The Path of Least Suffering

The post below continues the story of Ceremonia founder Austin Mao of creating the process of Modern Enlightenment: an integrated approach of psychology and spirituality to work with plant medicine. The first post is The Renaissance of Me. It was part two of a speech shared at the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit in Boulder, Colorado on June 7th.

Last year, I exited my real estate company and founded Ceremonia, a nonprofit offering plant medicine retreats. I now devote my life to the same transformational work with plant medicine that led to my own awakening. Ceremonia has more than 100 alumni that demark who they are as before walking through our doors and after leaving. This includes some people in this room.

I know now that this inner journey is a continuous unfolding. While I have felt joy, peace, and inspiration to depths I could not have imagined before, I have also manifested great suffering. I brought my marriage to the precipice of divorce many times and lost some of the closest relationships I’ve had. Just because I had a spiritual awakening, I was not healed of the shadows I inherited from my upbringing: a savior complex, mentalization, and pride. I didn’t have the tools that I have now, that I’ve earned through suffering and then carving a path towards healing to free myself from suffering.

When I first started on the medicine path, I learned to “choose love” and “feel gratitude”. These are very important practices, indeed. However, there is a critical step before these that I casually omitted: be with what is. I didn’t know how to fully surrender into my feelings. When I would feel guilt or anger, I would choose love. When I would feel shame or fear, I would choose love. What I was doing was I was subtly avoiding the underlying feelings. They would still be there, haunting me from the shadows. I was spiritually bypassing.

Former Harvard professor become spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, shares that he had an “an insatiable desire to find a way to 'stay high'.” He says, “I wanted to find a state of consciousness that I had glimpsed briefly while under the influence of psychedelics. I realized that the substances could only offer temporary glimpses, and I wanted a more lasting experience of that expanded state of awareness.” I felt this same calling. I started to read and research voraciously, seeking out teachers both shamanistic and scientific.

Since 2020, I have sat or supported in entheogenic ceremonies more than 100 times, being the guinea pig of my own consciousness with guidance from ancient shamanistic wisdom to contemporary transpersonal psychology. I have been blessed to be advised by some of the leading minds and biggest hearts in psychospirituality, including professors at Yale and Harvard. Most importantly, I have focused the energy of service and efficiency that once drove me from the shadows to seek out the clearest, most efficient path of transformation. I call this Modern Enlightenment: a synthesis of psychology and spirituality, science and shamanism that harnesses the power of plant medicine in a clear and coherent process of psychospiritual development.

Enlightenment is classically defined as a state of expanded consciousness, liberation from suffering, and unity with the divine that feels like infinite bliss, peace, and joy. Every spiritual tradition shares that enlightenment is the ultimate goal of human existence and experienced through the direct experience of one’s true nature. The trouble is, how the paths that have been charted to seek out this state do not map to our modern lives. Few of us can take refuge in a monastery for years on end or drink ayahuasca in the jungle day after day. We have families to come home to, businesses to create, and mortgages to pay.

The first records mentioning meditation are the Indian Vedas around 1500 BCE when Siddhartha Gautama achieved enlightenment under a Bodhi Tree. At this time, the average life expectancy was 25-35 years. To have discovered enlightenment required uncanny luck to happen upon just the right guru, freedom to pursue the inner work instead of toiling in the fields, and a life of renunciation. Now, everyone in this room can feel this state of bliss and peace in their lifetimes. What’s more, everyone in this room can live a life free from suffering, to never feel stressed, afraid, ashamed, or angry again. You can do it living in your home, in a city, and without renouncing sex.