Takeaways
- Real healing starts with safety in the body. Before meditation, before plant medicine, before any spiritual practice can take root, the nervous system has to have some degree of regulation — and that work often begins with the most micro of moments, like choosing to take a breath.
- A spiritual or multidimensional awakening is not about becoming a new person. It is a remembering of who you have always been, and the journey back to that truth looks completely different for everyone.
- Conventional approaches to mental health, from antidepressants to talk therapy, often treat the symptom without addressing the root. Both Balam and Bee found that the path to genuine healing required going far beyond what traditional medicine offered.
In this debut episode, hosts Bee and Balam introduce themselves to new listeners and share the personal journeys that brought them to this work. Balam, a certified registered nurse anesthetist with 20 years in nursing, opens up about growing up navigating his parents' divorce, unprocessed abandonment, depression, and substance use — and the moment an ayahuasca ceremony at a Native American church in Kentucky cracked open a completely new understanding of consciousness, purpose, and self-realization. His path through ketamine research, psilocybin studies, and eventually plant medicine is deeply personal and rooted in a genuine desire to find something that actually worked.
Bee shares her own story as a combat veteran deployed to Afghanistan at 25, who came home carrying a loss of purpose that no amount of achievement could fill. The master's degree, the house, the credentials — none of it answered the deeper question. After years of PTSD diagnoses, medications that didn't help, and talk therapy that fell short, a single astrology reading became the unexpected door that blew everything open. She describes this not as a spiritual awakening but as a multidimensional awakening — a remembering that we are far more than a three-dimensional body navigating a to-do list.
Together, they explore what awakening actually means: not a political term, not a performance of wellness, but a genuine process of self-realization. They discuss the "forging" phase of the journey — that frantic, fire-hose period when the door first cracks and you want to consume every book, modality, and tool available — and why the foundation of true transformation has to include physical and nervous system safety first.
The episode closes with an invitation to listeners who are spiritually curious but still skeptical: lean into the curiosity, there is no wrong way, and if you feel alone on this path, reach out.
Key Topics Covered
- Balam's background: 20 years in nursing, CRNA, astrology, and recovery from depression and substance use
- Bee's background: combat veteran, Afghanistan deployment, PTSD, nurse practitioner, and palliative care experience
- The limitations of antidepressants and traditional talk therapy for trauma and depression
- Plant medicine research: ketamine, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and ibogaine
- Astrology readings as a catalyst for awakening
- What a multidimensional awakening actually means vs. the term "spiritual awakening"
- The Standard American Dream (SAD) and why checking all the boxes doesn't lead to fulfillment
- Safety in the body as a prerequisite for spiritual practice
- Self-forgiveness as the foundation of inner work
- How to begin if you are spiritually curious but skeptical
https://doublelibraastrology.com/
