Awakening Through Ayahuasca and Dharma
Episode 19 with Redesigning The Dharma by Sahaja Soma is an enlightening conversation with Spring Washam, the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys.
Adrian and Spring catch up and discuss the evolution of Lotus Vine Journeys and its 10-year-long history of ayahuasca retreats blended with a Buddhist framework.
Spring shares her insights on the ever-changing nature of spiritual practices, the ethical considerations in shamanic traditions, and the deep healing she’s undertaken over the decade.
The discussion touches upon the importance of preparation and integration in plant medicine journeys, ethical tensions in traditional settings, and the benefits of incorporating sacred plant teachings with non-dual Buddhist principles. They also explore the possibility of sustainable practices with alternative plants like peganam harmala and the broader implications of psychedelics in shifting global consciousness.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Introducing Spring Washam
04:30 Integrating Dharma and Plant Medicine
14:31 Ethics and Evolution in Plant Medicine Practices
21:13 The Role of the Maestro and Direct Connection
33:47 Honoring Ayahuasca Traditions While Embracing Change
38:10 Integrating Buddhism into Ayahuasca Ceremonies
44:53 The Importance of Psychedelic Preparation
52:45 Sustainability and Accessibility of Plant Medicines
Guest Bio:
Considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based meditation practices to diverse communities; Spring Washam is a well-known teacher, healer, and visionary leader based in Oakland, California.
She is the author of A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage and Wisdom in Any Moment and The Spirit of Harriet Tubman: Awakening from the Underground.
Spring is one of the founding teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center, an organization that offers Buddhist teachings with attention to social action and multiculturalism. She is a member of the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, offering teachings on Buddhist philosophy, Insight meditation and loving-kindness practices. Spring is also the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys, a one-of-a-kind organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom for transformative retreats in South America.
She has practiced and studied Buddhist philosophy in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism since 1999. Spring is also a shamanic practitioner and has studied indigenous healing practices since 2008.
Spring’s workshops, interviews, and writing can be found in mainstream media worldwide.
Full Transcript:
Adrian: Welcome to Redesigning the Dharma. I'm Adrian Baker and I am especially excited to introduce you to today's guest because she's the first person that connected me with Ayahuasca and did so through, a a Buddhist approach, which is really what helped to get me onto this path.
So with that said, Spring is a pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based meditation practices to diverse communities. She's a well-known teacher, healer and visionary leader, formally based in Oakland, California and now in Georgia, where she's starting a new project, which we'll discuss.
She's the author of "A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage, and Wisdom in Any Moment," and "The Spirit of Harriet Tubman: Awakening from the Underground."
Spring is one of the founding teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center, an organization that offers Buddhist teachings with [00:01:00] attention to social action and multiculturalism. She's a member of the Teacher's Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, offering teachings on Buddhist philosophy, insight meditation, and loving kindness practices.
Spring is also the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys, a one of a kind organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom for transformative retreats in South America that is based in Costa Rica.
She has practiced and studied Buddhist philosophy in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism since 1999. Spring is also a shamanic practitioner and has studied indigenous healing practices since 2008. Spring's workshops, interviews, writings can be found in mainstream media worldwide. And with that said, I bring you my conversation with Spring Washam.
So I'll just start first of all, Spring, by thanking you so much for making the time to speak with me and to come on the podcast. It's been so long. And when I started this, you were like towards the top of the list of people I wanted to have on because I did my first Ayahuasca retreat with [00:02:00] you in Peru and Lotus Vine Journeys.
So I'm so happy to reconnect with you.
Spring: Wow. Yeah. It's our 10 year anniversary.
Adrian: wait, it's Lotus Vine's tenure.
Spring: Yes. 10 years. Yeah. We started in 2015.
Adrian: Wow. Congratulations.
Spring: I know that is, you look back and you think, wow, that's a chunk of time, a decade at this, you know?
Adrian: Totally. So maybe let's start right there. Not presuming that people know what you're doing, can you talk about what Lotus Vine Journeys is and just explaining the unique approach.
Spring: Yeah I think Lotus Vine Journeys is unique because of its blend of plant medicine, particularly ayahuasca. Now we're working also with huachuma and psilocybin, but ayahuasca is pretty much for many years that was our core medicine and you know, it came out of my Buddhist practice and my deep desire to blend ayahuasca with Buddhism and Buddhist psychology, Buddhist philosophy.
One [00:03:00] doesn't have to be Buddhist to attend a retreat, but it's that framework of liberation that I love. It gives us this map of consciousness that made sense for me.
And, I remember I spent a year living at the temple of the way of light in 2014 to 2015. And when I left there I knew right away that I would blend Buddhism.
Because I felt like that for me was a missing ingredient, was the path, how to make sense of all of this, all these visions and all these downloads and like, where is it going and how does one integrate this? And so I saw that there was a gap in that, for many people they didn't know how to make sense of it and go back to their New York City life or London and then they're like, oh my God, I saw the nature of mind, I'm interconnected, but I'm, it's where do I go from here?
You know? And so it just came about. But I will say that it's been a 10 year. Odyssey and a [00:04:00] refinement and full of learning and healing. Not just myself, everybody who I'm connected with that's involved in that project and just, it really set me up for, we do these projects and we're like, okay, it's gonna be other people.
But it became this, even now, just tremendous amount of integration that, by blending these, it can provide a path,
Adrian: Yeah. And that's immediately what attracted me to Lotus Vine as well was the Dharmic connection. In integrating that with the plant medicine, you said a bit about what the dharma really brings to the plant medicine path, and I wanna circle back to this as well, talking a lot about the importance of view, from a Buddhist standpoint.
I'm curious if you could speak to the other angle and talk about what sometimes, like what does plant medicine bring to dharma or what was missing for you? And just being on a Dharma path, just meditating without having, or without working with entheogens or ayahuasca specifically.
Spring: [00:05:00] Yeah. that's such a brilliant question because I think all of us, when we get into our spiritual path, I was very young when I started practicing meditation. I think I did my first retreat, intense retreat when I was in my early twenties. So that was something, and then when you get on the path, you're having this, what we would call like a rapid, it's a love affair.
You're just you, it could be a powerful moment. You hear people talk about that when I'm with elders, they're like, when I went to India and I was with Baba, so... there was a rapid, what we could call an expansion. Or an unraveling or an understanding, right? But that's a phase of our journey and it's like when you fall in love, like we're all in love with the dharma. We're on fire and we're practicing, and then what happens if we don't go deeper into the purification, if we don't go deeper into the real clinging.
If we don't really go deeper into the core [00:06:00] message of liberation, we can get stuck on a kind of feel good plateau, right? Where we are just practicing to feel more concentrated, to feel better. We've lost that deep hunger for liberation. We start out on that, And we give it a good go, but we, our energy kind of wanes and we settle for maybe the appetizer course versus the whole dinner of what is being presented.
And because that level of work is intense, when we really look at what the Dharma is offering. So what I saw was this plateau.
I saw it in myself as I started questioning, you have this idea also that it's a quick, easy path. Alright, I'll do a three month retreat, check all liberation at the end.
But when you're committing to this, you're committing to lifetimes. You're not committing to a two year experiment or a retreat. Like there was levels and I started to see in [00:07:00] myself that I couldn't get deeper with the practices at that time.
Like I was doing all the meditation, I was doing months and months of practice. I was traveling, I was with Sayadaws and Burmese Masters and Thai Masters.
But, it was as if everything was still on the surface. It was still an intellectual understanding. And that intellectual understanding was like an obstacle. Thinking you know, but you don't really know.
It's not embodied. It looks embodied at some level, but it's truly, I'm not living from that ultimate freedom. I'm not living every moment from that. And so I started to see other people when I went into teacher training, a formal teacher training at Spirit Rock, I was really shocked by what I was seeing was the lack of insight.
Like so much of my years of trainings was sitting with Jack Kornfield listening to people sharing about their meditations. And I remember being so shocked and so saddened. I was like, [00:08:00] everybody's just in the suffering of like, you know, do these teachings work? I'm really confused.
I thought this was, but I'm not seeing this liberated mind and energy. I'm just seeing us all in the ocean of samsara. And I, what I was seeing that in was people who had practiced 40 years, 50 years, that had this resume, that one collects of retreats. But I would look at them and they would just be sharing.
They were still caught in the same pattern that they were 40 years ago. Some more sophisticated version of that, the heart really wasn't opening, or they're chasing the previous experience when it was, on fire. They're telling stories from the seventies and it's like, well, here we are, where are we now? Where's the energy now?
So that was a very big wake up call for me. And then seeing where I felt stuck and had to, get down into the deeper levels.
Adrian: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. , the [00:09:00] last thing you said... one way to think about that, is it makes sense with the, some of Ken Wilber's points about development that actually you can think about maybe from a certain perspective, like the waking up contemplative perspective, the dharma might have been working in a certain way, but in terms of like psychological development, there were things that weren't tended to or spoken to perhaps by the practices, the teachings. And there was this other stream of development that wasn't growing as much or working with shadow aspects of the psyche and that, that connects and affects with those other streams of development.
And that's one thing that I find really interesting about Ayahuasca or this ayahuasca analog that I work with, where it's just incorporating Peganum Harmala with Chacruna, which I find it's the same sentient intelligence, just a little bit of a, a different feel.
It can work through those different streams of development. It can work just on the waking up perspective, working on true nature, but it's also about working on the relative, the [00:10:00] psychological level.
And what makes it so powerful is that it's possible to really sit on a meditation cushion for a long time and bypass and ignore a lot of those issues, whereas it's, I don't wanna say it's impossible, but it's a lot harder to do that with something like Ayahuasca because you're going to have to face things that you don't want to look at.
Spring: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really a beautiful point, is that shadow work and also the way that we practice in the West is very comfortable.
if we take a beautiful meditation center, it's oh, just get up, go for a walk, eat a huge meal. we're not really practicing like the ascetics did in another day and time where that liberation fire forced them into confronting desire and hatred and longing.
It's almost like when we get uncomfortable, we just get up and change. Let's go for a hike, let's go for a meal, let's go... you know, there was a way of practicing that was very different, and I'm not negating definitely that there was some tremendous [00:11:00] value into practice. it feels like a slower path when you're practicing what do they used to call Spirit Rock, the upper middle way...
Adrian: The upper.
Spring: Yeah. Versus, those old yogis and charnel grounds and naked and not eating and practicing hours and battling the demons in their mind.
And we don't have that fortitude as much in the west, right? So in a way, ayahuasca becomes that. Opens up that material that one would possibly meet, on a mountain alone and doing these intense renunciation retreats where you will, sit long enough, you will encounter this material.
But it feels like it's very easeful. We have places like Esalen that cater to our spiritual practices and it's beautiful, but there's a lot of distraction there. And the depth of where we could go, . We just don't access it. We give ourselves an out and, so that's okay. It's all about who we are and where we [00:12:00] are.
Adrian: Yeah. And I would say it's also coming from the yogic tradition. that perspective is dependent on the yogic tradition you're coming from 'cause I know you're more Theravada. That is deeply ascetic.
There are other yogic contemplative traditions where they talk a lot about purification, but for example, Kashmir Shaivism doesn't have that kind of asceticism. The notion of tapas is really important. But asceticism in terms of like the physical practices is not the same in some of those paths that are deliberately like renunciatory versus householder. And that's why I think it can be helpful to learn about these traditions and bring a view to the path.
So that we can decide what resonates the most for us. But I would say the one common denominator with all of them is the notion of purification is really central.
Whether it's has that deeply aesthetic flavor with material conditions or not, the notion of having to purify and work on the samskara is very true on the psychological subtle body level, even if it's not intense in terms of the physical [00:13:00] conditions or things like that.
Spring: Yeah, and, I don't think... I've, I've worked with renunciation in different ways and I've had many different ideas about it because, someone could actually be doing all that but still not be getting liberated. Right? Someone could be using that as escapism and all these other things.
So it's yeah, we can have that conversation about what is renunciation, but I think what we're renouncing is our attachment to our delusion.
That's ultimately whether you put your body in a cave or you're in a palace, if one has that desire to really work with the confused mind and the depths, and to take the dharma on as a " wow, this is liberation. Look what it's saying."
Like a lot of people we don't even know. We just wanna develop a little awareness. It's like Dharma light and that's okay. Dharma light is better than no Dharma.
Yeah. Let's, everyone doing Dharma light can make a better world.
And unless we get into our really deeper layers we create the world that we see now. There's all [00:14:00] of this arising of these energies and everyone's wow, what was going on? It's greed, hatred, and delusion. It's like it's in a tsunami of it and now we have to work with it in a way that's no escape.
Adrian: Yeah, I think that's well said. I want to get to some of the interesting things that I've reflected on from, doing the Lotus Vine Retreat and then reflecting back on it later, being in different settings with people, offering it in different ways, and also talking about, getting to like what feels aligned for you. Perhaps we can just start there at a big picture question.
You've connected two different traditions, you could say in a way, the Shipibo traditions you were training in Ayahuasca in Peru, and then also the Dharma traditions.
I'm curious what sort of naturally feels aligned to you, but also what doesn't necessarily go together so easily about those two sometime. Where is their tension as well?
Spring: So I spent so many years, as you mentioned, with Shipibo healers, and I studied with them and I found so much [00:15:00] resonance there, especially in the early days. I was going to Peru in 2007, so I was on that early, I was on that early flight of people going down to Iquitos and then from Iquitos out into all these different centers and looking and studying.
And I think one of the issues that I have encountered, the tension, I guess you could say, is around ethics. And I think that I went into believing that all these great beings who work with plants have the same ethical framework of non harming, non stealing around sexuality , and I think for me, as I've moved a little bit, it's almost like the Shipibos are in my bones, but there's a new expression of it.
Like I'm, I moved outta Peru and then I went to Costa Rica. Now I'm doing a lot of things here in the north. Now that laws are changing and decriminalization is happening,
Adrian: Sorry, to clarify, you don't mean the north of Costa Rica. You mean like
Spring: I'm [00:16:00] in Northern America, the nor yeah. And I like the U.S. I've come back. So it's, I never thought I would ever be out of South America. I just never could even fathom that.
But with this merge of information and decriminalization counties and states and this movement to see plant medicine as this agent of healing trauma, like the true depths of it is being studied , you know, in the psychedelic or it's MDMA or all of that.
But that gets me back to this point of where I separated a bit from the Shipibo, not in my spirit, but it was around ethics. And harm. I had to fire many different maestros. And I finally just decided when I left Costa Rica, after I filed, fired, my final one, I was like, wow, I just have a different ethical standard.
This is not just about the ceremony. So even those people were not integrated. They [00:17:00] could be in the ceremony. It was like a beautiful doctor that you go to, right?
And you need an eye surgery and you go to call the best eye surgeon in the whole world, and he does an amazing eye surgery on you and you can see, and you're clear and but then he goes home and he drinks and he hits his kids and he is cheats on his taxes and he is mean to everyone. But he has that gift, right?
He can give you the, that was the rub. It's like those Buddhist precepts of non harming. Began to weigh on me when I would see people acting in ways that weren't, they weren't attuned to that. They hadn't taken that precept.
And also the compartmentalization, It's not just how we are in the ceremony or we're living in the retreat. It's what are we doing when the moment we leave and how that impacts, everything else.
And so it began to, that began to create a tremendous amount of tension. How the leaders in which I was merging with, in leading these Lotus Vine Retreats with, I started to feel the [00:18:00] effects of the ethics not being aligned with non harming, and being unconscious, and creating things and actually real harm.
And so, that has always been a big issue for me. So that's why I'm in a new birth right now of my work. And then it's more about trusting myself. Trusting the dharma to guide us more now versus an external person, right?
It's us coming back to ourselves. The light is in us. we're kind of codependent or something on these other people, but it's no, the light is in us now. The medicine in it is us. The path is within us now. Let us embody it.
So I've come full circle on a lot of ways in which
Adrian: Wow. That's super interesting because in a lot of ways what I wanted to talk to you about this point, because that's something for me that, just naturally, like I loved a lot of aspects of the traditional setting in terms of just, I had so [00:19:00] much respect for the medicine, I wanted to work with it and learning about it. But there were certain things that didn't resonate naturally with me.
And I think, obviously different things worked for different people, and that's okay. But for me, psychedelics were always, have always been about a direct connection with whatever you want to call it, the divine source, true nature. And it just intuitively felt for me, like it was not something that needed to be mediated or guided by someone else.
And there was that, it's someone else's energy coming in here, and directing like it's.
There's an intelligence, and this is how I feel like working with Ayahuasca, that it's this unbelievable sentient intelligence that can't be improved upon by another person. And so it just felt very strange to have that.
But then when I connected with a friend later who, he became a friend, but he's a facilitator, and I said, I'm interested, I had a good experience, but here are my reservations. And there there are a number of issues, that I had.
And um, one of them was, he said, he trained in the traditional way with Shipibo, but he said, in my [00:20:00] experience, it's really about a direct connection with the medicine. It's not about having someone guide it for you.
And that the real teaching is about opening into complete non-resistance and not feeling like you need someone else to like, call in a spirit or when it's difficult to like move it along. All of that, in a sense is kind of a form of resistance. And it's really about completely opening to whatever is arising and surrendering to it. And so now you might not agree with perhaps that letter take, or I'd be curious to hear it, but it's interesting how you sounds like in your own way, perhaps for your own reasons, you've moved to this place of more the direct connection and not the mediation.
And actually one thing that, sorry to add he did say was that part of the issue with the shamanic context is precisely what you said is you are, when you have that person in that central role, they're bringing their karma into the space. And so, you know, it just puts a very high burden on that for [00:21:00] that person to really have their act together, in terms of cleaning things up, being aware of a lot of shadow stuff and all of that. And by not having that, by having the facilitator create the space, it does remove that issue or at least minimizes it a lot.
Spring: Yeah, I think this is a really interesting conversation about that, the role, of the maestro and maestra and what are the power dynamics...
Because they're given supreme power. They're deposited as the ones who hold the knowledge and who are the healers. So I think for a long time we needed that paradigm.
This was, ayahuasca was so powerful and so unknown. And we were entering into a stream that we didn't have ground in yet. And so as I meet with people who are older, have gone through all of the years of training and lived with all the, you know, and now they're in different parts of the world, we've all kind of woken up to that same concept.
Is it wasn't that it wasn't useful, but we are seeing where the rub is now. Where we [00:22:00] don't need a third person. And there is a beautiful, important, and I don't wanna de-emphasize for listeners, because the dangerous side is that people start taking things in their own hands and get hurt.
There's a role of a guide, right? And a role of a beautiful space held with intentionality, with love, with care. There is, that is the real place. Someone just opens that up. A group of people or a, so maybe we call them space holders, but we don't have this centralized,
Adrian: Or facilitator versus a shaman, but there's still someone creating a sense of safety and holding the space and
Spring: Yeah. That's very important to not disregard, because then I see some people getting in trouble off on their own, doing all these things and then calling and being like, I was stuck and terrified and re-traumatized..., you know, it's like...
So it's like holding that balance, but I think the key is that. The medicine is in you, the connection is [00:23:00] direct. And how do we create spaces that foster that direct connection where there's nobody in that seat of ultimate power, where they're sort of, you know, it, it's, it's a lot of danger in that and that, and we've seen where that has gotten people into a lot of trouble.
Not only, traveling and being in situations where there was , somebody acting as a shaman or, you know, there's a lot of fakes. So that's the danger. It's every, for every 10, there might be one real one. The other nine are acting, you know, in some way.
It's a job. It it's a lifestyle, but there's not that deep, compassionate heart invested in their own spiritual growth.
So it's just, it feels like a new time. It feels like we are the medicine and for many of us who trained in that, there's so many gifts that I receive there, but also so many things that I now want to do differently, and we're in a new place and a new time and in a different [00:24:00] culture.
And I think that it's less power down and more power to, power around. Everybody holds their own seat of power. And even when someone's taking the medicine and they are in a very vulnerable position, to remind them how powerful they are, that the light is in them. They don't have to keep looking out, to displace their liberation somewhere else, or even if they're getting help, it's still them.
They're doing the work, they're in relationship. There's just a way to hold even real healing that happens where I'm helping someone and there is a shift in the energy, but it's them doing it. It's compassion doing it. There's no one behind it.
Adrian: Yes.
Spring: Yeah.
Adrian: Which, if you have the view if you have a non-dual, you know, Buddhist
Spring: That... actually,
Adrian: quit.
Spring: not most of them, they have a very solid sense of self.
Adrian: There's a very, there's a very dualistic view. Yeah. And that right there is, I think a key part of what I feel is a difference in terms of what I'm trying to [00:25:00] promote on this platform and the way I approach the medicine and the way I learned it from my friend who facilitates versus the traditional approach.
It's that non-dual versus dual dualistic,
Spring: Yeah. And that's a very refined perspective, right? Most people who are, say, where there's a veteran who has huge amounts of trauma, they might benefit a lot from working in a Shipibo ceremony.
But there is a point where as we evolve, we then start to need something different, right? Where we're on that level where our, now our saṅkhāra are about uprooting, dualistic view.
That is,
So this doesn't work anymore when we're, we're refining that level of insight, and trying to rest in a deeper truth that becomes an obstacle.
Adrian: Yeah. I think people can come to it naturally, and sometimes that is, um, that's one way to learn. Learning's a process of discovery, and you don't tell people as much upfront. And it's that power of discovery that's really [00:26:00] potent.
But I'm also thinking the value of having a map, which you alluded to at the beginning of the conversation, and from a Vajrayana perspective, for example, right? It's taking fruition of the path. They give you that non-dual view upfront.
And just even telling someone, even the veteran, someone who's never, studied, practiced dharma, just given the metaphor of the mirror of awareness, everything that's happening is a reflection in the mirror of the awareness, the scary demon or whatever it is out there.
it's not an actual. Not reaffining it. We don't need to use the word reaffine with them. But like it is a manifestation of mind. It's an appearance in the mirror and you can turn towards it. You can check in if there's resistance, or if you're opening to it.
But even just giving people that mirror of awareness or there's different metaphors. Mind is like the sky metaphor. Even though if it's just an intellectual understanding and they don't get that direct recognition for a very long time, I find can really shift people a lot.
Spring: Yeah. It's like we're planting the really deep seeds of truth in [00:27:00] them in those moments. Rather they're unconsciously ruminating on it or it's, exactly, and that's where I am now. I'm working, where I've come with the medicine is exactly that,
Adrian: say more about that.
Spring: Yeah. Well, I recently, on the 10 year anniversary, I felt this, I felt I'm, I think I'm gonna retire, right?
Because somehow after 14 years and leading hundreds of ceremonies, and I don't even know how many retreats, probably over a hundred of our 14 day all out, you know, I, I realized as I was thinking about letting it go, that's the perfect metaphor, right? You're like well, I'll retire.
And then I was like, but I don't wanna retire because all over the world people send me these messages and they're like, and I have great conversations like this. And I thought, no, there's a role for this. I get invited to maps and speak about it and clergy. And I thought this is a unique thing because we were one of the early pioneers of being a Buddhist based, you [00:28:00] know, blending Buddhism and shamanism. And so I thought I, I'll just strip it down to its essence.
And I thought about Green Tara, and I said, what if Green Tara's our guide now. The Enlightened Feminine, the Enlightenment the awakened, Buddha, and that's the real guide.
It was almost like the 10 years I was like stripping it all. It was like this journey, going all over and back again. I thought, what if Awakened Consciousness is the guide? And I guess I was maybe scared of that, that people wouldn't get it or they needed these external pieces to feel safe, but, I just trusted. So I let all of that go and I put Green Tara, I redid our whole website and now it's owed to Tara, the awakened Buddha in a feminine form. And what if I allowed Tara to be the maestra? And I evoked Tara and we did Tara practice and we invoke compassion as the greatest guide?
And that's my new [00:29:00] birth. Letting go. And of course there's myself and some people refer to me as a maestra or curendera or anything. I don't know. It doesn't really matter. It's just compassion that sings and moves and I have this team of other Dharma devotional people, really, truly dharma folks, not just a team that's half and half, which causes a little bit of a
Adrian: Yeah.
Spring: misses the mark on some level. Yeah, there's like this constant, I have to like work to align versus we are holding together kind of devotional faith and frequency of refuge, so that became the new birth. That's what I'm doing now.
Adrian: Very interesting. It's so
Spring: Yeah.
Adrian: how,
Spring: Full circle,
Adrian: and I, that's what you're describing is, I, and I'm gonna ask, I want to hear more about what the actual ceremony space looks like, but that just totally resonates with my own way that I approach the medicine.
You know, It's really through a dzogchen view and path and it's [00:30:00] invoking, whatever deity resonates, most, sometimes it's coming from Vajrayana, sometimes it's the Hindu tantra traditions.
You know, we can pick those archetypes that resonate most with us. But it's important, I think, to honor the traditions and the cultures where it came from, but also give it permission to adapt. And this is why I love the Dharma's a great metaphor, because the dharma had to adapt.
Whatever it went. Like Tibetan Buddhism is quite different from Buddhism in Sri Lanka and it's quite different from Zen because it needs to meet people where they are and Buddhism's really great about that. It's not dogmatic, it can adapt. The same thing I think is true for this medicine and for ayahuasca or so on.
And one thing that I hear about people, for example, like from Thailand, it's, they're people who connected with my friend who's a facilitator, but then they said they couldn't really relate to it through that kind of more shamanic way, but when it was in the, just there is a safe space, the medicine, I've noticed this a lot with Thais, they naturally get lots of Buddhist archetypes coming through. Or someone [00:31:00] who's Muslim saying, I'd like to work with it, but that, or a Christian. But that just, there's certain things about that container that might violate some of my own religious principles or practice.
People just need to be able to make sense of it through their own framework and we can give them a secular view, like the mirror of awareness, but there needs to be some permission for people to play with it and make sense of it in their own meaning making, specific way.
Spring: Absolutely. I was inspired to create Lotus Vine Journeys from Santo Daime, the church that started in Brazil's worldwide, but they're the Christian Ayahuasca church.
And I remember feeling they can do a Christian, they do whole church services, right? Oh, they have a Jesus shrine and they have Mary and they sing all their biblical songs and hymns, it's in Portuguese. However, it's a worldwide movement and they're legal in the US too. They fought the government and they won their religious freedoms rights and all of that.
But they [00:32:00] inspired me actually to create a Buddhist based framework because it was so helpful. And when people would go there to Santa Daime, they would say I liked it, but I didn't really relate to the archetypes that they were worshiping, which was a light around Jesus.
They actually think ayahuasca is the blood of Christ. So as they're it, they're literally
in that view. I. It's a sacrament. And I love that for people who have the Christian faith and they go deep with it and they feel connected in a totally different way. And so I think you're right, as these communities evolve and it's hard, right?
Because we wanna always honor where things come from. There was this tremendous gift given and that was carried through these people who are making the medicine. Even right now, the medicine makers are, most of them are in pucallpa. Right, or harvesting and putting medicine not only all over Peru, but Brazil and people there.
So there's a deep sense of having [00:33:00] one foot in the honor and then another foot in the adaptation and the evolution of liberation, which different things are needed at different times to break through. And what might work for me 10 years ago, no longer feels liberatory. It did at the beginning. It really, I needed it. It was important. And now it's just something different as we're on a new, in a new age.
So I guess there's that tension between the old and the new. The ancestors, the medicine carriers and I think where we, where people get averse to this adaptation is when they feel that there's not a recognition of the labor, the work, the time where this medicine comes from and how it was worked with and so there...
I think there just always has to be that going back in order to honor, to understand, to know, and then as we adapt to just not lose sight of the good things that were there. And then adapting [00:34:00] it to this moment in time right now in 2025 and allowing it to grow, allowing Ayahuasca to flourish because there also can be that keeping her in a box of tradition and rules and it's also binding that energy.
So I noticed from, yeah, I tread that tension of those two wanting to always be honoring because that's where I had my deepest healing in the jungle and then knowing, okay, here we are. So it's that that understanding of both of those have to be a part of this. So even now, I don't wanna make it sound like I'm denouncing, it's just growing out of something.
It's evolving and the medicine wants to evolve the medicine's consciousness. She's not beholden to one group of people. She's beholden to the collective awakening,
And there's the honoring of those who labor to actually produce it, and to understand it. So I just noticed I have those questions around, [00:35:00] all of those are still alive in me as I express this new, vision and move into it of how to carry that lineage and then move it forward to meet the moment.
Adrian: Yeah. You know, It's something that you just said there about honoring it, like the specific group of people who nurtured it, but that it doesn't belong to the supreme intelligence, doesn't belong to a particular group. And it reminds me a lot of a quote from Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche where he talks about Dzogchen and he really, he is very open-minded and innovative in a lot of ways, and he basically, I'm paraphrasing, but said something along the lines of... Dzogchen happened to be discovered within Tibet, by Tibetan people. I'm sure there's some debate perhaps with other Himalayan groups about that, or bond people. So I'm not weighing in on that. But it happened to be discovered in a particular area by a particular group of people but Dzogchen doesn't belong to the Tibetan people or to a particular, it's just the nature of mind.
It just happened to be discovered there. It's like gravity was discovered, in a particular area of the [00:36:00] world, but it doesn't belong to that group of people. It's something universal,
Spring: Yeah. And it, I really understand that because I remember talking to Jack and he used to tell me ashancha was teaching Dzogchen.
Adrian: Right.
Spring: Es. that all the time. I Dzogchen from Rajancha in the jungle.
Adrian: Tsoknyi Rinpoche was doing those retreats for a little bit with Ajahn Amaro on the connection between Thai Forest tradition and Dzogchen.
Spring: Yeah. I so, so the wisdom doesn't belong to anyone. Yet there's a kind of honoring those who, harnessed it and shared it. And I think, and that's sometimes what gets lost in the West. They take without honoring, and that becomes the big sticking point that feels unbalanced with it.
We know that Tibetans didn't just discovers Dzogchen. It's the nature of mind.
It's like, However, when we go, oh, these great bastards who sat in caves 20 years and then [00:37:00] escaped across the border to share it there's something also about giving that respect and devotion and honor thanking those who labored.
And I, I, I, for me, that's the only tension I see here with bringing things is there's just such that consumption, appropriation with no acknowledgement that happens that it just sometimes gets tied up in people's minds and it, we can get tied up in the culture war around it when there's not the love and the honoring and that...
So for me that has to be there with Shipibos, is I always honor the depths of their own medicine. And the wisdom and the icaros and the power and that clear stream that was there and still is in its depth, right?
There's that clear nature of mind piece that runs through that tradition. But yet knowing that there's limitations too on everything. So I just like to, I'm grappling with that as I express this new way, without [00:38:00] having the focus be on the indigenous maestro shaman, and it's more of this other blend
Adrian: Yeah,
Spring: conversation that comes up,
Adrian: I bet it does. Can you talk a little bit more about the specifics of what this blend looks like that you're offering?
Spring: It's just really the same in so many ways, like the same type of schedule where we are doing less ceremonies now. I think I, I remember in the old days, you came to one of my early ones. I think we were still doing seven ceremonies or some huge,
Adrian: Eight, it was two on one off, and that was really rough for me. I need a night off now after that. Yeah. Two in a row is tough.
Spring: That also was influenced by my hardcore era, where I was coming out of the jungle for a year. So I'd lived on the medicine for a year straight doing diera, nonstop, nonstop nonstop.
I didn't understand what it meant to integrate and slow down. There was only [00:39:00] one year in that time, and that has been such a huge evolution of, wow, people are fainting outside and crying before the ceremony, I'd be like, come on, do you wanna heal or not? And that understanding that healing is happening so we stopped that after a couple years. I think the last 14 day I did, and we only had four ceremonies. We did a fifth one was
Adrian: Right. I saw that it, there, there was also I can now compare it later, but there was a lot of chacruna in that brew. It was like really
Spring: Oh yeah,
incredible. DMT. And so we were doing all the things that were blasting off, but I don't know all the time if it was grounded. That was the model that I had picked up from my year of diets and all, not only that year, I'd been doing retreats for, I don't know, seven years before that. That was the program of how you worked with it. There was no innovation. It was like that's what you were [00:40:00] doing.
So now as we step back and we're understanding trauma and of course all these things, so I. Yeah, it's the same thing. I work with a group of basically musicians and healers and we just set a beautiful stage and we go in and you know, we evoke Tara and we have the dharma talk and we're healing our bodies and yeah, I think we're playing all the same medicine, music and icaros but it's just framed completely different.
It's framed as you are a Buddha. Let's try to remember, okay, this is a remembrance ceremony and it might hurt and you might purge and you might cry and you, you know, it's just, I'm just framing it all different as my own evolution of understanding and what appeals to me. And I asked Tara, the awakened mind to be the guide, to be the real maestro lead this ceremony.
And it's just so beautiful and so whole. It's so [00:41:00] nurturing.
Adrian: It sounds like you're really I'm hearing that you're really integrating the Buddhism throughout all of it now. Because before when I was there, it was woven together beautifully, but it was really like, the Dharma was present. There was a dharma talk for the integration the night off, and then there would be a Dharma talk and some meditation before the ceremony.
But then once we were in the ceremony space the Buddhist symbols and language that didn't enter the space so much, it was really the okay then it's the traditional Shipibo. And what I'm hearing here is it's really sort of the Buddhist tradition's, really infusing every aspect, including the ceremony space.
Spring: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because that's what I need and that's what many of us need . And I think you were at those early retreats where I wasn't even co-leading as much, so that began to be different too as I began to take over more and more parts of the ceremony and guide and so there was that all, I didn't know how to integrate these two back then.
I was experimenting with [00:42:00] what I thought. And also when you're doing seven ceremonies, everyone's tired. There's no time dharma. You know, There wasn't a lot of time to
sit.
Adrian: eight now that I'm remembering. It was eight
Spring: Oh God, you were there the first two years and
I mean,
Yeah. Yeah. So we started in 15 and I think you were the last year where I had eight.
I was like, okay, we're gonna cut this down. I remember going to six was like revolutionary and it was still, and then we went to five people, complained initially until they did it and they were like, thank God we only had five. I'm like, guys, the medicine's also amplifying here. It's getting stronger, it's getting more powerful. One ceremony could do what three used to do. You know? So So,
Yes. So my ceremony now is completely interwoven. We have times of mindfulness, mantra, evoking, the deities, whether it's Tara or, Gautama, or Maitreya, [00:43:00] it's just coming back to taking refuge.
So it's naturally infused more, I think it's naturally my own embodiment and every guide is different, right? What they're embodying and how they're holding comes through their own heart, and that deep commitment to Bodhi Chitta and the Bodhi Satva path for me is everything and how I wanna lead. If I couldn't lead from that place I was gonna retire. I was like, it's this or nothing now.
This is the only context that I wanna work with this particular organization, which is Lotus Vine Journeys. I'm also doing other, starting a whole nother program here in Georgia. But that's still rooted in the same ideas.
But this, Lotus Vine has always been just a grand experiment.
Adrian: Yeah,
Spring: It continues to evolve and.
Adrian: Just a grand experiment. Yeah,
Spring: And I love that it's evolving and I hope that even in, I look back in two years and go, wow, we're doing this now we're doing Dzogchen meditation in the ceremony. Beautiful. Or
we're,
Adrian: Are you [00:44:00] doing Dzogchen meditation in the ceremony?
Spring: We're trying to point people in that direction, by the end.
Yeah. And we're doing, and now , I also use Wachuma, the San Pedro as my third ceremony because I think it brings so much balance and harmony and embodiment and heart.
And it's an interesting time to reflect, and I have been over this journey of many years on how to work with plants and not only that, also psilocybin has become very important to me now and how I can help people through psilocybin.
So my journey with the medicine will just continue to evolve as I also host just psilocybin retreats, which actually can be as powerful and illuminating. And so we're just like opening up everything at this stage.
Adrian: Very cool. I love that. I'd love to get your perspective on this. I think there's so much talk now about psychedelic integration for good reason. But it's [00:45:00] interesting how I think there's very little emphasis in like psychedelic preparation a lot of times like that hasn't become a buzzword to the extent that psychedelic integration has.
And that's one thing I notice a lot. It's like people have this big experience and then they're like, oh, I need help integrating it. I found your channel or this or that. Comparatively fewer people who I meet, especially from the west, who are like, oh, you know, I'm really intrigued by it, but actually I wanna take my time and develop a meditation practice.
And that's part of why I am creating this channel is to emphasize the importance of preparation as well as integration.
So I'm curious what you all are doing in terms of helping to prepare people. I imagine you also identify type of crowd who's more than average, perhaps, more prepared, has a meditation practice, things like that.
But I'd just be curious what, the way you approach that psychedelic
Spring: Yeah,
Adrian: preparation.
Spring: I would agree with you that the [00:46:00] preparation is also, that's something I appreciate about the indigenous people, though. They used to talk a lot about preparation, right? Diet, mental, all the things there. So I think some way I've really adopted that lately. For me, we have all these twice a month, I have info sessions, teaching sessions for preparation.
That anybody can come to, they're open. If you're interested in coming to a retreat, you can hear about that retreat in general. But what I'm teaching is how to prepare.
How to prepare the mind, the body, the spirit, our intentions, our motivation and doing that deep work of compassion.
That's mostly how I train people is to get into their heart because it is gonna be the heart that holds it. It's gonna be this compassionate awareness, loving awareness that holds it. And so that kind of preparation is, yeah, it's really important. And it's not something that people realize because when you hear about the [00:47:00] benefits, everyone just runs and give it to me now, so we're catching up.
But I do think as I talked to friends of mine who are in this field and from, one of my good friends is East Forest Krishna, who yeah. He recently released this music for Mushrooms documentary. And I'm a lot in the documentary. And so we had a premier here in Atlanta, Georgia.
And this conversation about preparation, being prepared, setting the set, and setting this information is gonna have to be really widely distributed. And what I like about Krishna or Issa is he's preparing all this music for those who are gonna take the medicine alone or outside.
He's like, I see this as a huge calling because they're going to need a guide and through this five hour journey album, I'm gonna give the all up and down and if they could just lock onto that. So we do need to teach people preparation because as we [00:48:00] enter into this period where systems are collapsing, where the health systems and psychiatric systems, mental health, you will have a huge group of people consuming psychedelics and not always knowing how to do this.
And so I'm hoping that many people come out of the closet from therapists and guides and we start making music and recording on how to prepare and having these conversations. Because I think the world, all the people who are losing their jobs in the U.S., I'm like, get into psychedelic therapy. This is the new paradigm, right?
This is the new world. This will be the, I believe for the next few years will be a massive shifting, but people do need to understand the wisdom and understand the power of these plants, and that should be emphasized in a preparation guide.
And so that's a lot about what I talked about with people and medication and healthcare and what's happening here and [00:49:00] what's not to be combined.
Still, it's a lot of information, but I think as we move this out of the hidden realm of healthcare and into the forefront, hopefully there'll be a tremendous amount of information coming online from people like myself or you or others. Hundreds and thousands of others that are guiding this work to be more explicit in preparation.
And then, during self-guided, this is huge.
Adrian: Yeah. Yeah.
Spring: What do you do when you're alone? And you just don't even know. You know what music to listen to, what can help you. And so I also plan on making a whole bunch of content around this. Preparation.
I'm not sure the vessel to deliver it, rather it's on YouTube or on Spotify or on... I wanna make it 100% accessible.
There needs to be a lot of thought to those who are going to do this in massive amounts. Like large populations of people when this research starts coming in and [00:50:00] could even be a massive, legalization, just the door thrown open on it very quickly. We don't know what the government here in the US where things are landing, but it's a deregulation time.
So this could just, the flood gates could just get pushed open. And I don't think that's a bad thing. I think this is like our Hail Mary pass.
Yeah.
This is just something I'm happier talking about and thinking about because I do believe if we could make this as part of the healing of the heart and the mind and there, there's a lot happening.
Spring: I'm, I'm tracking new people online who are doctors and therapists that are putting out really good guidelines.
Adrian: Excellent. Yeah, and also just having open source, like just best practices because not so applicable for ayahuasca, for maybe practical reasons and things like that, but psilocybin, stuff like that, I think there are safer ways to do that. in a group of people, if it's done responsibly, you have a sober sitter or that sober sitter maybe has some experience, you're following best [00:51:00] practices.
There are ways to mitigate, a lot of those things and that information just needs to get out there, also knowing people are just gonna do it anyways.
Spring: there. Oh yeah, though always, because that's just part of what people can do. They might not be able to access a sitter guide and, but they have their friends and they're out in the woods and be a good or bad, but we can keep trying to elevate the conversations and to keep trying to provide the support.
And as I meet people and people write to me all the time, having had difficult experiences... I think good Ayahuasca is less available. There is a kind of built in guardrails there. It's very hard to get ayahuasca anywhere. And if you do order it online somewhere, the quality and the, you don't really know.
Adrian: It is just harder to make even just even if you were doing pure DMT, which is not the same as ayahuasca. It just takes a lot more effort in like engineering skills and botany, whatever to make it, so it's not like you can't just get the bag of psilocybin mushrooms so that it, [00:52:00] it has these higher barriers to entry.
Spring: Which I think is important. The earth itself is guarding it in a certain way.
yeah.
And even the recipes are very intricate. You know, Ayahuasca works when she wants to work, and how the rest, there's a lot of bad batches out there.
Many people who have worked on it, and worked on it, and worked on it,
Adrian: Oh totally. After drinking, now I'm biased 'cause the more you know now that I've drunk a lot with my friend, do I really trust him and how he makes it, people are like, oh, you should come um, joiner circle. I was like, I really appreciate the invitation, but I'm like, I'm not drinking someone else's ayahuasca. I don't know what's in it.
dunno what's Yeah,
Spring: Exactly. And you know, it's just, yeah I'm glad that there are guardrails around that. Also, there's more contraindicated issues with that. That's why I love moving into more psilocybin and wachuma, which I think is an unsung hero of the plant world., San Pedro.
So learning how to work with those and able to grow those here in the [00:53:00] U.S. That's also something! I.
Adrian: I had love to ask you something on that note about the contraindication. I share your, what I imagined your view, which is so much of the benefits, really half of the benefits really are coming from the vine or peganam harmala. They're coming from the beta carboline, so much of the healing regenerative properties.
And so for me, I'm really someone who wants to take the full plant medicine and not, vape DMT. But for someone who has contraindications with the MAOI aspect, in your experience, what has been the value or what is the value in terms of healing or other properties for people who are just doing pure DMT from what you've observed?
Spring: Yeah, I don't think DMT just a smokeable experience is a full experience. It's nothing like an eight hour
Adrian: Right?
Spring: journey with ayahuasca where you are unveiling layers and purging out entities or working on your family tree or clearing your DNA. I think it has some potential. It's a [00:54:00] doorway, but for me, that's not a full one.
For me, the Ayahuasca full journey, with the vine, because you're with a doctor, people have to understand Ayahuasca is a doctor. There are the DMT Spirits for sure, we interact with them. But Ayahuasca is a chief of staff, ultimate soul doctor. So if you need to go again, that DMT could actually be a, like the mc light meditation we were talking about doing, some people could adopt that and think they're doing that soul level clearing and it again, it's not really,
Adrian: Yeah.
Spring: I've told DMT many times, it is oh yeah, this is incredible and can open gates and beautiful things. But again, those deeper sankaras. they're another level to get to.
They're another level to grapple with. They require an aware presence. That is more than just surface.[00:55:00]
Adrian: Yeah. That's removing the karmic notch from the subtle body, is really what the beta carbolines
Spring: yeah. We have to go into the underworld, we have to pull out, otherwise it rules us, and you only have to look around on the planet right now to understand when greed, hatred and delusion is not cleared. The destruction, the delusion and the power that those who have, are gripped in that can exert on humanity.
And so for me that is such a profound, if anything, it's an inspiration to go deeper into, uplifting, to looking at the shadow and to working with it. However, I, and I'm gonna tell you another thing, I've been, I have a really good friend of mine who is a scientist at this incredible like a retreat center in Madison, Wisconsin called Usona.
And he helped extract the molecule outta the mushroom
Adrian: Okay.
Spring: so that they could put it into tablets and that they could [00:56:00] run it through the FDA as a treatment for resistant depression.
And him and I talk all the time, he's brilliant. He's come visited me in Georgia and we talk about all this and he always laughs when I talk about these different molecules.
He goes, at the end of the day, they're the same.
Because I always go, no, this ayahuasca. And I go, well this. So I do think in a way all these plants. there is a similar, so I think psilocybin can mimic ayahuasca in high dosages.
Adrian: Well, the molecular structure is very similar, right? People talk about that of DMT and psilocybin.
Spring: Yeah. There's a similarity and I think at the end of the day, also, the plant world has become non-dual too.
It's just the higher mind talking to the confused mind.
Thus the Buddha nature. And so I've gotten where I used to be really specific, I can't go, okay. I've re-looked at psilocybin and wachuma in different ways. So that was very preferential to Ayahuasca, believing that Aya is [00:57:00] the most powerful one.
And I do believe she is, but due to the lack of resource of that medicine here in the west, we just don't have it. Last year , I don't know how much vine they lost. It was so much in all those fires, those never ending fires. And so that medicine, I don't know how it will exist unless it's planted in massive quantities... but psilocybin...
Adrian: But you're giving me an incredible segue there, which I have to take, which is that. That's part of the reason my friend and I are very excited about peganam harmala, which has harmine and harmaline, which are the same key beta carbolines for people don't know in the Ayahuasca vine.
And so peganam harmala could grow, in the climate, in the southwest or in many parts of the US Yes. So it's indigenous too, and it grows all over Spain. The Middle East, you could grow it. It was big India, Kashmir, and you can grow it in parts of the US and I'm, telling you, when you take it I don't wanna say [00:58:00] it's the same. It definitely, it's a different plant and it feels different, I think with the vine.
You know, It feels, the way it grows in nature, it really takes over things. It goes into every corner of your body and pulls things out. It's more purgative that way, but it is the same intelligence and I find the benefit also of harmala is, I think after I went through my initial ayahuasca, ceremonies as somebody who wa wanted to work with it in an ongoing way, it's easier to work with in an ongoing way 'cause it's just a bit lighter on the body, at least for me.
But it does that same function of, it's providing the relaxation, it's opening the channels in the subtle body, it's helping to remove those karmic knots when it's in union with chacruna or another DMT source.
And it's just so you know, my friend who grows vine says he is that, he said that's something I can feel growing the vine versus peganam harmala. Peganam Harmala's is just so much more sustainable.
So I really think this could be,
you know, yeah. A [00:59:00] way to solve this issue around sustainability and also growing it locally within the US.
Spring: We have to have definitely another conversation
because this is. Yeah, I've been hearing about these blends and stuff, but I've never met anyone who's really worked with what you're describing in this new way. But yes, sustainability.
These medicines have to become easier, sustainable to grow, and I do believe, the ability to share them wider and wider. I think these medicines I see as a huge shift in consciousness over the next three years.
There's a kind of period we have here and I do believe that these are gonna play a major role in the shifting consciousness and
Adrian: Absolutely.
Spring: Mm-hmm.
Adrian: Absolutely.
Spring: So the easier access, the better, on some level.
Adrian: yeah, and we could also grow. Excellent DMT sources in parts of the US right. Those same acacia that are very popular in Australia. You could grow the [01:00:00] Cordi, the Favifilo and um, the in certain parts of the US as well.
Spring: Wow.
Adrian: And that's what my friend calls, the Soma, which is it's the mix of that acacia growing DMT with the peganam harmala, and that's part of the hypothesis and why some people, there's a scholar at SOAs in London who speculates, it's just a hypothesis, but that this was the Soma from the Rigveda was a combination of the peganam harmala and DMT sources.
Spring: We always wonder what would the, what was the ingredient?
Adrian: Yeah. Whether it was or not. Either way, I find that it, it mirrors that experience that is described in Soma and that's what's compelling about, because it's not only the entheogenic, but it has that Soma was the elixir of immortality. It was regenerative and the beta carbolines bring that regenerative property to the experience.
I noticed there's [01:01:00] a lot of language in Ayahuasca, and I felt this about, it reprogrammed me, it deprogrammed me, all these kind of things. That's coming from the beta carbolines again, in union it's about the synergy with the sentient intelligence in DMT, but the beta carbolines are critical to that.
And actually some people who combine psilocybin with these beta carbolines say it's very similar to ayahuasca if you take them together.
Spring: Yeah.
Oh, interesting. Yeah. I recently did a high dose of psilocybin for the first time, a really high dose, and it mimicked Aya.
I really honestly think all this information and intelligence moves with this time. With this wisdom coming out on all of this is just so profound.
Adrian: This didn't have existed 15 years ago to have a conversation like that and to have access, right? But now we do just think about how much the growth, how much. It is just extraordinary.
Well Thank you so much for your time Spring. Really appreciate it and [01:02:00] really looking forward to sharing your wisdom with a much larger audience.
Spring: Oh, so good to be back with you and to see how 10 years have evolved, a lot has happened and nothing, still the same conversations on liberation.
Adrian: That's right. Thank you so much. 'cause I know you're really busy. I appreciate your time.
Spring: Absolutely. Thank
Adrian: you.
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None of this represents medical advice or advocacy and should be construed as a recommendation to use psychedelics.
There are [01:03:00] serious legal, psychological, and physical risks. Psychedelics are not for everyone. They can exacerbate certain emotional problems, and there have been, in very rare cases, fatalities.
Thank you very much for listening, and I hope to see you on the next episode, or elsewhere on the SahajaSoma platform.