Recently I had a really tough couple of days. Actually, days and nights. An old belief bubbled up: all seemed to be challenging, nothing possible. Darkness was descending. In other words, I was experiencing a Dark Night of the Soul. And in the Universe’s way, in rapid succession I heard from several people close to me about a challenge, tragedy or heartbreak they were experiencing.

It’s hard to welcome these Dark times with even a slight nod let alone a warm embrace, but perhaps we should.

The term, The Dark Night of the Soul, comes from the 16th-century Spanish mystic and poet St. John of the Cross.

According to John of the Cross, the Dark Night of the Soul is a stage of final and complete purification, marked by confusion, helplessness, stagnation of will, and a sense of the withdrawal of God’s presence. It is the period of final “unselfing” and the surrender to the hidden purposes of the divine will.

The Dark Night, then, is not destructive, but nurturing and what it is birthing is our “unselfing” — the release of our beliefs, fears, and identities — in order for the greater purpose of our soul to be revealed.

Alas, we cannot “fight” our way out of this darkness. Darkness doesn’t give us a clear opponent. It’s nebulous. It enfolds us. It conceals us. Yet it is only in this darkness do we see what we could not before, and its only here we fully come to terms with the truth that we cannot know what will happen next. These times require us to wait and wait more, until the faintest glimmer of dawn emerges.

In the Dark Night we wait: crushed, silent, still; needing to accept that which we believed we could not.

These dark teachers hurt, scare, scar, wound, and play with destroying us. And they make us who we are because they require the better side of our nature—courage, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, love, resilience, strength, generosity of spirit, ferocity of heart. Precisely within the times in which we feel lost, are the times that require us to find our way. The deepest losses often lead us to our most profound gains.

Yet we are constantly given advice on how to avoid these painful periods or to escape them as quickly as possible. But what if our Dark Nights were actually necessary for our transformative growth?

These disintegrations allow us to re-evaluate our priorities, values, and beliefs. More importantly, they allow an “ego death” and the opportunity to reframe our identity.

Hello darkness my old friend…

Keep the faith.

Dear Friends,

When we are young, about the age we first—and erroneously—decide we are separate, apart from others, we also begin an internal conversation. That inner dialogue, our first conversation with an inner voice, isn’t optional. For many of us, it’s how we survived. Regardless of our early traumas or lack thereof, we all must build neurological patterns for growth. These early voices are functional guides: they teach us skills, tasks, the unspoken rules of belonging. But some of these voices never understand that once we became adults, the job they were first hired to do is done.

So, they keep managing a threat that’s no longer there. All too often, our inner voices become too harsh, too critical, too damaging. It’s the voice of our scared, vulnerable, and powerless child trying to protect us and others. This ruthless voice is hard to resist.

It’s not wrong that we developed this dialogue—it’s an inherent part of being human—but it’s not needed, nor helpful, once we’ve grown up and it only escalates. That harsh voice doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s interwoven into the ego we built at the same time. As children we are growing an ego—the self we construct in hopes to be seen, loved, kept safe. Somewhere in that construction, we land on a belief about who we are. We might begin to believe things like: I am responsible or I am the one who doesn’t need anything. It’s actually a strategy.

When I was about seven, there was tremendous chaos in my family. My sister was born months premature, my mom nearly died, and my father succumbed further into alcoholism.

Read: It was Difficult and Unexpected, but She Lived

There was nothing I could do to change these circumstances, but in order to feel some agency, or level of control (even if an illusion) I came up with: “I am responsible.” And even if I wasn’t, I could try to be and think I was capable of responsibility, as those around me clearly were not.

The truth was, I was not responsible for others, could not have been, but my belief probably gave me some comfort as I could imagine that if I were responsible, I and others could be safe.

My burgeoning ego took this and kept it. It sounds so good, right? “I’m responsible.” But now that I’m an adult, and actually have responsibility for my life, believing (and worse, acting as if) I’m responsible for others can keep me separate and apart. Also, I can spend all my time and energy being “responsible” for, well, everyone, and ignore the only place I have responsibility: for myself. Even worse, I frequently end up garnering resentment from others, who are capable of being responsible for themselves, in spite of my “best” intentions in proving otherwise.

And so I ask myself: What’s the opposite of Responsible? Not Carefree. Not Happy. I think it’s Love.

When I do not hold myself responsible for others or situations, I simply and fully and completely can love them or what is happening. It’s enough. More than enough. Now that I’m not responsible for everything, I have the time and space to sit down, with me (and this inner child), and start a different conversation. Not “I am responsible.” But I can say to this little, scared part of me: I am here. I love you. And that’s enough.

Keep the faith,

Beth

“Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience; taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.”

— Byron Katie

We all have dates with our future selves.

Some of us will show up.

Dear Friends,

Back several years ago I developed group dynamic training for corporations in which I worked . I have always been a fan of experiential learning (meaning, doing instead of being told), so we built a curriculum (constructed games) to teach leaders how to lead teams more effectively. One was about change.

Here’s what we did: We had people play musical chairs. We simply said, “Musical chairs,” set up the chairs, and everyone would begin to compete. In all good fun, competition would heat up and we’d get down to just a few people. The handful of “elite” players were soon poised to win—and you know what came next, it became serious. But the next time the music stopped we added a chair. And then the next time another. A few people realized the “rules” had changed, and jumped back into the game. Many refused to “break the rules” and go back in, and those who had been about to “win” seemed a bit angry. Or very angry.

We never gave any “rules,” but as adults we “know” we are supposed to adhere to rules. Right? Except, kids make up rules for games all the time. Instead of playing by the rules, they’re playing with the rules — playing with the game itself. Changing the game is part of the fun. What if life is a game? Can we play with the game, not by rules but questioning and refusing some that often start to suffocate us?

We mistakenly believe rules are unchangeable and “true.” Yet, what is true, really True—with a capital T, as in fact?

Almost nothing people say is true, at least not to everyone. Opinions aren’t true. Our perceptions aren’t true—they change all of the time. So does known science—in fact it’s built on a premise of being tested, and retested. Falsifiable. We get happy when scientific knowns change, or we should be, as it means we’re learning. And then there’s our thoughts, which can be useful, often not true.

Rules aren’t true, they set expectations, the terms of the game set by people. Oftentimes rules if broken have consequences. But this may just depend on who you are. Rules, it seems, aren’t applied equally, as we all know. Rules can be a useful starting point, but they’re not the final answer. Those in power, or were in power, make rules, but those rules are as arbitrary as children’s games, created by a similar process—they’re made up. Rules can be ignored. Rules can be changed. No one has to follow a rule. We do need to understand there could be repercussions to breaking rules.

Rules are agreements, that some of us made. Rules are often useful, even necessary — but it’s worth remembering that somebody, at some point, decided which side of the road to drive on or if you could eat horse or not (not in California, unless you are a dog, and then yes, as horse can be an ingredient in commercial dog food, and how does that rule make sense?).

Moral right and wrong are different. As Martin Luther King wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963: “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that ‘an unjust law is no law at all.’” The question, then, is what is just? Many turn to a higher power for this answer.

Read FG9 Blog: We have wildly conflicting world views, largely because we have totally different informational sources.

Those who are “winning” don’t generally want rules to change, unless they feel they already won, and so new rules most likely don’t matter, to them. But improving the rules over time is critical and someone has to do this.

When we think we can’t make change, we feel powerless and frustrated. When everyone thinks they can’t make change, a whole society can get hostile and undermine or try to destroy the entire system, since we think we’re unable to improve it.

Helplessness is dangerous.

The world is negotiable. Whenever presented with rules, think of it as a game that can be changed. We may be surprised by how many rules we follow are self imposed and the only consequence to changing them is our unwillingness to face our own fears.

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules. They are committed by people who follow rules, feeling they have no choice or their immoral actions are justified because someone said we were supposed to do it.

Keep the faith,

Beth

Dear friends,

We humans are hardwired to understand our worlds through stories. Oftentimes, our stories help us make sense of what has occurred and plan for an imagined future. Also, we can learn and relate to others through stories. Sometimes, this is useful. But our thoughts often, as I’m sure you have experienced, get carried away—or carry us away.

People who have studied our thoughts, or the stories we tell ourselves, have found that almost everything we think today (more than 90%) is a repeat of yesterday’s thoughts, and our thoughts tend to be rather “negative.” The theory is we tend toward negativity to try to plan for an unwanted future or lament a “mistaken” past. In other ways, those of us who worried more, survived more. Maybe not any longer.

We are always trying to explain to ourselves the motivations of our actions and the causes of the events of our lives. We make up these stories without even realizing that they are fictions—because we don’t know the answers and don’t want to admit this. Over time, our thoughts and stories become our “reality”: of who we are and why we act the way we do.

In short, we are the story we tell ourselves over and over.

All too often our stories revolve around: not being good enough, not being safe, or not having enough (generally money)*.

None of these are true, generally. When I was the very poorest I’ve ever been, I still had enough. How do I know? I’m still here.

We are not generally very aware that we are doing this.

Once we are, though, we can at the very least question our stories. At best, we can pick better ones.

Keep the faith,

Beth

*Interestingly, research has shown that at almost any income level, we all predict we would be “happy” if only we had about 30% more wealth than we have. Meaning: all of our stories are wrong.

Dear Friends,

For most of my life I believed I needed to be tough. “Do the hard thing.” Face fear, beat back despair, fight for things.

Yet, I now question the merit in all this energy towards armoring and going to battle. I’ve learned that not every battle is meant to be fought. Some are meant to be outgrown or simply ignored. Rarely it seems does aggression need to be met with more aggression. Knowing when to step back itself is power and a sign of wisdom.

And so I find myself asking: can gentleness itself heal? Or put another way, can we heal without it?

Is this not the greatest purpose or meaning we can have in our lives: to help others heal, and live fully — in their light and divine nature? If we look at gentleness, we can see its core nature is attention, care, love. Gentleness allows us to know another, and understand how best to hold them. How to help them.

Gentleness itself has no force, no knowledge, no insistence. What gentleness does have is the time and patience to embrace vulnerability. When we are seen in our vulnerability, with gentleness, the truth of our own fragility can be known as well as our need for care, our need for another human. Yet in this — in being seen, in having our fragility and our need for others finally known — gentleness becomes its own kind of force, one that elevates care to a higher degree of compassion.

Lama Yeshe — “Be gentle first with yourself - if you wish to be gentle with others.”

Gentleness allows us to “suffer with.” To experience with another what he or she feels, without giving in to it. This compassion opens us up to others’ fear, their grief or suffering. Gentleness, at its best, allows us then to hold that pain, but not keep it. It allows space for us to breathe in what is oppressing others and breathe out love.

Being gentle means understanding others in their precariousness, their weaknesses. To appreciate what they have to give, when they have nothing, apparently, left to give. When we are infused with this tenderness, it means not wanting to add even a drop to suffering, to exclusion, to cruelty.

Gentleness gives birth to space for a sensitive humanity, for a relation to the other that accepts weakness or even disappointment. Gentleness allows us to engage more deeply with truth. Gentleness invites us to pay attention, to care for the soul of another human.

This compassion beckons to our responsibility as human beings toward the world around us, toward the beings making up this world and even toward the thoughts we may not ask for, but for which we are ultimately responsible. Gentleness is part of an intimate connection to all.

We are more and more trying to apply intelligence, artificial or otherwise, to “solve our problems.” But gentleness invites us to another order of being. It does not look at us as problems reason can or needs to solve. The consciousness of gentleness is a different order of knowing altogether.

We may be best served to ask: what alters us “for the better,” and what carries us to our hearts’ desire? How were we held at birth, and how do we hope to be held at death?

With gentleness.

Keep the faith,

Beth

Read: How To Be A Better Parent, Especially To Yourself

Problems are like turtles: they go all the way down. Once you solve one problem, others pop up.

By the time we reach adulthood, our problems are not the problem, it’s that we are not trained to think about our problems effectively. We sort of think we should avoid them or get rid of them, and our problem-free imagined future will be where joy resides.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons to be alive is to celebrate and amplify the miracle of being alive--to experience more, to learn and grow. A “problem” is, arguably then, just another experience, one we can learn from, not something to avoid at all costs.

What if we believed this? “Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it... it’s just easier if you do.”* ... then we wouldn’t really have “problems,” right?

Acceptance of what is, turns a “problem” into an experience — and it’s that turn, more than anything else, that gives us varied lenses, layered thought, and access to what once seemed inconceivable. Real education is not learning what to think about, but how to think in general.

Getting better at ignoring negative thoughts is not learning how to think better; it’s learning how to better dissociate. Our negative thoughts inform us as much as positive ones do. We can learn to see them as directives, or at the very least, if we can be discerning about what we ascribe meaning to, we can decide what matters to us, and to what degree.

Therein is the power of negative thinking. The Stoics practiced negative visualization (imagining the worst possible outcomes and accepting the impermanence of all in the quest to deeply appreciate what we have when we have it). In the same way, learning how to think more effectively means recognizing that we can choose how we apply meaning and emotion to our lives. And if we don’t consciously decide what matters and what doesn’t, we’ll spend the rest of our lives (most likely unconsciously) reinforcing limiting beliefs, responding to what we were conditioned by when we were young.

The solution is not hyper-focused positivity, but learning how to turn the shadow aspects of our minds into forces that ignite change and inspire growth. We are blessed (and perhaps cursed) by our prefrontal cortexes, which allow us to think about our own minds. Our brains think about themselves, which is called metacognition. This allows us to ascribe meaning to events and emotions. We can even deliberately choose to question our thoughts.

What this means is that whatever problem we think we have in our lives is not the problem, it’s the fact that we see it as a problem, rather than a signal. And as a perceived problem, we often over-ascribe meaning, extrapolate to assumptions, and dwell with irrational catastrophizing. Even the fact that we see our problems as problems is not, of course, a problem, but an experience we have and can learn from and let go.

The difference between the kind of anxiety that paralyzes us and the kind of fear that accompanies anything brave and worthwhile is discernment, which takes practice. We can see our obstacles as life opportunities by utilizing a lens of self-kindness and awareness. And the questioning of our thoughts. We may not choose our thoughts, but we certainly don’t have to believe them.

So, let’s embrace discomfort. Accept life comes with suffering, pain and loss. Do what we can, accept the emotions, feel them and be grateful for it all. Being uncomfortable encourages us to grow in ways we never imagined possible. It hardens us, making us sturdier. Going deep allows us to go high.

Read: Every Moment Contains The Power To Change Our Destiny

We cannot achieve true personal growth, spiritual depth, or self-realization without first confronting and integrating our “shadow.” In our shadow is where we file our “problems” as grievances and attempt to lock that door. But just as a tree requires a deep, dark anchor in the earth to be strong enough to reach toward the sky, we can embrace the gift of all of our experiences.

The problem is not the problem, it is how we think about the problem. Think better.

Keep the faith,

Beth

* Byron Katie and this topic is Inspired by an essay in the book, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think

Dear Friends,

This is my story. I had never done drugs. Never. I barely drank.

In the summer of 2020, I went to a psilocybin ceremony. This was a very structured and supported event, with about ten of us. I brought my terror and a pillow, along with socks that read, “Happy” on the toes, just in case I would forget that that was what I was after, or at least that was my hope. I was feeling rather joyless then, and no joy was on the horizon as far as I could see.

As I laid down on my mat, I adjusted down my expectations. I would gladly simply accept change.

We were given the drink along with some basic information. Soon the man across from me started to snore, the leader spoke in a lyrical tone while guiding us to breathe, “Go inside, relax,” she said. Breathe I could do, go inside I had done from years of yoga. I thought: “Well, perhaps I’ll get a really good five-hour nap and relaxation.” I breathed in, went inside (meaning intending to get a sense of my lungs…) and then I was inside. Of me. I could see my body from the inside out.

“OMG!” As I began to freak out, I remembered the guidance to go with whatever came up, and so I did, I swallowed (myself?!) and went deeper. It is said that describing a hallucinogenic experience is like going to the ocean and being able to return with only a teaspoon, and having to say, “Here, this is the ocean.”

Here’s my teaspoon: I was the me I am now, and I was also me in utero and I then again I was also me holding me as a newborn. I was engulfed in warmth, in love, in joy. There was so much joy, that I giggled, then laughed. I did not want to disturb others, so I covered my mouth, but like a small child, I only laughed more. I visited where we come from, and it was beautiful, safe, unified.

I came to understand we choose this consciousness, this experience and it’s our birthright to have love, joy and acceptance; interspersed with all the other stuff, like pain, suffering, fear. I understood where we go to after all of this, and this was back to something like a unified whole, which was many things, but not fear. Whatever our afterlife is; I cannot explain, yet I visited it. I was left with this: this non-believer ended up a Believer, of an intelligent design. There was more, much, much more and it was magnificent. But that is all that will fit in my teaspoon, and there’s an ocean left.

Later my co-journeyers said they were not annoyed by my laughter, but drawn to it. At times they followed it and it inspired them. This was the first time I had ever imagined I could influence others using no constructed persona with intellectual credence, authority, or title—only with joy. In other words, by being. With laughter. And this I began to understand is who I truly am—a soul visiting this earth in a body, tasked with influencing, ultimately only having love and truth to wield. I cannot say I healed, but I saw what healing was going to feel like. And so my journey began.

What I did right (for me):

1. I actually did the ceremony, faced my fears and went after something for myself, completely out of my comfort zone.

2. I was guided by a very experienced, intelligent and kind soul.

3. Although we had no pre- or post-work, I did my first ceremony within a small group.

4. I stayed within the United States, in a place I knew that I could get help if I needed it.

What I wish I had known… well, that’s everything below.

May you start on your journey,

Beth

Read: What A Psychedelic Journey Is Really Like

“You go deep enough or far out enough in consciousness, and you will bump into the sacred.

It’s not something we generate;

it’s something out there waiting to be discovered.

And this reliably happens to nonbelievers as well as believers.”

Michael Pollan

_{A Short Guide to Selecting Where to Go for a Ceremony}

Understand What You Want You may be looking for a “good” time, a “sparkly” trip, or a profound experience with real potential for shift and healing in your life. If it’s the latter, this guide is for you. Psychedelics are increasingly seen to have the ability to dramatically — even permanently — transform our worldviews, well-being and life satisfaction. It’s important to note, though, that this doesn’t happen without our participation. Perhaps most important in choosing the right experience for you is Set and Setting — what you do, where, with whom, and under what collective intention. The value of thorough preparation and support from a safe center and highly trained practitioners cannot be overstated. Who you do this with — ideally a small, vetted cohort who come with trust and honesty — magnifies the potential for a positive, profound experience.

Select a Practitioner, Center, Group All guides are not equal. Make sure you will be in a safe and comfortable environment during the journey, surrounded by trusted professionals who can and will provide support and guidance. In an ayahuasca context, lineage and training matter enormously. Shipibo-trained practitioners undergo years of systematic training. They sit hundreds of ceremonies, with extended periods of isolation and communion with specific teacher plants. What makes a psychedelic journey genuinely risky is unsupervised use, inadequate screening, lack of medical and emotional support when needed, and poor or absent integration support.

With most psychedelics, there isn’t as strong a lineage of ceremonial training, so what truly matters is selecting a professional who can help you prepare — providing information about the substance, its effects, and what to expect — and who can help you set intentions and create a safe, comfortable environment. It’s important to intentionally select a “sitter” or guide who has deep respect for the profound mystical component of the experience, as well as a solid understanding of the science and significant hands-on experience. Being guided by someone calm, reassuring, and trustworthy is essential. Do your research and make sure the group or person is legitimate, has legal rights to their space and follows ethical guidelines. Connect with them ahead of time and get to know past participants. Get specific about where they source their medicine, if it’s pure/tested and whether they’re adding anything else into it.

Preparation Ideally your guide will provide pre-work, information, informed consent and screen out for any potential dangers. There’s real benefit in understanding what you’ll be taking, the known experience of most people using this medicine, and the ability to feel comfortable, supported, and safe. It’s essential to be transparent about any of your medical conditions or medications. If needed, talk to your doctor about your intent, and get a clear understanding of their view on how to do this safely. Many antidepressants need to be stopped prior to a ceremony — agreeing to sit with more plant medicine while staying on medications is generally not advised.

Safety and Legality Some religious and research organizations, and certain places in the US, allow one to legally sit with psychedelics. None of this should be understood as a guarantee that a given practice is “legal” — the landscape varies by jurisdiction and continues to evolve, so it’s worth understanding the specific protections (or lack of them) wherever you choose to journey. Some states have adopted Good Samaritan laws, which protect those who seek emergency medical help during an experience for any reason. This is extremely important in case something occurs, like a fall or illness.

What is in the Substance? Not every brew is what you may think it is. Some practitioners add other plants or substances to compounds specifically to intensify the psychedelic effect. A more intense experience is not the same as a healing one, and this kind of additive practice is not about your wellbeing; it’s about a performative trip. It can also be genuinely dangerous. Introducing substances can give you a bang, but unknown interactions, unpredictable dosing, and physical or psychological risk you didn’t consent to also could arise. This is exactly why sourcing matters: ask directly what is in the medicine, where it comes from, and whether anything has been added — and be wary of any guide who is vague or evasive about the answer.

Group or Individual? You may be drawn to an individual experience, and that may give you a sense of control and intimacy. In contrast you may be drawn to community. Some places have large groups. For some, this can be chaotic or challenging. In any setting, ensure you and/or each participant will receive strong individual attention and support from the guide or facilitator. Small groups (10 or less) generally allow for better monitoring and supervision, helping ensure safety and minimize the risk of adverse effects.

Small groups also provide group bonding, shared experience, and mutual support, which often enhance the transformative potential of the journey. Often you’ll have profound insights that are nearly impossible to explain to others — a built-in cohort allows for deeper integration. Almost all ayahuasca ceremonies happen in a group setting.

Traveling to a Foreign Country? Going to the source, the Amazon can be a cathartic, profound experience, but even more caution is called for. Psychedelic journeys can be intense and disorienting and may — even if rarely — require medical attention. For example, you could need critical medical care for nothing to do with the ceremony, or want deep support in your own language. In a foreign country, you may not have access to the same quality of medical care or support systems you’d have at home. If you don’t speak the local language fluently, it may be difficult to communicate your needs or understand important instructions or safety protocols. Do not assume all plant medicine experiences are legally supported in any given country.

Integration After the experience, integration is critical. This is where the neuroplasticity lives, and when the real healing and growth happen. We believe this is the key to lasting, profound shifts from a ceremony. Integration with a small, supportive group led by a skilled coach for several weeks is incredibly powerful and highly recommended.

Above all...make sure you have an invitation to belong, will be held, safe and supported long after the experience fades and life continues.

From one FG9 participant...When people ask me about my experience here, I will say it was one of the most profound experiences of my life.

I have been living with insurmountable trauma for over 10 years and had done everything I could think of to heal, but I still had a deeply felt sense that I was to blame for what happened to me despite knowing that it wasn’t my fault. I needed something to break through my protectors that lived beneath conscious thought and heal me at a level nothing else could touch.

Thank you for building the program you have that’s strong enough to hold our deepest traumas and fears. I love you all and I am forever changed by this experience.

— July 2026

I was raised within a very strict religious structure. Eventually, I grew up and, unfortunately grew out of any belief. Now I’ve come back—come home to a faith not defined by my childhood. If you have ever wanted God and felt a need to reject God at the same time, I understand. This was my story growing up, until I gave up on that narrative altogether.

One day I was leading a “successful” life — learning to work with my trauma, “winning,” or trying to, at this game called life. The next, I was sitting in an ayahuasca ceremony, conversing with God. This was a bit surprising to me, as I was not looking for God. I was looking for answers I had not yet found. Instead, I found God. Or more precisely and more beautifully: God had been there all along. You can’t find something that was never lost.

I rejected the God I was handed: one of punishment, hell, sin, shame, surveillance, and vengeance. There was not only a focus on evil, but sin, into which I was apparently born. My early God was at its core: fear. I was able to see through the fog of those years. I now see an intelligent design working for me, for us. One operating on love and truth. In that memorable ayahuasca ceremony, I found plant medicine did not behave like the religion I grew up with—it did not punish me, although it could be frightening. It did not shame me, although it showed me myself in clarity. It did not hold me down, it held me. It did not tell me things I was to believe, it exposed in me what I already knew.

Most importantly, it revealed to me my direct relationship with God. Our longing for God is ancient. Religions have had their missteps, which does not mean they cannot be a path, but perhaps we still need to question. When I was very young and attempting to push back on the religion forced on me, I thought I had the one question that would bring it all down: where, then, does God come from? I love the child asking the question, and can now answer: I do not need to know. For me, God comes from the same unexplainable place as does the love we have, for example, when we first gaze at our newborn’s face. Or when we contemplate the source of consciousness, for that matter.

Because we love, we suffer, we die, and all that is mortal does as well; we want meaning in our lives: God is the love underneath it all. Or, God resides in us all. And perhaps we are always trying to remember these truths, while society, many families, and education seem to pump into us amnesia to these questions, let alone the answers. In my case, and maybe in yours, trauma led me to falsely believe I was alone. Fear taught me to stop asking to be seen. My early religion made me see myself as the problem, not the miracle. And then, medicine opened the door. I saw: love is the home of my life, God is the host.

If a spiritual experience makes us softer without making us weak, braver without making us arrogant, and more present to this magnificent human life, let’s meet it with gratitude—and pay attention to what it’s pointing toward. The appetite for God is not an escape from being human. It is being human all the way down: loving what we cannot keep, suffering what we cannot explain, laughing when we become too serious, and still reaching toward the love that never left.

We are often trained to believe through an intermediary. A priest, a therapist, a facilitator who’s supposedly closer to the source than we are. We are drawn to this, because we then can abdicate much of our responsibility to someone else. For me, I’ve found the path is with others, not through them.

What this self-trust means is for us to take responsibility for our own decisions, stay teachable, and have the humility to learn from our actions that confound us, break us, and humble us. The same recalibration applies to trusting God. It doesn’t mean expecting life to bend toward what I want. It means trusting that there’s a wisdom operating past the edge of what I can currently see, even in the stretches where I can’t locate the point of what’s happening to me.

What I’ve noticed is that this kind of trust is active, not passive. It shows up as courageous action and honest self-reflection, not as a comfortable feeling of certainty. It sounds like this: love everyone and tell the truth. (Ram Dass)

And so, as we traverse our lives we can do our part, but also release our grip on that which was never ours to control. We can: show up prepared, act with integrity, say the honest thing instead of the strategic thing. Then, once that’s done, let the results be what they’re going to be. In other words, have faith. Through sheer anxiety and strength of will we, more often than not, change nothing, but are left with the mistaken belief that we were ever able to prevent things from going “wrong.”

Grace was gifted to me; I did not earn it. We are all given this gift. It’s up to us to receive it when we can. And then, with the willingness to think, discern, choose, and act in accordance with whatever we come to understand God to be, we walk the path we were most meant to take.

With love, gratitude, and a whole lot of faith. -

Beth

resilience

Panic pulled her under the surface, depression held her there

until her lungs burned and her vision went dark around the edges.

Resigned to drowning, she opened her mouth to take one last breath

but something was different now: she had grown gills.

It was difficult and unexpected, but she lived.

We’re Meant To Believe......So science says.

Dr. Lisa Miller, who directs Columbia’s Spirituality Mind Body Institute, has spent decades trying to understand why humans are universally equipped with a capacity for spirituality, and that our brains become more resilient as a result of engaging it.

In MRI studies looking at people with a sustained spiritual practice over eight years, her lab found broad regions of increased cortical thickness — measurable, structural change in the brain’s processing capacity. What’s notable is how consistent this shows up across very different people. Using a protocol developed at Yale, Miller’s team asked research subjects to narrate their own stories of transcendence in vivid, sensory detail, then compared brain scans across participants. Despite the wide range of content and background, the same neural regions lit up in the same ways. Meaning, we are meant to believe.

She argues an engaged spiritual life enhances grit, optimism, and resilience, while insulating against addiction, trauma, and depression, and that loss and uncertainty can function as gateways to renewal rather than only as things to survive. In one finding she returns to often, teens who reported that personal spirituality was highly important to them showed an 80 percent decreased relative risk of addiction to drugs and alcohol, published in peer-reviewed research.

Dear Friends,

You know the feeling. You want that something. A car, a pair of shoes, a house. You know it won’t “fix” you, won’t bring lasting joy—might even bring the opposite. But, there’s such a desire, a need, almost. You crave the sensation of havingit. Whatever it is. And once you get it, that surge of feeling “good” does come, and so you think, Yes, that’s what I needed. This thing.

What’s really happening, though, isn’t the joy of acquisition—it’s that the wanting itself has quieted, for the moment. What we’re actually after is for our empty feeling to disappear. We mistake this temporary achievement of “good” feelings for the acquisition itself. In truth, we could skip the purchase entirely and go straight to what we’re really after: to feel loved, safe, whole, complete. No purchase necessary.

It’s exactly the same with our feelings of aloneness. We are taught and believe our feelings of aloneness are the result of being alone-- of not having a partner, or a the lack of a “best friend,” that’s always there for us.

As with purchases, when we are looking for this special someone, we are looking to fill a void. We are looking to treat a symptom, the void, not the underlying issue--why do we feel a void in the first place? Which does not mean we do not need people. We do. But not to fill a sense of incompleteness that is coming from within.

Experience and society convince us we are incomplete. When we meet that special other, we have euphoria, joy, infatuation. We tell ourselves, Now, life is amazing. Now, I’m complete. What’s really happening is that someone else is showing us what it feels like to be adored—reflecting back something we’ve been missing, something we haven’t been giving ourselves. The euphoria is real. But unless we learn to offer ourselves that same self-acceptance (love) it can only ever be borrowed, held by someone else, on their terms and their timing.

Read: Tending To Our Inner Divine

Dear friends, no one can permanently or completely fill this sense of longing for us.

The first problem with looking for an external fix to our sense of aloneness is that it’s an illusion, and we can’t fix illusions. The belief and subsequent feeling of being alone, is a negation of our true state of belonging to the whole. And in this illusion, we feel alone. Lonely.

The next problem is, we think someone can do this (make us feel connected) for us, and for a bit, it occurs. We are special, cherished, unique, irreplaceable—in the eyes of another. We cannot, however, be held this way perfectly by another human. And so they stumble. We see they are human. And with this sense of failure (their failure, in our minds) we may chose to end this relationship and look for another. The more perfect one.

Little may we know that the love, acceptance, belonging, and completeness we are seeking was always and fully within us.

To many of us, we do find our path to becoming (re)aware that we are part of something much larger, intelligent and kind. We may find this in what we call God, the universe or spirituality. Again, the path is through us, not held by someone else for us. In this place of being whole, loved, complete—we can fully partner with others. Not from a stance of needing a cure, but a reflection of the magnificence of being. Their being. Our being. The grace of being alive, present, and gifted.

It is only thru not needing another person, thing or state to be ok are we ok. And from this sense of being ok (or perhaps much more than that), we start to allow ourselves to shine and add much more to the world.

Nothing to buy. No one to find.

Keep the faith,

Beth

We sat in the audience and heard the words of a young woman who was grappling with acute alcoholism. She shared her experience prior to undergoing psychedelic treatment:

“I saw myself opening the fridge and wanting a beer. It was a vision, and I saw that the wanting, the needing, the craving felt like this little weaselly animal that was scrabbling and desperate...”

[After the psilocybin-assisted therapy]

“...I remember taking this mental image of the little animal and calming it. I simply petted this small alcohol weasel, soothing it and treating it with love.”

In psychiatric circles, the promising results of psychedelics in helping alcoholics overcome their addiction have been recognized for decades. Interestingly, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous considered LSD as a “higher power.” He was advised to keep this under close wraps.

At the Psychedelic Science 2023 MAPS conference, researchers shared a myriad of studies which explored the various ways psychedelics can be effective in treating the terrible ailments of our times.

Weeks later, I’m still recalling the presentation on alcoholism.

Not surprisingly, there is a significant correlation between low self-compassion and Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD). Equally remarkable is the profound impact of psilocybin-assisted therapy in addressing this lack of self-compassion, to the extent that AUD can be considered “treated.”

In a double-blind study, participants diagnosed with DSM-IV alcohol dependence received two psilocybin sessions, four weeks apart. The quantitative conclusion was that psilocybin-assisted therapy reduced drinking among patients. The qualitative conclusion indicated that self-compassion appears to be a key mechanism for patient improvement.

During the conference, in a packed room of scientists listening to a peer-reviewed and published study, one participant shared the following comment:

“I remember journeying back to a time before I was born... I chose this human body to fulfill the purpose I came here to accomplish in this lifetime. I saw everything perfectly orchestrated, including the role of alcohol... We need these substances [plant medicines] to help us remember our place in the world and the cosmos... It was more than just an intellectual understanding; it was a profound and genuine experience.”

Have you ever been in a room of Ph.Ds and M.D.s with tears running down their faces?

I have.

Hope has wings.

Beth

FieldGuide9

Some days I walk in the grace of God, and others I’m dwelling in our never-ending societal despair and the pettiness of my small grievances (which, to set the record straight, do not seem small in the moment). Regardless, when I see my agency in both “realities,” I’m growing.

We live simultaneously in two worlds: an outer, physical one, and an inner, emotional and spiritual one. Our experience of the inner world — and much of what we make of the outer one — is shaped, if not fully created, by our thoughts. Our progress, then, depends on to understand we are not our thoughts, and once doing that, distinguishing the thoughts that serve us from those that don’t.

From the moment we wake until we sleep, we are engaged in an inner struggle. If we live with faith, we may consider this a spiritual warfare. Regardless of how we identify this, our deeper values and better natures are constantly being tested. Our very society encourages us to immerse ourselves into what harms us (consumerism, numbing substances, envy) and to look away from what truly matters (living with a meaning/purpose). We often fall into self-defeating actions, then are surprised when they leave us feeling miserable.

The Greek root of the word diabolic — diaballein, meaning “to throw across” — describes that which accuses, slanders, and seeks to divide. It is an energy that fragments us from within.

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” (Milton, Paradise Lost).

Our thoughts have the power to shape the quality of every one of our experiences. Throughout the day, we by default accumulate harmful mental patterns that, often based in fear, that if left unexamined, become deeply rooted. When we allow destructive thinking to build, it forms a heavy residue that weighs on our soul by day’s end.

We, dear friends, are imperfect beings called toward wholeness if not holiness— a task that is never finished. Courage is not the absence of failure or fear, but the willingness to keep striving despite it all. It is when we work thru difficulty that we have the opportunity to grow most. Yet this requires us to own our way of thinking.

We may sincerely thank a cashier, but perhaps she does not respond and we conclude: What a toxic person! We then often carry this judgement into our next interaction, expecting, perhaps creating, separation. Or someone doesn’t reply to our message for a week, and each day we construct a darker explanation, until we act on it — only to learn he had her own demons to battle. Or someone passes us with a look of disgust, and we readily assume it’s aimed at us, unaware (or incurious?) he was simply caught in a difficult thought of his own.

As Seneca wrote, “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

Most of our interpersonal pain does not come from others, but from the stories we tell about them, with ourselves as the central theme. And often, what we find most troubling in others is something we have not yet faced in ourselves. We see this most clearly after sitting a ceremonial weekend. After a heart-opening weekend, we perceive our world, our relationships, and others profoundly different — perhaps with much more love and compassion. In other words, we see the undeniable goodness already present in our lives and in others. With this shift, it is most likely that nothing — and no one — has changed in our world, but our perspective has, and so all is different.

We cannot control what others think, say, or do. But we can choose how we treat them. When we act with care even if we are treated carelessly, something shifts — in us, and sometimes in them. Here’s a suggestion for change: How do you start your day? Is it with self kindness, gratidude or a quick look at our phones? An assault of news, a pang of envy over others’ “perfect” lives or problems awaiting us? What comes of this? Instead, what would happen if we started our days with a meditation or prayer — reflecting on gratitude, patience, love?

Marcus Aurelius: “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.”

The longer we sit with harmful thoughts, the more they spread — until we lose perspective entirely. By contrast, when we truly can come from gratitude and love, it radiates outward with consequences beyond our imaginations. Our random acts of kindness go so much further than we can imagine.

We cannot control a thought that pops into our head, nor the emotions that may flood us, but we do have choice in how we react. The full-blown reaction we may deeply regret afterward develops only when we give it our unchecked agreement.

Read our blog: How To Change Your Thoughts.

Awareness of our own patterns and failings is not the end — it is the beginning of growth. The more honestly we examine ourselves, the more clearly we see our own imperfect humanness, and in turn, the imperfect humanness of others. That clarity, far from discouraging us, opens us to grace. Perhaps the most important tool in facing the dark thoughts within us is self-forgiveness.

When we recognize our own wrongdoing, grieve it, repair it, and move on, we set off a chain reaction of grace and light. Refusing to linger in guilt — what some might call indulging it — is itself an act of responsibility. We carry forward the learning, not the false belief that we are broken. Rooted in this grace rather than in our darker thoughts, we act from love, and the world shifts around us.

Keep the faith,

Beth

When we are young, about the time we fully (erroneously) determine we are separate, apart from others; we start an internal conversation. This “inner child” voice is the dialogue we need—often to survive. Regardless of our early traumas or lack thereof, we all create neurological patterns for our subsistence. Many of our guides are very functional such as learning skills, tasks and social norms. Some are not.

All too often, our inner voices become too harsh, too critical, too damaging. It’s the voice of the scared, vulnerable, and powerless child. And it’s hard to resist.

It’s not wrong that we developed this dialogue, as it’s an inherent part of being human, but it’s not needed nor helpful when we grow up.

Simultaneously, as children we are growing our egos—the part of us that labels ourselves as special. Different. Oftentimes, we land on a mantra of ourselves that sounds great but actually becomes detrimental.

When I was about seven, there was tremendous chaos in my family. My sister was born months premature, my mom nearly died, and my father succumbed further into alcoholism. So, I came up with: “I am responsible.” The truth was, I was not, could not have been, but my belief probably gave me some comfort as I could imagine that if I were responsible, I and others could be safe.

My burgeoning ego took this and kept it. It sounds so good, right?

“I’m responsible.”

But now it can keep me separate and apart from others. You know, Responsible.

Also, I can spend all my time and energy being responsible for, well, everyone, and ignore the only place I have responsibility: for myself. Even worse, I frequently end up garnering resentment from others, who are capable of being responsible for themselves, in spite of my “best” intentions in proving otherwise.

What’s the opposite, I wondered, of Responsible? Carefree? Happy?

Love.

When I do not hold myself responsible for others or situations, I simply and fully and completely can love them or what is happening. It’s enough. More than enough.

Now that I’m not responsible for everything, I have the time and space to sit down, with me (and this inner child) and start a different conversation, based on belonging and love.

Dear Friends,

The body keeps the score. The phrase comes from the book of the same name, and it’s compelling because it matches how we often feel, like: Something (s) been done to me, and I’m carrying that around.

We come to believe that trauma is literally stored in our tissues, and that healing means finding it and getting it out. Once we do, we believe, hope; we’ll be okay. But this isn’t quite right, and the distinction matters more than it might seem.

What’s actually happening

What we can say more accurately (hyperlink to the study) is that trauma describes what happens when we’re unable—or unsupported, or both—to process an event and its emotional charge. When this happens to us, our neurology, thoughts, emotions, and bodies become overly indexed toward threat prediction (fear, anxiety). Our physical reactions become confirmation to us that danger is pervasive and always ongoing. So: we predict imminent harm, our emotions activate, and that activation becomes proof, to us, that danger persists.

This is an embedded feedback loop, not a certain place in our body that a trauma or traumas are stored. And yet—when we have this experience, it feels like something is in us. Something we could actually touch, and if we did, it would be dark, creepy.

This feels exactly like something is trapped inside us. When we begin to heal (e.g. sit in ceremony) and our bodies release—shaking, crying, trembling—what we’re encountering is our mind/body/soul recalibrating an overly constrictive predictive model. It is not an amputation or exorcism. This is important to realize.

The story underneath the story

We’ve been drawn to the storage model partly because it fits a narrative that’s been running in the background of our cultures for a long time: a story about purity and impurity, and more specifically, about the self as a reform project that can never confirm its own completion. That concept, of the need for our individual effort toward purification, has become the default mold and sounds like this: I’m not ok, I just haven’t gotten through all my trauma yet.

For those of us with deeper trauma, this can feel like a project that never completes. There’s always more. There’s a real difference between: I haven’t excised my core trauma yet, and I‘m learning to trust life more and more. One is a checklist with no end. The other is a path, that gets easier the more we do it. This shows up in subtle ways. If we’ve done real work, and are genuinely more resilient than before, have a particularly hard week; we feel overwhelmed. Defeated. Perhaps going backwards.

Under the I’m damaged and need to be fixed model, a tough week is not just that—it becomes evidence that there’s more unprocessed material, more to excavate. Every “difficult” feeling becomes proof the project isn’t finished. We’re still broken. So we get caught between a story that says we’ll never be finished and one that says we should already be finished. Both measure us against a finish line that doesn’t exist. Both are self-punishing.

What actually helps

Our work with difficult memories is real, and it matters. But what made our experiences traumatic in the first place was often that we were so alone through them. When we re-encounter that material with true support, it’s already a different experience. The container and integration in which the reworking happens may be even more important than we imagined.

It’s a reasonable desire—wanting to stop feeling threatened all the time. But healing starts with seeing the pattern: the smallest spark — a tone of voice, a pause, a look — and our nervous system responds as though the walls are coming down. We feel threatened by everything, never quite okay. This is exactly what trauma patterning feels like from the inside. And it’s also how our trauma began: something happened, we are not soothed, and so we tighten — turn inward, making ourselves the project.

Thus, we come to believe there’s something wrong inside us, that we need to get it out, and then we’ll be okay. Healing becomes exorcism. And this expulsion is a project with no natural endpoint—there’s always the possibility that something is still lurking.

[Read: “That’s Just How I Am, and other myths we tell ourselves.”]

Friends, we don’t heal by pushing parts of ourselves away. We heal when our system finds a new way to feel, and the energy begins to move. What is happening with the “release” is that our system is encountering our constriction, alchemizing it and creating new pathways of response. That’s healing, not rejection.

And with this lens we can see we are systems, with patterns “stored.” We don’t need to excise things out of us, but get back to a more positive patterning. Instead of waging war on something alien inside us, we can come into relationship with ourselves— meeting the parts that learned, young, to live as if the threat never passed.

And now that we are not alone, and not young; we can be what we were always meant to be. Whole.

Keep the faith,

Beth

I’m not on social media, but I have a great workaround. People send me the best of what they find, so I have excellent filters and get remarkable content without the cat videos. Although some cat videos are great--like the ones playing music late at night....

But I digress. Because, along came this: apparently Fiji has the highest self-reported happiness rates of any nation, despite having one of its lowest GDPs. What researchers found was a practice — ancient, communal, and almost (of course) simple It’s called Talanoa.

It seems there’s no clean English translation for Talanoa. “Inclusive dialogue,” maybe. Talanoa is not a conversation with an agenda. It is not a meeting designed to produce an outcome or a discussion hoping for a decision. It is the deliberate practice of sitting with others and speaking truthfully about your inner life.

Judgment and fixing are not part of it. Talanoa operates on three principles. There is no agenda — no one arrives with a position to defend or a belief that need to be shared. There is no hierarchy — every voice carries weight regardless of status, age, or authority. And vulnerability is not weakness. It is the entire point.

Over here (in the States) we seem to be trained to have conversations that never leave the surface or are “unproductive.” We can talk about what happened, but not necessarily what it meant. We can recount what we did, but not what we felt. It’s “safer” to talk about other people, not about ourselves. Sometimes, if you listen closely to our conversations, you will see people have stopped saying “I” altogether — as if there is no one present. Maybe there isn’t.

This is not an individual failure. Everyone is busy, true vulnerability can feel risky, and most families have things that remain permanently unspoken. We have even arrived at a place where words themselves feel dangerous, where saying the “wrong” one seems all too probable. Best to not say much.

The data on our becoming disconnected on any meaningful level is not subtle, and it has been getting worse for years. In 2018, Cigna surveyed more than 20,000 U.S. adults and found that only about half reported having a meaningful in-person interaction — an extended conversation with a friend, quality time with family — on any given day in an entire year.

By their 2025 report, the share of Americans experiencing loneliness had climbed from 46 percent to 57 percent, even as or perhaps because younger generations became more technologically connected. The American Psychological Association’s most recent survey, published in November 2025, found that more than half of U.S. adults feel isolated, left out, or lacking in companionship often or some of the time.

We are not running short on information or entertainment or ways to fill silence. What we are running short on is the experience of being genuinely heard, seen.

People with regular access to honest, vulnerable conversation show lower rates of cardiovascular disease and recover more quickly from illness. When a person speaks truthfully about their inner life to someone who listens without judgment, two things happen at once. The speaker’s nervous system registers the experience of being fully seen. And the listener’s nervous system co-regulates with the speaker’s — a process researchers call neural resonance. Connection is physical. Its absence is too.

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

Alan Watts

What does it cost to live without even one relationship where the truth about your inner life can be spoken without consequence? Would we even know what we were missing?

We readily talk about what we live for and sometimes—in dramatic moments—we imagine for what or whom we would die. Yet, if we really thought about it, both are the same. With every day, every action, every moment, we choose how we spend our lives and, in other words, what we’re dying for—that which we are exchanging our energy, time and, ultimately, if not incrementally, our lives for.

“Dying for something has a heroic ring to it. But really it’s the easiest thing in the world ... When you wake up and eat your toast, you are dying for something. When you drive to work, you’re dying for something. When you exchange meaningless pleasantries with your colleagues, you’re dying for something. As surely as time passes, we human beings are dying for something. The trick to dying for something is picking the right something, day after week after precious year.”*

And determining, deliberately determining, our life’s time usage is not easy, because although we have continuous choices, we routinely and unconsciously devalue our time. We seem to be much more aware and cautious of how we spend our money. But money, even if it may seem like it is, is not finite. Our lives are.

It’s tricky, because when we are aware that our time is precious and temporal, we don’t know how much of it we have, so we default to estimating on the high side—the very high side. (When asked, we almost all believe we are going to live longer than the average.). Here’s a sobering thought, if you are in your late or early sixties, statistically, you have about the life-span of a puppy.

Normally we won’t have one big event to “die for,” but all of our days, all of our moments culminate to what we exchanged our lives for. The problem isn’t that we’re picking the wrong things to die for, but that we generally aren’t actually choosing. Often we live by proxy, watching others, or imaging what we might do one day. And then our time goes by.

What did you die for today?

Beth

fieldguide9.com

*From John Kaag, author of American Philosophy: A Love Story

Dear Friends,

…To be valued for what you give, what you do, what you carry.* Perhaps some of your relationships hinge on what you silently promise not to say, how you make them feel. And yet even with decades of doing everything “right,” you may still remain wondering if you are loved for you. You may find yourself unseen. Unmet. With the lingering question: in how many of my relationships am I useful, but not truly loved?

Some of us have become experts in the skill to carry, repair, rescue, and step into places where things are breaking. We provide the usefulness that other people depend on. We may have been trained to believe we had to do this to be loved when we were very young, and have yet to break this pattern. We may confuse being essential, to being loved. And one day, once we stop serving in the way others in our lives have come to expect, or we start saying what they do not want to hear, or we refuse to carry what is not ours; we may realize many of our relationships were conditional. We were needed, strong, essential—not necessarily cherished for our true selves. The non-doing part.

We may begin to feel profound loneliness. Loneliness stemming from the absence of people in our lives who truly come toward us when we are no longer high functioning, serving or when we do, say or act in a way that challenges the (their) status quo. Like, we start telling the truth, our truth. In this realization, we may even ask ourselves if we are desiring others to give us what we are unwilling to give ourselves: unconditional love.

We may suddenly realize that our own vulnerability is not seen. Not accepted. Not part of the equation. This may not always look obvious from the outside. We can remain married, employed, befriended and socially adept while living for a very long time without real emotional support.

Often, we are fully complicit in this arrangement. We may feel “safer” doing and giving and fixing than receiving. We spend years attempting to erase our needs, our messiness, our dependence; fearing that if we displayed our rawness, we may be rejected. We may even hire people into our lives who we subconsciously know will not dig deep and love all of us.

When we finally say, “I cannot do this anymore,” people often rush to ask what has gone wrong. Far fewer ask us what has been missing from our lives for so long that we can no longer keep compensating for them. In our self-created busyness, we may have buried our deep desire (need) to be valued for what we do not do, for what we cannot carry, and for how much we admit we cannot solve. Perhaps deep down we believe a well-functioning life is the most we should hope for, because its better than the pain of our childhoods.

Occupations can hold us together for a very long time. They can give shape to a day, provide urgency, protect against harder questions, and even offer moments of genuine contact, which is exactly why it is so easy to confuse it with nourishment. With love.

Work is only one of the distractions to our pain, our loneliness. We may turn to exercise, self-improvement, screens, travel, productivity, addictions or the constant filling of time. Even as, or perhaps especially as, our life looks full, and we appear competent, sometimes even very successful, our soul’s isolation may grow.

We can be accomplished, informed, disciplined, psychologically literate, and still deprived in the simplest human ways: deprived of being known. We were not created to exist mainly as function, stability, labor, or a role--as the person who keeps the system running while some deeper part of us goes untouched. And yet so much of adult life comes to look exactly like that.

This is the truth: we feel love by being seen, all of the parts of us. Grace is felt through the repeated experience of being met with the truth of love, and the knowledge that we do not have to carry this alone.

A family structure can remain intact on paper and still fail in the place that matters most. We can sleep beside another body for years and still live in deprivation that never becomes dramatic enough to draw public attention. Friendships may look like they’re deep.

When lack of being seen persists for too long, we begin adapting around the loss. We may be married, employed, raising children, answering emails, attending meetings, exercising, showing up. From the outside many aspects of our life may appear solid. Inside there may be emptiness.

And so we do more, and allow ourselves to feel less. This is not because we are weak. It is because we are afraid. We were meant to both give and receive. We need to ask: why do I form and maintain relationships with an acute imbalance? How is this a reflection of my lack of self-love?

At some point we began to believe societal imposed limiting beliefs. Such as, I am not lovable. I am not good enough. I am not safe. I do not belong. Yet to heal we must reverse these mistaken beliefs and understand, I am meant to be loved, now and always.

And my friend, this requires relationship. It starts internally, but also must be reflected back. It’s our job to live a life in which we have this. To expect it, and allow it in. Where and why have we abandoned ourselves?

When our relationships are transactional, stress becomes ordinary, longing becomes embarrassing, need gets pushed into private corners and managed in silence. From the outside we may become more efficient, even more impressive, while inwardly we become hungrier, flatter, and further removed from simple aliveness. That is, until something breaks through, and we no longer can or will play the game.

We call it strong when we ask for very little and keep functioning. We call it stability when we will not disturb anyone with our pain. Then later, when we begin to fray, we act as if the collapse appeared out of nowhere.

Something in us dies from long exposure to indifference, from years of being tolerated but not held, from being valued for what we do while the rest of us goes unwitnessed. Many of us who call ourselves tired, numb, burnt out, or anxious are carrying some version of that injury inside us. We need to be met. We need to want this for ourselves. And not just sometimes.

What is life, after all, but the solitary journey we cannot do alone?

Keep the faith,

Beth

*Influenced by this longer article.

I want to believe I embrace change, but when I dig in deep and am honestly self-reflective, I have to say: Not so much. I find I feel unsettling upset when I move to a new home, or when I no longer work with people I care for, or even when I finish a wonderful book or movie.

The truth is, we can’t lose what we never really had, we can’t keep what’s not ours, and we can’t hold on to something that’s meant to leave or change. But we can make ourselves rather miserable trying.

Think about how many unpleasant things are only a part of our lives because we keep thinking about them. Forgiveness, I think, is about being willing to let go, change. It means we accept that people make mistakes and we do not need to hold them in that place where they did us “wrong”.

When we have been hurt we frequently, at some level, feel as if we have to hold on tight to our resentment in order to vindicate our position, and then the only thing that happens is the pain (resentment) we are holding intensifies. We do have another choice.

When we let go of things in our lives, we are accepting what is so, and allowing future possibility (or even present possibility) to emerge. We can be grateful even if we are leaving what is not serving us, because if we are going to give credit to a circumstance or person to have negatively impacted our lives, then we have to equally acknowledge all the good that they and it gave us as well. We tend to see things as all bad or all good, not really seeing it’s our perception of them.

And when someone or thing leaves our lives and we feel real pain and loss, it often means that we had the gift of this experience. Our upset in the loss is an indicator of something we cared about deeply, which is what we want to have happen in our lives. But then again, perhaps some of our upset is that we did not appreciate it or them enough in the moment.

It’s our choice how we appreciate what we have when we have it, and then let it go when it’s time.

“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.” ― Byron Katie

Dear Friends,

I really don’t want to throw up. Should I sit with ayahuasca? This is the most common question we get from people new at FieldGuide9 (FG9). So here are some facts and then some perspective: nausea and vomiting affected 68.2% of participants in the Global Ayahuasca Survey of over 10,000 people. Purging — which can also be yawning, shaking, or crying — is not considered an adverse effect. It is actively sought for its energetic cleansing benefits. The reason purging is so profound and healing is that it allows you to release what you have been holding: in your stomach, in your body. It is the release of fear, pain, grief, and sadness that you may never have been able to process.

Closely associated is: I don’t want to show deep emotions in front of others. Won’t I feel embarrassed? Well, you might but not for long. Instead, we are sure you will feel part of the whole of the small (about six) group of participants. We’ve seen this over and over again. From a young age, many of us were trained that being a “good” person meant keeping other people happy. Don’t upset your mother. Don’t challenge authority. Don’t make a scene. If someone’s uncomfortable, fix it. We confuse niceness with kindness and compliance with love. Instead of authenticity, we try to be “safe” with people-pleasing — trying to look good, stay in control, especially of ourselves. We learn to read the room, anticipate needs, and subtly reshape ourselves to be acceptable. It’s all an illusion. Our intent is that you break from this cage during ceremony and learn how to live from that freedom. To be truly human, and there be met and seen by others.

Is it safe? Ayahuasca is not addictive, it is the opposite, it helps us drop addictions. If it is the pure medicine it has no additives and only two plants (ayahuasca and chacruna). At FG9 a minimum effect dose is given—enough to be healing, but not incapacitating. There is no known lethal dose. Yet screening is essential. Ayahuasca can interact adversely with a wide range of prescription medications, including antidepressants and some medical/mental conditions. In a Shipibo context, lineage and training matter enormously to hold a safe, effective space. The Shipibo-trained practitioners at FG9 undergo years of systematic training at Nihue Rao, Peru under the guidance of Maestro Ricardo. They sit hundreds of ceremonies, with extended periods of isolation and communion with specific teacher plants — developing the skills that distinguish their approach. What makes ayahuasca genuinely risky is unsupervised use, inadequate screening, lack of medical and emotional support when needed, and no or poor integration support.

How does ayahuasca compare to other substances? The most cited comparative analysis comes from Professor David Nutt and colleagues, published in The Lancet. On a harm scale of 0–100, alcohol scored 72, heroin 55, and crack cocaine 54 — making alcohol the most harmful drug overall when both individual and social harms were considered. Plant medicine scored 6, the lowest on the list. Ayahuasca was not independently ranked, but its profile is close to psilocybin.

Of note, MDMA (Ecstasy) can no longer be reliably tested for safety — reagent kits confirm only that MDMA is present, not what else is in the sample, and fentanyl test strips are compromised by MDMA itself. And, Ketamine can be addictive.

What will my experience be like? Genuinely unpredictable and unique to you.

In a Shipibo ceremony specifically, there are no blindfolds, dancing or soundtracks. The practitioner sings (icaros) to you individually, based on your medical, emotional and spiritual goals. You may have hallucinations, you may feel many intense emotions, you may have meaningful dialogues with those who have passed, you may converse with God or a greater intelligence, you may let go physically of immense stored trauma and you may do all of these things. Or it may be a very quiet, contemplative, and introspective 4-5 hours. No matter, your neurology will be lit up, and you will have access to insights and neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to adapt, reorganize, and rewire its neural connections) to truly do the work, which happens in the days, weeks and months after ceremony.

How will I be immediately afterwards? You can function (drive, hike, work), but you may want to plan for a gentle landing. The days after ceremony are often very emotional and are important integration days. Fatigue is a common. But so is great energy. More sleep, more silence, and clean food are generally called for. Plus deep support.

I have this one chance, what if I don’t do it right? This pressure embedded in the belief that this is the “one chance to get this right,” which is both limiting and untrue. There is no “doing it wrong.” There is showing up, and accepting it is all happening for you.

You may come into psychedelic work with a simple and an understandable belief and hope: something is wrong, and this will fix it. You might believe that if you can just have the right experience, take the right dose, work with the perfect facilitator, say the right prayer, or finally access the thing you’ve been trying to manage for years — then the “problem” will end. This belief makes perfect sense in our culture. You are trained to solve problems, optimize systems, and complete tasks. When something isn’t working, you are suppose to apply effort, strategy, and determination until it does.

So with psychedelics, many people unconsciously think of the experience the same way: as a powerful intervention that, if done correctly, should resolve the issue once and for all. Psychedelics were never meant to be a single decisive event that carries the entire burden of your healing. They were meant to be part of a longer process — a practice rather than a “cure”. If you treat them like something you have to do perfectly, you unknowingly load one experience with impossible expectations. But when you begin relating to them as a practice, the pressure softens, and the work becomes more honest, more sustainable, and paradoxically, more effective.

A single experience can absolutely open doors, reveal truths, and release energy that has been frozen for years. But for most people — especially those carrying decades of accumulated stress, trauma, and adaptation — that first opening is not the end of the journey. It is only the beginning of a new relationship with yourself and healing. (For more, read this book.)Who is the best shaman? There is no “best” here — and in fact we don’t use the term “shaman,” nor do the Shipibo. Their healers are Ayahuasceros or Curanderos (Healers). No one leading a shipibo ayahuasca ceremony would have less than a full year of intensive, monastic training with a Maestro. The “best shaman” is a practitioner’s whose training, safety protocol and references are vetted and strong.

Do I really need integration? in the Global Ayahuasca survey, 6,877 ayahuasca drinkers reported integration difficulties as the single strongest predictor of negative outcomes — stronger than dose, ceremony intensity, or a difficult night. Integration is where the real work begins. The process at FieldGuide9 includes six weeks of integration after every ceremony, and free weekly community calls for life. A ceremonial weekend can usher in enormous perspective shifts and the release of long-held trauma — but your old systems and structures will be waiting for you upon your return. With support and neuroplasticity, your intentions can take root and changes can be implemented. This is where community and trusted support help bridge the experience to actual change.

Do I have to believe in a higher power or God to get strong results? No prior belief is required. And yet the question itself is profound— because what you are really asking is whether there is something larger than your ordinary self at work in this process.

And, there is.

Whether you call it God, the unconscious, the Self, or simply the medicine, something will meet you in that space that does not feel like your own manufacture. From a contemplative faith perspective, the experience often resonates with what mystics across traditions have described as dissolution— the stripping away of everything that is not essential. Many people in ceremony report the sudden, visceral recognition that underneath the fear there is something that has always been whole, sacred, eternal. You do not need a theological framework. But if you have one, you almost certainly will find it enlarged, and strengthened.

More than two-thirds of those who identified as atheist before ayahuasca no longer identified as such afterwards — the experience itself tends to move people to a belief larger than themselves, reinforces prior beliefs and underscores a larger connection. It is not certain all that Ayahuasca cures, expect disbelief.

Keep the faith,

Beth

[A year after his first ceremony and interview—read below—we sat down with Benjamin to catch up.]

Beth: It’s so nice to see you again Benjamin. It’s been almost a year since your ceremonial weekend. I’d love to hear your reflections now.

Benjamin: Nice to see you too. We talked about this during integration, and both you and others mentioned that the intensity of the experience would gradually fade. And it has.

But there’s also something that seems to stay with you on an almost cellular level. After the journey I became much more aware of what I put into my body—especially nutrition and overall health. In the beginning, right after the experience, what stood out most was how I saw other people. I felt a deep sense of peace, along with love, empathy, and compassion. As time passed that compassion and empathy toward others remained, but it seemed to shift inward. I began to experience more compassion and understanding for myself. I found myself wanting to treat every part of myself in the healthiest way possible.

That became a real shift for me. I had already been working out regularly—about five days a week—but there was this moment where I started paying closer attention to my health. That led me to really examine what I was putting into my body, how my body was functioning, and what was happening internally on a deeper level.

The journey with Mother Aya seemed to awaken a much stronger awareness of my physical health—almost down to the cellular level. I’m genuinely grateful for this new chapter. It feels like another important part of my overall journey and growth.

And beyond the physical changes, something else shifted too. I remember saying that before my journey, if I saw a spider, it probably wouldn’t still be alive. But afterward, I started feeling differently. There’s now a deeper sense that every living thing deserves the freedom to exist and live its life.

Beth: That reminds of a man, around your age, who came to a retreat a couple of months ago, who said, “Ever since sitting with ayahuasca, I just don’t want to kill things as much.” He’s a hunter. Or was. It’s a funny tag-line, but perhaps also profound. And the other thing I wanted to come back to is this: I think we often assume healing is mostly external. We focus on how we impact other people or how our relationships change, and those are all beautiful and important parts of the process. But I believe real healing has to begin internally. When we heal ourselves—we naturally begin relating to other people with love and strength.

Benjamin: Yes, exactly. In our field [Benjamin leads of team of emergency response mental health workers], there’s this idea of the “wounded healer.” Many of us are drawn to helping others because we’ve experienced our own pain and suffering. But I think my goal now is to move beyond being a wounded healer, because that’s how I’ve lived and worked for most of my career. I’ve spent a long time helping others while still carrying unresolved wounds myself. What I’m striving for now is the next stage—continuing to help people, but from a place that feels more whole, grounded, and healed. I’m not exactly sure what that version is called…

Beth: A healed healer?

Benjamin: Yeah. Because when you think about the idea of the wounded healer, there’s an important question underneath it: if someone who is deeply wounded is spending all their energy trying to heal other people, who is taking care of them?

Beth: I’d also love to ask you about what doesn’t fade from the FieldGuide9 experience?

Benjamin: I think the most fascinating part of all of this comes down to two things that have really stayed with me since the journey. One is related to my concussions [Benjamin was an elite football player], and the other is about my biological father. Starting with the concussions, something has noticeably changed over the past year since the experience. I’m not entirely sure whether it’s because of the journey itself, the nutritional changes I’ve made, or some combination of both, but I’ve been having far fewer headaches. For most of my life, headaches were just a constant part of my experience, and now there’s been a significant decrease. I honestly can’t pinpoint exactly when it shifted, but it’s very noticeable to me. That change feels huge.

And then there’s the piece about my father [His father was killed right before Benjamin was born]. Since the journey, thoughts and feelings about him come up much more often. Not long afterward, I lost one of my uncles—my father’s brother—and during that entire experience, I felt my dad’s presence very strongly. It’s hard to explain, but it felt as though a part of him was there with me in a way I had never experienced before. Because I never truly knew my father, I think I unconsciously searched for pieces of him in my uncles. Each of them carried something that connected me back to him. What was so powerful is that, during and after the journey, this was the first time in my life that my father felt emotionally real and present to me—as though he was right there with me on this earth.

Beth: I think about what happened during your journey when you experienced your father so vividly here on this earth. You talked about playing catch with him, and I think that’s incredibly meaningful. And so, your father lives within you, just as parts of him lived within your uncles. That’s not just a memory or an idea—it’s a profound experience that you had, continue to have.

For me personally, I don’t always remember specific details from my ayahuasca journeys. What stands out more is how differently I respond to life now compared to before I began working with plant medicine. Situations that once would have triggered me do not today.

I was reminded of this recently by another participant who told us he went to a speed dating event and was rejected four times in a row. He said that afterward he went home, prayed, and thanked God for protecting him from relationships that weren’t right for him. Before his healing work, he said he would have been devastated by that experience. And I think that’s one of the clearest signs of healing: not that life stops being difficult, but that our relationship to life changes. In your first interview, you talked about how these substances were used for healing for generations, and now they’re re-emerging into broader awareness again.

Benjamin: Yeah, exactly. It’s really interesting when you think about it that way. I remember having a conversation with my daughter about trees and plants, and how human beings are really just another expression of life in the same larger system. It’s strange and beautiful when you think about it—we’re connected versions of the same living process. And we’re constantly helping each other heal. Whether it’s eating fruit from a tree, picking strawberries, or working with plants in deeper ceremonial ways, life is continually supporting life. So when you talk about plant medicine, it feels like part of a much bigger truth: that healing often comes through our relationship with other living things.

Beth: Exactly. And at the most fundamental level, we all share DNA. Beth: That actually leads me to another question. After sitting with ayahuasca, did it have any impact on your faith?

Benjamin: That’s a really good question. And yes, it definitely did—but not necessarily from a traditional religious standpoint. It didn’t strengthen my attachment to a specific religion. What changed was more spiritual in nature. After the experience, I felt a much deeper sense of peace and connection. What shifted for me was this feeling that there is some kind of higher power, or higher consciousness, but that there are many different ways of accessing it. Before the ceremonies, we practiced holotropic breathwork, and that felt like one path into that deeper state. Plant medicine felt like another.

What stayed with me afterward was the realization that this higher power isn’t external or separate from us. I began to feel that there’s something sacred and powerful within each of us as well. Before this, I don’t think I truly felt that connection internally. Now I do. Another thing that changed is that I’ve become much more aware of energy—especially at work. I work with people in crisis, and I find myself paying closer attention to the emotional and energetic atmosphere in a room. Whether its staff returning from a difficult crisis response or a client who is deeply dysregulated, I’m much more conscious of what’s happening beneath the surface. I still need to practice that awareness more at home, because that’s its own challenge, but overall I feel like the experience strengthened my faith in a broader, more spiritual sense—a belief in something greater that moves through all of us.

Beth: Thank you. What we often see is that for people who already have strong faith, experiences like this don’t necessarily intensify their attachment to religion itself, which can sometimes feel external or institutional. Instead, it deepens their direct experience of the divine internally. People often come away with a stronger sense of feeling the presence of God—or whatever language they use for it—and a deeper understanding that they are connected to, and part of, something much greater than themselves.

One thing we hear all the time after ceremonies is that people become afraid of “losing” the experience or slipping back into old patterns. They feel the experience was so profound that they become anxious about how to hold onto it. What would you say to that?

Benjamin: Honestly, the biggest anxiety I had afterward was wanting to share the experience with everyone, while also knowing it probably wouldn’t land well with a lot of people. But beyond that, I didn’t really leave with fear. The experience felt so profound and healing that I walked away with a deep sense that whatever came next would ultimately be okay. I had already done a lot of work around my addiction and had reached a stable place in my sobriety. If I had been earlier in that process, I think there probably would have been more fear around relapse or uncertainty. I also think the preparation work made a huge difference. The IFS work, the reading, the breathwork, the nutritional preparation—all of it mattered. During the ceremony itself, I found myself returning to those tools. And the things that surfaced during the journey, especially around my father, didn’t feel shocking or destabilizing. They felt healing. It was almost a relief to finally experience them so directly. I actually had more anxiety going into the ceremony than afterward.

Beth: Is there anything else you would like to say?

Benjamin: Yes. One other thing that feels important to say is that I care deeply about social justice and racial justice. And honestly, I think experiences like this can also be a form of healing justice. For Black people especially, healing matters on a much deeper level because so much of the pain being carried isn’t only personal—it’s generational and societal. Healing itself becomes an act of justice.

Beth: I think that’s incredibly important. What I’ve witnessed, is that the trauma being carried in the room is often much larger than one individual life story. There’s generational trauma, collective trauma, and the ongoing weight of societal experiences. There’s extensive research around intergenerational trauma, and we can’t pretend that simply providing equal opportunities erases the deeper realities people carry.

Benjamin: Exactly. And I also believe racism harms everyone—not only Black people. It impacts non-Black people differently, but it still damages all of us. That’s why I think there has to be collective healing. Honestly, if the most racist person in the world wanted to sit in ceremony with me, I would welcome it, because I believe healing can happen there. I can do my own healing as a Black man, but if other people aren’t also doing their own work around race, bias, and pain, then I still have to carry the weight of navigating that. That’s why I think these spaces have the potential to create a kind of collective healing.

Beth: I deeply appreciate that perspective, and I appreciated it during your ceremonial weekend as well. You create spaces where people feel safe talking about race, and that’s not only commendable—it’s essential

.

Recently, we sat down with “Benjamin,” who completed his first ayahuasca weekend with FieldGuide9 just a few weeks ago. Benjamin is warm and open, with a successful career leading a crisis mental health team, a beautiful family, a background as a standout football player—and a childhood marked by profound challenges.

Beth: I appreciate your time here and your therapeutic perspective. There’s no roadmap for what we’re doing. As trauma surfaces, so do long-buried emotions—pain, fear, sadness. We can often get self-critical, wondering, “What’s wrong with me for feeling this?” How can we hold space to say: processing stored emotion is painful—and necessary?

Benjamin: You mentioned people asking, “What’s wrong with me?” That makes me think of trauma-informed care and the shift from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” It reframes everything. We’re not broken—we’re responding to things that happened to us.

Beth: Yes. And how important it is for people to find kindness and compassion for themselves—to understand that self-criticism is a coping mechanism, but can be overdone. Unfortunately we don’t normally ask, “What happened to me?” but, “What is wrong with me that this happened?”—which is completely backward. It’s amazing to witness people start to shift that belief.

Benjamin: It’s an ongoing process. Honestly, my experience with FieldGuide9 and ayahuasca felt like being reborn. Like a newborn learning to grow. We’re not just born once—we get reborn again and again. One thing I came to is: Life is good.

Beth: Let’s start with your first night sitting with ayahuasca—your first time ever. What was that experience like, and why was it important to you?

Benjamin: Honestly, the preparation really helped—the books, the pre-work. And even when I arrived, we did breathwork and small group work right before ceremony. That created a sense of safety--the ceremony wasn’t actually the first transformation. It was everything that led to it. I was concerned about my history with addiction, but the pre-work, the small group, helped me feel ready and vulnerable enough to receive the medicine. Of course, there was fear of the unknown—wondering what would happen—but I committed.

I said to the medicine: “Whatever experience you take me through, I’ll trust it.” About 20–25 minutes in, it started to come on. Like a roller coaster—slow build, then suddenly it hits. I remember colorful visions—like a million playing cards, kings and queens, merging and integrating. Then I started to feel nausea. I didn’t fully purge, but it felt like something wanted to come out. There was a build-up and then it stopped. I think my body was just like, “Whoa, what is this?”—like “Welcome.” When the practitioner (Garett) called me up and began singing (icaros, custom to each participant), that’s when it got serious.

The whole environment changed. I remember thinking he wasn’t just a person. Everything around him—the visuals, the drop cloth behind him—was speaking to me. Then I purged. It wasn’t physical, but something inside released. I even heard a kind of baby scream come out of me. After that, things settled down…Vomiting from ayahuasca is different. Yes, it feels like nausea, but the purge brings relief—profound relief. It’s not gross. You’re releasing energy that doesn’t belong in your body anymore. I was actually proud of it. It felt like healing, not sickness.

Beth: And you had a vision of yourself as a child that first night, right?

Benjamin: Yes. It wasn’t so much a visual image as a deeply emotional experience. My biological father was murdered two weeks before I was born, so I never met him. But I’ve always known about him through stories from my mom, aunts, and uncles. In the ceremony, I had this vivid sense of playing catch with him as a little boy. I smiled in a way I’ve never smiled before—ear to ear. I also thought of my mom, the struggles she went through, and had this internal celebration: “Look, Mom—we made it.”

I called my older brother after the ceremony to thank him. He was there when I was born, and in that first year of my life, he was like a protector. That came through so clearly in ceremony. I also felt the presence of women in the room and reflected on ways I’d been unkind in past relationships. There was sadness and regret, but also clarity. Everything kept pointing back to love and kindness.

Beth: You said after the first night that you weren’t sure you wanted to do it again the 2nd night.

Benjamin: Yeah. The first night was so powerful and good, I wasn’t sure I wanted to “roll the dice” again. But then, before the 2nd ceremony, you asked if I’d had concussions from football—and I said, yes, lots. Garrett said he could sing to that. That second night was incredible. Right away, the medicine started working on my head. It felt like energy moving from my head to my stomach, building into a huge ball of energy. When I purged, there was immense pressure in my head. At one point the medicine checked in with me to ask, “Are you okay?”—and I said yes, and it continued. Later, I realized it wasn’t just about football concussions—it was also about all the blackouts I had from substance use. That insight was so important. I’d been sober for over 8 years, and thought I was good. But I hadn’t done the deep cleansing work. I’d just made things look clean.

Beth: We talk often about emotional trauma stored in the body. And it’s not just childhood trauma—it can also be substance use and concussions. Even if we look functional, it’s still there. Ayahuasca helps the brain heal—there’s real neuroplasticity happening.

Benjamin: Yeah. And the insights keep unfolding. What I took away most is a deeper understanding of self-love. Before, I thought I knew what it meant. But now it feels different. I’m more honest with my wife. I no longer say yes to things just to avoid conflict. I speak my truth—and she respects that. And the way I see other people has shifted. Yes, there’s the trauma-informed lens: “What happened to you?” But now I also feel a deeper connection: I love this person in front of me—not in spite of their pain, but as a whole being. That’s new.

Beth: Yes. That distinction matters so much. It’s not just empathy based on someone’s pain, but love for their total humanity.

Benjamin: Exactly. I left the weekend with a deep sense that we all have this incredible opportunity at life—and that loving myself helps me love others more naturally.

Beth: When we’re truly taking care of ourselves, it’s the best gift we can offer the world.

Benjamin: Completely.

Beth: One last question—for those who feel curious about ayahuasca but still hesitant, what would you say to them?

Benjamin: Everyone’s path is different, but for me—after everything I’ve been through—this is real medicine. It’s natural, powerful, and it works. But set and setting are everything. If you show up and trust the process, the medicine will meet you. But you have to be ready to meet yourself, too.

Beth: Thank you, Benjamin. Your honesty and heart in sharing all of this means so much.

Benjamin: Thank you. I really appreciate everything you do

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