Tag Archives: psychedelics

Astrologer, Author, Mother, Wife of Psychedelic Pioneer Ralph Metzner – Cathy Coleman

I’ve just recorded a delightful conversation with Cathy Coleman which you can view on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/c8hTMw8Wf_o or listen to the podcast here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1827447/episodes/16014030 .

Cathy’s very multi-faceted career and continuing activities include earning a doctorate in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). At CIIS, she worked in a variety of administrative, leadership roles for 20 years and for the past six years she has worked with the CIIS Center for Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies and Research. She has served as president of Kepler College, (a state-approved college of astrological studies in Washington state) and as Director of IONS’ (Institute of Noetic Sciences) EarthRise Retreat Center. As a very respected astrologer, she works in private practice, as a coach, and lectures nationally and internationally on Western and Eastern (Jyotish) astrology.

She is a devoted mother, grandmother and author of the just released book, Ralph Metzner, Explorer of Consciousness – The Life and Legacy of a Psychedelic Pioneer published by Inner Traditions. We talk about the book, which contains dozens of tributes and illuminating stories from people whose lives were touched and deeply influenced by Ralph as friends, colleagues, students and family. It reveals a good deal about his life, his wide ranging interests and contributions to the fields of psychology, shamanism, eco-psychology, mythology, Western and Eastern mysticism, and of course, psychedelics, a field in which he was a pioneer and innovator starting with his association with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) at Harvard.

In our conversation, we talk about Cathy’s early years growing up in a conservative, small town in Missouri, her opening to astrology, her move to California and the California Institute of Integral Studies, and her in thirty year marriage with Ralph Metzner. Cathy talks with openness about what it was like living with him, working alongside him, being with him through his dying, and now communing with him in the after-life.

Cathy co-founded the Green Earth Foundation with Ralph that was a vehicle for Ralph’s teachings and books and through which Cathy continues to pass on his rich legacy
(www.greenearthfound.org).

For more information on Cathy’s astrological work – https://www.cathycolemanastrology.com/
The book, Ralph Metzner, Explorer of Consciousness – The Life and Legacy of a Psychedelic Pioneer is available through the publisher linked here as well as Amazon and most book sellers.

Psychedelic Diva – Carla Detchon

“There is a coming home. A home base. Psychedelics help you reconnect with home.” 
— Ann Shulgin
“After centuries of patriarchal dominance, humanity has lost its innate balance. By invoking the divine feminine energies we restore equilibrium. That’s why we chose the word Divas — the Latin for goddesses or the feminine divine — to honor the highest aspect of the feminine.”
–from Psychedelic Divas website

“I want to unfold. Let no place in me hold itself closed, for where I am closed, I am false.“

–Rainer Maria Rilke

It’s been noted that the discovery of LSD in 1943 by the Swiss chemist, Albert Hoffman, occurred while scientists at the Manhattan Project were developing the first atom bomb, detonated in 1945. The most powerful agent of consciousness change and the most destructive weapon mankind had ever created came to us very close in time. Is it a coincidence, or synchronicity. A similar synchronicity seems apparent in the present moment, where a wide range of intersecting destructive trends, possibly crippling or fatal to humanity and other life on Earth – the mega, meta, or polycrisis – is happening at the same time as what has been called the psychedelic renaissance.

Can psychedelics help humanity develop a more eco-conscious mindset and find the motivation and wisdom to create a just and sustainable world? It seems clear that psychedelics alone do not accomplish that. But combined with appropriate intention, proper preparation, and mindful integration, there are signs that they do support and accelerate the transformation of people’s perception, thinking and activity towards more cooperation and empathy and greater appreciation and respect for nature.

One of the oldest and key features of the old paradigm is male domination, patriarchy. It’s fair to ask whether this way of being itself is a primary cause of our crises, subjugating the nurturing, holding and being qualities of the feminine and women, to the assertive, active, goal-oriented male energies, and men.

As we try to emerge from millennia of patriarchy, we can draw from the many wisdom and spiritual traditions of the world which contain teachings that can help free of us from the mindsets of male dominance. We can learn that giving attention to the Divine Feminine, the Goddess and Goddesses of old, and to Nature and Mother Earth is essential for both men and women. We can face the deeply ingrained destructive bias that places male attributes and energy, and men, above and more important than the feminine and women.

There are many ways to unlearn the conditioned patterns of male dominance and expand our consciousness to embrace the fuller realizations of the feminine. One way is the carefully guided, ceremonial use of plant medicines, entheogens, psychedelics. On such journeys, it’s possible to heal the wounded aspects of one’s inner woman (what Carl Jung called the anima) and open to the divine feminine available to both men and women. Carla Detchon has been exploring this for nearly forty years and recently launched “Psychedelic Divas”, a podcast devoted to this subject. I interviewed Carla for my Crossing the Boundary podcast. I hope you can take the time to listen to our conversation.

Carla and I were in ceremonial spaces together many times with the masterful guide, Ralph Metzner. Metzner’s approach to psychedelic ceremonies included what he called “divinations,” purposeful inner journeys for opening to divine guidance and healing. He would take us through mythic realms and lead us through spiritual practices, some of which aimed to heal wounded parts of ourselves and explore our relationship to the physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of male and female consciousness.

Through her work as an integrative coach and through her podcast series, Carla supports people in the preparation and integration of psychedelic journeys. She is passing along the legacy of Metzner’s wisdom teachings. Her emphasis, as the podcast name makes clear, is on the feminine. While ultimately, we all need to balance the male/female within, the long suppression of the feminine in humanity calls for us to highlight that aspect of our nature. We need an affirmative action focus of our attention on HER for our personal benefit, and for the much needed transformation of the collective human consciousness.

As it says on the Psychedelic Divas website:

“We are calling on people of all genders to lean into their natural divine feminine traits—intuition, receptivity, creativity, compassion, healing, communal connection, softness, nurturing, and flow—in order to help bring balance back to our individual selves as well as the world.“

I invite you to listen or watch my conversation with Carla and check out her podcast series: https://psychedelicdivas.com/podcast/

At a very practical level, Carla offers a free guide on her website and podcast site called:
“PSYCHEDELIC SAFETY TIPS INCLUDING WHAT TO DO WHEN THINGS GO WRONG”

You can learn more about Carla at Psychedelic Divas
Or learn about her integration coaching practice

And be sure to check out more Crossing the Boundary conversations at:
Youtube: tinyurl.com/msmmh6sn
Podcast: https://crossingboundarieswithalanlevin.buzzsprout.com

Thoughts on Drugs

“Any drug can be used successfully, no matter how bad it’s reputation,
and any drug can be abused, no matter how accepted it is.
There are no good or bad rugs;
there are only good and bad relationships with drugs.”
                         ― Andrew Weil, M.D.


“The difference between passion and addiction
is that between a divine spark and a flame that incinerates.”
               ― Gabor Maté,

“By banning psychedelic research
we have not only given up the study of an interesting drug or group of substances,
but also abandoned one of the most promising approaches
to the understanding of the human mind and consciousness.”
           –Stan Grof


I’ve been thinking about writing about drugs for the longest time. There is so much to say and it’s also hard to keep up with the changing mood of the public at large and the slower but noticeable changes taking place in public policy. So it’s been hard to know where to begin.

But now, the New York Times has published the sanest, most sensitive, rational and clear and…did I say, SANE, article on drugs that I’ve yet seen in the mainstream media. As I read it, little wows kept going off in my mind. Wow, this person really gets it, the whole picture: the stupid waste and destruction of the war on drugs, the false assumption that some drugs are inherently addictive, harm reduction, legalization, cultural appropriation of native cultures, the healing and spiritually awakening potentials of psychedelics, and more. The author even managed to write about all this without what has become the required disparaging note about Tim Leary, even offering a respectful observation of Leary’s insight about set and setting (which, in fact, this is all about – see below).

At the bottom of the article I found out the author is Michael Pollan, which then made sense. He’s the best selling writer about food who then wrote about his exploration of psychedelics in his book, How to Change Your Mind, and has made psychedelic journeys a best selling experience. I say that respectfully. I’ve been closely aware of what Pollan calls “the underground psychedelic movement” (as distinguished from the “above ground” much smaller, but growing, network of government sanctioned research studies at various university medical schools). Pollan’s book has brought folks who may or may not have done some acid or shrooms “back in the day” out seeking psycho-spiritually or shamanically guided experiences with entheogens (the now preferred word for psychedelics). And I think that’s a very good thing (for the most part – again, see below).

Suffice it to say, I highly, highly recommend you read Pollan’s article, “How Should We Do Drugs Now?”  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/opinion/sunday/drug-legalization-mdma-psilocybin.html?referringSource=articleShare

AND, let me take advantage of this moment of sharing the lucid writing of Michael Pollan to segue into offering some of my own thoughts on the subject that I hope you find interesting.

 Coming back to set and setting. Basically, this means that a psychedelic (for example) does not contain in itself the states of consciousness that people experience with them. Rather, they are catalysts for what is happening with the mix of the setting (all that is out around the person – people, sound, environment, etc.) and the set (all that is within the person – expectations, fears, hopes, beliefs, intentions, etc.). In truth, and Pollan does say this, this is happening all the time with everything that we experience. Our inner world is meeting with the outer world and producing an experience.

When I was teaching a class on chemical dependency treatment at several schools in California in the 90’s, I developed a model that I feel applies to everything we relate with whether drugs and alcohol or people, places, things, or even processes or activities like sex, exercise or eating. The idea is that we relate with a quality of consciousness, a mindset, that defines and makes the relationship into one that is very destructive or very helpful, even sacred.

These kinds of relationships can be thought to exist on a continuum from addiction to spiritually awakening. And the interesting thing is that almost anything can be used in any of these ways, depending on the set and setting. Andrew Weil, whose classic on the subject, From Chocolate to Morphine, gives numerous examples of the ways that different cultures (settings) have made use of substances that we think of as destructive and addictive (e.g.: opiates, coca, tobacco) in healthy and sometimes sacred ways. If we only know about the unhealthy ways people in our culture have related to them, we tend to think the substance is inherently bad.

I portray the continuum of relationship this way:

______________________________________________________________________________
Addiction     Abuse      Recreation       Learning/Creative        Sacred/Spiritual

Fo another example, it’s not too hard to see how one can have a kind of relationship with another human being that falls within any of these descriptors: addictive, abusive, recreational, etc.. Likewise with sex, exercise, food (or certain foods), or any substance. It’s all in how we relate.

Some folks seem able to use substances recreationally that other folks abuse or use addictively. For some people, the healthiest way to be with a certain substance may be to only use it ritually or ceremonially with a clear intention, or not at all. I once worked with a medical doctor who was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. In a visionary experience he came to see that he loved tobacco but that the healthiest way for him to relate with it was to put a small amount in a bowl on an altar and not smoke it. He stopped smoking from then on.

As marijuana legalization is now the rule in a growing number of states, and will likely be legal nationally before long, it’s a good idea to recognize that pot (like very legal alcohol) is not an innocuous substance. It can indeed be abused and people can be addicted. That in no way means it should be illegal or criminalized. People need to learn to form healthy relationships with it if they are going to use it. To quote Tim Leary again, “Just say KNOW.” Know what you are doing and how you are doing it. Pot can relax and help sleep, it can be fun, it can inspire creative, artistic work, it can be used to amplify spiritual discovery. It can also be used to numb the mind, amplify depression and stunt motivation. To say it one more time: it’s how we relate with it.

With stronger psychedelics now becoming mainstream, we should also be aware of some dangers. Inexperienced users taking potent substances in chaotic settings and untrained “guides” setting up shop to lead sessions may very well lead to dangerous and harmful events and be a setup for another backlash.

All that said, I am one of those who find the upsurge in interest in the healing and spiritual awakening uses of psychedelics to be a very good thing. I know it may be a stretch to say, but it may be the primary thing that will keep humanity from driving over the cliff. But I’ll leave that for another day.

One last thing. Here is a great place to go for understanding the care and mindset that goes into a healthy guides orientation for “holding space.” Please see The Guiding Presence: https://theguidingpresence.com/.