The Tale of the Young Medicine Man

I was a psychonaught at a very young age. 13 is when I first started reading(and due to this
reading, robotripping, very much so as I had no access to psychedelics this early on). My father
had and has a library of books, some pertaining to psychonaughtical culture. I remember the
first time I heard about DMT, I was a freshman. Low-and-behold, I go to my dad’s house and
see ‘DMT: The spirit Molecule’ in his collection of books. So I started reading.

I was transfixed. Is it possible for me to see such things? Gnomes.. Elves.. Fairies.. Futuristic
societies.. Ultra/extraterrestrial contact through telepathy and symbols?

So I kept drinking robitussin throughout highschool, and I will admit that I did gain some insights
from it, but it was a pretty odd.. Odd is this only word to describe it. Sooner or later, I ate some
mushrooms for the first time. This was something I thought I understood through reading before
trying it, but nothing prepares one for this. Especially at the ripe age of, I don’t know, 14?

After this, I ended up graduating high school early and not going to college even though I had a
scholarship. Why I did this? I don’t know. I was pretty naive and just plain dumb at that age. So
for a few years I just worked at a local bar as a busser and sold pot and mushrooms, eating
whatever acid came along.. Most of my mushrooms.. I made no profit off of those. Selling
mushrooms was a good turning point for me. I had cut the robitussin business out and was
doing good.

Skip to age 18. A friend that I used to robotrip with in highschool(she’s always been a best
friend of mine) called me and asked if I had an old AT&T phone for her sister. I did and my
parents were out of town so I asked her to come over for a few beers, I was hosting a weekend
party and I hadn’t seen her in forever. When she came, she spoke of her friend who was a
Medicine Man and how she could get me into contact with him if I ever wanted to go to a peyote
ceremony.. “Peyote..?” I thought, “I’ve never done peyote and have always wondered. Sure!
Let’s get this into motion”.

So I go to this guys house expecting some 50 year old medicine man, but no, it was a person
the same age as me with tons of mutual friends, surprised I hadn’t met him before. He had told
me the next ceremony was next weekend and to come along. And that I did.

At this point in time I had tripped a lot.. Hundreds of times probably. I sold the shit for years, but
there was nothing as enlightening and therapeutic as what I was about to undergo.

I’ll explain the first ceremony in best detail I can. There were 5 of us that went together,
carpooling in a mini-van, listening to the grateful dead the whole way there. It was a 4 hour drive
to southern MO.
When we got there, it was neat! The Medicine Man who owned the property had a chapel on the
grounds, a little pathway through the woods lead to an open glen. There was a music stage, a
few gazebos.. Then we followed the path up closer to the bottom of a bluff. This is where we
held the ceremony.

Before ingesting the peyote, we were each told to state our intentions, if we didn’t want to talk
about it, we were told to at least think about it as we said “pass”. ‘What are we gaining from this
tonight’?

Personally, I had about 4 main issues going on that I felt were a problem. So I focused on these
and verbally said what they were, I mean, why be shy? I don’t know these people, and the
friends I was with were all very close or the couple I didn’t know too well, I trusted. What they
were isn’t important.

So we all ingested the peyote. It came as ground up plant matter in pill capsules(of which you
needed at least 20 for a solid experience, but that’s my opinion), then there was tea. One small
glass was 10 or so buttons. I promptly ate 24 capsules and drank two glasses of tea just to
make sure to go as far as possible into the peyote realms.

It was beautiful.

I remember sitting around the campfire with my buds, all the older folk were across the fire
talking about agriculture and what not. This was the middle of nowhere.. These people were all
farmers. It was interesting to hear them talk about goats and what not. One was actually a
catholic priest and one was a lawyer as well from the city.
The visuals were starting to increase. Lots of reds and yellows. Different, visually, than anything
else I had ever tried. I could see everyone around the campfires’ auras, they were even
bleeding out of their eyes and mouths and floating down and around them like smoke out of
some badass incense holder. Each one, unique.

One of my friends, Kyle, starts laughing.

“What’s so funny man?”

“The trees”, he exclaimed, “They’re made of things and they’re laughing at me.”

I gaze up at the trees and see nothing but cherubs. Naked babies playing trumpets.. Flowers..
The works.. All coming out of the patterning of the leaves. “Funny.” I thought. “Can I even make
this unenjoyable?”.

I realized at this point that whatever I imagined, I would be able to see if I just focused. I focused
on turning this angelic imagery to mangled corpses, death and despair.. But the visual would
only hold for so long until it bursted into cherubs again. I laughed.
Next, I go to pee. The dark forest made me weary, but I decided to face my fear.. There’s
nothing in the forest that’s going to ‘get me’. As I walked further into the darkness I could hear
laughing, see eyes poking out from behind bushes and the pitter-pattering of gnome feet.. I
pee’d anyways.
When I came and sat back down, I just kind of zoned out for a minute. My friend who was
talking about the trees sat down next to me and said, “Man, there are gnomes in those woods, I
just went to go pee and..”. I already knew that he experienced the same thing I did.

This was at the peak of the experience. We both started talking about gnomes and the elderly
people there agreed, there was definitely some gnome stuff going on because they could see it
too. This lead to conversations between the entire group of us, old and young, about aliens..
Quantum mechanics.. Huldufolk.. All that good stuff.
The whole time while this was happening, the therapy was taking place as well. Sure, I could
talk to the people around me, but what was going on inside literally made me cry at one point. I
finally understood where all of my issues came from, and what to do to fix them. Most
importantly that ‘everything’s going to be okay’. This is a simple principle. However, I apparently
needed it to be more of a direct experience to believe it ‘correctly’.

The older folk were speaking of ayahuasca while I was there and how it was unique, however
similar to peyote and that’s where they had some serious healing coming from. I had always
read about ayahuasca and was honestly afraid to attempt it due to some overwhelming DMT
trips that I didn’t seem to ‘get anything’ out of.

Either way, I decided to get my license to make it legal for me to purchase these plants as I
have a close friend who owns an ethnobotanical site selling these plants. All I had to do was
make a medicine bundle and describe how I used it. I made a bundle, not thinking much of it,
just trying to get my license, with an afghan blanket, a bunch of rocks and a circle made from
bark that I carved off a tree, tied together with hemp. Honestly, it was bullshit at the time, I was
just trying to get my license.

So I make some ayahuasca, quite a few times. It always worked, but never gave me that
experience I had read so much about. It was a trial and error experience, cooking ayahuasca.
But one day I realized exactly what I needed to do to make a brew strong enough.
I made the brew, and let it sit in my closet for months.. Scared to drink it.

I have always had depression issues.. Extreme ones, especially in these years. I felt ‘lost’ even
though before-hand I was convinced the peyote had healed me. Well this is not how that works.
YOU have to put in the work afterwards. These are teachers, not enchantments. You must do
your homework after the experience. After you see ‘it’.

One night, I was overwhelmed with depression. I had just gotten into a trivial fight with my mom
that made us both cry.. I hated myself.. I cried and cried. I was 19 at this point in time. I knew
now was my chance. No work in the morning, mom’s about to go to bed, I was debating
commiting suice, and I mean literally. Not just “IM GONNA KILL MSELF” it was more like I felt at
peace because I knew I was going to die and thank god for not having to take any more
breaths, I just wanted my soul to rest and be gone forever I never felt so good o comfortable
simply because I knew I was going to kill myself. It was not a question, it was the only answer
But as I said I always told myself I’d try it first… I knew the answers to what I was seeking just
laid in that bottle in my closet. So I drank it. 3 shots is all I drank, my stomach did not like that
stuff. Nobodies does.

It didn’t kick in.. I was very disappointed and decided to go to bed. But ‘going to bed’ is not what
followed. All the sudden, this reality had been switched with another. Aquatic creatures floating
through the mandalas that took up all the space I could see.. Intense auditory hallucinations of
rattlesnakes and freight trains. It was too intense there for awhile, I couldn’t even think.
Finally, that wave subsided and I just thought, “Man, I am tripping harder than ever.. But where’s
the lesson. I told it what I wanted.. Where is it?”

As soon as I thought this, I looked over at my couch, two of the cushions took the form of a man
and a woman making love, it looked like a greek sculpture. “Beautiful.”, I thought.
I rubbed it enviously. Happy for them.
Immediately, I was overtaken by this entirely beautiful sense of unconditional love. It was
pumping through my soul at a pace that is indescribable. “This is what all religions teach.”, I
thought to myself, “This is it. Love. That’s all that is.”

Everything is love. All my mental ailments, all my problems.. They are all rooted in a love
complex. For example, say that I wasn’t loved ‘correctly’ this leads to some issues(though do
not blame, we are all ignorant. You MUST learn to forgive if you cross the thought process of
childhood psychology affecting your current mental state. We are all but human.). If I don’t love
‘correctly’, then issues will develop. The correct way to love is unconditionally. Step over bugs
on the ground, don’t kill them, love them. Let’s say that our ‘problems’ are our enemies. As
Orson Scott Card would say(author of Ender’s game):

“In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to 
defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really 
understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they 
love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.”  
 
This experience changed me, I had destroyed my old self despite having some issues later on
in life it has and will ALWAYS stick to me like a tic that gives you constant spiritual awarenesss
and orgasm(not sexuallly, but sometimes..). It was the first of multiple ayahuasca encounters,
but this was my first glimpse. I cried the entire time out of happiness for finally understanding
everything I thought I understood before. I learned that I was just regurgitating things that I’ve
read about spirituality. But I really didn’t have as much a grasp on it, as I thought I did, until the
ayahuasca was introduced.
I used my bundle during this and felt the way that the crystals had an effect. My bundle now is
extremely complex. I have crystals of all colors and sizes spread across to symbolize each
chakra with a jade buddha sitting under a tree made of rosewood, amethyst and citrine, a hemp
necklace made by the woman who is my true love, my soul mate
(HA! Boy was I an idiot. Edit: 12/3/2019), a few hagstones.. Different things I’ve collected.. And I
use it. I will continue to build it forever.

It wasn’t until recently that I understood the true power of the bundle. Now it’s used even if I am
not embarking on a journey. Just used to meditate. It’s powerful. Or at least my imagination
makes it powerful. Imagination is real. So why can’t this be real? Why can’t the power of the
crystals be real, if I believe it to be so? They will be. This is why imagination and belief are
powerful. What you believe is true to you. Therefore, it is true. Others’ may see it differently, but
you know. Follow that. Believe what you do and as long as it helps you, it’s worth believing in.

Without randomly catching up with an old friend and finding my way to peyote, none of this
would happen. I can choose to view this as coincidence or something symbolic. Either way, it
doesn’t matter. It happened. And what’s happened is real. Also it’s not real. HA.

YUM.

Anyways, that is the barebones story of what is was like becoming a Medicine Man and I would
not take it back. I hold these experiences very close to my heart. It’s how I choose to focus my
spirituality. Others’ find it in other ways, and that’s fine. Just know the truth. Love. Compassion.
Be Zenful.. The past, the future.. Focus on your present, which is now. And it’s truly a gift. It
creates future and past. Love unconditionally. Don’t be destructive. Be aware of how you sin, be
aware of how you commit deeds. Be proud of yourself. You are loved eternally and have so
much love and potential to give back.

Thanks for the read.

Regards.