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 - Remembering and Re-membering
Geral T. Blanchard • June 27, 2022
I believe the therapeutic use of MDMA is likely to be most effective in healing the soul when administered using rituals employed in a sacred treatment ceremony. From an indigenous perspective, trauma recovery is about finding our lost, forgotten, or never discovered, soul.
The process is referred to as a
soul retrieval, the rebuilding of a better self from the carnage of the past. In the process we remember who we really were are, who we are beneath trauma’s rubble, what are destiny originally was upon entering this human body form, and who we are destined to be. Our destiny to be created is referred to as a future retrieval. It is sort of a composting process as Thich Nhat Hahn has outlined in his book,
No Mud, No Lotus.
Shamans have long portrayed a soul loss or soul theft as the deterioration and releasing of the physical self, and with it, all that once was original to the person. In artistic sketches I have seen depictions of the victim as a female being torn apart with her skin falling away in a dark and cavernous pit. Then nearly all body organs drop to the ground and eventually largely skeletal parts remain amidst piles of other human bones. It is as if nearly all of what was a natural part of a once beautiful human form has dissolved, and with it, the trauma tarnished ego with its memory of abuse and trauma.
Next, imagine a bird flying above the earthen pit and the victim, with one remaining flesh covered arm, reaching skyward pleading for help. The animal relative responds by summoning help, and soon a human is depicted as sitting atop the opening extending a hand downward to offer help. She is lifted out of the cavern and her body begins to re-form. There is a remembering, rebuilding, or re-membering of the body that commences. Out of the nightmare existence, after trusting a human once again, she is lifted from the chamber and the repair of both body and spirit is completed.
At that point the woman, once weakened by trauma and a near-death experience, rises to her feet, hands outstretched toward the heavens. Her body appears completely reconstituted and she is surrounded by a flock of festive birds. She is ecstatic with a sense of having been cleansed, rejuvenated, and revitalized after having been through an experience of life-changing importance, redefinition, and empowerment. Her psyche is reset to its original pure, innocent, and compassionate condition.
And according to shamanic legend, a healer is now being born, reconstituted from the residue of the trauma. It turns out that her original form at birth is what has been restored.
And as Hopi Elders have long taught, we are the positive change in the world we wish to see, the “ones we have been waiting for.” Out of our own ashes a transformative experience unfolds.
With many dark nights of the soul there is often a descent to the inner world of fear or terror, portrayed as being trapped in a cavern. The shadow of our original self remains in the darkness but still can be rediscovered. A power born of suffering beckons us to realize the greater purpose and meaning for our lives. New responsibilities are beheld, usually involving a life of devoted and steadfast service to others. And when this happens a fundamental understanding becomes clear: Illness and suffering can be a gift, an initiation that thrusts us into a dismembering process and a complete re-graphing at the deepest level of our being at the soul level.
At this juncture we embrace and engage all of what was once thought to be the inferior parts of our being. A shift in consciousness transpires – from judgment to tolerance, from rejection to acceptance, from separation to connection, and from fear to love of self and others. We question everything about our prior existence. And after the re-membering scenario, we also remember who we once were, the healing art that rests within us, and where that can take us.
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“Remembering used to be easier than it is now.” - Bonnie Glass-Coffin in Lessons in Courage: Peruvian Shamanic Wisdom for Everyday Life
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Additional Reading:
The World of Shamanism: New Views of an Ancient Tradition by Roger Walsh, 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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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.
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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.