Post 10

It may well be that a career as a spiritual and psychedelic guide is the only one truly suited to a man who was once diagnosed with a drug-induced psychosis. Nearly 30 years ago at age 20 this happened to me. It was a chaotic and difficult time in my coming of age. From a conventional standpoint many factors contributed. There was family and relationship strife. I was living on my own for the first time, it was the beginning of junior year and there was pressure to choose a direction in life against the way I wanted to go. I was not caring for the body, skipping meals and missing sleep. I was regularly smoking new highly potent strains of marijuana, and to top it off I was “dosed” with LSD at a party without first realizing it.

My experience at the time was rather ecstatic but also very scary. I was seeing auras, but also shadows. Not knowing I’d been dosed I thought something miraculous was happening to me. I was immersed in a mythical, archetypal world and experiencing incredible energies. I could not clearly distinguish between the energies, the psychological archetypes, and my own personality. I did not “come down” from the trip. I became invisible. I was going to save the world.

This all served very well as a temporary escape from conflicts and responsibility until my mother showed up at the apartment and called an ambulance. Then the real terror began. I spent two weeks locked in the psych ward with the residents. I always maintained that if someone might have taken me camping instead I might have fared better.

In indigenous cultures mental illness has been seen as the birth of a healer, as an initiating ordeal indicating an introduction to the presence of Spiritual energy and its effects. The illness results when the person is not guided in how to balance these energies. The healing and the birth of the healer results from that learning process. (see Jayson Gaddis, https://uplift.love/the-shamanic-view-of-mental-illness/)

Indeed it’s been a learning process. I moved across the country the year following my trip to the hospital and during that year was moved to embark on the spiritual journey I have mentioned many times in this blog. I dreamt of the mystical Christ and learned to integrate those energies. I dreamt of Carl Jung and learned to understand the archetypes too.

I carried a lot of shame and self-blame for many years around my “losing it”. While I knew what I experienced was real and powerful given its right place in a life, I was not in the appropriate frame of mind or supportive environment to handle the incoming energy and information. My ego could not choose to properly surrender, contain, or make appropriate meaning of the experience and no knowledgable guide appeared. At times during more intentional trips with friends I had been able to help them out of tough spots and was even asked to guide them, but now I was the one who needed help. Instead I was highly sedated and locked in a room.

The nearly 30 years since then has been a good amount of time to integrate spiritual energy and understand the depths of my personality. First the energy was integrated, it was the thing for me in my ordeal that was most calling out to be acknowledged. I have written much about that process in previous posts. I have often wondered why I seem to have such a rare and powerful experience of my connection to the world of Spirit. I have an energetic mark that will not go away. The more I have attended to it the more peace and kindness has entered my world, and as I’ve begun to share my guidance, I see that others are touched and transformed too. Not by me (I can only point to it) but by making contact with this energy inside themselves. In my view it is the intelligent healing and creative energy of the Universe and my calling is to share It’s power.

In order to more fully integrate that energy over time I’ve needed to understand myself as fully as possible down to the deepest and oldest motivations, to heal old wounds and to organize my life around prioritizing Presence. Presence is its own guide in the process. When other aspects of thought, emotion and desire are prioritized, the world flows less smoothly. I’ve spent time in somatic psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and with the Diamond Approach to do much of the necessary healing work. I’ve learned from acting out unhealed parts, losing friends and relationships, trying to bring Presence into my work-life, raising my daughter and marrying my wife. I’ve learned to care holistically for myself and structure my world in a way that supports thriving. I’ve also been profoundly healed by the right therapeutic and ceremonial use of psilocybin. When used properly psychedelics are incredibly powerful aids to healing and do not induce chaos. Through them I’ve been able to heal generational trauma, the inner conflict that held me back from full self expression, and open my heart ever more widely. I’ve learned to relate with and distinguish the archetypal world from the forces of the personality. Through psychedelic medicine I've been able to integrate shadow parts, the places in us we don’t want to look at, where we hide our selfishness, fear, rage and shame. All this has contributed greatly toward my development as a guide. I’ve been deeply held and supported in my process of growing into guiding by several incredible training communities and mentors, other healers answering the call to be of service in the world. It’s my pleasure and privilege to have joined these communities and their blends of ancient and modern healing traditions.