Flannery O’Connor’s short story, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, plays with the idea of goodness as conventionally understood. A family sets out on a holiday with grandmother in tow. Grandmother, although of good Christian stock, is manipulative and willful. En route, they hear that a murderer named the “Misfit” has escaped from prison,…
You’ve tried everything. Therapy, yoga, positive thinking, meditation, exercise, and fasting. You’ve been on retreats that promised the kundalini serpent would rise up and awaken you. You’ve opened your third eye, cleared your chakras, done past life regressions. Maybe you’ve tried psychedelics. You expected that everything would change. But guess what, at the end of…
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…
Joseph Campbell once wrote something to the effect that when people say they are searching for the meaning of life what they are really searching for is an experience of being alive. This felt experience of being alive, and the realization of its absolute value is what I call “intensity”. We all come into the…
With the proliferation of research studies, along with media coverage, indicating the effectiveness of psychedelics like LSD, MDMA, Iboga, ayahuasca and Psilocybin to treat a wide variety of psychological challenges such as depression, end of life anxiety, relationship challenges, etc. there’s a burgeoning public interest in these substances. Then along comes Michael Pollan’s best-selling book,…