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EP 044 | PRAYER, CEREMONY, AND THE LIVING MEDICINE FAMILY
WITH ANDREW ASKARIPOUR
One of the best things about working with sacred plants is the medicine family you meet along the path. Today on The Psychedelic Integration Podcast I am sharing a spacious conversation with my spirit brother Andrew Askaripour, also known as FifthGod. I had the pleasure of getting to know Andrew last fall when we spent some truly beautiful time in fellowship and ceremony together with our teachers at Hayulima Spiritual Sanctuary in Ecuador. It was one of those special times where medicine people come together and become family. It is an honor to call Andrew a brother and a friend.
Andrew is a ceremonialist and multidisciplinary artist from Long Island, New York. For well over a decade, he has been passionately studying, learning from, and working directly with master plant teachers, ancient ceremonial traditions, and the practice of holistic body-mind healing. While also establishing himself as a successful professional photographer and cinematographer.
Born of Jamaican and Iranian descent, Andrew humbly walks a path of service in order to honor and give thanks to his ancestors and elders. Apprenticing for many years with initiated teachers and elders of several traditions has provided him with an immense respect and understanding of the responsibility of what it is to carry these sacred teachings with the utmost reverence and integrity.
In this episode, Sinclair and Andrew discuss:
- Growing up a first generation American in the suburbs of Long Island, New York
- His growing desire to reconnect with his roots, and live more like his parents and ancestors
- Taking an academic approach to learning about the indigenous practices around plant medicines and herbalism
- Going on his first retreat and meeting the Hayulima family down in Ecuador
- Reawakening an ancestral remembrance inside the ceremony container
- Receiving deep spiritual healing from intentional, ceremonial work with plant medicine
- Not being to access his true purpose and feeling called to the medicine to find this spiritual connection
- Reconnecting to devotion and prayer after a time feeling separate from a relationship from Spirit
- The tool of prayer as the biggest blessing from working with medicines
- Reclaiming prayer through the ceremonial container
- Integrating prayer into everyday life, living it as opposed to it being a transactional process
- Being in alignment and resonance with nature and its response to prayer
- The medicine as a portal to finding connection to Source with awareness and consciousness
- The common dream of intentional community in the medicine space
- Being a ceremonialist because of the love of ceremony
- Being curious about the deep intention and purpose of ceremony, the why behind every action and decision
- Asking a lot of questions and getting to know the medicine family
- Dedicating himself to the path of learning how to humbly be in service to the fire and the medicine
- If you want to learn how to do this work, take the opportunity to learn
- The importance of the ceremony, the container –– the energy that is held and shifted inside that space takes integrity, strength, confidence, and responsibility
- The texture of ceremony offers a different dimension to healing and expansion
- Facilitators have to have walked a path with teachers and elders to truly be able to hold a powerful space
- Aside from the importance of receiving the blessing to carry these altars, learning from and spending time with initiated elders and mentors provides you a framework and tools of what works in these spaces
- Moving in a ceremonial manner, creating a sacred and safe space for yourself and others is something anyone can do if it is done in an intentional and purposeful way
- Finding the right teachers
- Becoming an elder doesn’t automatically coming with age, it is earned
- The teacher will appear when the student is ready
- Mentoring moments are appearing all the time
- Doing the internal work in yourself and having the patience to receive it
- Difficult situations and people can be our best teachers
- Chopping wood and carrying water
- Self-care boundaries practices for being in service
- Nourishing communication with loved ones – being co-dependent in the best possible human way
- Boring self-care, down time, and just being normal and human
- The importance of discipline, knowing what needs to be done and having the patience to carry yourself in a way that benefits you and those around you
- Ceremony as a catalyst, a sacred portal to drop into the space of Spirit
- What happens in your daily life to get you more aligned with your heart
- Being a part of the ecosystem of prayer, devotion, and wellness as instant integration
- Integration as an act of conscious living in the moment
- Inquiry into your own darkness and the path of self-discovery
- Integration as an analogue of the medicine ceremony, the surrender to what cannot be seen or felt and finding your power to meet it and alchemize it
- Andrew’s upcoming offerings, ceremonial psilocybin retreats – Alchemy of Clarity, Earth Medicine, Soul Medicine, and his work as a photographer in New York
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Work and connect with Andrew Askaripour:
Alchemy of Clarity – Psilocybin retreat in Portugal (May and June 2023)
Earth Medicine with Rooted Healing – Ceremonial Psilocybin retreat in The Netherlands (April 2023)
Soul Medicine with Our Future is Ancient – Psilocybin retreat in Mexico (April 2023)
Fifthgod.com – Photography and Cinematography
Follow @fifthgod on Instagram
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Does this resonate with you? If so, I’d love to invite you to learn more about Rise and Align, my groundbreaking psychedelic integration immersion program where you’ll learn exactly how to find your soul mission and become part of the living medicine family.