In this episode of Ayahuasca Podcast, host Sam Believ has a conversation with Spring Washam. Spring Washam is a renowned healer, Buddhist teacher, and visionary leader from California. She has been practicing Buddhism since 1999 and is an experienced ayahuasca facilitator. Spring is also the founder of Lotus One, and she combines Eastern spirituality with Amazonian traditions in her work.
We touch upon topics of:
– Spring’s journey into Buddhism and ayahuasca facilitation (00:04 – 07:28)
– The intersection of ayahuasca and mindfulness practices (07:44 – 12:12)
– How ayahuasca contributes to healing and spiritual growth (20:10 – 25:25)
– The challenges of building an ayahuasca church (42:41 – 45:14)
– The role of psychedelics in healing societal issues like racism (31:50 – 34:16)
If you would like to attend one of our Ayahuasca retreats, go to http://www.lawayra.com
Find more about Spring Washam at springwasham.com
Transcript
Sam Believ (00:04)
Hi guys and welcome to ayahuascapodcast .com. As always with you the host, Sam Belyev. Today I’m going to have a conversation with Spring Washam. Spring is a healer, she’s a teacher, she’s a visionary leader. She’s from California, she’s a Buddhist teacher. She’s studied Buddhism since 1999. She’s also an ayahuasca facilitator and author and the founder of Lotus One.
Sam Believ (00:31)
journeys. ⁓ Spring, welcome to the ⁓
Spring@springwasham.com (00:34)
Thank you.
Sam Believ (00:36)
bring you, even reading your description and your bio, it’s very clear that you have a very unique perspective and unique take on both world of Eastern spirituality and Amazonian tradition. ⁓ Tell us your story, how did you end up being that person and combining those two modalities, what in your life brought you to this ⁓
Spring@springwasham.com (01:02)
Yeah, well, first of all, I would say suffering and this exploration of pain and suffering is really what triggered everything. as a, know, growing up, I grew up in a really difficult situations and just all the drama of living in an urban community and, you know, father’s gone and all this trauma in my family. as a young growing
Spring@springwasham.com (01:31)
young person and as a teenager, I was really interested in psychology, actually. Like, why is there so much suffering here? Why is everyone fighting? And so that kind of got me on a path of self -reflection because I kept being like, I think this all has to do with our minds. You know, there’s something going on with our thinking. I always made that connection as even as a small child, like, what is wrong with their mind right now? They’re acting from this place. So
Spring@springwasham.com (02:00)
naturally that got me on the path of meditation at a very young age just to kind of start to understand my mind. And first I was Hindu for a while I was practicing and learning how to meditate. There wasn’t at this time this was like maybe 30.
Spring@springwasham.com (02:19)
years ago, right? There wasn’t a lot of information like there is now. Now we’re really lucky. We’re like in the golden era. There’s apps, there’s classes, everything’s there, free, online, you know? You almost have to try not to pay attention, you know, make some kind of effort. But what happened was I heard about a retreat
Spring@springwasham.com (02:42)
It was in the desert in Southern California and it was led by a Buddhist teacher who’s very well known named Jack Kornfield and psychologist and just really instrumental in bringing a lot of Buddhist philosophy to the West. He founded two big meditation centers, one I’m still connected with called Spirit Rock Meditation Center in West Marin. That’s like right outside San Francisco.
Spring@springwasham.com (03:10)
And I went on, I didn’t even know who was leading the retreat, but I went on my first retreat and that really got me deeply connected to Buddhist philosophy.
Spring@springwasham.com (03:20)
like how suffering is created. And that for many years, I guess I was more of like a yogi on that path. I spent years practicing, meditating, traveling around the world, studying with Buddhist teachers in all different traditions, Tibetan tradition and Theravada tradition and Zen tradition, and really trying to understand the nature of suffering and freedom and liberation. And I did that for many years.
Spring@springwasham.com (03:49)
and I was teaching classes and programs, but yet there was always still this layer that I felt like I could not untangle, right? It was like a baseline unhappiness. Like everything was great on the outer side, but there was this feeling that, of disconnection somewhere in the roots of my being that was like, it was painful and I was still sad. And yet I was supposed to be this teacher for everyone else and I was out there and I’m sure people can
Spring@springwasham.com (04:20)
with that, they’re, you know, we’re all just like, I guess, wounded healers or something until we’re all liberated. And it reached a kind of crescendo peak moment. And on a retreat, I kind of had like a disassociation when I got lost in a whole bunch of unresolved trauma.
Spring@springwasham.com (04:41)
And nobody in that time knew how to deal with trauma in the Buddhist Eastern world. They were like, just go back and meditate, just continue. And we’re so much more trauma informed now. mean, every day we’re learning huge, huge amounts on how to work with trauma, how to be with it, how to support others, as you probably know from your work. But during this kind of dark night of the soul and
Spring@springwasham.com (05:07)
Everybody was counting on me. I heard about ayahuasca from a psychologist and they said, hey, this could really help you. And I was so desperate at that time. I was really open. You know how you get when you’re just at the bottom. You’re like, what drink this vine from the jungle? ⁓ okay. And I got invited to a small ceremony.
Spring@springwasham.com (05:28)
This was over 15 years ago. It still very new for a lot of folks in the north even. And I did a ceremony and I had just such the classic everything that you could want out of an ayahuasca journey I had in an eight hour period. I mean, it was like love and pain and suffering and insight. And what I noticed for me is that there was a lot of Buddhist iconography and messages and I was using my
Spring@springwasham.com (05:59)
to be with the intensity of the experience in the moment. And then from there on, I was just in a deep connection with ayahuasca.
Spring@springwasham.com (06:10)
And I immediately got during that ceremony, should go to Peru. So I started going to Peru and this started a whole journey of me spending months in the Amazon and living with shipibo healers. And I eventually even spent a year studying, dieting. But all the time I was always utilizing my Buddhist practices of mindfulness, awareness, love and compassion. And I saw that I was sort of
Spring@springwasham.com (06:40)
creating.
Spring@springwasham.com (06:41)
insight and awakening, I was moving faster, you know, and that I think that’s what was so helpful. I was so grounded during those early days where everyone was screaming and freaking out and there wasn’t a lot of containment all the time. And I started to see how I was using it as kind of like ultimate meditation. And I was opening these places in my mind where I was starting to understand what great masters were talking about when they would talk about interconnection
Spring@springwasham.com (07:11)
and presence and karma and, you know, so everything began to make sense on this quantum level. And then that’s how my journey really started. So, you know, a few years after that, I started going, I want to have Buddhist based.
Spring@springwasham.com (07:28)
ayahuasca retreats where we drink a lot of medicine, we study a lot too to try to support what we were understanding the insight and to understand who we are faster.
Sam Believ (07:44)
Thank you, Spring. Thank you for sharing your story. It’s a very interesting one. ⁓ Mine was a little bit opposite. I started with Ayahuasca straight away and then I started discovering meditation and everything else. I ⁓ know I ⁓ pick up from different traditions, different things that kind of work for me. Interestingly enough, my chief facilitator at the retreat right now ⁓ is spent some few months in a Zen Buddhist monastery and he’s very…
Sam Believ (08:12)
grounded in tradition. So ⁓ I personally believe exactly the same thing you’re saying that ⁓ there seems to be this amazing match between ayahuasca and ⁓ mindfulness traditions. ⁓ It’s like the analogy I like to use both with mindfulness and integration, which honestly is a very similar thing if you look at it, is that ayahuasca, ⁓ if you like mining, ⁓
Sam Believ (08:42)
Ayahuasca is like a dynamite and meditation or integration is like a pickaxe and a shovel. So ⁓ if you just keep exploding over and over again, it’s messy. If you just keep with the shovel, it’s very slow. So but if you go like explode and then shovel, explode and shovel, you just have this ⁓ optimum ⁓ rate. So ⁓ as you mentioned, Buddhism and suffering. ⁓
Sam Believ (09:11)
I was come, do you think so? The ⁓ one of the things about Buddhism, Buddhism is it set out to, know, and the world suffering. So do you think I was can help with that somehow? Can it talk to us about
Spring@springwasham.com (09:25)
Yeah, well, I think it’s so interesting. I love it. More and more people who maybe started with ayahuasca and then after years of practicing, they realized exactly they need to integrate, right? Like the explosions over and over, you can, you know, spin out and that and so that the meditation is just, it’s how we integrate this into our being. And, and I had the same thought when I was teaching for years in these Buddhist communities and teaching
Spring@springwasham.com (09:55)
mindfulness. was teaching insight meditation mindfulness and I would see people that weren’t really progressing. Right. They would come in. I’m a teacher. They would share with me what their meditation was like. And it was like they weren’t growing anymore in that practice. It was like they hit a plateau. They hit a wall. And then and the people who are just doing medicine, medicine, medicine, they lack to kind of ground a clear path and ethics.
Spring@springwasham.com (10:24)
which without groundedness, without awareness and without ethical conduct, you’re like loose, you’re like that you’re raw dynamite. You could explode even though you have some wisdom, you’re learning, but you don’t have a way to process it. You don’t have a path, right? In the Shipibo lineage, there was no path of liberation at the end. There was a math, there was a road, but it wasn’t clear where it was going. okay, you’re going to be healed.
Spring@springwasham.com (10:54)
but healed how? What is ultimate healing look like? How many ceremonies do we do here before, you know, we are quote unquote done on some level. So.
Spring@springwasham.com (11:06)
I think ayahuasca can help us because the ayahuasca, I always tell people when they ask me this question, can ayahuasca enlighten you? I always say no. It can show you the obstacles. It’s like you’re walking on a path and there’s these giant rocks and boulders in the way, right? And you need to remove them, but you don’t know how to do it. Ayahuasca could come and say, okay, I can remove this one. I can remove this one. But now you have to stand up
Spring@springwasham.com (11:36)
You have to walk the path yourself. You have to get up and you have to do the practices and you have to be aware.
Spring@springwasham.com (11:42)
So I think on some level ayahuasca people have drank it for many years will realize it doesn’t enlighten you, but it is a vehicle that will help tremendously. And then at the end of the day, you’re a sovereign being and you must choose which path and you must choose how to spend your life. Do you want to be aware or not? Ayahuasca can’t just make you aware. It’s like there’s a choice factor that I think many of us are understanding. Hence we are moving.
Spring@springwasham.com (12:12)
more into what are the liberation practices. Okay, let’s go to the ancient schools now.
Spring@springwasham.com (12:18)
Let’s look at how we can combine these because ayahuasca removes the blocks, but then there’s a lot more you have to do. It’s like a 50 % relationship. You know how everybody wants, it’s like 50 -50, ayahuasca as your doctor will give you 50%. Now you have to do the other 50 and you need to put that in. Otherwise, even with ayahuasca, I’ve seen people plateau, get stuck and stop drinking it if they can’t do their 50%.
Sam Believ (12:48)
It’s like you have a friend and you go out and he always makes you pay for everything and then eventually he’s like ⁓ two, three dates later you’re like, come on, like it’s time, it’s time. So you stop going out with them. So I ask is also like this, you I’ve been giving you homework and why you keep coming back? Where’s the progress, you know, and it gives you a bad trip. It’s like, here you
Spring@springwasham.com (12:52)
Exactly.
Spring@springwasham.com (13:12)
Well, yeah, because it’s showing you where you’re resisting. And exactly, it’s like any great teacher. They love their students who are doing what they’re asking them to do. Ayahuasca is not just a doctor, but a very,
Spring@springwasham.com (13:25)
profound teacher. And if you only want to take the certain parts out of it, if you just want the excitement or some kind of tripping experience, you will not always get that. So sometimes, yes, but other times it’s the work that you need to do in your life. It’s the forgiveness, it’s opening your heart. It’s…
Spring@springwasham.com (13:48)
knowing how to sustain awareness, right? How to work with your mind skillfully, how to see what is true and what is not. You can’t just always depend. Exactly. It’s like a, it’s a relationship when you enter into ayahuasca. I always tell people, this is a living spirit. You’re going to enter in and I always look at ayahuasca as the most profound teacher, but one of my most profound teachers. I have other profound teachers and they work together.
Spring@springwasham.com (14:16)
Right? It’s a team. What do they say? It takes a village? Yeah, it does right now, especially in this dark time. We need all the tools, all the masters, the ones that are in human body and the spirits, you know, we need all of them as our community. And if you do the work, if you’re willing, they’ll show up for you.
Sam Believ (14:40)
Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned ⁓ integration or like lack of direction with the indigenous traditions. I was thinking about it and I think what happens there is, for example, here in the beautiful Colombian countryside, when people come over, they’re like, you know, I don’t, feel like I don’t even need to meditate anymore because just being here and looking at the nature already is like a form of meditation. So you get
Sam Believ (15:05)
20 little meditations throughout the day. So I think that what happens to the indigenous people is because they’re still in this natural environment, they just naturally meditate all the time because they’re like looking at the leaves and the greenery and the sounds of the river flowing. It’s literally, you know, when we meditate now we turn on like this apps with music and it’s like, that’s what we’re trying to imitate. ⁓ Maybe that’s why they don’t need to, but as opposed to like Westerners, you come here and you have this beautiful experience and then you’re
Sam Believ (15:35)
back to the concrete jungle with all the sort of scary noises and ugly looking ⁓ buildings and stress. Of course you’re like, you know, what the hell. ⁓
Spring@springwasham.com (15:47)
Yeah, that’s a that’s a really, I absolutely agree with you that being in nature is naturally very meditative, just turning off your phone and going in nature, you naturally become present. And I think that that’s a that’s a really, really important.
Spring@springwasham.com (16:04)
insight and I agree with you a lot of indigenous people they’re they’re practicing and they also don’t have the same kind of wounding that the westerners have. It’s a very different type of psychology. It’s a very disassociated state with a lot of westerners. You know they don’t recognize their impact. They don’t see interconnectedness right. They have to go somewhere in this environment to kind of remember it but it’s we’re very forgetful right. We forget the moment
Spring@springwasham.com (16:34)
leave, know, we remember some things, but so that’s why these practices mindfulness that word I love that word mindfulness, because one translation of it is remembering. It’s like we really have to remember who we are right now because it’s apocalyptic times that we’re in, you know, and everything that we depend on could start crumbling. And then what do you have left? You got to remember who you are to remember you’re connected.
Sam Believ (17:04)
Yeah, we live in uniquely difficult times. ⁓ But as you said, you know, we’re lucky because we also have uniquely amazing tools available. ⁓ Like 50 years ago, people didn’t have ayahuasca or at least ready access to it or even meditation. So that’s why a lot of people ended up drinking alcohol or taking drugs that are not really that productive. So we have unique challenges, but also unique tools. And I guess the guess is
Sam Believ (17:34)
The question is who wins, ⁓ the people that aim for ⁓ mindfulness and like restoration, love and peace, or the people who want to kind of, even though they don’t want it consciously, but people that are subconsciously destroying the world. ⁓ But talking about mindfulness, right? At Lawyra, for example, we ⁓ get people to do… ⁓
Spring@springwasham.com (17:51)
Yes.
Sam Believ (18:02)
We do yoga every day, every second day, which is nice. ⁓ It’s also a form of integration and mindfulness. And then we do ⁓ breathing exercises and guided meditation right before every ceremony to put people in that state where it’s easier for them to open up. In your opinion, also as a facilitator, what is the best use of, ⁓ let’s say, meditation and different mindfulness techniques ⁓ around… ⁓
Sam Believ (18:30)
ayahuasca ceremonies or during an ayahuasca ⁓
Spring@springwasham.com (18:34)
Yeah, well, I agree with you. On my retreats, I was doing for many years 14 days and we would do six ceremonies. So that was a lot. we would always for the hour before the ceremony, we would do practice. be a very short little Dharma talk, a half an hour sit. And then we’d have a short break before we would continue.
Spring@springwasham.com (18:58)
into the ceremony space, but we set it like a pre -ceremony meditation. And then, you know, for me, I would also give Dharma talks throughout the retreat and point people to what is mindfulness, what is embodiment. And also during a lot of our ceremonies and even in the middle, you know, it could be a little bit hectic, but I would ring a bell and remind people to connect to their breath and their body.
Spring@springwasham.com (19:25)
Like come back. You are in your body. Whatever is happening, know that you can be with this. So we would be training people on all of the tools of mindfulness, how to feel our feelings, how to be with difficult experiences, how to be with pain physically and emotionally. And we would just utilize all of these different…
Spring@springwasham.com (19:52)
practices and we would try to create a very mindful atmosphere. Embodiment, that’s what I would focus on a lot, was the first foundation of mindfulness, which is be in your body. It’s a big one.
Sam Believ (20:10)
Thank you for that. ⁓ As a, it’s a question I like to ask anyone who sort of works with ayahuasca as a facilitator, especially given your unique ⁓ holistic point of view, ⁓ what do you, how do you explain how ⁓ does ayahuasca healing happens? What is that? What is that process from your understanding?
Spring@springwasham.com (20:11)
Cough
Spring@springwasham.com (20:37)
Well, I think what it helps us do is really, you know, for me ayahuasca is like, you know, I always tell people it’s the root medicine. It’s a root vine and it works on root chakra, root problems.
Spring@springwasham.com (20:55)
⁓ for me, ayahuasca is deeply helpful for people who want to heal issues in their families, right? Their birth, their mother, their father, like we’re healing our family trees with ayahuasca. And these are the root chakra is the hardest one to get down because it’s so deep in us, right? Root problems, we can’t access it. So what’s beautiful about ayahuasca and all of these plant medicine is they give us access into
Spring@springwasham.com (21:25)
deep layers of our unconsciousness. What we can’t always see all the time, we live very on the surface, we often have to, we don’t have time to unpack these huge wounds.
Spring@springwasham.com (21:36)
that emanate in our body, you trauma. think one of the biggest things is, is Zioasca really helps us to release trauma so we can access these deeper levels of our unconsciousness. And, you know, not only energies that are stored in our body, but in our emotional body, you know, in our light body, or whatever subtle body, right, these things are so buried. So it gives us an opportunity to unpack everything that we’re not seeing in
Spring@springwasham.com (22:06)
daily life. And this is very valuable because when you start to work on those deep buried subconscious wounds, it frees you up in every other area of your life, right? You live with more happiness. So it is a doctor, you know, and for me, it works on all the chakras, but I really feel like the root system, identity, who we are, mother, father, great, great, great grandmother, where we were born,
Spring@springwasham.com (22:36)
where who you know
Spring@springwasham.com (22:39)
what is in our family that’s passed down to us, things that we just don’t see. These medicines, particularly ayahuasca, helps us to not only see it, but to work with it consciously, right? We bring it up into the conscious mind and then there we have to do the work to really sort through the tangles of what it is, whether it’s some kinds of abuse or, you know, but we know that we live in it with people who are very
Spring@springwasham.com (23:10)
I mean, they’ve been a world full of trauma and this stuff is buried in our bodies. So for me, I always describe ayahuasca. That’s one of the aspects of ayahuasca. There’s so many, you know, depending on what levels you’re on. I don’t like to say levels, but there are different stages and experiences. There’s no end to the mystery of this medicine. It’s consciousness itself unfolding, you know?
Spring@springwasham.com (23:38)
So different stages, I experienced very different journeys, which I love. It’s never boring. I’ve never once been bored in an ayahuasca ceremony. I’ve done hundreds, and so led people. But this is, I think, the main thing is this unconsciousness and bringing us into a conscious state.
Sam Believ (24:01)
Thank you, that’s a really great explanation. And then what you’re talking about levels and never getting bored, that’s really true. I tend to really obsess about a topic for maybe three to four years and then I move on with ayahuasca and psychedelics in general. There’s no ever grasping of completeness of it and I keep getting amazed by how unique each ceremony can be. And ⁓ at Lawara our motto actually is connect, heal, grow.
Spring@springwasham.com (24:15)
you
Sam Believ (24:30)
which is like you come, you connect first, then you heal and then you grow. ⁓ this connecting and healing process can take, you know, few months and few years for some people, depending on how big your trauma is. ⁓ But the growing part, never ends. I think it’s like you can be doing it for 100 years and you probably will still be unlocking new levels of this limitless spiritual exploration. ⁓ So… ⁓
Sam Believ (25:00)
The level at which you are and I assume that you’ve been drinking ayahuasca for a while now, can you talk about it now? What are you personally feeling ⁓ mostly? Is it mostly now like lectures or is it ayahuasca teaching you how to help others or what is your experience with the medicine
Spring@springwasham.com (25:25)
Yeah, well, you know, again, I hear you on the never.
Spring@springwasham.com (25:29)
ending. It’s just like pages in a book that they just keep flipping them. now I know one thing about me is I used to want to get to some kind of definitive ending. Like at this stage, it’ll all be done, right? After this ceremony and this purge, ⁓ I went through this big thing. Now this is healed. And then it’s like another big thing is on the horizon. It’s just like, my God, there’s no end. So now I’m really in a very surrendered state around all of that.
Spring@springwasham.com (26:00)
It’s like, right, it’s here. The journey is right here, right now. It’s not about trying to get to the end of the tangle or to heal my mother and you know, it’s like, yeah, that could happen. That might not happen. Who knows? But I think there’s something about my work right now is just kind of a radical embodiment of now.
Spring@springwasham.com (26:21)
right? Everything is alive right now. I don’t have to wait until some other place. And that feels like I’ve come full circle on something with my Buddhist path. Like I’ve gone all around and now I’m back again, but yet I’m back again in a different place.
Sam Believ (26:41)
Yeah, I guess this is where your Buddhist training comes really handy. So you kind of like let go of the ego and don’t expect this one very specific level where everything is, you you get your crown or whatever and no more trauma exists. think definitely with Ayahuasca, it’s with healing journey in general, but with plant medicine specifically, it’s journey of endless contractions and expansions. And it’s a two steps forward, one step back.
Sam Believ (27:11)
And you definitely are growing, but it’s really hard to like see it immediately because sometimes it feels like hundred steps forward and 99 steps back, but still there’s this one, there’s one step. ⁓ Let’s, you mentioned that we’re living in apocalyptic times. ⁓ Why do you believe that? ⁓ how can, why do you say that psychedelics is our last hope?
Spring@springwasham.com (27:40)
Yeah, I mean.
Spring@springwasham.com (27:45)
I mean, I just think that it’s about consciousness, right? And energy and on the planet right now, it’s just so many people lost in their minds, right? And the mind is so negative, the ego is such a grasp. No one’s present, right? And the ego, you know, ultimately it’s a sociopath, right? Everyone’s always, I notice everyone now is obsessed, I don’t know if I even hear the word narcissist and everyone’s
Spring@springwasham.com (28:15)
using everyone else as being a narcissist, like you’re a narcissist, don’t date a narcissist. And I’m like, we’re all narcissists. I mean, we’re obsessed on ourselves. We have very strong attachment to our thoughts and our mind and our stories. And this is what is killing us. It’s so disconnected from who we really are. So.
Spring@springwasham.com (28:39)
I think one of the beautiful things about psychedelics is that it can bring us back into our true nature. We’re not our thoughts, we’re not our mind, we’re not our trauma. There’s something so deeply radiant and beautiful, we’d call it true nature or pure consciousness, or there’s so many words for this state.
Spring@springwasham.com (29:02)
But I think what it’s trying to move into that and the apocalypse is, that, you know, so many of these systems are built on this egoic, you know, rather you look at healthcare systems or military system, everything is built on this very strong egoic system. And, you know, as people start to awaken, you know, it’s like, there is something shifting and moving faster and faster. And it’s happening at the same time.
Spring@springwasham.com (29:30)
Right? So there is this, it feels like a collision course, but like, you know, an earthquake that plates, they come together and then at one point they shift, right? Because the pressure builds and then there’s this earthquake, right? It’s like, wow, the pressure creates the quake. And I feel like there is a pressure on us right now. says both systems are collapsing and patriarchy and white supremacy and colonization. You see everything that was built on greed,
Spring@springwasham.com (30:00)
and delusion, can’t last. That’s deeply Buddhist wisdom. Nothing built on greed or hate or delusion will ever stand the test of time. It can’t. It’s universal principles.
Spring@springwasham.com (30:15)
So only things both on love and compassion and interconnectedness can last. And I think that we’re trying to make this quantum shift into that. And so these old systems are just, they’re going out, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a big fight for them. For people deeply invested their identity in these systems. They’re going to fight and they’ll even die for it.
Spring@springwasham.com (30:42)
Right? They’ll fight, they’ll die, they’ll hurt other people and in their confusion. But there is something I feel deeply inspired about this time, too. Just what you were just saying, Sam, you were like, wow, we live in all this. There’s a darkness, but then there’s all these tools that we’ve never had before. You know, it’s like all the plant medicines and MDMA and mushrooms and you know, it’s like this flourishing and everything is coming out. It’s what happens when
Spring@springwasham.com (31:12)
about to be that quake, right? Those who can get in your lifeboat now and start practicing, right? So that you can make this shift. And it’s exciting. And also, you know, when I’m not mindful, I get scared.
Spring@springwasham.com (31:30)
you know, but when I am aware, I’m trusting and the universe is unfolding and even if we all, you know, pass away, that’s the nature of this reality too. We all will pass away. Nothing here is permanent. there’s a lot for people.
Sam Believ (31:46)
Thank you. ⁓
Sam Believ (31:50)
On a similar topic, ⁓ you say that ayahuasca can help heal racism. Can you talk a little bit about that? ⁓ what do we do and how do we do
Spring@springwasham.com (32:04)
Well, I’ve kind of seen how these medicines, and I’ve been talking to other people here involved in psychedelic research, and I was recently at a conference where I heard about how MDMA was healing Nazis, people with a lot of Nazi fixation, you know, and how opening their heart and doing MDMA with therapy, here’s the thing, not just out in a party, but with the therapist, again, integration. Well, because I
Spring@springwasham.com (32:34)
what all of these medicines do is they help us get into what’s in the subconscious mind, right? They get onto the level of our programs, you know, and, you know, racism is just like…
Spring@springwasham.com (32:50)
It’s just, it’s like a parasite, right? It’s like we’re all human beings and then we adopt this part that’s like, it’s a cancer, right? It’s like hating ourselves, you know, but we just project it out. So it’s, like, we have to heal that energy in order to make this shift, you know, to some degree, not everybody, but a large group of people have to understand the truth, which is that we are all interconnected. You know, this is very foundational and Buddhism 101, but it’s
Spring@springwasham.com (33:20)
to understand that on the deepest level of your being. I feel like psychedelics and these medicines help us on the deepest layer of our being feel that interconnected. I ⁓ know you have so many experiences being in the jungle and people report, I mean, when we were in Peru on the river.
Spring@springwasham.com (33:38)
It’s like people, am the river, I am the cockroaches, I am the birds, I am the trees, I am the wind. And they feel fundamentally shifted, right, losing their identity as an isolated individual cut off, you know? I ⁓ have, I don’t know of another way that can move as fast as these medicines can move us. We have to shift a little bit faster and they give us, doesn’t mean easy, everybody.
Spring@springwasham.com (34:09)
fast and easy. No, ayahuasca is hard work, you know.
Sam Believ (34:16)
Yeah, I’ve definitely seen this and I’ve also experienced it myself where you go through this ego dissolution where all of a sudden you realize we’re all connected and then it also means that if you hurt others, you’re also hurting yourself, ⁓ including hurting nature because we were just this one organism, this very skinny slime on the top of this rock flying through the space. So ⁓ it really puts things in the perspective.
Sam Believ (34:45)
⁓ Let’s go back to a ⁓ little bit about mindfulness and in your past as somebody training ⁓ Buddhism, I believe in one of the interviews you said that when you first started drinking Ayahuasca you kind of had to almost hide it because it was not really that common. ⁓ What do Buddhist people think about ⁓
Spring@springwasham.com (35:11)
Well, like the world is an evolution. You know, it’s an evolving process. Yes, I used to get in a lot of trouble early days when I would come back to my community. I did, I hit it for years because, I would say I’m going on retreat and then I would go down to the, the Keto and I would be, you know, in the jungle. I think everybody at this, you know, there’s a 911.
Spring@springwasham.com (35:38)
signal going off here. So I think the openness to think about mental health is expanded the conversation into less judgment, right? That these things can be really helpful for people and how I always framed it with my with other colleagues of mine that were like, this isn’t Buddhism, what you’re doing down there is Buddhism, right? And I would say, but it is it’s like an accelerated I’m teaching people how to be present in this deep
Spring@springwasham.com (36:08)
that can be overwhelming, you know, or…
Spring@springwasham.com (36:12)
or terrifying or you know, and then I’m giving them tools. People are going to do psychedelics no matter what. I might as well be out there teaching people how to be mindful and giving a path that for a lot of people could be really helpful. And I’m not just trying to indoctrinate people into Buddhism. I’m giving them path of awareness, sharing with them the path of awareness, sharing them how to open their heart, doing compassion practices, focusing on love, understanding
Spring@springwasham.com (36:42)
right? Disidentifying so heavily with the ego and form and you know trying to get people to see their more than that. So I see myself as somebody out there that you know all these people have all these power tools and they could blow themselves up and and I’m trying to be like well hey everybody why don’t we integrate this way. So I think there’s more openness now to the whole thing but everybody’s finding that the world is getting more open you know.
Spring@springwasham.com (37:11)
is just like where we are. Eventually all of this will be legal. 100%.
Sam Believ (37:18)
Yeah, meanwhile for some people it’s hard to come out of the psychedelic closet as we call it. We have people that tell their parents, I’m at the yoga retreat or something like
Spring@springwasham.com (37:29)
yeah, for me too. And I’ve had people that wouldn’t take pictures and hid it from there. Even though
Spring@springwasham.com (37:37)
I had one guy who wouldn’t, his wife was so terrified, but he kept coming to our retreats and then finally he told her, honey, look, you love me so much more now. I’m so much better, but this is what I’ve been doing. And, you know, I just think there’s just fear. Fear keeps people, you know, stuck. love, we’re loyal to our pain. And sometimes these, these ideas feel terrifying, but as research comes
Spring@springwasham.com (38:07)
in around the world about the benefits of all of the psychedelic movement and therapies. I think we’re going to have a very fast course correction here and things are going to be moving to legalization and faster and decriminalization is happening all over in the US and different cities, counties by counties, know, it’s happening. Shift in consciousness is underway.
Sam Believ (38:34)
⁓ Spring, an interesting question. If you have ever observed any similarities between ⁓ Eastern spiritual tradition and the Amazonian spiritual tradition in your ⁓
Spring@springwasham.com (38:49)
my God, there’s so many, you know, I think about the practices of like even the Icaros, you know, the rhythm of the Icaros, the healing songs that we sing and get channeled maestros and maestros sing them. They sound just like Tibetans chanting, you know, in Nepal outside of shrines. And as we go on pilgrimage, I’ll never forget one time I was on, I think I was in Bodh Gaya and I was in India, the place where the Buddha became enlightenment and there was a man
Spring@springwasham.com (39:19)
and it sounded just like an Icaro and he looked, know, was some similarity. And I think that this is like, there’s, we’re all connecting to the same channels here. It’s not like you have it and I don’t, you know, it’s like, it’s this cosmic library of information. It’s called consciousness, right? And we’re all pulling books out of it. And, you know, and I think that there are so many similarities just on the, on the
Spring@springwasham.com (39:49)
the nature, the focus, you I think this big part of what’s so interesting about our time too is the impact of the earth, the presence of the earth. The earth is like, I’m being affected and you’re all gonna feel this effect, right? And so it’s a powerful…
Spring@springwasham.com (40:10)
It’s a powerful time. So for me, these practices, they go hand in hand. They’re not separated, everybody. You can work with these together, and then you really have the best of both worlds. You got the power tools to build your house, really, with a solid foundation.
Sam Believ (40:31)
Yeah, they’re all everything comes from the earth and the end of the day and we have ⁓ the same bodies with same energy systems and eventually people find different plant medicines in different regions to get the same messages and it’s very obvious. I remember when I was working with a shaman who never had any exposure to Eastern spirituality but when he would do the cleanses, he would, you know,
Sam Believ (41:01)
paint process on the chakras, literally like, I mean, the ones of them he could ⁓ physically appropriately access. it was like, I’m sure he’d never heard about it, but still ⁓ intuitively he knows and they know where, how it goes and where it goes. ⁓ it’s really, I guess, a ⁓ nice knowing because it kind of helps you ⁓
Sam Believ (41:29)
reinforce the belief and trust in the spiritual side of things. ⁓ Spring was a really fun conversation. think ⁓ our listeners will enjoy it a lot. Is there anything else ⁓ we forgot to cover ⁓ on the general topics that we’re talking
Spring@springwasham.com (41:52)
No, I think this is really good and I’m always happy to have these conversations about the medicine
Spring@springwasham.com (41:59)
I really like what you’re doing down there in Columbia. I just, yeah, just it’s amazing that we have access to this medicine and just deep gratitude for all of us who are holding this work with ethics and care and compassion. And yeah, we’re in a good place with it. And we’re doing what we’re called to do to be of service. And I just feel grateful for all of it.
Sam Believ (42:26)
Where can people find more about you, any of your books that you would like to recommend them for your events? ⁓ One last question I haven’t asked about ⁓ the church that you’re building. Let’s just answer that one real quick. ⁓ Why did you go from doing the retreat to now wanting to build a church? And ⁓ what are the struggles of ⁓ building an ayahuasca church?
Spring@springwasham.com (42:41)
Yes, well that’s a whole thing.
Spring@springwasham.com (42:53)
Well, you know, I
Spring@springwasham.com (42:56)
really, really wanting to focus on the US and all of the communities here. And so I moved to the southern part, which is historically very conservative. And it’s like a desert of medicines and information. still felt like some parts are still in the dark age or something. It was interesting. But there are so many people I felt called. So I wanted to start working with communities here because laws are changing, perceptions changing.
Spring@springwasham.com (43:26)
belief systems about plant medicine are shifting and a lot of decriminalization. So I wanted to start a church that I could take all the money structure out, you know, and base it very similarly on Santo Daime, which is the Christian church that’s legal in the US and around the world.
Spring@springwasham.com (43:45)
and have it be really based on community, know, community and love and practice. And it just felt like a church, though it’s like, you know, it’s a vehicle in which we can be protected with our religious freedoms. So that felt important, you know, we have it’s a Buddhist.
Spring@springwasham.com (44:06)
Christian mystic ancestor indigenous church full of world practices and Sufis and and great Zen masters every everything is like a stream right and everyone’s gonna get in the stream wherever they feel good about being in that stream, know what resonates for them and So yeah, we’re just in that process and we’re gonna build a retreat center and I wanted it all to be nonprofit I don’t want money to be an obstacle because
Spring@springwasham.com (44:36)
many people over the years have written to me and been in situations where they weren’t able to fly across the world. And they’re like, I’m right here. Can you come here? Can you come here? I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I get a request. Can you come to my neighborhood? Can you come to our part of the world? So this just feels like me listening very deeply to my intuition.
Spring@springwasham.com (44:58)
and to support the movement here. I feel like the US is kind of the epicenter of the sickness a little bit. And I’m just like gonna go right into the heart of that and then see what we can do so plow it.
Sam Believ (45:14)
⁓ Well, best of luck on this. I know it’s not going to be easy. ⁓ Now we can go to the previous
Spring@springwasham.com (45:22)
What was the previous question? Anything else I want to say? yeah, where can people find? Yes, you could.
Sam Believ (45:24)
⁓ Where can people find more about you? Any of your books you’d like to recommend?
Spring@springwasham.com (45:29)
Yeah, yeah, you can find me on my website, springwasham .com. And I’m pausing for a period on my international retreats, but I’m going to have meditation retreats coming up. And yeah, springwasham .com. I have books on Amazon. People can find me there. yeah, I’m on I’m online sharing more and more. And yeah, so I’ll be doing lots of retreats coming up in 2025. A lot of just pure meditation, light
Spring@springwasham.com (45:59)
energy, yoga, all of that. And then also through my church, working with communities in that way too. So I’m doing it all right in 2025. I’m building it all, rebuilt.
Sam Believ (46:15)
Okay, well, best of luck on all those projects ⁓ and thank you so much for coming on and sharing your unique perspective. It was a pleasure having
Spring@springwasham.com (46:25)
Thank you.
Sam Believ (46:27)
Guys, thank you for listening to Ayahuasca Podcast. As always with you, host, Sambiliyev, and I will see you in the next episode.