From Skeptic to Seer: How Plant Medicine Opened Me to the Spirit World
Five years ago, if you had told me spirits were real, I would have laughed. Today, my ancestors visit me often. I spent most of my life trapped in the scientific worldview that we are material beings and that we are alone in this dance of the cosmos. I leaned heavily on science to help shape that view. Like most of us, I didn’t see any visual evidence, and therefore I concluded that the spirit realm was a fantasy.
Two major shifts over the last few years changed my view. The first was diving deep into plant medicine, and the second was studying the world from an animate perspective with Josh Schrei at the Emerald podcast and Mythic Body course. The animate worldview sees the world as alive with intelligence—not metaphorically, but literally.
I did have a spiritual practice for many decades. I worked for the Krishnamurti Foundation for sixteen years. The Krishnamurit folk approach life from a rational view. They dive into our cultural conditioning as they attempt to unravel the tentacles of consciousness from the chains of the mind. I was his student for two decades.
My job was to read every Krishnamurti book, watch every video, and market those teachings to the world. Krishnamurti is the non-guru guru. He asked his students to unravel their conditioning while asking profound questions about the human condition. He didn’t have any techniques or practices to teach, but he did talk about ‘choiceless awareness’ as a way to know oneself—the observer is the observed, he used to say often.
This rational approach served me for years. Krishanamurti rarely spoke of the divine or anything related to spirit or God in his talks and books. In fact, he discouraged those paths, feeling they were a distraction from the true path of understanding the self. Even though his early life was filled with mystery and divine guidance while he was connected to the elite of the Theosophical Society, he rarely spoke of those mystical events and would not entertain questions about them.
The Otherness of Krishnamurti
There is one book in which he discloses his own process of awakening and describes what he calls ‘the otherness.’ In Krishnamurti’s Notebook, he writes, “the otherness came with such intense tenderness and beauty that one’s body and brain became motionless.” During this process, where the otherness was active in his life, he often complained of pain in the back of his neck and spine. The word Kundalini is never used in his descriptions, but from what I have read, that is precisely what was happening—the rising of spiritual energy in his body. What is described as ‘otherness’ is clearly divine guidance of some sort.
What are spirits? Spirits can be ancestors, plant beings, divine energy, planets, elements (land, water, air, and fire), or animal spirits. Webster’s dictionary defines a spirit as “a supernatural being or essence that is bodiless but can become visible.” Many people equate spirits with ghosts, but, as we described, there are many types of spirits with various functions and relationships.
Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife, and the survival of the spirit after death, were recorded in hieroglyphic inscriptions and tomb paintings over a period of more than 2,500 years. In the ancient Sumerian tale The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest examples of written literature, features the spirit of Enkidu visiting King Gilgamesh after death.
Humans have been interacting with spirits for millennia. Many ancient cultures performed rituals to honor spirits. American Indian traditions are a beautiful example of a culture that has placed spirits at the center of its ritual mandala. Native American spirit-honoring rituals are diverse across tribes but fundamentally focus on maintaining harmony and balance with the natural world and spiritual realms through practices such as purification ceremonies, vision quests, and ancestral reverence.
White Buffalo Calf Woman Spirit
Among the Lakota, there is a story of White Buffalo Calf Woman, a spirit-being who walked out of a swirling cloud and appeared to two hunters on the plains. One hunter approached her with impure intentions and fell dead instantly, reduced to bone in the blink of an eye. The other came with reverence, and she recognized the purity of his heart. To him, she revealed her proper form: not a woman at all, but a luminous spirit whose body shimmered like morning frost.
She carried with her a sacred bundle and instructed the hunter to return to his village and prepare for her arrival. When she entered the camp, her presence shifted the air itself—the wind stilled, the children stopped playing, and even the animals outside the lodge grew quiet.
For four days, she taught the people how to pray, how to purify themselves, how to speak to the unseen. She taught them that everything has a spirit—every stone, every river, every animal, every gust of wind. She taught that humans were meant to live in reciprocity with the world around them. Before she left, she gave them the sacred pipe, a living symbol of the relationship between the seen and unseen worlds.
Spirits Are Here Now
Spirits are with me as I write this article, and spirits are with you as you read. You might have an ancestor looking over your shoulder at this very moment. Spirits are everywhere. Developing a relationship with spirits, the animate forces that surround us, is essential to our human lives.
Whether we recognize spirits or not, they are influencing everything we do. Incorporating a practice of gratitude and honoring helps weave the wounds of disconnection between the unseen and seen worlds. This embodied somatic practice of reverence is what was missing from my years of chasing rational understanding.
About two years into my medicine path, spirits started to show themselves to me in ceremony. They revealed themselves slowly. At first, they were formless, resembling a cloud of smoke or a faint image of a large circle. More details slowly emerged, and eventually, I could see their entire form with color and size. I saw tall white goddesses, small beings that reassembled fairies and elves, indigenous people, and ancestors. In one ceremony, both of my grandmothers appeared above me, dressed all in black, watching me from a balcony. Another time, I saw five generations of my paternal lineage, all dressed in the clothing of their era.
I have had spirits follow me across a room, and I have turned to look at them directly. I have witnessed spirits perform healings on the people next to me. In other moments, the spirits appear entirely geometric, and I can follow them around the room as they travel to different people. Spirits are often active in the ceremony space, healing and guiding us in the journey. I once saw a spirit sitting behind one of my teachers and watched as it helped her play the viola with soft adjustments to her arms.
You might be thinking that psychedelics create images and visions that are not real, that these visions (which are all open-eyed) are projections of my mind, and that they are not really there. But I challenge you to take another view: that entheogens open our eyes to the unseen world, which is active around us at all times. My clairvoyance started to open as my practice of offering and devotion deepened. When I began my path in medicine, I had no relationship with the unseen world.
So what changed? Firstly, my worldview shifted from rejecting the idea that spirits were real to opening to the possibility that they were. I started to make offerings to spirits in my course with Josh. I began to feed the spirits in my house and at my altar. I sang songs to spirits and offered gratitude before meals and before bed. I opened a relationship, and it felt strange at first, but I settled into it over time.
I deepened my connection with honoring and thanking the elements and the unseen, including a daily practice of giving gratitude to my ancestors. This opened a kinship, a connection, a reciprocal dance between myself and the beings around me. As this relational dynamic deepened, the spirits slowly began to reveal themselves and assist me along my journey. If I had not instigated this practice, my sight would have never opened.
Does it matter that I can see spirits in a ceremony? Well, it has helped me shift my worldview completely and given me more resolve to strengthen my relationship with the unseen outside the medicine circles. I know these beings are here to support my journey, and I am thankful for their guidance and presence.
There is so much mystery in this world. As I reflect on the indigenous wisdom associated with this worldview, my heart sings with praise and reverence for the traditions that still exist to remind us of our connection to spirit. What a gift. I have no idea where this opening will lead me, but I know I am not alone and that unseen forces are steering my path.
As above, so below.
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