Connection with Spirits and Groundedness

“Can we really communicate with external spirits, or do these spiritual experiences simply arise from our own mind?”
As a psychedelic facilitator and coach, I often find myself wondering about this — especially as someone who approaches this work with a grounded and down-to-earth mindset.

Through many inner journeys with ayahuasca and psilocybin, I’ve come to know the powerful potential of psychedelics to connect us with our intuition, our subconscious, and our innate capacity to heal.
In these expanded states of consciousness, I can feel the presence of energies around me — which could point to external spirits — but true communication with them…

To explore this question for myself, I spent a month in the Peruvian jungle in February 2025, staying with the Shipibo, an Indigenous tribe that has been working with ayahuasca for thousands of years.
They communicate with higher entities to support healing in those who need it. They are, in a sense, the doctors of the jungle.

I participated in a master plant dieta, part of a traditional shamanic training. It meant eating minimally, living in extreme humidity deep in the rainforest, spending time in complete isolation — with no Wi-Fi, phone, news, or outside stimuli — and taking part in many ayahuasca ceremonies and purification rituals. This was my life in February.

The Shipibo believe that all living beings and plants possess a spirit. Among the 80,000 plant species in the Amazon, they recognize certain master plants with strong spiritual properties. These are the plants they consult for guidance.

Communication with these spirits, as they experience it, happens mostly through dreams, rather than through visions during ceremony.
The maestro smiles when you tell him that some people claim to have spoken with “Mother Ayahuasca” or with the mushrooms.
“The master plants don’t speak English, Dutch, or Shipibo,” he says with a grin. Messages like that, he explains, come from within yourself.

The spirits of the plants communicate telepathically — through imagery in your dreams — and those dreams must then be interpreted.
Over thousands of years, the Shipibo have developed a deep understanding of how to read these dream messages.

During my dieta, I experienced firsthand how other entities can communicate and guide you through dreams.
With all my logic, groundedness, and rationality, I can’t explain it any other way than: this is simply how it works.

I now understand this spiritual connection so much more deeply and hold great respect for the shamans who use this ancient knowledge for healing.

The photo above shows my master plant — the powerful Shihuahuaco tree.

Written by Eric van der Hoeff
Psychedelic Facilitator at The Matter