This is an article I wrote for Medium in June of 2024, where I write about a wide range of topics. However, this was particularly important to talk about, the first time, intentionally going into a plant medicine ceremony.
Those who know me call me a new-age hippie. I am happy to agree with them. I have a daily practice of meditation, mindfulness, and yoga to help my mind clear. I consolt my oracle and tarot decks frequently when I’m called to.
I have an array of crystals, pendulums, and jewelry that helps me in my journey. Hell, I am even working on putting together a collective here in New Mexico, “The Pneuma Collective” (editor note: how funny how this was the first choice of article to share on the Collective’s website, since I have been working on this for a while now), for other aligned people who are looking for a place to connect, gather, and share their gifts with each other and the world.
I’m also in the planning stages of making a retreat center here in the desert for those to come from around the world to heal, grow, and transform in all sorts of ways.
That is my opening to talk about something that is important to me. While I talked about my time in Sedona during a deep spiritual plant medicine journey, I don’t talk about my first time.
My first time journeying with plant medicine, guided by an amazing shaman, and starting down this spirutal path of leading with love and understanding. It is also the backing guide of how I approach my neurodivergent life and how it’s been helpful in that path as well.
Geodesic Domes and Apprehensions
The Florrest doesn’t sound like a place where one would goto to experience any form of enlightenment or awakening. It sounds like someone tried to say the floor and the forest at the same time and had a brain misfire.
However, this was the site of the first plant medicine retreat. It wasn’t completed back in the summer of 2022, however, the main event dome, the house, and the pool were all good to go on about 150 acres of trails.
It was intimidating at first, I am always strange around strangers. I want to connect, but I realize how much I intimidate people with my presence. I am a man, I am very tall, and I’m built like a football player.
I long for connection and community, however, always feel outcast because of my physical appearance.
This first day, pulling up to the house, I didn’t feel that. I had a nervous energy of getting ready to experience something brand new, but not a fear of being rejected.
This is where it hit me, I was the only straight male at this retreat. My healer and shaman Chrys, was the other male energy here. He told me that I would be filling a role that is sacred in a container like this, to be the masculine protector energy that people will come to for safety and to have hold space for them.
I had no idea what that meant.
I had no idea what any of that meant at all. I knew what holding space meant and what that type of energy was, but there were women here who were apprehensive around a man, still working through trauma caused by men, and just didn’t like being around masculine energy at all.
I have always been one that has been in touch with the feminine and understood the ebs and flows of the energy that is within me. It can be a lot.
However, to my benefit, I was there with my wife and Chrys also was a spiritual voucher for me.
The nerves around the house calmed quickly as we all began to talk and connect.
I thought, “If this is what retreats are, then I am here for it always!”
Before this, I had attended a few Cacao ceremonies that Chrys had held. I was always amazed by the power of heart opening medicine and moving forward with love. Connecting with the people in ceremony and releasing some negative beliefs. It was always incredible.
However, I had to prepare myself for this night. It went back a few weeks to prepare actually. I had stopped taking medication, stopped caffeine, stopped eating all processed and animal products.
I did all this to help my body take the medicine and move through it with grace.
I didn’t understand why I had to, in hindsight, I just knew I had to do it.
It was all leading up to ceremony.
Chrys had talked to me prior to beginning, and asked me a simple question:
“What do you expect from this ceremony tonight?”
I answered as I always do in life, but moreso when I started walking this path, “I’m open to experiencing anything that happens, whatever that is.”
I never had a problem releasing and surrendering, it’s kind of a benefit of my ADHD I feel. This ability to release control and surrender to whatever comes in the course of my meditations, ceremonies, or even day to day life’s hiccups.
So, with everyone at ease and familiar with each other, we began to file into the giant geodesic dome and get into place.
It was time to open the circle, start the ceremony, and find out a lot more about myself than I had ever expected.
The Night Begins
The ceremony opened familiarity. We went through our meditation to open our hearts and imbibed in cacao, however, there was a difference tonight. There were full doses of an intuitively concocted plant medicine blend for each of us.
What Chrys knew we each needed to get where we needed to be. He is always amazing at this.
We continued with our meditations and then we laid back and it began. It began faster than I realized, however, I was laying there listening to the sound of the singing bowls and music playing.
Then, I remembered hearing a voice to tell me to get up.
That is when I realized, that it was time to journey. Both in a metaphysical and physical sense.
I documented some of the night in my journal that was given to me and during the morning hours, wrote out my full recounting of the first night.
I had the need to get these words out before I ventured outside of the dome. They were important and still ring important to this day for me.
Let’s dive into the notes of the night.
It’s Begun
The following is a direct exerpt of my journal for the night, I will break it into a few parts for clarity.
“The whole idea of me here is becoming harder to figure out as I write this. I have spoken to my brother (who had been deceased for 7 years at this point) and know he is taking on the burdens of sadness, frustration and more. More importantly, he told me should you never lose focus on what is important. If it’s full of life, love, and energy, then it’s important.”
I was reflecting on my conversation that I had with my brother. He was very prominent that night. I was incredibly thankful for everything, but the night had traspired and I had to address what had happened before I lost it to a whisper in the wind.
So, I began writing as soon as I woke up, with everything fresh on my mind and in my body.
That was a theme for the weekend for me.
Mind, Heart, Body.
I was perplexed why I never heard, “Mind, Body, Soul” all weekend, but “Mind, Heart, Body.”
My mind was my soul, my consciousness, my ethereal energy would live on forever.
My body would be my physical 3d form. The tangible and present body. The very vessel that brings me forward in this life.
My heart would be the one that leads both. It is what keeps us alive physically, it pumps the lifeblood through our bodies. The heart is also our connector, letting us connect and touch the intangible feelings.
The heart lets us be vulnerable and open to experience people, ideas, and so much more.
It lets us be part of this life and universe.
How important it is to lead with the heart and follow with the body and mind, I unlocked that way of living that weekend.
“I realized I wasn not working in tandum with myself”, was me realizing that my heart was closed off, my body was confused and my mind was everywhere. I learned how to have all three work cohesively that weekend.
But that wasn’t all.
My brother had an important message.
Reunited with Old Friends
When I synchronized my three pillars that night, I had my awakening.
The door opened. To all realms and all possibilities.
“I had been reconnected to joys, sorrows, and light beings from my past. I was re-introduced to everyone, embraced by everyone…”
It was a bit surreal, looking back in retrospect. However, one thing was clear;
“I had returned home, to see a place I missed and forgot about. It was welcoming and a little overwhelming, then, I felt at peace.”
That peace came with warmth and love. I was reintroduced to an old group of friends, realizing how important they were in my development as a human.
I had forgotten the lessons and teachings of theirs all these years, however, the joy of instantly recalling all these lessons of love, connection and freedom to express came flooding back in.
I let these emotions wash over me in a tidal wave of color and frequency. It felt like a cleansing so deep and pure that I felt at ease with the swirling visages in front of me.
Then, as almost right on queue, my brother Kenny showed up.
In his typical, larger than life, fashion.
I remembered him coming in and being larger than everything. Which was funny because he was a short and stocky man in 3d. However, this ethereal form of him was him being larger than life, full of love and all heart.
Him becoming the forest and speaking to me was funny and important. He still had his sense of humor, he was still him.
The first thing he mentioned was me going bald and all the years I used to bust his chops about it. We laughed a lot.
He then became semi-serious. He was in his, “Big Brother”, mode.
“I am taking on any burdens of sadness, worry, and everything that might take you from your path”, he said to me. Wildly articulate for Kenny, but it was still him.
He kept reminding me that he was the oldest brother and he was going to handle it all. Anything with Vinny, who at the time was still alive with stage IV renal cancer, will be handled by him. All the burdens will be carried by him.
He said I could be sad and feel the loss of them, but any burdens from them leaving the earthly plane are not mine to shoulder.
He made sure to let me know that when Vinny does cross over, hewas going to rub it in his face that, “He was born first, died first, and got to the next plane of existence first, and Vin only got there because of him.”
Typical older brothers fighting, they did that their entire lives, even to Kenny’s last days on earth.
It was as soon as the message was brought and understood, that it was over, the forest returned and I felt called to connect with the others around the fire.
The Lesson
My biggest lessons of that first time in ceremony still follow me to this day and continue to grow every day, even years later.
I will always lead with love.
I will always trust in myself and what I am doing.
I will let Kenny carry those burdens that I don’t need to.
I will always continue on the path.
That weekend I was forever changed and forever moved in a direction that I am so thankful for.
I know that no matter what happens, I am doing the work I need to do.
I am forever grateful for everyone there that weekend, the medicines that are forever a part of me, and the work I get to do and will do until I am no longer on this plane of existence. Helping those who need it, creating containers for those who need to heal, connecting with the world and healing the world at large through the work we all do.
