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 as Your Truth Detector
Geral T. Blanchard • November 4, 2022
"Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.”
- Comedian, Stephen Wright
It may be difficult to review your life story without admitting a few broken rules along the way. When sequestered from the agents of propaganda, and during an MDMA treatment, the full truth can be revealed from deep within yourself. Old rule-breaking behavior might better be reframed as healthy resistance to a previously unhealthy world that surrounded you -- a world characterized by soul suffocation. But when out of self-respect you fight back by defying your oppressors, you may sound like this: “Tell me I can’t speak out…just watch me. From this point on I get to be me.” That was the clarion call of Muhammad Ali, “I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be who I am.” Or, in the words of Gandhi: “The only tyrant I accept is the ‘still small voice’ within me. Even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such minority.”
In Native American culture Raven and Coyote have long been regarded as trickster figures. In the Lakota world (as seen in the TV series Longmire), the human version is called a heyoka. Similar to Ali they are semi-humorous rule breakers, amoral beings, who teach us much about what is sacred and what is profane. Tricksters tend to be boundary challengers, boundary crossers. Their internal, free-spirited nature ignites and steers their social interactions, especially upon courageously uncovering their deepest personal truth and displaying it in very unconventional ways. And MDMA can catalyze that process, helping to unearth deep insightful realities and embolden you.
When your innate sense of honorable behavior has momentarily left you unable to act, the inner trickster, which can intuitively distinguish between right and wrong, may embolden you to step outside traditional conventions to survive, and eventually to thrive. Your voice returns. This is not about a fleeting state of mind, it is about your original state, potentially your eternal state. Almost always, tricksters have been born out of woundedness.
The wounds often come from abusive
encoders, the purveyors of propaganda in our lives that destabilize personal confidence. To move in the direction of recovery, victims must become
decoders of perpetrators’ messages. You may recall the story of an Apache Indian who worked in my Wyoming office. Repeatedly, in reference to the challenge of decoding, he would advise patients how to posture themselves in relation to abusive persons. He would say, somewhat tongue in cheek, “Be sure to thank them. They are teaching you how not to be.” In the custom of Native American tricksters, there is the recognition of disguised messages hidden behind confusing and sometimes injurious behaviors. The truth must be deciphered.
Coyotes can be crafty challengers – thrivers -- who have learned how to adapt and rise above ever-present dangers. These tricksters have learned how to trick the tricky. They develop masterful and resilient skills.
Coyote, an old Native trickster figure, is featured in a story involving a predator called “Mouth at Both Ends;” the name ought to be sufficiently descriptive of its character. The story features a predacious creature that is deceptive and duplicitousness, which also typifies the nature of many abusive people. Among humans this cunning maneuvering is called gaslighting. In the story, Coyote has long been watchful for dangerous traps set by another kind of animal, humans. Coming upon a snare, the clever canine now chooses to defecate on the trap and in doing so, is no longer a predator nor the prey, but a third animal. He howls in rapture. Coyote has become something more, no longer being defined and confined by the imposed boundaries of others.
For humans, insights can come after a period of introspection, perhaps in and enhanced or altered state. In the MDMA world we talk about brain plasticity. In Coyote’s world, great behavioral plasticity is required in a shifting and oftentimes dangerous world. A fixed repertoire of strategies is not enough; it is necessary to learn new responses to launch a new self-directed lifestyle. Coyote becomes the crafty actor, not just a defensive reactor. Therein is a lesson for us.
So clever behavior isn’t necessarily about deception. In most cases animals simply live their truths. Humans, immediately following abuse, not so much. Their inner truth may be disregarded or forgotten. At various times in life individuals can temporarily be confined by powerful people and cultural forces surrounding them. Ironically MDMA has a crafty ability, however, to bring truths to the surface, which are always more satisfying than the backward-looking life many people have been living. To live out an inner truth is so much more authentic and satisfying than buying into the gaslighting negativity of others. Different from many animals, humans are not restricted by an innate, fixed, or instinctual responses. MDMA is there to help spiritual seekers become more insightful, discerning, flexible, and genuine, resting in the truth of who they really are.
**********
“He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Truth is my God.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
“We cannot freely and wisely chose the right way for ourselves unless we know both good and evil.”
- Helen Keller
*********
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
More Articles
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.