THE WILD WILD WEST

This may be one of two things: a riveting, hallelujah kind of read or something you continue reading out of curiosity, concern, or perhaps sheer determination.

Either way, this is pretty fucking important to me.

We are living in a time of extraordinary advances in science, medicine, spirituality, technology, and access to information. The possibilities are meaningful, and the pace is unprecedented... what a remarkable time to be alive.

I offer this perspective earnestly: to the curious seeker, the cautious skeptic, and the hopeful at heart. I believe every word of it. I stand behind every implied stance, every explicit warning, and every note of caution about the landscape we are collectively shaping and navigating.

This perspective is mine, forged through many experiences as a participant, a practitioner, and a witness. It has been shaped by my own mistakes and failings and what I have learned from them as well as being a witness to many different kinds of harm being done within these spaces.

I do not write from a position of perfection or moral authority. I write from lived experience and from a deep sense of responsibility.

My objective is to bring greater awareness, transparency, and accountability to my own work and to the wider community of people participating in this landscape, in any capacity.

What follows is my testimony regarding these subjects, offered in the hope that it contributes to greater safety, clearer discernment, and more ethical care for all of us.

SPIRITUALITY

The rapidly expanding world of healing includes an enormous range of helping professions: from occupations governed by licensure, regulation, and professional oversight to a growing field of largely unmonitored, unorthodox, and nontraditional practitioners, including authentic lineages of shamanism, ceremony, ritual, and sacred medicine.

Breathwork, psychedelics, plant-medicine traditions, and other non-ordinary states of consciousness have opened meaningful possibilities for healing and self-discovery. They have also created a largely unregulated landscape in which charisma can easily be mistaken for competence, confidence disguising itself as wisdom, and intensity can masquerade foolishly as transformation.

Spirituality is increasingly being sold to us as a commodity, packaged, branded, aestheticized, even sterilized and marketed as a faster path to healing, fulfillment, and freedom.

Algorithms are dialed in tight, we are surrounded by polished spiritual language and AI-created content that may sound profound, while carrying none of the lived experience, embodiment, relationship, or accountability from which genuine wisdom is formed.

A profound spiritual or mystical experience does not automatically produce profound healing. Intensity is not evidence of ethical practice, professional integrity, or meaningful integration. Knowledge without embodiment will not cultivate sustainable wisdom and spirituality without embodiment has little promise of longevity.

GURUS

The costume of enlightenment is everywhere. So are self-appointed authorities offering certainty to people who are searching, hurting, or trying to find their way home.

It. Is. Just. Too. Much. I’m waving the white flag (or perhaps the red one:)

Much of what I see in contemporary spiritual spaces fails to bear witness to the complexity of the human experience. Too many influencers and thought leaders are profoundly articulate yet lack an embodied testimony of the work they are selling, and it shows. When the messenger has not lived into the message, something essential is lost. The teaching lacks the nuance required to honor the process of becoming human: grief, paradox, responsibility, rupture, repair, embodiment, and integration.

We are inindated with disposable content that reduces the long, nonlinear arc of healing and self-discovery to slogans, promises, formulas, and “new” spiritual identities. This can be particularly seductive for people who have deconstructed inherited belief systems. Post-religious landscapes can leave significant holes in people’s lives. Those seeking to fill the void that religion once held often go looking for “something” to replace a spiritual world, once centered on community and faith and often with a ‘male savior’ with yet another spiritual authority outside of themselves or even worse, a guru. These individuals are exceptionally vulnerable to new systems, leaders, and organizations that still fail to teach the most important principle of their work: what real sovereignty is.

POWER DYNAMICS

The irony is not lost on me, that people can lose themselves while trying to find themselves.

Our search for freedom can make us vulnerable to yet another authority who wants to tell us who we are, what our experiences mean, and what we must do next.

Across this broad spectrum of disciplines (licensed or otherwise) we desperately need practitioners who have done and continue to do their own work; people who recognize the responsibility they hold and the dangers of projecting unexamined wounds, needs, ambitions, and desires onto their clients, students, followers, friends, or communities.

Power dynamics are everywhere and are not inherently wrong or bad, however, it is a common blind spot for many. We need practitioners who can offer a living, breathing testimony of sovereignty while returning to clients the very thing they came seeking: a return to the home of their own belonging. They carry the medicine they seek. They are their own medicine.

Teachers, practitioners, guides, and communities can offer meaningful support. There is nothing wrong with experts. For example, if I wanted to build a custom home, I would seek out and hire an expert contractor. But no one can give you sovereignty, and no ethical guide should ask you to surrender yours.

The path to sovereignty cannot be handed to you by another person. It will always lead you back through yourself.

Traditionally, a Guru is a revered spiritual teacher or guide within several South Asian religious traditions. The word itself is not inherently suspect, a Guru does not always call themselves one. In the modern spiritual landscape, self appointed authorities are everywhere, sometimes obvious, sometimes disguised, and sometimes cloaked in genuinely good intentions and potent promises of liberation, these are the type of “Gurus” to walk carefully around. Use your discernment. Study their ethics. Examine their reputation. Pay particular attention to how they respond when questioned, challenged, or told no.

Additionally, I will say that accountability is not medicine a facilitator administers to another person, even very practically when a facilitator has been hired as a literal guide. When a practitioner brands “accountability” as their medicine, they risk appointing themselves as the authority who determines whether a client is being honest, responsible, or sufficiently committed to healing. This is one example of how pervasive the imbalance power can be.

A practitioner may invite honest self confrontation, reflect incongruence, uphold clear agreements, and name harm. But accountability must ultimately remain with the person whose life and choices are at stake. Otherwise, what is presented as accountability can quietly become compliance and the person seeking freedom has once again surrendered their authority to someone promising to liberate them. Ethical support strengthens a person’s capacity to hold themselves accountable; it does not make the practitioner the keeper of their sovereignty.

FACILITATION

Being in an expanded or altered state can make a person unusually open, suggestible, and emotionally exposed. This vulnerability is not inherently dangerous, but it places tremendous responsibility on those holding the space. A facilitator’s ethics, experience, self-awareness, informed-consent practices, emergency preparation, community support, and accountability matter profoundly.

No title, healer, shaman, coach, guide, practitioner, therapist, or medicine carrier guarantees safety. A state issued license may establish qualifications within a defined professional scope, but it does not, by itself, guarantee competence in altered state work or ethical space holding.

Popularity does not equal competency. Neither does spiritual language, physical appeal, personal experience with substances, a large social media following, or claims of having facilitated hundreds of journeys.

There is a lot of light in the space of facilitation and there is a lot of shadow. Shadow follows all of us, including the very best among us. When acknowledged and respected, it can be a powerful teacher. When denied, it can quietly govern the room.

RED FLAGS IN FACILITATION

Be cautious of a practitioner who

• Positions themselves as the authority on what your experience means.
• Claims exclusive access to truth, healing, or spiritual insight.
• Encourages devotion, dependency, secrecy, or unquestioning trust.
• Promises a cure, breakthrough, awakening, or guaranteed transformation.
• Dismisses concerns as resistance, ego, fear, or an unwillingness to heal.
• Pressures you toward a larger dose, greater intensity, physical touch, or another experience.
• Introduces sexualized energy, nudity, touch, or other boundary crossings without clear, specific, and ongoing consent.
• Discourages medical care, psychotherapy, prescribed medication, or outside consultation.
• Has no meaningful screening process, informed-consent agreement, emergency plan, or integration support.
• Operates beyond their actual training while presenting themselves as qualified.
• Cannot clearly explain their scope of practice, limitations, or sources of accountability.
• Makes you feel that saying no will disappoint them or interfere with your healing.
• Refers to themselves as the healer rather than supporting your own discernment, authority, and capacity for healing.

A facilitator should never require you to abandon your discernment in order to access healing.

ETHICAL FACILITATION

Ethical facilitation protects your agency; it does not replace it.

A trustworthy practitioner welcomes questions, respects hesitation, and discusses risks as openly as potential benefits. They understand that consent is specific, ongoing, and may be withdrawn at any time.

They do not position themselves as the central figure in your healing. A facilitator’s role is to support your relationship with your own inner knowing and capacity, not to claim that role for themselves.

They remain aware of power dynamics. They do not interpret every reaction as evidence that their method is working. They recognize the limits of their training and refer to medical or mental-health professionals when a person’s needs exceed their qualifications.

Profound experiences do not automatically produce profound healing. Catharsis may feel powerful, but it does not always become resolution. Meaning making belongs primarily to the participant, not the facilitator.

Feeling deeply connected to a practitioner during therapeutic, ceremonial, or spiritual work does not necessarily mean the relationship is safe, sacred, or meant to continue. Transference, idealization, attachment, and dependency can emerge in any relationship involving vulnerability and unequal power. An ethical practitioner understands this and does not exploit it.

Remember the vulnerability that may have brought you to this work in the first place.

Your openness and the openness of a practitionerdoes not create implicit or explicit permission to cross your boundaries.

You are allowed to ask difficult questions.

You are allowed to verify credentials, request references, understand what will happen before agreeing, and change your mind. You are allowed to say no. You are allowed to leave. You are allowed to seek another opinion.

You are allowed to recognize that something felt wrong, even when you cannot yet explain why.

The purpose of ethical support is not to make you more dependent upon a guide. It is to help you become more resourced, discerning, embodied, and capable of trusting yourself.

HEALING IS PARADOXICAL

To truly understand sovereignty is to understand the paradox it holds.

Sovereignty is not about standing alone. It is not the same as independence. It is the paradox of finally belonging to yourself and, through that belonging, opening the door to everything.

Real sovereignty is the refusal to abandon yourself. It is the courageous and continual return to the home of your own belonging, no matter who stays, leaves, or misunderstands.

We hurt in community, and we heal in community. We need one another. We need honest conversation, ethical accountability, and the willingness to link arms without surrendering ourselves.

A rising tide lifts all ships.

I believe we can hold one another kindly and courageously accountable. I believe we can make this Wild Wild West a safer place to seek healing, discover meaning, and return home to our own belonging.

With Ease and Grace

Jen Hurst