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 Relations and Place
Geral T. Blanchard • December 28, 2021
Typically, when people think of MDMA their minds go to Molly, Adam, ecstasy and other street drugs.
The recreational use of these drugs may nudge them into a new way of being, whether that was their original intention or not. Often social bonds are momentarily strengthened, whether partying or in a solemn and sacred ceremony close to Nature.
This family of drugs is known for its relational qualities. Pure, research grade MDMA is recognized as one of the safest and gentlest of the empathogens; it fosters and deepens empathy for all that is sentient.
To understand the deepest potential residing in this version of MDMA we must first leave the research labs and reconsider indigenous ways of being. After all, First Peoples introduced colonizers to a variety of plants with unique molecular structures that enhance our connections, not just between humans but with plants, animals, elements, and even one’s sense of place.
Place may be the place to start. For Amazonian tribes or Native Americans of the Northwest Coast, much has been said about location. If an Achuar of Ecuador is suffering from a serious illness, this tribesman will likely fear being removed from the jungle to an urban hospital lest the act of transplanting him might result in death. The jungle is experienced as one’s mother and lungs – it’s always been that way. A person’s psyche is rooted in the land and is refers to the rainforest as “relatives,” various forms of life coming from the same mother. To be cut off from family, therefore, would be akin to spiritual death, or even provoke a literal death.
Among the Kwakiutl, Haida, and Tsimshian, their physical home in Canada near the Pacific Ocean is much more than a location they have occupied. It is more like the foundation or the mooring of their cultural and spiritual values. They are children of that place, and once removed, they become unsettled and experience an internal clamor wanting to return to the womb. At that location called “home” every being (“all my relatives”) shares responsibility for everything. Every form of life below, on, or above the land is inseparable kin, all of whom have equal rights as well as similar responsibilities.
There is a sacred and often wordless language that may not be discernable until we settle into a deep trance. It often comes with an expanded consciousness and enlarged sense of interconnectedness. Some cultures describe this largely ineffable something as an energy, the life force. The Lakota refer to it as
Skan. The Paiutes as
booha. In the Islamic tradition it may be termed
Waqi. Its place of residence can be everywhere, what Black Elk called the
axis mundi; the center of the universe where I am at in this moment. It is found wherever we go. And wherever we go, physically, it is possible to feel centered and connected.
These concepts may help us appreciate what Native Americans have long believed: There are no sharp boundaries between outside and inside, human and the rest of Nature, self and others, or the secular and the sacred. In fact within most indigenous cosmologies there is no secular; everything is sacred.
And this thing many of us call “self” is a very small part of the Whole and my thoughts and worries, well they are even smaller. But when I reunite with the larger self, the Vast Self (Pueblo term), I grow in opportunities for participation and strength. But first I have to get out of my own way. Then a calm can come over me, in fact, over all of “us.”
Africa is a destination for some journeyers, perhaps because that is where the four primary strains of human civilization hailed from. MDMA allows us to surmount this momentary existence and return to the place of our origins, the place where we have been anchored for thousands if not millions of years. Jung went there and felt it immediately. Everything is remembered in our human bio-computer, the brain, but not always downloaded in visuals or in immediately understandable ways.
Interestingly, many (not all) individuals ingesting MDMA -- who are not far removed from the land and interactions with the other animals – can find themselves being consciously transplanted (like being teleported) to a different place that feels surprisingly familiar. An ancient link is restored and faint, vaguely familiar voices or faces may emerge. To travel in this way one must suspend disbelief, give space for imagination, and quietly see what might happen. Certain animals may show up during their journeys as if to say, “Don’t forget me, I am Giraffe, your sister. I can guide you.”
For this type of homecoming to occur, it is helpful to precede the ingestion of MDMA with preparations involving indigenous concepts of set and setting. Weeks of preliminary rituals allow us to be lifted into an expanded consciousness and delivered to new/old locations. If we embed the MDMA experience in ancient ceremonial practices, perhaps adding our own meaningful rituals to the mix between sessions, some ancient memories may come alive in this dimension or in the dream world.
Then familiarity with the previously unfamiliar can be striking. Something very real can be felt or known during these unique experiences, what some say feels “realer than real.” It may be that part of our DNA is being resuscitated, reinstated, or altered (epigenetics). It may be about relationships, place, purpose, and meaning.
During an MDMA experience be sure to heed, and serenely listen to, whatever arrives from deep, deep within you. If anything like that happens, announce it. At that point it will be difficult to detach from the Whole. It sticks because it feels good and it heals. Such an important memory, once it has been revived, cannot easily atrophy again.
In many indigenous cultures great value is placed on dreams and visionary experiences as they can hold healing knowledge. They are usually preceded by planned deprivation, fasting, and suffering. Frequently, a physical or emotional breakdown propels someone to head out on a journey of enlightenment before their breakthrough can transpire.
When that happens it often resembles a dismemberment. The symbolism and experience of dismemberment and then rememberment can be dramatic and painful. A part of the self is dying and wants to fall off the skeleton of our existence. It has bogged us down far too long. Once the weight of ego’s demands are dislodged -- sometimes with the help of an empathogen or entheogen -- the “old self” is literally pulled apart and discarded, and a new self is formed from the remnants, but the person is enhanced by a greater authenticity as well as a new and richer spiritual power.
By going on this “hero’s journey” the “individual” transcends the limitations of his present culture, is reconstructed, and in the process renews the larger surrounding culture. Both end up being greater and more complete than before. A few may go on to be healers, or even shamans, depending on their host culture’s support.
The celebrated Catholic theologian, Thomas Merton, after trying LSD while cradled in carefully organized set and setting, found a greater freedom and a new “calling” in his life. And he said that “…there’s no real freedom unless you go through a serious crisis which delivers you from dependence on other people.”
Truths lurk in the silence of an MDMA experience. Listening to our indigenous voice is essential. First of all, it is important to acknowledge hearing what has been said for thousands if not millions of years on the place of your most frequented existence. It may feel quite primal, quite ancient.
The voice can arise in us, usually not in the ways of language, but in the ways of spirit, or if we are fortunate, in images too, perhaps of our native land. Our salvation depends on it…to realize the full dimensions of a priestly calling, a redemptive and healing work that follows lengthy suffering and a radical listening to that “still, small voice from within.”
MDMA lowers many human walls that perpetuate the platitude of being “terminally unique.” The medicine is a form of liberation theology. Wearing this way of being with a quiet humility in turn vitalizes all our connections.
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“I sit around working on myself as an act of compassion for other people.”
- Ram Dass
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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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