The Shaman’s Lawyer

I am my shaman’s legal advisor. He lives in Oregon with his partner on a compound where they perform ceremonies with the sacred tribal plant medicine 5 MEO DMT.

They travel around the country “carrying the medicine”—which is to say, being invited to someone’s home for the purpose of dosing a group of people with the medicine in a ceremonial setting.

They charge for this. The way it works is, someone (usually the owner of a piece of property that is fairly remote) organizes a ceremony and invites a handful—I’ve seen anywhere from ten to over 40–of like-minded people to take part.

We camp out, interact, break bread together and socialize. Mostly it’s a bunch of hippies, various social outcasts and dropouts, and the occasional converted square wannabe-hippie like me. The medicines offered are Bufo and Kambo. “Bufo” is 5 MEO DMT. Kambo is a purging agent, and participants are asked to provide their own vomit buckets. The use of cannabis is general at these gatherings.

My shaman was given the name Ramadasa by his teacher. Ramadasa means “worshipper of God” in Sanskrit. It’s a slightly different elucidation of the moniker Richard Alpert’s guru gave him in India in 1967: Ram Das.

Ramadasa charges a per person fee and specifies a minimum number of participants in order to cover his and his partner Kumari Kandam’s travel expenses from Oregon.

On this particular occasion, Ramadasa and Kumari flew into Chicago’s O’Hare International airport with a suitcase full of crystallized 5 MEO DMT, a natural extract of the venomous skin secretions of the Sonoran Desert Toad. It’s one of the most powerful psychedelics known to exist.

On this trip, the trouble started almost immediately when the minimum number of participants was not met and the organizer, Joe, had not been honest about it. Things got worse after Ramadasa learned that Joe had also padded the ceremony fees by a couple hundred bucks and pocketed the difference. (Editor’s note: This type of manipulation involving money completely taints a ceremony.)

Finally, to top everything off, Joe found a reason to stiff Ramadasa and Kumari out of an additional $400 worth of ceremony fees.

By the time I was consulted, this whole thing had gone as far as Ramadasa sending a message to Joe then immediately blocking him. Followed by Joe sending Ramadasa messages from a burner phone number. In the latest of Joe’s messages, he threatened to report Ramadasa and Kumari to the FAA for smuggling 5 MEO DMT aboard commercial flights.

Ramadasa wanted me to put my lawyer hat on and write a cease and desist letter signed by me, Mr. Esq., on a fancy letterhead, sent via Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested and all that sort of jazz. Which I can easily do and often did do back when I was still practicing law.

Okay, so what is really going on here? Could it possibly be a pissing contest between two men, neither of which wants to allow the other to have the last word? How best to proceed from the perspective of the law and the right thing to do?

This guy Joe had also reminded Ramadasa of several people he had hurt, as in put in the hospital. Ramadasa sent me a screen shot of a message in which Joe had texted, “I never told you how bad I am, but if you want to find out….”

[I’m thinking the medicine seems wasted on people like this, locked—hopelessly it seems—in mind states predominated by anger and ego: reactive, vindictive, and rage-filled.]

I needed to tell Ramadasa and Kumari that such a letter should not be sent. From a legal standpoint, whatever the guy may have already done is done. And frankly I don’t think FAA and TSA are all that concerned about people carrying stuff on planes unless it’s fentanyl or meth or something. Plus, hopefully they are way more concerned about terrorists than Toad Medicines.

But anyway, I got to thinking that Ramadasa wanted me to send that letter so that he could have the absolute final last word. And goddamnit my last word comes from my fucking lawyer! So fuck you! Or something like that in his mind.

That’s sort of the emotion. It needs to be noticed and laughed at and let go of immediately. Otherwise it will hook you.

I needed to help Ramadasa stay unhooked.

I told him the legal reason why no letter should be sent: because some people get riled up if they get a certified letter from a lawyer and start doing even crazier things. Let the sleeping dog lie. Let him have the last word.

What is the spiritual or psychological answer, which I did not share, mainly because he perceives himself to be my shaman and therefore on a higher spiritual level of understanding than I, and because of this he has no ears to hear anything I might say if he perceives it in any way as a spiritual teaching from me to him.

Pride. 🤷

But alas, even the truth should not be spoken unless it will bring some benefit to a being.

Ultimately what is seen is that these situations keep arising in our lives to give us yet another chance to learn spiritual lessons. In this case the lesson is about turning the other cheek and letting go of all that ego bullshit which is in the nature of anger and a desire to lash out and hurt or psychologically dominate another human being whom one perceives has wronged one.

The solution, again, is non-reactivity: don’t send a lawyer letter. Instead, send waves of love and joy.

This is the spiritual rationale.

Peace

P.S. Rewind to two weeks ago, before they ever left for Michigan. He told me they were about to leave, and two or three times I heard the voice of my mind telling me to help them with their travel expenses. So then I spontaneously Venmoed him $500. That was God, in her beauty and power and grace, shuffling Her money around and making him whole, plus a little bit.

Maybe that’s the way this whole thing is supposed to work.

P/o