Post 11
Diving into my personal healing journeys with psychedelics in my 40s took a bit of grit for me. I’d been burned in my youth when I was dosed with LSD at a party and wound up in a mental institution. After many years of other types of healing and spiritual work I’d tried psychedelics again recreationally, in part to test how far I’d come, and it was fine, but facing the inner world in a dedicated healing journey, blindfolded, with no distraction, is a different challenge.
Even those of us who haven’t already walked on the other side of sanity have fears of losing our minds when we approach psychedelics. In fact to some degree that is exactly what happens when we do them, and when done properly, that’s the point. For many of us, our everyday personality is so set in it’s system of interpreting reality that it’s difficult for new perspectives to get in. For surviving in the world this type of stable worldview can be a great benefit. When we preset our expectations and limit our sensitivity we might more easily focus on making the money in the way we know how, but it can also cause stagnancy, boredom, meanness, frustration, substance abuse, lack of fulfillment in work and relationships, anxiety, depression and other limiting symptoms.
The area of the brain responsible for continuing to tell the same old story is the default mode network. The DMN narrates our life history and is responsible for our sense of self, as far as the brain goes. This area would then be responsible for our biases, prejudices, inner-conflicts, attachments, runaway worry and the incessant chatter of a restless mind. It is also responsible for our inflated pride. In short everything that convinces me I’m a separate individual who must battle to survive is there.
When we take psychedelics activity in the DMN quiets down and the brain makes connections more globally. Neurons literally grow more dendritic spines and reach out for new connections under one single dose of psilocybin. Activity in the amygdala, or fear center, also quiets down. When our usual narrative and our fear is diminished, we are able to see ourselves and our experience of the world from a much more open perspective. We may even access parts of ourselves we usually hide or are defended from, allowing us to see them in new ways, to integrate them and heal. When we do this our capacities expand. We bring greater wholeness back to our lives and this brings greater vitality, flow and connectedness. We have more choice about how we engage in work and relationships and often open up to spirituality and continued growth.
In narrating my own story I was certainly set in certain ways of seeing, even as I had done much inner work and thought I was beyond most of my conflicts. In my personal life this might have been so, but as I opened up to training in various healing communities, I was called upon to speak out and offer my perspective to a larger world. Bringing my voice to that larger world was at times terrifying. In my old story I might have concluded that I just wasn’t meant to speak out in public, but the inner call to grow and express was strong enough to make me confront the terror.
As I learned more about the specifics of this particular conflict for myself, I had also begun to journey more intentionally with psychedelics. That dedicated work looking at a specific conflict served very well to prepare me for a healing journey. I could see the parts of me in conflict, but I could not get “under” them. I couldn’t feel or understand their true source and couldn’t heal the fear. In one psilocybin session I was able to see the source of the conflict in generational abuse and struggle. I got to grieve for the wounds of my family, see how identifying with my family’s chosen defenses was limiting my own expression, choose to let that part of the story go and feel incredible empowerment and freedom. After this session the terror was largely gone. I no longer held myself back from expressing my passions because I let the part of me in conflict with spirituality and psychedelics go. I let the part of me that felt it should be quiet and fit in go. At the same time this made me less reactively loud and mean, less frustrated in my authenticity, and began to further open my heart.
There is further to go and I think there always will be. (In the spirit of fun I recommend the Railroad Earth song, Long Way to Go). As we move to express our souls and grow into new situations we continuously encounter incompatible boundaries within ourselves. These give us stability for a time but also become limiting to continued evolution. It may be that we are content in our place of pause and this is sometimes necessary and even satisfying. It may also be that if we turn our attention inward during that welcome pause, we might hear a voice calling us home to greater connection, greater openness, greater kindness, greater flexibility and growth. If we can find the courage to confront our fears and set beliefs around these things, intentional psychedelic work can aid us on the way.