Many people tell me, “I’ve tried ketamine therapy, but it really wasn’t that effective.” Or “I’ve done MDMA with my therapist, and it was good, but it wasn’t life transforming.”
What makes Lucid Mind journeys more impactful and transformative?
Some instruction in how to navigate a medicine journey goes a long way. Some come into a ceremony or therapy session with an expectation that the medicine or plant is going to do all the work. But just as in life, with a little preparation, intention, and guidance, the entire experience can be greatly enhanced. Having a skilled and experienced guide before, during, and after the session, is very important.
A Lucid Mind session begins with time for reflection of your life so far, garnering an understanding of the most influential experiences and relationships and their impacts on you. We prepare with creating the space for your session, making it comfortable, safe, and inspiring; a place to fully surrender in, experience deep states of awareness — beyond the rational mind and default mode network – and to stay grounded in your experience so that it can be fully remembered and anchored in consciousness. We meditate, pray, intend, and do breathwork with presencing exercises to learn how to be both in the body and far beyond it at the same time. We practice grounding exercises and movement that allows the nervous system to reset and integrate new energies, emotions, and concepts. In essence, we learn how to stay conscious in ever expanding energy fields of our own being, heal, clear, and rebalance the body and mind. We align all known aspects of our awareness to take the journey.
The ceremony itself is only as powerful and effective as your ability to be aware of what is happening, and at the same time be surrendered and allowing of all levels of the experience. You can ask yourself these questions to tune into your experience:
- What do you see?
- How does it make you feel?
- What is the mind doing? Why?
- Where does this pattern or emotion come from?
- What is the higher pattern that can transform it?
- What do you hear? Listen! Lose yourself in the music.
- How is the music impacting your experience?
- What do you feel in your body?
- What is the energy, the vibration, doing?
- Does my body want to move?
- Would that help the body and mind let go even more?
- Where is energy stuck?
- How can I move or breathe that would help shift the energy there?
- What is my breath doing?
- Can I be more aware of it, calm it down, or make it more intense to deepen my experience?
It may seem like a lot of thinking, but it is really just a shift in awareness, from paying attention to your breath, to feeling the sensation in the body, to listening to the music through open ears, and so on. A tuning of your awareness to different levels of experience. With practice we can experience numerous levels of experience simultaneously.
The journey is not passive, but very active, totally immersive. The more we engage in active surrender, the greater the experience can be. The more presence we bring to the dream, the more lucid it becomes, the more healing and revelatory it becomes. The journey can open the door to the rest of your life, and an entirely new way of being — a greater version of You. We learn everything we are not, and what we are beyond all limitations and identification. We discover and integrate who we really are, and how we want to Be.
This is why many people say:
“This journey feels like a second chance at life.”
“I feel like everything I have ever done has brought me to this moment,
so that I could experience this.”
“This is a new beginning. I feel reborn.”
And so we are. Every journey can be a rebirth, if we allow the past to die. How do we do that? The past that is understood, honored, and let go of, can be integrated. When it is integrated, we become whole, because in truth we are the past. We are–and this moment is–the accumulation of everything we have ever done, thought, and felt. When the past is integrated, we can love it and appreciate it, and insodoing, we can love and appreciate ourselves. From there, we can love and appreciate every one and every thing that comes our way in the future. It is not the past that holds us back, but our perspectives on the past. The baggage — patterns of thought, emotion, and judgements – is the karma we carry, the energy we emit, and the veil through which we see and experience our current reality.
After the journey, there is rest. The next morning, the first day of the rest of your life begins with a deep breath, a sigh of awe and amazement, and the thought, “What an incredible experience! How do I find words for it?”
Recollecting the previous 18 hours, we remember the highlights, and the nuanced subtleties of the journey we just went on, and write them down so we won’t forget. In writing, we remember even more, and are filled with gratitude for the experience. Tears come often, and our hearts open to the possibilities of a bright and love-filled future. We remember all we want to, what we want to say to the people we love, or have hurt, or been hurt by. We decide we want to do things differently, live more fully, love more openly, and take care of ourselves.
Some people go home to clean out their liquor cabinets after decades of self-medication. Some go to a special spot in nature and hike or sit for the day in quiet reflection and appreciation for life. Some spend all day doing art, or writing letters to people. Closets get emptied, garages get cleaned out, as life takes on new clarity and organization. This is a spring cleaning of the soul!
Life is the journey. Take the journey that never ends. It only gets better and better.
With an integrated journey, life can evolve into an awakened, embodied meditation. We realize that all is consciousness. Everything is an aspect of the mind, whether it is experienced within us, or all around us. Nothing is outside of us, and everything is possible. As we bring greater conscious awareness to bear on our momentary experience, we become an integrated conscious being, autonomous and unique. We are able to appreciate all experience, even the challenging ones (especially the challenging ones!). We learn how to continually learn more, about ourselves, others, and life itself. We become inspired, curious, and in awe of the entire process.
This is a journey of becoming. We become more by releasing what we think we know, and who we think we are, and open to something new. We can become anything we can imagine. Imagination is the key, and the medicine journey becomes the doorway into an experience of consciousness beyond anything we allowed ourselves to imagine before –to the experience of our greatest potential.
As a human being remembers true nature – that of an unlimited consciousness within a loving, conscious universe – the shackles of human conditioning dissolve, and the mind becomes slave to a new master, You, conscious awareness. Embodied, conscious awareness fills the mind, finding that life is no longer overwhelming or threatening, but interesting, inspiring, and creative.
Some of the tools that we can use to practice and prepare for journeying are:
- Meditation
- Breathwork
- Yoga
- Conscious or embodied movement practices
- Journaling, Dream Journals
- Mindfulness practices
- Art and creative expression
- Toning and chanting
- Sharing Circles
- Spending time in nature and ‘unplugging’
Using these practices to deepen the experience of the everyday can greatly support the psychedelic journey. Explore what works best for you. It is an individual experience of learning how to work with your consciousness and spectrum of awareness. Please contact me if you have any questions or would like support for your journey!