Honoring the Feminine Through the Use of Sacred Medicines.
By Alyssa B. Gursky (Psychology major at Naropa University)
As you begin to read this passage, I ask you to, for a moment, check in with your own body. To step outside of your head and drop into the beautiful, unique space that is your body and send every inch of it love.
Are there parts that you feel more tension in than others?
Give those parts of yourself extra love.
The same love you would give to a child. Unconditional, pure, love.
Every scar, every stretch mark, every curve, every bone,
is
just
where
it
should
be.
On your next breath, I’d like to invite you to honor every day that your body has not failed you.
It’s difficult. Re-building a relationship between the body and mind. We compare and contrast and break ourselves down to meet this picture perfect image that some underpaid, overworked human behind a desk spent hours photo shopping.
We are not photo shopped. We are real, we are perfect, and we are unique.
How can we not see? The goddesses that we are. The past does not matter. The inner goddess is always waiting to be seen. She does not hold on. Just patiently waits for us to join her in our true power.
Albert Einstein once said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”
My journey of healing and reclaiming my goddess within could not have taken place if it was not for this message. I needed to see my patterns and problems from an objective point of view before truly realizing how much they did not serve me.
My story is one of chemicals, medicines, entheogens.
For those who are unfamiliar, Entheogen translates to “generating God, the Divine, from within.”
It was time for me to stop looking out and start looking in.
My inner goddess was waiting for me.
I had been incredibly empowered by the work of an organization that is known as MAPS, or the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. They had been doing research on using psychedelic substances to heal mental illnesses. I wanted to join them in this fight. This fight is to provide such a clear path of healing for souls that truly needed it. Souls much like mine, who were diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress. Souls who were unaware know that their bodies could even be felt.
I wanted this healing.
I wanted the feeling of feeling my body and loving every inch of it. I just didn’t know how to access it myself.
So I asked the universe for medicine, in whatever avenue possible.
And it came.
Quickly.
One eighth of an ounce of mushrooms came to me. Psilocybe Cubensis. That day, I consumed them. I thought they’d be an escape. Quite the opposite, it turned out, a true awakening.
Late at night at my parents home (sorry mom and dad), I laid in my bed, sobbing. I cried until I couldn’t feel my face anymore. Rubbing my arms and legs, begging for forgiveness for not being with my body any sooner. I have been overweight for a majority of my life and thought I had been experiencing rejection from the world because of this.
It wasn’t until my consciousness was altered that I realized that this whole time, it has been me. I locked myself in a prison and projected judgment of myself onto others for my whole eighteen years of life. I tried being someone else. I tried being someone else before I knew who I even was. I had diagnoses and labels put on me. I was peeling all of these off having no idea what I’d find underneath.
After this acknowledgement had been made, I felt ecstasy. These shackles were removed and I was free. The walls around me did sort of start to melt, but that’s also just a facet of the medicine. The tears transformed from pain to joy. I was home. This body, no matter how jiggly it is, was mine to change. My inner goddess and I became one.
I’m in charge. This is my body. This tattoo covered, love filled, body is mine. This is my life. This wasn’t an overnight fix in my psyche, but it really did lay out the groundwork for my self-work and professional calling for my adult life.
A quote by Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, has been very dear to my heart throughout this transformational journey. “My life seemed to be a series of events and accidents. Yet when I look back I see a pattern.”
Now, nearing the age of twenty-one, I see the beautiful, complex, and colorful patterns that are my path.
While this may be my path, I honor that there are a multitude of paths for every individual.
*I feel compelled to state that I am not condoning or promoting medicine use, as these medicines are currently illegal in the United States of America. If you or someone you know has had powerful and/or life changing experiences with the use of sacred medicines, please head to www.MAPS.org, look at their resources for integration, and donate whatever amount you possibly can, as they are actively researching methods to give us access to psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. They are about to begin their phase three study with MDMA to treat PTSD, which I have the honor of being a night attendant for. However, there are many ways to induce non-ordinary states of consciousness. For example, ecstatic dance, certain yogic traditions, binaural beats, sensory deprivation, breath work (such as Holotropic Breath work, Tummo meditation, or the Wim Hof method) interaction with nature, or sitting meditation. This is just a short list, but I encourage you to reconnect or even connect deeper with your body in any way possible.
