Starting from a place where this experience of life is less than satisfying, being overwhelmed by emotions, self-imposed rules and regulations (i.e. mental cages), and the rather tightening framework of societal expectations, there seems to be a natural tendency to either want more of it or less.
So two options to retreat to then? Like a pendulum that swings?
- Surrender to a state of utter experience: quick flashes of experiences that have (as Ken Wilber puts it) a beginning and an end, fireworks, splendor, triggers of all kinds, 30″ of bliss here, 1 minute there, another 24.8 seconds elsewhere, etc.. What this state naturally leaves us with is wanting more bliss. We want to get more stimulated, more social media, more TikTok.. in other words this seems to be our societal state currently and the direction in which it is moving.
- At the other end of the scale is a state continuous Being, some sort of peace if you will. A timeless Awareness that observes all the experiences but doesn’t really get involved, or does it? Where is this Awareness and how to connect to it?
- Maybe in silence, and with focus and patience. Hey, but that’s meditation? Perhaps. It is one road to Rome.. Is this why monks retreat from experiential and experimental life? Is this what mindfulness is about?
- Another road to Rome could be psychedelics. They give you that one shot – BOOM – into bliss (of course depending on which one you take it will be BOM! or BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!). What Wilber says there is that if we can take a step back, we can feel this continuous being, that state of being and that the essence is to remember this, anchor it, integrate it and go back there when the psychedelic picture show is over.. The concept is very old, it’s being rephrased again and again to bring the message to the masses. Two other examples from recent times:
- Sandra Ingerman, a shamanic practicioner and psychologist, who in her book “Medicine for the Earth” asks us to ask ourselves “who is feeling these feelings, who is thinking these thoughts and who is seeing these images”.
- Similar concepts are brought up by Rupert Spira and others who are floating on the stream of non-duality principles.
A very practical and natural way to help people find their way back to Awareness and their sense of self is lived by the Bwiti in their work with the Sacred Root Iboga. The idea here is to provide an individual with one massive dose of the root and then work with tiny quantities over a long time to help you feel this state more and more in daily life. And then live it..
This reminds me of the psychedelic revolution in the sixties, that enabled the birth of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, whose effectiveness is now being proven in clinical trials. There were two streams there:
- The US stream: where larger doses were administered between 1 to 3 times
- The European stream: where lower to medium doses were administered over a longer period of time.
- What if the sweet spot was in between, like the Bwiti have done for ages: A larger dose, followed by multiple smaller doses?
In the end, it is all about the subtlety to connect to ourselves again. And in effect, we don’t need to learn how to connect any more, we need to _remember_ we are still, always were and always will be _connected_.