New research has shown that using “magic mushrooms” might rewire the brain, leading people to have entirely new experiences. The brain builds pathways over the course of a lifetime, and strengthens those pathways every time it uses one. That means that people tend to get into a rut of having the same thought cycles many times over.

Many parts of the brain are not directly connected to each other. Thoughts, memories, and ideas in the different regions are not linked together, so they operate relatively independently. Some of the most creative people have had unusually structured brains so they connect different parts of the brains.

A Unique Phenomena

Typically, brain pathways don’t change. However, when someone ingests mushrooms, that can change. The main ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms is psilocybin. This drug has been shown to create new neural pathways between brain regions that were previously unconnected. That’s what leads to things like seeing music or hearing numbers.

In one study, researchers gave psilocybin to some people and a placebo (a fake) to others. They gave exactly two milligrams of psilocybin to the study participants, though mushrooms are eaten, not injected, and don’t always have the exact same dose.

The scientists found that the people who received psilocybin had more erratic brain functioning than the control group – the neural pathways that were lighting up were unusual. However, they weren’t completely random.


Restructuring your thoughts

Instead of random chaos, the new pathways formed an entirely new organizational structure, and it has the potential to do amazing things, such as treat depression. Studies have found that people who suffer from depression have too much activity in the area of the brain that’s devoted to a sense of self. It’s important to have a moderate amount of activity in that region, but when there is too much self-criticism and negative thought, a person can spiral into depression.

Since psilocybin removes old pathways as part of creating new ones, it can help people get out of a rut. The brain chatter that leads to depression – negative self-thought can be muted and lead to people having a new experience.

This effect has been studied. One Johns Hopkins study gave psilocybin to a small group of volunteers, who reported an out-of-body experience. Those volunteers reported feeling more open and more appreciative of the beauty in the world – and that the effects lasted a long time. One of the participants reported feeling a sense of a greater force, and a realization that the many anxieties they struggled with were just not as important as they felt. A full year after the study, almost two-thirds of the participants said the experience was one of the most important in their lives. Half continued to be more open than they had before.

While mushrooms (and psilocybin) continue to be illegal in the United States, there is definitely a possibility for future therapeutic use, especially in cases of depression.




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As I feel indebted to the shamans who saw themselves in me and helped me understand why I have always felt like I don’t belong in mainstream medicine, the intention of this article is to respectfully honor the shamanic tradition, and not to violate it in any way.

Because modern culture doesn’t have a role for the shamanic archetype, many people who grow up outside indigenous villages are shamans and don’t know it. Many naturally wind up in overtly healing professions, such as medicine, psychology, or life coaching. But some wind up in professions where they may feel like they don’t fit in at all. Even those who enter the healing professions may feel out of place, because the systems of Western medicine and psychology leave little room for a shaman to practice his or her natural healing art. But many will wind up in various forms of sacred activism, healing the planet, for example, rather than healing people.


Are you a shaman and you don’t know it? Here are some telltale signs that you might fit the archetype.

1. You sense that you’re meant to participate in the global shift in consciousness that is currently underway.

We can all feel it, this impending shift that New Agers have talked about for decades. But those with the shamanic archetype don’t just feel it, they feel it pulling them, like a magnet, towards leadership positions that help facilitate this transformation of human consciousness and evolution of the species.

2. You’ve been through a difficult initiation, which has prepared you for this leadership role.

In indigenous cultures, the village knew who the shaman was because he or she was struck by lightning and survived. In modern culture, you may not literally be struck by lightning, but you may have survived some other life or heart-threatening ordeal. You may have experienced childhood abuse, sexual violence, a near-death experience, or some other trauma that put you through the crucible and forged you into the healing earth shaman you are becoming.

3. You are an introvert.

Shamans are multi-dimensional beings who dance between the realms of the seen and unseen worlds, so if you’re of the shamanic archetype, you may have a hard time navigating the 3D realms of this dimension, which may cause you to withdraw into yourself so you can visit the realms of consciousness where you feel most at home.

4. You feel most at home in nature.

The shamans of a culture are the bridges between nature and humans, serving as translators between the mountains, oceans, rivers, animals, and people. You may sense that nature is talking to you or that you get your most tuned in downloads when you are surrounded by the natural world.

5. You’re very sensitive.

You may feels things others don’t feel, see things others don’t see, hear things others don’t hear, smell things others don’t smell, and sense things others don’t sense. This may make it hard for you to be out in public, where you may feel accosted by over-stimulation of your senses. If you embody the shamanic archetype, it’s likely that you’re the kind of person others may feel is “too sensitive.” But this sensitivity is a blessing. It’s part of your gift.

6. You feel a sort of spiritual calling to ease the suffering of people, animals, and nature.

Many health care providers are called to medicine the way priests are called to the priesthood. But you don’t have to be a health care provider to have the shamanic archetype. It may transmute itself into healing service to animals, sacred activist causes, or conservation of Mother Earth.

7. Physical ailments that fall under the category of “shaman sickness.”

In the indigenous cultures, shamans who have been called to service but haven’t yet said “yes” to the call often wind up struck with physical ailments. In modern culture, these shamanic sicknesses may fall into difficult to treat categories like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme disease, chronic pain disorders, and autoimmune disorders. Acceptance of the call to shamanic service often resolves the symptoms of shaman sickness. If you’re suffering from one of these illnesses, ask yourself, “Am I a shaman who hasn’t said yes to my calling yet?”

8. You tend to have vivid dreams.

The unseen realm may be communicating with you through your dreams, so try analyzing your dreams. Pay particular attention to any animal totems that may appear in your dreams. Google search the animal and “spirit totem” and see if you can find any messages from the animals in your dreams. Or try a Jungian analysis, like the one described here.

9. You may discover unusual spiritual superpowers, or what the yogis call “siddhis.”

You might be psychic. You might get healing visions like the one in my previous post about the meeting of Western medicine and Shamanism. You might realize that you can heal people with your hands or that you can telepathically communicate with animals, people, or even inanimate objects.

10. You’ve always felt like you don’t quite belong anywhere, because you are a bridge.

Shamans tend to live on the outskirts of the village for a reason. They are not like the others – and this is a blessing! In village life, this is understood and recognized. But in the modern world, it may leave those with the shamanic archetype feeling like they don’t ever fit in. But don’t despair. You DO fit in. Your role is essential. You may find that you fit in best with others who share this shamanic archetype. Among your fellow shamans, you will feel like you are with family.

Embrace Your Bridge Work

Because shamans are always operating between worlds, you may find that you’re connecting mainstream culture and the culture that wants to be born in the new consciousness, and this may feel uncomfortable, as if you don’t quite fit in. When I realized that I am a bridge between mainstream medicine and the new world of medicine that is being co-created by others who share the shamanic archetype, it brought me such a profound sense of relief! This relief is shared by the health care providers who participate in the Whole Health Medicine Institute, which I founded for doctors and other stealth shamans. If you’re one of those bridge workers, please know that you belong with all the other stealth shamans in this program, designed to merge medicine and spirituality, and we’re enrolling for the 2016 class now.

In our culture, it can be quite challenging to be a stealth shaman. Yes, it’s a blessing to have the opportunity to help people end the story of separation, to dissolve the apparent duality into Oneness, to fulfill our callings to bring the worlds together, to heal people, animals, and the planet. But it can be lonely and disheartening and scary and isolating. I sense that many of us stealth shaman bridge workers have scores of past lives during which we were persecuted for our attempts to connect the worlds, so no matter how much we know in our hearts that we are all One and we DO belong, we have cellular memories of past traumas, during which we were literally killed because we refused to fit in. So it takes tremendous courage to come out of the spiritual closet as someone who embodies the shamanic archetype. In order to keep being brave, we need to feel safe. To feel safe, we need to foster a sense of belonging so we don’t feel isolated on top of feeling scared. In order to feel safe enough to keep bridging, we need each other.

Are you a shaman who is still in the closet? If so, please know that there are many of us, and we hold you close in our hearts while you muster up the moxie to claim your place in the world.

To begin embracing your purpose, please feel free to check out my new book The Anatomy Of A Calling. Click the link below to see if it’s for you:

http://theanatomyofacalling.com

Here’s to bridging the realms and healing our world!

Lissa


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Handling Marijuana Is Often More Difficult Than Major Psychedelics

In the fight for the legalization of various drugs, many people are under the impression that marijuana should be legalized before other types of drugs. Their thinking presumes marijuana is an easier type of psychedelic for people to handle, so it should become legal before more major psychedelics should. This certainly seems like sound logic, doesn’t it?

Indeed, it is the common belief of most that marijuana provides a mellow experience, rather than the intense psychedelic experience that comes from other drugs. That is not always the case, however. It is, in fact, the opinion of many users of various psychedelics (including marijuana) that weed can be a lot harder to handle. They claim that psychedelic overdose can be handled and is well understood, but a marijuana overdose is shrouded in confusion and misconceptions, and therefore is more dangerous when an overdose occurs.

What is a Psychedelic Overdose ?

There is a lot of confusion that accompanies the idea of a “marijuana overdose” or a “psychedelic overdose.” Many people believe it does not occur, while others imagine it to be the exact same experience as an overdose of hard drugs, like cocaine or heroine. For the sake of this article, a psychedelic overdose is not exactly the same kind of overdose as would be experienced with alcohol or other drugs. The main difference between a psychedelic overdose and a hard drug overdose is that they are not fatal at all -- the overdose is simply a stronger experience than the user would like. In other words, it might overwhelm a person's threshold.

Just like alcohol users learn to avoid a hangover, psychedelic users learn how to avoid this “overdose.” Simply being familiar with your personal limits, and keeping tabs on how much you take is usually sufficient. Also, be sure to consume in a safe environment, in case the experience is more than you bargained for. In fact, psychedelics are better to overdose on than other drugs for another reason: the overdose can be turned around into a positive, transformative trip if the surrounding environment is a good one.

The Marijuana Overdose

Perhaps the main problem that surrounds understanding marijuana overdose is the fact that everyone thinks it’s an easier drug to handle, so it is taken much more casually, without planning or second thoughts. The fact that marijuana is usually consumed via smoking rather than ingesting it (such as with most psychedelics) means that its effects occur much more rapidly. It is said that the faster a drug affects a person, the stronger the addiction is to that drug. This, for instance, is the reason heroine overpowers opium in addictiveness.

With marijuana, many of the people smoking it really enjoy the act of smoking. This means that, even once they have gotten to the point of being at the “right” level of high, they will just continue smoking because they enjoy it. They likely would not do the same thing if they were using tinctures or consuming marijuana edibles, for example.

Another reason a marijuana overdose can be difficult to deal with is the fact that a person who is overdosing will seem fine to everyone else. While their emotions begin to spiral in fearful, confusing directions, they won’t receive the care they need because they look fairly normal. A psychedelic overdose, on the other hand, makes the person look obviously unwell, meaning the proper care will be taken.

Proper Marijuana Education is Needed

Ultimately, the main problem that comes from marijuana during the present day is the fact that people are not accurately educated about the drug. If everyone learns about limits and smoking safely, these overdosing issues can easily be avoided. It should not be a more complicated issue than with major psychedelic drugs, and we can make it that way through education.

As marijuana becomes more widespread and legalized across the nation, we truly need to address this issue. The new technologies allowing for concentrated doses is just another reason why people need to fully understand what they are consuming similar care to how we treat major psychedelics. Most things are good in moderation, we should focus on defining what that is.

Author : Robert Bergman, Founder of ilovegrowingmarijuana.com.

Robert has been growing cannabis passionately for over 20 years and shares this insight to educate growers avoid mistakes and to fully capitalise on a bud's potential.




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Being a sensitive person in a highly desensitized world can be worrisome at times as one tends to absorb energies which are not our own and get conditioned to believe ourselves to be a certain way ... fueling the ego even more. There are many a pitfall on the spiritual path of awareness ... for one, the idea of having acquired knowledge or enlightenment of some kind without having lived through the hellish realms of dark despair and grief brings one back to similar learning experiences we thought we had once mastered.

Once we realize we are sensitive to energies (some call us HSP, a Highly Sensitive Person) we become more aware of the present moment, more in touch with reality without being affected by our fears and paranoia about the past and the future. Experiencing increased synchronicity and the cessation of worry are signs of an awakening brewing within our being. We can quickly be drawn into the world of illusions (Maya), getting sucked into self created whirlpools of darkness and despair, while trying to gratify the hunger of our Ego.

For all empaths its imperative to let go off unnecessary baggage and mental clutter which keeps us from accessing our intuition and other extra sensory abilities ... It's one thing to theorize universal love ... infinite consciousness .... oneness ... to live it one has to experience all the shades of life .... from light to dark ... dull to bright ... all of it. If you consider yourself an empath and a lightworker ... you know energy and you know how to trans-mutate when the need arises. Here is a brilliant article from our friends at the Openhand Foundation on being an empath ...

Unfolding the Higher Paradigm

Imagine being able to feel and sense everything, whether positive or negative around you, 24/7. An Empath can’t turn off empathy (unlike someone who is perhaps 'empathising'). It is possibly one of the most challenging of psychic gifts to master. I am an Empath who has spent nearly two decades, since awakening, mastering my empathic nature. It is an ongoing process. I am still not perfect and not sure that I ever will be whilst incarnated here. I am however content, despite the challenges of integration, as I see it as an incredible gift to humanity...

Empaths incarnate into this world without a manual. Some seem quite blessed in that they bring with them the memories of mastery from past lives. Even then, the remembering is often a bumpy journey in itself. To add to the confusion, most Empaths cannot tell the difference between their own energy and someone else’s. Something happened on my journey where I just ‘got’ the difference. It came from increased presence. There is a subtle vibrational difference that we can discern when we are fully present. Constantly attaining presence within spiritual evolution is a very important key to mastering empathic gifts that I cannot over emphasise.


Everything is Energy

Everything is energy, pulsating particular vibrations. Since an Empath feels energy, just like a living person breaths air, it is understandable why a few issues might arise as an earth-incarnated-being. Humanity (apart from perhaps indigenous cultures), is one big confusing energetic vibrational mess! The modern world is a melting pot of fractured and frantic energies: for example, loaded emotional projection, hidden agendas (whether personal or global), wi-fi, mobile phone radiation, electric gadget emissions, multi media marketing designed to allure and captivate, highly processed foods, TV, the thudding din of consumerism... the list goes on and on.

Empaths will feel the energy in the field, feel the energy of conversation, feel body language, feel words used (or not used) without intellectual interpretation. They will intuitively know what an energy is ‘really’ about despite what is conveyed on the surface. They will also know what a person is really saying, no matter what words are being offered.

Because of the tendency for people to hide the full story, or try to control the situation, an empath will tend to feel a huge inner conflict or inability to process the enormity of the engagement. One of the main problems for Empaths is the lack of transparency and honesty in the world and the consequent resentment of having to process all the energy that is not in full view. Of course lots of of these sensitive beings struggle also with things that are in full view too.

"Make it go away!!!"

Most people who have this trait do not see it as a gift. I would more often expect to hear the pleading cries to make it stop. Initially, it often involves being so overwhelmed with feeling energy that it is challenging to function in an ordinary sense. Empaths often come across as over emotional, at times others become emotionally detached in order to cope. It wouldn't be unusual that they might just 'freak out', without apparent cause. They often prefer their own company and don’t like to build many personal relationships.
In my early days I used to cry out to the universe

"I don’t want to feel all this energy - it’s not mine"...
the universe would always reply that it is a gift.
“How on earth is this a gift!!!”

I often found it difficult to get close to people in a personal ‘every day’ sense. It would drive me nuts, so I would prefer independence or distance. Independence and contentment with only a couple of close friends still feels very natural to me. In a way, it's a saving grace.

Powerful impetus to sort it out

The initial overwhelming intensity served a wonderful purpose for me. It evoked a powerful yearning to master my unique configuration here as an earth-being. It created the impetus for me to come to terms with my natural born empath traits and master them, eventually finding a high altitude of peace and functionability with it all.

The importance of releasing emotional attachment

Releasing emotional attachment is the main key to mastery. Most Empaths suffer needlessly because they cannot release their personal emotional attachment to feelings. If we let go of attachment, it doesn’t mean we won’t feel. It just means that we don’t get tangled in the feeling anymore. It means we can watch as things happen and really discern that ‘that isn’t us’, ‘that isn’t our own feeling’ and really begin to embrace when we are DIVINELY GIVEN to take action or not.

For me this involved years of becoming consciously aware and centred. Once I started coming from a centred place of presence, I began to discern what I was meant to do, releasing emotional attachment to both that which is not meant for me and that which was. This is a very powerful factor as it means that we can still feel the energy empathically, but it doesn’t bother us adversely any more. We are able to act of infinitely more divine service when we are not attached emotionally. In fact unless we come from this place, we would tend to make a situation worse not better. That’s the bottom line. It means we feel the energy with the deepest compassion, yet we can truly hold the space for another. In so doing, we reflect the light of benevolence, allowing true healing to take place.



Finding inner peace and stability

Daily centering, meditation practice, yoga, compassionate eating, conscious lifestyle, conscious choices that cleanse our energy field and promote centredness will all help big time! Being in nature serves to recentre and recharge depleted energies. Spending regular time in solitude away from idle chatter and drama can be invaluable. I would say that making sure that a bare minimum of half an hour per day consciously looking after yourself is crucial. The more the better. The above are very important. There may also be many other ways, such as swimming in the ocean, hill walking, having a bath with oils or salt, giving yourself a foot massage, listening to your favourite music, playing an instrument, conscious bodywork or massage... basically whatever it is that helps you maintain balance and build up your sense of inner peace and stability.
Another important key is ownership. If you have the trait, then to deny it just makes it worse and ensures that our spiritual evolution is dysfunctional. Our evolution will happen when we embrace our unique configuration. So we need to be 100% honest with ourselves and know that it will get much easier the more and more present with become with it. The only way out is through.

Without these practices it is very difficult (I am not sure if it is even possible) to master being an empath here. So if the motivation is a little lacking, JUST DO IT anyway until you find a rhythm to your daily life that you see working.

A true gift of benevolence

So whether you are an empath or you know one personally, hopefully this is helpful in some way.

I truly believe that, the challenges as highlighted are there to help us refine and alchemically transform this true gift of benevolence. The gifts of empathy have the power to really make a difference in this world. This is what most people who feel the call of Divine Service long for, to be able to help others in a life changing way.

An evolved Empath has the natural ability to connect on a Soul level, helping to release blocked energy with another. An Empath, if given, can also release coagulated energy within the field at large, discerning between what is benevolent and what is not. Since everything oscillates a frequency that can inadvertently influence everything around it, then a truly benevolent Empath realigning the energy field can help make a huge difference in terms of spiritual evolution.

Whether an Empath not, if we can all work together with our gifts we can allow this higher paradigm of to unfold together.

Soul to Soul
Trinity

Source : Being an Empath - Openhand Foundation