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 narratives borne of all the -isms. The more we can hold the paradox of both how miraculous and how humble we are, the greater our ability to sit with nuance.

That means, the less relevant Tucker’s show becomes. Not his humanity, but his platform.

Yes, Tucker Carlson is a child of creation and is probably doing a bang up job of whatever his soul mission was this time around. I don’t really get it personally and think he’s doing some real harm, but cosmically speaking maybe he’s hitting it out of the park. Who’s to say.

But when we allow ourselves to be dunked in love regularly, when we see multiple ways of being and recognize their inherent value, when we face our own shadows and expand to hold it all, then I bet we just won’t need Fox News anymore. We can take the mic away from our angry friend and lovingly say “Sit down, honey,” and talk about more life-affirming and creative things instead. Hopefully, he’ll…