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: From Ego-System to Eco-System
Geral T. Blanchard • September 3, 2022
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. So when two coherent people are physically close together, as in an MDMA treatment, we have a potential mechanism for feeling or sensing another person’s emotional state independent of verbal or body language. This can be referred to as heart resonance -- when we feel connected, understood, and lifted up by other persons, and is also called the social coherence multiplier effect. This is what the Himba tribe of Namibia have been telling people for hundreds of years; they picked up on this uniting bubble concept simply by chilling while hanging out together.
In the book, Heart Intelligence, written by HeartMath staff, they posit: “Incoherence is like static on a radio station we are listening to, whereas internal coherence better ‘tunes us in’ to the station and we get much clearer signal.” With the help of MDMA, “ground clutter” is quieted while incoming information and insights -- that were there all along – are recognized. And they are experienced as deep truths or knowings. With this channel open, clarity concerning relational matters occurs.
Obviously, if your MDMA therapist and attendant are in a coherent and contented spot in your presence, a potentiating effect can occur – a field of attunement quiets the ego long enough to let another station, or frequency, inform you. And it informs you of things already known, things that were onboard but previously difficult to access. Personal wisdom is being enhanced by the wisdom of the field of collective intelligence. Similar to a quantum physicist you can call this nonlocal intuition, or woo-woo, but it does seem to be a something.
Now, let’s consider the synchronicities so many people report following an MDMA treatment. More woo-woo?
Or, as Rollin McCraty, a psychophysiologist affiliated with HeartMath and Florida Atlantic University contends, people who have been practicing heart coherence techniques seem to have increased intuitiveness. They also report an increased number of social synchronicities. So what might occur if both healing strategies were merged?
As a living being, Mother Earth radiates electromagnetic energy – a steady “Schuman Resonance” as it’s called – and this gives sensory awareness and connection to its parts (all plants and animals, including us), both directly and indirectly. This is ancient Native American wisdom.
A Shoshone man of Wyoming once explained that the language of his people comes from Mother Earth. And medical anthropologist Joan Halifax (once studied entheogens with psychonaut Stanislov Groff) has written about a Ute Indian who said, “The voice of the land is our language.” Through this unspoken and unwritten language – perhaps the uniting field of electromagnetic energy “talking” to us – we develop a collective consciousness that strengthens us all. Halifax wrote: “This [companionship or community] is the ‘medicine’ that Native Americans refer to – the experience of relatedness that allows the mystery to flow between seemingly unrelated entities.” So we all can coherently move along with Mother Earth, keeping in rhythmic time with Her. The key – whether for patient, shaman, plain citizen, or everyone -- is to find balance flowing with Her current. A holy woman spoke thru a vision to an old medicine man, Wolf Collar.
She gave him this song:
When the wind blows,
that is my medicine.
When it rains,
that is my medicine.
When it hails,
that is my medicine.
When it clears after a storm,
that is my medicine.
Lastly, I’ll quote physician Rafael Kellman of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who likened unhappiness to an unhealthy internal ecology – poor gut health affecting all three human brains. He wrote, “…the disease is rarely so simple as just ‘cutting out’ or ‘destroying’ the problem. A negative process has been set in motion, triggering many other side effects. A decline in wolves causes an overpopulation of deer, which causes a shortage of grass, and so on. The poisoning of the grass causes an underpopulation of deer, which causes the wolves to die, which poisons the fertilizer they provide, and so on. The problem in these examples is not a thing but a process. Instead of removing the disease, you have to reverse the process.”
Simply put, healthy diet and gut health can connect all three brains in a post-MDMA recovery process contributing to vastly improved mental health. Depression and anxiety are not free standing things, they are part of your body’s ecosystem, our
enteric nervous system -- the intestines.
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Additional Reading:
Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology by Allan Hunt Badiner (ed)
Heart Intelligence: Connecting with the Intuitive Guidance of the Heart by Childre, Martin, Rozman, and McCraty
The Whole Brain: The Microbiome Solution by Raphael Kellman, M.D.
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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