The Dark Side of Psychedelics

One of the more essential and forgotten aspects of psychedelic experiences is the shadow side of all people. This side includes less involved with profound visuals, aha moments and inner healing and more engaged with hidden aspects of misguided or under-educated use and malicious intent.

Light Your Darkness Without Falling Deeper In It

Since the dawn of time, it’s in the shadows that lurk the predators and blind spots that have timelessly intimidated humanity. Some steer clear of the darkness and keep safe. Others use the dark to cover their hidden agendas and the rare few ventures into the dark shadows to bring light. Tools that have been used since the dawn of art and human expression to illuminate the darkness are psychedelic plants. But these plants are tools that can be used to light the dark or fall deeper into the darkness.

Recreational Drug Use vs. Plant Medicine Experience

A lot of young people are doing these substances at a concert with thousands of people and very loud music that may not have the highest intentions. It might be music that’s coming from a place of ego, and they only consume junk food and alcohol. Taking that into account this definitely won’t give them a profoundly personal experience. You have to choose if you want to use the full potential psychedelics or play some psychedelic roulette. People have taken it under a lot of lousy circumstances like the raves where they don’t know what they are taking or how much they are taking.

The revolution the Psychedelic raise at the 60s where drugs and dancing became the mantra. These raves have been the setting where many psychedelic experiences went wrong. The music is typified by monotonous drums and catchy hooks that go for the extended amount of time to afford people long soundscapes upon which to dance. Someone could say that it’s a revival of shamanic trance rhythms, but these scenes seem less interested in community bonding and prayers. It’s more into recreational drug use. However, there is also a resurgence of ceremony prayer and oneness once you leave the typical rave scene and enter festivals like Burning Man, Lucidity Envision, Spirit Weavers, and Symbiosis.

How Ancestors Used Psychedelics

Just as our ancestors had no rules for the responsible use of psychedelics the youth today are finding their own ways to explore the depths of conscious while remaining in modern style gatherings. But the most significant differences is that traditional ceremonies included only those participants that the shaman would allow. Today anyone with any intention is just a ticket away from the psychedelic journey.

Gathering together for music dance and psychedelic journeys is not new. In ancient Greece, the festivals were a time for people to gather dance and sing, even perform plays in partaking psychoactive herbs infused in alcohol. Across the Atlantic, in present-day Mexico, the Aztecs worship the God of dance, pleasure, joy and psychoactive plants named Xochipilli. It’s hard to know how safe the set and settings were on these festivals. But we know they were highly celebrated as opportunities to depart from daily labor.

There hasn’t been enough medical research to make any scientific claim regarding the dangers of psychedelic journeys around thousands of strangers, but when you open on a trance festival, there’s always some shadow that can enter. And when you are hurt inside you will attract a similar kind of hurt from somebody else. That is seen as darkness.

In Shamanism they have the courage and tools and techniques and the focus to go into the darkness. That doesn’t allow fear, there is light to gain in the darkness, and that light has to be. That’s soul retrieval. Using the best methods Shaman empowers others to listen to their own words and therefore their own subconscious.

Acknowledge the Shadow, But Don’t Embrace It

By educating people about the energetic anomalies, which are yet to be scientifically proven, we will learn just how much we don’t know. Once this is acknowledged receptivity, and sensitivity to psychic phenomena can be addressed. This is the safeguard against life shadow elements. However, there is also the flip side of this coin.

Those who are overly fascinated by the world of psychedelics yet naive to the landscape are in danger of delusion and vulnerable to the Shadows that look therein. It is believed by some psychotherapist that people can be hypnotized by forces that work through them. And it is believed that these individuals become driven to climb corporate ladders or inject themselves into positions of power.

Use This Tool In The Right Way

Psychedelics are tools that can be used in different ways. They can be used for healing, inducing spiritual experiences, or for nonethical experiments. The way forward safely and intelligently is to understand protections we have available to us. The power of psychedelics is to open the mind to new information, not simply to make the world look better than it is. It’s to address the shadow side of life. Psychedelics help to understand the life, not by giving us all answers, but they dismantle unhealthy beliefs that shadow our vision. They offer anew perspective to worldviews and because of this, a new and more relevant understanding of the actual world we live in.