"Everyone has been to a chain gas station, or to a restaurant chain… and then others have visited that mom and pop joint, that has survived via reputation alone and everyone knows the difference between the two. Authenticity cannot be bought inside of taking a 12 week course or a 6 month course, no class can teach you to be authentic. Only your passion for what it is that you do, your skill and tenacity in continuing to do that which against all odds, you truly love. True Authenticity is striving to truly explore because its what you love, not because you are looking to share information you haven’t even learned yet. It comes in the desire to work on yourself, and do your work with grace, for the sake of oneself to benefit others. Not solely for financial gain or the gain of fame and fortune. Above all else, authenticity is telling the truth even when it sounds weird, and no one is looking.

Your survival should not depend on your level of spiritual realization. One of my first teachers told me, simply “What you lead with… gets wrecked first”. So if you’re planning on leading with something, don’t lead your life with how spiritual you are or plan to become… you’ll burn more than just bridges, you could legitimately wreck yourself. Ie. Take on attachments that could follow you for the rest of your life if not eliminated early and kept with appropriate boundaries. The spiritualized work attracts a level of difficulty, the more spiritual you portray yourself to be, the cycle of manifestation tends to pull more challenges your way. Many Christians would call this “God testing you”.  Many times we voluntarily enter the testing and quality arena, the question is something we want to know ourselves, “just how spiritual am I? Just how spiritual can I be? Can I be enlightened already? Maybe I am, that’s what everyone else thinks they are right?”. Wrong. The mentality of creating a following and a cult of personality is a very slippery slope, especially when we work with sacred plants and practices that can result in authentic spiritual development or “aushadi”. What is aushadi?

My mother once told me, you cannot be both sweet and sour… you’re sourness will ruin the sweet. Before you start weaving in your spirituality into your self image, first question why it is that your ego needs to automatically create a new spiritual identity for oneself? The boxes that you create for yourself are far more limiting that the ones generally self-identifiably adopted  ones (gay, straight, black, white) without psychedelics. But after psychedelics, you’re the “coach”, or the “teacher” or “shaman” or “insert title here”, because you have tapped into the illusion of Divine Authority, as a “Knower of truth” for that trip at least until you come down and feel naked without this safety blanket of authority. That is not to say that after many years of study, just like in any field.. As you become proficient you may be able to share your insights with others.

Many people get stuck inside of the loop of self realization chasing…. The focus is always on the next trip. The next trip will be “so healing”, “you’ll see exactly what you need to”,  etc… “you’ll make the change”. Perhaps the first realizations should be integrated before you move on to stronger, more “powerful” substances and experiences that will take you to the very core of your existential fears. In later sections, we will discuss what it means to learn to S.W.I.M. This is a technique that can be identified by Stabilizing, Wandering (learning how to Explore), Integrating, and Maturing.

The first term, called Stabilizing…is learning how to sit with your triggers before throwing a herb or substance at your symptoms of anxiety and depression. Literally, how do we stabilize ourselves in the moment without a massive energetic jolt . Thousands of people suffer from a multitude of mental wellness issues. I say mental wellness instead of mental illness, because many of the people who have anxiety and depression are missing a way to establish wellness within their minds, let alone within their waking life and reality. Learning how to speak to yourself from scratch, rather than tip toeing around mental and emotional triggers can start to form a wellness within the mind.

As the Buddhists say, you must cultivate “Basic Sanity”, as defined by practicing the Eight Fold Path. As a lay Buddhist practioner, my opinion is that you should make your mind like tempered steel. By challenging your beliefs and pre-existing programed notions, and challenging your patience, and discipline, you start to forge yourself a mind that does not collapse under stress and pressure as easily as it once did. Cultivate your mind with small daily challenges. Sitting in the lotus pose and starting a meditation practice is a massive challenge even for myself, having spent countless thousands of hours chanting in that position. You may want to start with something a bit simpler than that.

“Om Mani Padme Hum”? I’m sure the Dr. Stranges would stop me right there and point out that they had casually seen that crap in every metaphysical gift shop, and that they had already tried it and that fake spiritual stuff doesn’t work! Baba Kilindi Iyi said we need more Sourcerers… but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t also follow another one of his advice, no matter what religion or spiritual system it is that you work with, pairing those practices with the Entheogens is appropriate to see how they were originally intended to be used, in my own personal opinion. The word “Om” that seems so simple, or the word “Ah”, that on the surface looks like just a two letter word with little meaning, can contain a universe of vibrational information with limitless depth."

‍This has been an excerpt of : The Researcher's Divine Master Alchemy

This is the depth that we speak of in this book.