Psychedelics will Show you the Work
5 ‘geltabs’ of LSD
“Have you ever done LSD?”
“Yes…” I replied somewhat confused.
“Then you know that there are other ways your mind can work?”
I laughed and nodded.
“Good” she said as she turned to walk into her meditation room beckoning me to follow.
Welcome to my first ever meditation instruction. I entered a woman’s Boston apartment and within moments we had the conversation above. Not what you heard the first time you fired up a meditation app?
Should it be?
After failing to get hooked on meditation for a few months clients often ask me, what exactly are the benefits of meditation supposed to be? There are rational arguments to be made, but they are never as compelling as direct experience.
The way my mind worked on LSD was unfathomably different from the way it had worked prior.
That’s me in 1995. 17 years old. 4th generation atheist living in a small, mildly xenophobic, church going town. Math and science were my religion. A massive over thinker, I believed that all of the worlds problems would yield to reason if people would just think more. I was an insomniac, but even as I lay awake for hours every night I didn’t see how much over thinking was making me miserable. I was depressed. It had been building for years.
LSD blew my math obsessed little mind….and then dumped me back into my miserable ruminating self. I experienced something transcendent, but then quickly found myself right back in my thoughts. It would take me years to properly contextualize what I had experienced.
LSD opened my mind to the limitations of reason. I didn’t suddenly understand Godel’s incompleteness theorem (which proves that Math can never be both complete and internally consistent 🤯), but in a single evening I knew at my core that all concepts, even math, are a human filter that buffers us from the direct experience of reality. Unfortunately, I didn’t suddenly know how to ruminate less. On a primal level thinking started feeling less and less hopeful, but I knew nothing of meditation and had no real understanding of how to interpret this in a positive light.
I was severed from my materialistic worldview with nothing to catch me. Looking back I realize I had a profound experience of what Buddhists call ‘emptiness’ (shunyata). This is the realization that everything, from thoughts to objects to events, have no absolute essence, or meaning. All meaning is relative based on the perspective we happen to be taking at the moment. In this emptiness one can eventually find an equally comprehensive fullness. In the darkness we recognize the light.
Had I a spiritual education this might have inspired me. In it’s absence I was cut adrift. I understood insanity experientially.
I became nihilistic.
I fell into a Spiritual Emergency. Words lost meaning, polarities collapsed, hot & cold, good & bad, became meaningless without an absolute center to define them. Studying post-modern and existential philosophy in college compounded the problem by proving that if you look at anything closely enough it’s meaning becomes impossible to pin down. Concepts became lines drawn in sand.
It would be many years before I came across the parable of the Taoist Farmer, Zen’s Heart Sutra, or the Two Truths Doctrine, all of which help to put this in a healthy context.
I simply became unmoored from reality as everyone I knew experienced it.
Realizing that a significant portion of my mind is pre-verbal I spent a year and a half trying to think without words. Music and art helped, but still I became suicidally depressed and thought about killing myself daily for almost three years. I could not see the possibility of living a meaningful life. I spent years floundering before dropping out of college and having a fateful conversation with my uncle Dilip, who showed me the first steps in an infinite path of functional spirituality.
Dilip suggested I take two courses through the Art of Living Foundation (AoL) in order to learn breath work and meditation. I had no idea we would be talking about my drug use, but I’m glad we did.
Walking behind my new instructor I wondered, Is she suggesting that meditation can be as mind altering as LSD? She was. Exogenous chemicals (drugs) work because we have endogenous chemicals (neurotransmitters, hormones etc) and the receptor sites that bind them.
Drugs can give us a glimpse of the ways that the mind can work, but altered states only lead to lasting traits when we commit to practices that revisit and reinforce them.
Psychedelics launched me to a peak and then dropped me back to earth. Meditation and breathing exercises showed me the path up the mountain.
Daily practice became the key missing element.
STAGE 1: SITTING PRACTICE
I spent years doing the 3 breathing exercises and twice daily meditation that I learned; 30 minutes in the morning (10-15m breathing → 20m meditation) + 20min of meditation in the evening. Breathing exercises taught me to regulate my nervous system, release trauma, calm my mind, and shift my mood. I learned to witness my thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations in ever subtler ways.
I explored Eastern philosophies and discovered the word mysticism. I became Spiritual, but not Religious.
The work of Ken Wilber reconfigured my mind and acted as a portal to dozens of other disciplines and thinkers all of which helped me think about how science, spirituality, psychology, and philosophy fit together.
I learned that happiness does not have to be circumstantial. In theory I believed it. In moments, I experienced it. The radical emptiness I had experienced on LSD convinced me that all thoughts and emotions are relative. I knew that meaning making involved a significant amount of unconscious choice and if I could make those choices more conscious, I could experience the world with more light, love and acceptance, but it was still largely theory. I was no longer suicidal, but to day darkness still beckoned.
I did more psychedelics, but they started to become redundant. My familiarity with peak states was not turning them into permanent traits. Awareness can be curative, but it must be embodies to be brought to life. I decided to double down on daily practice.
The ayahuasca vine, banisteriopsis caapi, growing in the jungle of Brazil
STAGE 2: WALKING PRACTICE
I realized that attempting to shift my mind while on the cushion wasn’t enough. I needed to practice shifting my mind as I engaged with the world.
Why move to Charlotte?
Because I hated it :)
I convinced a company to hire me as their only employee in Charlotte, NC so I could oversee their biggest account. I was in the wrong career, the wrong city, and I had zero friends there. I had a plan. I decided not to build a life there. I wanted an obstacle course for my mind. This was to be a test.
Could I generate happiness despite my circumstances?
I added physical exercise to my morning practice. With strength training and stretching (asana) my body wanted to be still. Breath work (pranayama) helped my mind be still. This took 90 minutes. I repeated it most evenings.
I challenged myself to not only access elevated states of consciouses as a departure from my baseline, but maintain them as long and as often as I could in order to shift it. All day I played with physical postures, smiling in the mirror (studies showed to be as effective as Prozac), affirmations, journaling, reading spiritual texts, listening to self help recordings (Tony Robbins!), writing and producing music, and more.
Could I choose the last thought in my head at night and the first thought in my head in the morning?
I took a ‘fake it until I make it’ approach to positivity recognizing that much of what I told myself was ‘real’ about my demeanor and my mind could be more accurately described as shitty habits.
In meditation I revisited states of radical ‘emptiness’. What was once disorienting and devoid of meaning, became a loving peaceful, rejuvenating presence. This calm, alert center began to show up outside of meditation as well. I was visiting many of the states of consciousness that LSD, mushrooms, and MDMA had exposed me to, but in a slow, incremental, controlled way that I could more readily connect with throughout the day.
The line between ‘practice’ and ‘life’ blurred.
The experiment worked.
After a year I left Charlotte for NYC based on an intuition (more on this to come) that I would find the love of my life and together we would move out of the city.
I look back at this year of isolation and hard work as one of the best periods in my adult life. Why? Not because it was full of relationships and experiences that filled me up, but because I was now showing up with my cup full and to a significant extent I was choosing the meaning I applied to experiences.
Still, I sensed I had more to give. I wanted to know my purpose and make a living with it.
When one layer is resolved a deeper layer comes into view.
Between ceremonies at Spirit Vine
AYAHUASCA: Kundalini Rising
In 2008 I traveled from NYC to Brazil for my first 3 ayahuasca ceremonies.
A decade of practice primed my system for a breakthrough. I was opening up to trans-rational contemplation, but when it came to making life’s big decisions I was still fundamentally a rational materialist. I weighed pros/cons and worried about the outcomes more than acting on intuition and taking leaps of faith.
My 3rd ayahuasca ceremony included an inexplicable psychic event that forced me to re-evaluate my dogmatic faith in science as providing a ceiling on what I should consider to be real. How could I witness events happening thousands of miles away? What other information might I be blind to in every moment? How small are my doors of perception?
How is one to make decisions when their conscious mind is dealing with such a slim sliver of reality?
Back in NYC things got weirder. I was having more psychic experiences, but I wasn’t clear what do with them. During one multi-day period I barely ate or slept. My body radiated an intense heat that others could feel from a distance. It was blissful. My mind was like a laser beam. I floated through my days with a quiet mind full of peace and clarity. I was opening up to a new, more intuitive way of processing reality.
I met the love of my life and got my heart broken. One reason it hurt so much was because I knew I wasn’t living in integrity. I wasn’t taking the risks I wanted to take with my life. I was working as a health coach part time, but by day I still worked with security systems. I couldn’t see the shift towards a more meaningful career. I was afraid of losing the security of my lifestyle.
I understood experientially that intuition could lead, but I struggled to trust myself. I was still being reasonable (overly rational).
I pictured my mind as an unfathomably deep pool of water that I could only see from above. Every conversation or piece of media was like a pebble being dropped into it creating ripples on the surface. Only with a complete lack of stimulation and intense focus could the water become still enough for my awareness to penetrate down beneath the surface and into the depths. I intuited that I needed to work with the deepest currents.
I decided to leap into the unknown. Not being able to see my big YES I decided to say no to everything that wasn’t 100% in integrity for me. I didn’t have a vision for my career, but I could see an ideal day. I decided to double down on my Charlotte experiment and engage transformative practice full time.
“No Problem Can Be Solved From The Same Level Of Consciousness That Created It.” - Albert Einstein
My log cabin on top of a mountain for a year
STAGE 3: SABBATICAL
I moved to a log cabin 7 miles up a dirt road on top of a mountain in North Carolina.
I spent a year in isolation; no phone, no internet, no TV. If you emailed me you got an auto-response with my address. I hand wrote letters and sealed them with a wax stamp. I spent my time turned inward, listening deeply to my body/mind and engaged in transformative practices.
The line between ‘practice’ and ‘life’ dissolved.
I practiced Zen meditation for a few hours per day. I did pranayama, strength training, asana, vocal exercises, chanting, song writing, woodworking, nature walks, journaled, dream journaled, practiced lucid dreaming, read about science, spirituality, intuition, and great literature. Every moment was one of radical self indulgence coupled with an attempt to resonate with my highest self and to feel One with all things.
My center of gravity, my most common states of consciousness, shifted towards the elevated states that I had experienced first while on psychedelics and now, increasingly, while deepest in meditation.
Psychedelics show us what the mind is capable of.
Meditation functions as the bleeding edge of our stable development.
I experienced my thoughts WAY less.
Days passed without any.
To this day I know in my bones that my mood and my mentality are my responsibility, independent of circumstances. I find solace in the fundamental emptiness of all conceptual frameworks and I’m less likely to expect circumstances - and my interpretations and preferences about them - to make me feel ok.
I sleep better too.
The more I trusted my intuition the more quickly wise decisions were made and actions taken. The scope of the decisions I could make without much, if any thought increased over time.
As I practiced taking baby steps of faith the leaps began to appear.
I found my purpose; raising the consciousness of those whose decisions have the biggest impact. A vision emerged of the life I have been living since. My career path, as an Executive Life Coach began. Hana (who dumped me) and I rekindled our love via hand written letters and the occasional visit. I moved back to the city to be with her, start my business and our family. Actions that once scared me because I focused on the risks now enlivened me as I focused on the energy that emerged by following my curiosity.
Coming down from the mountain and working as a life coach became the next stage of doing the work. My new way of being now infused my career as well.
I spend my days helping leaders make life altering decisions.
Today, when I help my clients prepare for and integrate experiences with psychedelics I tell them to expect to be shown a path, not carried to the end of it. Having a vision can change everything, but only to the extent that we are willing to invest in it. Your perspective can, and will, shift in an instant. If you want the rest of your life to follow you have to do the work.