Animals can be powerful guardians and healers. They may show this in mystical forms and visions, or their presence may be as guileless as a puppy anchoring a patient’s heart while sitting at the end of the bed during an MDMA treatment. After an intensive treatment, readjusting to the world might be aided again and again by the steady, reliable, and affectionate presence of an animal friend. Patients have shared photos and stories of their feline companions with me. I can’t help but wonder if critters are every bit as beneficial as psychotherapists. Being friendly with wolves I was drawn to Wisdom of Wolves by Jim and Jamie Dutcher of Idaho who lived intimately with four-generations of gray wolves. They concluded that some of the best life instructions for humans arose from their time with these much maligned animals.

There is no foundation for a “Man and Nature” conceptualization; we are all integral parts of Nature. A kinship or family of interworking relatives. Humans don’t have to go outside to find Nature, it resides in us and all things on planet earth. We are a contributing part to Nature’s intelligence and consciousness, as is a jaguar, a crystal stone, and bacteria. So it should be of little surprise that a plant like ayahuasca, or a chemical concoction like MDMA, both products of this earth, might add to our brainpower. From our pedestal as the “wise ones,” fueled by our singular language, we may have tried to divorce our unit from Nature. The idea of being Number One, above all the rest, allows for no permeability of life forms – how we bleed into our other parts. Even when thinking of our human form we still want to draw lines of separation like mind and body.

Traumatic experiences may represent a tiny fraction of a person’s life story. Many other things likely happened as well. It is useful to put everything that has occurred to us in proper perspective so as not to skew and darken our complete life experience. If we over-identify with a specific time period and persistently share that narrative with friends, family, and therapists, two rather predictable issues may develop: 1) a sense of helplessness and 2) depression. Several years ago I was forced to fell a giant white oak tree in my backyard. The majestic behemoth suffered from oak leaf wilt and could no longer sprout leaves. When I counted the rings that tallied her long life, I determined she was at least 135 years old. There were thick bands along with much narrower bands that revealed periods of normal and abundant moisture, life enhancing periods that were contrasted by strained times of drought.

I was walking alone along a tributary of the Amazon River when a beautiful and magical incident occurred. Standing quietly on the shore I gazed out with a calmness that enveloping forested areas tend to bring out in me. While I had heard stories of pink dolphins residing inland, far from the Pacific Ocean, specifically in the Amazon Basin, I never anticipated I would ever see one. Suddenly the snout and head of a dolphin emerged from the water immediately in front of me. It stared at me curiously (I think) making a high pitched sound. Visually color challenged as I am, I noticed something very different about this male relative, Dolphin was pink. I squatted down to get closer to water level hoping to seem less imposing. And I decided to talk to him (gender determined later). As soon as I did so, Dolphin slid back underwater. Well, “That was cool!” I thought.

Dr. Otto Sharmer, a professor at MIT, described a phenomenon he called “collective intelligence.” When our own heart is coherent (in sync with the upper brain and lungs) and we join with a group of similarly coherent people, social coherence is the result. Going from a solitary being -- an ego-system -- to a multi-being makes for a smooth running eco-system, according to HeartMath Institute researchers, raising the vibratory rate of individuals and the group’s energetic field. This group field connects all the member heart’s electromagnetic energy. The human heart generates the strongest magnetic field in the body, approximately 100 times greater than our cranial brain. And, with the help of a magnetometer, this radiating field can be detected up to ten feet away.

What treatment is most effective in facing and overcoming trauma? Most of them! More precisely, if a person, and better yet a community of people, believe in a purported trauma remedy, it will likely work. Just like we used to believe wholeheartedly in SSRIs and SSNIs for depression and trauma, and later came to rely on EMDR and tapping, they all can and may still facilitate some change. But often reasons for their efficacy remain unclear or unproven. This despite the desire of psychologists to ensconce encouraging trends in unproven neurological theories rather than longstanding and well understood psychological phenomenon.

Some “graduates” of this relational medicine have had meaningful experiences with animals including Dog and Wolf, our second cousins after the other primates. Our bond with canus lupus goes back, way back. While we have been on the planet for at least 3 – 5 million years, Wolf has been around for about 1 million, 750,000 years on this continent. We became close friends long ago and started living aside each “other.” Then our lifestyle became agricultural and, as a result, humans started isolating from the natural world that once was immediate. In a fascinating book by Teo Alfero, The Wolf Connection, he contends that the connecting force known as Wolf is part of a collective global awareness and Wolf consciousness remains omnipresent. It is an omniconsciousness. And as one of our closest animal allies, Wolf, remains tightly entwined with us at some level. So, if you have felt coessence with Wolf during or after MDMA treatment, read on.

Pure, research grade MDMA is recognized as one of the safest and gentlest of the empathogens; it fosters and deepens empathy for all that is sentient. To understand the deepest potential residing in this version of MDMA we must first leave the research labs and reconsider indigenous ways of being. After all, First Peoples introduced colonizers to a variety of plants with unique molecular structures that enhance our connections, not just between humans but with plants, animals, elements, and even one’s sense of place. Place may be the place to start. For Amazonian tribes or Native Americans of the Northwest Coast, much has been said about location. If an Achuar of Ecuador is suffering from a serious illness, this tribesman will likely fear being removed from the jungle to an urban hospital lest the act of transplanting him might result in death. The jungle is experienced as one’s mother and lungs – it’s always been that way.

The form of “God” is energy. And the entire universe is alive, literally singing with vibrational forms of faintly audible energy. Humans are a part of this immense choral group and can more fully unite with it by merging attitudinally and tonally. Of the primary elements in the universe, each is associated with our many (perhaps 30+) senses: 1) fire is associated with touch and sight, 2) water is correlated with taste, 3) earth is linked with smell, and 4) wind is coupled with touch and hearing. Additionally, according to the Upanishad texts of the Vedic era, there is 5) vibration, the most subtle of all elements which is referred to as akash and linked with hearing too. Within some ancient cosmologies on up to quantum physics, the thoughts of our minds are said to make sounds. And mind, with these attendant sounds, creates matter. Further, with clean and clear intentions, or desires, we combine with the vibratory chorus of the universe and which makes our vast home even bigger, better, and more complex.