#422 How to set your personal compass, unlock inner harmony, and discover the power of plant medicine in spiritual and personal growth, with Michael Peterson.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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Michael Peterson 0:00

There is a very subtle numbness. Because if we are going to avoid feeling the depth of our pain as humans, it means that we also avoid feeling the highs of our joy.

Agi Keramidas 0:19

You are listening to personal development mastery, the podcast that empowers you with the simple and consistent actions to take that will help you create a life of purpose and fulfillment. Before we dive in, if you enjoy listening and appreciate what we're doing, the quick favor I'm asking of you is to click the subscribe button. Now, let's get started today. It is my pleasure to speak with Michael Peterson, Michael, you are an approach coach, transformational guide and ceremonialist. Your unique blend of traditional coaching and ceremonial frameworks transforms lives by helping people set outdated patterns and discover their true potential with experience, from the jungles of Peru to shamanic practices, you offer profound yet gentle methods for personal evolution, and you are passionate about guiding people on their path of self discovery. Michael, welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to speak with you today.

Michael Peterson 1:23

Thanks for having me on AGI. I appreciate it.

Agi Keramidas 1:27

I'm looking forward to discussing with you some I will give a glimpse of what some things that I have, you know prepared. I have the feeling that we might not go necessarily there, but, you know, one of the things was the power of plant medicine, which is something I haven't spoken in the podcast for a while. Actually, it's been a couple of years. But there was some other thing that caught my attention, and it was about setting your personal compass. And I find that concept very intriguing the especially the compass meeting, compared to other ways that you can describe similar concepts. So, yeah, let's say these are a couple of things that I would like to speak about today. Before we go there, I would like a little bit a very brief overview of, you know, you have a very different background to what you're doing and now, so if you can share a little bit about that transition, and, you know, so we can get a little bit of understanding of who Michael is or where he's coming from, actually, that's probably

Michael Peterson 2:43

so I had a very you point this out. I had a very traditional Western upbringing, which was, go to school, get a job, go back to school, and that's what I did. So and the only kind of curve ball in there is that when I was 14, my father committed suicide, and it kicked off this question for me of what is the meaning of life? There was no guide that I had, except for trying to make a ghost happy. And I ended up getting my MBA and a Master's of Science in Public Policy Management. And I was looking at how business could be used to create social change, how policy impacted business and that interrelated nature of the governmental and the financial business side of the current reality that we live in. And when I graduated, I was looking around and I realized that there's not a single job that was going to make me happy, no matter how much money it paid, and I needed to spend some time taking care of myself. And so I ended up going to Guatemala to begin with, and I did a yoga teacher training and studied natural building and permaculture, and also started working with plant medicine down there. And that transition was challenging in some ways, but very natural. And I had a plan at that point in time to go to Peru, to join an organization called the Peace Corps, which is a US governmental organization that does volunteer work in developing countries. And I was serving in Peru, and as soon as I got to Peru, i. I had already had a couple of Dianas under my belt and a decent amount of ceremonies for beginner. And I kept on thinking, When can I go to the jungle and lie to my organization about what I'm doing and go work with plant medicine? And I said, that's probably not the right way to go about it. And at the same time, the program changed, and we weren't doing what I thought I had gone down there to do in terms of small business consulting. My Mayor thought that I was a spy for the CIA and my social development manager came into the office drunk and tore up my visa documents, and so it wasn't a comfortable transition to say I need to let go of this story. But at the same time, there weren't that many options available, and so I quit. I went back home. My mom said, Great, Michael, you have two master's degrees from a top 15 school in the US. What are you going to go do? And I said, I'm going to move back down to Peru. I'm going to go to go to the jungle, and I'm going to study plant medicine full time. And that kicked off a journey that is still unfolding.

Agi Keramidas 6:32

You know, let's go straight into it, because you mentioned plant medicine, so it makes sense to remain there. So my question is, first of all, what drew you to that in the first place? Why? What was the your personal calling to that? Let's start with that. Tell me what, what was that drew you with plant medicine. And just to clarify also, Michael, for someone listening and might not be certain of what you mean by plant medicine? Give a brief Fauci explanation.

Michael Peterson 7:05

So when I am talking about plant medicine, I am not just talking about psychedelic plant medicine. I'm talking about working with plants as spirit allies, and so working with them in a spiritual, ceremonial, intentional way. Within that to for the sake of healing and connection to the divine. And within that, there's the category of psychedelic plant medicines, which would include things like ayahuasca, psilocybin, you could include LSD. It's synthesized, but it is synthesized from a fungus, so it's kind of on the edge. There things like aboga and even cannabis. And when my dad died, I had a kind of very strong reaction for a while against substances, and so I didn't touch anything. And at the same time, I had high school teachers who thought that I was smoking pot all the time, and so by the time that I did eventually smoke cannabis, it was a very interesting experience for me, because Cannabis works on a horizontal axis, if you will. And so if you imagine every piece of stress that you have as the center of a graph, cannabis helps you get to the side of that tension so that you can see what's going on and gain a different perspective of it. And that has a purpose, but eventually you have to deal with that ball of tension in the middle, and it's useful to get the different perspectives. But Canvas keeps you on the outside, if it's not used in a ceremonial context, which I definitely was not doing. And the more I used it, the farther and farther removed from myself I got. And through that experimentation, though I was also trying mushrooms, trying acid, in a mix of concert settings, festival settings, but also in terms of personal use and exploration. And through. Those experiences, I had a somatic understanding of something that I could not explain. Okay, and when I was graduating from my master's program, I knew that there was something deeper there for me to explore. And I also knew that I really needed some healing. I had spent, you know, the last 16, 1416, years of my life, something like that, trying to make the ghost of my dad happy, trying to live up to other people's expectations of what I should be doing. And my body was tired of it, and so when I went to sit with plant medicine, I couldn't say with specific detail all of the things that I knew I wanted to work on, but I knew that I was in a place that I didn't like within myself. I needed some help navigating through that, and there was a call from Ayahuasca that just said, Hey, it's time, and I found the right facilitators for me who had a lineage that's a mestizo lineage, so a mixture of the Spanish and indigenous cultures that is also a syncretic lineage, and brings in Buddhism, Kashmiri, Shaivism, and has one of these kind of multi faceted points of view that is still rooted in a traditional lens, but isn't contained only by that.

Agi Keramidas 12:03

You know, there is one question it came to my mind. When you were talking about cannabis, you used the phrase that the more you did it, you said something that it removed you from yourself. You were more removed from from yourself. So I wanted to ask, how did you mean? How do you mean that? What just a brief comment? And sure, well,

Michael Peterson 12:31

I guess. What I mean is that instead of just getting a perspective on the stress and the pain that I was feeling, and then going back into that pain and stress with a new perspective, I continued to stay away and try to numb out that feeling in some way, shape or form, and I was very functional to some degree while I did that, it wasn't like I was on the side of the road or homeless throughout, throughout that process. You know, it's it's pot, but there is a very subtle numbness. Because if we are going to avoid feeling the depth of our pain as humans, it means that we also avoid feeling the highs of our joy, and so we can't avoid any aspect of ourselves forever, and we can't cut off an aspect of ourself without blocking access to a corresponding part of ourselves that we might really enjoy. So that's what I mean when I say that I distanced myself from myself, I disengaged.

Agi Keramidas 13:51

If you enjoy this episode, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? I'd really appreciate it. It helps the show grow, and you will also be adding value to people you care about. Thank you. And now let's get back to the episode. Thank you very much for this answer. Yeah, that was everything I hope to hear, and more so appreciate it. Let me bring this then to a more practical because so far we have discussed quite, let's say, on a theoretical level. But I understand that you integrate in what you in your practice. You integrate those shamanic and ceremonial techniques. Some of them, you mentioned them. I bet they are many more. But you integrate that with traditional coaching. So I wanted to ask, How do you do that? So what is the give us an overview of how that works, yeah.

Michael Peterson 14:51

So what I have found after studying plant medicine for five. Years, however many diattas I've done at this point, and is that not everybody is trying to come in and study shamanism to serve the medicine. Most, in fact, most people aren't. And so there's integration as a whole, which is, how do you bring those big experiences into your life? And then I found that there was also a set of people where plant medicine just wasn't the right fit for them, whether it was for health issues or personal choices, but the shamanic realm was still open. And what coaching is very good at is helping people explore themselves. And so if we think about therapy as looking backwards in life and saying, what happened? How did it happen? How does this impact you? I'm less curious about that. Admittedly, it's not that I think it's not important, but as a coach, I'm much more curious about where are you right now, and where do you want to be? And so my first question to everybody who I work with is, how do you want to be?

Michael Peterson 16:32

And people struggle with that. I get a lot of here's what I want to do.

Michael Peterson 16:42

And I get a lot of surface level, you know, how do I want to be? But what I'm talking about is, how do you want to interact with the world? What is the quality of the relationship that you want to have with the mystery and we use coaching to explore that, and then we use the shamanic energy work that comes from the mountains of Peru and the Kero, and I've mixed that with some of my Ayahuasca training as well to clear out the imprints, the dense energy, the patterns of the stories that really don't serve us anymore. They served us for a while, but then they stopped being useful to the next step of our evolution, and they're either calcified in our system or we're just very scared to let them go, because what's beyond those stories is unknown. And so again, it's how do you want to relate to the mystery? And it's to the mystery of life, to the mystery of you, to the mystery of your becoming. And I think it's really important to acknowledge that many times we don't want to engage, we don't want to engage with the mystery of our becoming, it is scary, and if we can avoid it, it's great, and the that's okay. But is that avoidance of the unknown? Is that avoidance of your becoming how you really want to be, and that's where it becomes important to develop a personal compass so that when we are navigating the terrain of life, we're able to say, Ooh, that path ahead looks really scary, but that's where my compass is pointing. And so do I want to follow this compass that I have developed and cultivated and worked on, attuning, not knowing where that path is going to lead? Or do I want to say no, I'm going to reject this call to adventure, and I'm going to just stay right where I am for now. Both answers are fine, but there will, I can almost promise you, there will be enough tension that builds after you sit in the same space for long enough that life will propel you into an adventure. And so in my experience, if we can learn to navigate that adventure skillfully and willfully, not willfully as in force, but willfully as a choice. Yes, and you know, I. Um, my compass that I've developed for myself is that I want to be real, I want to be relaxed, I want to be engaged, I want to be authentic, and I want to be loving. Am I always those things? No, but that's the compass. And so I work consistently on attuning myself to that state, and it informs the actions in the past that I need to take, but it requires me to be feeling and listening and opening to the world and have a sense of wonder and curiosity. And so oftentimes they lend people that compass to start, but it's more important for people to cultivate their own, whatever that is, and to not be provided this external solution. Of here's what you should do, because then we're not in the mystery anymore. And that's a really fine line that I enjoy walking. Is how can we stay engaged with the mystery and delicately hold the discomfort that comes in the unknown?

Agi Keramidas 21:20

Michael, this is such a beautiful description that you just shared so to thank you for for what you just did, what I find fascinating about the way you describe the personal compass like this, it that it is that it is not related to things that we want to do or to have, which is many times, as you said, the idea of, you know, the North Star or the ultimate goal or something like that, it often, more often than not, it relates to have or do rather than be so by setting a compass based on how want to be, I find it fascinating as a way of you know, taking the decisions because that when you use that compass in your decision making, it's very different approach, and it probably will live will lead to some different decisions that might look obvious. The other thing I took from your description that I liked very much was the the mystery how to relate with the mystery, whether you want to engage with the mystery. And this is also, I find it a very beautiful way of or perspective, not way perspective, point of view of everything, because that is our experience. So we choose how we want to experience it or engage with it. So what a beautiful reminder. Thank you.

Michael Peterson 23:06

It's funny because I you introduced me as an approach coach, which I I'm pretty sure that I came up with that description for myself at some point, and I remember sharing it with my with one of my teachers, and he said, It sounds like you're a dating coach. I was like, and then I looked up approach coach, and the top three results were dating coaches. And I was like, well, in a way, I am. It's just, I'm not trying to help you get the date with you know the person of your dreams? Well, in some ways I am, because are you dating yourself, and who is the person you dream of being? But my my wife, said it very well recently, which is the mystery is not a what, it is a who. And so as we date the mystery and continue to get to know it, it is a relationship, and it's it's deeply personal, and just like you don't necessarily want a third party coming into your marriage and telling you what you should be doing in your marriage, you don't necessarily Want a third party coming in to your relationship with the mystery and telling you what you should be doing. And at the same time, we live in community, we have egos. And you know, one of the most brilliant things that I heard recently. It was no it's really important to share your egotistical perspectives too, because the community needs to hear them. And then, as a whole, we whittle down what's there, what's brought to the table, so that we can find these nuggets. And if it's not, if it's based on ego, the community will will let you know, and they'll reflect that back. But don't deny that you found that thing too. And so yeah, dating the mystery and and having that relationship, you know, for a good relationship to play out. We have to show up. And it's it's no different with the mystery the Divine Spirit. God choose, choose your word, but the words less important. It's this ineffable being that we are all part of, relating with, interacting with, both inside and outside. And nobody, nobody knows. So as soon as somebody says, I know the answer, and if I ever tell you I know the answer? Please call me out, and I'm sure that sometimes I do, but you know nobody knows, and as soon as we say I know, we've disengaged from the mystery, because the mystery doesn't have an answer. It has a multitude of answers and an infinite, boundless exploration. So that's my perspective, and I enjoy being able to be a mirror to help kind of bring out and reflect back what other other people are going through, and that's where the coaching and the energy work comes in together, which is I'm just really skilled at reflecting. It's my natural skill state and asking questions, and I know when to poke, but it's a play.

Agi Keramidas 27:23

What would you say to someone listening right now and thinking, you know, that's great. Michael, I would love to, you know, engage more with the mystery. What's one action that you would tell them to take? What's something practical that one can take, you know, to take one step towards this direction practice.

Michael Peterson 27:47

I mean, it's that simple. You know, if you want to have a date, you have to go out and meet people, right? So whether that's getting on one of the infinite dating apps that are out there now, or going to some community event, or whatever it is, you're practicing putting yourself out there, the same holds true for the mystery, and it's an it's much more accessible and sometimes than getting a real life date. I'm not going to tell you that you have to meditate. That might be too restricting for your body, although it might be very helpful spend time in nature as danger. I mean, have a conversation with a tree. Try it. It's weird. It's great. You know, how many cultures out there have a relationship with oak, right? So we can look at the Celtic traditions. We can look at the Greek traditions. We can look at even Polish traditions and North American traditions. Oak is a powerful tree, but it doesn't have to be an oak. Have a conversation with a flower. Have a conversation with anything. And

Michael Peterson 29:25

what I want to be really clear about here is that a conversation involves two parts. One part is sharing and the other part is listening, and unless you listen, you're not going to hear unless there's like a big thunderstorm that comes in and there's that crack of. Thunder and lightning that's like forces you to listen. And that's where ayahuasca and some of these plant medicines can be great.

Michael Peterson 30:08

It can be that crack of thunder that it is impossible to not listen thereafter something. You'll have heard something, and you won't forget it. But if you'd like a more subtle practice, find something that works, put your hand over your heart and feel your heartbeat. What is it telling you? And mean, it's so accessible and also so so challenging. So note the my this is a long answer to your question, but my framework is based off of my own compass. So can I be relaxed, engaged, authentic and loving? But the point of that is that when I am real, everything flows. And, you know, talk to however many entrepreneurs and, you know human optimization experts that you want people like, I just want to live in flow. And they'll give you some really nerdy state that it's like, this is what your brain waves are doing. And they're they're not wrong for me. Flow is what occurs, what I feel when I listen, open to the world around me, and when I wonder or I'm curious. And the way that I encourage people to be real and to live in flow is to practice magic. And so whatever your practice is, this is another acronym, but it's it should be mindful, in the sense that you know you're being present and conscientious about what you're doing. It should be adaptable, so that it can go with you no matter what state you're encountering, and it can change with you. It should be gentle. And gentle is a very interesting word, because if you're used to driving a car at 90 miles per hour, slamming on the brakes is not gentle to your system. So gentle for where you're at now, it should inspire you, and it should help you connect with something more than yourself. And if any practice meets those five principles of magic, it will help you find your compass. It will help you live in flow, and then whatever the words are that you want to use that resonate with you in your life, makes sense, and they will come. But it is an adventure, and it's not without risk. So you know, I'm not gonna sit here saying, Oh, it's so soft and easy and gentle. No, it has challenges. So strap in and also remember to be gentle with yourself as you go through those challenges. Good luck.

Agi Keramidas 33:40

Absolutely. Michael, well, where will you direct people who want to find out more about what you do and connect? Yeah,

Michael Peterson 33:49

people can find out more about me at my website, which is www, dot alchemy, shift.com, and if they're curious about any anything about the approach where they're at in their life, they can set up a free call with me. It's called a purposeful path call, just to understand either how we can work together, or what the next step on their journey could be that would be useful.

Agi Keramidas 34:16

Thank you. And I have two final quick questions that I always ask my guests, and the first one is, what does personal development mean to you?

Michael Peterson 34:28

Personal Development to me means cultivating a relationship with myself and tending to the soil of my being so that I can grow.

Agi Keramidas 34:50

And hypothetically, if you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self, what's one piece of advice you would give

Michael Peterson 34:57

him? Chill out, bud. I. Uh,

Michael Peterson 35:05

yeah, I

Agi Keramidas 35:06

think

Michael Peterson 35:09

this is gonna sound so cliche, but you know, every neurotic experience that I had while I was 18 helped me get to the place where I am now. With that said, I could still probably have done all those things and been a little bit more relaxed throughout that process. And I think I probably would have just said, You're doing fine. Just keep exploring. I love you, I love you, I love you. And then he would have done whatever he would have done with

Agi Keramidas 35:53

that, Michael, I want to thank you very much for this captivating conversation. I really enjoyed it, and I believe we passed some inspiring messages for someone to pick and, you know, implement. I want to wish you all the very best with your life and your mission and engaging with the mystery. Any last part in words,

Michael Peterson 36:21

oh, I've spoken so much. Thank you for having me on AGI. I really appreciate it. And for anybody who's listening, I wish, pray, hope and know that you will have a relationship with the mystery that is you, and I hope that it can be a beautiful one.

Agi Keramidas 36:50

And before I end today's episode, if you enjoy this podcast, can you think of one person that would find it useful and share it with them? I'd really appreciate it. It helps the show grow, and you also add value to people you care about. Thank you, and until next time, stand out. Don't fit in.