Quite a number of years ago, I attended an Ayahuasca ceremony at the invitation of a friend of mine. Or rather, strictly speaking, it was one Ayahuasca ceremony that I had been told to expect. Eventually, it turned out as two Ayahuasca ceremonies that took place two nights in a row with a San Pedro ceremony in between, adding up to an intense and certainly mind-bending weekend schedule that didn’t allow for much sleep to happen. These ceremonies were led by an experienced South African Shaman who, as I had been told, had received extensive training in the use of psychoactive herbs in the Amazon region.
Rest assured, I’m not going to suggest that you need to travel to some faraway and secluded place in order to make experiences that the local authorities in your country might want to punish you for. Also, I acknowledge that this topic can be considered to be somewhat delicate. I should probably mention that using plant medicine and the like as auxiliary agents for introspection and personal development is something I’ve never actually seen work out in a truly convincing way. And, when it comes to working with people in coaching sessions one-on-one, I’ve never been able to bring myself to enjoy the additional effort required to create the utmost value for a person for whom taking mind-altering substances is a regular thing to do, either for recreational reasons, or in order to fight the boredom that everyday life imposes on them.
More often than not, individuals who fall into this category are less present in their body and have more difficulties to get to a point of clarity about what they want. From my experience, having “a way out” tampers with people’s self-awareness and often has a crippling effect on their ability to make strategic decisions. But mostly, they tend to have a hard time realizing when they slow themselves down and that they’re usually prone to chicken out as soon as things get even the tiniest bit too uncomfortable in ways that they aren’t used to.
Some people like to point out that, with proper guidance and under the right circumstances, they’ve gained a lot of worth from devoting themselves to certain paths that promote and indeed rely on the use of traditional plant-based aids for the purpose of enforcing an opening to different levels of awareness. Still, I’ve rarely encountered anyone who shared compelling arguments that would have me convinced that their experiences had indeed allowed for the extent of development that they assigned to it.
While I have no reason to doubt that accepting support from the magicians of the plant kingdom can have some positive effect on those who make wise choices while going down that road, I’ve never actually seen anyone build on that effect in ways that seemed impressive to me. Frankly speaking, I can’t think of anyone who displayed a huge amount of personal advancement as a result of these kinds of experiences. So, if it indeed helped them move forward a bit, it certainly didn’t get them far. On the other hand, I’ve seen a sizable number of people ending up either distracting or sedating themselves, and essentially letting off steam, while diminishing their willingness to actually deal with certain issues and restraints in their lives.
I’m by no means insinuating that you cannot ever get any kind of personal-growth-related value out of using certain remedies. I just don’t consider it likely to happen to the extent that many people yearn for. I’ve seen a notable number of individuals being held back by making questionable decisions, and I’m convinced that I’ve found more effective alternatives for my own purposes. Besides, there has indeed been a time, many years ago, when I showed a somewhat extended interest in making my own experiences in this field, allowing for me to draw my own conclusions, none of which led to outcomes that I’ve ever had any reason to regret. Needless to say, I’ve made very conscious choices about these situations and I’ve never taken anything just for recreational purposes, to decompress, or party.
Then again, the most meaningful “psychedeliciously” rewarding experiences I’ve had over the years weren’t induced by anything I’ve taken. And, I never hoped, let alone expected, for the actual challenges in my life to get resolved or alleviated without me assuming a distinctly active role. Also, I’ve come to conclude, many times over, that the more dependent people are on pretty much anything that allows for them to keep putting up with the status quo, the less effective they tend to be when it comes to either making real differences in their own life, or helping others to create the kind of outcomes they’re looking for.
Now that I’ve thoroughly clarified the stance I take in this matter, let me get back to that weekend a few years ago, which I like to keep in mind mostly because of a seemingly minor incident that took place on Saturday, somewhere in between the kitchen and the living room area. More accidentally than intentionally, I overheard a conversation that the shaman had with one of the other attendees, a Canadian woman who, just like the shaman herself, had a German spouse. At first, I wasn’t even listening. However, it caught my attention when the shaman made a somewhat ironic comment about how being married to a German man had taught her that “there’s always a right way and a wrong way of doing things, and, there’s a process for everything”.
I found this really funny, to say the least. I perceived her phrase as straight-to-the-point and agreeable, but I was also quite conscious of the fact that a lot of fellow German men I know wouldn’t necessarily identify with her assessment. Even more, I knew that some would possibly take an issue with such a generalization.
What made the whole scenario even more entertaining to me was the fact that I wasn’t the only bystander in the room who had taken notice of the little chat that the two of them had. Another German guy had listened in as well, and he immediately felt a need to step away in order to hide his upcoming anger. He obviously felt pigeonholed as well as diminished. I, on the other hand, enjoyed contemplating the train of thought that was going on in my head.
A lot of people will tell you that, in most cases, there’s more than one approach that allows for creating an outcome that you’re interested in. Which, of course, is essentially true. However, oftentimes, we’re tempted turn a blind eye to the fact that doing things in ways that don’t actually give us the experience or result we’re looking for is remarkably common. So, yes, there isn’t just one right way. There are also many wrong ways that cannot give us whatever we want or need. And, since we aren’t always able to immediately recognize which way will turn out as “the most right” for us, we need to put some focus on experimenting and changing strategies until we get what we want.
The second part of her statement feels even more intriguing to me, as it reflects a tremendously positive attitude. I like practical approaches to life. I don’t believe that we should spend our lifetime searching for some kind of “magic pill” that is supposed to give us the outcomes and experiences we want. Instead, I see a lot of reason in dedicating one’s life to developing “magic processes” suitable to create results that are much more interesting than what most people feel able to accomplish. If we dare to believe that there’s a process for everything, this essentially means that we allow ourselves to trust that there’s always a replicable course of action that will give us what we’re looking for. Which, quite often, is a remarkably expedient expectation to have.
As I understand it, what the shaman said about German men wasn’t negative until it became negative in the aforementioned guy’s head. Also, it wasn’t positive until I had put it into my own mental frame of reference. In my eyes, there is no reason to assume that she had any intention to belittle anyone, let alone her husband. And, of course, her intentions in this regard aren’t all too relevant anyway. What’s actually important is that, in many ways, perception is a result of choices, meaning that we’re able to prioritize certain interpretations of reality over others. We don’t perceive the world objectively. We constantly make connections with whatever we’ve stored in our inner archive of referential experiences in ways that affect us, either favorably, or adversely.
The shaman’s comment instantly reminded me of something that I’ve heard a hospitality expert say many years ago. According to him, large and successful hotels all over the world are more commonly led by general managers who’ve been born and raised in Germany than most people would expect. So, since excelling at managing hotels surely requires a lot of procedural thinking, I see these two statements as very much aligned.
The be honest, there aren’t many situations in which I’d refer to myself as typically German. I don’t drink beer, I don’t care about watching soccer, and I would happily choose Indian food over German traditional cuisine every day for the rest of my life. Also, I’m not easily impressed by authoritative figures, e.g., people owning academic titles, which includes myself. In fact, there’s probably a whole list of cliches that are often accredited to Germans that I don’t see reflected in my everyday reality to any significant degree. Also, I believe that a lot of people, no matter their nationality, either are, or at least could be, great at creating and optimizing processes. Not to mention that I know a few German guys who aren’t process-focused by any means. So, as an avowed agnostic when it comes to the uncritical ascription of personal qualities to any ethnic collective, it’s actually entertaining for me to encounter a situation that makes me focus on a pattern that I haven’t paid much attention to so far.
I’m not denying that every ethnic group that I’ve come in contact with over the years indeed appears to hold a unique set of positive and sometimes even admirable qualities that are, in one way or another, part of the epigenetic or cultural heritage that the members of this group have been imprinted with. Also, some of the ways in which, at some point in my life, I either acted or felt like an idiot might well be similar to how other guys who I’ve grown up with felt or acted like idiots in situations akin to the ones I experienced. As much as I generally try to avoid this, it’s just one of those things that happen. However, this doesn’t allow for the conclusion that specific qualities are exclusive to any one group, and it certainly doesn’t mean that anyone should feel entitled to any specific character trait, attribute, or capacity by ethnic affiliation or nationality alone.
In my experience, all of us have an incredible say in what qualities we take ownership of in any area of our life. In this sense, it’s largely up to us to decide in which ways we set ourselves up for being functional, dysfunctional, or anything in between. If we’re serious about taking control of those decisions that ultimately make us who we are, we need to understand the underlying mechanisms that these decisions are based on. So, it’s no coincidence that this blog talks a lot about the internal and external processes that I personally make use of in order to create outcomes and experiences that I care deeply about. And, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I have personal stories to tell that illustrate the insights and conclusions I’ve been able to draw thanks to the decisions I’ve made.
Every day, I choose to perceive whatever happens in my life as primarily resulting from strategies and practices that I implement in order to make my life happen. By and large, I don’t feel particularly concerned by how things have been seen and done throughout my ancestry line, and I enjoy learning from anyone, no matter their ethnic background. I like to use shortcuts and interlinked thinking in order to get my processes right, and I deal with issues and challenges that I encounter as creatively as I can. Freedom comes from taking approaches that give us the outcomes we want. Processes, as I define and understand the term, are not limiting, but ways to create space in my head and means to open doors leading to what’s beyond my zone of familiarity and habitual comfort.
The way I’ve come to see it, life offers us many paths to choose from. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that all of these different roads will eventually lead us where we want to be, let alone allow for us to live up to our full potential. Also, we shouldn’t be so arrogant to believe that there’s any path at all that doesn’t come with a price. When we open a door, several others get closed. If you’re hoping for some magic elixir to unlock certain gateways of perception for you, make sure this doesn’t prevent you from getting access to other gates that lead to even more interesting realms of experience, while requiring from you to do the work yourself. To make a long story short, if it feels to you like you need to escape from your everyday reality on a regular basis, this doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong with you or reality at large. However, it might well mean that something you do, meaning a path you’ve chosen, isn’t compatible with another path that your unconscious mind wants you to pay attention to.
The level of freedom that I establish by following the path I’ve chosen, as well as the richness of experience that comes with it, feels far more intriguing to me than anything that any “magic pill” could ever offer. So, from my point of view, finding the “right way” that will most probably give me the result I’m looking for (while putting a lot of focus on figuring out the exact processes that serve my purpose as ideally as it gets) is the natural thing to do. In fact, as much as I like to see myself as a dedicated advocate of the notion of free will, I’m by no means offended by the idea that my personal attitude in this regard appears to be quite congruent with a particular nationality as well as gender related cliché.
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