Psyche and Psychedelics — Medicine, Part 1

I’ve been talking about “medicine” for decades. I’ve offered workshops on Medicine Wheel teachings, traveled to the Amazon to explore medicine plants, and taught about medicine names, songs, and encounters with medicine animals. Now, with the upsurge of interest in “medicine plants,” I want to share some thoughts about what the word “Medicine” means.

 

The word “health” comes from an old English word “hale” – meaning to be whole — and I’ve come to define medicine as anything that returns or moves us toward wholeness. In this sense, medicine is certainly what we usually think of it as – surgical, procedures, pharmaceutical compounds, etc. But there’s so much more. When encounters, experiences, and lessons – whether from plants, teachers, objects, songs, or animals help us become whole, those encounters and experiences possess medicine.

What’s involved in becoming whole? The diagram below is useful in thinking about wholeness.

In this picture, the entire circle represents wholeness, and the horizontal line toward the top separates what is conscious (above) from what is not (below). This line separates the known from the unknown. What we’re familiar with is vastly smaller than what’s unexplored  or mysterious. (Plus, we keep most of our consciousness within that small box at the top called “ego.”) The vast majority of who we are or can be — the “capital S Self” – lies below the horizontal line. Consequently, anything that gives access to that larger field below the line could be “medicine,” if it brings us closer to the whole.

This larger field includes most of what we usually refer to as medicine. Our conscious mind can do a number of things. It can go shopping, decide what’s for dinner tomorrow, or design rocket ships that will land someone on the moon. But the power of conscious choice to stop an infection, make bones heal, cure cancer, or even rid yourself of a headache is pretty limited. But these areas – the processes of the physical body – can be affected by aspirin, antibiotics, blood transfusions, or chemotherapy… medicine.

Of course, the whole self stretches far beyond just the physical body. The Psyche-as-a-whole includes feelings, dreams, instinct, archetypal knowledge, DNA, the collective unconscious, ecstatic, mystical, or shamanic states, and more. And therefore, medicine – whatever gives access to or affects this larger field – is also much more. Medicine can include breathing techniques (breathwork), vision quests, dreamwork, shamanic journeying, art and imagery, ritual and ceremony, somatic processes, plant medicines, and innumerable other methods.

But because any of these could be medicine, doesn’t mean they always are. Surgery — the act of cutting through skin, muscles, etc. – to remove a tumor or repair a valve in your heart is medicine because it restores or moves us closer to wholeness. Getting hit by falling glass or being stabbed — also cutting — does not. Likewise, the use of ritual and ceremony – or any of the possible ways of opening a window or lowering a bucket into the psyche — may, or may not, be good medicine.

In my next post, I want to share some of my thoughts about the ways plant medicine ceremonies are being used, asking, “What makes for good medicine?” For example, one could come to a well, lower a bucket, and bring water to the surface. If you’re parched, thirsty, and in need, this water could save your life – it would certainly be medicine. But you could also haul that water to the surface just to wash your car, or worse, to waterboard someone… this, without doubt, is not medicine.

~ August 26, 2019