How to (really) Change Your Mind
Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash
I absolutely love and appreciate Michael Pollan’s 2018 bestseller, How to Change Your Mind. It took a good bit of daring for an established author to broach what to many is (especially in Mr. Pollan’s readership demographic) a dicey subject. His work took the discussion of the proper use of psychedelics to “middle America”, as it were.
That’s a good thing in my book.
And with all due respect to Michael Pollan — and I do respect the voluminous and erudite body of work he’s produced over the years — in How to Change Your Mind, he falls short in championing one *crucial* aspect to psychedelic work: the integration process.
Now to be fair, I get it. You don’t know what you don’t know. And as Mr. Pollan is by his own admission, a newcomer to the world of plant medicine and psychedelic work, the importance of deep integration is not yet fully understood. And if you can’t understand a thing, it’s tough to appreciate its importance.
So, as a more seasoned veteran of the space (and a practiced facilitator), I’d like to add a little clarity to this most important aspect here.
My personal experience in years of working with clients has shown me that the western take on any substance used to precipitate a reaction in the body or psyche is that the substance “fixes” something “wrong with them”. Now, this could be the stand-alone subject of an entire book in and of itself.
HINT: and that work is likely forthcoming from yours truly.
Suffice it to say here, though, this “X substance fixes Y problem” mindset is utter marketing spin. Nothing more. But if Big Pharma does have one thing dialed in though, it’s marketing expertise. They, in my opinion, set the exceedingly bar high for the craft. The government ain’t too shabby in this endeavor either.
Another story for another day.
Now I feel the resistance to my saying that, and I hear you: that’s a bold statement about the pharma industry (and the government); it’s an opinion that could be debated ad nauseam. That’s not my intent here (though there is A LOT of that in Primal Uprising). Let’s just say for now that as for psychedelic and plant medicine work, the real-life transformation comes not by the (sometimes) mind-blowing psychedelic experience itself, but by virtue of the post-experience heavy lift. And that heavy lift is known as the integration process.
What is integration?
I’ve told this story a few times to illustrate what I mean by “integration”: by no means a newcomer to the psychedelic experience, I sat, many years ago, in my first Ayahuasca retreat. The retreat was meant to be intense (perfect for my “go big or go home” attitude at the time), and it delivered in spades: 10 days long, consisting of 5 Ayahuasca ceremonies while undergoing a redwood “dieta” for the duration.
In the Peruvian lineage I worked with for so many years, “dieta” was actually the primary tool used for spiritual awakening. In fact, for an apprenticing shaman, it was the primary focus of training. In boxing terms, the dieta might be considered the bread-and-butter footwork and jab. A technique that, without mastery of, would render any other subsequent punch rather useless. Because surviving a fight long enough to even utilize any other punch would be rare.
Dieta is another subject worthy of a book in its own right, but I’ll give you the nuts-and-bolts basics here: the diet is sparse, bland, and devoid of color. That is, seasonless and *saltless*, white starches, legumes, and veggies. Some lineages allow limited white meat (chicken or fish). And water to drink. That’s it. And you’d be right if you think you might drop a few pounds eating this way. I sure did.
Now aside from the diet itself, try going even a day with absolutely no salt and you will soon find out why the substance was so prized in ancient cultures. Your physical energy level will absolutely plummet, which makes my claim of salt being the original performance-enhancing “drug” all the more valid.
Also, there is no exposure whatsoever to any other “contaminants”. No soap, or shampoo. No toothpaste or deodorant. No touching or physical contact. No media of any sort (spiritual reading is ok). And while not intended to be a “silent” retreat, one is encouraged to steer conversations clear of current events, pop culture, and the like. Cultivating a “be here now” presence is the aim.
The idea behind the dieta is to lower one’s worldly, physical energy and attachment while boosting spiritual “openness”. Another way of looking at it is the removal of as many distractions as possible so as to better lock frequencies with the “spiritual realms”. Boosting the signal-to-noise ratio, as it were, to better find “yourself”.
As well, a tea made of soaking the bark of whatever tree is being “dieted” is ceremonially consumed in morning and evening rituals. In the case of this particular retreat, the tree was redwood. The idea being that the initiate will take on the properties of the dieted tree. You could think of the way this particular lineage ascribes properties to the various trees similar to the way other ancient cultures affixed properties to the various Gods. Redwoods are steadfast, enduring, towering (majestic), and incredibly individually resilient, yet communal.
Now, as for the Ayahuasca experiences themselves? Mind-blowing.
I mean, seriously. I lost my mind. Found “God”. Died (over and again; hideously). Was reborn. Became nothing. Reemegerged *everything*… all the things, in fact, you’ve likely already heard about these experiences. Again, in my old “go big or go home” paradigm, I got my money’s worth. And then some.
But here’s the thing: while all of that was utterly amazing in a jaw-dropping, awestruck, holy-shit-I-can’t-put-this-in-words kind of way, there wasn’t much in the way of practical “action steps” I could ferret back to the real, get-your-hands-in-the-muck world I choose to operate in on the daily. If my psyche were a pinata, Ayahuasca was the Louisville Slugger slamming into its delicate, paper mache vessel. Shards by the thousands of my former self were left scattered among the redwood forest.
Ok… so now what?
Well, integration was the “what”. And though I didn’t know it at the time, mastering the integration process is what matured me from a psychedelic journeyman into a true seeker of Self. And of Truth. And more importantly, integration was the practice I needed to take all those shards of myself I’d left strewn in that redwood forest and reconfigure them, little by little over time, into a new “me” that can better play, learn and teach in this material, 3D world we find ourselves in.
This process was — and continues to be — (in essence), spiritual and psychological kintsugi. Kintsugi being the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with inlays of gold thereby making the pottery stronger than before the break. As a philosophy, kintsugi treats breakage and repair as part of the beautiful and unique history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
Nassim Taleb might describe kintsugi as a material representation of the concept of anti-fragility.
Because, for better or worse, this 3D material world is where (depending upon your cosmology) we chose to incarnate. This world is where we have chosen to spend our time, effort, and conscious energy. And I can only assume we chose this plane for a reason. A reason that might not make a lot of sense to us as we’re lost in the wandering (a forset/trees kind of thing), but one — on a cosmic level — that does make perfect sense. Even if we can’t — with our limited perception — make sense of it at all.
Yet we endeavor to do just that. Totally my perspective here (the only subject in which I’m an expert), but I believe we should strive for understanding. Daunting as that is.
So what does my daily integration practice look like? For me, it’s journaling. Every morning. Sometimes for 15 minutes, and sometimes for 3 hours plus. No pressure, no constraints.
I’ve journaled about every psychedelic experience I’ve ever had since that retreat in the redwoods so many years ago. Every single one. As soon as I’ve had the ability to write. That’s now well over 500 pages of material. Then, on the daily, I will randomly scroll to an experience, reread what I’ve written there, and use that as a prompt for expansion.
And I’ll tell you this: even after years of having not revisited an experience there is always something that I can add that came as a result of that experience. Dots connected. “Serendipitous” happenings. Things that make sense to me now that were completely alien to me at the time I encountered them in the depth of the experience. Or even in the more “back to earth” aftermath.
And I always find a little bit more of me, every day. Another step closer to Truth.
Now, writing works for me. But I’ve worked with clients who essentially do the same thing via meditation, carpentry, motorcycle maintenance (seriously), art, dance, music… the list is endless.
And, in the end, integration is simply this: mindful contemplation.
Simple, yes — but as we know, simple rarely implies easy.
The substance, I like to say, merely opens the door to possibility and lets you take a peek inside. It acts as the “Roger Bannister” for your psyche. Knowing the 4-minute mile is possible is one thing, however. Going out and actually running a sub-4-minute mile is another matter entirely. One that takes effort and dedication.
The day-in and day-out training for that 4-minute mile? That, my friend, is integration. Life in this life, in this dirty, broken, beautiful, and chaotic world? That is race day.
Our challenge then, as conscious beings, is to weave those two aspects into our daily journey of finding ourselves — and Truth — from within the chaos of our confines.
Til we chat again…