The Myth of Full Potential

I saw a video the other day. Palm trees, white linen, slow-motion smiles.
A voice whispered: Create a new life and unlock your full potential.

I laughed. Then I rolled my eyes. Then, somewhere between cynicism and sadness, I felt that old sting again, the one that comes when we humans try to sell transcendence.

Years ago, I used to work at one of those places, a luxury retreat center promising miracles and rebirth. I led Ayahuasca ceremonies there, not as a guru or healer, but as someone who had walked that road long enough to recognize the scenery.

Back then, before we arrived, I remember the fear. Could we hold space for a hundred people? Were we good enough? Experienced enough? And when we finally got there, we realized the irony: the ones afraid of not being ready were the most prepared in the room.

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.
They sound beautiful. They are beautiful.
The tragedy is not in the words - it’s in the way they’re used.

Because the slogans are true. Every single one of them. But they belong to a reality that can’t be reached by buying a package or drinking a cup. Used as promises, they become lies. Not because they’re false, but because they’re sold in a context that cannot deliver them.

People come to Ayahuasca for help. They are sincere, broken, hopeful. They want relief from pain, meaning, a way out. And just like children, they want someone to do it for them. The industry knows that. So it feeds the hope, sells the shortcut, packages transcendence in the language of possibility.

It works, at least for a while. The placebo is powerful. But it also keeps people small. Dependent. In love with the idea of awakening rather than the responsibility it requires.

What Ayahuasca Really Does

Ayahuasca is not a pill. It’s a process. A collaboration.

Two plants meet: one that opens the gate, another that carries the vision through. They need each other, just as we need a human bridge - someone who knows how to prepare, hold, and translate their language. Even the medicine itself depends on relationship. It must be cooked, watched, sung to. It demands patience, precision, reverence. That alone should tell us something: truth doesn’t come ready-made.

Ayahuasca cleanses. It reorganizes. It teaches. It reveals the energetic architecture that lies behind the visible world. Often it realigns things in a way no human could plan. Sometimes it brings to light what we didn’t even know we had forgotten. But it cannot walk the path for us. It can open the door, yes. It can show us the next step of our highest potential, but it will not take it. That part is ours. Always was.

The Misuse of Miracles

Some centers have mastered not the medicine, but the marketing. They promise guaranteed transformation, measurable enlightenment, 97 percent miracles. They take what is ancient, sacred, and profoundly unpredictable - and turn it into a product line. This is not just about one place; it’s about a culture that wants shortcuts to the divine. We have turned healing into consumption. Awakening turns into entertainment.

And yet, the miracle everyone’s chasing is not something you can stage. It’s what happens when truth meets readiness. It’s what happens when a person stops outsourcing their becoming. The spiritual market has learned to speak in light. But often, what hides behind the light is control. And control, no matter how well-intentioned, kills the very thing it promises to awaken.

What Healing Really Is

If I had to define healing - though the word itself already feels too small - I’d say it’s the art of becoming whole again. Of calling back every piece of ourselves we once exiled. Of remembering what we are beneath the noise of personality, trauma, and defense.

Healing is not about becoming better. It’s about no longer needing to be. It’s the gentle undoing of fragmentation and the return from a thousand identities to the simple pulse of being. It’s realizing that enlightenment isn’t a mountain peak, but a homecoming.

Most people won’t “reach” their full potential, because there is no such finish line. There’s only the next unfolding, the next step toward coherence. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe our full potential isn’t a destination but a presence that appears every time we stop running from ourselves.

Epilogue

So when I see the videos, the slogans, the promises I no longer get angry. I understand the hunger behind them. We all want to remember who we are. We just keep forgetting that remembering can’t be bought. Ayahuasca, at her core, is honest. She’ll show you everything you say you want to see and everything you don’t. She doesn’t lie. We do. Mostly to ourselves.

And maybe that’s what “unlocking your full potential” really means: to finally stop pretending, and let raw, imperfect, and whole truth do what it came to do.