And once again I am, I will not say alone, no, that’s not like me, but, how shall we say, I don’t know, restored to myself, no, I never left myself, free, yes, I don’t know what that means, but it’s the word I mean to use, free to do what, to do nothing, to know, but what, the laws of the mind perhaps, of my mind, that for example water rises in proportion as it drowns you and that you would do better, at least no worse, to obliterate texts than to blacken margins, to fill in the holes of words till all is blank and flat and the whole ghastly business looks like what it is, senseless, speechless, issueless misery.”
Mental diagnosis felt like an act. A script I shouldn’t have played into. Some do. Some need to. Those whose function cannot find place. Like mine at the time. But I was passing throughāturbulent heartbreaks, growing pains, clashes with Himsāand mistook role for reality. I overthought my relation to it, that joy and suffering, and tied it to a being beyond. I regret that now. Or at least can see it as it was: seeking, clenching, grasping. Am I nothing more than a need to reach? Maybe. I’m human. Some childlike essence that shows in contours when ignoring and blurring details of pores. Take off my glasses and focus on the obscure. The fuzz. That uncertainty between me and it. Subject in/to object. Still disoriented in space, lost along the way, I may trip a few times too many, but that’s okay. Because it’s only and not me at all.Ā
I always kept a quotation mark to my left and another to my right. Somehow ‘as if it wasn’t me’ was broader than if it wereāan inexistent life possessed me entirely and kept me busy like an invention.”
Is speaking/(writing) subjectively an inherently selfish act? Is it possible to speak for others in speaking for self? Or speak for those who came before (especially those silenced) by speaking now? Do women get challenged more for speaking subjectively than men?
She had all the attributes of a great character. She was capable of madness, like the affair with her land, but she also possessed a great lucidity. She embodied those contradictions that make for great characters, like when she nearly died upon learning that I enrolled in the Communist Party. But she is not the main hero of my body of work, nor the most permanent. No, I am the most permanent. Writing is to write for oneself… We separate ourselves from people by writing.”
-Marguerite Duras on her mother in Me & Other Writing
How could a self be anything but self-referential? Aren’t all regurgitated references still filtered and selected through self-perspective/history/bias?
Psychedelic researchers, advocates, and skeptics alike met on February 13th, 2019 in Melbourne for theĀ Mind Medicine Australia launch. Fresh from San Francisco and eager to meet people in this city also interested in psychedelic medicine, I bought an early-bird ticket.
***
February 13th, 2019, 5:30 PM. At this point in life getting ready to go out involves more time bopping around with acid under my tongue than looking in the mirror. Microdosing quells my zapping nerves and oftentimes overactive mind, especially before larger gatherings.
So I took a small dose before biking to the University of Melbourne for the Mind Medicine launch. The bats werenāt out yet, but they would be soon, and the air was a perfect 23Ā°C. I locked my bike, tried to tame my helmet hair, and entered the Sidney Myer Asia Centre. Immediately greeted, thick lashes ushered me to the left. More smiling eyes appeared around the corner, showing the way upstairs. I entered the full, bustling theater.
There were only a few seats left. Everyone was finding their space, finding their friends. I sat down in the back and observed the crowd. No matter if itās in Melbourne, London, Berlin, or San Francisco, the general attitude and sense of psychedelic conferences remains the same: compassionate, curious, positive, and present. Thereās this shared understanding, communicated with kind and sometimes cheeky glances that say: āWeāve seen a glimpse of the possible. Thatās why weāre all here.ā Itās usually a clash of characters, buttoned-up scientists, artists. The kind of people you might bond with at a music festival and never see again are there, anticipating a lineup of lectures.
Sound cultish? It really shouldnāt. People from all edges of the earth have been interested in psychedelic medicine and its potential for millennia. Many aboriginal people wonder what took us so long to make the connection. This goes beyond a Reddit thread.
āHi neighbor,ā the man next to me introduced himself. He was wearing a sheen suit and said he wanted a job.
The transition from fully committed to quitting was slow to start. My hours of operation started to sync with my circadian rhythm. The 9ā5 became 8ā3. Mornings were so efficient that by midday, Iād be fried. Done with screens, done with meetings. So Iād leave the office early.
On a microdose of acid, Iād feel completely in tune with my energy capacity, unable to ignore the afternoon dip. There was no more gray area of hanging around the office or poking around on Twitter, letting the time slip as the outside world turned. No more āshould I stay or should I goā debacles in my head. I couldnāt sit (er, stand) at my desk any longer for the optics of working a few extraāāāunproductiveāāāhours. I realized the work would never be done, so it was up to me when to go. And as soon as I felt accomplished for the day, Iād slip out the door. Down the stairs. Into the sunlight.
I didnāt initially start microdosing at work for the professional edgeĀ like many peopleĀ in tech. I started toĀ manage shifting moodsĀ that made it hard to leave my apartment. To feel better just being. And it worked. I felt happier and more comfortable within myself. I took it on workdays because I wanted to stay consistent in my regimen (one day on, three days off). Heightened imagination, concentration, and energy at work were really just nifty side effects. But eventually, this new way of feeling, thinking, existing made it much harder to spend time in the office.
After microdosing for six months, I didnāt progress at work; I quit.
The self is the way we organize reality. It is mutable. Ephemeral. Itās an organizing structure that arises and is always completely embedded in relational reality. Itās never apart from that relational reality. Thatās it. Itās pretty simple.
Oftentimes when people hear the teachings of no-self, they think that no self exists, or that no self should exist. But thatās not what it means. The teachings of no-self mean that we are not fixed, we are not permanent, separate, isolated. We are this dynamic reality. We are as DÅgen says: a flower of emptiness. A mutable articulation of reality.
So the teachings of no-self are not aimed at erasing ordinary personality or diminishing our worth, our needs, our vitality.
The self is not a problem to be solved or an obstacle to be obliterated. Quite the opposite. The teachings are about liberation from constricted states of suffering. Liberation from the delusions that we have about the self. They aim for our full participation, with kindness and clear thinking.Ā
Itās also true that when we let these teachings sink in, when we allow them to touch us, they are deeply, deeply challenging. Because they ask us to risk a new way of being…
Releasing the hold on the self is a necessary and radical event that is liberating. It is also a process that leaves the practitioner to the edge of the known and beyond. The practice requires a willingness to allow everything on which one has relied and what is most intimately known — the self and one’s notions about the nature of reality — to shift and change.
If we look closely at this process, we find the ability to allow it is intimately linked with our experience of trust. And it requires an encounter with trust. Ultimately, it requires trust in life itself.“
