James Jesso - Psilocybin, Healing, and The Examined Life

In an era where medical interventions, neurobiological research, occult magick, and high-dose psychonautic exploration are taking the psychedelic centre stage, what about psychedelics as a part of the simple quest to live an examined life and become a more mature person? In this talk I look at the role psilocybin can play in our lives as an agent of insight and how it can help us mature and develop into whole people, trustworthy partners, and healthy citizens.

James W. Jesso is an author, public speaker, and podcast host with a deep respect for psychedelic medicines. His two books, Decomposing The Shadow: Lessons From The Psilocybin Mushroom (2013) and The True Light Of Darkness (2015), present a model for working with the ‘magic’ psilocybin mushroom as an ally in personal transformation and in developing psychospiritual maturity. Adventures Through The Mind — his podcast and YouTube channel — is an effort to contribute to the psychedelic culture at large. Featuring interviews with luminaries in science, art, and culture across a range of disciplines.

[janefortune]

Listened to again on 21/04/20, 4-weeks into the Covid-19 Lockdown. James words in this lecture strike me now as prescient of this period in human history, overflowing with compassion that forebodes this crisis we are now experiencing. His word/insights invite us to look within ourselves and take personal responsibility for how we self-care and respond to the care-needs of one another and our planet.

[lukebeam]

Keep it up James! You’re a great speaker! With truth backing you🖖

[Academic_G]

Great insights.
Beautiful, vulnerable, and confronting. We need the cognitive flexibility psychedelics can bring us to deal with the complex times ahead.
You inviting us to, in a willing and open attitude, to stare deeply and with consideration into the depth of our current global situation with an open mind, without falling into neurotic tendencies to keep us distracted, is also very thought-provoking.... Oh how we can be distracted and waste times in daily (habitual) life; whilst we could also focus on new habits of e.g. regenerative practices.
Collective habits can create and regenerate; or they can destroy.
A quote I also found inspiring from you: "That which only grows for itself, is for the collective like a tumor."