#71 Rebekah Shaman on the healing politics of unity consciousness
“We’ve allowed the capitalist system to get so entrenched in its commodification of anything that is a ‘free’ element for everybody else that we’ve reached a point of crisis. The only way I feel that we can come out of this crisis is to reach unity consciousness, which is a remembrance that we’re all interconnected, that we are the ancestors of our future generations. We need to recognise that everything that shares this planet with us is equally as important and any action that we do that is harming other species, or even our species, is going against natural law.”
How can the intimacies of human relationships with the more-than-human help inform and reshape environmental and development policy at the global scale? What power does awakening a collective ecological consciousness have in remediating our moral and political systems which have grossly failed in building and sustaining unity and integrity in wider community?
Today we are joined by Rebekah Shaman, a plant medicine shaman inspiring conscious change in the urban jungle by bringing nature and humanity back into balance through working intimately with the Master Plant medicines Ayahuasca, Cacao and Cannabis over the past 25 years. Through her work, Rebekah has inspired and urban dwellers to live shamanically by reconnecting to the rhythms of life through the Master Plant ceremonies she offers under the guidance of indigenous shamans in the Amazon. Rebekah is the managing director of the British Hemp Alliance which promotes hemp as an environmental tool to reaching Net Zero, and she also is one of the largest suppliers of ceremonial grade Cacao in the UK.
In this episode, Rebekah guides us through the wonderfully complex and deeply inspiring stories of the Peruvian Amazon, and how the teachings of the rainforest enriched her journey as a plant medicine shaman working for radical system change in the urban jungle. Challenging the divide between bottom-up and top-down approaches to addressing our ecological crises, Rebekah particularly emphasises on the need for consciousness shifts at the individual and community level to feed and stabilise decision-making at the macro-level, which requires the integration of indigenous, local and more-than-human knowledges into policy which have been successful in preserving cultures of care and stewardship.
What will be covered:
Rebekah’s journey into shamanism through her experiences in the Peruvian jungle
Challenges Rebekah faced in the UK with introducing plant medicine and plant medicine shamanism, particularly around the illegality of psychedelics
Rebekah’s circular path into shamanism, sustainable tourism policy, shamanism again and now global policy, and how this taught her that top-down and bottom-up approaches have to coexist and work together for radical change
Understanding that plant medicine work is a lifetime journey full of continuous evolutionary shifts
Importance of the presence and guidance of indigenous shamans when carrying out ceremonies in the Amazon
Environmental issues around mainstreaming plant medicines and opening up indigenous land to tourism and plant medicine retreats
Realising that her true spiritual awakening occurred not in the Amazon but in London where she had to bring together her experiences and figure out how to integrate them in policy work
Urgency in shifting from a consciousness of separation and domination to a consciousness of unity and harmony, in line with ‘natural law’ as opposed to capitalist values
Utilising academia as a medium to centre indigenous and more-than-human knowledges in decision-making processes in the West
Requirement of inner work and self-discovery for macro-level changemaking
Resources:
Rebekah’s website
Follow Rebekah on Instagram (@rebekahshaman_)
