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 Mayan Calendar
Geral T. Blanchard • Dec 09, 2021
There is a cosmic plan in place that guides our personal and societal evolution.
It is revealed in your Mayan prophecy which is based on your birth-day energy matched with your energy on the day of your conception.
To begin to understand the Mayan cosmology, one must have a rudimentary understanding of the human brain, the Mayan concept of a Galactic Underworld, the polarities of the brain – left and right, upper and lower regions that cause dualistic thinking -- plus the Hopi One World, and the climb of the Divine Cosmic Pyramid.
I’ll begin with a reminder that the lower brain (deep limbic system, seat of emotions) can become so activated that it protectively acts like a circuit breaker at times, shutting down the upper brain, namely the prefrontal cortex (the discerning, clear thinking part of the brain). And a second reminder, the left brain is our dualistic thinker, the part of us which, in kneejerk fashion, places things in “factual” categories and judgments that are black and white, right and wrong. The left-brain is like the guard at the fortress wall keeping dangerous enemies outside. The right brain, however, is more intuitive, global, and welcoming. It helps us to see beyond the ever-threatened ego, creating a cosmological picture that is more trusting, less defensive, and less walled off.
Now I’d like to build on the previous theories with the help of Swedish biologist, Carl Johann Calleman, who has written The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness. I have selected a number of quotes from that book which pull all of the above concepts together, including the way trauma can influence our lives:
“The Galactic Underworld that we are now entering is fundamentally about healing, about creating balance both on a global and an individual scale. It is about unifying the East and West, intuition and logic, spirit and matter. It is also about unifying body and soul and healing the traumas that prevent us from being fully in the present. To allow this to happen, we must choose paths consistent with the wavelike evolution of this Underworld. We are presented with a choice as to whether we want to integrate or oppose new and unfamiliar energies.”
“The main path provided by the Galactic Underworld is thus toward wholeness and love, and this is charted at the level of consciousness. With the onset of the Fourth World, the beginning of a balance between the left- and right-brain hemispheres gave rise to the beginning of balance between men and women, and between adults and children.”
“The mind can’t rest in the present; instead it oscillates between the past [traumas] and the future [threats], always looking for ways to change things. It is not intent on being but on becoming and so leaves no room for peace or satisfaction.”
“The traumatic events in our early childhood really did cause pain at the time, but the only reason that a trauma of early childhood still influences us is that is being used by the left-brain dominated mind. The modern mind, we may recall, lets our past dominate [and ruin] our present.”
“Healing is essentially about going back to a point in our lives prior to the time that the dualistic mind came to dominate. As this mind is preoccupied with making judgments and evaluations, it creates a universe of ‘right’ and ‘wrong;’ it must be ‘right’ about the past and its traumatic events, and so one is unable to forgive either others or oneself.”
“In two significant ways, the qualities of the right-brain hemisphere support forgiveness. First, they allow you to trust your own intuition, which is of the rightbrain hemisphere. Trusting your intuition is really about trusting yourself, your whole being, sometimes in the face of almost constant, distorted, left-brain chattering. Hence healing is possible if we can transcend the linear time of the left brain [one role of MDMA or psilocybin].”
“There is also a judgmental side to this dualistic mind that inhibits the flow of love. If you and everyone else are constantly judged by this mind, how can you allow yourself and others to be fully who you and they are? How can you fully accept and love someone else, let alone yourself, with a dichotomous mind that was designed to be separate and causes further separations? Can a person who is only half love, love herself fully?”
“Only the person who has freed himself of the dominance of the left-brain hemisphere can allow the whole person, and the whole world, to be. If the dualistic mind is ruling at the present time it will not bring love into your life.”
“Only the person who has freed himself of the dominance of the left-brain hemisphere can allow the whole person, and the whole world, to be. If the dualistic mind is ruling at the present time it will not bring love into your life.”
~Carl Johann Calleman,
The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness
“The truth emerging is that the energies described by the Mayan calendars define the limits of human creativity at any given time. Regardless of the energies that temporarily rule the cosmic time plan, they are first and foremost subordinated to its end result of enlightenment, and no matter what we think or visualize we cannot do anything to change this fact. The cosmic plan is beyond the range of human manipulation. The answer is that understanding the over-arching cosmic plan is part of our own evolution into cocreators with the Divine. To be cocreators, we need to know what the canvas [individual prophecy] we are to work on looks like and what its format is. If we choose to surf on the cosmic plan, we had better know what it is. At the present time the traditional Mayan calendars play a key role in providing knowledge about the plan, and its dissemination is crucial for how things end up for humanity.”
“The good thing about the present situation is that we are living in an Underworld (since the beginning of the Fourth World, calculated to be 1947) that is designed step by step to generate a more unitary outlook on life, and so we need to let the two opposing dualities merge rather than engage in their respective dominance games.”
“From the description of the cosmic plan by the Mayan calendars, we also have an answer to why the emergence of the hippie movement was one of the later signs predicted in the Hopi Prophecy. The shamans or prophets of this people were able to be in resonance with the energies of the cosmic time plan and to ‘see’ the directions in which it would lead. It led them to see a shift towards aspects of the cosmos mediated through the right-brain hemisphere. They were able to see the coming of ‘flower children.’ The only reason that such prophecies, precognitions, premonitions, and miraculously filled ideas exist is because there is a cosmic plan.”
“The road to peace involves creating peace within ourselves, between our brain hemispheres, and then projecting peace externally so that we may all evolve.”
*********
Additional Reading:
Quantum Science of Psychedelics: The Pineal Gland, Multidimensional Reality, and Mayan Cosmology and
The Purposeful Universe: How Quantum Theory and Mayan Cosmology Explain the Origin and Evolution of Life,
both by Carl Johan Calleman
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
More Articles
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.