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“This is a vocation that chooses you. Ultimately, it's not a vocation that you choose,” says Payam, a shamanic medicine carrier and integrative healer, joining the Mental Health in a Modern World podcast to illuminate the true demands and sacred responsibilities of medicine work. Far from a fashionable trend or therapeutic add-on, Payam explains that working with plant medicines—and safely facilitating others in these deeply transformative realms—requires enduring rigorous spiritual initiation, facing dismemberment of the self, and developing the character to carry others through profound psychic rebirth.

In this riveting conversation, Payam shares how his path unfolded unexpectedly, bridging years in New York’s creative world with shamanic initiation rooted in both Western psychology and indigenous spiritual wisdom. He dissects the gulf separating clinical, retreat-based psychedelic approaches from authentic lineage-based facilitation, exploring why pain and suffering are essential to spiritual initiation, and why true healing goes far beyond symptom management.

Tune in to this episode of Mental Health in a Modern World to hear Payam and Greg Schmaus open up about soul wounds, the dangers of bypassing initiation, and the real reasons you should be deeply discerning both as a seeker and (especially) as a would-be facilitator. If you’ve ever felt the “call” of plant medicines or questioned mainstream approaches to mental health, this is one conversation you can’t afford to miss.

5 Key Takeaways

Discover how to truly honor the power of medicine work and begin your healing journey with integrity, discernment, and courage.

1. Trust your intuition when choosing a facilitator or community for medicine work—seek those who demonstrate integrity, openness, and a willingness to answer all your questions fully 01:06:22.
2. Understand that true healing and initiation require facing discomfort, pain, and even disintegration—don't seek to numb your suffering, but move courageously into it to discover your authentic self 31:49.
3. Recognize the difference between credentialing and true readiness; look for guides who are genuinely initiated, experienced, and chosen by the medicine—not just certified by a training program 27:01.
4. Prioritize doing your own shadow work and continually question your beliefs and conditioning—discernment is key to sovereignty and avoiding indoctrination 01:11:25.
5. Embrace community and brotherhood (or sisterhood) as medicine in itself—healing alongside others who have walked the path fosters authenticity and deeper transformation 40:06.

Take one real step today: initiate a conversation with someone you trust about your healing journey, and approach the path with respect, patience, and a willingness to be truly transformed.

Memorable Quotes

"This is a vocation that chooses you. Ultimately, it's not a vocation that you choose."

"When we go into medicine work, it's about remembering by forgetting. Remembering is to bring back together, but to bring back together requires you to completely let go and to dissolve to the Great Spirit, to dissolve into that universal consciousness where you no longer exist as who you thought yourself to be."

"The reality of the experience is substantially more demanding of your character, your patience, your mind, your body, your spirit, your resources, your life."

Connect with Payam

PAYAM (official website) – https://payam.com/

The Psychedelic Executive – https://thepsychedelicexecutive.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/payam-a5b35a6/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_psychedelic_executive/

Resources Mentioned

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Maté – https://amzn.to/4cyV7JF

Sensory Motor Psychotherapy (Pat Ogden) – https://www.pesi.com/sales/bh_c_001577_patogdencomplextrauma_organic-328416

Internal Family Systems (IFS) – https://ifs-institute.com/

Connect with Greg

Website - https://www.healing4d.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/4d_healing/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@gregschmaus

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-schmaus-22929589/

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But the reality of the experience is substantially

more demanding

of your character, of your patience, of your mind, of your body,

of your spirit, of your resources, of your life.

This is a vocation that chooses you.

Ultimately, it's not a vocation that you choose. In a world

moving faster than our minds were designed to handle, mental health is becoming

one of the defining challenges of our time. Welcome to Mental Health in a

Modern World with holistic health practitioner Greg Schmauss.

After overcoming severe anxiety and OCD in his own life,

Greg dedicated the past decade to helping others heal through a fully

integrated approach to mental health, combining lifestyle coaching,

psycho emotional healing, mindfulness and archetypal work.

Over the years, he's facilitated thousands of sessions guiding people back

to peace, clarity and a deeper connection with themselves.

Each week, Greg shares powerful solo insights, conversations with

leading voices in holistic healing, and immersive live coaching sessions that

take you inside the healing process itself. New episodes every

Friday. Follow the show and start reclaiming sovereignty over your mind

in a modern world. Here's Greg Pay, and welcome to the

show. Thanks for having me. For the third time, yeah, we've been having

some technical difficulties, but the third time's the charm. So,

you know, most of my listeners are aware of your work

just because you and I have been collaborating for many years. But

for those that are not and are new to Payam's work, would you be

open to just starting by sharing a little bit about your background and what brought

you into some of this medicine work? Yeah, my

background. In short, I spent about 15 years in the creative field in New

York and I found my work

in the shamanic realm in New York City of all places, where I would

have never imagined that I would be doing spirit work. And there I was, I

got initiated, initiated into working with medicines, not having

sought it out, so to speak, but the medicine

finding me and me finding the medicine in the way that it needed to happen.

That was around 2018 or so

and I started working with the medicines that I work with

since then. And I work

with shamanic medicines and shamanic philosophy approaches

as well as the western evidence based practices, namely

family systems and somatic experiencing to help people heal from

various material in their subconscious or unconscious mind and

effectively become better human beings on this planet.

Beautiful. And you know, when we

do our work together, you know, one of the ways that we always start

by opening up sacred spaces with a prayer. And

so I would love for you to just guide us through a little prayer and

invocation before we move forward. I'll be happy to

you. Ready? All right.

Great spirit,

Mother Earth, Grandmother Moon, Mother sun,

the spirit of Aya, spirit of Botok,

spirit of the fungi, a spirit of

Hape Mapacho,

the spirit of the heart,

The spirit of our guides, our teachers and body

and beyond around us. Your spirits all check.

Whole spiritual

or spirit. The spirit of our ancestors,

spirit of our parents, our siblings, our partners,

wives, our husbands and our children,

our spirit brothers, our spirit sisters on the quest.

I thank you for bringing Greg and I together.

We honor you for all your wisdom, to your medicines, to your

sustenance, your lessons through darkness, through

light, through pain, suffering, through joy, laughter,

through love, through abundance.

We thank you for your wisdom and your healing within us and

this brotherhood. We ask you to

guide us, shed light into our wisdom so that we may share

it with the audience. That we may all

alleviate suffering, so that

we may all be free. Walk gently, lovingly and

compassionately on this earth towards

earth, towards all the sentient beings

that we encounter. Show us the

way to truth, to healing and to love as we receive you

with gratitude. Wow.

Oh, thank you.

So one of the things that I really love about your

work is how you bridge a lot of the western

clinical therapeutic model with a lot

of the shamanic spirit work. And most of

the times you don't see those really integrated.

You either see people working in the clinical western

therapeutic setting or you go down to the Amazon and you see

the shamans doing the spirit work. Can you talk a little

bit about your journey bridging the two and why you feel

like that's so important, especially in this day and

age? Yeah,

well, I think fundamentally when we

strip ourselves of all these labels, these mass identities, these

cultural polar programming, programmings,

fundamentally we all return back to source.

We return back through source

by going through the nobodyness or nobody in this training of around

us when we start to shed all these armors and

these identifications with all the things that we've been acculturated

to believe about ourselves.

But within these cultural frameworks, we

going to somebodyness programming based on certain

common consensus realities of the cultures that we're in

the programming.

And when you look at

a western society that's by

and large completely divorced from the spirit of

Earth, there's no language to be had to even be able to

conceptualize and connect to what

is natural and integral to the psyche of

the people that are connected deeply to these

ancient technologies, technologies within the

societies that are still connected to the earth.

The aboriginal, the native, the first nation

tribes in Colombia, Brazil,

the Amazon. So.

Westerners need a, a technology

in the form of language to explain symbols

that they may be able to understand through their mental process,

because without that language, they're not able to understand what the medicine may be

showing them to be able to be in the

medicine, to be able to dance with the spirits,

to be able to establish a relationship and move

forth with the benevolence of the spirits that they're working with.

And so there needs to be some sort of language that

we can use to help people understand what they may be going into.

And whether it's through archetypal language that you use when you do your

work, which is pretty close to some of the

spiritual ifs language, those help people

understand what they're going through,

because there's no cultural scaffolding as such here in the

west to help people undergo an

initiation into a medicine journey.

And

when consider

first nations or the tribes in the Amazon,

they may not necessarily have

been exposed to some of the illnesses that the Westerners carry,

because it's not part of their paradigm. The

pages in the Amazon don't recognize trans people.

They recognize men, they recognize women. It's a

duality of masculine and the feminine, neither being

able to cop one another. And recently Max, who

is our spirit brothers of ours, was down in the Amazon

and there was this big uproar about

this trans identified person who insisted on

being in a woman's ceremony and a woman's clearing ceremony, and

they weren't, they weren't having it. And

they talk about decolonizing. The critical

social justice activists and

their accolades talk about decolonizing.

But then they go down to the Amazon and insist on colonizing their

spiritual beliefs that are fundamentally founded on the reality of Earth,

the masculine or the feminine, the duality that exists.

So the pages are looking at this person like they've lost their

minds because they don't understand what they're talking about. So there are

certain disparities of

ideology, beliefs,

disorders or

distortions of thinking and being that may not necessarily

be in alignment with one another.

So having a relationship with the spirits that I work with in medicine and also

being Westerner, so to speak,

gives me a more of a tool to be able to

negotiate both without excluding the other.

Right. You know, one of the

things that I was hearing you say is the difference

between. And you've talked about this a little bit, treating a soul wound

versus appealing to a social construct.

And so, you know, what I've experienced in medicine work,

both with my own work, but also doing a lot of deep Work

with you. And collaborating in spirit work is

really helping people

remember their soul blueprint. And

their soul blueprint is very

different than the social construct that they've

created or adapted themselves into.

And so I would love for you to speak a little bit about that

and how this medicine work and spirit work.

The real intention of it is to help people remember

that sole blueprint that they have forgotten. Yeah, that's

really beautiful, Greg. Thank you for asking that question. I've really been working with this

and grappling with all these very deep aspects

of what I see as disease and distortion of mind

in this society. I've seen it in

the institutions that are training therapists to be psychedelic facilitators.

I've seen it within the trainings that are spearheaded by

certain people who have another agenda and are basically

informed by Wiko and their own shadows that they're not able to reconcile

with and acknowledge much of those work with in park and obviously with

people. And fundamentally, Greg, it

distills into the disconnection of our connection with our

spirit that is connected to Mother Earth, that is connected to Father

Sky. Because when you're connected in

your essential self, you don't need to put on these

masks or these constructs to develop a

survivable identity that is

rewarded and applauded

by these

ideologues, so to speak. And

because we were disconnected initially from that source of love and

expansion and connection to the Great Spirit, because we had

to come into Somebodyness, we forgot.

But we became and came from Source only to be

disconnected to then come into somebodyness training,

which mostly, mostly gets us into disorders, you and I both know,

because we were there, to then realize,

hey, I'm suffering, there's something wrong with my soul. To then realize that what

my soul thought it was is actually the mass that it assumed, or

the mass that assumed the soul to survive and then

to realize, okay, I'm not the mass, I'm actually

a soul. So how do I strip myself of the mass that I've assumed to

go back to Source to then leave this body to reincarnate

again? So

when we go into medicine work, depending on what's being worked with,

it's about remembering by

forgetting. It's almost like these are the

paradoxes of spirit work. Remembering is to bring back together, but to bring back

together requires you to completely let go and to

dissolve to the Great Spirit and to dissolve into

that universal consciousness where you no longer exist

as Greg or I no longer exist as I am, as we

ourselves to be. Yeah,

you know, one of our shared teachers is

our good friend Gabor Mate. And,

you know, I love Gabor Mate's work when he

really speaks towards the,

the inner conflict between authenticity and attachments.

And that if that soul blueprint is really our authentic self,

we forego that to secure attachments to our

parents, our primary caretakers, our culture.

And so, you know, to me, it seems like that's one

of the bridges is in the therapeutic world. They do

talk about attachment injuries and things like that. But

the way the shamanic spirit work really bridges with

the clinical work, from my perspective, is what Gabor

Mate is talking about is when we heal the attachment wounds

and we remember our authenticity. That's really

a lot of the healing journey. I'm wondering if you want to expand upon that

at all. Well, the first thing that came up in my mind, Greg,

and I'll flow with it from this as a foundation, is

the societal and cultural

programmings that were

programmed in our minds, maybe epigenetically.

You and I've done some work around that. I'd like you to touch on that

at some point, maybe after I say this. But so we,

we come into incarnation carrying what was not even

ours. So fundamentally, as we start to take

embodiment or, or take out this

incarnation, we're naturally given these burdens.

And then they come from our parents, our family, all the educational

institutions, religious institutions, and it just goes outwards. And

most people live like this. I, I, like I said, I'm not perfect at all

by any stretch of the imagination. So I took birth into this

incarnation, not given understanding what that meant. And then here I was

operating. Attachment versus authenticity, I think is

one of the pieces, but it's not the piece

that keeps us from being an essential self or soul

self, because as I just mentioned, there's a lot of things that we carry. And

God Word doesn't necessarily subscribe to past life stuff,

incarnations, and maybe not necessarily the

spiritual epigenetics of what we carry as we come into

incarnate here and so forth. And maybe that's a little too far for many

people. It's a little esoteric, but it can and it does

exist on this level. But if someone is

suffering from anxiety disorder, last thing you want to do is, okay,

let's go back into 10 incarnations when he got stabbed

in, in the chest or in the battlefield. How's that going to really help them?

Maybe that takes them into spiritual bypass because they haven't worked through their stuff here.

So my work is about really working about on these elements

that keep us in a disordered nervous

state, self and the nervous state,

self being, the mental and the physical experience of

being embodied in this vehicle that we're in. And then obviously, as

you and I do, working with other people on our team that

support people with herbs, with Western

medicine, with these different modalities that support the body into

finding homeostasis and balance, through which then

you can start to let go of the things that you thought you were.

Yeah, you know, one of my

mentors who's a shaman, his name's Foster, Foster

Perry. And,

you know, one of the things that he's taught me is whenever you're working with

an individual, you're from a

shamanic lens. You're usually looking at three things. You're looking at

childhood trauma, you're looking at

ancestral imprints, intergenerational

trauma, and you're looking at the possibility of past

lifetimes. And so I'm curious, when you're,

you know, doing skirt work and medicine work, are you

tuning into all three of those, you could say dimensions

and kind of working in that way? I'm curious, when you're

working with someone in the spirit world, I'd love for you to take us through

what your process is when you're. You're.

You're tracking back to the root of someone's pain or

trauma. Because that's, from my perspective, what shamans are.

They're master trackers. And so I'd love for you to take

us through your process when you. Because you go into medicine with

people, which is very different than the clinical setting

where people are serving, you know, patients, medicine, but they're

not actually going on the journey with them. So I'd love for you

to take us through that, almost like a little journey, what your process is

like when you're going into the spirit world and you're operating as

that tracker to really find the root of someone's pain. You

made a distinction. And I'd like to first

lay out the foundation of what that distinction is for people

that may not understand and then go into working in the spirit realm, which

is the clinicians that don't take the medicine, whereas the. The

shamans that do. Yes,

the. The first thing I want to

recognize is that I know clinicians personally that are really amazing

facilitators that are. That are working in integrity with these medicines.

There are men and women of integrity that I. That I trust.

There are then clinicians who are taking these

medicines as another tool

because inherently they. They want to help, but

it's like adding another tool to the system without fully

understanding that this tool and one tool in the toolbox

requires a lifetime to learn. So there's a

major distinction there. And just because

you choose a tool doesn't mean the tool chooses you.

And there's another distinction. That's

why when you're working with spirit medicine, the medicine chooses you as much

as you ask the medicine for its wisdom. There are certain medicines

that won't agree with each and every person

and the medicine will not speak to you.

That's another distinction within the clinical model.

So what they're doing is essentially maybe having their own experience.

And again depends on the level and degree to which they really are actually

committed to this work. There are trainings, quote unquote, as I'll

say, where they do one experiential or role

playing of a psychedelic session and then they're

certifying therapists to go facilitate medicine without having

any requirement for inner work, shadow work.

Seeing if they actually have the, they possess the character,

then this is critical to actually have the character to be able to carry this

medicine, to be able to sit with this medicine and see someone through

with or without actually being in medicine. And therapists obviously can't because

that's outside of the agreements, their clinical agreements.

So it's this naive understanding that,

okay, I've been trained and now I may have my own experience,

I may have one experiences or two experiences. Now I'm going to facilitate this person

through an experience that is incredibly vast. And these medicines open

up many different layers of the consciousness

of not only the individual, but also the individual within the field that being in

the ceremony or more the therapeutic room. In my view, it's irresponsible and

dangerous to work with these medicines and claim that you know what you're doing with

without really fully understanding the power of these tools.

And let's just say a therapist has had

some training or has, you know, has had some

experience with the medicine and has gotten their certification,

but they haven't really fully experienced the

relationship with the medicine and the medicine hasn't given them permission to go to the

spirit realm. So they're just

watching and trying to guide someone through an experience

as though it were an individual sitting in a command

post telling someone in a submarine how to navigate the

Mariana Trench without ever having been in the trench,

much less ahead of the U boat as it's navigating these very

treacherous waters. The

obverse of a shaman, a paget,

a spirit walker, a medicine keeper, is that they've been

initiated into the medicine. The

medicine has a relationship with the Medicine Keeper.

The Medicine Keeper has a relationship with the medicine.

The medicine will show the Medicine Keeper what the Medicine Keeper needs

to see as this conduit between the

spirit realm and this earthly realm. And to

help someone navigate the spirit realm through

their body, through their felt, energetic

psychic experience, and help them navigate these

planes of consciousness to get to the root of what may be ailing them.

You know, the image that comes up in my mind is

if I were wanting to climb Mount

Everest, I would want to hire a guide

who has climbed to the summit of Mount Everest a few thousand

times, where if a

guide comes along and says, hey, I'm happy to accompany you

on your summit, your climb to Mount Everest. And I ask

the guide, have you ever been to the top? And they say, no,

that's not someone that I would want to work with. And so

I would love for you to speak about the importance, importance of initiation

and the people that you're choosing to do medicine work with.

What do people need to pay attention to when they're

choosing a facilitator? Because, you know, this medicine

is becoming very popular. It's almost becoming like

a fashion trend to be doing psychedelics and to be serving

medicine. And I think the,

the prevalence of this medicine right now is a blessing and a curse,

depending on how it's used. So I'd love to really hear

your perspective on this psychedelic

renaissance, this shamanic renaissance that we're experiencing,

and some of the, you know, benefits and potential

dangers that people could possibly

find themselves in entering this world. Another distinction

I again, looking

at how the

traditional cultures worked with these medicines,

the pages were

initiated through lineage or through shamanic

initiation that oftentimes involved some shamanic sickness,

perhaps a psychic breakdown of some kind. And that's

really the spirit world challenging them to see if they can survive that. The experience

versus the Western, where anyone can go to a training,

pay them 5 to 10,

$15,000 or euros to get a certification to

facilitate medicine.

Credentialing does not mean competency, whether it's in

the shamanic realm or in the therapeutic

realm. I've seen some

highly credentialed people that

I would not trust my cat to for an hour.

And I know some people who have zero credentials that I trust my life

to. And

this is that confusion of the

Western mind is you pay for something, then you get

a certificate. Maybe you are on some portal of some

institute that's trained you, but that institute

is not testing your character.

It's not testing your personality type. It's

not testing to see whether you will fragment in medicine,

whether you go into psychosis. It's

taking the money. Here's, you know, a course. Play by the

rules, you'll get the certification, you can go and do whatever you want.

And that's the problem here in the west is

in my culture, in this Iranian culture, your family name, your

reputation was everything that was social currency.

So payam, my name, it

stands for something, and it stands for my reputation. That's what matters the most

to me. And I

interact with people of reputation, you being one of them.

Whereas in the West, John

Smith is John Smith. Who knows what John Smith, father or

grandfather did? There's no connection, no tie to anything, no

reputation. And people build reputation based on

online presence, right, by.

By creating this facade. So then there are people that are

attracted to that facade or that image that's projected outwards as

a mark of competency and character. And then

they go and sit with those people, and they may end up getting damaged, hurt,

or even killed. So there's. There's that distinction. Did that answer you

fully? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, a few years ago,

I. I think I actually FaceTimed you right after the ceremony. I was

traveling out to Taos, New Mexico, by myself, almost like a little

pilgrimage. And I sat in a

solo ceremony with some spirit medicine,

and I took the medicine and just went for a little walk and then

came back to my altar. And as I was walking back to my altar,

I just had this intuition to pick up this stone that was

sitting on the ground and I put it on my altar.

And just a little background, which some of my listeners know.

You know, when I was 19 years old, I had a huge psychic break.

I had a physical trauma, and I went through

severe obsessive compulsive disorder and

got to the point where there were times where I wasn't sure if I still

wanted to continue living. And I had many

opportunities to be given, you know,

medications and psychotropics and anti anxieties

and antidepressants. But there's a part of me that

was like, this is happening for a reason. And I found the

right teachers, I found the right mentors, and, you know,

through a lot of deep inner work, meditative work and shamanic work,

I pieced myself back together. And so at the

end of this ceremony, this was about three years ago, I

looked at the stone, and it had the number 19 on it.

And obviously that was the age that this happened. And

I just heard the Spirit say, we've been training you since then.

And so I had the direct experience for over

10 years of where pain and suffering

is a shamanic initiation, if you're willing

to go into it. And so, so much of

the Western medical model, which has its value

from my perspective, in a lot of acute traumatic care,

not in chronic conditions, but in acute traumatic care, it has

value, but where it misses the

mark is the numbing of pain. And the

shamanic perspective is to go into the pain.

It's very different. So I would love for you to speak to the difference

of going into the pain and suffering and bringing it through

shamanic medicines as an initiation versus

numbing it and trying to make it go away. Yeah,

great, Craig. That's really great stuff. I'm going to go back

backwards to go forwards. And this is one point that I, that I missed that

you touched on, which is pain and suffering are inherent parts of

the initiation process of becoming a shaman. And

the spirits test me constantly, Greg. It doesn't end.

You and I were in Ireland with the guys, and once we watched over you

and you guys split, I had some time to sit with myself, and there I

was. And I took a pretty heavy

dose because, like, I had some work to do.

And there's a point where the spirit just said, we're going to take your body

whether you like it or not. And there I was, and I

said, before the curse of you, go high. And they took my body.

And I was just actually remarking on this, which

is, imagine being taken

as who you thought you were and

completely dismembered into a million billion pieces. And all those

million billion pieces are having experiences

of all of these states of

consciousness. And you're the watching yourself be shattered

and trying to hold that together. And

you don't hold it together because if you're trying to hold it together, then that

would be complete psychosis. But you just literally sit there and

be witness as your body is being used as a conduit of the suffering

of the people in Ireland. That's what I was going through.

And I came out and I realized that was another initiation

because the spirits had told me. And I realized, okay, I

don't think I would have been able to survive this psychically if I wasn't

initiated into all of the things that I'd done prior to

sitting. And so the trainings

don't initiate you in that process. I think what the

major distinction. I don't think I know the major distinction

between the Western model and the

shamanic model. Is symptom

management,

stabilization and

equanimity or harmony in the system through

conventional means and

psychotropic means to create a

sense of numbness so that you can operate within the parameter of the

society, of what's acceptable versus

the shamanic, where

the guides, the ancestors that have come to me have given me a blade

to literally cut the cord of

ignorance and the suffering that keeps us in our ignorance,

to elucidate the source of why we are running from

that which keeps us in. In darkness, to bring

it to light, to release it,

and then to reconstitute.

And that may

require someone to split into a million pieces, to lose what they

thought they were, to go through heavy experiences. You and I have been

together with. Working with hopping Sananga and 5

Meo and really going through these. This

dismemberment to then remember who

we actually are. Yeah.

You know, one of the things that was coming up when you were sharing

is how much

initiation is missing in our culture.

And that indigenously, almost every

tribe had their own form of initiation

from childhood into adulthood. And

that initiation aligns

someone with their real purpose.

And the purpose is usually something that's greater than themselves

and our culture.

Lacking that initiation, what I

observe leads people to not move into purpose, but

into performance. And so

I would love for you, if there's anything you want to add to

really, the consequences of

living in a culture that does not have true

initiation anymore. Yeah. Like you said, indigenous cultures

initiated you as you age through these ordeals,

Whether it was going off into the desert for four days,

seven days with no food and water, and

saying to the initiate, see, when you get back and if you make it

now, you're a man or a hunter.

All these initiations

strip us of these identities we assumed. Greg, the

greatest amount of growth that we both individually have gone through and

together is when we got shattered

by my life, where we got shattered in medicine, when

we're in process ourselves, not sitting in a

group, right. Where we're like, oh, damn that I was there.

Didn't realize I was there. Right. And so

it's when we go through these challenges, when we

surrender and release these identities that we assumed, do we then

entering into rebirth and

gather a newer understanding of what we're. We're made of

fundamentally and essentially as a

vehicle that contains a soul that's connected to spirit,

that's connected to Earth, the. The. The sky.

Western culture

does not initiate. It

creates these identities

that are imprinted on us for its own greater good.

It's also that's that's a little bit of a paradox. It's a very individualistic

society. Right. The. The indigenous, their

collectivist I. I and my. My needs are not as important as

the greater of the good. And I'm here in service to Great

Spirit and my community, the West. It's the me show

me myself and I and

the institutions and organizations that prop up this

false self, create these mass that people

assume by purchasing all these products and goods and services and fashion or

whatever to come into somebody and is assuming this

identity. That's not founded fundamentally unreality,

but fundamentally it's founded on someone

else's need to use you as a tool

to enrich themselves. Major distinction. Yeah.

You know, when you were speaking, what I was hearing

just in my mind intuitively is

if you don't initiate, you indoctrinate.

And that since our culture is lacking initiation,

it's getting consumed with indoctrination. Yep.

Now, you and I do a lot of men's work.

And so I'd love for you to talk about, you know, your focus

on working with men and why that men's

initiation and men coming together in sacred

space and in that sacred container, and they move

through an initiation together. Why that is so important and why

you're so passionate about doing some of that men's work as well. I'm fondly

reflecting back on Taos together,

And it was a really beautiful

experience, number one, because

the healing was a community. Whether we were sitting in medicine or not. That

was in of itself a very healing process. To be in

community with men who

all had done work, whether they were working with you or

me, or simultaneously. These are people that we've had relationship with. But

that elevated the level of consciousness of the group to higher

state where men are. We're not being

performative. Unlike the previous ceremony that we had

done up in New York. There was no performance. There was just a state of

being. And there is that expansive state

in the field of the ceremony over the course of a few days,

where men

learned that it was safe, not that they needed to because of the quality of

the guys that were there, but implicitly there was that sense of

safety and acceptance to be who they needed to be at the moment,

regardless of whatever they were going through.

That togetherness was the medicine.

And the beautiful part of it all was that we were there

to support one another in whatever capacity we needed

to uphold each other so that we could uphold the

coherence of the group and the field and the ceremony over the

course of the Five or six days that we were together, having gone through some

very challenging experiences in medicine as well.

If all You've known for 40 years of

your life is fight or in flight, and you're in a business world

where at every corner, someone can take a knife and stab

you, metaphorically, how are you able to trust

yourself in relationship to a man and trust your heart and

be in an open state without being armored and guarded and performative

so that you can protect yourself?

And there's that. That process of lack

of. Or there's a lack of initiation, and there's a

lack of brotherhood, lack of community.

And so we walk around lonely

in life in general, you and I, lucky that we have each other and

that we have some really remarkable men that we can count on if we need

each other. The knowing that you're there or

Mac or whoever in the group, hey, I need someone

to talk to. Just. You got 15 minutes. And you just put something on the

table. That end of itself is really, really healing to know that someone who's

gone through the same initiation can sit there and be present with you

and to listen to you and speak from their heart, not from their ego.

And fundamentally, I think that's what the healing is in men's work.

Yeah, you know, it's beautifully stated. And

it's almost like when you bring men together and create a sacred space,

the medicine that you're taking is almost secondary to the space that you've

generated. You know, one of the reasons why I really

love men's work and it's also been so therapeutic for me, is,

you know, psychologically and archetypally,

the ways that we experienced our

father and the ways that our father received

us. We as children and as young men

anticipate that the world is going to receive us in the same way.

You know, so the mother creates what's called our inner ego, which is how

we engage our inner world. Our father creates our outer ego, which

is how we anticipate being received by the outer world.

And so many of us have this script that says,

I have to armor up, I have to perform, I have

to do X, Y, or Z, or else I'm going to get judged,

criticized, attacked, et cetera, by these other men.

And so by creating. Because we have the projection of our father

onto other men in the world. And so by creating this

sacred container for men, they can begin to

rewrite that script, you know, just by

being able to say, oh, wait, I can be vulnerable, I can

cry, I can feel, I can get messy and These guys

can actually hold space for me. These guys can actually show up

for me. These guys can actually listen without judging.

And so the medicine that we're taking is almost secondary to

that experience, which is so beautiful. And I'm so grateful

to be able to be a participant and a facilitator

because I've been healing that same wound in myself as well.

Yeah, you. You touched on something which is, I

think, really, really critical. And this is one of the disorders that we're kind of

confronted by, is there are

a lot of wounded masculine and a lot of wounded feminine in this world

and their respective projection

of their own wounds onto the other, which inflames the wounding within.

So then it comes a very polarized the masculine and the

feminine. And so

when we start to come into. In terms of.

With recognizing that we all,

as men and as women, possess the

masculine and the feminine. If

I possess feminine qualities, it doesn't mean that a woman or

I can identify as a woman as much as a woman can

possess masculine qualities, but that does not mean that they can identify as a

man. We possess the yin and the yang, the

masculine and the feminine, the light and the dark. And those are the polarities

that uphold us so that we can be the

healed bridge of both archetypes

within and without. When we

operate in our woundedness,

we're projecting on our woundedness of the feminine or the

masculine externally that's being received and that our

woundedness actually engulfs and then

enlarges these false archetypes

of the masculine and all the. Of the feminine. But when

you're a divine masculine that possesses the

divine feminine within itself, and you're the divine feminine that

possesses the divine masculine, you don't need to assume anyone

else's identity or their sexuality or their quote, unquote, gender.

You just possess the archetypes in a healed fashion, and you can

recognize the healed archetypes of the other within them.

And then you can be in balance and in harmony. You know, speaking of the

masculine, I was. I was in a ceremony a few weeks ago,

and, you know, one of the

beautiful insights that I got is that when it comes to the

masculine, a knight wears an armor but

no crown, and a king wears a crown but no armor.

And so the initiation is the removing of the armor,

and which is us stepping into our authenticity. And that's the crown of

our own sovereignty and our own empowerment.

So I really loved that insight that came in a recent ceremony.

One of the things I'd love to dive into together is

you know, you and I have both explored a lot in the realm of parts

work. And, you know, you, more than

any medicine carrier I've ever met, does beautiful work

in integrating the parts work

with the medicine work. And I

would love for you to speak to, number one,

what parts work is, and number two, how

different medicines interface with the

psyche when it comes to parts work. For example, if someone's working with

ketamine or MDMA, how does that interface with

people's internal system versus working with, say,

psilocybin or 5 Meo? I'd love

for you to kind of take us through that a little bit. All right. So

one distinction I make, which I think is very important,

is organic medicines

and synthetic medicines, both of which we both work with,

have sat with and have relationship with. And if there's a moment

you want to jump in to add some of your thoughts because you're very eloquent,

please stop me. Okay. This is very, very important material.

So for those who

may sound. For those who this may sound a little

insane, it's totally okay.

But when one takes an organic medicine that comes from

Mother Earth, there's a spirit there. And a spirit is a

benevolent, wise entity or a

multiplicity of entities, depending on which medicine. I can touch on

that that have your best interest in

mind. But are there, as most often, a very stern

teacher that will reveal to you what

needs to be revealed to you for you to heal, because you've

gone to them, ideally humbly,

to ask for healing. That's the organic spirit

medicine. Then we have the synthetic. The

synthetic is just as powerful,

but the synthetic works differently than the

organic. The synthetic, in my

humble estimation, is medicine that

strips away parts of you

or organizations of defense mechanisms around

you in your psyche and your body, to

strip away of these identities or these mass

that you've assumed to slowly come to terms

with who you actually are. That

being ketamine, MDMA, synthetic 5 MeODMT, 2

CB, 3 MMC, 4 MMC, 2 MMC,

and all these analogs, LSD.

And so those are the two major distinctions

that I draw from the medicines

within the synthetics. They certain. There are certain classes

that work and operate differently on the mind and the body and the psyche

and pathogens and then tactogens like two mmc,

three mmc, four mmc, mdma.

Those, and I will talk under the umbrella

of mdma because those are all sort of very close to

each other under the umbrella of

entactogens and pathogens.

These medicines

slowly disarmor our Protective mechanisms of mind

body. So there are parts of our psyche that live in our

body. There's parts of our psyche that actually live in the mind like

the amygdala and the limbic system or DMN

up here and the psyche. That being of

the mind body system, that interrelatedness neural

nervous system and the parts within the nervous system.

And that gets into some deep therapy work with like the work of Janina

Fisher and Pat Pat Ogden Sensory motor

psychotherapy, which is really beautiful and brilliant unless your system is really

worked through a lot of material and is open and one is able

to facilitate really deep healing journeys with these medicines. The

synthetics that you've had relationship with

dosage dependent. But generally with the

exception of LSD and

5 Meo DMT. So these intactogens and pathogens

don't disarmor the protectors so much that

repressed material can come to the surface. Unless like I said, there's a really

nice relationship of the facilitator and the seeker and their

relationship in the space and so forth. So

that's in pathogens and intactogens. And then we go into 5 Meo

DMT which is by, by far, by my estimation

the strongest medicine. There's a Bogo, there's ayahuasca, again the

dosage dependent. But 5MEO cuts through the material real quick.

5MEO

I liken to energy medicine and what is energy medicine is?

It's hard to explain what energy medicine is.

Medicine that enters our body and dismantles our

identity very, very quickly, very rapidly. And

all these identities that we assumed they kept us from being in

in spirit self.

And it purges the these, these parts of our psyche and our

identities through the somatic self or the energetic body and so forth.

Because we are the psychic container of this body that we're in and it's

consciousness. LSD is not my medicine. I haven't worked with it,

so I can't speak directly to it. Then there is

psilocybin that I work with. There's San Pedro. It's

not my medicine. Ayahuasca is not my medicine. POD is not my medicine. So

I won't talk about those because it's nothing that I can authentic,

authentically and truthfully speak about. But psilocybin

has.

A spirit consciousness that's not one spirit like one entity, but

it's a collective of

entities within an entity. It's like that's that paradox of one entity

being many and the many being one. And

depending on what Your relationship

is with the particular medicine, particular strain

that you're taking. They all have their own qualities. Yeah. They

have their own spirit, so to speak. Some are very direct and very

sharp. Some are very connected to Ayahuasca and

Fatima spirit or Toto spirit. They can actually

bring those spirits up in you if you've taken those medicines.

But it's like taking those medicines connect us to the greater collective

consciousness of Mother Earth and the

consciousness of our ancestors, the consciousness of this land that has that

innate desire to help you heal from

what's kept you from being in spirit or

soul self. But again,

it's the distinction is you go to an elder and ask for help

regardless of how badly it hurts, and you're gonna have to pull the tooth. So

you go to the elder and say, take the tooth out, and you kind of

have to grin and bear if that means that you're going to get

smashed into a million pieces so that you can essentially find your essential self.

You and I have talked about this in the past, but,

you know, the way I've seen it is that a lot of the

synthetic medicines that you're talking about, and you call them self

medicine, is they really help connect you to your

essential self, but you're not necessarily

interfacing with another intelligence or

entity outside of self. Yeah, but when you're taking

organic medicine, you are interfacing with other forms

of intelligence that on some level,

are not you. I mean, in a sense, everything is,

you know, on a divine level, but you are interfacing with

another entity, which, if people haven't done

enough deeper work within themselves, would you say that

can be very fracturing if they do it too soon? Yeah, I

think that it requires a lot of preparation, and there's really no

true way of preparing for bufo, for instance.

There's no way in hell. You're like, okay, this is how you get prepared and

go on this journey. And I'll see you back soon. You see, when you come

back. But within reason, understanding and

preparing and be able to go into these expanded stage of consciousness

allows you to be with the wisdom of the medicine that

you've taken without being completely fractured. People

who have had deep experiences can get fractured or can go through really

disorienting experiences. And maybe that process is

actually a preamble to a different and deeper experience that

you actually need to kind of go later on down the line. So

you may come back upside down or not know what the hell happened.

But two, three, four, five years later, you're like, oh, yeah, Okay, I get it

now. I see what that was about. This Western model is a

very linear model. You go to the clinic or you go through some sort of

facilitator or a therapist, you go and sit in a

chair or in a bed, they're gonna give you the medicine, you're gonna go through

it for six hours and you're gonna come out and that's it. You do this

once or twice or three times, and you have remission of depression

or remission of ptsd. And all

those things can be true and are true, but

like developing deep relationship with medicine may take years

and years and years and never gets done either. That's all the

problem. The more you dig, the more

there is. Yeah. And then. So then to what end?

What. Why are you doing the things that you're doing? Ramdas said when you, you

know, when you get the message, hang up the phone. Yeah. The possibility of

if someone. If someone doesn't have enough access

to self. Yeah. If spirit medicine could be too

fracturing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean,

if you look at an individual, for instance, who has

borderline personality disorder or narcissistic personality

disorder or certain disorders, they're not integrated. Right. They're

assuming all these masks. And when you go into medicine,

these masks, whether or not they take it, they start to

come off. And so these other mass or

ego states or parts are trying to

fight as much as possible to maintain some sort

of control in an environment where control naturally needs to be

let go of. But this is the problem with

the preparation phase of, oh, you just need to let

go of control. And this is what it looks like. And you may teach

breathing techniques and somatic techniques and third

eye techniques and all these things that we have done also together.

But it's incumbent on a facilitator

to see what the personality structure of these individuals are

and how rigid these personality structures are. Can I jump

in for one sec? Yeah, please. Yeah. I'm glad you bring that up because

some of the cases that you shared with me

that have been mind blowing is where you might

say I served someone 7

grams of psilocybin and nothing happened.

If you. If I take seven grams of psilocybin.

Bye. Bye. See you next week. See you next week.

I mean, I'll have a beautiful experience and I'll hang out with God

for six hours. But this

really illuminates how powerful the psyche is and

how powerful people's protective systems

can be. So I'd love for you to touch upon that because that's been really

mind blowing to hear some of those cases where you can serve that high

of a dose and the psyche still doesn't crack at all.

Yeah, well,

I, I know what you mean by cracking. And you also know that I don't.

I'm not there to rip someone's stuff open unless they really ask me. And

we've done a lot of work to get ripped open. But this one particular

case that you're mentioning, it was,

I think, a total of 10 grams of silo and

two rounds of toad. And again, we'd done all of this prep and I said,

hey, you want the truth? The truth might, might upend your

life as you know it. Are you

ready for the ramifications of your

entire reality as you thought you knew it,

completely dissolving? And

so we had to go through all the, you know, the steps of what that

would mean and so forth. And this particular individual got

the truth and got the memo and they were, they

were so diligent at repressing it and convincing

them otherwise that they decided that they were going to live a

entirely false life with a false identity and a false family and all

those things to prop up this idea

of this person that they, they assumed to be

for themselves and for outward, publicly

facing identities that they were projecting. Whether it's a

trauma response or whether it's a shame response, whether

it's a response to

conformity for safety,

attachment versus authenticity. Basically, when,

when it's like a narcissistic

structure of, of a false self

developing around shame and guilt that's actually underneath the

wounded child and the true self. These

identity structures,

you know, these identity structures are formed as a means

to survive, you know, that become the survivable identities, as Chris

Burgers calls them right now. It's a,

it's just a very, very delicate amount of work to first

discern as a facilitator. Is this person's personality

so rigid that they, that they may go into

psychosis or, or come back depersonalized because the

medicine revealed to them something that they were not ready for? It's like a

rubber band that's so dry that, you know, it starts to stretch, it

just breaks. Is this person so porous

because of attachment needs and, and has no

boundaries that they attached to someone else energetically,

emotionally, psychically in medicine, which obviously backfires again,

Is this person resourced enough and has enough

flexibility in life to be able to go into places

and get really honest with themselves and what

do they really want? And having that

verbal contractual agreement hey, this may happen if you end up

going here, but if that's what you want and we

have a conversation about it, then we can step into that space and see what

happens. So it's always consent based? Yeah,

yeah. Informed consent. So, you know, some of

our listeners might be individuals that are, you know,

interested in experiencing medicine work. And

there might also be potentially some listeners that are practitioners

that might be interested in the potential path of

facilitating medicine work and what that path might look like.

What would your piece of advice

be for, number one, people that are potentially

interested in just experiencing medicine work as a participant.

And what would your piece of advice be for people that might be

interested in going down the facilitator route? I'm curious

what PAYAM would want to share with

both of those potential individuals.

The first word or thought that comes to my mind is,

it's not cute. Yeah,

it's not pretty. It ain't cute. I

think that there are therapists who have come to me to be supervised me or

be trained by me and so forth. And then 8% of the time I

say no to them because I know that they're not ready or I'm not the

right person to teach them anything. But I think that

therapists have this false,

romantic, mystical idea of what it is to be a facilitator

because they may have their. Have had their own personal

experiences with spirit medicines

or have seen Instagram posts and these projections

of what these beautiful retreats are in Bali and,

you know, the yoga classes and the organic foods and all these

beautiful circles. But the reality of the experience

is substantially more

demanding of your

character, of your patience, of your mind, of your body, of your spirit,

of your resources, of your life. And

this is a vocation that chooses you. Ultimately,

it's not a vocation that you choose. It's that

piece about being initiated and being permitted to work with the medicines, as opposed

to you assuming the character that thinks that

it can facilitate these medicines.

And how about for people that are just looking to sit

for themselves? Whether it's choosing the right medicine or choosing the right

facilitator, what would you advise

for those individuals? Because people can go online right now and sign up for an

ayahuasca retreat in the Amazon tomorrow and get on a plane.

But that might not be the right fit for everyone given their

trauma history, their psychological structure, etc.

Yeah. I think that the most important

piece is trust your gut

instincts. Beautiful. There are some

very, very smart and attuned

quote unquote facilitators that are acting nefariously in this space

who are hungry ghosts that are trying to fill their own holes by using others.

And they can do a really good job of putting on the mask

and telling you what you need to hear to draw you in. With

their hooks,

Any facilitator should be

able to.

Withstand any question, to be able to respond without being

defensive, to be there from a place of an open heart, to be there

to speak with someone, to see if that

relationship as a seeker and a facilitator is the right

relationship and what skills they have to

assist the seeker that's coming to them.

And they should be honest about what they may not be able to do

for them. That's walking in integrity.

I don't work with everyone because I'm not there to work with everyone because I

don't have the skills. I don't. I don't possess the,

the qualities as a man, as, you know, having the warrior energy.

Some. Some people need softer energy. Like the reason you and I

get along so well in ceremony, when we run ceremony together or Nick and

I is like you and Nick possesses more of a

softer energy with your.

With your energy or the way you speak, the way you

articulate thought, the way you are present and

spaced. Whereas I carry more of the masculine warrior

energy that uses a blade. But we complement each other.

If there was two of me in the ceremony, that wouldn't go so well. If

there's two of you, maybe it would go well for certain groups, maybe

it wouldn't go so well for others because there'd be people bouncing around the wall.

So making sure that you're there to

be upheld respectfully, but also not to

work with someone that's just there to be walked all

over because you're going to consult the medicine and to be

challenged. This is not a place where your

whims and your

I'll say in ifs language, the needs of these young parts

that are seeking safety and reassurance should, should

be met. Because, yeah, we do that within reason. But this is an initiation

that you're going through. It's going to hurt. It's going to get

uncomfortable. If you're getting. If you're getting Sananga and Hoppe, it

ain't got to be fun.

Yeah. So,

yeah, it's just understanding what the facilitator is there to offer

you and if that's in alignment with what your needs are essentially

beautiful. And so before I

invite people or direct people to your. Your website,

if they want to work with you, are there Any other final thoughts

or messages that you would like to share given your years of

experience and wisdom, as any parting message?

Yeah, so I've been, I've been really working through some

material with regards to the dark forces of the universe. What do you call

malevolent energies, entities and people being

brainwashed and using you

as energy and as technology

against your own personal interest to enrich themselves. And there you

go. And this

has become very, very prevalent in, in our society.

And.

You know, it's that it's the shadow archetypes that we oppose this or the, the

shadows of the archetypes that we're working with and the shadows of our

parts. And

I encourage people to

really start to question themselves

and how they may have been indoctrinated in certain belief systems

that are sold as

ideologies that are there to benefit the many and

you being part of the many, like a collectivist ideology

that are fundamentally flawed and are inflicting a lot of harm

individually. So that's some, a lot, some heavy material

to think about and work through. Yeah,

and it seems like it's a mix of number

one, us doing our own shadow work

because it's an expression of the shadow and we all have our own personal

shadow. So the more personal shadow work we

do within ourselves, the more discernment

we probably have when we step out into the world.

And then also, you know, questioning,

questioning our belief systems, questioning what we're seeing, what

we're hearing, what we're reading, what we're watching and having that

level of discernment to ask ourselves, is this really

true? Because a lot of times the devil hides in sheep's

clothing. So that's a precise thing. And

that's the essential distinction, I

think, between doing spirit work versus

clinical work, which is clinical work is affirmative,

like gender affirming sex

reassignment surgery that the Western

clinical model is doing, which is to me, mental.

Because if you're connected to your essence and to

your masculinity and it's full expression and it's healed for in its

field, fullest expression, you're not going to be swayed or

brainwashed or extorted to believe something that

requires you to rip apart your body parts to fit into another

gender identity that never is really you because you're never man

or woman.

And that the word discernment is very important. And then

sovereignty is to be able to discern what's true and what's, you

know, there's relative truth and there's absolute truth to understand

relative truth that is relative to you within absolute truth.

That is the truth of God within yourself and stand in your sovereignty as you

are and become the expression of absolute truth. That's God within you.

Beautifully stated, Beautifully stated.

And so where would you like to direct people if they'd like to

learn more about your work, if they're interested in attending one of your group

ceremonies or to work with you one on one? Where would you like

to send people? Well, first I'd like to send people

to our upcoming ceremony, Greg. So we're

talking about first week or second week of

June, and that's upstate New York.

And that's going to be held for approximately eight or nine men,

facilitated by you and I and our assistant. So

there will be a total of 12 people max. We

have to still make the announcement for the exact dates, but

relatively speaking, it's the first or second week of June.

So they can go to your website or they can go to my website, pyum.com

and reach out to the both of us to schedule a time to chat.

And then we take that process. After speaking, we send them

intake forms, physical and the psychological intake

forms, Review that. And if that passes, then we do two

prep sessions with them, a group prep and then to

do the ceremony work. And I think we're looking at four to

five days on this one, right, Greg? Something to that effect,

depending on how deep guys want to go. Right. So it's probably going to be

about three days of medicine and two days of rest.

I just started this company called the Psychedelic Executive, which is

based in the Netherlands. The psychedelic executive.com and

that's geared more towards people that want to do more conscious leadership work

with psychedelic work and the

Netherlands and in Portugal

and yeah, that's pretty much it. Those are the two best ways to

reach out to me or, you know, they have your contact details and can

speak with them and see what suits them best. Beautiful.

And one of the reasons why for our ceremonies we don't have

any sort of online signup is because we

require know a personal relationship. And so,

you know, setting up a individual call with PAYIM or myself is the

prerequisite to receiving an invitation to one of these

ceremonies. So booking a call with us is, is the best starting

point on his website or my website. And so

payam, thank you again for, for coming on the show and thank you for the

beautiful work that you do. And likewise, I look forward

to our continued collaboration with many more conversations

and nine more episodes in this series that we just

started, apparently. Thank you

to all the listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe. Please

share it with anyone that you feel would be benefited by this

conversation and this content. It's really important to get some of these messages

out into the world right now, and I look forward to sharing more with you

guys soon in a upcoming episode next week.