Before You Seek the Journey, Learn to Stay

In recent years, so-called ancestral medicines and consciousness-altering rituals have increasingly entered Western spiritual and personal-development spaces

Ayahuasca, rapé, sananga, ceremonial cacao, psychedelic mushrooms and practices originating in distant traditions now appear in retreats, social media and everyday conversations

This is not an article against these practices

Nor is it an attempt to demonise them

I am interested in a different, perhaps more uncomfortable question

How much time do we devote to cultivating presence before seeking an altered state of consciousness?

Because, in my view, the central question is not simply the plant

It is our relationship with whatever we are seeking through that plant

Every Plant Can Be a Teacher

In my understanding of energetic work, there are not only a handful of sacred plants

Nature itself can become a teacher

A plant growing outside our door, a tree we pass every day or a wild herb native to our region can become a powerful opportunity for relationship, observation and listening

And we do not necessarily need to ingest it

Entering into relationship with a plant can begin simply by observing it, knowing it, understanding its cycle, its habitat, its scent and what it symbolically awakens within us

So perhaps we should ask

Why travel halfway around the world searching for a teacher plant when we have not yet learned to listen to the ecosystem surrounding us?

Before looking elsewhere, perhaps we should rediscover what is growing beneath our feet

The Point Is Not to See More

Psychoactive substances can profoundly alter perception and consciousness

Images, memories, bodily sensations, powerful emotions and symbolic experiences may emerge

Some spiritual traditions interpret these experiences as journeys through spiritual, astral or subtle realms

Psychology and neuroscience use different frameworks

We do not need to collapse these different languages into one another to recognise something important

An experience occurring during an altered state of consciousness can have an extremely powerful emotional and bodily impact

Expanding perception does not automatically give us the tools to understand everything that emerges

Before Entering the Forest, Learn to Navigate

Imagine having spent your entire life surrounded by concrete

You know the streets, pavements, traffic lights and artificial lights

You understand the landscape because you have learned how to move through it

Then, one night, someone takes you to the edge of a dense forest

And you walk in

In complete darkness

Suddenly your familiar coordinates disappear

You hear sounds you cannot identify

Shadows acquire shapes

You cannot distinguish a path from a trail leading nowhere

You do not know which plants you can touch, what animals inhabit the territory, how far you have travelled or how to find your way back

The forest is not necessarily dangerous

You simply have not learned how to know it yet

For me, this image captures something essential about entering profoundly altered states of consciousness

Within my energetic understanding, what we call the astral or etheric field is a territory requiring knowledge, discernment and orientation

Other traditions use different words

Science uses entirely different explanatory models

But one question remains

Why should suddenly opening our perception mean that we automatically know how to interpret everything we encounter?

Entering the forest does not mean knowing the forest

Seeing something does not necessarily mean understanding it

Feeling something with extraordinary intensity does not automatically reveal its meaning

Perhaps this is precisely where apprenticeship should begin

First, we learn the terrain

Then we learn to navigate

Then we learn to discern

Only then do we decide how deeply we want to enter

Tradition Was Not Consumption

When we look at traditional cultures, we often take the most spectacular element of a ritual and forget everything surrounding it

We see the substance

We do not see the years of apprenticeship

We see the ceremony

We do not see the discipline

We see the journey

We do not see the cosmology, preparation, integration, community and relationship with the land

Removing a practice from its context and turning it into an experience that can be purchased is profoundly different from living within a tradition

So perhaps we need to ask

Am I encountering a tradition, or consuming a spiritual experience?

The Body and Mind Already Have Extraordinary Doors

Meditation, contemplation, silence, embodied practices, prayer, ritual and dreamwork can profoundly change our subjective experience

That does not mean they produce the same pharmacological effects as psychedelic substances

They do not

It means something different

Human consciousness already possesses an extraordinary capacity to explore itself

Perhaps, before searching for a substance capable of rapidly opening a door, we can discover which doors are already accessible through presence, discipline and listening

Integration Matters More Than Intensity

We have become fascinated with peaks

The vision

The revelation

Ego dissolution

The journey

The opening

But the more interesting questions arrive the following day

How do you treat the people you love?

How do you handle anger?

Can you establish boundaries?

Can you remain in silence?

Can you inhabit your body?

Can you distinguish intuition from fear?

Can you tolerate uncertainty?

A powerful spiritual experience does not automatically make someone more conscious

What matters is what happens afterwards

Otherwise, we risk collecting extraordinary states without transforming our ordinary lives

Before Opening, Learn to Ground

Before seeking an extraordinary experience, perhaps we should ask

How well do I know my body?

How well do I know my fears?

Can I remain present when something difficult arises?

Am I seeking knowledge, or escape?

Am I moving towards something, or running away from something?

Do I truly understand the tradition I am approaching?

And above all

Have I learned how to stay before trying to travel?

Spirituality Should Not Be a Shortcut

We do not need constant extraordinary experiences in order to be spiritual

Sometimes the most radical practice is simply to stay

Stay in the body

Stay in relationship

Stay in front of fear

Stay in silence long enough to hear what we normally cover with noise and stimulation

Consciousness does not always need to be pushed further away

Sometimes it needs to become more deeply present

And before asking which medicine can take us beyond ourselves, perhaps we should ask something much simpler

How deeply am I able to inhabit what I already am?

Because perhaps the real inner journey does not begin when we leave the body

It begins when we finally learn how to enter it