This morning I felt myself in the grips of a reflection about a seemingly very specific state of mind that comes about in two different on the surface, but related experiences, those being meditation and psychedelics. The state in question is something akin to “Okay I better get all my shit together now cause who the fuck knows who I’m going to be on the other side of this.” Which on the surface seems god-damn terrifying but I have found to be deeply life-affirming when you ultimately do come out the other side.
Instance #1: The Psychedelic Trip
Much has been talked about the preparation stages of a truly mindful trip, but so much of this seems to have an undercurrent of “better do this now In case I never come back” woven into it. Turn off your phone, cancel your meetings, and forget about your future. You are about to dive into the now, HARD. No matter how many times I trip I still get nervous thinking about going into it, as If I am to become something utterly alien to myself. The reality of tripping is of course much different, as I never really feel alien to myself, but I feel primal, essential, and like everything is on the table (or rather up in the air). Another common fear I have during a trip is thinking about what the other people in my life that are not present (bosses, parents, etc) would think if they saw me now. It is these bursts of reality that feel alien, not my relationship to my self. But always, barring extenuating real-ass circumstances, the trip will calm me and make me feel so much more at home in my reality.
Instance #2: Meditation
This applies more to a retreat than an everyday meditation, but the feeling I get before a retreat is very similar to that of tripping. I gotta put everything aside and just be ready to try and be present. But then when I’m in the thick of it, there I am, my “self” more present than ever, with all of my anxieties amplified to a harrowing clarity rather than being in some kind of alien-to-myself escape state. And I don’t mean this in the “true inner self-creator of my reality” type of self, I mean this in the much more “incidental pile of my own cravings and aversions” type of self.
And at the end of the retreat, like a psychedelic trip, all of my pre-emptive anxiety seems so silly, and I feel much clearer and at home in my reality.
The real lesson that I take from this is that as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “wherever you go” there you are. Barring a total psychotic break or other related mental health problems, when you go through these kind of perceived trials, you come out the other side, and sometimes it can feel like you never went through at all.