The Myth of Full Potential
I saw a video the other day: palm trees, slow-motion smiles, white linen, and an almost wedding-like atmosphere. A voice whispered: Create a new life and unlock your full potential, obviously promoting a New Age Ayahuasca center.
I laughed cynically and honestly I was a little jealous, because their marketing is so much better than ours. Then came the sting. I was angry at everyone and myself, for how much we love to lie to ourselves.
Years ago I worked at one of those places, a big luxurious retreat center promising miracles and rebirth. I was leading one of the weekly ceremonies. They called me a shaman, like they called everyone else who could wear a hat and start a playlist.
Before I went there with my friend, we were both terrified. Ceremonies with a hundred people in one of the most famous centers in the world. What if we weren’t good enough? When we arrived, we found out we were the most experienced people on the whole campus.
The Language of Illusion
Unlock your highest potential.
Open your heart.
Become your true self.
Step into your power.
If enlightenment were a marketing campaign, these would be the taglines. And the annoying thing is, they’re not false. But they belong to a reality you can’t buy with a package or four cups of Ayahuasca. Sold as promises, they become lies.
People come to Ayahuasca not only because they are curious. Most of them really need help. Many carry big problems, in their bodies, in their hearts. And like small children, they want someone to take the responsibility off their shoulders. The industry knows that and feeds the hope.
It works for a while. The placebo is powerful. But it keeps people dependent and treats them like fools. And the ones making the promises know very well how exaggerated they are.
What Ayahuasca Does
Ayahuasca is not a pill. You can’t just chew on the vine and wait for enlightenment.
The brew is made of two plants, the Ayahuasca vine and usually the leaves of Chacruna. They only work together, and only when someone knows how to cook them. Then it needs a person who builds the bridge between the plant and the one who wants something from it. It needs a safe space, held with integrity. And it needs the one who drinks to be ready.
When all of this comes together, it goes far. Ayahuasca cleanses, physically, emotionally and energetically. It heals by putting things back into place, in ways I can hardly describe here. It works behind the visible world, in the energetic structure, and from there the change reaches the body. And it teaches. It is a master plant that can show us what we didn’t even know we didn’t know.
It shows you yourself, it opens a new path and it explains the next steps toward the end of the rainbow. Then you go home, and you have to take them yourself. Otherwise not much happens.
The Misuse of Miracles
Some have mastered the marketing better than the medicine. They promise transformation with a guarantee and miracles for 99.999 percent of their guests. What they sell as their method are simply the gifts Ayahuasca brings anyway, when it is used with care.
Sometimes they go further. People arrive open and trusting, and someone with a lot of power stands on a stage and tells them what they are going to experience. The story gets more polished every week. The guests take it for their own transformation. It’s manipulation dressed in white linen. And it’s dangerous.
This is bigger than one place. We live in a culture that wants shortcuts to the divine, and the spiritual market has learned to deliver them. Healing turns into shopping.
The real miracle can’t be staged. It happens when people stop waiting to be saved and start doing the work themselves.
What Healing Is to Me
The word healing already feels too small. If I have to define it anyway, it's becoming whole again. Calling back every piece of ourselves we once sent away. Remembering the version of us that was never wounded. Physical healing is the side effect of that.
Healing doesn’t make you better. It ends the need to be better. We return from the busyness of a thousand identities to the lightness of being nobody in particular. Enlightenment is not a mountain peak. It’s more like coming home after a long trip and finally taking your shoes off.
Epilogue
They sell you the pot of gold. Nobody mentions that the end of the rainbow keeps moving. There is only the next step and that’s all we need.
When I see those ads today, I still get angry, for the same reasons. I’m still jealous of good marketing.
That’s me. And I'm not here to sell you my truth, but the freedom to find your own.