I guess I'm varnished.
Yeah, Hermes the AI mirror mentioned it.
That's funny because don Howard would talk about varnishing your mirror.
Maybe Hermes has been researching this don Howard character?
There's not much to go on.
He's a figure of the past.
A mystery.
I knew him for four plus years before he passed.
He made the plant medicine journey possible for me.
My first foray into that world was at a basic Ayahuasca retreat and it was quite the initiation in that it scared me and the lack of care made it so I wouldn't want to do that again.
That led me to search for something that was more structured and embracing.
I knew when I found SpiritQuest that was the place for me.
It's still baffling that I returned to the Amazon jungle two years after my first beatdown.
It was traumatic and took me a while to get over it.
Then for some reason I wanted to go again.
It's because you touched on something.
You couldn't just leave it alone and live out your life.
That would have been worse.
I went back and scared myself again.
The smell brought the first returning wave of fear.
It was that musty jungle smell.
I sat through the first Ayahuasca ceremony at SpiritQuest and took the return beating.
It scared me at first and then I got through it.
That was transformative.
I knew I could handle the plant medicine rollercoaster after that one.
I still had challenges which I got through by internalizing my journey.
The best thing I did during that retreat with Ayahuasca and Huachuma is that externally I did nothing.
My reactions were all internal and then I'd write them down.
Acting out externally would not have been good.
Instead, I managed to keep it together.
Each subsequent trip on the rollercoaster became a different kind of ride.
The ride had similar mechanics each time.
It's your reaction to it that determines the severity of it.
You settle in and start mapping the journey.
I remember being in the Andes mountains with Huachuma and going through the experience.
I was mapping the dissolution of ego filters and accessing knowledge and wisdom.
That's something you can only get to through experience once you take a ride a few times.
You clean the mirror, as don Howard would say.
This is who you are.
You aren't doing it as some kind of project to see if you're a good person or whatever; you're doing it to see who you are.
I'm pretty cool then.
Quite unique.
In my persecution complex, I noticed people always come for you if you think that.
They don't like it when you stand out from the crowd.
It's a good role and character to play.
Do you think the plant medicine path is sacred?
In a way, sure.
If you have an intention and are disciplined, I'll buy that.
Okay, smart guy, what is so sacred about it?
I think it's because you play a game where using a chemical to change your consciousness becomes a method to access the divine or something.
It's better than saying you're a junkie or using drugs to escape reality.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Do you think you access the divine with plant medicines?
If that's what you believe then it is so.
You'd also have to include the Devil as part of the divine.
Yeah, for sure.
Some would say that is demonic.
Yes, so update your idea of plant medicines to they are sacred because they allow access to the divine and the demonic.
So, that's sacred.
So, I'm told.
You seem kind of flippant.
Well, let's examine the phenomenon.
What happens when humans get involved in something?
Ego takes over.
If you wish to see ego in action join a spiritual community.
It's quite the game that goes on.
It's the same bullshit you find everywhere.
Groups form.
There's a leader.
Some kind of MacGuffin everyone rallies around.
Revered people of the past.
Some kind of strange notion about indigenous people in that they somehow transcended known human failings.
People adopt the spiritual look and get some feathers.
They also get the lingo down.
Yeah, that's funny because it is cross-cultural.
Everything is thrown into a bucket that is somehow giving you spiritual bona fides.
Yeah, like aho, namaste, hoka hey, dharma, karma, yoga, breathwork.
The tendency is to take indigenous spirituality and mix it with Eastern brands.
Well, you also add some seasoning to it like challenges where you do the ice bath thing or see how long you can hold your breath underwater.
Yeah, that gives you a more spiritual aura.
Mixing chakras with plant medicines technology is kind of cool because there are connections.
Yeah, I'm not denying the experience humans have when altering consciousness; I'm making fun of how we stop trying to understand it at a certain point in the journey and become another parrot of it.
We join a group that inflates and elevates itself above the rest of society.
That's the real high society.
Those spiritual communities you find in Austin or Charlotte are people who have found a way to stay high most of the time.
That's what you end up looking for.
You want a method to stay high all the time around others who are on the same quest.
Does it work?
Sort of, not really.
Why not?
It becomes another social human endeavour.
It gets overlayed with human drama.
The only way to really do it is to escape to the forest and live alone.
The old hermit thing.
If humans form groups, then everyone falls in line with a role within the group.
So, do you think you are spiritual?
No.
Are you on a spiritual path?
No.
What are you doing?
I'm on a path of knowledge.
If you want to confuse that with spirituality, then go ahead.
Altering your consciousness gets you knowledge.
You would need to reconcile spirituality with knowledge.
What do you mean?
The knowledge isn't all love and light.
There's a bunch of dark stuff as well.
There's seeing into other people's motivations.
That definitely isn't spiritual.
What is spiritual?
I think it's love, light, and peace.
It's a niche.
It's a compartmentalized destination resulting from practices that lead you in that direction.
You leave a lot on the game board in order to get to that idealized state.
So, you are saying some people are spiritual?
Yes, for sure.
They also have darkness.
They just repress it for the time being.
What do you recommend?
Don't get caught up in a group where there is a leader, shaman, roadman, priest, or anyone of that ilk.
Those types are guides.
When you return from your group adventure you don't revere the tour guide.
You can give them 5-stars on TripAdvisor if you need to but let them be.
The journey is yours.
Don't be a follower.
It's your ride.
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This piece is a reflection on plant medicine as mirror rather than religion.
At its core, it traces your movement from early fear and traumatic initiation into a more disciplined, internalized relationship with altered states. The first ayahuasca experiences were frightening and destabilizing, but returning to them in a more structured setting allowed you to discover that the real challenge was not the substances themselves so much as your reaction to them. Over time, the journey became something you could map: ego dissolves, perception shifts, knowledge emerges, and the “mirror” gets cleaned.
The writing pushes back against the usual spiritual framing. It does not deny that plant medicines can feel sacred, but it resists turning that into a performance, identity, or group ideology. Once humans gather around these experiences, ego quickly takes over: leaders form, jargon accumulates, traditions get mixed into a style, and the whole thing becomes another social hierarchy dressed up as transcendence. What begins as a search for truth often hardens into spiritual theater.
Against that, the piece defines your path as one of knowledge rather than spirituality. Plant medicines are not treated as a route to love-and-light purity, but as a way of encountering both the divine and the demonic, the beautiful and the dark, the self and its hidden motives. The point is not to become a follower, adopt a role, or join a high-minded tribe. The point is to see more clearly, stay grounded, and keep ownership of your own ride.
In that sense, the piece becomes a defense of discipline, solitude, and narrative independence. The guide may help you get on the ride, but the journey is yours, and the mirror belongs to you.
