The Integration of Sacred Medicines

Integration has been the most important factor in giving the psychedelic experience its lasting personal growth factor rather than allowing the experience to be solely a roller coaster ride that sweeps you off your feet for several minutes or hours and then fading away into a mere memory. 

When preparing to go through a psychedelic experience and not having a plan to integrate the experience thereafter is similar to performing the process of planting seeds in the ground and neglecting to water them. For years now, the international psychedelic communities have known of the unbelievable power that remains within the psychedelic experience and the immense healing potential, but psychedelics are not a magic pill that will transform your life without any conscious sacrifice from your part in everyday life.

While the main topic of this information is about the integration after a psychedelic experience, we cannot conclude the whole integration process without considering the importance of the preparation and intention beforehand. Your intention before the actual psychedelic experience is playing the important role in one's mindset and the environment in which the psychedelic experience will be taking place which is incredibly beneficial to have a clear and focused intention in mind that could formulate a positive framework for the experience.  It is of vital importance to know what you are striving for whether the intention is to heal from a traumatic experience, resolving a persistent addiction, and/or wanting to discover one's purpose in life. Whether or not the experience ends up like you hoped it would, having the intention previously serves you to preserve the goal and re-ground in case fluctuations of the unexpected arise. After the experience has completed, the preparation of the intention helps you to deconstruct the insights and challenges of your experience within the context of your stated intentions, rather than as random events.

When returning from the psychedelic experience, there are many times that an incredible amount of information, ideas, emotions, and perspectives begin arising in one's mind and the worst thing that someone could do when experiencing that reality is to try to get back into their normal routine while dismissing the grand opportunity of creating new understandings and paradigm shifts in their lives due to feeling overwhelmed. We need to keep in mind that the psychedelic experience merely opens the doors to places we want to experience, but we hold the responsibility to walk through those doors in order to manifest the positive changes in our lives. An important way to then assure that the insights obtained through the psychedelic experience remain present and long into the future is not so much to remember exact details of each insight, but preferably take the time to reflect on both the thoughts and emotions that you experienced while seeking a trusted source that could assist you in the process of better expressing those ideas and emotions into a more tangible form that can continue serving you to remember and integrating those lessons.

The unbelievable power psychedelics have had on people through time is in formulating an opportunity for radically new and positive changes in one's life which is constructed through the intent and purpose of the observer. On one hand, a person suffering from a long line of drug abuse could manifest into no longer need the drug of choice, no longer focusing daily on how to obtain the drug, and even separate themselves from their old community of drug users and pushers. For someone now intentionally seeking more of a spiritual experience through psychedelics, this could involve a person finally taking responsibility in their daily health, an organic shift in careers, and even beginning a new relationship. No matter what the purpose and intent are to make the changes in your life, they require direct action from the individual.

In the days and weeks following the psychedelic experience, the purpose to make positive life changes will be powerful; but as always over time, if those impulses are resisted or over-rationalized due to the fear of change, those goals and motivations will fade away.  Our knowledge and capability to reconstruct both ourselves and the world around us extend in the connection of our vision manifested by taking action, and all the insights in the world will change nothing until we ourselves bring them into being. So, it is with honor, pleasure, and the great responsibility that I am here to take you from the stage that you currently are in your life, to where you have wanted to be.