'I’ve overcome the fear of death'... It's almost become a throw-away line in some circles.
But what if, as Castenada put it, death was suddenly sitting over your left shoulder?

In December 2010 I was diagnosed with a rare and advanced form of cancer, the conventional medical prognosis of which is decidedly grim.

While the imminence of death terrified and appalled me, and the prospect of leaving my loved ones broke my heart...out of the fog of chemotherapy and painkillers something unexpected emerged. I started to feel more alive than I had in years.
I began to heal.

The curious thing is, not long before my diagnosis, in the depths of depression, I had asked for this. I had quite literally called out to the universe for something, anything, to save me from myself; from falling any deeper into the rabbit hole of despair I had been digging. Specifically, I called out to my greatest teachers…I called out to the plants.

The scientist in me understands that a cancer of this kind takes many years to develop, yet the shaman in me knows that more subtle energies are also in play.

In this talk I would like to share with you how my experiences with plants have helped me start coming to terms with what it means to die, and in the process heal my heart and reawaken my spirit. More, that despite the conventional medical prognosis I have been given, the plant-facilitated deepening of my spirituality has opened up the very real possibility I may heal my body and prolong my life.

This talk also touches on various theories or understandings of death and the after-death state, including research into the use of entheogens with the terminally ill, esoteric spiritual texts including the Bardo Thodol (‘Tibetan Book of the Dead‘), and an exploration of the apparent parallels between ‘Bardo’ states and the realms revealed by psychedelic/entheogenic experience.