5 Timeless Insights of Dale Pendell

The emerging theme of posts and interviews with herbalists, ethnobotanists, anthropologists, shamans and other plant gurus, is a friendly reminder we are all shamans coming into our own. One is not experiencing the ultimate metamorphosis without growing aware of the initially misunderstood or unrecognized within and about ourselves. Ah-ha moments are triggered in different ways. Check our related interview with Dr. Rick Strassman too.

It feels perfect to offer timeless insights shared by Dale Pendell (left his body January 2018).  American author, ethnobotanist, and magician, he creatively combined science and poetry to describe the relationship and dialogue between psychoactive drugs and human beings. Among other works, he is known for the Pharmako Trilogy Series.  These and his other books offer poetic delivery of knowledge that registers on deeper levels than can be directly accessed. Dale has been gifted to share in-roads to universal knowing. Ponder how you relate to these five timeless insights:

1. If you access inner magic, you are vulnerable to it.

Magic is a term used until that moment when more of the expansive energetic workings of universal consciousness is grasped and understood through direct experience.  Its like magic guides unravelling the thread of yourself, encountering knots (perceived obstacles and personality), then moving along until you reach the end of the thread and finally, nothing.  Being in a trance is the feeling of alignment, allowing one to see things as they are.  So often, humans are trained to 'snap out of it' and shift unconsciously back into world of maya (illusion). The key is to be a conscious worldbridger.  True Magic is not about rituals, spells, illusion or manipulation.  Inner Magic is the Divine Science of Creation and mastering this is self-mastery.

2. Energy flows through everything and each substance is a song one can tune into

This implies every substance, whether perceived as legal or illegal, offers a key to accessing more of our own core vibration.  Whatever we ingest is speaking to and through us as it flows, creating or breaking down blocks we create or imagine into being. In Dale's books, he masterfully shares different perspectives on plant substances as if each is alive and speaking musically to the Soul.  Samples he explores include; Opium, Cannabis, Alcohol (beer, wine, distilled spirits), Absinthe, Salvia, Tobacco, Nitrous, Kava Kava, as well as fossil fuel, coffee, tea, chocolate, and coca (and its derivatives) and empathogens (notably Ecstasy). Water itself is pure or polluted and affectes consciousness at every level.

3. Our existence here rests on many lives who have gone before us

Many beings have lived, suffered, and died, those seen and unseen, known and unknown, including micro-organisms, plants and animals.  All of it creates the air that we breathe, flows into the water we drink, merges with the light that sustains us, the soil and more. So every moment of existence is a gift of countless generations that have provided it.

4.  True magic is not self-centred 

Ego-driven endeavours do not allow one to experience the harmonious music of the universe. Call it the music of the spheres or what you choose. This requires surrender, like releasing a bird. Pendell shares that dangerous magic is when you’re trying to get something for yourself; that’s a binding magic. Recall the idiom "the goal is to free yourself from the ties that bind the mind.' The best unbinding magic is invisible, there’s nothing there that anything can catch or grasp it.

5. One does not have to ingest plant substances to communicate with them.

One can use plant substances as purifiers, offerings, in other capacities, and also commune with them in natural settings.  This is why it is common to shift state of mind and state of being when spending time in nature.  What is unfolding energetically is not always registered by the physical senses.  Accessing altered states of consciousness allows one to encounter and interact with the Spirit World and channel these transcendental energies into ordinary reality. Plants can facilitate this process in a conscious individual yet tuning into yourself is also possible.  To be truly aware is to commune with everything consciously now.