible geometric patterns. Illness is a diagnosed when there is a disruption in the patterns.”
-
Luis Edwardo Luna, Ph.D, in Inner Paths to Outer Space by Strassman
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Additional Reading:
Inner Paths to Outer Space by Rick Strassman
Other Topics
Basics of MDMA
Rituals and Ceremony
Brain and MDMA
Trauma
Heart
Energy Movement
Quantum Physics
Native Cosmologies
Nature
Spirituality/Enlightenment
Kogi Tribe
Books written by Geral T. Blanchard
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In recent years psychotherapists have become increasingly aware of the risk of transmitting trauma intergenerationally. By examining the impact of the Holocaust, or the experiences of Native Americans who were systematically abused by colonizers including the Catholic Church, it becomes obvious that indirect passage of depression, despair, anxiety, and damaged self-regard are but a few of the ancestral legacies of uninterrupted abuse. If, however, trauma can be passed from generation to generation without direct experience, could it also be possible for the reverse to happen?
Just as we have started to witness the reality of individual post-traumatic growth (PTG) – not just bouncing back after trauma but bouncing forward – could we entertain the concept of intergenerational growth (IG) – in other words, thriving from generation to generation?
There can be two levels at which trauma is processed. The first tier may be a time of quiet denial or the dissociation of nearly all thoughts of how painful the past was. The body feels it, but the mind does not speak it. On the second level a person awakens to the entirety of it, often an unpredicted and sudden onslaught of previously suppressed details with extensive associated pain. When trauma is reconstituted at the second level it often happens unwillingly. A person may be swept away by an awakening that seems very ugly. It feels like too much to absorb in its entirety. The result is often to feel afraid, even shattered – at first. Now with everything out in the open, what must be done with it?
At the second level of awareness, it is almost impossible to go on pretending that everything is fine. No longer can the visuals and emotions be kept submerged. One wonders, “Damn it, will I ever get better?”
Traumatized persons, with their pervasive pain, typically seek mood altering experiences. This can include ascetic restrictions, hedonistic over-eating, chemical dependency, sexual dependency, sexual anorexia or celibacy, romance addiction, relationship dependency, compulsive gambling, TV or movie binging, rock climbing, auto racing, reliance on antidepressants and/or antianxiety medications, religious addiction, and so much more that can serve to pacify, distract, and avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings. By thrill-seeking, the higher the risks being engaged, the greater mood alteration one can experience. It’s a big dopamine splash and more.
These are the adult versions of childhood thumb sucking, according to Dr. Harvey Milkman, the author of Craving for Ecstasy (the feeling of ecstasy, not the drug). Harvey pointedly said, “Growing up consists of finding the right substitute for your thumb.”
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.
It’s impossible to talk about projection without incorporating a discussion about Sigmund Freud and Donald Trump. In this article I will skip Donald but throw in a little Carl Jung. Freud, of course, named several distinctive defense measures – reality distorting strategies to keep us safe. Two of the big ones are displacement and projection.
First, a definition of projection: This is evident when an individual attributes their own unacceptable impulses onto others. For example, a person might accuse others of engaging in thievery when, in fact, they are swindling money from their employer. Some of the behaviors and thoughts we are most ashamed of could be called shadows. We can see them first in other people before we can “call them out” in ourselves. We are defending against humiliation and mortification lest we be exposed.
Does this empathogen work in a similar manner as psychedelics, blasting us off to a sudden and dramatic awakening of the mind and soul? Not necessarily. Much like massive stress, psychedelics and MDMA can knock people off an unhealthy path and offer them an entirely different trajectory, but there is a lot of arduous individual work that must follow the use of these propellants.
So, could it be concluded that MDMA is a transcendent spiritual event -- a chemical event, or perhaps a neurological experience? By themselves, both seem unlikely. They can change activity in the brain, but enlightenment comes from hard work before and after their use. Entheogens and empathogens likely have a catalytic but not a primary casual effect in awakening.
Many events in life can change us, some in profound ways, others somewhat superficially. Some positively, some negatively. Some temporarily, some permanently. Let’s break it down.
With the “help” of psychology and the diagnoses of PTSD and C-PTSD, an entire trauma industry has developed. Much help has been delivered and, unfortunately, in many instances the assigned labels stick like glue and there can be difficulty relinquishing the newly imposed identity of “breakage.”
Many life events are transformative:
Many great minds have come out of India. Like countless spelling bee champions, Mahatma Gandhi, and Aurobindo Ghose who later took on the name of Sri Aurobindo. Sri Aurobindo became a highly regarded spiritual teacher and author in the twentieth century. His main insight was that what many humans experience during altered or higher states of consciousness are glimpses of the future of evolution. And, he contended, one day these states of expansion will be normal for the whole human race.
Countless numbers of people are seeking the unity consciousness that MDMA can offer. It can make them feel bigger. And more deeply connected and powerful. Like many billions of tiny ants inching a fourteen-wheeler up a hill, every tiny bit of effort pulls the big rig along. Similarly, each one of the eight billion or so people residing on our planet today may, via a combined assemblage of singular efforts, raise their individual consciousness, while tugging the entire race forward.
“Where did all the time go?” That is the ubiquitous question every patient asks after a treatment. They ingest the medicine at 9 a.m. and, after what seems like perhaps an hour or so but was actually five or six, and once the eye mask comes off there is bewilderment as to just how much time has passed. Of course, this is all built on the bedrock notion in Western culture that time is a straight line and linear manifestation. And that there is such a thing as time! Stepping out of existing paradigms, even if for a brief “time” can be eye opening while your eyes are closed.
Traditional Native American cultures have long believed that time is a circular phenomenon. Remotely like the movie Groundhog Day suggests, every day is very similar and reoccurring like the last. In indigenous worldviews, the sun rises and the sun sets, routinely; we always have a predictable reset of sorts, the start of what we call a “new day,” or what Arapahos called “sleeps,” both reflecting measurements of time.
Dark nights of the soul as Saint John of the Cross called those long, despairing periods of our life, are never easy, in fact they are usually dreadful. They are so necessarily awful and so damn long because some of us don’t do subtlety very well. If we are open to these moments, even a tiny bit, they can serve as an internally calculated and blaring wakeup call that will guide us to solace.
John Nelson, in Healing the Split, refers to a fleeting or ephemeral sense of a higher purpose, not fully conceptualized, but compellingly near the heart. It holds answers to life’s pain but isn’t quite within our grasp…at least until the dark clouds engulf us. Then, with great staying power and inexperience matched with trust, a spiritual emergence nears surface awareness. And it always happens, as psychiatrist Stan Groff defined it, around the time of a blurry spiritual emergency.