.

That's how it strikes me as well - although the motivation may be different. Dogma is dogma. For me, if someone can give clear, concise, and lucid reasoning as to their insistence, I'll usually listen with an open mind. However, if they take the hokum and hex route of "because it's always been so" or "the spirits will it that way".... well then I'm apt to smile, bow respectfully, and politely sidestep the advice.

What pup said ^

Everyone has their own complex conceptual framework through which they view these experiences/topics, and traditional healers- despite their vast knowledge store and so on- are no different in that regard.

I think by now its very clear that many westerners can and do benefit from taking these things outside of the traditional contexts that have been employed throughout the past . Just do what feels best for you.

Although I do somewhat agree with them in that i think ritual/ceremonies in general, whether just something you do yourself or ones that align to a traditional context, can be incredibly powerful and useful ways to approach these things...and as they say can help navigate around/through some of the darker doors that can potentially be opened up (which is also where a skilled shaman can be handy, to pull you pack down and ground/protect you)....But you don't need trip with shamans or follow any groups style in order to do things ceremoniously, since it can be done yourself. Not to discount the knowledge, skill, and usefulness of legit shamans here, but its sometimes puzzling when people say things like "ONLY take it with a shaman" or "ONLY take it this way" etc, because how do they think people originally learned to work with these plant teachers in the first place?

Ayahuasca in the united states, in w/e context will not be ayahuasca in the amazon. Peyote in a teepee in Alberta will not be peyote in it's desert homelands.

I believe that there is a dreamtime..everywhere that is connected to the land. I believe that indigenous peoples have always been the custodians of that dreamtime. We all have ancestral heritage in this practice, somewhere..even Europeans.

I don't call my home "north America"..Because I don't believe that I live in North America. I live on turtle island, because that is what it is called. It is following the traditions of my ancestors to do so.. I am not first nations..however, it was always very taboo among the European tribes to come to a new land and not address the local land spirits..the nosre would remove the dragon heads from the ships bow as they came upon new lands so as to not frighten the local spirits, who they would always address and respect and would wish to learn as much as they could about the local spirits. This is how it was. Turtle Island is the name of the land given by the ones who speak with the land. "America"..well do I even need to get into that? To even call this place America to me is offensive to the land.

The first nations peoples of my home have mythologies, songs, languages and acknowledge local spirits of this land. For me to ignore this, which for me is a living reality, would be asinine.

Following this paradigm, it also makes perfect sense to me that what comes through an ayahuasca dream or peyote vision for the collective is going to be that which resonates with that land. The stories, the songs, the ceremonies..the entire cosmology is morphically aligned with the land. This is, IMO how it always was..and still is for some.

Take peyote out of that context..take it to Europe for instance..is that really the same thing? IMO..no. No it is not. Is it still healing? Yes...but it's peyote in a new land..a land with different stories, different songs..different ceremonies..building up a morphic resonation takes time. How would you like to immigrate somewhere and be condemned to only speaking your native traditional tounge?

It makes little sense to me to worry too much about "tradition" with something that is totally removed from the traditional context..how can you have that context without the land which breathed the whole thing into being?

You ever wonder whats going on in the dreamtime? How do local manitous relate to the more recent middle kingdom beings that must have come over with the Europeans? How does a dryad of the oak feel paired next to an ancient redwood?..what about all the other races? How do you deal with local land spirits while trying to accomidate "traditions" from an entirely different land?

I think the real issue is that we forgot how to see. We don't feel the land..we worry about traditions we don't even understand.

I am an import seeking to become feral in this new land. I have to straddle two worlds..the dreamtime of my ancestors, and that of the peoples who have been the custodians of this land for a long long long time. I have to find my own way to navigate this place in a way that is coherent with all of it.

Everything is changing.

That was not an answer to your question BTW..just highlighting some issues that come to mind in the wake of these kinds of issues. It really is more complex than just doing it traditionally.

Unfortunately many of us will not be invited to participate in traditional indigenous ceremonies. In most western countries the indigenous customs have been pretty well systematically stamped out; and understandably, those that remain are wary of having their tradtions usurped and commodified. This leaves the sincerely seeking gringo with the options of taking it into their own hands and doing it at home by themselves or jet-setting halfway across the world to the Amazon basin (or Gabon or Oaxaca etc..) to participate in the usurping and commodifying of their traditions in the form of 4 figure retreats so we can obtain our metaphorical traditional indigenous ceremony merit badge.

There most assuredly is something to be said for having a guide with the lineage of 10,000 generations of unbroken teachings behind them. I have no doubt a competent curer can navigate and guide one through these spaces with a level of efficiency and precision far beyond that of the solo explorer. However if the experience of taking the vine (or the cactus or the mushroom or the root etc...) and experiencing the Gaian consciousness must come at the expense of the planet, the people, and the traditional way of life, then the harm of chasing a traditional ceremony far outweighs the benefit.

While there is much to be said for the wisdom of ancient traditions handed down from antiquity, I would say that today we have a distinct advantage over the healers of olde. With the internet and web forums where we can connect with thousands of other seekers and share experiences, advice, techniques, and tools; we are able to carve out our own culture and create our own traditions. I personally believe the collected wisdom, experience, and knowledge of sites like dmt-nexus, ayahuasca.com, erowid and the like dwarf those of any single shaman no matter how experienced and well trained.