Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Hamilton Souther: Explore Consciousness with a Master Shaman
104 Plays5 years ago
Hamilton has spent the better part of the last twenty years traveling inward and outward, exploring the Amazon and his and the greater consciousness and spirit. His tour company, Blue Morpho, offers spiritual journeys by way of plant medicines and is situated deep in the jungles of Peru. In our conversation, we cover all things shamanic, mystic and spiritual and Hamilton deftly articulates the sensitive and particular components of these concepts and his work. From assisting with addiction and depression to communicating with guides and energies, we cover it all!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction: Hamilton Souther's Spiritual Journey
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey, welcome to this week's episode of the Art of Authenticity. Thank you guys for tuning in. I'm Laura Coe, your host. Today we have something really different. I loved this episode. We got Hamilton Souther joining us. He's the CEO and master shaman of Visionary Plant Medicines and founder of Blue Morpho Shamanic Ayahuasca and Sacred Plant Retreat Center in the Amazon. Yep.
00:00:41
Speaker
that's a mouthful, really cool episode. This guy has gone deep into spirituality. He has really lived an interesting life coming from a Western upbringing with parents who are a doctor and a nurse landing himself in the Amazon and guiding people through spiritual journeys.
00:01:00
Speaker
We get into it. I learned so much, shamanism, mysticism, consciousness, what these concepts mean and how he articulates them in this episode. I had to go back and listen through and take some notes. So I loved it. I hope you enjoy it. And if you're interested in learning more about Hamilton, it's bluemorphotours.com. You can check it out on our website. And I hope you enjoyed today's show. Thanks for tuning in. Hey, Hamilton, how are you today?
00:01:29
Speaker
Hi, guys. I'm doing really great. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's a real pleasure to be here. I'm a little at the edge of my seat. We were chatting for two minutes, but I didn't even divulge how excited I am to have you. Hamilton works with plant medicine and helping people with addiction, depression, and shamanism, mysticism. There's so many topics. Honestly, Hamilton, I was like, I want to ask about all of them, but I'm going to show some restraint here.
00:01:54
Speaker
Ask away and I'm happy to talk about all of this. It's always been a passion of mine and something I think is really incredible to share with people. So I'm happy to answer all your questions.
00:02:03
Speaker
Yeah, so before we jump into everything, and I'd love to deep dive into some of these topics, I'm always curious about people's stories in particular yours, right? Like, were you always, were you a family of origin? Were you, I read somewhere that your family was actually more
Transformative Spiritual Awakening
00:02:17
Speaker
science-based. Were you, how did you get interested in plant medicine and shamanism, you know, eventually your business, blue amorphous. What was that story? What was that process like for you? Sure, I mean, I think I grew up really kind of,
00:02:32
Speaker
what you think of as normal in the 80s and 90s in the United States. I grew up in California and ultimately went to the University of Colorado at Boulder and studied anthropology there. I was really interested in athletics and I came from a family that was completely immersed in science. My father was a surgeon and doctor, medical western practitioner, and my mother was a nurse. Our whole understanding in our family was really about science and
00:02:59
Speaker
There was very little spirituality that was kind of part of my upbringing, but then my mom became really spiritual in her own right and my dad too and my teens. So, you know, around the age of 16 to 18, they opened up outside of kind of the bubble that their mind was in and opened up to lots of other kinds of topics. And they started to ask me questions that were, you know, in the kind of philosophical arena around spirituality.
00:03:25
Speaker
spirituality for me at that time was still really foreign because I hadn't been introduced to it. And I think when you're young, your mind's really closed and ensconced only in what you're learning in school. And you know, it's a very small world in that sense. And so I would, I was able to field the questions and have ideas about the philosophy behind it, but it didn't really have much meaning to me until I was in my early twenties, the year after I had graduated from the university, I was kind of in a place that was directionless and not really sure where I was headed. And, um,
00:03:55
Speaker
It was pretty dark at that time and I, you know, pretty depressed about kind of just the fate of living, you know, the journey of life itself. And my mom told me that if I wasn't interested in my own life anymore, that I should give my life to spirit. And I didn't really know what to make of that, you know, I'd give your life to spirit. I literally thought nothing would happen. And I also thought like, well, maybe this is a way to prove to her that
Validation and Pursuit of Shamanism
00:04:20
Speaker
maybe all her ideas aren't exactly spot on, you know, so.
00:04:23
Speaker
I gave my life to spirit and I did something that ultimately I couldn't come back from. I literally made a change and it was an authentic moment of absolute transparency between myself and really the rest of the universe at that moment. And it was a really cathartic experience and it was a really, like I say, very authentic, very honest
00:04:47
Speaker
uh representation of how i was feeling in that moment and then afterwards i i literally thought nothing would happen but i felt relieved and uh i love that it was like i do your mom's like saying and you're like yeah i'll just do this but it means nothing to me
00:05:01
Speaker
Sure, I'll just do it. But I really did it, though. That's the thing. I didn't fake it. I didn't half it. I really did it. And within 24 to 48 hours, I actually started seeing what people called spirits. What was the thing that you did just for a second? Because I think that's really important. It's probably been a long time. But what's that transition look like when you said you gave yourself to spirit? I was standing in the kitchen. I was looking out of the windows into the dockyard.
00:05:29
Speaker
I just invoked spirit. I don't know exactly how, but my imagination opened up to the idea of the totality of this concept of spirit, kind of like the way you would, I don't know, call anybody or call anything. Like when they say call on your guides or call on divinity or call on a star being, call on whatever. I mean, I just, I called on great spirit, like, hey, great spirit.
00:05:54
Speaker
I don't know, it was a focusing of my mind. Like I directed my awareness to that concept and its absolute totality. And then I just started talking and the connection was immediate. It was real. It didn't have another side to it, but I had an outpouring of emotion and
Challenges of Shamanic Apprenticeship
00:06:11
Speaker
tears.
00:06:12
Speaker
and this huge heart opening that happened in that moment that I didn't really understand. I mean, like I said, no context for the experience nor any understanding of what I was actually even doing. I just literally did it. I just said, well, I'm tired of this in this very small ego bubble that was filled with so much dualistic conflict and pain and suffering of my own.
00:06:34
Speaker
And it ruptured. It just blew up right there in that moment. And then, you know, it wasn't like the clouds parted and angels sang from heaven. It was like, yeah, it's still nighttime. Yeah, that's the moonlight. You know, that's it. It was like that. But then what I couldn't explain, you know, is that I literally started seeing spirits, like I said, 24 to 48 hours after that. And then I was confronted with a drastic
00:07:02
Speaker
experience and expression of life where you don't believe in something and you're having the experience of it and so the disbelief has to go away to the experience that you're actually having and ultimately confront that and face that in a very positive way to embrace the change that had started in that moment and you know from what I can tell from my own experience it hasn't stopped from that moment in my you know when I was 22 and I
00:07:28
Speaker
gave my life to spirit. Spirit has been the guiding force of my life until now. Oh my God, that's beautiful. And I love what you said too that you did it, but you actually did it full heartedly because my sense and my experience is that when you do these things, but you actually don't mean it at all, like there's complete resistance deep within you, then not so much happens. Exactly. Yeah.
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, so you gave yourself to this experience and what the spirits and the guides started to show up for you. And that just became, how did the next couple years unfold for you? How did that move forward? It was really fast, actually. I mean, from that moment that the guides appeared and they appeared in ways that were corroborated by lots of other people, which is also amazing at that time. And I think, you know, a tremendous gift from spirit that I was not left alone
00:08:18
Speaker
I was having these visions literally knowing presences were in the space with me. I think it's common even if people brush them off that sometimes they're in the house alone and feel like there's something else in the house with them. In my case, it was constant and the presences were the same over and over and over again to the point that I could start to describe them to people.
00:08:40
Speaker
When I described them, they were not presences that I knew, but other people knew of them. Some of them were people that had passed on and some of them were just spirit guides. I met other clairvoyant and visionary people that could literally see them and also corroborate the experience for me.
00:08:59
Speaker
Without me telling them, it wasn't like I preloaded the conversations or whatever. All of a sudden, someone would be talking with me that I had met at a lecture, and they would say, hey, you have a guide behind your right shoulder that's telling me this. And I'd be like, yeah, I know the guide's behind my right shoulder. So it was just happening in that way, and it was very synchronistic.
00:09:20
Speaker
I tried to make sense of the experience. I was lucid and clear. I knew I was having experiences well outside of what people called normal. And also other people could express them in very negative ways or be very scared of what I was experiencing. And so I was very attuned to that. And since I'd grown up in a Western scientific family, I understood Western psychology and psychiatry and their understandings or lack of understandings of these kinds of experiences.
00:09:47
Speaker
And so I was, you know, immediately looking for solutions. And so I did really two things. I went to a psychologist and I started reading about shamanism from my anthropological studies. I had read ethnographies about people having these really wild experiences with other mystics.
00:10:04
Speaker
and trying to make sense of that. And so I thought that was a start point to try to understand what I was experiencing. And the psychologist affirmed that I wasn't going crazy, but was really having an awakening kind of an experience. And she was a really wonderful psychologist. She was open to the idea of spirit guides and power animals. She was not shut off from that as an aspect of kind of another expression of consciousness and the mind, and was open to having the conversations with me about that.
00:10:32
Speaker
Actually, after six weeks told me I didn't need to see her anymore, that I was fine. And I just needed to keep going with my experience. And then that left me to go in the direction of shamanism. And I was reading books by other shamans that you can find them on Amazon. They're out there in bookstores. One was The Way of the Shaman by Michael
Rise and Healing Properties of Plant Medicine
00:10:50
Speaker
Harner. I was reading books by Alberto Vololdo about his early experiences with mystics in Peru. And I was just trying to put some context to my own experience.
00:10:59
Speaker
And ultimately I realized that I was having what people would call a traditional shamanic awakening and that shamanism would be the direction that I would head.
00:11:09
Speaker
And that led to learning how to do meditations and trance journeys all without sacred plants, just in a very open psychic state and utilizing authentic movement as a way of getting into a trance state and then communicating with these guides. And within six weeks of meeting them, they told me that there were shamans waiting for me in Peru that had been having visions of me for a long time and that I needed to go find them and that they would guide me ultimately to those people.
00:11:35
Speaker
And that sent me off on really the journey and the path that led me to talking here today. That's an amazing story. I gotta stop too and give such credit. Have you ever come back to that therapist and thanked her? I love that you're like, I'm just gonna check that I'm not going crazy. But for her to be open to all of that and in Western medicine and also say you really don't need a therapist, it's pretty cool.
00:11:58
Speaker
Yeah, no, it was really amazing. I actually lost contact with her and I haven't had a chance to thank her, but if she ever hears of this interview, I would give a tremendous thanks. It was very amazing. It was really amazing. She helped me understand that there was direction for me and that I just really needed to follow that direction. And I think it was so corroborating, like I said, on both sides of thought, on the Western scientific way of thinking about it, and then on the shamanic side. And ultimately, the shamanic side was where there was room for growth and a continued
00:12:27
Speaker
developing of these capacities or skills that were starting to open up for me that really kind of overpowered anything else I was interested in. It was so fresh and so new and so amazing to be connected and feel connected to something larger than the self and that just bubble of ego that felt so isolated and scary and also painful in terms of so much personal suffering to be connected with something greater that gave life a greater purpose than that.
00:12:56
Speaker
was so whelming in my early 20s that it just really took off on that journey to ultimately find the shamans and then apprentice with them. And during this process, I mean, right? You come from this family while your parents had the spiritual awakening. There wasn't a ton of belief on your part, but you didn't grow up with it. How much doubt did you have? Or was it the kind of thing that once this stuff started to unfold, you just were able to put doubt and questions of skepticism
Retreats at Blue Morpho Tours: Safety and Growth
00:13:23
Speaker
aside?
00:13:25
Speaker
Oh, I don't think that happened for a very long time. You know, I think I doubted really for a really long time. First, the validity of the communication, because I didn't want to be delusional. I thought that I'd be terrible. It's a delusional experience that's not relatable in any way. And so that was the first series of doubts. But like I said, the messages that I got were corroborated in such
00:13:49
Speaker
Accurate ways that I ultimately had to surrender the doubt to the fact that the path was really opening up for me And that the calling was real and then when I got into the traditional Amazon and into traditional Apprenticeship the doubt all came back in terms of just the ability to survive it and actually go through that process That was a
00:14:10
Speaker
a process that was very kind or very gentle in any means, and Don Julio-Gerena Pinedo and Don Roberto Torres Davila, who are the two master shamans that took me under their wing eventually and opened me into that world, were very clear with me that in the traditional Amazon, apprenticeship can result in death. And so I had the notion of death looming over me the whole time. And I was petrified, you know, it was terribly terrifying to think that
00:14:37
Speaker
The path had led me in a direction that could ultimately end in a kind of fatality and I really didn't want to be alive and actually make it through the other side. It was a very much like a true old mystic in the forest who was very attuned with the forest and I asked him
00:14:58
Speaker
Like, hey, can a foreigner learn this? Can a white person learn this? And he just said to me, if you can survive, we all bleed red. That was the way he described it. And it's just like, it's not very reassuring.
00:15:15
Speaker
Oh my God. Hold on. So I want to hear about the apprenticeship and what that process looked like, but can you, for the listeners out there, how would you describe shamanism? Can you explain this to people who, you know, I'm sure most people have heard the term, but they may not have a full understanding. Yeah, sure. Shamanism really is a term that's describing from around the world of tribal societies, lots of different kinds of people that had a very unique and special role in that tribal society.
00:15:43
Speaker
And the role that they had was to be a wisdom keeper, a keeper of the oral histories, mythologies, and traditions, a medicine keeper, a healer for the tribe, a doctor for the tribe, and also your psychologist slash psychiatrist. So they had a very wide range of skills depending on the tribe. And in the Amazon specifically, there are so many medicinal plants, the shamans really
00:16:08
Speaker
we're attuned with the forest and the way of utilizing plants as a main source of medicines and treatment for the people. But the main idea is that a shaman has a capacity in their consciousness to be able to walk between worlds and to be able to go into visionary states. And I don't really see it so much in the separation of worlds, but that there's a much greater world of consciousness that the shamans learn how to navigate through different kinds of altered states of consciousness or trance states.
00:16:37
Speaker
And when they do that, they are in contact with the beings of their mythology and those beings have the ability to talk with them and communicate messages that are very important for the tribe that give the tribe direction and also provide healing and medicine to the people that are in need of it. There's a reverence.
00:16:56
Speaker
and a sacredness to their role. And they hold this very wearing of many hats within the tribe to support these extraordinary needs that really any group of humans find themselves needing in tribal societies. Okay, so that's, thank you for that, by the way, that's very clear and articulate explanation. And so my mind is now going, okay, so that sounds lovely and amazing. So why would the apprenticeship potentially lead to death? What was that process like that was so difficult?
00:17:25
Speaker
Well, to support somebody and being able to handle those states of consciousness, typically the apprentices are put through very rigorous tests. And so you have to be able to handle all of the different kinds of forces that you can find in those altered states. And a lot of those forces are considered malevolent or malignant.
00:17:45
Speaker
And to be able to go through the tests themselves, they put you through lung diet does and different kinds of starvation. And then they also utilize in the Amazon, lots of kinds of medicinal plants, including plants that are known as being poisonous and even poisonous to the point of causing
Blending Spirituality with Entrepreneurship
00:18:00
Speaker
death. And they make you consume them.
00:18:02
Speaker
And so you have to like you have to consume the plants as part of your training to be able to learn from the plants themselves how to be able to work with the energies and the plant spirits and they call basically the total energetic force of that plant its plant spirit and ultimately learn from that plant and so through the combination
00:18:22
Speaker
of the kinds of tests that they put you through and the kinds of forces that you come up against in the visionary experiences and the copious amounts of plants that they have you take including something extremely poisonous, you know, it can ultimately result in death. I mean, I would be in situations in my early apprenticeship where Alberto and Julio would look at me and say, if we didn't chant to this plant, it would kill you. Now drink it.
00:18:45
Speaker
you know, that that was like a literal quote. It's like knee-knocking fear, right? So I'm looking at them going, chant, chant, you know, feel the chant.
00:18:53
Speaker
I don't know that chant and I don't even know if that chant is real, but just chant that thing if I had to drink that thing to keep doing this. That's awesome. I can't even imagine. I feel like I'm getting a flight out of here in the morning. Plant medicine, it's certainly something. I'm a yogi. I do a bunch of yoga. I hear about Ayurvedic and people are doing plant medicine therapies. Why is this on the rise? Tell us a little bit about plant medicine and people's experience with it. Sure.
00:19:22
Speaker
basic understanding that there are certain plants in the world that are medicinal plants, which I think is, you know, really common and understood. And then there are these plants that are said to have master teachers or master teacher spirits. And those plants have a way of awakening consciousness and helping people learn. And when people ingest the plants and have experiences often visionary or hallucinatory in the visions themselves,
00:19:48
Speaker
They have incredibly healing and incredibly awakening experiences. And there are a number of different plants out there in the world that are like that. And in the Amazon, the main ones that are used, that's now, you know, more popular and known about as a combination of plants that make up the tea of ayahuasca. Yeah. There's also San Pedro, Wachuma. There's also Peyote. There are the different kinds of psilocybin mushrooms and Amanita, Muscaria mushrooms.
00:20:13
Speaker
There's also really quite a number of plants that are not part of popular culture and that are, they're not really closely guarded secrets, but they're just not popular. So people don't really know of them. Like there's a group of family of plants in the Amazon called Senango that are also visionary and healing. There's Toei, which is similar to Datura, Brugmancia, which is incredibly dangerous and not something to be played with and toyed with at all. It's an unbelievably dangerous plant.
00:20:39
Speaker
but they have these teachers that come to the people that participate in the ceremonies really repetitively over and over and over again, so much so that they've become part of the collective mythology of the tribes. They're known about by people who don't drink the medicines, the people who have visions, learn of these plant teachers and receive from them. And I think the reason why the plant use is on the rise is simply because there's so much need that the plants help.
00:21:07
Speaker
And so they really do help people reset psychologically and confront their fears and get over their fears. And in professional practitioners hands who are holding really professional ceremonies, you know, in very safe guided ways, there's endless, endless evidence and proof of the validity of these kinds of experiences helping people. And so much so now that there's, you know, on the rise in Western medical studies,
00:21:33
Speaker
lots of studies that are happening about these compounds and substances and what they can do for people's minds and ultimately helping them with different kinds of mental difficulties. And so that's what's going on in your business, Blue Morpho Tours, like people come and they can work with plant medicine and go through these ceremonies. Can you walk us through a little bit about if I were to come down there next week, what would this experience be like for me?
00:21:58
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. You know, I opened Blue
Sustainable Agriculture and Amazon Preservation
00:22:00
Speaker
Morpho Tours in 2002 as a really first as a place where we did jungle trekking and I was doing my apprenticeship and the people that were coming out and trekking with us into the forest where I was doing the apprenticeship, I was very off grid. I was beyond the concept of off grid. I was the last inhabitant on a river tributary of the Amazon. I was 24 hours away from the nearest city with hospitals.
00:22:22
Speaker
and five-hour canoe paddle away from the nearest town that had a light bulb and radio. Dude, that sounds just brutal. I was deep. I was in a place where you literally lived off the land. There was a small community of eight families that lived out there, and we were literally 45 minutes deeper into the jungle by canoe than a native tribe. So that's where blue morpho started, and pretty soon our guests were more interested in the sacred plant experiences than the trekking themselves.
00:22:50
Speaker
And so we had to make a decision as a center whether we would focus solely on the sacred plants or.
00:22:55
Speaker
continuing our jungle adventure trekking. And we decided on the sacred plants because of the really incredible healing experiences that people were having with us. And so, you know, ultimately we, we fully organized the center over 2003, 2004. And since then we've been hosting anywhere from 15 to 25 retreats yearly for people, groups of anywhere from 15 to 35 to come down and experience ayahuasca ceremonies or plant diet does with us.
00:23:21
Speaker
and really be immersed in the traditional Amazonian shamanic practices. And really we've organized over the years based off of an idea of safety and professionalism for our guests. We've had guests from over now, a hundred countries and literally numbers in the thousands. And I've personally been able to work with thousands of people, which has been a tremendous gift and joy in my life.
00:23:45
Speaker
If you are coming down, you go to our website, bloomorfordtours.com and you can read all about what's, what we offer on a retreat. People come down for a week at a time. And during that time we have five ayahuasca ceremonies. They happen at night. So you have experiences with us as a collective group in our ceremonial house. You have the ayahuasca ceremony. And then during the day we have lectures and activities to help integrate the experience and make sense of all of it.
00:24:12
Speaker
and to continue the work with the intentions that we have of promoting the overall wellbeing and transformation, spiritual healing that people are receiving. In terms of the business itself, not everybody can come and drink Ayahuasca. There's lots of medications that are contraindicated to it, as well as different kinds of health conditions that just make it so that you're not a candidate to be able to participate in the ceremonies. So if you go to our website and you find a retreat that you like, we go through an online booking process that also has medical screening,
00:24:41
Speaker
to make sure that you are a safe candidate and if it's a borderline situation we ask that you have western medical practitioners sign off on coming and you know doctors letters and things like that and if you're on certain medications that are contraindicated if your doctors are willing and think it's appropriate to come off those medications for a period of time.
00:25:00
Speaker
to be able to have these experiences, then there's typically a weaning process that can go from anywhere from a month to three months for people to be prepared to be able to come on the experience.
Continuous Journey of Consciousness Awakening
00:25:10
Speaker
And people come literally from all walks of life. It's not just specifically healing. There are seekers that are coming to learn more. And there's a huge aspect of the practice, which is just opening up to your spiritual connection, opening up more to the universe and what's out there and having these extended experiences of consciousness that help you
00:25:28
Speaker
Have even greater contact with your guides and really feel that sort of unconditional love of the universe and support and connection with divinity and the greater beyond. So once you go through that process, you come to Akitos, Peru. You fly down here. Akitos is a really interesting city. It's the largest city in the world that is not accessible by road.
00:25:48
Speaker
So you have to fly in or come by boat. It's about 400,000 to 500,000 people where we have our central offices. And then we have our lodge an hour outside of the city. The group forms, it comes together, and then we go out to the lodge together as a group. And there, one of the master shamans, Alberto Torres Dávila still works with us. Julio passed away many years. He started training me at the age of 85. So, you know, he passed away in his 90s.
00:26:11
Speaker
And Alberto's now in his 60s and I'm not in my 40s, which is hard to imagine. But we've been hosting groups and then people come and have the experience. And really the goal is to support a person to have the absolute maximum benefit out of the experiences and utilize the time we have together to go as deep as we can in the safest way into the plant medicines.
00:26:33
Speaker
and receive the healing that the plants can offer. Yeah. So on that, I mean, right, the power of now and Eckhart Tolle, and he had a moment of pure awakening, and you read these people's experiences. Somebody is interested in this and suffers from, I don't know, depression, anxiety, some kind of
00:26:53
Speaker
way in which their life isn't feeling good to them and they're looking for a way to have an awakening, have this moment of consciousness. I think ultimately what people are looking for is a freedom, a feeling of feeling better in their life, feeling connected to themselves, walking through their days. The reason this podcast is the art of authenticity, feeling grounded in yourself and in your authentic truth. I don't know.
00:27:18
Speaker
The idea that all of us are at a point where we're ready for a quote, awakening and whether that really is how it works versus we're sort of always awakening and there's an endless opening to consciousness that's happening for us, I think over many lifetimes. How do you think about that having done so many of these ceremonies, you know, consciousness awakening, what does that mean to you? I think the awakening of consciousness is truly evolutionary and it's happening.
00:27:43
Speaker
And there are so many people that are interested in these kinds of experiences, but I don't think the miraculous awakening experience is really for everybody. I'm not sure everybody truly is ready for that, especially with the sacred plants. I think the sacred plants are whelming and can be really intense. And they can also have a darker side or a negative side in the wrong hands. And they're also known to be used also for nefarious purposes.
00:28:10
Speaker
So I think in terms of the sacred plants, you have to really be prepared. You have to go and do your own meditations and your own inner journey to know that it's right for you. Feel like that your own inner guidance is telling you that it's right for you to have the experience and then research the people that seem professional and have a lot of track record showing to the world that they've been doing this for a long time and really know what they're doing. The sacred plants,
00:28:36
Speaker
They're wily and the way that you have your experience.
00:28:41
Speaker
is not part of a statistical average. Your experience is truly personal. And so if you don't have a positive experience, you're left with that. And that's not something that is, I think we should promote. I think we need to promote the ways to be able to have really all of the best chances and possibilities to make sure that your experience is going to be really phenomenal. And if you go through that and it really is right for you and you've gone through that process to make that decision and you're really grounded in that decision,
00:29:07
Speaker
even if
Maintaining Authenticity in Spiritual Practices
00:29:08
Speaker
you're scared and still have doubt, but you know that it's the moment for you to have that awakening, then the sacred plants are a tremendous accelerant to that. I think we're here of consciousness in different ways. And I don't think that we should be comparing and judging individual consciousness to individual consciousness. To me, it's like a big ocean. It's a field. And we're all of that consciousness. And we all have different levels of intelligence. We all have different purposes. And I think when we put that all together, we see the great scope of consciousness.
00:29:36
Speaker
you know, an individual competition in any kind of way. And so I always steer away from kind of cross comparing that idea. It's really an individual who's trying to awaken for themselves no matter where they are in their life. And that individual has a possibility with the sacred plants to have a tremendous help in being able to tap in and have an authentic experience that would otherwise be just left in a realm of belief. And, you know, for people who are visionary and are psychic and have had awakening,
00:30:04
Speaker
It's so natural for them and it's easy to forget that really the vast majority don't have those experiences and they're in a state of doubt and confusion about how to even approach authenticity and they are seeking and they're looking for tools.
00:30:17
Speaker
That's where I see the sacred plants have a tremendous capacity to be able to accelerate that for people and make it real. Yeah, and this idea that there's no right or wrong approach to it and that I love to think of it as you said it to some degree, but that what we can handle in our life at that particular moment is our version of our own consciousness. There's no singular awakening. I do sometimes worry. There's a few out there just waiting for that moment of pure enlightenment.
00:30:47
Speaker
right? Whereas, you know, you were saying that for a lot of us, maybe we're not ready for that. That's not the place we are in our life or, right? Constitutionally, if that were to actually happen, it might cause us to, you know, it might be too much for us, but create a sense of overwhelm in our life.
00:31:05
Speaker
So how do you speak to somebody who's looking for that awakening, that moment of euphoric, I'm never going to have a problem again in my life. Everything is going to be easy once I get to this place of enlightenment. How would you reply to that? Money doesn't buy happiness nor spiritual enlightenment.
00:31:22
Speaker
It's a simple concept. There is no true one moment that then sets off all the other moments. And then there's books like, you know, Chop wood carry water and what happens after enlightenment. And there's this concept of attainment in life. We have this idea that if we obtain that one thing, then it's like this if-then statement in logic. And I just don't think life ultimately plays out that way. You know, I think that we have great awakenings throughout our life. And if we really want those experiences and those experiences are meaningful to us,
00:31:52
Speaker
then we seek those experiences and we really do things to try to have them. And I actually think they're more common than not. I just don't think people know how to often relate to it and share those kinds of understandings. But I think it comes for people in dreams. I think it comes for them when they awaken to love of really any kind. I think it happens for parents when they have children, when they want to have children.
00:32:14
Speaker
I think it's literally part and parcel of the experience of life itself and this idea of a magic pill or an idea of a magic ceremony that then truly makes it all better, I think is a little short-sighted to really the true evolution of an entire lifetime. If we're going to live however long that is, we don't know when our own end will come in terms of this life.
00:32:36
Speaker
But if we're going to live an entire lifetime, we may have a hundred awakening moments, 200. Why is it one? You know, so I don't think it's like that. I don't think it's this idea of obtainment or the great trophy or I have become, I think those are just more traps of ego.
00:32:51
Speaker
And from my experiences connecting to lots of different philosophies from around the world, because in working with sacred plants, it wasn't just our own mythologies and lineage that we got introduced to. By having people come from literally all over, we've been presented with all different cultural beliefs and understandings, Eastern philosophical beliefs, the idea of enlightenment, concepts that are found in Buddhism.
00:33:14
Speaker
and stuff and it's just really layer upon layer upon layer of ever shedding of the ego and growing and learning more and.
00:33:23
Speaker
ultimately expanding more into that authenticity and being able to hold it. And so I don't see it as a single individual moment that makes it all better, but rather what you do and how you implement the changes that you make through those moments. And so I think the implementation is really how we carry ourselves and that's really about our authenticity and much more important to the idea of really opening up to what we really believe in and what's really meaningful for
Philosophical Blending and Technology's Role
00:33:48
Speaker
us.
00:33:48
Speaker
and standing for that in our lives and presenting that in an authentic way and our actions and our words. Yeah, beautiful. I think sometimes the pressure to get there and arrive there and have that moment distracts us from the ones that we're having on a regular basis or sets up a life for disappointment because there's no top of the mountain moment.
00:34:08
Speaker
So we've been talking a lot about the philosophical, spiritual, I definitely want to keep going with that, but I want to also talk about what's going on in your business in general. While this is a big piece of it, you guys are also working on other business models, sustainability. Can you talk a little bit about what else is going on with you guys?
00:34:27
Speaker
Yeah absolutely love to you know more for started as a way to reach people and to help people and what was most amazing for me out of that is that we met so many incredible interesting entrepreneurial creative people that came to us and over the years we formed a business group in business community.
00:34:45
Speaker
that really wanted to use the sacred plant experience not only just for personal healing and growth but then to also try to approach larger problems that the world is facing and so we have organized around concepts of sustainability and renewable food production and you being able to utilize the land for protein production
00:35:07
Speaker
in sustainable ways and renewable ways. And we're focusing our work now around the city of Iquitos and doing scientific exploration in how to be able to take our spiritual awakening and ideas and then actually implement that for the greater masses and for the greater good. And so we are right now in scientific research about innovative methods of sustainable agriculture and sustainable protein production for the tropical and subtropical regions of the world.
00:35:36
Speaker
and starting our first projects here outside of Akitos. So what's the first project looking like? What is it that you're... Can you give us a little more information on the... Yeah, I mean, the main interesting thing about agriculture in the tropical forest is that
00:35:52
Speaker
There's very little topsoil and erosion is a really big problem. And so we're looking at how we can utilize the land to be able to create the inputs that are organic and created by the forest themselves to be able to sustain farming and sustain the agriculture.
00:36:09
Speaker
and instead of using single crop concepts utilizing a variety of different kind of crops that add to the soil and help sustain the soil and ultimately create healthier soil so that a single agricultural pot can really become a renewable source of food for the local communities.
00:36:27
Speaker
I love it. I love it. And I love the fact too that you're blending these models, right? I came from a healthcare tech background and I've been interested in writing and philosophy and authenticity and podcasting and all of this. And I don't know, sometimes the more I studied Western philosophy, Eastern and...
00:36:43
Speaker
I don't think that all of these things are as divided as people want to think they are, right? So here you are doing plant medicine and you're working as an entrepreneur as well. I sometimes wish that this quote on alternative world wasn't placed into a separate bucket from what we consider mainstream. I don't think it is. I think people did that. Philosophy is a great ocean of thought and we've used categories to separate out the different concepts.
00:37:11
Speaker
Ultimately, we've globalized and there isn't just one way of treating anything anymore. There's options that are out there and it's starting to blend and I think it's at some point in history, not now. You know there will be a much greater blending of those kinds of ideas, but I agree with you that in a way it's very sad that there's been an isolation of these kinds of concepts that if you're in one thing, that's the only thing you can be interested in. You know that never happened in my life.
00:37:40
Speaker
really open to creativity and art and entrepreneurship and sharing ideas and opening up to more and even tech.
Final Reflections on Holistic Living
00:37:49
Speaker
We've been involved in tech and then the emergence of the blockchain and smart contracts and new ways for people to make agreements and the changing of the concepts of different forms of economic interaction across cultures is all happening right now in our society. And so I don't see it as just, you know,
00:38:07
Speaker
One paint can is spirituality, and over there is business, and over here is food. On the contrary, if you're living in a city, you need food, you need philosophy and spirituality, and you also need to continue your own pursuits that are also economic in their origin. And so I really do see that we are holistic. We are the holistic expression. Not that there is a holistic expression beyond us. We as humanity are that holistic expression.
00:38:35
Speaker
And we've just been isolated in these bubbles of thought and specialization, but that that is actually changing. I think that technology is helping that and the internet is helping it in the sense of sharing cultural ideas so quickly across the globe.
00:38:50
Speaker
And it's what's allowed us to even exist as a center without the internet. We never would have been able to get a word out there to the people that there are these sacred plant ceremonies available and there's a place to do them in their indigenous setting and that you can actually find really positive benefit from them. And I thought if these great teachers are guiding us
00:39:10
Speaker
Why would they only guide us in spirituality? That made no sense to me. If we really are being guided by a greater force and there really is a benevolent force to that and it really does want to help humanity and humanity is evolving and growing, then it would have to ultimately step outside of just the bubble of spirituality and ultimately impact other sectors of the global population.
00:39:33
Speaker
And that that could ultimately look like anything. It could be environmental, it could be in food production, it could be in communication technologies, it could be in medicine, but that we would ultimately, or energy production, it would be in literally all different forms. And that I think ultimately that benevolent force would help guide people to realizing that it's not so separate.
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. And it's like, if you're doing work that's authentic or based in arts or healing that there can't be financial benefits. And if you talk about the finances, you're somehow taking away from the core mission. And I just don't believe in that. I think these things can all come together. You can do great works and there's a space for the financial end of it as well. And the corporatization of something doesn't always mean it's bad.
00:40:19
Speaker
So that takes me to the question that I ask everybody on the show, authenticity and what it means to live an authentic life. What does that question mean for you? I think to live an authentic life is to know your true nature and to accept your nature. Understand that we're part of a collective as well as being an individual and that you can't separate as an individual from the collective and that your nature is purposeful both to you and to the greater collective.
00:40:49
Speaker
And that in your authenticity, you're made up of lots of different expressions of what is part of thought and part of philosophy and part of your spiritual exploration. And that the heart is really the center of that. And that the heart is a place of infinite love and infinite connection and infinite guidance throughout our lives. And that the nature of authenticity comes from accepting your own nature and then expressing that in literally everything that you do.
00:41:19
Speaker
All right, Hamilton, I've done several hundred of these. I gotta be honest, I think that might...
00:41:25
Speaker
most intriguing answers. I'm going to have to play that one back. That's beautiful. So to stay in a place of authenticity and knowing your nature and living from this heart center, clearly you live in this world in plant medicine and so many things. Is there anything in particular though on a day-to-day basis you do to keep yourself from moving back into the ego mind and help you make heart-centered decisions on a regular basis?
00:41:53
Speaker
I think everything is daily practice, literally everything. I don't see a separation in one specific practice from another. And a long time ago from the immersion that I had in the sacred plants, I realized that I would have to live my life basically in a continuous state of practice. And so I learned to think of everything that I was doing as an expression of that practice. And so, you know, everything from
00:42:19
Speaker
uh, what I do in the morning to showering and, and balancing and grounding in when I'm grooming and then the nature of the clothing that I'm wearing and what I'm communicating with that to the nature of how I communicate with others and speak with them. And then, uh, you know, breath-based practices and centering practices, grounding practices that I can use, you know, literally any time in the day to be able to stay centered and grounded. And if the mind gets out of,
00:42:47
Speaker
out of whack, which it does often. It's not so easy, I think, to be alive and to live of the mind. I think the mind is a wily tool, and it's a difficult tool for all of us. I don't think that there's anyone who is truly the master of that. I think it's an ever
00:43:06
Speaker
Expanding expression of mine that we share and so I use grounding activities and I think the one that is most potent and powerful is to reset the senses into being in a state of receptivity. So I think it's really easy to dissociate into the just the thoughts and that everything is externalized and it's easy to forget that it's.
00:43:27
Speaker
the sounds that are coming into the ears and the smells that are coming into the nose and that I'm assimilating that within me and within the nature of my own consciousness and that I'm not having to act out the nature of my thoughts. And so that that expression of a meditation or an activity to ground and balance and to really flip the senses back into being fully receptive and just having some time in the day to be in that state of absolute receptivity and relaxation is the core form of grounding that I would do on a daily basis.
00:43:56
Speaker
Oh, beautiful. Honestly, I feel like we need a part two. This was amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain all these things. I know I learned a lot. I'm sure everybody listened. If people are looking to find out more information about you or your business, where might they find you, including our website? Yeah, sure. Please come find us at bloomorphotours.com and also Source Independent Entertainment. We're also a production studio.
00:44:21
Speaker
And we have created lots of different kinds of meditative tools and ceremonial tools. And we have a YouTube channel called Source Independent Entertainment, where we have hundreds of pieces of production that you can enjoy. And find us at bloomorphoteurs.com and sourceindependententertainment.com. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thanks, Hamilton, for coming on the show. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.