Ok, so I’m starting to write this at almost 5am in the morning and I’m not feeling my usual self. I’m so upset, I’m so angry at myself and I can’t even begin to get to sleep, and I’m experiencing a rare moment of ‘what the fuck am I supposed to do right now!?’ There’s a background to all this which I should explain first.

I’ll start with my first San Pedro experience which took place about 3 weeks ago. San Pedro is a cactus that grows in Peru and it’s another plant teacher that people and shamans use for healing and spiritual growth. From what I understand, it’s very effective for healing, or bringing awareness to, emotional issues which are usually related to the heart. And it certainly did it’s job on me!!

Now I wanted to write about this experience several weeks ago, just after it happened, but I decided it was too personal and I just didn’t feel comfortable writing about it in a public blog. I still feel pretty much the same way, but after tonight, I just feel ‘fuck it’. Maybe getting some of my feelings out into the open will start a healing process that I really need to begin, otherwise I’m just going to keep repeating the same old patterns that are becoming increasingly more unbearable. We can’t have that can we?

To explain the problem I need to talk about my life a bit more….

It’s fair to say I’ve had a very comfortable and happy life. There’s very little I can complain about, I’ve never really wanted for much and most things have generally gone the way I’ve wanted them to. I think I have a life and a (predominantly) positive mindset that many people would envy. So, I’ve always been pretty happy with my life except for perhaps one thing - I’ve never found that special someone. I’m currently 33 years old and I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I’ve spent pretty much all my adult life being single. Although I have to add that’s been mostly my fault and mostly my choice. Things could easily have been very different.

If I have one main regret about my life it’s that when I was younger I always took the idea of relationships far too seriously. Ever since I was about 19 and I discovered spirituality (way younger than most people) I’ve been searching for my soulmate - whatever that actually means (I’ve decided I don’t know anymore). But whereas most young people don’t think about these kind of things too much and usually just date, go out, or have sex with whoever they please, I usually judged every girl I met as a potential ’soulmate’ or not. And if I didn’t think she was then I usually wasn’t interested in anything other than friendship. As a result of that particular mindset I turned down the possibility of many relationships that might have been casual or otherwise.

Now, I have had a few short, casual relationships and a few one-night stands over the years, but they’ve been fairly few and far between and although I don’t regret any of them, I don’t feel particularly great about them either. I know a few of those could have turned into relationships had I wanted them to, but they just never seemed right at the time.

However, over the years, there have also been several girls that in some way or another have really captured my heart and this is where things have always gone wrong for me (or I’ve completely screwed things up) and I’ve usually ended up getting really hurt. On the few occasions I’ve let my feelings known to someone (and usually, for some reason, believed they felt the same way about me) I’ve always ended up being rejected. And each and every one of those times has really hurt like hell!! However, usually within a week or so I’d start to feel ok and start to believe I was completely over it and I’d just get on with life as I always do. I’ve never realised how deeply I was affected by those rejections until I did San Pedro a few weeks ago.

This plant teacher showed me that I was still carrying all these emotional wounds from all these years of rejections that I had never properly healed from. And it showed me that if I don’t heal these wounds then they’re going to keep causing big problems in my life and prevent me from getting what I want. Well tonight I experienced another example of how they are still capable of causing big problems in my life.

Some of my friends know that I have a friend from the UK visiting me right now. If you don’t know who she is then it’s not important. But she is someone I’ve known for about 7 years and I once believed she liked me, and just over 3 years ago I decided to ask her out but she turned me down. Now, of all the rejections I’ve experienced this probably affected me the least because I never actually believed she was my soul mate or anything like that. I just really liked her and for the first time I was just intrigued to see what would happen. Unfortunately I never got to find out.

We did stay good friends though, even though I rarely saw her, particularly after I left Leeds almost 3 years ago. About a month ago I invited her to visit me in Peru, and a few days later she (very unexpectedly) bought a ticket to visit me for about 4 weeks.

Anyway, she arrived here just over a week ago, and although we’ve been having a good time together, a lot of my feelings for her came back which has been a little problematic, especially tonight…

[stuff edited out]

To cut a long story short, I was kind of hoping we might have a bit of fun and romance for a few weeks. However it became pretty clear to me quite early on that that wasn’t going to happen. Fair enough I thought, I had no expectations, and I certainly wasn’t upset about that, and ultimately I was just very happy and grateful to have some good company for several weeks.

But tonight something happened that I wasn’t prepared for, and I repeated some old patterns and lost the plot a bit (alcohol played a major role as usual). It was clear my friend was getting rather too friendly with some other guy we’d met earlier in the evening, and I suddenly felt these huge and horrible waves of jealousy and feelings of abandonment. It was basically another form of rejection. I made quite a fool of myself, and I won’t go into the details about that, but I know I’ve gone and made things very awkward between us and I’m feeling so angry and upset at myself, and stupid and depressed - and I never get depressed.

My behaviour has shown me that there are some important lessons I haven’t learnt yet, but I now realise from taking San Pedro a few weeks ago, that I keep repeating this pattern because I’m still carrying these old wounds with me that I’ve never really healed and whenever I feel rejected it’s like someone rubbing salt on open wounds. I’m not sure what to do right now. I’m feeling like I may have ruined my friends holiday and so that’s making me feel worse. I don’t usually feel like I want to climb into a deep hole, but that’s how I feel right now. Hopefully things will be ok in a day or two.

I’m mostly just upset because I feel like I’ve let myself down again. This isn’t the first time I’ve behaved like this, and each time I’ve felt bad and convinced myself I’d learnt my lesson and would never behave like that again. Yet here I am once again, repeating the same old patterns and feeling totally upset and shitty about it (again). I guess the main (and very important) difference is that for the first time I feel like I know exactly why I’m repeating these patterns. I guess that’s the first real step to healing. You can’t solve a problem unless you know exactly what’s causing it.

Hopefully I’ll get back to my usual positive self a few days from now

“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” - Frank Lloyd Wright

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in. “ -George Washington Carver

One of the many great tragedies of our so-called ‘civilised’ Western society is how most of us have lost our connection with nature. It didn’t always used to be that way, and for most of the remaining indigenous peoples on the planet, working in harmony with nature is still a way of life. But sadly for most of us Westerners nature has become almost a foreign concept, which is weird when you consider how absolutely vital it is.

For example, You should be aware that our very survival is entirely dependant on nature. If it wasn’t for all the plants and forests there would be little or no oxygen on this planet, and instead Earth would have an atmosphere of poisonous CO2 gas.

You should also aware that a healthy diet involves eating lots of fresh vegetables and fruit. Plants and fruit are where all our most important nutrition comes from.

Perhaps you can recognise and name several common plants and trees, and maybe once in awhile you feel like getting out of town for a short hike into the countryside or wilderness. Then of course it’s back home to plonk yourself back in front of the TV, where thanks to the likes of David Attenborough you’ve probably come to obtain almost all your current knowledge of plants and nature.

Perhaps you’re vaguely aware that many illnesses can be cured using plant medicines, although you most likely still visit your GP, and not your local herbalist if you have a problem. It’s interesting to note that most pharmaceutical drugs are ultimately derived from chemical compounds found in plants.

The Western mindset generally sees nature as something to control, dominate and do what the heck we like with regardless of the consequences. If that means killing millions of species then so be it. It’s only nature after all, we’re far more important aren’t we?

Indigenous peoples all around the world have a totally different view of nature. They understand that they are not separate from nature, they know that trying to control and dominate nature is pure insanity, and for hundreds of thousands of years they have peacefully co-existed with nature.

They also have another different perspective of the world which is that everything contains spirit and consciousness. Even the plants and the trees.

The idea of plants having consciousness is alien to most westerners. Isn’t consciousness generated by the brain? and plants don’t have brains, right? Wrong, consciousness is ultimately the ground of all being, but that’s a subject for a future blog post.

Indigenous shamans, often through many years of training, can obtain the knowledge and ability to tune into this consciousness, to learn and be guided by it. This is not something they believe, it’s something they do.

Different plants and trees can impart different types of knowledge, some more profoundly than others.

Some plants, when ingested, have the affect of profoundly altering your state of consciousness for several hours, or more, putting you in meditative state where you often receive profound visions and lessons that are almost always very relevant to your personal life.

These plants are always considered to be sacred plants and are often referred to as plant teachers. Some of these plant teachers include Peyote, a small cactus that grows in Mexico and parts of south western USA, various mushroom species that grow in many locations around the world. San Pedro, a cactus that grows in several South American countries including Peru, and of course Ayahuasca which is a brew made from a combination of boiling two plants that grow in the Amazon basin.

These plant medicines have been used by indigenous peoples for many thousands of years (and probably much longer than that) as a way to obtain spiritual knowledge and healing, as well as many other insights relating to their personal lives and their communities.

Ayahuasca in particularly is a master healer and there are countless stories of ‘miracle’ healings from people who have ingested this amazing brew. I will write much more about Ayahuasca in a future post because it really has had a profound affect on my life.

Now to many westerners who don’t have much knowledge about these plants and how they work, ingesting these plants is nothing more than ‘taking drugs’. However this is a very small-minded opinion which displays a complete lack of knowledge on what they’re talking about.

Certainly on a very basic level you can argue it’s a drug experience. These plants do contain certain chemicals which have psychoactive properties; In Ayahuasca these chemicals are DMT and harmaline, in most mushrooms it’s psilocybin, and in Peyote & San Pedro it’s mescaline.

However, as almost everyone who has ever experienced these plant teachers has come to realise for themselves, there is something far more amazing and profound happening than just a ‘drug experience’.

Almost all recreational drugs are taken for fun, or to get high and take your mind off any problems you might be experiencing. Taking many of these plant medicines is rarely fun (with perhaps the exception of fairly mild doses of ‘magic’ mushrooms). And you certainly don’t take these plant medicines to avoid your problems, you take them to face your problems head-on. The experiences, particularly with Ayahuasca, can often be very intense and not for the faint of heart. You have to be willing and able to face and accept all aspects of yourself, particularly the bad and the ugly. People can get away for years believing they’re good people, when really they’re quite rotten. If you have a rotten side then one of the first things Ayahuasca will do is to bring it to your attention and show you just how your rottenness is hurting other people. That can be quite a nasty shock for many people.

Another thing is that almost all western recreational drugs are ultimately quite damaging to the body, particularly if used for a regular and prolonged period of time. Virtually all shamanic plant medicines have no harmful side effects, however, it’s quite common to feel a bit sick and even throw up (usually referred to as purging) during a sacred plant medicine ceremony; however, that’s just a sign that the medicine is healing you and removing many toxins and negative energies from your body. Usually by the end of the ceremony, and certainly the next day, you feel quite incredible, almost like you’ve just done a 6 month detox in one evening. I’ve heard it said that western drugs make you feel good first and bad later; shamanic medicine makes you feel bad first and good later. There’s a great deal of truth in that.

I’ve been working with plant teachers, on and off, for about 6 years now, and I never cease to be amazed by what they show me,  the lessons they give me, and the incredible healing and sense of wellbeing they bring to my life. Many times on Ayahuasca I’ve experienced the intense and profound love that I now know is ultimately behind the force that brings all things into being. When you experience that for the first time it changes your perspective on virtually everything. You can’t be quite the same person ever again.

I strongly believe that if everyone worked with these plant teachers, even if just a couple of times in their life, then the world would be an infinitely more loving and peaceful place, and much greater numbers of people would seek to live in harmony with nature and continue to learn from nature as do the indigenous tribes that still exist today.

It’s time for all Westerners (not just a minority out on the fringes of society) to wake up and realise that nature is not separate from us. There are no real boundaries between us and nature, and if we don’t stop destroying nature then our actions will surely end up destroying us. The survival of our Earth depends on the continued functioning of a great many complex eco-systems and if just one of them should breakdown it can affect all the others. That’s something that’s starting to happen and the consequences could be horrific.

The only way we can change our understanding of nature, and the way we interact with nature, is to learn from nature and I believe the best way to do that is to go straight to the source, and I believe that plant teachers are a good place to start.

“You will find something more in woods than in books.  Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters.” - St. Bernard