- [Steve] Hey, it's Steve, and this is "Luminous", a podcast series about psychedelics, from, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge". If you hang out in the psychedelic space long enough, you'll run into a few really thorny questions, like, what's the relationship between Buddhist meditation and a psychedelic journey? Both can take you deep inside your mind. They can change your life, and they both come out of long spiritual traditions. So, you might think there'd be a lot of shared DNA here, and for plenty of people there is. But I've also talked with some prominent Buddhists who don't want anything to do with psychedelics. They tend to regard using drugs as cheating, getting a quick hit of enlightenment without really earning it. And there's one other thing, depending on how you read the Buddhist texts, there may be a prohibition against psychedelics.
- [Spring] The fifth precept, which is around this idea of non-intoxicant, and taking intoxicants that cloud their mind. This is the big debate about, are plant medicines and psychedelics intoxicants, or are they liberatory? Do they cloud the mind or do they awaken the mind?
- [Steve] This question is one reason Spring Washam is so interesting. She's a renowned Buddhist teacher who taught for years at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and she's one of the founders of the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland. She also has a long history with plant medicines, and she incorporates dharma talks into her ayahuasca retreats. That's gotten her into a lot of hot water with some Buddhist elders. I first met Spring Washam at a conference last year. She got up on stage and with no notes, told her life story, and it was riveting. So, when I saw her recently at another gathering, I really wanted to talk with her, to hear how she became a Buddhist teacher, and then crashed, and was saved by Ayahuasca, and then came back to Buddhism. Spring, recently moved to Atlanta, where she started her own Ayahuasca church, and she took on a huge challenge. How do you heal racialized trauma? It's an incredible story, and Spring is wonderful company. So, I think you'll really enjoy this conversation. So, the reason I wanted to talk to you is, you have such an interesting personal journey and you have explored different contemplative traditions, different spiritual traditions, and I sort of wanna just walk through that process for you. So, were you always someone who gravitated towards contemplative practice? Was there a sort of a particular moment when you thought, this is what I wanna do with my life?
- [Spring] Honestly, when I look back now, I can see the very, very deep thread of a spiritual leaning. As a teenager, I was reading all kinds of self-help books, Wayne Dyer, I remember reading Wayne Dyer and trying to meditate in the fourth grade.
- [Steve] Oh really? Wow.
- [Spring] Yeah, reading his book, True Magic, or Real Magic, something like that. And then I'd sing my first real practice community, where I got very serious was, somebody left the book, "Man's Eternal Quest" on my dining room table when I moved to Oakland. I remember, I'll never forget that, I moved into an apartment, accidentally left it on my dining room table. And I remember at 23 reading that book, it was all about meditation, and that's when I really committed my life. I recognized, I'm a spiritual person. Oh, oh, this is the life I'm supposed to live. And it was kind of this whole revelation.
- [Steve] And when did you start to dive into Buddhist practices?
- [Spring] Not long after that. I studied in the Hindu practice, self-realization fellowship, Paramahansa Yogananda School for a year. But without a teacher, I felt at a disadvantage, without a living teacher. So, I would practice, but I wasn't getting the- I didn't feel like I was growing. I spent hours and hours and going to the temple, and doing three hour meditations. But all I did was think about all my problems. But, I needed a technique. So when I heard about this 10-day retreat, very randomly, in the desert, where they taught you meditation in silence, you practice all day. I signed up, not knowing anything about it, not even knowing it was Buddhist. And that, is where I was introduced to Buddhism, insight meditation, and then of course I met my teacher, Jack Kornfield, who has pretty much had the biggest influence on my life, I would say, of any being I've ever met.
- [Steve] What did he do? What opened up for you working with him?
- [Spring] Well, on that retreat, I just remember hearing him teach, and there was a deep resonance with the teachings of presence, and sanity, and how to be with my emotions. In my mind, there was a naming of my direct experience of like, I'm living with this chaotic hell, you know, in my head, oh, you are too? Oh, okay. Oh, it's actually diagnosis. It is actually, you know, it was this opening to this wisdom of the suffering. So, I really resonated with how he taught, because he was a teacher that was very heart-centered. And I think I have that same inclination to be rooted in compassion and wisdom. And then he just really took me under his wing. He saw my passion for the practice, and for, right after I met him for about 10 years, that's all I did, was practice.
- For 10 years?
- Yeah.
- [Steve] And did you practice with the intention of becoming a teacher yourself?
- [Spring] No, I never even had an aspiration of that. Not at all. I practiced because I felt so terrible. And I wanted to understand why I suffered. My family was a total disaster. My father was crazy off on his own, my mother was married to this really abusive man. I hadn't lived with them in years. I was, everything was just suffering in pain. So, I really wanted to understand why everybody was so sad, why there was all this addiction. I wanted to understand why life was so hard. And so that was my whole motivation was, how do I become happy? But I really cared about that, and how do I love this life? And, this was all in my early twenties, and I thought, you know, this is the time to understand. And I was deeply inspired by these texts I was reading, in the Hindu texts, and of course these Buddhist texts, which talked about freedom through these practices. And I was starting to taste it. And so then tasting it makes you want more, right? So, I started going on three month meditation retreats at Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts. I went on a nine month retreat there at a refuge they'd built in the forest. I went, traveled all through and did a pilgrimage, the holy, old school pilgrimage, and studied, and studied, and traveled all over, going to many teachings. And from a long time I followed the Dalai Lama, in New York, and San Jose, and back anywhere he went, even though I didn't even understand it, I was so drawn to monastics, monasticism. During that 10 years, I was always entertaining the idea of being a nun.
- [Steve] To be a nun in the more of the monastic tradition or as part of a larger community?
- [Spring] It just to be- just to practice with that level of devotion. However, it was always the needs of my community that would pull me out of that trance state of being like, I'm going off for myself, goodbye world, you know, and go to Burma, or go to Thailand, or go to Nepal. And, it was always the suffering of the people around me that would be like, it would somehow pull me out of that. I thought, well, maybe this lifetime, I'm really at service. Yeah, and then, I had no interest in teaching. They had to talk me into teaching. I've never, that was never my motivation. It was always just to be of service. And when I was younger, there was no teaching as a career like there is now. There wasn't like whole teachers coming up and being like, "I'm gonna base everything on a mindfulness teaching career." That didn't even exist. There was like three teachers, and they didn't look like they had any money, and they were working on donation. So, that wasn't an aspirational career. The teaching came out of me, just sitting there and being asked to share, and then being asked to share again. And then I started an organization in Oakland, all donation based. So, I never tried to become that. In fact, I've always pushed against it a little bit.
- [Steve] So, for the people who came to you, who showed up at your house in Oakland, were they doing that because had particular issues, problems that they were dealing with? what would you say was the attraction for the people?
- [Spring] I always was fascinated by that. They were really, really interested in working with their mind and also finding inner peace. Not long after that, we opened up East Bay Meditation Center, which was a nonprofit, donation based, generosity based economics. You know, it was basically like a Buddhist church, right? And we taught all classes constantly. I was a resident teacher. And everybody would walk through those doors, and I was always asking people and they would just like, I wanna be happy. I feel sad, I don't wanna feel this. And people were starting to equate it with their own mind. Like, there's a way I'm thinking, there's something I'm doing, there's something I'm not relating to my emotions. People knew suffering, they didn't have the words to describe their experience. And when I was able to give language to it, it was like, oh! these are the four noble truths. This is how you be with pain. This is how you be mindful of terror. This is how you, you know, I was teaching all this skills in a way that came straight out of the Buddhist tradition, and people needed those skills.
- [Steve] Why do you think that mindfulness healing work is so effective in dealing with people's unhappiness, with their suffering? What is that doing for people? How does that open people up?
- [Spring] It gives people a way, to compassionately deal with their own mind states, bodily sensations and emotions. They need a practice of liberation. We need a practice of freedom. We practice mindfulness every day to be sane. They wanted to be there, right? And this was the technique, that is so old, right? 2,500 years old, is this vipasana, clear seeing meditation. And I would teach them, this is a lineage, this isn't New Age guys. This is not what you, you know, 'cause a lot of people, they had to know it was rooted in a powerful lineage. And this isn't something we invented yesterday. And that, you know, that there's a long history. And I began to teach the lineage and people began to study that. And they found a lot of relief. I always tell people to look at the Buddha as a psychiatrist. Like, who doesn't need a good psychiatrist right now at a call? This is gonna be your psychiatrist, you're gonna call them once a week, and you're gonna look at your mind, and you're going to try to feel better.
- [Steve] And what is your, I assume you have a daily practice.
- [Spring] I do.
- [Steve] And can you summarize what you do?
- [Spring] Yeah, so I think, you know, it kind of vacillates, and sometimes it's a less steady than others. But usually, every day, I try to sit for 30 minutes, and I try to do a physical movement practice as a minimum. And for me, it's like food. It's just, I notice if I go two days or three days, I notice that my happiness level isn't the same. I notice that I'm not flowing with things, right? I'm starting to get graspy, resistance, resisting everything. Just, the being alive, waking up out of bed and going, no, I don't want this. Not even knowing what I'm saying no to, you know? It's just like a no to existing. And then, often I do heart practices. I also do mantra practice a lot. So, I'll take periods of day where I'll do heart mantras "Om Mani Padme Hum", which is the compassion mantra. And then, all throughout my day, and I'm not kidding, I try to practice awareness of my body, to try to keep my presence in my body. 'Cause I'm moving fast, I'm working a lot. So, when I get up and down, I try to remember, feel your feet. I was doing, all yesterday at the airport. I was practicing on the way over. I was doing mantra on the plane. And if I didn't do that, I wouldn't feel joyful.
- [Steve] So, I wanna pick up your personal story. So, you had developed your own Buddhist practice, basically as a teacher. You were well known, recognized, at some point you shifted direction and got interested in psychedelics, in plant medicines. How did that happen?
- [Spring] Well, I think what happened was, after really, really practicing seriously for 10 years and on the Buddhist path, and using all the practices, I was on a long retreat. I'll never forget it, it was when Obama was elected. So, I knew it was 2008. I was doing concentration practices, and I fell into a very deep trauma spiral. Now, they didn't know a lot about trauma, like they know now. You wouldn't believe it. It has been like, a liberation of insight and growth on trauma. But in 2008, when meditators lost it, they were told to just calm down and go back and meditate. Or they were told to get off meditation for a day, go for a walk, eat heavy, and then you'll be- And also those people who had to leave meditation retreats due to trauma. I knew a lot I hadn't processed, but I didn't know that then. I thought I had cleared the decks, And, you know-
- [Steve] I mean, it's so interesting to hear you say that. I mean, here you had been teaching for, I mean, you sort of become this master teacher yourself. And yet, this stuff started bubbling up for you.
- [Spring] Oh my gosh, it did. And I was ashamed at that time. I remember I was finalizing my teacher training. I was supposed to have all the answers. I had a center was right when "Occupy Oakland" was going on. I remember just all these things where I had to be this super leader, right? In the midst of it, have all the answers. And at that time in Oakland, a lot of our community was wild activists, you know? It's not easy to run that ship, it's not easy to steer it, right? You have people who are just, you know, so much energy. And, I fell apart in a way that I hadn't before. I was in terror and I left the retreat early, and I didn't realize I was disassociated at that time. Like, I had totally disassociated. And I was trying to understand my own trauma myself, because people didn't know what to do, and I felt deeply embarrassed to go to the teachers who had trained me and put me on this pedestal to be like, well, now I'm freaking out, and, you know, I was- I hid it. And so, I remember at that time, all that came to me. And that time, you need a shamanic intervention. I had no idea what that meant. And one of my very closest friends, dear friend of mine, who also serves medicine, and had just started working with it, I called her and she said, "I have been working with this plant called Ayahuasca, it's a vine, it grows in the jungle." And I thought, "Honey, what? This sounds so crazy." But I, at that moment was so down and out, if you would've told me any medicine I could take, that would help me with whatever this traumatic energy, 'cause I didn't understand what was happening. I understand why I couldn't sleep, and I was crying for hours, and I was losing all this weight, and I was shaking, and terrible memories were coming. I didn't know how to be with it. The first time my practice couldn't meet the moment, and that terrified me. It was like I had no boat and I'm in the ocean, suddenly my boat cracks, and you're like, now I have to swim? Where do you, you know, I had no refuge for my mind, I had relied so heavily on, I'll just open to it, sit on my cushion, and then it'll all work itself out. I couldn't do the practice. So, I ended up getting invited to do a ayahuasca ceremony in my darkest time, and that-
- [Steve] Where was that?
- [Spring] This was in Santa Cruz. And it was in Santa Cruz mountains with a couple of therapists and a guy who was really a beautiful healer from Puerto Rico, and he had been working with the medicine. And so, I had my dearest friend who was a psychologist singing to me, and I had this other person and we had this small group. And I'll never forget, in eight hours I learned more about my trauma and myself than I had in years. It was as if the door to all these questions, I couldn't even explain how profoundly liberating and helpful, and just, it was like healing the trauma. I was seeing it, I was understanding, 'cause when you don't understand something, you don't know how to be with it. I couldn't figure out why I was doing what I was doing. And I'm a leader and I'm- And the heavy weight of the teacher identity, was so unhelpful at that time. Because I was still only 35.
- [Steve] So, can can you take me there? I mean, you were so experienced, you know, as a-
- Yeah, as a meditator.
- [Steve] As a meditator yourself for years. I mean, you had been exploring your own mind, and yet this other experience with ayahuasca, did something different. And I guess I'm wondering what was the different thing that happened with Ayahuasca?
- [Spring] It was like, when I took the ayahuasca, like I hadn't even been in the game. It was like, I was sitting, wandering around the field. But now it was like, now you wanna get into the real awakening, liberation game. And it was as if, the medicine for me, helped me to understand that I always had this huge energetic component, and multidimensional level to my practice, that was kind of shunned by the western vipasana world. I was very, very good at Jhana practice and meditation, so that, because of that, I was kind of like a darling of the, you know, it is like if you're a math teacher, and you have a student who you're like, "Yay! they've got the formula" I taught 'em and they know it, right? And you, sort of look to them, and I had all this kind of concentration Jhana. And so, I had a lot of mystical experiences, but I didn't know how to make sense of those experiences, and neither did the guides, because they hadn't mapped that terrain themselves yet.
- [Steve] So, do you think that ayahuasca, I mean, clearly it opened up something for you. that you didn't have access to, just through meditation. And I guess I'm wondering, like, what is it about ayahuasca or your experience with it that did that, do you think?
- [Spring] Because Ayahuasca became like a teacher. Ayahuasca began to walk me through my experiences, and helped me integrate and open, and where things were not balanced, it balanced them, right? And I began to understand how karma and trauma really worked on my energetic body. Oh, this is how you release it. And then, I mean, my first ceremony, I saw I would go to Peru. I saw I would work with indigenous people. I was so curious about working with it from the source. Like, how does this work, this vine. I wanna see where it grew. I wanna see how they make, I don't believe it. How is this- I was so mystified. And that led me into doing many ceremonies. I started drinking the medicine all the time, and I was getting so much better. I started going down to the Amazon, and I was staying at different Shipibo places, with women healers and working with the medicine. And I was just, it was like a growth spurt, that I couldn't even believe of understanding. Everything that I understood intellectually with Buddhism, nothing had been integrated deeply. It was a little bit there, it was like 5%. Now we were like, going all the- it was like I was embodying it. And because I had so many years of practice, I was really good at ayahuasca ceremonies. The wildest, screaming, craziest, that's why I ended up living at a Shipibo healing center for a year and did great.
- [Steve] Because it's really scary for a lot people.
- [Spring] It can be scary for a lot of people.
- [Steve] But that it wasn't for you.
- [Spring] It wasn't for me because I relied on everything I saw. It was almost like this Buddha would come into my head, and say, everything here, let it go. Arise, pass, feel. Really, it was almost like this inner coach, through every ceremony. It was like, this is all just a dream, now this is terror and terror looks like this. It was like every teaching I had absorbed by, all the Jack, and Ajahn Sumedho, Ajahn Amaro, all my Ajahns that I used to study. It was like there were, everything was alive, and that, I could pull from that toolbox. And I kept pulling from it, and it made me accelerate in my ceremonies in a way, because then I'm working with the plant. A lot of people, when you're terrified, you go in as an unwilling participant, and you're just kind of in the fetal position screaming your way through it. That's one way to get through a ceremony. But I would really try to sit up and be fully, I was interested in what was going on. It was like, to me, the ceremonies became ultimate meditation practice. And I was so fascinated.
- [Steve] When you say working with the plant, I mean you felt the intelligence of the plant.
- [Spring] Absolutely. I felt that I was in the presence of a very powerful, not only doctor, but a very powerful teacher. And the teacher was teaching me through all of the imagery that I already knew, right? It was using everything I had stored up, to show me, how suffering is caused and how it ends. It was using all, it was like I had this library of all this Buddhist doctrine, and imagery, and experiences, and it was showing me in my own, previous, or my, you know, at the time, I've never not been Buddhist. It was showing me how to heal myself through that lens. It was showing me how to master the eightfold path, how to walk the dharma path. And so, for me, I loved it. I never saw it as not dharma. Every ceremony, I was so- I had so much gratitude, it was never boring. And I always saw, I had this connection with this plant that was unbelievable. And when I started living with indigenous people, because they had a worldview like that, I resonated with them. They were like, yeah, this is a doctor, and this tree is a doctor spirit, and you could talk to this spirit. I sort of melded in that world very comfortably. I was like, yeah, I have to get used to no electricity, and showers in the river, and giant tarantulas. It was like- But that felt secondary to the inner growth that I was experiencing far. For me, that was the easy part, was the lifestyle of living in the, Shipibos in the jungle.
- [Steve] You're listening to Luminous, our podcast about psychedelics from, "To The Best Of Our Knowledge." I'm talking with Spring Washam, a Buddhist teacher and a healer who works with plant medicines. I'm Steve Paulson. Did you try to figure out, or did you have thoughts about what or who this plant was? I mean this intelligence, I mean, who do you think you were communicating, whether who was teaching you?
- [Spring] That was the endless speculation. And at times I got suspicious, you know, I don't know, maybe I should stop this and go back to just- It's just, only should be talking to Buddhas, and Bodhisattvas and awakened beings. And sometimes I was like, who do you think this is? If you believe in Jesus, and I'm Jesus, you believe in Mohammed? I'm Mohammed. I am the higher consciousness. And now, where I come with that, and I used to talk to the indigenous people about this, and they would tell me, "You're talking to Pachamama, that's who you're talking to. You're talking to nature, you're talking to the consciousness." They just looked at it like that, you're talking to the universal intelligence. You're talking to source, you know? And now, I really look at it as this, I've come, and this is where I am at this moment, it could change, obviously with more information, I'm in a growth process. I really look at it as, I am talking to the part of my mind that's already awake. It's trying to wake up the part that's lost still, and confused. And it's always kind of breaking out of storylines, you know, constructs.
- [Steve] So, how long did you go down to the Amazon? How many years were you doing this?
- [Spring] Oh wow. I would say my biggest stint down there was from 2007, until 2021.
- [Steve] Oh wow. So, many years. And for just like a trip at a time, or were you, did you spend some time down there?
- [Spring] I, for a lot of that time, when I started my organization, because when I lived with the Shipibos for a year in the jungle, I saw so many miracles. 'Cause it was like I was a nurse, I was an apprentice. I was at all the ceremonies. Helping them, helping the people, calming people down, teaching mindfulness. You know, that's the training, was to watch how these medicines affected people from all over the world, healing from everything. Autoimmune disease, cancers, all kinds of mental health disorders, all kinds of addictions. And I saw so many miracles, when I left there in 2015, I wanted a Buddhist organization, 'cause I miss Buddhism. I had involved myself so deep in that world, that now I was like, now I want both of them together.
- [Steve] Well, and I wanna ask you about that, because as you know, there's this big split, among, I mean, there's not just a single Buddhist community, there are lots of Buddhist communities, on psychedelics.
- [Spring] I know, I know.
- [Steve] You know, and some Buddhists say, no, this is like sort of a violation of Buddhist principles, bringing in these, you know, these other substances, and for other Buddhists, why not? I mean, if this helps you get to deeper truths- and how do you navigate that terrain?
- [Spring] Well, I've always just surrendered to both truths being equal, and valid, and going- And that's what, kind of drove people a little crazy about me in the beginning is, when I was pulled in front of the elders council, and they're like-
- [Spring] Did you have to feel like, you couldn't tell your Buddhist friends that you were-
- For a long time-
- for doing Ayahuasca?
- [Spring] I did not tell them because, I would just say, "I'm going on retreat". And I would stay in a jungle a month or two month, and I would literally would do the ceremonies and meditate in jungle most of the time and do yoga, right? I was doing a retreat, but, yeah, I did because it was so controversial. People were so afraid. And there still is this fear that's kind of, we're coming out from the cloud of it, but I think it was just a lot of fear around indigenous people, a lot of fear around losing control or- But I went through a lot, I was always getting in front of the elders council. I had teachers filing complaints on me when I would do public talks. People demanded I took my website down. It was okay for them when I was doing it for my own mental health, my own wellbeing, and I didn't talk about it. But when I decided to open a retreat center and bring, and live in the jungle six months of the year, and then six months in California and do my retreats, so now, imagine I'm a new teacher, right? I'm a black teacher. I'm already like the youngest, the black, or the only, like, to come on this council of elders that had been together. They were already like, "Okay, we opened the door, and now you're gonna do your retreats in the jungle with ayahuasca, after we train you for 10 years", right? And I was like, "Yeah, isn't it a great idea?" I know, I know, and they were like, no, that's not- and I was still teaching.
- [Steve] Did you push back when they said that?
- [Spring] Yeah, I didn't, but I never pushed back hard because, I really understood the concern. They were like, somebody could die or this could happen. I thought, you're right. This isn't Theravada Buddhism. I was like, you're right. On these nights, we're not doing classic Theravada Buddhism, I would agree. We're gonna drink ayahuasca on, you know, instead of dharma talk on this night, this night we are gonna do these ceremonies. But, I think on some deeper level there was some trust, 'cause they didn't just fire me, or kick me out, or denounce me. And then there was a group of people that really fought for it. We were a small mighty few that were like, no, we will, this has some real validity. And because of those teachers, because they were also some of the founders, they kind of allowed for me to stay. But I think that my reputation was tarnished. And even though I never fought back. I told them, "I will do my retreats, I will keep my website, and I will never change my biography." And I've always encouraged these organizations, go with the wave, why don't we open to it? You know, instead of maybe shutting down. And so, there's various concerns around that. But I've deeply respected everyone's view. I've always said, thank you for sharing. I've answered every questions, I've protected myself with legal things, I've done everything, I did all the work in South America, so there wouldn't be an issue of, you're doing something illegal, 'cause it's totally legal in Peru. So, I did all those requests, and then at the end of the day, I have to live my life. And so I ended up, only recently in the last couple of years, I ended up trying retreats in Costa Rica. And then, I started slowly making my way back to like, being rooted in North America for this time. Like, you know, I thought I would live in Peru or Costa Rica, but, I feel like more and more, how I got to Atlanta as I rooted down there, and it feels like the right time with this whole psychedelic movement.
- [Steve] I wanna come back to that, how you got to Atlanta, but- So, when you were doing these retreats, were you melding, combining, sort of, you know, working with ayahuasca, with your Buddhist practice? Sort of like-
- Yeah, absolutely.
- [Steve] In what way did they work together, or are they complimentary?
- [Spring] For many years, up until very recently, I led 14 day retreats, and I would make five ceremonies, six ceremonies, depending on the group. And on our off days we had dharma talks, meditation throughout, studying, we would have all these amazing, different Buddhist text available, and we would do dharma reflection, and so, at the beginning of the retreat, when they would arrive, we would take the precepts. And then, during the ceremonies themselves, I would often co-lead the ceremonies with the Shipibo maestro. So, it was always also a lot of Amazonian influences. We would be doing all the healing work, and flower bath, and all the things that was required for Ayahuasca retreat. But I would be reminding them, we'd have dharma talks before the ceremonies, reminding them on Bodhicitta, or to compassion, or I would think, okay, tonight we're focusing on the first level of mindfulness, first foundation, embodiment, let's come back. And I would help people get in their bodies during the ceremonies, right? And I'd remind, in the middle of the ceremony, I would stop and say, "Feel your breath. Sit up, if you can't claim your body, feel your body, bring your awareness fully in." And so, that began to infuse, right? Everything had a weave, and people would say that, oh, the dharma teaching yesterday was so alive in me during the ceremony. So, for me that was just natural because that was were my practice is. I generally was just doing what I felt in the moment. And then I had no idea so many people were gonna like it, and be like, coming on board for the- even people that weren't even Buddhists were like, I'm really into this Buddhist thing. I'll be like, "You weren't Buddhist", you know? And they're like, "No, but I am now".
- [Steve] And you know, what you said, I mean, it makes so much sense what you're saying. I mean, why not draw the best from different traditions? And yet, there's so often resistance to this kind of thing. And I guess I'm sort of wondering why, is it that there is, I mean for a lot of people there's sort of, a purity in a particular tradition, or I don't know, integrity of a particular, you know, you don't want to kind of dumb it down, or sort of, corrupt it in some way. Like, why aren't more people bringing together different traditions if they work?
- [Spring] Well, I was influenced by Santo Daime, the Christian Ayahuasca church in Brazil. And that's all over the world now. The Catholic- I think they're more of a Catholic, but they were blending Christianity with ayahuasca. How wonderful, right? I was like, I didn't feel that, what they did was wrong, and nobody else, and it was legal in the US. So, I was influenced by them. I was like, well, why can't we have a Buddhist, ayahuasca ceremony? That was so great. Then that ticks my box, right? Because I'm already doing that. And I used to give medicine, and I remember coming back from a lot of my Peru trips, I would bring medicine back with me, and I would share it with my Buddhist friends. And we used to call ourselves the shamanistic, shamanic Buddhist. We had a little club and we met like once a month, and we would drink the medicine, and we would take refuge and we would pray, and then we would talk about Buddhism at the end of the ceremony and be like, the nature of mind- And we would have these like, debates about philosophy, you know, emptiness and form. And, who is ayahuasca? It's a . It's- I loved it. It was so my thing. So, I think there's a fear around ayahuasca being appropriated in a totally different way. And even though it's kind of normalized with the Daime church, because it's been around a hundred years almost, you know, it's like a long time, right? But there's also a fear in Buddhism where it's like the fifth precept, which is around this idea of non-intoxicant, and taking intoxicants that cloud their mind. This is the big debate about, are plant medicines and psychedelics intoxicants, or are they liberatory? Do they cloud the mind or do they awaken the mind? Because clouding the mind is very different than awakening. Alcohol is not liberating. I am not into that, as far as like, drinking heavily on my retreats, but, that's a different association when we talk about intoxicant versus a medicine. And so, I think for a lot of people who have never done any of it, that conversation for them is unclear.
- [Steve] Are there different metaphysical systems here as well? I mean, when I think of ayahuasca, and sort of the traditions that you've been talking about, the plant as teacher really, communicating with this, I don't know if spirit world is the right word. Is that also true? I mean, Buddhism is a big tent, a lot of different Buddhist traditions, but, is there that same sense of spirit world in the Buddhist traditions that you've worked in?
- [Spring] Yes. I think for all of our, in the Buddhist traditions, I think what happens though again, with a lot of these traditions, when they meet the western science world, they become deeply secular, right? So then, pretty soon Buddhism gets stripped out of the magic and it just becomes fixated on what, mindfulness, right? And science.
- Right, Right.
- [Spring] And brain imagery. And all the magic of the whole lineage somehow, and all the texts, and the suttas, oh my God, if you read the Pali Canon, which is the short, middle, and long discourses, it's full of magic. It's like what? They built this bridge, and they went up to the God realm, and gave the Buddha's mom medicine, and drove back and then they were here. I mean, it's like, oh my God.
- [Steve] I mean, it's so interesting you say that because you know, there are all these people who are, you know, very sort of, believe in western science and all of this, and say, you know, Buddhism is the one spiritual tradition that the atheists love.
- [Spring] Exactly. Because they haven't read it really. They've just been doing certain practices, and you can focus on aspects of it. And the great thing about Buddhism, it's like a buffet. You take what you need, and you can leave the rest and get by, right? You don't have to eat every dish there to have a nice dinner. You can just take a little this, a little that, a little this, and you can go a long way, and feel a lot of happiness, and a lot of joy, and a lot of peace and contentment. However, if you want to open up to the true nature of this world, I mean, even in the suttas of the Great Night of Enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, they said they- We called a 10,000 world system, of seeing everything, a 10,000 world system. And we know the universe, even every day they're finding universes on top of universes on- This thing is a lot bigger than any of us know. So, to hold on to any narrow view, and to go, I know what this is, and it's that, you know, I feel like we're constantly breaking that, we're breaking that, and we're breaking that. So, I just invite people to take what you need, and if you don't wanna know all the mystical things, or you don't wanna believe that, you know, you don't have to subscribe to that to practice. You could just follow a simple path, of just looking, working with your own heart and mind, and doing the best you can to be here. And you know what, and that's great. I mean, most people aren't even doing that. They're not waking up every day trying to be a good person. I mean, I celebrate anybody who's on any path of like, do no harm and actually try to be present.
- [Steve] So you mentioned that, you are now living in Atlanta.
- Yes.
- [Steve] Which seems, like a different world than, everything than you've been talking about up until now. So, how did you end up living there?
- [Spring] I mean, I could really tell you it was Harriet Tubman. Yeah, I wrote a book about Harriet Tubman during 2020, had this whole very profound connection to that ancestor, and wrote all about it, in a book called, "The Spirit of Harriet Tubman".
- [Steve] Why Harriet Tubman? What drew you to her?
- [Spring] Honestly, I've always admired Harriet Tubman, but I was never like obsessed on Harriet Tubman. I was, who didn't like Harriet Tubman? I was like, oh my God, this woman, underground railroad. I mean, I think-
- [Steve] Who kept going back down to the South-
- [Spring] Went back down and then fought in the war, and then like, you know, five minutes a year, we all had a Harriet Tubman picture, and go around for black history month in February, and that was it. I had that, I learned, right that little bit. But no, Harriet kind of showed up for me in 2020. I started to have all these mystical experiences, and Harriet was like, coming, and the spirit of Harriet, and it stayed with me since then. I feel like it's been a guiding ancestor.
- [Steve] Wow, that is fascinating.
- [Spring] Yeah, there's a whole realm in that. I write all of it in the book. And I'm still making sense of that, my connection.
- [Steve] When you say she showed up to you, what do you mean?
- [Spring] Well, she first showed up in a very powerful dream, rescuing me. And then, when every time I did any ceremony, in any way, Harriet was the theme of the entire ceremony, and was guiding me, and talking to me, and helping me, and sharing, and basically was showing me, our connection, and showing me about writing this book, about her heart. That she was unknown as a great spiritual being. She was known only in one context because, I was, you know, so, I said, okay, I'll write this. And I was, at the time, during the lockdown, I was doing the Church of Harriet Tubman online, and inspiring people with messages and teachings. And, so that book came out, and I was still determined to move to Costa Rica, to my paradise, outside of the US, 'cause I thought the US is so traumatic. No, no, no. But, it was always this narrative in the back of my mind. Like, no, no, you go to the South. And I had never even gone to Georgia, only one time. And it was this project now is about, being some kind of presence there. I'm, you know, starting a whole project there-
- [Steve] Wait, wait, can you describe the project that you're doing there?
- [Spring] Yeah, so again, it's this bridging of these worlds, right? And we're talking about Buddhism and plant medicine, and people ask me to guide them in ceremonies. And that, I love to do, and I sing, and I play music, and I have my cosmic band, and we do heart prayers and practices. It's my favorite thing to do. It's one of my favorite things to do.
- [Steve] Can I just say though, it's one thing to lead ayahuasca ceremonies in Peru or in Costa Rica. To do it in Georgia, that's a different thing.
- [Spring] I know, and I've been very nervous about that, and trying to understand. And so, I spent a lot of time, we worked with lawyers, and we got our church, right? And our church, and then I started a 501C3 connected to that, so I could do all the meditation, the yoga, I could build out a retreat center, and then, all in through our church is our sacramental work that's protected. So, we founded our church as an ayahuasca church.
- [Steve] So this is legal, what you're doing there.
- [Spring] This is. The word legal, through the church, yes. Because, the good thing about Georgia, what's kind of hysterically funny about these southern states, is they've given all this power to the churches, like this unimaginable amount of power. And they opened up a huge back door to medicine churches. So now you have the Mushroom Church of God, the Mushroom Church of Mary, all these churches are popping up in North Carolina and Georgia, a lot. Areas where you have these people are saying, religious freedom, this is our religious freedom, these are our ancestors, we have a right. And so, we are going through on that religious freedom law, and following the peyote, Native American churches, and following in these other churches, that are getting DEA exemptions.
- [Steve] What does it take to start a church? I mean, what qualifies you to start a church that is actually gonna be recognized by the legal authorities?
- [Spring] Well, apparently not a lot in Georgia. And that's why you have a lot of these quack churches. And I think they wanted to empower a lot of these, like white supremacy, kind of these QAnon type churches. They were giving a lot of power to that. I am considered Buddhist clergy, that has been my tax identification status for a long time before I started going to Peru. And then my co-partner is, a beautiful teacher named Lama Rod Owens, who went to three year retreat in the Karma Kagyu lineage, and graduated with a Master's in Harvard Divinity, he considers himself a preacher. So, this is a co-founding of both being black Buddhist ministers and mystics. So, this was very new in Georgia, so I'm taking my time, you know, all the legal, paperworks found to, all the doctrine, and we're slowly gonna be moving into presenting programs, but it won't just be medicine, medicine, medicine. It's medicine in a mandala, right, of other holistic healing practices.
- [Steve] So, I'm guessing, that the community that you're working with in Atlanta, is quite different than what you were doing in California. Or maybe not, I don't know.
- Well, I think-
- [Steve] So, I mean, because you said there was a reason that you felt like you needed to move to the South.
- [Spring] Yeah, there's like a lot of need for healing racialized trauma, and Southern trauma, ancestral trauma. I was always really like, oh, that's too hard. Yeah, yeah, that's too hard. It's too triggering. But then, with the health of Harriet Tubman, I was like, well, you've gotta be strong, and you know how to work with these medicines and people need safe places to heal this energy. And it's really deep, the stories. And I wanna start telling them, meeting these young people who have been beaten up by police or their family's murdered, in jail, just like, a lot of racism directed at them, and their terror of living a normal life, feeling that they can be themselves. It's like, wow, it's really a lot stronger in the southern part of Alabama. You know, I'm only an hour from Montgomery. That just seems like, the cradle of the confederacy. It's like, wow, I can't believe I'm here, and gonna talk about healing work. We're calling our community a little bit more black centered, but inclusive of all beings. So, it's like, if you were gonna go to a black church, you could go to a black church, there's always a lot of other people in black churches, but it has that feeling. So, I wanna center blackness so that, people who are there feel that they're being witnessed, seen. The set and the setting is comfortable. And also, a lot of those communities in the South, they like churches. They've organized in churches, the civil rights movement came out of a church. They feel safe and protected inside church energy. So, I realized that, a lot of the songs then now take on a gospel sound, like just what's emanating, the land pulls it out of me.
- [Steve] Yeah, so you said, your first thought was, oh my god, like, using plant medicines to work with racialized trauma, that sounded too hard. And somehow you decided-
- Yeah, like it was a hard-
- [Steve] So, how do you think you'll approach it? Or are you approaching it now to use these psychoactive substances to deal with this really?
- [Spring] Go right into it.
- [Steve] It's not just, sort of personal, it's historical too.
- [Spring] Yeah, and it's my own family. It's my father, it is my, you know, I'm biracial. My mother's white, my father's African American, but they were subjected to hell. The stories, my grandmother, it is like, oh my gosh, you know? So, these are stories that I know well, and have led to a lot of suffering, you know, unresolved trauma in the family. You know, I thought it was gonna be really heavy. And on one side it is, right? But then, it turns into this incredible joy, The ceremonies, they started off weeping and tears, and we're in the mud and it's like, oh my gosh. And, you know, and everyone, we're holding people, and singing over them, and it's like so hard, right? And those moans, and the groans, and the pain, and the memories and- but as it starts to lift, then, this joy I've never known before. It's just like, at the end we're just singing and we're all, and it's like, that, it's so good. Oh, this is a payoff. We're like, we're gonna go into the bottom of the hole and we're like, oh, and we're gonna clean and we're gonna- And we're all rocking like, oh, holding each other, and so sick, and this, and, you know, feeling everything that the psyche is holding right? But doing it together gives tremendous power. You need all the people together, you need their bodies close together. You know, it's like a movement of energy and it's lifting. And what I notice also, when it lifts, it lifts everybody.
- [Steve] I have to say, this is so inspiring. I mean, just kind of amazing what you're doing. So, thank you.
- [Spring] Aw, you're so welcome. I love talking about it. It brings me a lot of joy. It makes me cry, 'cause I just also think like, I just wanna be a force of good. And so many people do too in this psychedelic movement. So many healers and therapists and people trying, and I don't know if we can make this turn without the use of all these medicines. I think we need them. They're here right now, they're trying to be used, they're trying to, you know, like, hi, you know, they're trying to magnify themselves. And I just- So I just pray constantly for the legality and he conscious use of these, and the wisdom keepers to come forward, and people to begin to hold these and so we can help people, so-
- [Steve] Thank you.
- [Spring] Thank you.
- [Steve] That's Spring Washam, a Buddhist teacher and healer who works with plant medicines. She's one of the founding teachers of the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, and the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys. You'll find more interviews on the science and philosophy of psychedelics on our website at ttbook.org/luminous. And I hope you're subscribing to the Luminous podcast feed, where you'll meet a lot of amazing people, including Gul Dolen, the neuroscientist, who's given MDMA to octopuses. Erik Davis talking about the history of LSD in the psychedelic underground, and Brian Muraresku, unpacking the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece. "Luminous" is produced in Madison, Wisconsin. Joe Hartke is our technical director, Sarah Hopeful did the sound design for this episode. And Angelo Bautista is our digital producer. I'm Steve Paulson. Be well, and join us again next time. PRX.
