In this episode of AyahuascaPodcast.com host Sam Believ of LaWayra Ayahuasca retreat interviews Rick de Villiers
I found Rick’s video on topic or integration and really liked his explanation, so I invited him on the podcast to explore this subject more thoroughly.
Transcript
Sam Believ: You’re listening to aya podcast.com.
Hi guys, and welcome to ayahuasca podcast.com. Today we’re joined by very special guest, Rick Veliz. Rick is from South Africa. I believe Rick is a facilitator himself and I stumbled upon Rick’s video when I was myself learning more about subject of integration. And his video on YouTube on the topic was really the best.
I found he has amazing ability to express himself and he’s very knowledgeable when it comes to the topic. So I decided to reach out to him and invite him to this podcast and universe conspired and a couple. Common friends have emerged and we have him here now on this episode. Rick Rick welcome to Ayahuasca podcast.
And it’s it’s great having you, Rick.
Rick de Villiers: Thank you so much. Yeah. It’s great to be here.
Sam Believ: Rick tell us a little bit about yourself before we jump into the topic.
Rick de Villiers: Sure. As far as my healing journey or medicine journey has gone as I said it’s been about four years since I stood first met the medicine.
I was at a very low point in my, the lowest point in my life. And it was the point at which the gates opened for me to then move on to the next chapter. And so it was such a blessing that was what was needed to push me. And I worked with San Pedro for a while, and then finally I felt that Ayahuasca was calling and that was, that was the step that I needed to take.
My first retreat was completely life changing it. It just took me to who I was supposed to be. It was just nothing short of magical. And yeah, following that, I had this deep. Passion for the medicine and a curiosity for the medicine. And I was just so enchanted by this world and wanted to know more about it, and it just felt like home.
And so I worked with the medicine as much as I could During that year, I had a, the person that I first sat with was a good mentor to me and we sat together one-on-one a few times, and I never intended on holding space or serving the medicine. It was never part of my plan. I had no intention of doing that.
No need to do that. And then the medicine gave me this kind of a mission, if you like. It was the ceremony that I had that it showed me that, the potential of the medicine to heal the world from a, not just from everybody drinking iOS, the point of view, but really from a point of view of the ripple the knock on effect that, that has, when one person heals the impact that has on their family, their friends, their employees, and what the medicine said was that.
There are a lot of very kind of spiritual seeking person people who are looking for this medicine, but your average CEO and accountants and politician and that kind of thing, these people often look at the medicine with suspicion. It’s something that’s a little too far out there.
They’re not maybe ready to go camping in the jungle and that kind of thing. And so the medicine said to me, it needs to be legitimized in the way that. Sober, cynical people can look at it as a possibility for their healing. Something that’s a real possibility. And it just said to me, look, if you’re up for it, it’s something that you could be good at.
I’ve spent a lot of my life in kind of corporate, in the corporate world, working for corporate companies and my job, and it said to me, you could be a good translator, one foot in both worlds. I started doing that with my mentor and then it just didn’t go very well. There were too many ideas in the parts, and it wasn’t quite the mission that, that I had been given.
So I realized the only way I could possibly manifest that was to go to the jungle and do my initiation and learn, and do the studying and everything. So I went off to Peru and spent two months there. It was hell. And yeah. And then I got back and then I sat and co-facilitated with my mentor for about a year and then eventually started my own retreats and that, and yeah.
And then that’s been about, yeah, two years or so of doing those retreats. So that’s basically my little journey.
Sam Believ: Journey. It’s interesting. We have a lot of parallels in our stories. ’cause I also first sat with the medicine about a bit more than four years ago. I also never planned to start a retreat.
It just happened to me. Also had a calling message in the jungle and since then, basically synchronicity after synchronicity. Here we are. And yeah. Yeah, it’s funny how you just, once you experience that yourself and also I was in a very low law when I got into that and it’s I think it ties into integration, right the way.
The way I think you talk about it in your videos, how medicine doesn’t stop where the ceremony stops, and it’s actually, the medicine is all around us. All altogether. So let’s let’s talk a little bit about integration. Right? So it’s a difficult concept to explain. It’s something I.
Battle myself when the retreats are happening. ’cause there’s always there’s so many facets to it that you can always take a little bit different of an angle of explaining it. But for you what is integration? How do you explain it to people?
Rick de Villiers: Sure. The world that we live in now, and I think this is the first thing that, that I see as an important thing to be aware of with integration is that the world that we live in now. It is so different from the natural world, in terms of when you are a vulnerable animal, living in the forest where your next meal is served by faith and grace, as opposed to the world that we live in, where we control everything around us, we control the electricity, the running water, we control everything around us.
There’s so much about our lives, which is constructed and contrived, and there’s a sense of control, and it is everything’s cause and effect and all of that. And that breeds a lot of fear. Because then what happens if you lose control? And then we have our traumas thrown into that and all of that kind of thing.
So you’ve got this whole baggage of life where it is all about this control and very much in the mind. You have this mystical, deeply spiritual experience, and what this medicine asks of you more than anything else is. To have faith, if any, if nothing else it’s to go with the flow, to believe in the journey, to let go, to surrender.
And this is the greatest challenge for a lot of, western minded people coming into the medicine is learning to surrender. It’s obviously the biggest obstacle for everyone in the medicine, and it is the gift that the medicine gives you, which is the most profound. It’s the ability to surrender into anything that life shows you.
Obviously, old habits die hard and there’s so many triggers all around us to try and take control again, to try and, to fall into fear again. So I think by and large, the integration process is on the one hand, a trust process. It’s about trust and vape. So you have this, unbelievable window into the truth.
Then it just gets tested. Every day it goes out there and it gets tested. And the integration process is really about taking those obstacles in your mind, or the whole of your mind essentially, and trying to quieten that down, that’s that knowledge, that understanding, that instinct for the truth that you experienced so profoundly in your journey.
Can become a part of your life, can become the walk that you walk every single day of your life, and that you can just manifest that, that understanding, that clarity, that peace. I think that’s the crux of the integration process is that faith, that trust, that calm, that peace, that surrender.
And yeah, just to go on about, a little bit about what I said in, in the video is that. When people think about surrender, integration, it the mistake with integration is I think that, just like we tackle every other problem in our lives with our minds, our instinct is always to tackle the problem with our minds.
People will often have an in, an in an inclination to tackle integration also with their minds, right? So they also. Set out a journal or make a checklist or, as I say in the video, they monitor themselves and they say I said I wouldn’t drink alcohol, so I’m not gonna drink alcohol.
And they really monitor themselves and make sure that they’re integrating and scold themselves potentially when they’re not integrating properly or if they repeat the same again. And there’s a sense of needing to. Perform and meet some kind of an expectation that you’ve set for yourself.
And, forgiveness of self is one of the other things that I find in the medicine is such a challenging thing for a lot of people. Forgiving other people in the medicine is often easier because you see things through the context of the other person, and that allows you to forgive them.
It gives you the perspective and the understanding, and the compassion. But forgiving yourself is really difficult because it’s hard to move forward. You, you see something and you feel like you maybe don’t deserve to move forward. You know that forgiveness of self is such an important part of integration as well, because integration can never be perfect, right?
You cannot integrate perfectly. You can’t come out of an iOS ceremony and then just live perfectly for the rest of your life. That is completely unrealistic. So integration is such a. It’s an art form. It’s a slow, gentle process. It’s not something to be rushed. It’s not something to be crushed.
It’s not something to be good at. Not at all. It’s something to be quiet about. Curious about, kind to yourself, about, being like a parent to your 4-year-old self and giving yourself a break and saying, this is my intention is to change. My intention is to manifest this new part of me that I’ve come back to.
But it’s not gonna be overnight and it’s not gonna be easy. I’ve got, decades of baggage. And not to mention the other thing which a lot of people struggle with. Integration is the entire circumstance of your life. You’ve got all those relationships that you have to go back into. You’ve gone through a profound, transformation.
They haven. And this is something that, that a lot of people do struggle with. If it’s a, going back to a partner or going back to your friend group, a lot of people say, people who come back on retreats and things like that. I’m sure you’ve experienced as well that their friend groups change, after they start working with the medicine because it just doesn’t work for them anymore.
That friendship was filling a hole and that hole is now gone. So that friendship then doesn’t serve the same function and it’s no longer necessary. And that’s quite traumatic, and obviously other people don’t like that. So it’s not as easy as just walking out all Zen and just going about your business.
Everyone else expects you to be a certain person and shedding your skin, so to speak is troublesome. The world might not always approve of that. So yeah, there’s so many pitfalls. But I always say when you’re gonna go through something hard. The best way to approach it is to acknowledge to yourself first before you start, that what you’re going to go through is hard, because just that process of acknowledgement, it’s like you’re just about to run a marathon or climb a mountain, or whatever the case is.
When somebody embarks on running a marathon, they stand on the starting line. They know it’s going to be tough. So when it is tough. It doesn’t come as a surprise to them. It doesn’t, deflate them or anything like that. They just buckle in and keep going because that was the deal all along.
They knew that it was gonna be tough and they were prepared for that. As far as the integration process is concerned, it’s important to know, look, this isn’t gonna be a piece of cake. It’s not gonna be easy to just, walk this. New way of life necessarily. They are gonna be tricky things to it.
And just being patient and kind and just knowing that it’s a long journey, it’s just something that you just just keep going. There’s time limits.
Sam Believ: Setting expectations is very important. When, whether, when people come to the retreat and they need to understand that.
Ayahuasca is not gonna be easy and there’s work you need to do and nobody else can do it for you. And it’s same with integration, right? And the work is, even the workload is even bigger when the retreat ends, and there is no direct guidance from the medicine to tell you exactly what to do. And yeah, I do agree with you a lot on the fact that integration is somewhat of a passive process and you can’t really force it too much.
However. For example, I really thought about integration a lot when starting the retreat. And I try and help people to not only understand that topic, but also to, to remember about, for example, here at LA Wire we did create a journal, which is an integration journal, but it’s like an ability for people to at least recall what happened during the ceremony.
So they can go back to it and not forget it, and then as they read their experience over and over again, or maybe it’s a mix of that. And also picking up a journaling practice where they can find time of the day to actually think about stuff. And because I think and what we do here is also we try and have people be bored a little bit because I think that.
In those moments of boredom, when nothing is happening, when they’re not entertained, the thoughts start to, to process themselves. And you can allow, give yourself time to think. And I think the problem with the current society a lot as well is we don’t have time. To think. ’cause even let’s say you’re in the past, you would go to an elevator, you would enter the elevator, you would thank thoughts you would come up.
And now is, we always have our phones on us. And I think the worst thing for integration is that smartphone addiction, which I myself suffer from. Especially ’cause you have to work so much on your phone to, to organize things. So my next question to you is what I know it goes again against your whole philosophy because you do say it’s not an active process, but what could you recommend people do maybe actively or some kind of tips or tricks that can help them in that process, if that makes any sense?
Rick de Villiers: Sure. No, absolutely. No I do believe there are. There are, tools at your disposal. And I think that for me, just instinctively when you asked me that question, I haven’t given it much thought now, but just instinctively when you asked that, where my mind went to was, what you just said about boredom, and forcing people into a bit of bored, Ry.
We do, I do that as well. I actively discourage people from chitchat on retreats because people get into conversations, they get very excited, everyone’s going through a lot and whatever. And then sometimes a conversation can just go on a little too long and then everyone gets a little distracted from their own personal process and it is about you.
You’re there for you, gonna leave and it’s just gonna be you. I try and encourage people to spend time alone as much as possible. The whole thing about, the medicine and its gift, right? And how it gives that gift is this idea of sitting in discomfort, right?
That’s what the medicine does. It puts you into a state of discomfort and you need to surrender to that. And so you learn to master discomfort, fear, pain, dread, guilt. Regrets, all these things and sometimes just physical discomfort. All the spiritual practices since the dawn of time have heralded discomfort as this pathway, to, to an inner process.
Whether it’s walking on coals or Christians do lent and, and there’s fasting and there’s this, and all these different, things. It’s. It’s all about the abstinence and that discomfort. I would say that if you’re struggling with your integration process, or if you feel like you need to do something to assist you in your integration process, my instinct would say, do something difficult.
Do something d. Put yourself under a bit of question. Maybe do a two day fast or something like that. Or something along those lines. If that’s what you need. Some people need different things, but, and also things like, okay, conversation would be another one that I would say is like a really important thing.
So there’s probably a laundry list. Two full pages long by the time you leave a retreat of things that you should have said to people in your life that you never did, right? You’ve never had those conversations with them. There’s so many people you haven’t told them how you feel about them, or things that you’ve done that you maybe feel you wanna get off your chest or, there’s a thousand difficult.
Uncomfortable conversations, just waiting for you and beyond each one of those conversations is a beautiful and glorious liberation for your soul. And those are the kind of things that I would probably engage in if I wanted to do a really active an active integration would be to really put myself in those difficult positions and rather not just leave those things and just say, no, you know what?
I don’t know if I want to tackle that or I don’t wanna get into that, or, I haven’t spoken to that person in a long time. I’m sure they’ve forgotten about it or whatever. That’s really. When you put yourself in that position of vulnerability, that’ll take you straight back to your ceremony.
You know that being vulnerable is such an integral part of what you need to get to the medicine, what the medicine needs you to learn anything from it, and definitely what you should take back into your life to be open, to be vulnerable, to be able to be wrong, these are all things that kind of maintain that humility.
And with that stays the connection, so yeah, and I think more communication, real communication obviously. And yes, you can meditate and do all of those things. Funny, quite a lot of people ask me on retreats and that, what kind of practices do I do?
Do I meditate? Do I do yoga? Do I do all this? I suppose people. Curious as to know what a facilitator would do in their own lives. And I always say no. I don’t really because for me I try and look at life as a meditation, that every single moment of every single day, and I was just saying that it’s not for everybody, but I think there’s a possibility that when you start meditating. Habitually what you do is you almost create that same thing where I talk about in the integration video, where it’s easy to see the medicine as one world and the real world is a different world, and that’s a mistake. You’ve really gotta understand that the spirit moves around you all the time. In the medicine, ultimate is all the same thing and. So it can be the same thing with these practices like meditation and yoga and all of these things. It can be the same thing where, you sit down to meditate in this harmonious environment and you burn incense or whatever the case is.
And then when you stand up off your meditation, there is this transition from this sanctuary that you’ve created, even if it’s only in your mind, and then going into the traffic and having someone cut you off or steal your parking or whatever. For me I want to be able to, whatever I do for my integration, I would want it to be kind.
Like real as in amongst everything else, amongst all the noise. So what I often say to people who ask me that question is I say the kind of meditation I would like to do, and I haven’t done it, but I would really love to do it one day, is actually just to go to a very busy mall and go and sit down on the floor in the middle of the mall.
And close my eyes and meditate there with everyone walking past thinking I’m a complete lunatic. Because that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. You know that intense discomfort and self-consciousness, the things that you would have to overcome within yourself. To find peace while you’re sitting there on the floor waiting for security to come and get you, that would teach you so much.
It would take you back to that journey, being in that discomfort, having to surrender, having to, overcome all the fear and making the peace inside yourself. Not having the peace around you already, just making the piece for yourself. Yeah, if I was to talk about active integration it would be things like that.
It would be things where you. You’re exercising those muscles, you’re exercising those surrender muscles if you like, putting a bit of pressure on that. Yeah.
Sam Believ: This is this is all true that you’re saying it’s just extremely difficult. It’s kinda expertise level meditation, and this image that you said about you sitting in the mall. And meditating. It reminded me there’s this Japanese I believe practice where there is a monk and he quietly walks through a busy street and as he takes a step, he rings the bell. That kind of stuff, like where meditation is is pretty much your entire life is meditation.
It’s interesting that you mentioned that you tell people at the retreat not to chit chat. I do something similar, but what we do instead of saying don’t communicate, I do believe in talking as a form of integration. However, it has to be deep conversation. So what I ask people to do is take off the masks and accept that this is a safe space where.
Deep conversation is allow, and if somebody asks you, how are you in the morning, instead of saying, okay, you say stuff like, I had a nightmare and it brought this memory about childhood trauma and just go full into it. So what do you think about that approach and what do you think about talking as a form of integration, specifically one-on-one or maybe in a setting of a word circle or a sharing circle?
Rick de Villiers: Oh, absolutely. One of my journeys was actually one of the videos on, on, on the channel, one of the journeys I had was about about how are you, the phrase, how are you? So it was funny that you mentioned that. Now it’s literally how came to me in the journey. Just so you know, I haven’t,
Sam Believ: I haven’t seen that video.
I’ve only seen I think, two of your videos. But I think we agree on a lot of stuff.
Rick de Villiers: No, for sure. And it showed me that when we greet people at the door to our house, so you’ve got friends coming over, family coming over, whatever, you open the door and right there standing in the doorway.
You say, how are you? And they say, Hey, I’m good. How are you? And you say, I’m good. And that’s it. That’s it. That’s the end of the conversation. That’s the end of the how are you conversation. And then you sit down and you talk about the kids and you talk about the weather, you talk about COVID and you talk about all these other things, right?
And the medicine said to me, this is, I’ve got to stop doing that. And it, it was it had a sense of humor to it, but it said to me, how are you mustn’t be sit at the door. You wait until you sit down. Then you ask, how are you? And it should take up 75% of the afternoon is each person’s opportunity to speak about how they are.
It should be the most important part of that getting together, not the cursed. That just gets dismissed at the door, and it’s very much the practice around sharing circles and things like that, which we practice in this medicine, and I think a lot of people don’t have the confidence to try and encourage that within their, it’s again this resistance from peer circles and friends and family and stuff like that.
It’s very difficult to encourage people. Into that practice if you’re the only one who wants to do it. But this is where I find people in recovery are actually so lucky, addicts because they go through the very similar process where they do a lot of group work and a lot of sharing and a lot of that, it’s.
It’s such a fundamental part of human connection, is that real sharing that honesty. Everyone worries, everyone wonders why they feel alone and cut off in the world. The reason that you’re alone and cut off is ’cause you’re hiding. It’s totally your responsibility. It’s no one else’s fault.
It’s because we don’t feel safe to share. We don’t feel like if you tell someone what you really feel or what you’re going through, that they might not judge you or whatever. There’s always that concern that they might look at you differently. You don’t wanna mess with that, you. Yeah, a hundred percent.
I, I agree with you a hundred percent. Where those conversations need to just change their depth, change the level of vulnerability, and I love that. I really love that. I really love that, it’s only the distracting conversations, on a retreat, it doesn’t matter how well you screen people.
There’s always one or two people who get there, and then they aren’t that keen to. Do the hard work. And then sometimes they can be a distraction to others ’cause they’re looking just to, talk nonsense.
Sam Believ: So that’s
Rick de Villiers: why I always just say to people, if you get into a circle like that, move away.
Don’t get caught up into that because it’s just gonna take you outta your process. Not everyone you know. And when you have screening conversations with people, I always try and place as much emphasis as I can. I say, look, this is really tough, hardest thing you’re ever gonna go through.
You think, it’s what’s hard is. This is really hard, be prepared. And everyone always says, I know it’s good. I’m ready. I’m ready until they get there. And then it’s whoops, I don’t wanna look at that. And and then, yeah then they get into a mindset of just trying to distract themselves with lightheartedness and that kind of thing.
And that can really bring the container on. This
Sam Believ: Really rings a bell for me ’cause this is a daily life of a facilitator. You talk to people and you put your soul into the explaining and try to use the best analogies you can come up with. And then when and then they still don’t understand you, or if, let’s say I tell people, sometimes maybe half of you are not gonna connect completely and have the big breakthrough in the first ceremony.
And then, they just assumed that it’s the other half. It’s not them. Or, I had literally 10 days ago at the retreat, I had the guy and he listened to everything that I’ve been talking to in, in preparation. And then when it really hit him and he went through a really tough process and wanted to give up, and we started talking, I managed to convince him to stay and keep drinking.
And he had this beautiful, amazing, transformational experience. He said but. It was really painful, but I was like, I said I warned you that it’s gonna be this way. Yeah. He said but it was just words. But when he felt it, he was like, okay. I it’s not just words. So everything facilitate says to you probably is for a reason.
There’s not much time to talk about, filler words and stuff like that. It is really. How do you, I know it’s not on the topic of integration, but it’s a topic that fascinates me. You communicate pretty well. How do you find it? The communication with the patients?
At the retreat?
Rick de Villiers: On the retreat itself?
Sam Believ: Yeah. Or just generally. Yeah.
Rick de Villiers: I’m, yeah I’m quite ruthless. I find that I. I I push people quite hard. I can be quite strict and I’m available to everybody all the time. I love what I’ve learned. I love. Speaking, I love speaking about the medicine.
I love sharing the medicine, but in terms of how I deal with each person, I will always push exactly whichever button I feel needs to be pushed. And I’ll push it hard, I don’t, I try not to let anyone get away with. Anything less than their best on a retreat, and if that means triggering their ego or upsetting them or whatever, I have this saying that if something I say pushes you further away from me, but closer to God, mission accomplished.
So it’s just a matter of pushing those buttons and sometimes people get upset with me and whatever. Until the last sermon, and then they come back crying and it’s oh wow, thank you. And it’s just about just pushing, pushing, and it’s something that, our world around us now, the way that, our modern medicine and.
Our entire approach to life is all about trying to feel better, right? So not necessarily get better, but just feel better. So we’re always pacifying ourselves and feeding ourselves, just with stimulus and trying to feel better. And the whole pharmaceutical system is, if you have a headache, you take a tablet, it’s all about feeling better.
If you can’t sleep, take a sleeping tablet. It’s all about feeling better. So it’s so difficult because all of people’s understanding of what human empathy is actually sympathy, which I don’t believe in at all. It’s this kind of, rescuing this notion of rescuing. And when people are having a tough time in that, there is that kind of instinct in them to say I need help.
I need to be rescued. But if anybody helps that person or rescues, then they will never have the truly overwhelmingly beautiful experience of helping themselves. So whenever someone’s struggling like that, I just say to them, you’ve got this, get out of the backseat of the car. Get into the front seat, front, take the wheel and drive the car, and then leave it at that.
Because that’s how it goes,
Sam Believ: so Rick I believe the topic you’re talking about is the concept of tough love and I ask is known for it’s tough love. It’s like showing the problem the way it is and just saying kinda like tough motherly love, go. Go clean your room style thing.
It’s the nobody else is gonna do it for you. So you have to do it. And I think your teaching approach is very much in line with that concept. Which I’m sure works. And I also myself, have some difficult conversation with conversations with people a lot of times because in our society as you mentioned, we all.
Are conditioned to numbing the pain and running away from problems and also wanting people that they assume sometimes, they come to an Ayahuasca retreat and they paid for it. Everything will be done for them, but we can do everything for you except the healing part. And this is, this gets tough sometimes.
You mentioned about people also trying to separate, say meditation from their everyday lives, I believe, if I’m not mistaken, the word separation is literally the opposite of the word integration. How do you, yourself, you talked, talk a little bit about that, but what do you see mindfulness where do you see it in the part of the integration process?
And do you have any, anything you can recommend to people? Maybe some. Some specific tips or tricks,
Rick de Villiers: so does tricks go? Yeah, it’s something that she speak to my wife quite a lot about, just as we navigate life together, and it’s something that often comes up is, when you’re faced with a situation in life there’s always the mental interpretation and the spiritual interpretation, and, if you get a flat tire or if you run out of electricity or if you crash your car, or, anything happens, there’s, if you crash your car, it’s very easy and very common to say I shouldn’t have been driven driving on the wrong side of the road, or I shouldn’t have done this, or I shouldn’t have, turn so soon or I shouldn’t have been in a rush to get there, or whatever the case is.
This is our habits of always looking for cause and effect, and it comes, stems from that control I was talking about earlier where our entire society is structured around control and the illusion of control that we can control everything, that we can avert any kind of disaster in our lives.
If we plan everything perfectly, then nothing will go wrong, and so for me, the mindful practice is really about trying to look more for the spiritual explanation in the challenges that we face, in our daily lives and each time something happens. Also something that came to me in a journey once is that, you know when something goes wrong, you are walking down the road and you stumble and you drop your coffee. Your brand new Starbucks coffee just goes spilling on the floor. There is a microsecond, a split second as that coffee hits the floor and you realize what’s happened where you get to label that experience as being bad or good.
It’s a split second, and we’re not even aware of it because we just assume it’s bad. Oh something’s gone wrong and now, I’m really crossed because I don’t have coffee anymore. But it was just, the medicine showed me that how once you label something as bad, as soon as you say that this is a problem that shouldn’t have happened, I, this could have been avoided, should have been avoided, and definitely must never happen to me ever again.
Whatever I need to do to avoid this ever happening again is what I need to change in my life. That’s a very mental approach, a very mental controller oriented approach. But if you take that moment and allow the possibility that dropping that coffee brings you a gift, and it’s all about timeframe, it’s not gonna bring you a gift in this very moment, but it’s all about timeframe and just allowing yourself to experience the journey.
Just give it a chance, give it a chance, see what happens. You never know. And so I think that, as far as a mindful practice is concerned I have a young child who’s six, and what I always say to him is, wait and see. Just wait and see. Don’t be so quick to judge what just happened as being a problem or being wrong, or being something that you don’t want.
You don’t know that. You have no idea. So many people, obviously, I think everyone in life has this experience where you have a terrible boss or something like that and you hate the way they treat you. And this kind of torment goes on for a long time and eventually you’ve had enough and you leave the job and you end up doing what you were meant to do, your all that, you know, and then you don’t think back and think that was an angel.
That person was an angel that was pushing me to where I was supposed to be going. But in that moment, we’re so convinced that this is a negative thing in our lives, that this person shouldn’t be treating us this way. That we don’t realize that we can be so rigid that we don’t move with a hint. Spirit set us.
You shouldn’t be here, be there, and we don’t listen. Because again, the control thing, we don’t wanna lose our job. We don’t wanna be vulnerable, we don’t wanna do this. We don’t do that. So we don’t listen and then we don’t move. And then, the universe knows what’s best for us. So then it pushes a little harder and it gives us an impossible manager.
And, it, it throws all these insufferable things in our way to ultimately kick us out the door to where we’re supposed to be. So for me, that process of mindfulness is really about wait and see. Don’t label everything that happens to you straight away, just wait and see. You’d be surprised at how often it just turns out exactly the way it’s supposed to,
Sam Believ: this is this is a very wise advice and looking for silver lining and things or being patient. Patient definitely happened to me, myself. I had some what at first seemed negative events led me into very positive ones and I’m sure it’s not the end and more, more will come.
Such just being, remembering that. In your video on integration, you also mentioned that indigenous people don’t seem to have an officially defined integration process. Why do you think that is?
Rick de Villiers: Like I say in the video, our process of integration and also what I said at the beginning of the video is that our process of integration is actually an unlearning process.
It’s not a learning process, and that’s where I think, the difference between active and passive. The people often approach integration. They think they have to learn something new. It’s not learning something new. It’s letting go of something that doesn’t belong there. It’s a letting go process.
It’s not a, it’s not a I’m gonna change, I’m gonna get fit. I’m gonna stop drinking alcohol. It’s rather just letting go of the part of you that, that doesn’t, that wants that, letting go of the feeling that you need that in your life, or the feeling that. You can’t do without this thing or that thing or this structure in your life.
For the indigenous people, again, like I was saying about, an animal that lives in the jungle any part of nature, as I say, lives by faith and grace because they don’t know when their next meal’s coming, everything is, they’re at the mercy of the beauty of nature, and so the integration process for them.
Those habits haven’t really formed the way that they have for us, because they live closely to nature, because they’re working with the medicine all the time. And from a young age, so a lot of these coping mechanisms that we use to get through the traumas of our life, Dr is such a great guy to, to listen to and how he talks about trauma and all of that, his thing is that, a lot of your coping mechanisms were there. Sorry, one second.
Your coping mechanisms were there to protect you as a child, and to protect you and get you through life, and difficult situations in life where you had to survive. And that can be. Being bullied at school, being made fun of. It can be anything. Trauma doesn’t have to be something huge and significant and, abuse or something like that.
Trauma is anything that makes you look at yourself with anything except love, so those is, that’s where our coping mechanisms come from. And then we build a whole castle on top of that. We make a whole life outta those coping mechanisms. So the integration process is really about letting go of that.
And I think that they haven’t put as much of that into their lives as we have. And it’s actually quite sad to see as modern, the modern world penetrates the jungle. How, these people who used to be living completely within nature are now all on social media, and. Going into town all the time and stuff like that.
And there’s a sadness experiencing that because you know that, you know where that goes. So it almost feels like there’s a time limit and that knowledge will be that that perfect integration with nature will almost be lost to humanity. There’s so few untouched civilizations now left.
And I think this is a very important part of, where you and I sit is. Trying to keep this alive at all costs, and studying it and respecting and honoring it and, and trying to carry it forward, so yeah. So I think the integration process is really just a consequence of our modern mind, really, our civilized mind, if you wanna call it that.
Sam Believ: Yeah the, it’s unwinding, that’s, there’s this biggest big movement of, capitalism and modern day living coming into the indigenous people’s lives. And there’s also, and an opposite direction, the ayahuasca coming into the western world. So the question is what wins? What happens first?
And then, yeah, maybe by the time the western way completely takes over. It might not be that bad already. That’s my hope and I’m sure it’s yours as well, is like any person that’s optimist and is hoping for more people as possible, having AYAs experience hopes for this other version of reality where we are better of as a society.
And yeah. I think another thing that indigenous people have. Generally South Americans to a larger extent, is they still have the families and their communities, they’re still big and the sharing is still there. They really have that mechanism that I believe we have lost in the Western world.
So even if the, if looking at once again at, talking as a part of the integration process. I think they still have those deep conversations at least. My wife, she’s she’s Colombian and of course she’s partially indigenous, like all all South Americas. And you can see in her.
But she’s not, she didn’t grow up in the jungle, she grew up in the countryside and she’s, educate and is largely a part of the Western world. However, when she spoke to her family members or her friends on, on a daily basis, the way they share is much deeper than you would observe in a conversation in my country or, on between to North Americans.
So I think if we, go back to, building communities and like allowing that form of, we would naturally, I would assume with a bonfire in the middle and group of friends sitting around and people and community members and just sharing about how the day went.
I think this is also a beautiful sort of way to integrate. And you mentioned Gabor Mate, I really love Gabo mate. I partially, when creating this podcast I had this. Unrealistic dream to maybe interview him one day and you never know. Never know.
Rick de Villiers: Oh, that’d be great.
Sam Believ: Yeah. You never know. If you just if I guess, if the universe is on my side, it’ll happen.
So Gabor, if you’re listening, which I know you’re not or maybe somebody who knows them, send me the contact I need to interview this guy. He’s he’s been a big part of my own journey with the medicine. And it’s it’s interesting that you mentioned him. As a outside of a topic of a facilitator, something we touched upon a little bit just now, what do you see the future of ayahuasca and in our modern society?
What do you think it would hap will happen? Where are you yourself pushing towards, in which direction?
Rick de Villiers: What do you mean? Direction?
Sam Believ: You mean yeah, I, I guess that’s that’s my way of thinking because you’re going more with the flow. But for example, I’ll my hope is I want to have as many people as possible have experience with ayahuasca experienced the healing and launched their healing progress healing process.
And I. Would like to be there to be as many retreats similar to mine and yours and many more to slowly pop out as mushrooms in the forest under the rain, and like gradually come to the point where instead of, as of now, I believe we have less than 1% of the world trying ayahuasca to have more, maybe 10, 20.
That’s my dream. I’m an optimist. I believe it will happen as the time goes by. What do you think from that perspective and what is your approach to the medicine? Because I believe you mentioned that you have this grounded way of seeing things and working with the medicine.
Rick de Villiers: Sure, yeah. Yes I would love for everybody to have that. And when I speak to people that I know are not ready, I never see somebody as being not suitable for ica. I always see them as not suitable yet, or not suitable. Now, not prepared to work with the medicine yet. There must be a question before the answer can emerge.
So that person needs to get to that place where they’re willing to listen. And. And I would love for everybody who feels called to the medicine to be able to experience the medicine. That would be utopia. And Graham Hancock is obviously one of the people from the very very civilized mainstream world who advocates Ayahuasca so strongly.
And being a best selling author and all of that, he’s obviously got quite a. A mouth mouthpiece. He, a lot of people listen and, and that was readiness. He said that he believes that this is not just your brain chemistry, this is not some hallucination. This is a deep spiritual journey that you go on.
And what is very real. And he said that. This is not something to be suspicious of. This is not something to demonize, this is not something to control. It should be something that any adult should be able to take the decision to do if that’s what they feel is on the healing part. And I think that goes for most plant medicine, and we are seeing a lot of that now with mushrooms where they’re getting a lot of, freedom. There’s a quite a very rapid, revolution in that sense. Especially in the states. Many states are now allowing it. So I see that as very positive from a plant medicine point of view, I think. And that’s also been, a big part of my. Of mission that was laid out to me in that ceremony is really about legitimizing it.
I also, I speak to a lot of people who are in recovery, ex addicts and things like that. And I was actually speaking to someone just yesterday who was at the house and and I said to her, we should consider working with my medicine. She’s willing to be ready to work and whatever.
And she said I’m not sure if it’s okay if I’m taking a substance and maybe I should speak to my sponsor about that. I appreciate that’s the box that the world has put these things into. Anything that alters your consciousness is now considered a drug, which is something that can be abused.
I can’t imagine anyone abusing ayahuasca, but the drug’s not the thing that would be abused. You would regret that so terribly. And there’s nothing fun about it. It’s not the kind of thing you’ll do to run away from your problem. Certainly not the best thing. The best thing happen
Sam Believ: to an addict is to try and abuse ayahuasca because you’ll no longer be an addict for.
Rick de Villiers: Yeah. No. You’ll learn your lesson real quick. So I see absolutely no correlation between those worlds and I think that’s the difference between a drug and a medicine. And I think the way that we speak about this medicine to the average person, when you talk about it as a medicine, I think that’s something that’s quite difficult for them to get their head around.
We just use the word medicine, all the time synonymously with these plants. And I think that there’s a degree of resistance there that they don’t really maybe believe that 100% and then maybe think that we’re just, sugarcoating what’s actually a drug. Because that’s the simple view on things. If it alters your consciousness, it’s a drug and it’s dangerous and you might get into trouble with it and all of this kind of jazz. So unfortunately, we’ve got a legacy of that, thanks to the war on drugs and thanks to all of that stuff where everything’s just been piled into that box, that with marijuana being rapidly, it’s exploded everywhere, all over the world.
And now mushrooms are going through a rebirth. From a legal perspective, I’m really hoping that, San Pedro will go through the same thing. Aya will go through the same thing and slowly but surely people will start to realize and governments will start to realize that these things heal you. And it’s for the betterment of society and but obviously there’s a lot of.
There’s a lot of strings being pulled everywhere that, it’s a difficult process, but as far as I’m concerned, and I think you probably feel the same as you do what you can with what’s in front of you. I just keep trying as hard as I can within my environment and hope that makes a difference, yeah. I hope I do. I hope for
Sam Believ: the same thing. I hope for the same thing that the world slowly. Rebrands, the, these medicines to from drug to the medicine and responsibly. So meaning in a controlled setting, people will experience their healing to eventually ceremony where ceremony, where the better world can exist.
May I’m even open to the medical therapeutic setting, but it has to maintain some side of the ceremony because if you take. The ceremony away from ayahuasca is like taking roots off the tree. The tree will then rot and Yeah,
Rick de Villiers: absolutely. Yeah. This is what concerns me is that, there’s some research being done and I appreciate that the scientific community is looking at some of these plants.
However, the scientific community or the pharmaceutical community is notorious to wanting to put something into a pool. And also to separate the molecules. So you know, we wanna address Parkinson’s. Only this percentage of BioCar has a proven scientific effect on Parkinson’s. So we’ll remove all the other molecules and we’ll just isolate this one molecule and you’ll take it in a tablet.
And that is not what the medicine’s about. So if I’m not keen on that type of legitimacy where it’s used as a product. Yeah. But the kind of legitimacy where they appreciate the ceremonial context and realize that in the context of that it must be done that way,
Sam Believ: it’s a psychology.
I do agree. Let’s let’s keep things traditional ceremonial. Rick, we are running out of time, unfortunately. I have a feeling we could talk about this subject for hours and maybe either more. And probably we should do it again. So guys, if you like this episode and you’re watching it on YouTube, do leave a comment and ask for another one.
And if, if you leave enough comments, then maybe Rick will agree for another episode. I’m just kidding. Rick thank you for your work, for the work you’re doing and for this episode. I think some people find it very productive. Rick, where can people find you and more about you?
Rick de Villiers: My YouTube channel is called In Ceremony. And my contact details are on there, so you can contact me that way. I share on there some information. Like my integration video. I have a preparation video as well, which I send to all my participants and that’s quite popular. And then also basically all the journeys I’ve had, I try and share the.
The nuggets of truth that, that, that came from these things and how that’s helped change my life and whatever. So yeah, I think that’s a good place to start. Check that out, see if you like it. And then anyone is welcome to contact me. I’m very engaged on my YouTube channel. If you ask me a question in the comments, I’ll answer completely and I’m always happy to speak to people one-on-one.
So no worries. I’m very available.
Sam Believ: Yeah, guys, I recommend you check Rick’s videos. He’s he is really good at explaining some pretty difficult things. So Rick, once again, thank you so much for coming and thank you guys for listening to this episode of ayahuasca podcast.com. As always with you, was Samie the founder or founder of Laro Ayahuasca Retreat, and I will see you in the next episode.