This is the first in a series of posts using Life Story Crafting to tell the transformational true story of my meditation/psilocybin non-duality experience.
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”– Matthew, St. James Bible
“Now, if you’re like most people, as you gaze at your face you’ll feel that you are on your own side, behind your face, looking across space at your reflection in a mirror. But I would have you notice now that there is only one face appearing here. The only face in evidence is the one in the mirror. Where your face is supposed to be, there’s just the world.”–Sam Harris, “Looking in a Mirror,” Waking Up App
The Ordinary World
In daily life, I can curb some of my habitual reactivity through meditation practice, but my best shot at transcending it comes when Elizabeth travels to Chicago to visit her family. I use the opportunity to become a part-time monk on solo silent retreats and disrupt my wake-sleep-meditation pattern with the S.N. Goenka schedule for Vipassana Retreats.
4:00 a.m. Morning wake-up bell
4:30-6:30 a.m. Meditate in the hall or in your room
6:30-8:00 a.m. Breakfast break
8:00-9:00 a.m. Group meditation in the hall
9:00-11:00 a.m. Meditate in the hall or in your room
11:00-12:00 noon Lunch break
12noon-1:30 p.m. Rest and interviews with the teacher
1:00-2:30 p.m. Meditate in the hall or in your room
2:30-3:30 p.m. Group meditation in the hall
3:30-5:00 p.m. Meditate in the hall or in your room
5:00-6:00 p.m. Tea break
6:00-7:00 p.m. Group meditation in the hall
7:00-8:15 p.m. Teacher’s Discourse
8:15-9:00 p.m. Group meditation in the hall
9:00-9:30 p.m. Question time in the hall
9:30 p.m. Retire to your own room-Lights out
But while I’m willing to accept the altered state of the schedule, I am unwilling to surrender myself to 10 days at Dhamma Kuñja in Onalaska, Washington. It isn’t the time commitment, I could manage 10 days, and it isn’t the money. There are no upfront costs. It’s the unwillingness to surrender so much control. At the end of the stay, retreatants are asked to pay it forward so others can benefit. I’ve read reports that if a contribution is deemed ungenerous, subtle or not so subtle pressure is applied for the retreatant to reconsider their generosity. The cash value of peak experiences is difficult to appraise, especially in their afterglow.
Plus, it creeps me out that the teachings are all delivered by S.N. Goenka from beyond the grave. Facilitators press play on a recording at 7:00 p.m. each night and the charismatic business man delivers his spiritual sales pitch. The first time I followed the schedule, I listened to the lectures. Though the spiritual message was wrapped in a master salesman’s charisma, I knew enough about the underlying teachings to verify that he was only taking liberties with one. Awareness of bodily sensations was not the one and only form of mindfulness taught by the Buddha. I cut him slack on that because it was taught by the Buddha and might have been the only method his teacher used.
Bottom line: Vipassana ticks all the boxes of a cult. And I lived through Jim Jones and the Kool-Aid incident.
Still, the retreat schedule has allowed me to explore concentration, reframe beliefs, and on a few occasions (usually the second to last day of retreat) get glimpses of awakening: moments when time falls away and I come back with heightened consciousness and vigor.
These glimpses have allowed me to recognize the vocabulary of awakening when I hear it from advanced Western meditators who have founded retreat centers or earn their livelihood by teaching at them.
But while these teachers have all attained their deep spiritual awakenings during long retreats at the feet of spiritual masters in India or Burma, none of them could replicate these retreats in the West and still earn a living.
I wasn’t born of the class (or caste) to travel to Asia, ordain as a monk, and meditate for six months or more. So, I wasn’t going to get the experience they got. Not in this lifetime.
Call to Adventure
Michael Pollan’s Fresh Air interview about his book How to Change Your Mind sparked my curiosity in psilocybin, which was being successfully used to treat people with severe depression.
It wasn’t what it cured, but how it worked that made me curious. It appears to calm the Default Mode Network, which is where the concept of self arises. One of the principle insights of Buddhist teachings is that there is no such thing as a permanent independently existing self that remains unchanged throughout a lifetime, or even throughout an entire day.
More intriguing were the accounts and brain scans of people who had done 50,000 hours of meditation. Comparing psilocybin to meditation, they just said, “Same.” The scans indicated the same brain regions were active in both long-term meditators and first time “trippers.”
Refusal of the Call
I am not an early adopter of anything, and by the time I became aware of psilocybin as a possible meditation enhancer, I lacked the qualifications to participate in any psilocybin clinical trials.
Meditation has downgraded my depression symptoms from mental to physical, and the depression related studies limited their candidates to people who didn’t respond to antidepressants.
Elizabeth and I both grew up during the war on drugs, and that indoctrination precluded me from seeking out under-the-table practitioners as Michael Pollan had.
Even if I found one, I would have resisted the way the psilocybin sessions are conducted. Patients are asked to strap on a set of headphones and listen to a pre-selected music playlist. Music exists solely to manipulate our emotions. I’m not any more willing to entrust my altered state to an unknown DJ than to a master salesman.
Meeting the Mentor
When Sam asked if I’d be interested in volunteering as a practice client for two professional cuddlers in training followed by lunch at Petite Provence in February 2020, it sounded like the perfect way to spend a morning and early afternoon.
During lunch, she mentioned that she was thinking of throwing a going away party for her second retail space, which she’d be vacating at the end of June. She said she was curious to see how I’d respond to psilocybin and she and another cuddler would be around as drug baby sitters to make sure we’d all be safe.
Sam had been using psilocybin for years. I know because I edited accounts of those experiences for her upcoming book. I trusted her more than the minions of S.N. Goenka, the psilocybin study clinicians, or the underground therapists. Plus, her studio space was the closest thing I had to a clubhouse. I felt at second home there.
Due to circumstances beyond human control (think COVID-19) my farewell to that space consisted of three souvenirs, a white board, an underwater shower curtain that had been used to cover the flat screen in the community room, and, the closest thing I got to a psychedelic experience, a rubber duck that glows with colorful lights when you thwack it.
Crossing the First Threshold
A couple years and several vaccine and booster shots later, Sam asked if I was open to doing a group retreat at an Airbnb for which she would cover the cost. I was very much up for the psilocybin experience, but I felt a gut level discomfort about trying to sell the retreat to Elizabeth.
When I had mentioned my curiosity about psilocybin in the past, she expressed no curiosity of her own and a deep skepticism about why I was interested. We had never talked much about the moments of insight I’d gleaned on solo retreats because those experiences are ineffable.
If I was going to try psilocybin without creating relationship stress, I would have to work with what Elizabeth was already a yes to. She accepts that Sam is a friend I occasionally hang out with, and I often do solo retreats when she’s in Chicago.
During a walk and talk with Sam, I mentioned the complicating factors around the Airbnb retreat idea and asked if we could try psilocybin as part of my solo meditation retreat while Elizabeth was visiting her family.
She said yes. She was ready and had the mushrooms any time I was.
Tests, Allies and Enemies
Sam provided an email consent form to help her customize the experience. First, she wanted to know how deep down the rabbit hole I wanted to go.
“The 1-10 drunk scale I find translates well, with 10 being ego death with potential lack of control over your movements at times, 6 being more like drunk but certainly manageable, 3 would be like drinking one beer quickly.”
Since it was my first time, and I was using it in conjunction with meditation, I went for a six of ten, figuring that I would get to a peak experience at some point during my meditation retreat anyway.
“I will need an emergency contact and which hospital is preferred if needed (this is very unlikely to be needed from anything you’d take, but in case of other medical issues arising from regular life coincidentally at this time). I also need to know about any medical concerns or active health conditions such as diabetes or seizures, known allergies, and medications I’d need to inform the EMT of if an emergency does arise.”
The imagined scenario of some unforeseen complications arising and Sam having to explain things to Elizabeth was my greatest fear. But if a life emergency arose, Sam would be one of the first people I’d call. If the emergency wasn’t caused by psilocybin, Elizabeth would be grateful that Sam was there to help.
But in order for me to be a full yes to the experience, I felt that I needed one more ally. I didn’t know anyone who had used psilocybin to amplify meditation. I knew someone had done it. All I had to do was find them.
