Pascal: Hi. Welcome to Nectara’s Conversations. I’m your host, Pascal Tremblay, I’m the co-founder of Nectara, we're a psychedelic support ecosystem. And today, I’m calling from Kaslo, the ancestral lands of this Snixit and Ktunaxa people. And I'm really honored today and really happy to talk to Shiri Godasi. Hi Shiri.
Shiri: Hi Pascal. Thank you for having me.
Thanks for being here.
Pascal: Where are you calling from?
Shiri: I'm calling from Costa Rica, on the edge of Tamarindo, which is a beautiful surf beach town, and I'm looking at the jungle outside my window, so it's pretty bright and beautiful, and I’m sending lots of healing jungle vibes to anyone who is listening right now.
Pascal: I'm receiving those healing jungle vibes right now. Shiri, you've been around in a psychedelic space for many years, you're a pioneer in some ways around integration and community building and activism. For people who don't know you, would you like to do a short intro and tell people what you're up to in the world?
Shiri: Sure. Thank you. So I'm Shiri Godasi, born in Israel. My name literally means sacred song in my native language of Hebrew. My superpowers are poetry of the unconscious and igniting quantum leap transformations on multi-dimensional levels. My values are creation and connection which I feel that this is what I'm here to serve, and that is my soul code.
And I'm very much interested in the psyche of the – in the study of psyche and soul. So I've been swirling in the psychedelic space for about eight years now. It is interesting to hear that it seems like you say for many years because when I got started I was a complete novice. The word consciousness at the time meant absolutely nothing to me. And yeah, eight years later, it is really interesting to look back and review what has been created within that window of time, and how it still keeps unfolding. So thank you for that reminder.
Pascal: And thank you for doing such beautiful work since those eight years, and yeah, it's such an interesting space, the psychedelic space, because it's such a multi-dimensional one. And as the years unfold, it feels like an eternity sometimes, and yet, we're still new at this and still exploring so many different things in the world within ourselves, and also in the community that we're forming and the movement that we're a part of, and it's a beautiful journey for all of us, and one of the topics we wanted to talk about today is right relationship.
We had Joseph Mays here from Chacruna last week talking about reciprocity, and he had beautiful things to say around relationship to the land and communities and honoring the roots of the communities from which the medicines come from. And it's such a multi-dimensional question to ask, what does right relationship to psychedelic use looks like. I'd love to hear your personal journey around like things that are emerging for you these days things that are top of mind, top of heart, anything that you'd like to share around that for you personally would be totally welcome.
Shiri: Thank you. And specifically, I'm answering the invitation to speak to what it means to me personally, because I know that there are many teachers in the field, many teachers that have also studied under the guidance of indigenous elders and with the land. I have not had that type of study, so I could not speak for the ancient traditions and what reciprocity looks like to, but more of what the journey has been like for me, and what I have learned being a person that is very much interested in utilizing the modality of psychedelic therapy for my spiritual, psychological evolvement, and also to be contributing to the evolution of humanity, and the return to the age of communities.
First and foremost, being a psychedelic integration person, I am aware that, especially now with the expansion of our field and so many people approaching this modality, with an idea that psychedelic therapy is going to change their lives, because oftentimes they approach this modality after the typical health system has failed them, and they're looking for that magic pill.
And we do know that the media is largely responsible for selling that idea that psychedelics can be a magic pill, and can be the solution to a person's problems, there's that famous analogy of one trip can equal to 10 years in therapy, 20 years in therapy. So actually it's both the media and, I believe also our community that generate that narrative.
So with that, a lot of people that are approaching this modality, potentially have the belief or a condition to think that psychedelic integration and approaching the modality of psychedelic therapy necessarily means that they are required to go through some type of an initiation with a medicine to try different medicines, to do it in a certain way, to partake with it in a certain rhythm or in certain intervals.
People are following the studies, they think they have to do this number of treatments within this number of time, and there are all these protocols flowing around, and all these ideas, and to a point where I feel like people believe that psychedelic integration means a direct and constant engagement with the medicine, with the psychedelics, with the substances.
And I myself, on my journey, have also believed that for many years, and being a person that, again, did not come from a conscious background, I come with from a lineage with boatloads of trauma, intergenerational trauma, lots of issues in the family and culturally, and really approach this modality with the same idea of, okay, this is what, this is amazing, I'm all in, and I'm going to do it as often as I can, and utilizing, of course, all the different tools that are disposable to me to really make the most out of it.
And it's interesting because I got to a point, just over a year ago, right after I moved to Costa Rica, where, finally, I left Los Angeles with my family and really finally found a space where I couldn't just let go of all the stories and conditioning that have been deeply ingrained in me, both for my background and also my work in the psychedelic sphere.
And it was during a ketamine journey that I received an insight that there's nothing else for me to figure out in this space by continuously approaching psychedelics and returning to trip after trip, I just need to take a break and rest, I need to get sleep, I need to get activity that honors my body, I need to sit down and spend time with my daughter and play with her, I need to invest time in cooking myself food, and I can be in more of an honoring rhythm and cadence with the person I am.
For me, really that insight that, again, that ketamine journey was really pivotal, and I decided to take a break, for the time being, from any engagement with psychoactive substances. And it's been over a year now, I completed a full year of celibacy – what I call celibacy, and I just popped that, I just broke that cherry, or just popped that – just completed that cycle with a journey that I had a couple of weeks ago.
But it was over a year that I did not engage without modality, and it's been definitely a year where the idea of right relationship began unfolding for me and what that looks like. So that was a background answer to your question of what does right relationship mean to me,
Pascal: yeah. I love that you – and I loved the word celibacy, I’ve never heard that before. That's really interesting. One of the most powerful experiences I've ever had was like the most non-experienced, psychedelic experience ever where I just blanked out, and I was left with the message and the question what did that mean to me, because I came in with the intention of opening the celestial realms, and meeting the unicorns, and having this huge download, and I was ready, I can do this, I'm ready to step into the stairway to heaven, and I just got a black screen the whole time.
And the answer I got after processing that, and, of course, at first, I was a little bit disappointed, I was like, where's my healing, how come I didn't get blown into the universe, and the answer to the question I had was basically to sit down, slow down, integrate what you've been receiving the last five years, and slow things down a lot more, be more gentle.
And I did two years of celibacy and that was the most powerful psychedelic experience of my life is to interface with life itself as the medicine as myself as the source of wisdom and teachings, and just as well from a practical point of view, integrating my first experiences still, and I still am integrating those experiences, and I feel like what you're touching on here is very valuable and also kind of culture in a way because we have a culture of chasing peak experiences, like you said, we are chasing the big downloads, and there is a culture around this is going to fix everything for me.
And there's lots of clinics out in the world right now where it's like an in and out place, where you come in, do your new session and you leave and you're back home. And what happened to you in the last year, in terms of, like, how did you process or integrate your previous journeys what changed with this aspect towards yourself that is honoring and gentle what are examples of things that changed for your insights you received during this year of integration?
Shiri: Yeah, thank you. So picking off on where I left off in my answer, so the idea of psychedelic and right relationship to me in the psychedelic space, which is, of course, our topic at hand, is to find your own rhythm soul's code and follow that as your method for psychedelic integration, which also means that being in right relationship with this modality does not necessitate psychedelic use, and this is what I really want to emphasize.
There may be seasons where you are more pulled towards this modality, and other seasons where, again, if you are in deep attunement, you will notice in subtle ways, not through big life events, big changes, disasters that sometimes we have to go through that slap us awake and out of our patterns.
But you will basically get the message with more ease, and then, follow that, and then learn that actually the ceremony is right here in this dimension, meaning, we are spiritual beings, of course, living through human experience, but we don't live in the ether – a part of us is from the ether, a part of us is always communicating with that space, but the body is here in the third dimension.
So this was probably one of the biggest insights for me, and as a person that is highly analytical, I have a psychology background, I have a master's in psychology, I studied union analysis, I'm very fascinated with that aspect of diving deep into the psyche and really getting into the archetypes and the symbols, and finding how they correlate and what stories are weaved around those liminal spaces.
And that fascination, I found this year, has really removed me from being deeply attuned with my body, and as we all know, trauma is encoded in the physical vessel, it's encoded in the body. And one of the symptoms of trauma is dissociation – dissociation from the physical realm. You're dissociating from the reality that we live in this space, because there's something in that reality that is too triggering or too overwhelming, or we are unable to correspond with it and respond with it in a healthy manner, so we dissociate.
People who have suffered from trauma tend to dissociate into other realms, psychic realms, because we're not able to be embodied and to maintain all of the energy with all of the stories, all the traumas, all the triggers in this body. So learning that when I first received the “instruction” of, okay, you just start attuning to your sleep, start taking supplements, start just taking care of the human in you, I've been like really deeply attuned to the spirit in me for so many years, but not attuned to the human in me, I had no compassion for it. I wasn't taught to have compassion for it as a child. I wasn't modeled that as a child.
My parents, bless their heart and soul, are very hardworking people that have worked seven days a week until their 70s, and I've learned work ethic, and I've learned to work myself to near death, but I've not learned how to have compassion for this human and take care of these human needs without completely dissolving.
So attuning to the body was a huge lesson, and I honestly, I feel like, with this lesson, this was like the umbrella theme that from once I got that, everything else started to fall into place in that regard.
Pascal: I love this so much, because it's been the same process as me I'm a very analytical person as well, and a lot of my journey has been around like leaving this a little bit more and going into my body more, and when you talked about being raised in the hardworking family, my dad is – and my grandfather, and probably my great-grandfather were really hard workers. And I think it speaks to the social norms of the time too, and how we were sold as children for some of us to just work hard, push through, you got this, don't give up, keep working, make more money.
And. from that perspective, we've seen now how the societal fabric is these days, and what it's teaching us, is really to go back the opposite way and being more attuned to, like you said, energy and being more attuned to our body, being more attuned to the cycles of nature, which you touched on a little bit. So I love that you're in that same process, because I really feel like that's the next age of the world really.
I'd love to hear more around what do you see next for us in terms of how do we embody these teachings and how are things going to work, and how do we interface with our healing journey, from that perspective, what do you see coming up next?
Shiri: This is such a powerful question. First of all, where I feel like I'm being taken is as leaders in this space and I learned only in the last couple of years that I'm in a leadership position, this was like big news for me. As someone who came to, that wanted to support people on integration processes, I had no idea. I did have an idea, but I wasn't willing to fully embody the idea that people are actually looking up to me and modeling themselves after me.
And I feel like in the psychedelic space, there is, much like the bigger story in society, the cultural norms that you are touching upon Pascal is that we are conditioned to be generating, producing human doing – we're not human beings, we're created to be human doings, and we are awarded and prized for, again, the work ethic for contributing to society, for being available, for building businesses, for – I don't know what, for building castles in the sand. And I feel like a lot of people in the psychedelic community as well, because it almost feels like there is such a race to get everything set up for the masses to enter our field...
Pascal: Yes, absolutely.
Shiri: It feels so overwhelming, and because a lot of us are here, most of us, if not all of us even, are here for service, we want to serve, we want to make ourselves available, we are seeing ourselves as stewards and as shepherds that are, like Ramdas said, are here to walk each other home, and we want to be there for one another. But oftentimes this comes in our own expense, in our own expense of, again, remembering that we are – our work is not created in a season, it's created in a lifetime.
So I have noticed that cycle within me in the last, about year and a half or two years, of literally working myself to the bone. My integration certification program really exploded in the last couple of years, and I gave everything I had to that program to a point where I was completely under-resourced. I was barely even able to show up to my clients who wanted to join on this journey with me, paying clients who invested their resources in my services.
And I saw that I was not being a good role model for these people that are modeling themselves after my leadership style. So once I noticed, I became aware of that through some pretty difficult lessons. I had to make a choice, and this is part of my desire to be in right relationship, not just with myself, but also with my community, and with the energy that I'm generating and the ripples I'm putting out in the world.
I realized that I do not want to contribute to the doing culture. I don't want to contribute to model, to people that are modeling themselves after me in the psychedelic world, that to be a psychedelic, contributing service person, you have to work yourself to the bone, and literally to a point where you have no time for your own integration practice, selling yourself cheap, contributing everything you have back to the community with almost no resources for yourself. These are lessons that I’m still learning in some ways.
And in the last few months, I've been really blessed to be awakened and invited to join the feminine cycle, once I was able to finally, in Costa Rica, shed those masculine doing productive energies. And that was when I received an energetic invitation to explore the feminine, and it's been a big lesson in surrender and creation for sure.
But this is what I want to model, this is what I wish to put out in the world, and this is what is leading me right now, is how to be able to show up for psychedelic service that is soul aligned, and is deeply attuned with who we are, and also models the new earth consciousness that we want to realize right here and now. What cycles do we want to obliterate – it's not just speaking out about them, but it's also being the reality that we want to create.
So right now, I'm practicing being in that space of the being, and I feel like this is like the first step to that new world that you're talking about is, what am I seeing. First, it begins with us. It first begins with us and how we show up to them every day.
So before I talk about the vision, I really want to just nail that is, first, it begins with us, and in some ways, that is more important than what the vision is, because the vision is somewhere in the future, but we can be that reality right now with the way that we choose to show up to this moment.
Pascal: Yeah, it's beautiful. And I resonate so much of what you're sharing, cause I'm on the same journey, and it feels like such a paradox of being in this exponential age of information and everything in the psychedelic space, like you mentioned, there is a chase to create the capacity or the structure or the offerings to like help as many people as possible, to do it now, and it can feel quite overwhelming. And as a co-founder of a company in this space I can share personally, it has been a wild ride of being in that mode of doing and over time realizing I need to go way more in a slower mode.
And what I’ve realized is just looking at nature and how nature is actually the teacher here for me, and the invitation is just to go stand next to the trees and just be present with that, and be calm with that, and connect with the calmness and the slowness and the energies of the earth really nourishing me, instead of being in this external horizontal field of doing all the time.
I've learned to slow things down in circles that I'm a part of the biggest thing I hear is overwhelm. I feel tired, I feel I'm doing too much, and all my friends are in this space, therapists, bodyworkers, practitioners, and they all say the same thing, it's that feeling of overwhelm.
And you mentioned the rise of the age of feminine, which is inviting us to being more and more slowness and nourishing and slowing things down. I'm curious, and just one last thing on the business side is it's probably another conversation altogether, but I really feel like my experience being in a company in this space is that also capital, the money that we're putting in the space is asking us to do even more. It's like reaching metrics, and making more money, and being on the stock market, IPOing.
There's a lot of structure being built right now that I feel has that very strong doing energy that I feel is really not serving the space. And my [inaudible] has been to counter that by imagining what it looks like to be in service, like you have, in a more nourishing way.
And one thing I'd like to explore with you a little bit is also your role as a mother, and how that shift has changed, because, for me personally, when I'm doing this doing with Nectara, my son sometimes comes to me and says, hey, daddy, when is Nectara going to be done. I feel terrible, and I'm like it's never going to be done. And then, I just stop my work and go play with him. And I'd be curious for you as a mother what that experience has been like on your journey.
Shiri: Oh my God. Thank you for asking. So every time the children speak, your child, my daughter, when I hear my daughter speak in a similar air of, come play with me, and then I find myself hearing, oh, but, I got to blah, blah, blah.
I'm reminding myself that the universe is asking me to stop everything and go play; and put to rest whatever tasks I think I may have, the laundry, I got to put dinner on the table, all these adulting chores that we are called to fulfill, and really trying to remind myself that more than anything, and this took me a while to learn, my first role, before I'm committed to this mission, before I'm committed to my clients, before I’m committed to service, being a community organizer, all these roles that I took upon myself, my biggest creation will be one good human that I am creating, that to the best of my ability, hopefully, will be trauma-free, at least, direct trauma.
If I can just create one good human that will not need to heal, and spend most of their adult life on healing, like I did, like many of us do, what would that – how would that shape the world and how would that contribute to the greater mission? So first and foremost, I always attempt to return to that one I can.
And then, when I became a mom, it was interesting, because, first of all, as a woman, and this was in 2017-18 – ‘17, that I created the psychedelic integration community in Los Angeles, and I, of course, got pregnant, and it was obviously a big blessing. But I also found myself really torn between, again, my role in the community to being a mother.
For example, I remember evenings when I put my daughter, or try to put my daughter to sleep, and then, had an integration circle an hour away. We were living in Los Angeles at the time, so there's a lot of traffic, so literally just giving my daughter to my husband, and trying to drive to the event and stopping on the side of the road in the dark, crying because it felt like I just want to be with my daughter I don't care about any integration circle right now.
I felt very torn, to be very frank very torn between my commitment to, again, to my work and my daughter. So I was in that conflict for, at least, two or three years, to be fair. I attempted to return to, again, what I thought I needed to do, and I keep returning to that, because in my mind, at the time, the place where I was at, I felt like, again, I was on a mission to help humanity through psychedelic support, and nothing was going to get in the way of that, but it really became a compulsion, it became unhealthy. I had postpartum depression. I had a lot of anxiety, and I attempted to return to journeying.
I took my daughter to an ayahuasca ceremony when she was six months old, and then, tried to go again to ceremony, and I had just happened to miss her first steps as a child. So when that happened, that was a big wake-up call too. I'm a human and my mind may be limitless and wants to do all the things, and can do all the things, but at the end of the day, the human resources are limited. And how do I bridge between the very limited linear time that I have to this one human body that wants to be in several places at the same time, and do really important things? And that very slow journey of embodying that insight has been very grounding for me, cause my daughter is the reminder that I live here and she needs me. And as a psyche knot that travels far into all those spaces, I, as a mother, I have a responsibility, first and foremost, to return home to her.
So I do feel that itself also really helped me pull away from the psychedelic therapy modality, because it is so demanding, because it is so taxing, because, when you go to an ayahuasca ceremony or even an LSD journey at home, you need at least 10 hours of your time. As a mother, I did not have that privilege to just take 10 hours off, and then, of course, time to integrate after that. I try to, but very quickly realize that, at this season of my life, I am called to make different choices.
So being a parent has been a real beautiful grounding agent for me, and I feel has helped me become more embodied in my path. But I just also want to give a shout-out to all the parents, and all them, especially also mothers that go through childbirth and labor, and are tasked with, again, the return to the body from healing, from giving life physically, emotionally, psychologically, it's really no easy task.
It took me in two and a half years, three years to return to being Shiri after I gave birth. And yeah, but now, with all of that, I just want to wrap that up with everything that I do now is in hopes of providing a better future for our children. So the purpose has also shifted. I'm really hoping that my work of attempting to be loving kindness in the moment now will bring about an age of peace that my daughter will be able to live in a more peaceful world.
I am more devoted to the transformation of consciousness for ease, and being in flow for all beings, and I'm not really even attached to the psychedelic modality anymore. I'm really seeing it as a tool, and not the thing that will get us there, which I think has also been a really big shift for me.
Pascal: Yeah, thank you. And I've also been on the same journey of less psychedelics and more living every day as a ceremony, using things like breath work, for example, which is really accessible, you can do it in an hour or even 30 minutes, and it can really help shift your life in a very deep way, in allowing integration to be microdose too, in terms of integration, not necessarily, just like the psychedelic experience itself, not necessarily needing to be this big program or this big thing that you do over many months. It could just be something that you start your day with or you inject in while recording a podcast, for example, is how can I use those resources that I’ve learned or things to integrate in the moment and using life itself as the journey.
And what you've talked about speaks so much to this idea of the micro influencing the macro, and it starts to touch on maybe certain myths that we have around psychedelic integration. Do you have some ideas to share around what are some ways that you see integration, sometimes having myths in the community or things that, why do we do integration, how do we do it, are there things that you'd like to share
Shiri: around that?
How much time do we have for that?
Pascal: We have 15 minutes.
Shiri: Yeah, plenty of myths, again, and this is, of course, my very subjective POV. Okay? I just want to put it out there, I have one version of the truth, as I see it, and, of course, it's not the ultimate and ulterior truth. I just want to put that out there, and I also highly believe in pluralism, I believe that no method is right or wrong. I think there is room for all the opinions in the psychedelic revival, and I’m going to contribute my opinion to the table.
So one myth that I see circulating in the community at large is the myth of surrender. The myth of, okay, come to the ceremony, surrender to the medicine, surrender to the facilitator, surrender to the container, and basically, just completely forfeit all of your sovereignty, your willpower, your decision making, your discernment, your right sense of self, and give it up to a force that is outside of you.
I humbly see where this potentially has stemmed. Of course, there are many cultural aspects to this. We are, because we are at an age when we are redesigning our relationship with psychedelic therapy, we're doing it based on lineage, excuse me, indigenous traditions that have been around for a long time, and have been practicing their relationships with plant medicines in their way.
We have drawn some elements from the 50s, the 60s, of course, the 80s, when the age of MDMA assisted psychotherapy began in different places of the world. So we are drawing from different modalities and trying to piece together a story that would be appropriate for this time.
So the surrender element, I feel, is really borrowed largely, and I could be wrong, but I think it's borrowed from the indigenous, traditional cultures of surrender to the medicine, surrender to the plant medicine. I believe that currently one of the bigger lessons that we are being, hopefully, being taught or the medicines are attempting to teach us is to return to our sovereignty and to reclaim our power as creators.
Meaning, at any time, any place – and I'm refraining from saying in the ceremony, because, again, as you say, Pascal, the ceremony is here and now, every day is a ceremony, every moment is a ceremony – but at any time, at any moment, including in the psychedelic trip, psychedelic ceremony, where we are told to surrender, we not only have the right and the privilege, but we have an opportunity to practice being sovereign, and being completely present with a medicine, with spirit, with source, whatever you want to call it, with your inner healer, and co-creating with it, practicing being in co-creation and finding that edge of balance of what it looks like to dance with the transpersonal forces, again, whatever is outside or inside of us, but is not the I observer, and interact with it in a way that is beautiful and beneficial and regenerating, and doesn't completely run over you like a truck, and doesn't completely...
Sorry, let me rephrase that. I don't believe that the transpersonal is here to put us down or make us second-guess our abilities in the medicine. I believe that it's actually trying to empower us to get up and find our power and design our moment to moment, including in the ceremony. And I believe that once we embody that, and again, letting go of the surrender mindset to a co-creator mindset, then we really have a chance to eliminate what we call “bad or difficult” trips.
We can create really beautiful things in ceremony. We can really hone in on the goals that we have or the intentions that we have, and really potentiate them, amplify the benefits. So I feel like that mindset shift of, again, you're not here to surrender, you're here to co-create, of course, from the ceremony, really ripples out into the everyday and reminds people that we are here to create this world, we're not here to surrender to whatever religion tells us, the government tells us, the system tells us.
I feel like the surrender narrative is like a replication of a much larger, broader, social indoctrination that I feel can truly be examined at this time, and completely shift our relationship with this modality. So that's one big thing that I feel is important, surrender versus co-creation.
Pascal: Yeah, it's a beautiful one. I think it speaks to, just like our parents and society, back in the 40s and 50s, were all about reaching the top and making it happen, working hard, there was also a narrative then of you're alone and you have to figure it out by yourself, and you've got to walk the path by yourself essentially.
And what I found too, again, being an instruction or an inspiration from nature is it's not I got this, it's we got this. So when we're surrendering to the medicine or giving our agency to some external force, I feel like there's a relationship there within ourselves that says that there's something above me, there's something I have to figure out by myself, there's something that is happening to me, and I need to hold it all by myself.
And I feel like we are rewiring that slowly in a very large way within our communities, and I love that you talked or mentioned the age of communities earlier, and I feel like it touches a little bit on that surrender piece. Can you talk a bit more about the age of communities and what that looks like for you?
Shiri: Oh my God, yes, return of the tribes. Return of the tribes – so this is a discussion that I’ve been having with other members of the local community here. And right now, as we are seeing with current world events more than before, we are seeing more polarization in the opinions that are coming up in response to, for example, the pandemic, the AI generators, so these are stirring big conversations, and a lot of people feel invited or evoked to very specific opinions on the matter.
And even though it seems polarizing, I do feel that there's an invitation here for people to claim their voice and to state their truth and articulate their values, again, because we are not, for a lot of us, we're unable to just sit and watch as these big world events happen. So we are being invited to take a stand, and to articulate what we stand for.
And even though it seems polarizing and breaking up communities, people are finding that, maybe they used to belong to a certain circle of friends, but now they have different opinions, they don't feel like they can hang out with them, I do feel like ultimately this what seems like polarization is actually an invitation to find or to magnetize or to seek “others” who are very similar to us and have similar worldviews, similar values, similar value system, belief system, similar perspectives, because there is a lot to be said about the power and the synergy that happens when people come together and collaborate.
So I feel like actually there's an opportunity to break up all the relationships that are stale or lukewarm, and in some ways take up a lot of energy to manage and uphold, and to really focus on those relationships that are more collaborative, that are more uplifting, with people that somewhat think, again, have the same value system, and then, when that synergy happens, then we are able to co-create really great things in the world.
And I'm seeing that, there are already communities building all across the world, obviously, Costa Rica is a hub for that. People that think the same see the world in the same way, they get together and they build really big, beautiful things, and I feel like this will be one of the ways that we're, right now we're building bridges towards the New Age, and we're really being asked to be more discerning with where we are diverting our attention, as we know our, there's competition and a race to just completely dilute our attention span, and we're really being tested on how we are able to focus our attention, and what we can create out of it.
So if we can free ourselves from the need, and this may seem – it may be questionable to some people, but if we free ourselves from the need to be in relationship with absolutely everyone, if we make a conscious decision to really focus and invest our time in people and communities and projects that truly feel so aligned, that feel like they're speaking to our highest values, where we can really make the most impact and the most contribution together, I wonder how much less overwhelmed we will feel, and how much more in tune we will feel, and actually, how much more impact we will be able to make.
And, of course, while remaining highly kind and compassionate towards any other group or person, but I don't believe that we're meant to be everyone's friend in this lifetime or contribute our energy to everyone. I really do believe that we're returning to our soul brothers, sisters, soul family, and that each soul family is going to contribute their own genius, and their own medicine to this bigger melting pot, and this bigger melting pot is the bridge to the new age of consciousness,
Pascal: yeah.
I totally agree with you. We have a very deep community here in Kaslo, therapists, practitioners, healers, energy workers, there's just like an amalgamate of different folks here that are really soul aligned on their purpose. And also, some of my closest friends deep friends that are part of the soul family, they have very different political views as me, for example. They have very divergent views from what, I believe, aligns with me. And yet, there's a deep connection there that is formed around shared values and soul purpose that overlaps, over cedes everything else, supersedes everything else.
And through that forming of the community in our relationships, we are really reforming what it means to live in the world in a supportive way. And I feel like that's a really big insight for us to download, and to start to embody because it really is the medicine that the Earth is asking us to do is to come back together and stop dividing, and it is really a medicine for the polarization that you've mentioned.
And on a certain level around that, it also speaks to our relationship, to our own healing journey around dancing with the light and dark, and not being attached to things being all okay all the time, and turning towards, rather than turning away from things. And there's a lot of deeply embedded societal and cultural things that touch on that frame of mind, including the surrendering that you talked about earlier.
So there's a lot to unfold here, I wish we had two more hours, but I'd love to hear more before we close around your personal vision of the psychedelic space your own perspective of how things are unfolding, and where would you like it to go?
Shiri: Would you mind if I just tie something up with the idea of values, which I feel is such a key point?
Please, yeah.
Tying it back to how we started the conversation of right relationship – again, what does right relationship mean? To each person, it's going to look and feel different. And what is your North Star, and each person's North Star is values. What is your value system, and does this decision, this modality, this method, this relationship, how does it align with your value system – if it's aligned with your values, then it's right. If it's misaligned with your values, then it's not right.
And I feel like following the values, North Star is really the key to everything, to business management, obviously, for friendships, but this is how we come into right relationship – so is it aligned with my values or is it not aligned with my values?
Pascal: Beautiful. I'm going to put a link in the show notes for Nectara’s integration roadmap, which has some prompts and a process to dive deeper into your values, and I find that's such a North Star, and it's so valuable, so I’ll put that in the show notes for people who want to explore.
Shiri: Great. Thank you for that. So the question of what is next in a psychedelic space,
Pascal: Is that right?
Yes, for you, what's your personal – everything is gone super well in 10 years it's perfect, we're having coffee in 10 years what's happened?
Oh my
Shiri: God. For me in 10 years to be very fair, I don't know that I will be in the psychedelic space. That is a very long time, and I am in attunement to where spirit and source wants to carry me, and I do pray every day for source to align me with my highest expression. I feel like for me the psychedelic space has been a very cool reality to explore, and I also recognize that there are many other realities, many other dimensions. And as an explorer, I don't feel like this is where I will reside for the rest of eternity.
So I don't know if I will be here in 10 years. But right now, I'm very grateful to be able to witness how the field is unfolding. I'm grateful to organizations such as Nectara coming into the space, how we're all learning and growing together. I do feel that, as you mentioned, the collaboration is where it's at, the connection is where it's at, this is something that I learned – like a big lesson in my journey has been that the visions are so huge, but to execute them in this dimension, it takes a village.
And I've brought to life some pretty amazing visions through my business, but honestly, they're really too big to carry on a single pair of shoulders as a human. So I am seeing how we are returning to the tribes in the psychedelic community as well, I'm seeing how there will be more groups that, again, carry similar values, obviously a lot more in the field of education.
What I'm really holding out for is to see how we can reinvent the idea of education and psychedelic therapy. I feel like right now the field is overly relying on methods that we borrowed from a paradigm that did not work. For example, the licensure board that I heard that MAPS is putting together for licensed psychedelic practitioners, I feel like that is a replication of the clinical licensure model. I'm not saying it's unnecessary or wrong in any way, but I do feel like there's certainly room to be more imaginative in how we want to create a new earth paradigm that will not replicate the same results that the licensure boards got us too.
So I don't know what it looks like, but right now, I do feel like there's room to go wild. So I am inviting wild creativity into the space. I feel like the way to get there or to achieve that is by every person completely stepping into the authenticity without owning any narratives, not the societies, and certainly, not the psychedelic communities.
I feel like there is a big lesson for us to learn in the community with certain groups trying to shut down certain other groups by not being scientific enough, not being proven enough, not being natural enough, not being this enough, I feel like there is too much of that going on. And we are all better off just remembering that pluralism is where it's at, multi-dimensionality is where it's at. Each person and each group will have their own medicine, and it's all part of the greater plan.
And really, the mission that we're all on, or the lesson is to embody loving kindness, no matter how weird, how bizarre, how “abnormal”, how whatever, frightening it may be to some people, but we are here to be free. We're here to embody freedom, and to bring the age of freedom to planet Earth, and the way to do that would be for each of us to be free in the moment and be authentic and just do us. And once that beautiful vibrant rainbow of all the emanations of God, once it is fully expressed, then we will know that we have succeeded in the psychedelic mission,
Pascal: yeah.
Beautiful. Radical authenticity and radical action.
Shiri: Radical authenticity and radical action, I feel like those are – it's also really important to remember that. And I feel like the second part, I feel like, some people are really good at being authentic, some people are really good at taking action. I feel like there's a lot of room to expand in the integration of both, how can we be radically authentic and contribute and dare to sound our voice, dare to share our medicine despite what other groups, organizations, however they're trying to take over the space. But yeah, this is the age of the underdog, the age of the underdog.
Right on.
Pascal: Yeah. I love the vision, I love where you're taking it, and I love what you're saying in a very deep, authentic way, I really love that. We're running a bit short on time, but if you'd like to share, I'd love to hear a bit more about your program coming up in January and how can people learn more about it?
Shiri: Thank you. So we are, as mentioned, I am the founder of a psychedelic integration coaching certificate program, which is one-year long. And in addition to that, so that is level one, and level one is what I call Integration 1.0. And then, level two of that is a visionary business mastermind program called Soulpreneur. It is six months long. It is a container that's specifically designed for trained psychedelic practitioners, psychedelic integration support, therapy, facilitation, and it's a container where basically I share everything I've learned in the last eight years as a psychedelic entrepreneur.
I've founded five psychedelic support organizations, including a non-profit, educational methods. I've written books on the topic, and, of course, I have a coaching practice. So I have a lot to share and I know that people are interested in learning on how to create – how to turn their passion for psychedelic therapy and healing into an abundant and reciprocal and right career in right relationship and soul align career.
So the program, that starts in January is exactly that. So it's half spiritual mechanics, again, soul alignment, and half business strategy. So that begins on January 17th, and registration is now open, and I'm super stoked to open up this container for the community. It's going to be my fourth year of running my program, so I’m really stoked. We've come a long way, and there's so much to share. And yeah, I just hope that it serves the right people as they make their way into the psychedelic revival, and more than anything, it teaches authenticity and radical action, and right relationship, which is what we're talking about, so
Pascal: yeah.
Beautiful. I look forward to learning more about it, and also, I’ll link the programs inside of show notes for everyone who's interested. And thank you so much for doing that work, and for all the work you put in, and the organizations, and for really deeply embodying the lessons of the medicine in the everyday life, and I find that has such ripples just by itself. So thank you so much, Shiri, really appreciate it.
Shiri: Thank you so much. Thank you for the opportunity to share, and blessings to
Pascal: you, blessings to everyone.
Thank you.
