What is healing anyway? To answer that question, we need to ask another question: What is a human being? Healing is recovering from anything that causes you to feel and act less than human. Which begs the question, what is it to be human? I was listening to a podcast in which the host asked…
I’m grateful to my mentor and therapist, Andrew Feldmar, for this principle. When he first dropped it on me I remember being speechless. I could hardly imagine putting it into practice. It’s wisdom spread through my system like a time-release capsule. Here’s why I think it’s so hard to accept, let alone practice. When we…
I intend to write this reflection in two parts, tracking the spiritual progress of our protagonist, Siddhartha, and then riffing on some possible meanings for our own spiritual journey. I must be one of the very few who had never read Herman Hesse’s classic novel, Siddhartha. It’s based (sort of) on the life of the…
The new psychotherapy: MDMA and the Shadow by Ann Shulgin Originally published on Eleusis, n. 3, pp. 3-11, 1995This is a revised and edited version of a talk given at the Psychoactive Sacraments Conference Retreat, sponsored by the Chicago Theological Seminary and the Council on Spiritual Practices Vallombrosa Center, Menlo park, California, U.S., February 16-19, 1995.Modern psychotherapy utilizing psychedelic drugs probably began in…
In my previous life I must have preached on the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness a dozen times or more. I never really feel like I cracked the code. It was my own time in the wilderness that helped me to listen more deeply to what might be going on in this archetypal story….