On Tucker and Ayahuasca

Musing on ayahuasca a few weeks ago, I had a funny thought that if more people did plant medicine or had big shamanic experiences, nobody’d watch Fox News anymore. So I made a graphic and posted it to my socials.

A bunch of people thought it was funny. A few, however, commented on how plant medicines teach them to love everyone and how I must be misinterpreting or appropriating or I don’t know, generally not being enlightened enough. I’ll give these commenters the benefit of the doubt because I did ask for comments and opinions and they’re likely knowledgeable people. That said, I see a lot of this kind of comment in new-age and holistic circles and I’d think it was ironic if it wasn’t so predictable. Sometimes it even shifts into spirituality-shaming.

I take responsibility, however, for not skillfully saying in my 1080 pixels and limited character count what was really at the heart of my post.

It’s this: perhaps when we engage in shamanic practices like entheogen ceremony, the higher our potential for discernment between wisdom and bullshit. The more we recognize the value of the “other,” and that in fact at a certain level there is no “other,” the more we see through the mainstream…