Plant medicines and substances that broke open ordinary perception
Plant medicines and psychedelics appear in roughly one in seven accounts, most commonly ayahuasca and psilocybin mushrooms. These experiences range from catalytic openings to sustained shifts that permanently changed the person's relationship to reality.
What distinguishes the accounts that count as triggers (rather than just experiences) is that something changed that didn't close back. The substance opened a door the person then found themselves unable, or unwilling, to walk back through.
I was taking San Pedro, and there is a specific way you take this medicine, you’re walking around a fire within a corralled area until about 4am in one direction, which is the unwind, and then the shaman stops the whole thing, a little ceremony happens, and you walk the opposite way.
But I also found a friend, a mentor, who was doing a kind of shamanic journey work that I began doing, and it included use of substances, psychoactive medicine.
And because if you think about people on the spiritual journey, lots of this "I lost it, I found it" kind of thing happens because people get tripped up often by suppressed unconscious material that hasn't been seen yet.
I think everything that's happened in my life has led me to where I am now. You can get there by a jet if you like — go to an ayahuasca ceremony — or you can get there by foot and walk in meditation. It's the same place. The same exact place.