What Are We Really Looking For?
Updated: 4 hours ago
Psychedelics, Entheogens, and the Return to Nature’s Intelligence
More people than ever are turning toward psychedelics and plant medicines. This isn’t a trend; it is a response.
The real question is not what substances are people taking.The real question is what are we seeking?
We are seeking relief from anxiety, grief, trauma, and chronic stress. We are seeking resolution from feelings of deep disconnection and spiritual confusion. We are looking for meaning. We want to feel something real again. We are seeking reconnection to the body, to meaning, to something larger than our isolated minds. We are seeking coherence.
Many of us have tried therapy, medication, self-development, or spiritual practice. Some of it helped. Some of it did not. Yet a quiet sense remains that something essential is missing.
What I see in my clinical and spiritual work is not pathology. It is sensitivity. Our nervous systems are becoming more permeable. Our perception is widening. The old strategies of coping through numbing, overriding the body, and pushing through are failing.
Collectively, we have reached a threshold. Enough is enough. Disconnection from the body, nature, and truth is no longer sustainable. When the psyche can no longer suppress what wants to be felt, it seeks reorganisation.
Sometimes that reorganization comes through stillness, breath, or prayer. And sometimes it comes through the living intelligence of Nature.
Important note: This article is not here to persuade you to work with plant medicines. It’s here to offer clarity, discernment, and grounded education for those who are already drawn and want to approach this terrain with integrity.
Psychedelic versus Entheogenic
Why Language Matters
The word psychedelic was coined in 1956 by psychiatrist Humphry Osmond. It comes from two Greek roots:
• psyche meaning “soul,” “spirit,” or “mind”
• dēloun meaning “to make visible,” “to reveal,” or “to manifest”
Combined, psychedelic literally means “mind revealing” or “soul manifesting.” Ultimately, it translates to “that which makes the psyche visible.”
The term was chosen to describe substances that bring unconscious material into conscious awareness through altered states. Today, psychedelic broadly refers to substances that significantly alter perception, cognition, mood, and sense of self across recreational, clinical, spiritual, and experimental settings.
The word entheogen was coined in 1979 by a group of scholars including R. Gordon Wasson, Carl A. P. Ruck, and Jonathan Ott as an alternative to the word psychedelic.
It is derived from three Greek components:
• en meaning “within”
• theos meaning “god” or “divine”
• genesthai meaning “to become” or “to generate”
An accurate translation is “that which generates the divine within”.
The term was created to emphasize sacred or ritual use, distinguishing traditional sacramental context from recreational or purely psychological framing. Today, entheogen refers to substances approached ceremonially and relationally, often with an emphasis on reverence, ritual container, and transpersonal experience rather than simply altered perception.
The distinction matters because language shapes posture.
Psychedelic orientation often centres the experience: visuals, catharsis, insights, novelty, intensity, and neurobiological effects.
Entheogenic orientation centres relationship: responsibility, reverence, lineage, preparation, integration, and how the encounter reshapes one’s life.
Neither framework is inherently superior. The same substance can lead to very different outcomes depending on dosage, setting, guidance, and integration.
That said, context changes experience. A compound isolated in a lab is not the same as encountering a whole plant within a relational or ceremonial container. One emphasizes pharmacology. The other includes ecology, ritual, symbolism, and human connection. Both are valid; however, I would argue they are not interchangeable.
General Orientation Categories
Common psychedelics in clinical or experimental settings:
LSD
MDMA
Ketamine
DMT (extracted / vaporized)
5-MeO-DMT (synthetic or isolated)
2C-B
Mescaline (isolated compound form)
Ibogaine (clinical extraction form)
Common entheogenic in ceremonial or relational contexts:
Ayahuasca
Psilocybin mushrooms
Huachuma / San Pedro cactus
Peyote
Iboga (root bark in ceremonial context)
Cannabis (when used intentionally and ceremonially)
Cacao (ceremonial use)
Rapé (sacred tobacco snuff)
Bufo / 5-MeO-DMT (toad secretion in ceremonial framing)
Important note: Legal status varies widely by country and context. Many substances remain illegal outside specific religious or clinical frameworks. Legality does not equal safety and illegality does not remove responsibility. Informed consent and discernment remain non negotiable for responsible and safe care.
Why We Seek Expanded States
An Evolutionary Drive
The impulse to alter consciousness is not a modern trend or inherently escapism. I see it as adaptation to the state of our world and as an evolutionary drive. When stress becomes chronic, when the identity you have built no longer fits, or when life starts to feel hollow, your system begins searching for relief. Not as weakness, but as adaptation.
Expanded states can temporarily soften rigid patterns in the body and mind. They loosen what has become tight. And in that brief opening, new ways of seeing, feeling, and organizing yourself become possible.
Expanded states can:
Interrupt stress loops
Surface suppressed emotion
Restore connection and belonging
Offer new perspective
Temporarily increase physiological flexibility
They can also bring:
Temporary anxiety, fear, or disorientation
Emotional intensity
Nervous system overwhelm
Physical or psychological destabilization
What I see in my work is this: expansion is not the same as integration. Accessing wider perception wihtout the capacity to hold it can fragment a person. Intensity without regulation can destabilize the nervous system. Insight alone is not transformation. And this is part of why discernment is essential in how we approach altered states.
Important Note: Psychedelics and plant medicines are not the only doorway to expanded states. Breathwork, meditation, chanting, movement, fasting, and extended time in nature can open non ordinary states. For many, these are safer and more sustainable starting points.
The Return to Nature’s Intelligence
Tuning into the Plant Kingdom
In my work at AjaOso, I focus primarily on entheogenic medicines. I approach plants as living intelligences that humans have worked with for thousands of years. Entheogens such as Ayahuasca, Huachuma, Psilocybin, and Peyote are not modern inventions. They are ancient relational technologies re-emerging as we collectively seek reconciliation with ourselves, with nature, and with truth.
When I speak of plant intelligence, I am not mystifying chemistry. Plants contain active compounds that directly affect physiology, neurotransmitters, inflammation, and nervous system tone. They affect the body in measurable ways. But they are also whole organisms shaped by environment and evolution, and that context influences how they interact with us emotionally, cognitively, and spiritually. Working with whole plant medicines with intentional relationship can create different effects than isolated psychedelic compounds. Each plant carries a distinct biochemical, ecological, and vibrational blueprint. When a human nervous system meets that intelligence, the interaction can catalyse reorganization across body, mind, emotion, and meaning.
The deeper truth is we evolved in relationship with the Earth.
Our biology developed alongside plants. We are not separate from nature. We are co-evolutionary with it. Returning to nature’s intelligence is not about escape. It is about remembering what shaped us in the first place.
Working with nature’s intelligence does not require intellect. It requires humility. I view these encounters as relational with sentience from the plant kingdom. And this is why intention, preparation, and integration are essential when working with entheogens.
What Plant Medicines Can and Cannot Do
We Remain Responsible
Plant medicines are mirrors and catalysts. They are not fixers. An expanded state may show you the truth of your life with startling clarity. However, it will not make you live differently the next day. You still have the choice.
From this perspective, the value is less in the peak moment, but more in what you do with what opens. The intelligence of plants can show you significant insight. Your human work remains essential: translating insight into how you live, relate, and act in the world.
A Personal Note: It is challenging for me to say what the plant kingdom will or will not do. I’ve seen incredible reconciliation, deep healing, and what many might call miracles — in myself and in others. I really want to stress that the intelligence of nature is not limited. And that these sentient beings will not meet us where we cannot meet ourselves. When approached relationally, they can evoke extraordinary states of unity, forgiveness, and coherence. They can also surface shadow material that requires long-term therapeutic work. My journey into their world has proven to me how vast their capacity is; arguably limitless. And requires responsibility, reverence, and ongoing engagement to transform insight into embodied change.
Safety, Capacity, and Harm Reduction
As a clinical counsellor and educator, I need to be clear: psychedelics and entheogens are not appropriate for everyone, and not for every season of life.
If your nervous system is already overwhelmed, if you are in an acute crisis, or if you have certain psychiatric histories including psychotic spectrum conditions or severe instability, expansion may exceed your capacity to integrate safely.
Responsible relationship with these medicines includes knowing when to say ‘not now’.
Often the most ethical starting point is building regulation capacity through gentler pathways as pre-integration work. Building capacity first is wisdom, not avoidance.
If someone does choose to engage with psychedelics or plant medicines, harm reduction includes:
knowing medical and psychiatric contraindications
clear informed consent
experienced and accountable facilitation
realistic expectations
structured integration support
no pressure, no coercion, no glamorisation
Note: Any approach or practitioner that minimizes risk or pressures participation may not align with genuine healing.
A Loving Reminder:
A plant can show you the door. It cannot walk through it for you. True change happens in the kitchen, in your relationships, in how you respond to stress, set boundaries, make choices, and inhabit your body day after day.
If you feel drawn to this work, let your curiosity be slow and informed. If you do not, trust that as well. The Universe speaks in many languages. Plants are one of them.
What matters most is not how you access expanded awareness. What matters is whether you become more regulated, more responsible, more connected, and more alive in your ordinary human life.
That is the work I stand for.
With all my love,
Aja xx
Bridging psychology, energy, and soul. Sharing Vibrational Psychology, Spiritual Integration, Plant Medicine Support, and New Earth Evolution to help you harmonize mind, body, and spirit –– and live with clarity, coherence, and grounded truth.
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