Ceremony has had its roots in every culture, throughout all of human history. Whether honoring birth, death, marriage, rites of passage, or the changing of the seasons, ceremony marks the passage of time and provides context to our lives. In indigenous cultures, many of these traditions include the ceremonial use of plant-based medicines.
The United States, with its widely diverse religious and cultural ancestry, lacks the rich ceremonial heritage of more homogeneous populations, especially those found in indigenous communities. This lack of common ground, combined with the war on drugs, has led to a general mistrust of sacred plant-based medicine ceremonies. However, a rising wave of researchers, medical professionals and truth-seekers believe that the ceremonial use of plant-based medicines may play a universal role in healing; personally, societally, and globally.
Rite-of-passage ceremonies are used to celebrate major life transitions. An indigenous vision quest bridges the gap between childhood and adulthood. The transition from adulthood to elder-hood is similarly met with dignity and honor as indigenous communities celebrate the wisdom of their elders in sacred ceremony. Sacred plant-based medicines play an integral role in the communion of man, nature and God.
In modern U.S. culture, the lack of sacred ceremony creates a void. This void has become so prevalent, we consider wide-spread depression and anxiety as normal for teens or adults going through “mid-life crisis”.
It’s interesting to note that in the absence of sacred nature-based medicines, people turn to synthetic medications, alcohol and party drugs. It’s as if we intuitively know that our bodies need biological assistance navigating major life transitions. But without the help of sacred medicines, we seek our own imperfect solutions, to the detriment of our health.
Humans are intrinsically wired for ceremony. Ceremony provides a sense of place. It provides connection. Without consciously creating connection to others, connection to nature, connection to God and connection to self, we feel deeply lonely, separate, and untethered.
In ceremony, we give ourselves permission to release the constructs that form the basis of our reality. The use of plant-based medicines in a ceremonial setting creates a shift of state. Consciousness expands beyond even what we experience in deep meditation. These shifts in consciousness are deeply personal and deeply transformational.
In ceremony, many people have access to healing and insight that was not available to them through traditional medical interventions or therapy. A flurry of contemporary research is yielding evidence that indigenous plant-based medicines are accomplishing healing that would take 5-10 years of therapeutic intervention in a medical setting for patients struggling with drug-resistant depression, anxiety, alcohol addiction, drug addiction and PTSD.
As science continues to uncover the adaptogenic properties of many plants and mushrooms, we begin to see the true symbiotic relationship between man and nature. According to the “The Therapeutic Potentials of Ayahuasca: Possible Effects against Various Diseases of Civilization“, which was published in the National Library of Medicine,
“Ayahuasca-induced insights facilitate self-reflection, producing changes in self perspectives that can trigger psychodynamics insights which provide solutions to personal problems that underlie maladaptive lifestyles. Ayahuasca helps resolve personal conflicts by providing conscious insights into patterns of psychological functioning that underlie pathological behaviors such as substance abuse and dependence. Participants of ayahuasca rituals often report insights that enable acceptance of previously denied problems and dysfunctional patterns. The visionary state of consciousness produced by ayahuasca can also provoke reflections on personal relationships which provided the motivation for making the changes necessary to resolve interpersonal problems.”
Beyond healing on a personal level, our society’s need for ceremony has reached a critical level. Apart from death, nothing is as powerful as ceremony in transcending disparities in economic status, social status, race, religion, age and gender.
People describe the bonds formed in sacred ceremony, among people united in the common goal of achieving growth and healing, as being unlike any other relationship they develop in their lifetimes. Finding commonality in delightful and surprising ways, they connect with people who are very different from those who make up established social circles. There is power in this divergence. Ceremony allows people to find compassion for and even intimacy with those who might otherwise be seen as “different” or “other”.
Plant-based medicine ceremonies also create deeper connections with nature. In this contemporary era of computers, organized sports, social media and sprawling suburbs, it’s easy to lose our connection with nature. When people lose connection with nature, they feel out of place, as if this planet isn’t really their home. In ceremony, relationship with the earth is restored and participants re-discover deep gratitude for the many ways nature supports humanity.
We are reminded that everything, including the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat, is a precious gift from a loving Mother. Many people experience direct communion with nature in ceremony, where they become aware of nature’s deep, abiding love. They feel a sacred connectedness to all things living and non-living. This intrinsic sense of belonging recalibrates our capacity for global empathy and restores balance.
In addition to connecting with self, others and nature, plant-based medicines provide a heightened opportunity to commune with God / the Universe / the higher Self. We receive insight, wisdom and perspective that might not otherwise be available to us. In ceremony, we hear the voice of Spirit more clearly.
Words, which are the language of the ego, give way to images, which are the language of the soul. Problems that seemed particularly challenging in our everyday lives lose their power. By releasing entanglements, we have the ability to view life’s challenges from a new, healthier perspective.
Indigenous plant-based healers say that 50% of the work is done in ceremony and 50% is done during a period of time, generally 3-5 days after the ceremony, known as integration. Many people fail to dedicate time and energy to the process of integration. An expeditionary retreat uses movement to integrate the wisdom, insight and perspective gained in ceremony. Through several days hiking through awe-inspiring natural settings, participants of an expeditionary retreat deepen their connections with self, others, nature and God.
Though everyone benefits from ceremony of some kind, those who feel particularly drawn to plant-based medicines often experience something akin to a “calling”. It’s more of a spiritual pull than mere curiosity. At a deep cellular level, you recognize the “rightness” of this form of ceremony and feel the hand of God and nature in that calling.
If you are feeling the call to ceremony, visit our contact page for more information about Escape Bound expeditionary retreats.
