Author and ayahuascero Javier Regueiro occupies an important nexus point between indigenous healing traditions and Western culture. Mr. Regueiro is a Spanish national who was raised in Switzerland and moved to Peru in 2004, eventually training under Don Francisco Montes Shuña and becoming a full-time ayahuasca facilitator in 2006. He has also written two books: Ayahuasca: Soul Medicine of the Amazon Jungle, and San Pedro Huachuma: Opening the Pathways of the Heart. In this podcast, Joe Mattia speaks with Javier about the divine feminine, self realization, ayahuasca, and the importance of preparation and integration with ayahuasca and other entheogens. Show Notes: Healing the feminine [7:45] Javier’s personal history [16:15] Apprenticing with ayahuasca [20:15] Self realization and enlightenment [23:45] Unique journeys with ayahuasca [27:15] Spiritual bypass and the shadow [34:15] Remaining a student [39:15] Psychedelic preparation and integration [41:00] Game of Thrones and ayahuasca [44:00] The importance of integration coaches [50:45] Authenticity and integrity [55:45] Processing difficult journeys [59:15] Approaching psychedelic experiences [63:00]   Selected Quotes: On healing the feminine: “Particularly in our Judeo-Christian tradition, we have been repressing, oppressing, oftentimes abusing women and all expressions of feminine energy. Just recently for instance, here in the States, you’re experiencing another wave of women speaking openly about instances of sexual abuse in the workplace. So this is part of a larger process of healing a long history of abuse of women, of repressing their energy through judgement, even through religious and legal texts, limiting their freedom to be women. Women are invited now to not only heal their own wounds, but also whatever ancestral wounds have not been healed and integrated yet, for the sake not only of themselves but collective consciousness.”   On jungle ayahuasca experiences: “In 2004 I went to the Amazon jungle. I had drank ayahuasca a couple of times a couple of years earlier, and finally I went to the jungle for an ayahuasca retreat, as I was once again running out of tricks, and getting increasingly bored with my own dramas. And that experience in the jungle was very healing- so much so as a result I entertained the possibility of studying plant medicine… The year after I went back to Peru to find out whether that idea was serious. While I was there for the second time, in the middle of an ayahuasca ceremony, I was so in awe of this medicine that from a place within me just came out the words directed to the medicine: you’re awesome, I want to work for you. And here I am 12 years later, still in service to this medicine, as well as San Pedro, and in service of all the people who feel drawn to engaging in this process.”   On self realization: “There is a certain misconception about what the experience of enlightenment of full self realization is. We often perceive these episodes as an end, we've reached the goal, whereas in my experience, these experiences of awakening they are simply just another doorway, and that doorway is onto a more expanded state of consciousness and awareness, but also for me the work with plant medicine is not one that seeks transcendence or going away from this level of reality, actually I find that the invitation of plants as well as all of creation is for us to engage more fully with renewed enthusiasm in the process of life.”   On the importance of shadow work: “There are some people who go to plant medicine ceremonies seeking an expanded state of consciousness, seeking a sense of connection, of unity with the cosmos, with everybody, with themselves, but struggle with exploring their own shadow. Basically they never do the dirty work. So in ceremony they experience an expanded state of awareness and consciousness which then dissipates within a few days or weeks or months at the most, because we always fall back into our densest vibratory state. The