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 the Inner Shaman
Geral T. Blanchard • Apr 17, 2023
I have observed how people using this relational empathogen find wisdom and transformative assistance, not from without, but from within themselves.
Once the search for the self-proclaimed shaman in the suburbs has ended, after the Mayo Clinic could not provide personalized care infused with love, and when the last wayfaring guru’s spell persisted for only a couple of days, other solutions may be sought by looking inward. This time, health and recovery must finally arise from deep inside the psyche with an uplift that comes from what some people call the
inner physician.
It is the natural human propensity to look toward a stranger for answers to personal problems. Anyone familiar with ceremonial MDMA psychotherapy has witnessed the brilliance that rises to the surface amidst the quiet during an hours-long internal gaze. It is a beautiful thing to witness individuals whose self-esteem had once been devastated by abusers lovingly counsel themselves. Almost always their “advice to self” is profound and offers a guiding personal mythology to live by. Then, of course, comes the requisite maintenance.
Anthropologist Stanley Krippner co-authored a book entitled Personal Mythology. It is about the use of rituals in ceremonies, tapping imagination, and listening to dreams that can help us craft our inner story, one that is far more honest and reflective of our soul than anything society or abusers imposed on us. He references the “Inner Wise Man” or “Inner Wise Woman” that awaits summoning, usually after more traditional life guideposts have disappointed us.
Beyond the confines of cultural myths, a personal myth can be thought of as an updated guiding narrative of how we will position ourselves in the world hereafter, post-abuse that is. It is a new story with an eye for an ending that offers more rewards. A personal myth can be thought of as a roadmap of our own making, unlike an occasionally errant GPS that may take us in circles often ending up right where we started. This guiding narrative doesn’t take us down the well-traveled dead-end streets of the past. It offers a new path.
While authentic shamans are attuned to ancestral wisdom and cultural traditions, they are also adept at tapping intuitive understandings of what the patient sitting before them needs right then and there. They recognize that not always does one-size-fits-all guidance hold our answers. A true shaman isn’t compelled to have their identity wrapped up in mystical mannerisms and garish attire which can be distracting. They want to know you – and help you to know you, without eclipsing your luminosity. Their sacred responsibility is to assist in the development of your Inner Shaman. To help you find the passageway between waking consciousness and an enlarged consciousness (during an altered state) and eventually arrive at the depth where insights and solutions have been slumbering.
This can be done by focusing your intentions and employing your imagination to evoke a primordial sense of personal wisdom that can show up in different forms. It may appear as an elder relative, ancient aboriginal faces, or by encountering the image of Jesus, Mother Mary, the Buddha, an unknown Master, or a wise animal. Be receptive to the image your psyche, your
Inner Shaman, offers you. This occurs while masked, when the figures emerge into your visual field.
This may become a transcendent and transformative event in your life. Be open to this moment as more than a fanciful imaginative journey, it may be a manifestation of your Inner Shamans prescription for health. This is likely a mysterious place of your being that must be noticed, valued, and esteemed.
At this point you have broken society’s stranglehold, and not in the “Graveyard of Discarded Illusions,” you can enter the hidden dimensions of your being. This is not magic, but it is magical how our inner knowing has its own GPS guidance system. Ask yourself, that is your Inner Shaman, “What does this all mean?” and await the answer that percolates up.
From the book Personal Mythology I note recommendations for an “attitude of gratitude” for who we are. An example: “Thank your Inner Shaman for having met you. Use words, gestures, or silent intuitive communication. Recognize your Inner Shaman’s bottomless affection for you and belief in your worthiness. Your Inner Shaman acknowledges your life’s journey and the courage it required. Your survival has qualified you for the wisdom to come.”
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“The future is not out there in front of you, but inside us.”
- Joanna Macy
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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.”
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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.
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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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