Psychedelics reveal in us a reality that is uncomfortable for most and dismantling for some and it is this: Every subjective experience that you would become emotionally attached to and identify with, every part of who you believe you think yourself to be and stand in defense of… it shows you that - taken to scale - your attachments and agendas are no greater than those of an ant.
There are legitimate concerns over the use of psychedelics as a means to release someone from the Wheel of Samsara. Stephen Jenkinson has offered his opinion on this in spades and, though I have some ardent disagreements as to the broadness of the paintbrush for which he paints this picture, the profundity of his words shouldn’t be so easily glossed over.
When a death-phobic culture generates solutions to death-phobia you can be absolutely certain that the goal of these measures is not to diminish or dissolve the death phobia. You can be sure that on the other side of the adoption of these measures the death phobia is in fact intact, fully functioning and has absorbed this latest greatest alternative in a way that pretends to be offering alternatives as any consumer culture will do and at the same time keeping in good working order the culture or the orientation that produced the longing for it in the first place and interestingly enough by doing so create greater longing for it (Stephen Jenkinson).
I’m fairly certain that the culture is going to eat itself from within. Not only from our disdain for our jobs but the actual work we are undertaking, what we are doing to the land that feeds us in the pursuit of personal attainment. It is important to remember that these ranges of cyclical human behavior have always occurred throughout history.
But with the rapid escalation in technological development in the last 75 years now suddenly the stakes are a lot higher. MDMA and all of these drugs are becoming legal in the United States and the world over. And that’s a good thing. They were never under our jurisdiction to regulate in the first place. It shouldn’t have happened.
But what are the consequences of controlling it all in the first place? Ignorance and false gods. And that’s how psychedelics are going to be looked at in a world that recognizes only the I… something they can take from, something to solve all of their problems. The masses who are illiterate to the power of these drugs will not consider the fundamental shifts in reality, personally identifiable reality from interacting with them. And because they aren’t fundamentally changed they will attempt to take the drug and fit it to the needs of their life. Psychedelics pull all that shit away and give YOU the opportunity to find the grace in your steps as you begin to see with new eyes.
I know I sound as though I am overplaying this all, but please understand: unless people are fundamentally changed they will destroy themselves under their own delusions, those of boundlessness and competence and goal orientation. And you know it’s true because it underwrites the way in which our society operates and the people within it live. And the culture cannot survive that. We cannot suck from momma’s teet any longer.
The work that I want to do won’t change the culture. Ask people around you if they are going to die. Ask them what evidence they can provide. And watch them rush to their priorities about one life to live and take the day and fade not into that good night and all that fine jazz. But HOW are they living? Is it in the pursuit of what they can add to their own belt of “can-dos” or is it in the service to that which will outlast us only by our own hands man… life. It’s continuance. Not our own personal monuments. That is our job. Not buying shit on Amazon.
All this is to say that I just want to do something different. Not to fix it; just to do something different. I want to play some lovely music as the ship goes down, and maybe some people will come to sit down and listen, or maybe pick up an instrument and play alongside. Now that’s a pretty good spot to be in on a sinking ship with no lifeboats, is it not?