So how do we use psychedelics in a way that is not detrimental to the awakening process, and might even be indirectly beneficial? [I phrase it in this perhaps clunky way because the awakening process is something that is just happening and that cannot be orchestrated by the mind or ego. You cannot make it happen faster, but you can do things that could inhibit the process, or that could facilitate or clear the way, so to speak.]
Psychedelics can create a strong energy body, if used accordingly. They can be intense, so intense. The more I would let go and allow the experience to intensify, in an uncontrolled direction, the more they would surprise me. Sitting with my experience, whatever it was, softening, relaxing, and breathing would allow more and more energy to move through my body. This I believe cultivated a strong energy body so that I could go through difficult experiences, both in psychedelic spaces and in sober spaces, without resistance. I learned to let things pass through me without holding on to them, without making a story about it. So many times intense energy came pouring through that felt negative and I resisted the urge to put images to it, or make a narrative out of it. The more this happens the more this is my automatic way of being in the world, and this creates a strong container for holding presence for others as well as myself when emotions and energies run high. It also keeps new samskaras (undigested, or unprocessed experience) from being laid down. Does this change my day to day consciousness? No. But I do believe it brings me closer to seeing reality as it is, without beliefs and stories laid over it and it helps me to be with what arises without needing to run away. So for this reason, though tough psychedelic experiences can be the most beneficial, we shouldn’t necessarily seek them out as they can be traumatizing if we haven’t yet developed a sufficiently strong energy body.
Psychedelics can purge both conceptual and non-conceptual non-verbal samskaras. Samskaras are the residual impressions of undigested experiences, and these can be negative or positive. An example of a negative samsara would be grief that you never allowed yourself to feel, perhaps you never cried when a loved one died. For me it is not easy to tap into my deeper samskaras. It really wasn’t even easy for me to have a challenging or difficult trip for a long time because my armor and conditioning was so strong that I unconsciously and automatically avoided negative experiences within my trips, and even held this ability as a badge of honor. In the psychedelic community they call this being hard-headed. For a lot of people it can be easy to be guided into a somatic space, meditating and/or moving and get in contact with deep samskaras and allow them to move as energy through the body and be released. For me this does not happen generally, unless I take psychedelics. For people like me in this category, they can be a great tool for doing this kind of work. Some people might call this healing work and some people do this with psychedelics and it’s never ending. You can do this work for a lifetime, especially if you’re not doing the first practice of creating a strong energy body, because you’ll keep laying down new samskaras in between your psychedelic experiences so by the time you go back into the plant medicine space you have a whole new set of things to work on. This can feel really good, this cycle of “detox to retox” as they call it. But if you’re doing the first practice, then this second practice of releasing deep, hard to get to samskaras (ones that won’t just come up by talking about them, they are hidden deep deep down) is finite. It may take only one psychedelic session, or it may take 10 years (raises hand) but you will know it’s over when you no longer feel like you need to go back to a plant medicine ceremony every couple months just to stay sane in your relationships and at work. Because those deep hidden samskaras are the things that self-sabotage you unconsciously. They’re the things that make you really irritated at that person for no discernible reason so you snap at them, or make an uncomfortable situation for yourself and others. They’re the reason you [insert your own undesirable behavior, reaction, or response here.] After this tipping point you will probably no longer feel compelled to go back to psychedelics just to get through your life, though you may choose to do them occasionally for a variety of reasons, for the additional therapeutic benefit.
These two processes work together. Because at the beginning you may not have a strong energy body, you’re still getting new issues lodged in your body every week or every month, so as soon as you clear out some old ones, new ones take their place. But the more you create a strong energy body that can digest all experiences, the less processing you need to do because you digest each experience as it happens, with little to no remainder. Just like paying off your credit cards, when you don’t make new purchases, eventually you start to become debt free. When you get really good at allowing the process to happen, i.e. not making stories or telling narratives about your experience, and allowing what is happening in the experience without resistance, it’s like paying double on your credit card. Those old samskaras just get digested at quite an exciting pace.
Is any of this really necessary in the path to awakening? Well, yes. In accordance with the definition of awakening in the previous post, I will explain why. Developing and strengthening the energy body is necessary for awakening because seeing reality as it is can be pretty intense. It can feel groundless, without support, like you are falling. You can also feel incredibly sensitive to each and every little thing. If you are highly reactive and avoidant of discomfort, you will tend to move away from practices and viewpoints that expose reality to you nakedly. In the same way, having your samskaras at least partially digested allows you to be less reactive to every relational aspect of your experience. If you are constantly triggered by everyone you meet and every situation you find yourself in, you will not have much resources or space to practice because you are always dealing with the latest emotional overwhelm brought on by circumstances. You will be using what energy you have maintaining your coping mechanisms and strategies just to get by. Building a strong energy body and digesting your samskaras basically removes these energy leaks and allows you to put this newfound energy towards the process of awakening.
But you don’t have to use psychedelics to gain these skills. And you do not have to digest ALL of your samskaras. In fact, if you don’t strictly NEED psychedelics for this, I strongly encourage you to stay away from them. They’re a lot of work and some risk. IF you get captured by the blissful side of things (which is a side effect, whether you’re using psychedelics or not, so you always have to be cautious of it, but HOOBOY with psychedelics that bliss sure can be accentuated.) you can be sidelined from the awakening project for good, in this life anyway. Not that I’m making a statement one way or the other about reincarnation.
There’s also the risk of having your ego hugely inflated. I can’t help but notice that there is an alarming trend among devoted psychedelic practitioners to believe they are saving the world, or healing the planet, or some other inflated story about how important the work they’re doing is. It is undoubtedy true that the work that each and every one of us is doing is unspeakably important, even the person who spends most of their time home petting their cat. The sense of inflated importance, or that they’ve received a mission from Spirit, is a story that helps infuse new meaning into a person’s life who is quickly realizing on a deeper level that there is no inherent meaning to be found, anywhere. This can be a depressing realization when you have staked your life on having meaning or purpose. But when you realize that purpose is not necessary to have a deeply fulfilling and satisfying life, the need to overlay this type of story disappears.
Psychedelics are hard work. They are potentially traumatic if you’re not suited to them, so in that sense they could be called truly dangerous—they can lay down negative samskaras that can be hard to digest (ask me how I know). I don’t think they’re inherently a faster track. People who value psychedelics like to call them the quick way to awakening, and I’ve thought so in the past, but I just don’t think that’s true anymore. I don’t think there’s any way to rush the process. They can just as easily sidetrack you in an eddy of spiritual-bypassing and spiritual-ego and superiority. They are certainly no guarantee that you’re on the right track because they can be just as easily misused as any other medicine or practice. All spiritual practices, no matter how “pure,” can be misused.
Who are psychedelics for on the path of awakening? If psychedelics scare you, then they are probably for you. If you love them so much and can’t imagine your life without them, then take a minute right now to imagine your life without them and take a year off. If you are that attached to them it’s possible they are serving as a coping mechanism in your life and keeping the discomfort just far enough away that you don’t have to make any real changes and you are in a holding pattern, or at a plateau. Which is fine if you’re not trying to awaken. If you’re just trying to be happy, and have a comfortable pleasurable life — a fine goal, by the way — a holding pattern that feels comfortable is really not a bad place to end up.
To be continued…
Read Part 1