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 - Showing Up
Geral T. Blanchard • January 15, 2022
“Just when I needed support and guidance the most, someone showed up for me – myself.”
That is a common refrain among people who are seekers and have experienced an MDMA ceremony.
Thereafter, when actively looking for answers, they almost assuredly show up for themselves. It’s not that answers were not there all along, you just may be looking more keenly with stronger hope and optimism in place. And we are doing spiritual work, as Marcela Lobos has written in her first book, Awakening Your Inner Shaman (2021), answers seem to appear when we are confident from experience that the Universe will mirror back to us what we knew all along.
When fear has us in its grip and we marshal the courage to quiet our lives – shut off the TV and “smartphone” and go inside after going outside – an animal messenger delivers an insight, the UPS driver leaves the most perfectly salient book on the front steps, or a child displays a needed ingredient in our spirit – fresh eyes, awe, or playfulness. Spirit shows up through signs that seem to be applauding our faith in the shamanic growth process. But to open the mind to this mystery, the grace of it all, sometimes an altered state can set the stage for possibility.
The mystery of paradox is such that when we are in the dark night of the soul and when we feel utterly alone and despondent, being fully present with the pain can deliver us. That is the way of it! We show up for ourselves rather than routinely and unthinkingly run to the psychiatrist’s office for the next best antidepressant. Many times, more often than not, the answer rests deep within us.
As Lobos suggests, when we do the interior work over time, eventually everything lines up for us to jump through a newfound portal. And there we are on the other side, joined with our bigger Self, the genius that had been close by all along.
As we cried out for a consoling friend, we responded to the call. For many, that is one of the gifts of MDMA assisted psychotherapy.
Victims of trauma are often given to playing small. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking, which instinctively occurs when in the presence of an emotional vampire, who with diminishing judgements sucks the confident spirit right out of us day in and day out. Playing timid and small does not serve us well, the people close to us, nor the world. A life of quiet compliance and dutifulness hides us from our true nature – our best and most capable, bigger Self. But first we must die onto our old self, our self-limiting story first imposed by an insecure parent or partner(s).
Jaguar is a fiercely protective and empowering guardian animal for Amazonian shamans. In the presence of their companion ally – mentally through shapeshifting, or physically in the jungle – they feel compelled to practice alert fearlessness. Jaguar symbolizes our potential awakened strength and can be called upon like an exemplar who can show us how to walk in darkness, within the black places of our soul. This brave relative has the capacity to perceive in the dark, literally with at least six times more illuminating proficiency than humans. And Jaguar, like MDMA, can reset our brain and our soul. That is when we become, as Lobos says, luminous warriors. And, interestingly, others are often inclined to see the radiance before we do. They are drawn to it, to us, and eventually we are too.
If one is to experience a future retrieval – to arrive at our divinely determined destiny -- it may be necessary to cut the rope anchoring us to toxic stories, acquaintances, or even a spouse. We can easily decay in the presence of controlling advice-givers, even when they believe what they are doing is in our best interests; it usually isn’t. But first comes the realization from within (a Pachakuti*) that enough is enough. As civil rights luminary Rosa Parks once said, “I have learned that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.” Then the Jaguar bravery shows up and we say to abusers, “I release you to your own destiny. I can walk alone.”
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“Breaking away is a marvelous invitation to stay with the immanent freshness of life, an opportunity to not be blinded by the given, and to follow our inner fragrance like a treasure hunt.”
- Annette Knopp
“I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man.”
- Chuang Tzu
* Pachakuti: A Peruvian indigenous (Q’ero) term for a cataclysmic moment in which a new world is suddenly born.
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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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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.