Getting High on Your Own Supply
Psychedelics
A path to higher consciousness or a potential trap?
Having participated in several dozen ayahuasca, huyachuma and mushroom ceremonies - even going through intense training with the Shipibo tribe of the Amazon to become a curandero. Having had hundreds of “less formal” experiences with LSD, mushrooms and various other natural and synthetic psychedelics, from age 13, right up until my mid-forties. And, contrasting the results of all those experiences with those of the internal and external arts, and contemplative practices I’ve been committed to over the last 13 years, I would like to share some perspective on my observations of the usefulness and sustainability of psychedelic-use for the purpose of transformation - or, what I call, living lucidly.
As far as I can see psychedelics are good for shaking up your context. Perhaps show you what’s possible for your life when your energy is up. Beyond that I believe they have limited use and can be a trap for for many.
By trap I mean something very specific. In my experience we are capable of consistently entering into the states that psychedelics provide without them. Psychedelics can open and relax the body-mind enough to experience high-energy states. Like I say, this is powerful in that it shows us what is possible for our growth and evolution. In the light of that possibility powerful “healings” can occur. And whilst I’m open to some of those healings being “permanent”, in my experience, most of them are not. Why? Because the habits of mind that created the conditions for dis-ease have not been habituated to a new context. Thus many so-called “healings” are generally reversed with a few weeks or months. The person involved may have changed some content of mind, but they have not changed their context. Changing one’s context requires much more than insight or the release of trapped energy, it requires placing consistent attention on the source of the condition and intending for an outcome that is increasingly in alignment with truth. And that takes discipline and focus. Two things I believe have a tendency to atrophy in regular psychedelic-users. Our body’s ability to contain and sustain high-energy states weakens and atrophies when we become physically and psychologically dependant on an outside source for raising our energy and healing our body-mind - leading to loss of tone in our energy-body.
The body, in its infinite wisdom, will always try to save energy. So when we don’t use certain tissues and pathways, the body stops maintaining them and they go dormant. Depending how long they have been offline will depend on how much time and effort it will take to reawaken them. Imagine putting an arm in a sling for six months. The muscles will atrophy and will take a lot of work to bring them back to their functional state. Psychedelics are like that sling. They are helpful in that they allow a certain amount of healing to happen, but all the time you are losing strength. At some point we need to step beyond them and start doing some metaphorical bicep curls in order to reach our full potential. I could even make an argument that they provide a false sense of growth and that when one gives them up one must start from the beginning again anyway; albeit with a new sense of possibility.
I don’t see any reason why anyone would need to have any more than a handful of ceremonies in a lifetime. And in between, following a structured and disciplined practice, tailored for the individual, to meet with and strengthen one’s weaknesses, and maintain and increase the high-energy states experienced during and after the drug-experience. It’s your conscious and active participation in your process that makes the difference between heightened states that weaken you, and those that facilitate adaptation and growth.
Consider: if states are, by there very nature, transient, who is it that experiences the highs and the lows?
The Brain as a Medicine Cabinet
Our brains are medicine cabinets. Every time you take something outside of you to change your inner state it pays to consider the message you are sending to your body. The brain will not produce “happy juice” if it’s getting it from a plant or pill. You will block the body’s intrinsic ability to create these medicines, and consequently inhibit its healing capacity, if you hold it that your wellbeing lies in extrinsic sources. If you keep seeking extrinsic pleasure and it will inevitably lead to pain. Be aware of integrating the lessons learned in those experiences and take pause to assess the conditions of your life before running to drugs the next time things appear to become derailed. Take responsibility next time things become challenging in your life. Ask yourself, “Who have I been being in order to attract this experience?” Work to strengthen yourself internally while mapping out the patterns that pull you into pockets of dense energy. At the core of these dense pockets you will find a belief or assumption about yourself or life. Once identified, you can train your body-mind to release your craving or resistance to experiencing the reality that the belief is based on.
Practice
A simple technique for this (which I’ve adapted from something I learned from Frederick Dodson) is to:
- Ask, “What’s bothering me right now?”
- Identify and place your attention on a thought, sensation or situation that is bothering you in this moment. Wrap your conscious awareness around the object of your attention. Find its edges, its boundaries. Envelop it completely.
- Ask, “Am I willing to let this go?”
- If so, allow yourself to let go of your attachment or resistance to whatever thought, feeling or situation you identified.
- Then ask again, “What is bothering me now?”
- And repeat the whole process again and again until you begin to feel relief.
With practice your body-mind gets this process and you don’t need to explicitly ask the questions any more. You simply put your attention on what is bothering you and release resistance to experiencing it. It’s quite mechanical and very effective. You can think of the “placing attention” step as acceptance. There’s no question of letting go until one has accepted what is. Once accepted and acknowledged then you can locate the aspect of yourself that is resisting that experience. The layering on of resistance to an experience is always of the mind, and therefore unnecessary. Once seen in this light it becomes a simple mechanical act of letting go.
Summary
My point with this article is not to criticise psychedelic use, but to put these compounds in their place. Putting one’s eggs all in one basket and holding psychedelics as some kind of panacea, in and of themselves is folly. I only have to take a critical look at the culture surrounding them to see that the results appear to be a little underwhelming.
I know people who live a perfectly lucid life and have never taken drugs of any kind. And I know countless people who take psychedelics regularly who’s lives, health and relationships spiral into chaos just as regularly.
If you are going to experiment with these drugs then I suggest you do so whilst critically observing the nature of into the experience they provide; assessing what it is about those states that are so healing, cathartic and high-energy; and find ways of recreating them without the drugs. There is an abundance of tools, techniques and practices that act as vehicles to those realms, and actually strengthen you rather than weaken you. Putting some energetic skin in the game makes the journey more sustainable and you’ll be living a lucid and expansive life without being bound to any culture or compound.
If you intend to experience higher states and healing states without assaulting the psyche with extrinsic compounds, and believe that you can, and keep your focus on that outcome, then you can and will.
As always, I am committed to the expansion of humanity through individual empowerment. With these articles I aim to spark these inherent qualities in my reader.