From the moment I sat in my first psychedelic therapy training, I knew there was a disconnect within the premise of post journey integration.  For me to unravel where Integration misses the mark, it’s important to understand what one is aiming at.

Firstly, the “westernized” model of utilizing Spirit medicines in therapy follows a linear and individualized format.  After Journey work one will have an “integration” session to collect oneself and make sense of the lessons and experiences from the medicine. Integration fits nicely into this medical model of treating your problem with surgery (spiritual surgery in this case), and after you are wide open, you are then sown back up and assumed as “healed.”

Attempting to fit the vastness of Spirit medicines into the limited container of westernized scientific thought is the first faltering step.  There is still the heavy focus of the individualized self, where Spirit medicines have been honored for time immeasurable to dissolve the self.

If you can imagine this modern therapeutic approach to integration as a circle.  One has the experience that begins to dissolve the boundaries between self into collective consciousness, and then is guided to circle back to distilling it inward and reconstructing ego.

In the original shaman alchemy of Tao, Spirit medicine expands outward horizontally and vertically, not as a circle.  It’s expansive, creating a connection portal, where we no longer exist as an individualized island.

The aim of the western (or better yet, colonialized) medicine is to focus on individualized healing.  If one person “heals” themselves then they will be free from suffering, and yet this has proven to be a failed concept, as our sickness grows deeper within the chasm of disconnection.

At the time of this article there is a current horrifying genocide of Indigenous land stewards in Palestine.  How people have been responding while they bear witness is a reflection of their own ancestral trauma and connection to collective consciousness.  The westernized mind of individualism, where one is not reliant on the collective for safety, will keep us circulating back to this type of immense suffering, over and over again. 

Within Spirit medicines there is Indigenous wisdom, a sense of belonging to the collective past, present and future, to the Earth and the cosmos.  In this realm there are no politics, no religion, no currency, no hatred, no greed, no fear, with both the dissolution and alchemy of identity.

Honoring these deep teachings comes with responsibility for safeguarding the collective.  

Think of it as a 7th sense.  Those of us who are stewarding these sacred medicines are looking around to see who is also care-taking this 7th sense, and who has integrated horizontally into the collective instead of circularly back into the individual ego.

This is a moment of great opportunity and healing across generations, almost like a blurred energetic frequency of time and space.  Although grasping this opportunity is dependent on dismantling the colonialized mindset of self care before community care.

As for me, I have renamed “integration sessions” with “alchemy sessions.”  Alchemy, as in the ancient spiritual discipline of achieving alchemical consciousness.  

The alchemical mystery of the heart according to Taoist medicine is the healing transformation of life experiences – the lead weight of suffering, illness, loss and humiliation – into the gold of wisdom, connection, empathy, and insight.  When we transform, we do not circle back to what was.  We discover a new space filled with the possibility of collective healing and liberation from suffering.