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 the Soul's Discovery
Geral T. Blanchard • September 3, 2022
Ask most anyone to define soul and you will understand another word, enigma. Often attempts to describe this mysterious force have a sacred or mystical feel to them.
Just as often there is an attempt to locate this thing or spirit inside the human body. Already I have suggested soul may be like a force, a physical thing, but also as a numinous spirit. Starters.
I have read theological books that say that this force-like something serves as an inner guidance system, an aspect of the self. But to perform such a function what is it hooked up to? Energy? If so, from where, and how do we get it? And are we something much greater than a meager human self?
Philosophers have likened the soul to a seed, and encapsulated in the seed is the plant’s entire life. That life is connected to life on a far grander scale. So, perhaps it can be said that all life forms have a soul, their own higher power that connects it to all else in the universe. In this way, all living things have a consciousness ready to unfold and expand. A seed may have to be planted, fertilized, and watered before it can enter into a new, altered state and become all it was intended to be.
It seems as though this energetic connection to all other life forms, may make our soul one part of a far bigger soul of which we are like a tiny cell – doing our small, yet vital, part to keep the Whole operative.
The entire universe surrounding us is filled with electrical energy. It can explode into stars or reach down to Earth in a powerful lightning strike. It can heat our planet and carry invisible messages on radio waves. If, however, this energy is so big and explosive, why doesn’t it “blow a circuit” in our brain. Well, that may be where the soul helps out.
It is hypothesized that the soul inherently serves humans like a transducer or a reducing valve, sort of like how high voltage power lines aren’t allowed to surge all their energy into our homes without a big explosion occurring. Similarly, all that universal voltage can’t be allowed into our brain at full force lest our heads explode. The ultimate spiritual power of life can’t surge directly into us without doing some harm. So the soul – an extension of the bigger grid system – must “step down” the flow of energy and life. Too much equals death. Titrated to just the right level, it promotes human life. This is the soul’s function.
A bolt of lightning gets stepped down to miniscule electrical firings (microvolts) moving across neuronal networks that allow us to think; that is called consciousness. Our body (upper, middle, and lower brains) collectively have the meager equivalent of a sixty-watt lightbulb which is subdivided into 100 billion neurons, making each brain cell’s portion infinitesimal. And infinitesimal is good, it makes us smart. Similar to the energy behind gravity, if it were not stepped down significantly on Earth, we could be slammed down very hard on our mother.
In Sanskrit this inner guidance system that extends into the heavens is called Upaguru, meaning the teacher who is near – in fact, runs through us. The implication is that consciousness, or awareness if you prefer, is not limited to the brain or body but is an external force that guides all life.
Asking a question “in here” may not allow for answers about “out there.” A prerequisite might be an altered state when the brain gets quieted down a bit so that subtle energy can enter and inform us. All that said, it may be that the brain, when the ego is in total command, is an obstacle to knowing the soul.
So when I meet my “soul mate” I am said to “fall in love.” When thoughts of love are pondered, brain imaging devices pick up on areas of the cortex and limbic system that literally light up. So does this mean love is a burst of electricity and chemicals? If we refuse to accept that the brain creates a love response in our skulls out of an electrochemical soup with origins in the stars, where is the evidence that it comes from somewhere else?
Now try this idea on for size. If the soul is an aspect of something bigger than self, could we be a stepped down version of God? Further, if life is immeasurable by human standards, stratagems, and manmade devices, and we are part of that seemingly eternal and much bigger guiding life force, notions of self ought to transcend small human conceptualizations of birth and death. We are a big deal, but not in the ways we have conceptualized ourselves in recent millennium.
Our soul, our inner guide, is always with us. The connecting link is the electrical mind. That should offer us some comfort. The soul is our higher power and we don’t have to search far for it. An enlarged consciousness – of the kind experienced with MDMA – might introduce us to ourselves, the source from the Source of everything.
There is a shield that can keep us from this discovery. Often it is fear. Fear creates spiritual constipation. Fear closes us off to electrical signals of the over-arching universe. However, some plants and manmade medicines can minimize such interference and open us up to the Greater Frequency.
Deepak Chopra has a knack for reducing ideas to understandable nuggets. In Reinventing the Body, Resurrecting the Soul, he offers a simple formulation, what he calls the basic flow chart of life. Here it is:
Soul carries the potential
Mind carries the intention
Brain produces the result
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Thoughts can change our brain wiring. Certain ritualized ceremonies that promote altered states can allow the formulation of new thoughts, new intentions, potential, insights, and a new way of being. And empathogens and entheogens have the capacity to remove the brain’s reducing valve, at least for a time, to allow resonance with other frequencies.
Zen Buddhists contend that every inquiry already contains its own answer. Soul holds the questions and answers in the giant world wide web of consciousness. We all can create an answer for any question we create.
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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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