Years ago, a shaman told me something that forever changed the way I looked at my past and really my whole life.

I had gone to an Amazonian plant medicine ceremony as a way of releasing and transforming trauma. 

After years of talk and other kinds of therapies, the painful past was still very much alive and well in me. 

In my discomfort and desperation, all I wanted was to be free, once and for all, of the burdens of the past that kept me chained in place, unable to move forward in my life. 

If I could have mercilessly cut the past off like an overgrown fungus that ruined the garden of my present day reality, that’s exactly what I would have done.

But then, a dark haired, brown-eyed medicine woman who had spent years deep in the jungle learning to listen to its wisdom shared with me something that still brings me chills whenever I think about it:

“Rather than wanting to cut the past off,” she suggested, “think of the past as your medicine. That it is the sacred medicine that you can offer to other living beings -  your precious and sacred gift, your unique contribution to the healing of yourself and the world. Turned outward, in the service of others, it is your gold.”

Listening to these words, I could feel every cell in my body light up, as if being charged with an electrical current that connected everything from the depth of my bellybutton to the outermost stars in the cosmos. I could see that I was part of what Buddhist’s call the web of kindness that connects all of life and that, rather than being something to be surgically removed with a sharp knife, my past was actually the most precious gift I had to offer the world. 

I thought of this story recently when a woman in my group coaching program mentioned how angry and frustrated she was with the uncaring response to the covid crisis among her friends and close family. How what was being revealed in this particular apocalypse (and remember the Greek word means “uncovering”) wasn’t love and light, but rather a marked difference in values that had long been papered over merely for the sake of getting along.

I could really relate to playing the role of the peacekeeper and not wanting to rock the boat lest other people be uncomfortable.

Like her I, too, have spent far too much of my life wanting other people and society to change, rather than risking the courage of offering my own medicine as a balm for the wounds of others. 

Today I can look back on the times I lacked the courage to challenge injustice and said nothing with deep compassion. It’s one of many ways I continue to mine the gold from the past, and encourage my psychedelic integration clients to do the same. 

I also know that the greatest medicine I can offer the world is that of my own past. 

I cannot cut it off, for that would be like a tree cutting itself off from its roots. 

But I can trust that, in the healing light of presence and compassion, it is the most sacred medicine that I, and perhaps any of us, have to offer for the healing of the world.