Psychedelic Integration is the Wild West
If you shoot, don't miss
I was talking with some folks recently about the unregulated nature of this rapidly growing psychedelic scene. It was a group of healers; therapists, underground guides, integration coaches - people in the trenches, doing their work with the people.
It's the Wild West - Someone said, perhaps unsure if that was a problem or not.
To which another replied, "Better not miss, then. If you're going to take your shot, don't miss."
It hit home. Ha.
So many of us are so concerned about other people acting poorly, we forget that we're actors too. It's fun, almost lurid, to focus on others and their problems. But the more attentive we are to our own behavior, the less other people are going to have to worry about us. We've got to hone our aim.
If we're working with people and they're in our care, we've got to be care-ful. Precise. We get invited into people's hearts and minds, we can't be taking wild swings at what we think they need to hear. We can't rely solely on spirit guides to point us in the right directions (at least, most of us can't). Our joy and love for the work hopefully inspire us to put the work in to be the best we can be.
I'm working on it all the time. This is drawn from my experience of trying to become better at what I do and who I am.
Here's a short list, a loose musing, on how we can become the sharpshooters we were meant to be.
Ethics - A necessary starting off point. I rely heavily on the yama and niyama from the yoga sutras. It's a system of ethics specifically designed for people who do weird things with their consciousness. It helps keep a space voyager grounded. As Bob Dylan says, "To live outside the law, you must be honest"
Training - We've got to keep learning, and more importantly, practicing. Hopefully we love what we do so much that we're constantly chasing more education, whether it's from traditional institutions or not.
Exploring our Habits - Sometimes we get stuck in a rut. we're like that carpenter that only sees nails because we just have a hammer. We've got to practice noticing what we're attached to and what we're afraid of. Otherwise we're leading people from our comfort zone, and not a place of true service. One of my favorite coaching books in the world is called "The Mindful Coach" and in it Silsbee lays out a wide range of ways we might interact with our clients, and tools for freeing ourselves from our habits so we can use the best tool for the job at any given time. It's great.
Attention - I'm not a big NLP guy, but one of the things that i think is really interesting about them is how they pay attention to their clients. They look at how their eyes move, how their cheeks flush, the way they might cringe or lean forward. By paying close attention to the body language and their words we get out of our own heads and gain a clearer picture. Then we can respond more skillfully.
Meditation - In this case, we can practice meditation to help us clear out distracted jumbles of thoughts and emotions. We can unravel deeply held tension that comes from limiting beliefs and self hatred. As this unravels, we see ourselves for who we really are (good enough) and can move free of the neurotic need to have validation from our clients.
Intuition - Meditation can help us to hone our intuition. Our intuition, when freed from self-interest can be quite accurate. It's always good to practice with it in low stakes situations. Let your intuition pick out your outfit or decide which coffee shop to go to for a while. See how it goes.
Curiosity - Exploring beats knowing, any day of the week. There is humility here.
Mentorship, Supervision, Community Support - I always like to make sure that I've got people who will give me clear, honest feedback, and hold me to my best. Other perspectives from brilliant, kind people are more valuable than gold. We could perhaps even put ancestors and supernatural aid of all kinds in here too!
Drop the Guru act - There is a thing called Guru Yoga. It's a practice where an aspirant dedicates themselves to an enlightened individual who can guide them from a pure place of wisdom and love. This works great when it does, but if the guru isn't actually the enlightened, and is playing ego games, dominance/submission games, sex/power/money games with the person in their care, it's a mess. 99%+ of us are not enlightened in any workable way. Obviously, we all have Buddha Nature at our core, but we're not consciously identified with it on any reliable basis. We can't act like we're infallible and that everything we do and say is always the perfect thing for our client. Humility and Gratitude.
Open Heartedness - People need love more than answers. As Neem Karoli Baba famously said, "It's better to see god in everything, than it is to to try to figure it out."
Accountability - If you mess up, say you're sorry. This is so key, and keeps abuses of power from compounding.
Again, a short list. I hope this hits the mark for you. What might you include?
We have the opportunity to be great, we really do. We have a chance to touch the lives of countless people in a positive way. We can continue to grow as people and practitioners infinitely and exponentially. I just want you to know that it is my honor to be riding off into the sunset with you.
Pew Pew.