Iboga Insight

Information

Our Western world is in some respects a bit of a spiritual desert. Many of us come from families and cultures that are lacking rites of passage, transitional initiations and other ritualistic and educational traditional practices. Further to this, our educational systems were designed to meet the needs of industrialists to take children and process them into workers, systematically stripping them of dignity and obscuring their relationship to nature, confusing their natural relatedness to others and obscuring relationship to the divine. This is an oversimplification and there is a great deal to say on this topic. The effect is that we are a traumatised people, who find ourselves feeling rootless, alienated and forced into submission to structures which neither care for, nor conceive of our souls. If we are different, or face challenges in integrating into these impersonal systems, then the medical systems offer us superficial treatments, like the six sessions of CBT and a course of emotion numbing anti-depressants as a way to help us to recover. And recovery in this system essentially means getting us back to work.

Many people become highly adaptive and learn to repress the wonder of life and the full scope of their potential. This is a very sad state of affairs that not only applies to the financially disadvantaged, but to all of us who are born into this system.
Alternative ways of approaching reality can be co-opted by the basic mindsets of this corrupt conditioning, meaning that meditation and other spiritual practices may be approached as a path to gaining a new identity, or a way to achieve some special status, or belonging to a new tribe. Chogyam Trungpa calls this corruption ‘spiritual materialism’.

Other people may find themselves caught up in cults or joining religious groups which offer belonging, at the expense of a regressive move to homogeneity and loss of individuality under the rules and hierarchies of the new group. In so many ways there are great obstacles to us regaining the insight into our true place in the world.

Some people come to plant medicines and psychedelics in the hope of finding alleviation to this sense of divine homesickness and once again there may be a host of dangers. Psychedelic culture can become psychedelic cult too easily.

Reckless behaviours in engaging this realm of plant medicines also stem from a lack of healthy tradition, guiding and protecting individuals. We see clients who have taken too much, in the wrong setting in a desperate attempt to find answers.

It is a great challenge to cobble together a new tradition and some practitioners in the plant medicine world choose to dress in robes, wear fancy hats and shake feathers, calling themselves shaman, or other titles. Others may be authentically initiated to some degree in a spiritual practice from the Amazon or maybe the rainforest of West Africa and may be guided by insights from these journeys. It can become very confusing to navigate this realm, for someone who is seeking answers and looking to reclaim some of the magic of life.

Many of the routes that are advertised for spiritual development unfortunately result in what we call ‘spiritual bypassing’, which means the adoption of a new superficial spiritual identity that is clung to and resists anything that may be considered undesirable to this identity. The trouble with this is that it is in the darkest places within us that we find the answers that will heal us and assist our growth. It is learning to stay present and taking care of all parts of us that gets us past inner conflicts that result in various symptoms, behaviours, habits that keep us feeling stuck and disconnected.

Iboga, more than any other plant medicine, that I have worked with or have known, has the skill of showing us exactly what we need to see and this means that it is sometimes feared and is treated with great caution and respect.

Taking Iboga is undoubtedly a courageous act and the spirit of Iboga can be very challenging, but ultimately loving. In this sense Iboga can be regarded as a true rite of passage, or a self-initiation. Clear intentionality and insight regarding our own inner state, behaviours and outward circumstances are an absolute prerequisite for undergoing this experience.

Coming to the medicine without adequate preparation and with a host of misguided and uninformed hopes is in my opinion foolish. Any treatment provider who offers to dose you without such support and makes miraculous claims is not to be trusted.

I work within the psychotherapeutic frame. My Training is psycho-spiritual and I am a long term meditator, but the core of my work is founded in love. The foundations of my work lie in the love that I have experienced from family and friends in my lifetime and the lessons, both positive and challenging that have presented along my own journey. Out of this foundation grows a faith that our true nature is loving and relational and that the challenge to recognising this is the work of spiritual practice and initiatory experiences, such as with Iboga. Ram Dass says ‘We are all walking each other home’.

Relating to abandoned, exiled, lost and forgotten parts of ourselves helps us to begin a process of integration that leads us beyond self-referential and automatic protective patterns and returns us to life with a healthy orientation to ourselves, others, life and a real sense of connection to the divine.

I offer a grounded approach to psychospiritual work, that doesn't require you to change yourself in any superficial sense, but also looks very deeply to uncover your authentic core self and help you to make corresponding changes that make sense and work for you.

I invite you to make contact with me, should you be looking to prepare for using iboga for these reasons, for support during your journey and to assist integration afterward.