twocats

After careful consideration and preparation, you’ve chosen to do a psilocybin journey. You’re now in the company of an experienced psychedelic facilitator and have taken the “medicine”. Here is some guidance on how to navigate your experience. As you start to notice the effects, your mind may start to question why, for crying out loud, you would agree to do something like this. Is this really a good idea? It may ask. What if it’s too much? Is it too late to back out? Couldn’t we just order a pizza instead? I wonder what’s on Netflix…?  At this point, for better or for worse, you have entered the TLP zone (Too Late for Pizza). Acknowledge that it’s ok to feel apprehensive. It means you’re a normal person with a functioning nervous system. Focus on the essentials: Breathe, relax, pay attention…and say “thank you”. Breathe Inhale slowly and evenly until your lungs are mostly full. Feel your chest cavity expanding, your lung capacity increasing. At the top of the breath, pause for a moment, then release. On the exhale, let the air escape. Don’t push it out, let your diaphragm do that. Notice your chest settling and recognize that this process is simultaneously happening on its own and being supervised and, to an extent, controlled by you. At the bottom of your release, when the air is gone, pause for a moment and be still as if floating at the bottom of a pool, then inhale again. No matter how intense things may become, you will always have your breath* and therefore, a visceral connection to yourself in the here-and-now. Relax your body Notice if you’re tensing up or collapsing and attend to these. Do this in parallel with your breath. For example, you can fortify against collapse (by sitting up straight, etc.) on the inhale and relax tension (perhaps in your neck or shoulders) on the exhale. As the journey begins to intensify, you’ll notice things starting to happen. We won’t go into the details, you’ll know it when it happens. Responding with rigidity and resistance will not serve you at this point. Greeting the experience with curiosity and some degree of openness, will.  Pay attention  Don’t worry about making sense of everything. Just pay attention to it. Engage your mind but don’t get caught in your head. You don’t have to interrogate or interpret your experience, at least not yet: “Ah, that’s an interesting pattern, nice colors…oh, a dragon…no, a donkey…a man riding a don…it’s Don Quixote riding a translucent, orange donkey, how interesting…” Take it one breath at a time. Tranquilo. Do not forgo the possibility for joy Expect it. Why not? The spirit in which you attend to your journey makes a difference. You are not a leaf blowing in the wind, you are an entity with some agency, potential, desires and worth. You believe this is true. Why else would you be here? You may notice that, as the medicine gets stronger and things become stranger, you are still clear and able to observe and comment on your experience. This is important. Stay in touch with yourself. You are both astronaut and ground control. Try to be curious. Ask the “medicine” questions. You’re building a relationship and have a right to ask. You can be playful, a wise-ass even. You’re allowed. Go to your joy, to your grief, anger, gratitude. Go wherever you need to go.  Continue to track your body, your breath and your state of being. Give yourself feedback, preferably encouraging, the way you would with a young person you care about. You’re doing fine.  From this place of agency related to the breath, body, attention and spirit of gratitude, you can start to “let go” and venture further into the psychedelic journey space. You’ll be able to do this intuitively. Easy does it… If things start to feel a little “unhinged”, as they say (again, you’ll know when this starts to happen), come back home to your breath. Do a body check and notice any collapse or tension and tend to these. Remind yourself to stay present, to pay attention to what’s happening in this very moment (you don’t have to figure it out) and finally, say “thank you” again, even if you don’t mean it – though by now you very well may. Do this for as long as it takes. If you’re struggling, know your experience will shift and get easier soon enough. Do your best, easy does it, one breath at a time. *At very high doses, it is not uncommon to lose the self altogether. This post addresses experiences that are more moderate in intensity and much more common than what a very high dose might deliver.

…at least some of the time. I’ve allowed this to partially sink in, against my will, kicking and screaming, over the past 10 years as my personal work with psychedelics has deepened. I am me and there is no cure. Further, the experience of being me seems to have been specifically designed to generate humility in it’s occupant. It’s not how I would have it, but that likely explains why I am not the designer. In light of this truth-grenade, the question I’ve been asking has, by necessity, evolved  from “How can I create lasting change?” to “How can I stay present to what is, to who is- without  resisting, punishing, shaming or escaping? How can I not change? How can I increase my capacity for being this particular human instead? How can I stay but do it with a little less shame or self-rejection and a bit more awareness, grace, courage, patience and humor?” The shift is nuanced but profound: Don’t make me a better person, just make me better at being a person. It’s paradoxical, of course, like everything  in life: by not working so hard to change, I open myself to a strange form of grace that evolves not from seeking but from staying present. From the present moment I can pay attention to what is actually happening instead of ruminating on a future or past that does not exist. From the present, I have access to agency, the ability to make choices, which can actually lead to…change. This magical yet perfectly sensible process is activated when we commit to ourselves. It is less about working or striving as it is about the quality of attention we employ. All that’s required is having a grown-up on board, at least as a part-time employee. Child Or Adult? Am I relating to my experience as a child would or as an adult? In one state, I am immobilized, a victim. The world, my emotions, my circumstances are happening to me, being done to me. I lack agency, awareness, clarity and am overwhelmed. In the other, I notice my thoughts and emotions as they arise. Often, they are not welcome but I’m aware rather than being blindsided. I try to keep a little bit of distance, just enough to notice that I’m having an experience rather than being the experience. If I speak to myself, (which I do, incessantly, like a ventriloquist to his dummy) I try to be encouraging the way a parent or coach who sees great potential in me would. I may attempt to employ every trick in the book to find relief. Almost always, I’m given some bandwidth to decide how I will proceed or not proceed. I also try to keep in mind that my state of being will certainly change. “This sucks”, I say to myself, because this is how I’ve been conditioned to respond to states that I believe to be undesirable. That’s the human part. It’s supposed to hurt, some of the time. It’s a clause in the contract that has already been signed, that I must agree or not agree to live with. In exchange, I may have coffee and love and ice cream and connection and laughter and swimming. My prayer goes like this: “Please help me to get a little better at being a human, let me stay with myself no matter what.” After all, I really have no choice. I am me and that is by design, on purpose, preordained. Stay One of the fundamental lessons psychedelics have taught me is this: I must, by necessity (because there is no other viable option), deepen into who I am now. I must build capacity for the good, the bad and the unexceptional so that, eventually, I may coexist with this guy without flinching every time I catch him leering at me in the mirror but rather with acceptance, fondness and even…love. This is the starting place. It is necessary to tend to this relationship first, because I am a microcosm- of you and he and she and all of creation and the empathy I cultivate in myself will surely radiate outward. If there is “work” to be done, for my money, this is it. If I’m going to change, it will happen from a place of agency, awareness, acceptance and love. It will be an expansion, not a rejection- an increase in capacity rather than a letting-go-of. A deepening into rather than a transcending. I am me, it’s a niche that has never and will never be filled again. I may as well do my best to honor that for the blink-of-an-eye that I get to be here.