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 World of Allies
Geral T. Blanchard • July 25, 2022
The storyteller and author, Carlos Castaneda wrote several books about his Yaqui Indian teacher in Mexico, don Juan.
Today, there is great skepticism about whether or not his older teacher, a shaman, really existed. Was he a brilliant old man, or if everything was made up by Castaneda, was he the brilliant man? It may not matter. The knowledge shared, no matter where it came from, is enlightening.
Don Juan presumably taught Carlos that “Mescalito” – peyote – was a benevolent teacher and protector of man. It was ingested at gatherings of “mitotes” (shamans and sorcerers) who were seeking knowledge of the right way to live. Jimson weed and mushrooms had somewhat similar powers and were referred to as “allies.” The power contained in a chewed mushroom, for instance, was considered a personal ally.
Carlos asked don Juan, “Why did you ask me to take those power plants so many times?” Don Juan laughed and softly replied, “’Cause you’re dumb. There was no other way to jolt you. There are other types of people who do not seem to need them.”
The suggestion was that Carlos needed to turn off his narrow mind for a while so that he would stop talking to himself so much from his presumed spot of human wisdom. It turns out, humans often confuse the world with what they think. In contrast, don Juan believed the world to be incomprehensible, a mystery, and in that way it was smarter than us.
So, don Juan urged Carlos to step out of his ignorant looping consciousness and let a plant teach him; the plant becoming an ally. Carlos said the insight given to him was, “…a warrior treats the world as an endless mystery and what people do [to diminish their fears] as an endless folly.” Certain mind altering plants share their unique form of consciousness with humans and other animals, allowing them to see and as a result, they come to be known as our allies.
A guiding plant or a guardian animal can be elevated to astounding importance given the insights it seems to provide. But does it really do that? Or could it be that the plant allows our brain to break out of its small prison and see the larger world much more clearly.
This may be what MDMA and psilocybin do. They introduce people to an undiscovered intellectual potential. In the end, if we note how untapped powers actually slumber inside us, the obvious conclusion is that we are our own allies.
Said another way, it may not be necessary to look outside ourselves, at least not for long, to become acquainted with who we are and the wisdom we have, albeit buried. So, we go out, toy with old and new ideas, and come home with an ally – ourselves. We are back where we started from. Unfortunately, in a magical, superstitious, and fanciful time in human history, humans want to believe in powers that lay beyond us. Some do. Many do not.
Don Juan spoke of will as a force. When we develop our will and learn how to see in the way don Juan spoke of, we discover what was referred to as a sixth sense. This sense allows an honest relationship between ourselves and what was once the perceived world formed from our limited intellect. When a medicine has a person momentarily under its influence two things become clear: 1) It is ludicrous to think the whole world is composed of things that can be explained and 2) only a few things in this world can be explained in our old way. Much is beyond human understanding, but some additional insights await us.
Perhaps the most important lesson Castaneda shared was that once the medicine provided him with a sacred appreciation for the Great Mystery, his task, like ours, was/is to continue developing our own inherent clear-headed understanding of things. This can be done without more and more medicines. We have become our own medicine.
Plant induced non-ordinary reality, Castaneda came to discover, is the underlying reality. Until he met don Juan he wasn’t awake to the truth of that. Every person’s task is to become a spiritual warrior who develops their minds “impeccably,” and in so doing, rejoins their rightful place in the animal world.
Don Juan concluded: “Someday perhaps you’ll be able to see men in another mode and then you‘ll realize there’s no way to change anything about them.” You are left to change yourself, much like AA’s Serenity Prayer advises.
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“Upon learning to see a man becomes everything by becoming nothing. He vanishes and yet he’s there. I would say this is a time when a man can be or can get anything he desires. But he desires little, and instead of playing with his fellow men like they were toys, he meets them in the midst of their folly. A man who sees controls his folly, while his fellow men can’t. Seeing has already detached him from absolutely everything he knew before.”
- Carlos Castaneda in
A Separate Reality
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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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