Education and Integration.
Terra is a writer, traveler, artist, and organizer with a background in non-profit, community based finance, book-keeping and small event fundraising.
Terra works in many capacities to support and facilitate art, artists and creative living in everyday life. One of her deep passions is the collaborative art form of film, and creating community events around independent film screenings.
Her online presence is a neo-cultural curation, featuring art, blogs, podcasts, photos, music, events and festivals exploring the psychedelic, visionary edges and depths of modern day.
Terra works seasonally as a Festival Accounting Coordinator for Sundance Film Festival, volunteers throughout the year with Burning Man in the Box Office and as a Regional Representative (Alumni), has organized screenings, discussions and other events as part of the Evolver Network and has a small blog on Reality Sandwich.
She does film curation and copywriting for Keyframe-Cinema and has received an Associate of Arts as a Paralegal, class of 2000.
Presentation Abstract:
Considering Integration In Advance of the Psychedelic Experience
Considering healthy integration of psychedelic experiences as something to be addressed before the experience begins, empowering those who choose to work with psychedelics and creating safer paradigms for the daily exercise of cognitive liberty on a personal and social level.
New regulations and laws are taking effect in the United States as marijuana becomes accepted as a legal medicinal and recreational substance. But are public education efforts keeping up with the spirit of legalization? Tax revenues collected have dedicated funds, specifically for public education, how are these funds being applied? What is the educational message being funded by revenues from the sales of marijuana either medicinally or recreationally? and where are the opportunities to have an effect on the messaging, development and institution of curriculums related to this new direction of legalization? Is the current curriculum appropriate and relevant to marijuana as a legal medicinal or recreational plant?
This presentation is intended to consider how the psychedelic community would approach ‘public education’ through channels now being funded with legalization revenues, meeting public education on a broad level within the spirit of legalization, explaining traditions of culture in relation to the plant sciences, mental explorations in relation to physical effects.
More About Terra Celeste
Mission: To support art and artists in all forms, mediums and voices.
What is medicine?
An external influence that, when taken in, has an affect of curing, treating, disrupting, neutralizing, remediating or redirecting the energy of an illness, whether manifesting as mental or physical, with the goal of supporting a full and vital recovery, alway towards perpetuating life, giving respect to the natural cycles of living through to dying.
What does it mean to heal?
Recognition, Restoration and Release of Energy consumed in pain, discomfort, distraction, disease, illness or affliction accompanied with a redirection towards energy of wellness, comfort, focus, general ease, happiness and well being offering a state of health and wellness more prominently in the focus of day to day living.
If something is literally broken, life energy will naturally flow attention to that break. One goal of healing may be to focus directly on the full affects of mending, repairing and remediating this break, when the break is ‘fixed’ energy focuses on living life to the fullest potential – integration of the healing process and any information learned, from break through to the point of healing, may be worked with in continuing to define a full life.
What are the new meanings and mechanisms for healing, medicine, growth, integration and visionary experience in the 21st Century?
Consensus reality, consent in experience, social integration of individual experience, expanding methods of self and social expression from the heart of compassion, empathy and building kind relationships.
What are the safety, ethical, legal and cultural considerations of entheogenic plant use in consciousness expansion, spiritual development and healing and religious practices?
All points of education. Whichever practice or group; where there’s a conversation, there’s an opportunity or point at which these groups are inherently meeting, a place where they’ve come together, already present and aware at a cultural crossroads.
How do we honor and respect indigenous traditions?
Through discovery and sharing of our own inner light.
Recommended Reading: Books
Cultural Uses of Plants: Learning Ethnobotany by Gabriell D. Paye and Gabriell DeBear Paye.
Recommended Reading: Articles
When Pot Goes from Illegal to Recreational Schools Face a Dilemma, NPR, February 2015.
A new curriculum is needed in public schools to help with smart use and integration of marijuana in a way that fits with the spirit of legalization, metered by long standing legalization advocates.
“The Colorado Department of Education has not changed its statewide health curriculum guidelines since voters legalized marijuana. Up to this point, it has used money from marijuana taxes to put out a series of public service announcements on pot’s negative effects.”
The False Promise of Marijuana Money in Education, The Atlantic, May 2015.
Colorado Marijuana Revenues, USA Today, February 2015.
Tax revenues in Colorado are being utilized to fix public schools, literally with new roofs and building upgrades, however the curriculum offering cultural direction and education fitting the spirit of legalization as understood by marijuana advocates, remains largely stuck in programs of the past – with a focus on abuse and addiction.
“Overall, Colorado collected about $63 million in marijuana taxes in 2014 on an industry worth about $700 million. Much of that tax money goes directly into the state’s general fund, not into the specific school-construction account. The school-construction money comes from a 15% tax levied on wholesale sales from growers to recreational marijuana retailers. Much of the rest of the tax money is being dedicated toward drug-abuse education, research and substance abuse treatment. Because Colorado was the first state to legalize and tax recreational marijuana sales, lawmakers across the country are closely watching its experiences.”
Recommended Video:
Marijuana legalization, flow of revenues, and taxation is in a developmental phase as States modeling legalization are working with different reasoning and methods for taxing revenue from marijuana and dispersing those revenues to public programs, impacting public budgets, such as those for public education.
Causes and non-profits:
The Evolver Network, Sporeganizer
BurningManProject Regional Network, Regional Representative (alumni)