Who can serve as experienced guides - therapists - shamans

[phalaris]

Initiated by the Suicidal tendencies and LSD thread.

Fork and others:

Who can serve as experienced guides ?

This topic is related to the heated MDMA topic from a few weeks ago. In an ideal world, the person in need of guidance could go to the village shaman.

- Normal doctors know next to nothing about psychedelics, let alone have extensive experience with them.
- Most experienced friends are not "professionals". I can image that dealing with serious personal issues is hard enough as it is for a psychiatrist/psychologist/therapist. Letting a friend play the role of therapist is maybe too much too ask then.

But who then ?

what should the qualities of these people really be ?

These positions really need to be filled for everyones sake I think.

 

[Guest]

no one needs guidance.
if he/she can't learn anything by themselves, it won't be a guide that will help him/her.
if he/she learns by themselves, the guide won't help at all.

if you don't trip on strange/dangerous sites, everything will be over in a couple of hours and you can lick your ego's cock again. otherwise, have fun.

 

[HeartCore]

what should the qualities of these people really be ?

-Respect for the experience/journey in general
-Wish to guide people
-Sense of set & setting and how to positively maximize these in preparation to the trip
-Ability to judge if someone has a condition which would make tripping dangerous (like heart disease but also someone who takes prescription medication for depression or other mental conditions. ).
-Experienced with deep journeys, difficult journeys
-Ability to witness without steering and to comfort without disturbing the process (it's ok to cry and it's also ok to be afraid for the people journeying)
-Knowledge of shamanic practices around the world (not saying you need to be a shaman, but at least I feel you should know a bit about how this practice is being done in other cultures)
-Ability to generate trust towards his/herself from the perspective of the people that are guided. It's kind of a dead end when the tripper distrusts the guide while going through some difficult moment and starts to project the misery, onto the sitter.

I'm sure there are many more

 

[BrainEater]

empathy and the ability to share uncondonditional love and of course the standard things like having mastered at least to some extent the own mind is essential in my opinion. i don't know if shamans are general healers but i guess healers need to be able to share uncondontional love as well so it might be the same ... .

 

[Forkbender]

-Experienced with deep journeys, difficult journeys
-Ability to witness without steering and to comfort without disturbing the process (it's ok to cry and it's also ok to be afraid for the people journeying)

I would emphasize these two.

 

[Forkbender]

Letting a friend play the role of therapist is maybe too much too ask then.

Definitely. I guess that if you know the other person too well, it can get into the way of healing. There are already assumed roles towards each other, preventing the ability to overcome these roles. A certain distance is necessary.

The best possible guide is someone you trust with your life. This is hard to build up, but it is part of the process of healing.