Karen. Yes, we've had hundreds of conversations about hundreds of different topics while
doing the show. Sadly, just because someone's consciousness might be expanding, what
doesn't necessarily mean you can safely integrate your new awareness into your daily lived experience,
right right, I mean you may not even know what I was talking
about just that, right. No, we've heard a lot about how it
can be difficult and challenging to handle when everything you thought you knew about yourself
and your reality gets turned upside down. Well, then how do you do
it and hold on a successful physical life that others might not understand or even
accept some of the changes that you're undergoing. That's tricky. It is tricky.
Well, if you're listening to this, then there's a good chance that
this is a reality that you find yourself struggling with, and that this is
the episode you may have been waiting for all along, because today we're talking
with an expert in helping people transition from the three D to five D n
way beyond. Need help getting a grip and stay tune, because by the
end of this show, you're gonna know just what you need to do to
handle and integrate your spiritual transformation, into your career or into your current life.
The Skeptic met Physicians starts now. My name is Will and I'm Garous,
and unlike moulderin Scully, both want to believe. So we've embarked in
a journey of discovery. We've talked to people deeply entrenched in the spiritual and
metaphysical world. We've thrown ourselves into weird and wonderful experiences. I even joined
a coven of witches and wait, you joined a coven yep, all on
the interest of finding something, anything, that will prove that there's something beyond
this physical, three dimensional world we all live in. This is the Skeptic
Metaphysicians. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another thought provoking episode of the Skeptic
Metaphysicians podcast. I'm Will and I'mcarous, and today we have the honor of
hosting a distinguished guest, Illuminary at the intersection of skepticism and metaphysical exploration.
She's a veteran in the realm of spiritual transformations and integration, having served as
the past president of the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences.
Say that five times fast. Now. Her extensive background includes over a decade
of dedicated work supporting and guiding individuals who have undergone profound spiritual experiences, a
journey that commenced in her own childhood and has traversed with her into her adult
life. With the wealth of experience spanning decades, our guest expertise is deeply
rooted and not just a theoretical but the lived reality of spiritual encounters, enriching
her perspective with firsthand knowledge and empathetic understanding. I'm not going to say anything
else because i don't know if I'm making any sense at all. I'm just
gonna welp on the show. Elizabeth Sabbath, thanks so much for coming on
the show. Thanks so much for having me. Will and Karen, I'm
grateful to be here. We are thrilled to have you. This is a
topic that is near and dear to my heart for lots of different reasons.
But let's start at the very beginning. When we are talking about spiritual transformative
experiences, it covers a wide gamut. So what can we talk about in
that sense? Well, I like to call them so as you said,
there's a wide variety of experiences, but typically spiritually transformative experiences, or stes
for short, are a type of nonlinear, non ordinary experience that takes you
out of your inculturated worldview and gives you an opportunity to experience life differently.
And so there's a list of about one hundred and twenty six different types the
Brown and researchers Brown and White identified approximately one hundred and twenty six types of
experiences in their research. Good god, wow, Now is that something like
when I was in college? It's friends of mine got stes all the time
and had to go get a pill to get a DIGG. Yet it has
begun same thing. Some people take pills for this. But yeah, yes,
so one hundred and twenty six are we talking about like a tap on
the shoulder? Are we talking about your life falling apart? I mean,
I assure yes, I would think all yeah, potentially all of the above.
There's so many different types. Anything from a mystical experience where you experience
after death communication maybe your dead grandmother sits on your bed in the middle of
the night and scares you wants to talk to you right, an out of
body experience in your death experience, a crisis of psychic opening, which could
be Claire audience, sentience clear ten gingency. I can never say that word
where you pick up an item and you just know something about the person that
had that owned that object. But any exceptional there could be called exceptional human
experiences, numinous experiences, luminous experiences, non ordinary, non linear states of
consciousness experiences. Okay, it could be a United state of consciousness experience where
you're just walking down the street mining your own business and bam, all of
the sudden, you experience oneness with everything around you. That's that's what happened,
Karen, That's what that's so. Yes, Yes, I'm so glad
that you brought this up, because I've got I've had flashes of that all
of a sudden, like oh my god, and it's been glorious, fantastic,
like I have not wanted to come out of it, but inevitably go
to sleep next morning. I'm like, what I say, it's like a
blackout after you're drinking all night long. Right, it's different. And I'm
sure a lot of people have run into those that are living in those experiences
on a prolonged basis and they're thinking, what is wrong with this guy,
right, So this is kind of what we're talking about now. Well,
they can happen spontaneously in a very split second, or they can be prolonged.
They can last minutes or hours or days or weeks or months. Are
these things that you can kind of help to happen, Like, if you
want to have those experiences, there's something you can do. Are there's some
steps to take? No, she said there was a pill for it.
I think that was after when it happens excitedly. Well, these experiences happen
in all types of ways. They can happen because of illness. Women can
have them during childbirth. Childbirth can bring these on an accident. They can
come in dreams, they can come through meditation practices, yoga practices. They
can come through for absolutely no reason, apparently no reason at all, trauma.
So then sometimes things like that can be wonderful, and it has been
wonderful for a lot of folks. But there are some people, and we've
talked to a few of them, that they thought they were going crazy or
their lives, and so you actually are an expert at helping people get a
grip for lack of a better word, Right, so how can someone integrate
this sudden awareness expansion into their daily life. It depends on where they're at
when they come looking for help. Sometimes people go to mental health professionals who
are not trained in identifying or differential diagnosis between psychosis and spiritual emergence and emergency,
which there are DSM codes for spiritual and religious problems, and there is
research literature around this, but it's not a requirement for mental health professionals to
get licensed, so they don't get trained in it as of yet. There's
one university, a Rutgers University, which is in the process of integrating this
information into their educational process. Are you saying you saying that this is a
clinically accepted experience. Yeah, no, so in some clinical settings with people
who've been trained by it who want to be trained. And that's what ASSIST
did the American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences. So we used
to host academic conferences to train mental health professionals and other helping professionals and to
get training on differential diagnosis. They're no longer doing those trainings, but we're
looking for other places. I'm looking for other places to host that training so
I can organize more academic conferences because it's not happening at the collegiate level.
They're not getting trained. But you said that there are codes for that,
there's a diagnostic code in the DSM. Yes, that's that's kind of eye
opening. When you I mean to have a code, a diagnosis code,
you have to accept that there is something to code for. Yeah, and
right now it's the problem is Yale University has just finished They've done two studies
on hearing voices and how why is it? How is it possible that some
people hear voices and they can manage it fine, and they go on their
daily life like, oh yeah, heard from my grandmother, Oh yeah,
an angel told me this, or Jesus or the Holy Spirit of whoever.
Okay, I'm going to go do that now. And they go on and
they do it and they're fine. And why do other people hear voices that
cause problems that that they can't handle and they can't make it stop. When
Harvard is looking at this, are they thinking, I think it's Yale I
was looking at this. Are they looking in the direction of like these are
they're communicating with other people or are they just considering all of these a form
of psychoses. That was one of my little problems with the first research is
because it's about hallucinations hearing voices. And when I talked to the researchers about
that as an advisory person, you know, on their advisory committee, I
was like, my people are not going to be happy participating in this study.
They were looking for research participants because you're using the term hallucination and they
don't believe that they're hallucinating. And they said, yeah, we understand that,
and we have to do the basic research first, so that in using
the academic language that the current academic standard is going to accept. And when
I've read the first when I read the first research article, I still had
a bit of a problem with it as somebody who has heard voices myself.
And at the same time it's foundational and it's really important to help people stay
safe because as we know, there are people who hear voices and then go
out and kill people. Yeah, or they're tormented by these voices and they
can't make them stop, and they're not just talking to somebody a loved one
or relative on the other side that they can hear in a form of after
death communication and it's comforting and nurturing. So they do have to make sure
that they are the medical community and the mental health community is causing no harm.
They are responsible if they put somebody on the street who could potentially cause
harm. So they have to start with this baseline to know the difference.
And the premise of the research is what can we learn from people who hear
voices and are fine with it and who can control it voluntarily that we can
use to support people who cannot. And so the foundation of the research I
felt was very respectful and I think it will go a long way to further
research as to is it this kind of voice or is it that kind of
voice? And it's not looking at where is this voice coming from, or
they're not attempting to validate where the voice is coming from in that particular research.
Anyway, mainstreaming this type of understanding about spiritually transformative experiences, it's very,
very difficult. There's an organization called the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium which is
looking actively looking for funding and fundraising for research and for emergent phenomenon and to
understand it and to build towards the body of research that would contribute to differential
diagnosis and proper care and integration for people who've had these experiences and are asking
that question, Am I crazy? Am I okay? Is this what am
I supposed to do with that? And what was this organization? Again?
The EPRC, the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium, It's THEEPRC dot org. Perfect,
That's what I was looking for. This is an organization of global research
that are coming together to share their work and to make connections and to take
a look at what's currently happening in the research world concerning emergent phenomenology. It's
multidisciplinary. There are researchers and practitioners and even people like myself that show up
to the meetings that are from all different disciplines that are contributing to somebody of
knowledge. There are very limited places where somebody who's asking these questions can go.
ASSIST has a online forum that's very well moderated, and so they could
go to assist dot org and click on the tab to be let into the
forum. And that is a peer led forum, but they're very well trained
peers that are moderating that. So right now, the majority of the help
out there is peer led and groups that you can find in abundance of on
Facebook. Well, then let's get back to the experiences themselves. I'm sure
there are some that are much more difficult to integriate than others. Do you
have an idea of what someone should be looking out for. It could be
any experience that creates an ontological shock. If I have a specific worldview that
everything I see is real and solid, and all of a sudden, I
have an experience of somebody walking through the room coming to see me right like
a somebody on the other side, or if I think that's demonic, if
my religious upbring has taught me that that contact is bad, and here it
is with me, that could be very difficult. For others, it wouldn't
be very difficult at all, right, right, Dark spiritual experiences are the
most difficult for people to integrate, and then the ones that are the farthest
away from their current belief system, worldview, or godview are the most difficult
to integrate because not all experiences are all sunlight, butterflies and unified at the
heart center. Yes, yes they are. I'm going to keep telling myself
that until it happens, we create all reality. Dammit. Yeah all right,
that's what I thought too, until I went to hell. Oh wow,
okay, So did you have an NDE or is it just like you
just decided to take a trip. No. One of my funky gifts is
to support people in transitioning from this life to the next. So sometimes I
get called out of my body to do that. It's almost like there's a
signal and my soul leaves the body. So weird alert, really wow,
crazy woa woe alert. So people may not believe this, So just saying
it's not what I really talk about. But you saying that was like,
yep, I know, I know that. One Okay, So I'm in
the hospital, I'm in my living room and then I can't all of a
sudden, I'm just completely inundated with fatigue. I can't even sit up.
I had to lay down and had no presence of tiredness prior to that.
And then the next thing I know, I'm out of my body and being
pulled out of my body, and I'm in a hospital room up in the
corner of the room and somebody is dying. A man was dying in an
ICU by himself, and he was very angry and bitter, and he was
saying to himself, Man, nobody's ever given me a break. Life is
sucked. Now I'm dying here by myself, and I have to go to
Hell. And this is such an unfair life. I don't even know why
God made me, know what was the purpose of my life. And so
the next thing I know, I'm with him as where I called it the
upper reaches of Hell, which I didn't even believe in. Personally, I'm
a student of a course of miracles and a student of a different kind of
Jesus than what I was taught as a child, and so this, first
of all, was quite terrifying. I mean, I've worked with people on
the other side and assisted them in transitioning from the earthplane before. This was
quite different. So I'm standing at this place which looked pretty hell like that
I didn't even believe in. Well, you could almost say it was hellish.
Yeah, it was hellish, and I couldn't I couldn't move. I
was terrified. I didn't even want to turn my head. I just looked
at my periphery. Okay, so it was was it the flames in Inferno
and Pitchfork, the kind of the thing, kind of hell was it was.
I actually had an experience of eternal condemnation and eternal hopelessness. And you
know, it's not like the movies where they were like please, It wasn't
that level. It was the level where they couldn't even lift their arms.
They couldn't even lift their arms to say help me. They didn't even have
the belief in them that they could ask for help. They were no longer
even seeking help because they didn't believe it was available. I'm freaking out.
All I can see is an uncountable number of souls standing before me in this
experience of absolutely eternal hopelessness. It was a bit. It was so bad.
You know how people I've listened to countless NDE experiences where people talk about
how good it is and they can't explain it. This was the opposite.
So I started and I'm screaming at them like, no, no, no,
y'all have been lied to. This isn't real. This is an illusion.
You know, you need to wake up. You don't have to be
here like you've been lied to. And I fell being pulled down like quicksand
and I couldn't get out, and so I was like, oh, geez,
I know you don't want me here, but I can't get out by
myself. I need your help, and like that, backup out of it
and back into my body in the living room and function for three days.
Took three days for me to get my body to stop shaking and to try
and figure out what happened. And I went to my favorite coffee shop for
three days, all day from open to clothes, reading my Course of Miracles
book, trying to figure out what the heck happened, right, because nothing
spells relief like caffeinician. That's right, that's right, and the local bookstore
run by your local Buddhist. Right, coffee shop run by jo Buddhist.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know that took three days and to
integrate, but only three days because the coffee shop owner came by and it
was a long story I won't get into, but she said, oh,
you went to hell. How sweet? You know, when what the Buddha
says about hell, if you find yourself in hell, you're there to mind
Jules and I looked at her like she was crazy, but it gave me
that new perspective to look at you know, instead of being stuck in Why
did this happen to me? Am I crazy? Oh, here's a different
perspective. I can take this in and look at it differently. And what
did I What could I have learned from that? And I did? I
learned a lot. But it was very difficult. So for what other people?
Would it have taken three days or would have taken longer? No one
knows the answer to that question. It's based on your capacity that the integration
process is based on your capacity to take in new information and give yourself permission
to explore it. It's when we reject this new information that it takes longer
to integrate. Was this your first kind of opportunity or I guess with helping
transition someone? No, okay, because I was just thinking, you know,
Will was saying, we created on reality, and you know you believe
in hell or not believe in Helen. I was just thinking, what if
this man's hell was so strong that he kind of sucked you into his reality?
Would that be a possibility. That is an excellent question. We'll ask
you to answer that for us. Right after this, we're back to the
skeptic metaphysician. But before we get back to the interview. I wanted to
share a new five star review that came to us via Apple Podcasts. Subject
line of the review reads a great podcast, and the review says I've only
recently started listening. It was through a recommendation and I'm so grateful for it.
I love the honesty in your conversations and you're down to earth humor.
Thank you and then put a star answerm J and D from the UK.
Well, jn D, thank you so much for taking the time to let
us know how much you're enjoying the show. We're thrilled to hear from those
whether you like to show or not one word or the other, we'd love
to hear your thoughts and J and D thank you for doing just And if
you'd like to hear your review D on the air, please feel free to
go to Apple Podcasts and leave us a review there. It doesn't matter whether
it's a five star, a four star, or three star, any kind
of star. We would just love to hear from you. We're always trying
to get better and the best way to do that is to do so by
learning from the people that we are doing the show for. That's you.
Okay, let's get back to the show, okay, because I was just
thinking, you know, Will was saying, we created on reality, and
you know, you can believe in hell or not believe in Helen. I
was just thinking, what if this man's hell was so strong that he kind
of sucked you into his reality. Would that be a possibility. Absolutely.
I mean, when you work with people on the other side, you have
to go into their reality to rescue them out of it, all right,
So then if that's the case, then maybe there doesn't have to be a
hell. Well I kind of see it like what dreams may come right the
movie where we all create our own afterlife. So this person obviously believed in
hell, and this was the hell he believed in, or he thought he
was going to go to, because Elizabeth, you said right as you were
mentioning him that he was saying, I don't know why God made me.
Now I've got to go to hell. That kind of thing. He already
had that in mind. In his mind. It was his beliefing over right,
So it's passing over. You experienced his version of the afterlife. So
that's just another example of how important it is to solidify what your beliefs are
and to not take it flippantly, but think positive thoughts, right, because
who wants to go to hell for God's sakes? Yeah? Nobody. And
do you know doctor Nathan Castle. He is a Catholic priest who also helps
people transition lost souls transition. I was visiting with him and we both agree
that the most important thing anybody in a helping profession can do, or anybody
who loves anybody, is to help them recognize how beautiful they are, and
how lovable they are, and how worthy they are, and that any mistakes
that we make are mistakes from a lack of understanding or experience and not worth
being condemned for. There is nothing more important, I think, personally than
helping people receive as much love as possible before they leave this earth, because
that will ensure a safe transition from this life to the next. So then
I know that we had talked earlier about you go through these experiences and you
already having a hard time handling it, But then you throw in the fact
that we have to we have to live, we have to work, we
have to as a family, we have to keep going with our lives.
And everybody knows it's getting better. But when someone said to you sometimes in
the past, hey I'm hearing voices, you immediately get put in a straight
jacket. So how does someone who's having these experiences, how do you manage
to integrate that into your daily life without seeming like you're a loon. Well,
the first thing is to find someone who understands you, specifically with hearing
voices. There's an organization called the Hearing Voices Network who has a very strong
support system of people who do hear voices. And it's very important when you
share your experiences that you know who to share them with. If you already
know that your experience is going to maybe freak someone out, freak some make
them concerned that you're talking to the devil or going to hell, you might
want to talk to somebody else that has some experience with them. And it
depends so in a light filled spiritual experience. With a light filled spiritual experience,
so many times people are filled so full of love and life they want
to share it with everybody, and they're so enthusiastic about it that they're sharing
it with people who can't relate. And then you experience that let down or
that disappointment where you feel ostracized. But what I suggest to people is that
first they have compassion for the people who have not had the experience instead of
expecting to go to a well full of water and get a drink. But
if that person hasn't had your experience, then they can't meet you there,
and if it's outside of their worldview, you can expect resistance. So first
to find people who can understand that you've had some form of nonlinear, non
ordinary experience. There go buy so many different names. People don't even like
the word spiritual anymore, right, So they could be a transcendent experience or
a non ordinary experience. And there are therapists now that are trained or who
work with non ordinary states, and coaches and spiritual guidance directors. So looking
for a spiritual guidance director in your specific faith tradition to help you work things
out could be a safer person to talk to you than perhaps a therapist to
begin with that hasn't been trained, Yeah, because they might try to help
fix you. So you're not hearing the voices, but what are there are
important voices that you need to hear, that's right, yeah, And working
with these, you know, is the voice coming from you, from your
psyche, in your subconscious or your higher self. Is it coming from the
light or is it coming with a flavor of darkness towards it? And that
even flavor of darkness could be within yourself as well, teasing out is it
light, is it dark? Is it heavy? Is it light? What
is the attention? And it's important to talk about these kinds of things with
the right folks because a lot of times, if you do have these experiences
and you start opening up bottom and get negative feedback, that then tends to
get you to close up even more. For example, we all know that
evolving spiritually transcend this reality is what we're all trying to achieve in one way
or another, everyone in this space in a new age, your new thought
space, or whatever we're talking about here. Everything we've heard about is that
this is a positive step forward. This is the next evolution of mankind is
into in this direction. So if we are doing that and all suddenly we
take a little baby step into this world and we get slapped back, that
might shut down any future experiences that would then prevent you from moving where you
need to go. So it's really important to really do this discerningly, so
that so that you don't close yourself off because it it like we talk many
times, you're not going crazy. This is perfectly natural and normal stuff.
Its just not everybody is at the level that which you are. There's no
need to convince anyone of anything, because you're not going to be able to
do anyway. That's right. You can't convince somebody who hasn't had the experience.
And it is natural and normal for an evolving consciousness to start losing touch
with Newtonian paradigm physics and to be experiencing something beyond the ordinary, what we
would call the ordinary in the three D. And so one of the questions
people ask is why is this happening? Why me? And if it wasn't
childbirth or a trauma or in your death experience, and even those things,
I say, because your soul is ripe, Your soul is ready to be
expanded beyond your unculturated identity. And the benefit even though it's very challenging and
can be scary, and you can lose relationships and people do lose many relationships
because of it, it's a natural, normal part of your consciousness expanding and
all sorts of things are going to happen some very challenging things where you may
have karma arise different which is just more learning and in the purification process of
having our inculturated identity purified, that means we're also purifying our concepts about unworthiness
and sin and disempowerment, right, and those things are very challenging to deal
with. There's so many different directions that we can go, but I definitely
add one of the things that when doing research on you before we came on
the show, one of the things that caught my attention was your thoughts on
plant medicine because there's a big question mark. Some people believe that plant medicine
is actually helps with expanding your consciousness and taking the necessary evolution or step and
things like that, but then there's other factions that talk about plant medicine being
a crutch that maybe it's not exactly what people are saying that it is.
So I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, So, just
like anything else, psychedelics can become a crutch. Meditation because all spiritual practice
can become a crutch. We call that spiritual bypassing. Okay, that means
when we are ignoring the attending to the normal needs of human life, or
spiritualizing something to not look at it, to not deal with it. I
just want to say that, so anything can become a crutch. Okay,
there's a big debate. Should you engage in psychedelics to expand your consciousness and
to advance spiritually. Will it help you if it doesn't break your consciousness?
First? Right? Right? And that's I'm afraid of. Well, if
you have good integration support and you have a really good trip sitter or someone
who's been trained in shamanism that knows what they're doing and knows how to hold
space for it, to not allow anything else in the space to attach to
you, and knows if there's something rising up within you, how to allow
that space and support it while it's arising and proper post session, you know,
post integration sessions. Then it's the risk of being so broken that you
can't be put back to get there again. It's greatly reduced. Psychedelics are
here. They're back, and I'm glad to see it. I'm glad to
see it coming, you know, instead of being something that the old I'm
saying stoners in quotation marks very lovingly and respectfully, Okay, that it's being
taken out of the basement or the backyard or whatever and being brought into a
cultural space where we can look at the benefit of it, where the experience
itself can be supported. And that's the wonderful benefit and the healing, the
amazing healing of the mind and the spirit that happens with proper ceremony. It's
absolutely incredible, the suffering that can be eradicated. It's amazing. Not to
throw stones at it at all. And there are lots of research that are
being done now that are finding it's actually they're continuing now the research up our
big gap now that they're finding that a single session of MDMA for example,
or cilocybin will help cure PTSD's not even to ease the symptoms, but rather
they're finding that a single single session could have a completely life changing effect on
someone who's suffering. So that's that's remarkable. The question is you hear back
in the day, right, if you did six drops of acid or more,
are you're going to go in thing? Right? So I assume that
that kind of thought, like you said, anything in everything, moderation,
anything has abused. It's going to become a problem, so it's important to
do it with a proper facilitar. Ay, you say, but you do
believe then that there is a place for these psychedelics in a spiritual pursuit.
Is that right? Yes? And so I'm kind of old school in the
fact that I think that you have to what are you being devoted to?
There has to be devotion, but what are you devoted to? Truth,
beauty, love, creator? Are you devoted to these in a way that
you're attempting to do your best to live from these principles? The devotion to
these principles first, that has to be there. But the reality is is
for some people they can't get there without having a strong pattern interrupt and what
the psychedelics do is it interrupts a pattern. So somebody can do nothing but
prayer. Development of their personality it has to be spiritual. Develop needs to
be psychological and have the spiritual devotion component in order to be balanced, because
if you skip the psychological development and go just total into spiritual, then you're
going to have to at some point come back and pick up the psychological development
that you've missed out on. And if you're all intellect and all psychological development
with no spirit. At some point you'll get confronted with that if it's your
lifetime for that. Okay. So part of the problem is is that people
are doing psychedelics, they're doing meditation, they're doing all sorts of devotional practices
without having attended to their trauma or their hatred or their resentment, or their
guilt or their shame. And then they come to these practices and they're so
blown open and can see that. And afterwards, because whether it's through a
spiritually transformative experience that happens spontaneously or an intentional psychedelic experience, is you start
becoming a different person. And that different person if you have a lot of
that stuff, you know, a lot of hidden guilt and shame, that
stuff starts to arise now that your consciousness has expanded a little bit and you're
recognizing, like, oh my god, who was I before? Oh my
god, I can't believe I did that. I was a horrible person.
Now I have to be with that. And that's been the hardest thing I've
had to work with with people in integrating, is they become awake to their
own behavior that they are now ashamed of. And feel guilty for and they
don't know how to forgive themselves. It becomes less of forgiving others and more
of a challenge to forgive themselves. Elizabeth, you and I are going to
have a conversation after this is okay. Well, it's interesting though, because
a lot of people turn to these practices because they have all of these issues
and the traumas you know, and their childhood or whatever, and they're thinking
this can help them. But what you're saying is they actually need to deal
with that first before coming into these practices. It's best you'll have a less
challenging post integration if you deal with this first. But we see, we're
just not talking about this as a society. We're just you know, mental
health. I'm fifty eight. Mental health was not a social and cultural topic.
We didn't talk about our therapist at the dinner table like you know,
oh I love my therapist. No, we didn't do that. I do,
by the way, it is, I love her too, hi,
doctor Jones. Yeah. And so this is the problem with people who go
on like long vipastna retreats, you know, ten days silent meditation retreats,
is they sometimes go into psychosis during or after, because I talk about the
process of strengthening the container of your consciousness, that the most important thing you
can do before engaging in any spiritual practice is to strengthen the container of your
consciousness. So what that means to me is that you have a practice of
paying attention to what's arising in your emotions and in your thoughts and determining how
is this thought or this emotion. You know, what information is being presented
to me? What is this information informing me of that I need to attend
to right now? As opposed to this emotion means something bad, you know,
attending to our shadows. And we should make a definitive distinction about what
we're talking about. There are a faction of those that use this type of
thing for an escape or recreation. Right, you drop a tab of acid
because you want to, You don't, you don't think about the world,
and you who right, You're you're having fun or you're you're doing mushrooms and
let's go how the moon. That kind of thing we're talking about very specific
ritualistic reasons for and intentions when you are undergoing these journeys. For lack of
a better word, it's important to have that. We're not condoning a recreational
use of mushrooms, for example, orything like that. This is more about
once you're ready to take that next step. If you're stuck, this might
be able to help you, but do it in the right way. It
might be if you are going to a trip sitter who has been trained in
how to hold safe space and safe ceremony and how to support you in lifting
out what is arising out of you? Should you need support if the medicine
isn't doing it itself right, So Johnny down the block who has a bag
of t rooms in his pocket does not a good trip sit or make no,
no, no, I've worked with young people who've done that and whose
whole life was blown apart and could no longer fit into their society because and
I won't share their stories here because they don't have permission, who no longer
fit in They could no longer be and they couldn't go hang out with the
guys and drink beer anymore. They couldn't, you know, just try to
have sex with every girl that would get in bed with them. They just
couldn't do those things anymore. And so what I want to say about this
is is that if anybody's listening to this, it's interested in psychedelics, and
you have access to the medicine because it is sacred medicine. Okay, But
to remember that these plants came the use of these plants. We came to
know about the use of these plants through medicine men and women of tribal cultures
all over the world, and they are medicine to be respected, to be
used appropriately in sacred tradition. There's a diet that you have to do for
six to ten days. There's a purification process that you have to put the
body through or I could kill you. Oh wow. And then you must
meditate every day. Like with ayahuasca, you must meditate every single day for
ten days before you drink the medicine with the shama. When you meditate with
the plant spirit, you're connecting to the essence of the benefit of that medicine
and you take your challenge or your trauma, or your physical ailment, or
your relationship problem, whatever that is. You take that to that plant spirit
and you say, please, here is my dilemma. Please help me,
And it's a supplication to the divine nature of that medicine. Gosh, there's
so much that we could dive into and talk about, but I definitely wanted
to talk about the fact that on your website you give classes, you help
folks, and it's not just you. We have a few facilitators that what
would help people integrate these kinds of things into their life. If someone wanted
to get better at it, you would recommend go to your website and reach
out to you there to get better. Yes, integrating, yeah, integrating
the experience. Yes, I'm actually graduating a new group of spiritual integration coaches
in December. Actually we'll have five more coaches on the roster. So yes,
I do have people that can support people and integration, whether it's psychedelics
or any other experience. That's great. So then whether you are looking for
help or you want to help others, that might be a good resource for
you. Absolutely, I'm right. Well, Elizabeth, this has been wonderful.
Thank you so much for coming and sharing your expertise with us, sharing
space with us, and we're going to add direct links to your website and
social media on our show notes. So all you need to do is go
to Skepticmanaphasician dot com go to her episode page. You'll see all those links
late in there directly for you, so it makes it super easy to get
connected with Elizabeth. Once again, thank you so much for coming on.
It's been wonderful. It has been Thank you so much for having me,
and a huge thank you to you. We know that there are tons of
options out there, and having you decide to come along on our journey of
discovery with us is an absolute honor for us. We hope you've enjoyed this
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ways. Well, that's all for now. We will see you on the
next episode of The Skeptic Metaphysician. Until then, take care,