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 and Epiphanies
Geral T. Blanchard • Dec 11, 2021
Being administered pure, clinical grade MDMA is likely to reduce symptoms of trauma, post-traumatic stress, and post-traumatic stress disorder, especially when relationship issues gave rise to the pain.
Many persons, however, report an additional reward from the medicinal experience, namely a profound spiritual awakening. It results in a radical departure from old and inefficient ways of being in the world. In their place are new emotions and beliefs that tend to be very clear sighted and uplifting, what some call an epiphany.
One of the most fascinating factors is how suddenly a shift can occur. In his book, The Holy Shit Moment: How Lasting Change Can Happen in an Instant, James Fell somewhat lightheartedly looks at the elements that comprise a rapid psychological transformation. Fell finds himself in agreement with Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, “A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.”
For a life-changing holy shit moment to strike, you need to have many pieces of the puzzle, and possible solutions, floating in your brain all at once. When they are in the mix and congeal under the influence of the medicine, an internal wisdom frequently arises. This capacity is built into us and can be fertilized. Hence all the handouts and books that are assigned pre-epiphany. The ideas are put on standby, incubating, ready to be tapped when the ego (left-brain activity) quiets down thanks to the medicine. Then the big picture perspective suddenly shows up as an aha! moment, a new story comes online and the rest is a reset of history. It can arrive in quiet subtle form or as a BAM!
As a result of an enlightening vision that comes beyond cognition, dramatic mental reorganization can occur. It is not about a rational and analytical decision as much as it is an awakening. You have now gone beyond the old and ineffective pattern of analysis paralysis. It is when the rigid controls of the left-brain are relaxed by the medicine, lightning can strike. In fact, it strikes more often when we aren’t working on a problem, often when distracted from the problem. Relational solutions tend to show up at unfocused times, when walking the dog or, like Einstein noticed, during the dreams of our sleep.
I’ll quote Fell directly as he gets right to the point: “While a life-changing epiphany feels like it is something that happens to you, the preparatory work, along with your life experiences and deepest desires and understanding of your true self, help ensure it was something coming
from you. This isn’t an outside agency acting upon your brain;
this is your brain.” With it comes an overwhelming feeling of clarity and
rightness.
A deep set of truths from deep within have been unleashed. And this is why the shift in perspective and feeling lasts – because it resonates so well with our deepest self.
It’s not that the medicine lingers in your system for months or years, it is that a bigger and more accurate worldview gets a foothold and serves to guide you well thereafter.
We also know that a hopeful and positive mood can stimulate an epiphany. That’s the generative result of the chemicals released by your body – the amphetamine, dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and norepinephrine. They are the chemical part of a complex substrate – the underlying marinade and foundation for an epiphany of wisdom to rise up.
Common takeaways sound like this: “Oh shit, man! I don’t want to be that person anymore!” Or, for a religious person it may sound like, “I don’t believe this is what God put me on Earth for.” It is an overwhelming sense that the ground has shifted beneath you and now you are on more solid footing. So when a quantum leaping rhinoceros crashes down on an epiphany landing pad, it’s going to make an impression.
In William Miller’s book, Quantum Change, he explains there is a bimodal distribution, by which he means the epiphany on one end of a continuum is filled with “insightful” conclusions, while on the other end is marked by something “mystical.” Curiously, most of the people Miller wrote about who had this kind of experience weren’t often religious. And none of them described a return to an old way of being! They were done with it. Moving on.
The point of this handout is to extend an invitation to your epiphany. If you desire such an outcome, a pilgrimage is in order – one occurring in your mind as you read and study ahead of time, the other when you board the plane to come to Charleston, London, Boulder, or Des Moines. Set out for new territory of mind and body and see what happens.
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“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
- John A. Shedd
“Good sailors are made after being on rough waters.”
- Zimbabwean proverb
“Life is a series of collisions with the future.”
- Jose’ Ortega y Gasset in Meditations on Quixote.
“One does not become fully human painlessly.”
- Rollo May, psychologist
“A mind is a system of ideas, each with the excitement it arouses, and with tendencies impulsive and inhibitive, which mutually check or reinforce one another…But a new perception, a sudden emotional shock, or an occasion which lays bare the organic alteration, will make the whole fabric fall together; and then the center of gravity sinks into an attitude more stable; for the new ideas that reach the center in the rearrangement seem now to be locked there, and the new structure remains permanent.”
- William James, father of psychology, circa 1936
“Examine your life. And it will never be the same, because when epiphany arrives, the real self and all its accompanying values of your true identity are unleashed from the false cage you [previously] constructed around it to get through each day.”
- James Fell in
The Holy Shit Moment!
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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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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.”
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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.
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