独家优惠奖金 100% 高达 1 BTC + 180 免费旋转

A Beautiful Cry

What psychedelics taught me about love (and hatred)

The second night of the ceremony started as these things do: our small group of friends circled up in our living room in the late afternoon, the spring sun streaming through the windows (I thought about how they needed washing).

We went around the circle and everyone shared about how their first night went. The first night of a plant medicine ceremony (in my practice) is usually more of an immersion — the group gathers together to relax and shake off the world. We typically stick with heart-opening plant medicines that first night, since they generally have milder effects such as feelings of relaxation, well being, and the hard-to-describe but delicious sensation of your defenses coming down. People are always afraid they’re going to get naked and dance the hootchie-koo on the coffee table or spill every deep dark secret they have, but it turns out your defense mechanisms and your personal sovereignty are two different things. You can lower the former without losing the latter.

Now, you might be asking yourself how a nice middle-aged lady such as myself got involved with plant medicine. Good question. For most of my adult life, I’ve touched nothing stronger than coffee. I’d had a rough go in my late teen years and struggled with substance abuse, so I made it a rule to leave drugs and alcohol alone. Then, a few years ago, some friends started attending plant medicine ceremonies. I listened raptly as they told me stories about the insights and healing they experienced as a result. I saw how the work was making them calmer, happier, more open and more grounded. I watched them heal and change their lives in real time; it was like they’d had ten years of therapy after each session. I was intrigued.

It took me another year to get comfortable with the idea of taking mind-altering substances, until someone pointed out to me that I do it willingly every time I fill a prescription at the pharmacy. In my mind, those prescriptions were ‘medicine’ while everything else was ‘drugs.’ This person also pointed out the importance of ‘set and setting,’ meaning that if you approach working with substances from the mindset of connection to spirit, personal growth and healing, and within a setting of safety, sacredness and intention, it’s wildly different than tripping balls.

At the same time, I started seeing articles in publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post, talking about how researchers at Johns Hopkins and other respected institutions were finding extraordinary healing benefits from psychedelics and MDMA-assisted therapy. Terminal cancer patients were losing their fear of death, traumatized soldiers were finding peace, and people with drug-resistant depression were finding consistent relief. I finally decided that I could trust myself enough to give it a go.

Back at the ceremonial circle, it was my turn to share about the previous night. I told the group about a recent conversation I’d had with the executive coach at work. I’d told my coach/shrink (he’s also a psychologist), how I had used anger to access my power in a difficult situation where I’d felt disrespected and betrayed. Somewhere along my self-help journey, I picked up the idea that I could use anger as energy to better access my power. As I recounted the story, he listened thoughtfully. “I want to share something with you about the nature of power, Bridgette.” He has a lovely British accent, a shock of white hair, and a fondness for crisp white shirts. “We often think we need to use anger to gin ourselves up for what we view as a difficult interaction. But when we do that, we inevitably create defensiveness or some kind of reactivity in the other person. Even if we wait until we’re not actively angry, the other person can sense it in our tone and bearing.”

I nodded. “Yeah, they were definitely picking up what I was putting down — and probably not in the most constructive way.”

“There’s another way to do it, would you like to hear?” he said.

I could tell this was going to be good.

“You don’t need anger to access your power.” My face made a Whaaaa?!?! expression. He went on, “You access power by getting clear on what you need from the other person, and then simply stating that. When you do it this way, you are always in your power. It’s much easier to address issues in the moment because you don’t have to wait until you cool off and you can express whatever is arising for you right then.”

I told the group that while this advice seemed more than a little obvious in hindsight, it had hit me intensely. Last night, I could still feel the resonance of his words, like they were shaking something loose inside of me. But I wasn’t yet quite sure what it was.

Carlene, our facilitator, said, “Ah, I think you may need to balance your masculine and feminine aspects, or your yin and yang, if you prefer. It sounds like you’re using your masculine energy to prop yourself up, in a manner of speaking.”

“Um yeah, that’s pretty much how I do it,” I laughed. On the positive side of the ledger, using my masculine energy to bulldoze forward has gotten me far in life. On the negative side, bulldozing is exhausting. It’s also not the finest tool for life navigation.

Carlene offered a plant medicine that helps to balance out the yin and yang energies. I started nodding enthusiastically. “But,” she warned, “it’s work.” Er. Um…“What kind of work are we talking about here?” I asked.

I’d experienced plant medicine ceremonies that are work. It’s not always peace, love, and electric boogaloo. Naturally, I was a little hesitant. But in ceremonies, as in life, sometimes you have to do the hard things.

“You’ll be fine,” Carlene laughed. “It’s called serpent vine.”

“Serpent vine?!?” I did my best impression of the bug-eyed emoji. Steph, my partner, leaned over and said, “You should do it. You need this.” She was right. I could intuit that I needed this experience too.

You might imagine that serpent vine is a noxious powder, potion, or goo. It may have started out that way, but it arrived to me in the form of an innocuous little capsule. I reaffirmed my intention for energetic balancing and popped it down the hatch.

The group chatted amicably as we waited for the plants to kick in. Connecting with people during a ceremony is its own treasure. Everyone talking and listening with their hearts open makes you remember why humans are so lovable. We are pretty great creatures.

After a while, I began to feel the serpent vine coming on, and as it did, I said hello to my old friend surrender. We used to fight a lot, me and surrender; I tried to control outcomes, manage people, and, most importantly, keep a firm handle on myself. Over the past few years however, the plant ceremony work has taught me how resistance truly is futile. When I’m afraid, I try to control how I feel by suppressing the shit out of it. Instead of creating comfort, this creates anxiety. And when I’m anxious, I actually feel more out of control. Once I learned to just freaking relax and surrender to a moment, ceremonies — and life — got much easier.

I glanced at the floor. Colorful geometric patterns started dancing on top of the rug. Then the rug itself started dancing. I could tell that this was going to be a potent journey. “Here it comes!” I exclaimed to no one in particular and reclined back onto the floor.

I closed my eyes. My vision exploded with electric-white light. Intensely colorful, geometric images danced in precise patterns. It was like Fibonacci meets Fantasia. I was also receiving this incredible download of love and affirmation. It filled my senses. My attention drifted between the conversations and the music, the two completing each other in my mind. I would hear, “Listen to this.” And then the lyrics of a song would say, “You are perfect.” Or someone talking with someone else would say, “Forgive yourself.” It was like traveling within a symphony. I was being carried from movement to movement, each sound linked to the next, and yet beautiful and complete within itself. It was magic.

Then, the sparkly, affirmational movement ended and things took a more somber turn. The plants needed to have a serious talk with me. I relaxed my body and prepared to hear what they had to say. I know it’s weird to talk about plants as if they have a voice, but that’s pretty much how it is.

The serpent vine got down to business and began showing me places in my life where I was falling short. The voice was firm yet compassionate. I was being shown all of this for my own good, so I could be a better person. The voice told me that I hadn’t been holding enough space for Steph, and then it showed me an image from our life, offered as evidence. In the life-movie flash, Steph was experiencing legitimate grief while I prattled on about my own overblown neuroses. I felt my chest tighten with shame and sadness.

Then the voice then took me through a litany of all the places where I needed to do better. It followed a rigid pattern: first, the statement of my wrongdoing, followed by an image from my life that illustrated the point. My heart sank, I had thought I’d been doing so well.

Then, a thought occurred. “Hold on…” I said to myself, “Are these messages from spirit or is this my inner critical voice?” Hmm. I wasn’t sure. I mean, I could see all of the evidence, yet at the same time the litany of wrongdoing seemed a little… much. I was legitimately confused. And not just because I was having an in-depth conversation with a plant.

As the movie of my wrongdoings wrapped up, the serpent vine had a final message for me. The voice was clearer, more grounded and absolute. It said: “SELF-HATRED.”

Boom.

“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed out loud and bolted upright. “Self-hatred?” My friends barely glanced my way. “I mean, I get that I have low self-esteem and all, but self-hatred… really?” The serpent vine replied back in no uncertain terms, “YES. SELF-HATRED.”

I had never realized that the constantly-running movie in my head of never-enoughness could be self-hatred. I tried to equivocate. “Really? I mean everyone puts too much pressure on themselves. Everybody has an inner critic that tells them nothing they do is ever good enough; including how they make coffee and scoop the dog poop. I mean, I know that it’s not great to never, ever, let myself off the hook for anything I do less than perfectly, but come on! Self-hatred? That seems a little extreme.” The more I talked, the more I started to see the problem. And the truth. I was gutted.

In a gentler tone, the serpent vine pointed out how even my argument of defense came from self-hatred. My attempts to couch my inner viciousness as something common and therefore acceptable, allowed it to continue to thrive within me.

I could feel that I was coming into a deeper knowing of myself, but I was still confused about these voices in my head. I needed to talk to Steph.

Synchronicity and energetic connectivity seem to amp up during ceremonies, so I wasn’t surprised when right at that moment, Steph rolled into the room with a beatific grin on her face. She was having an epic night. She cheerfully plopped down next to me on the floor. I gave her my spot on the comfy cushion — after all I’d been so shitty about not holding space for her, it was the least I could do. “How ya doin’ toots?” she asked.

“I’m really confused. I was getting these messages but I don’t know if they’re true or not… Babe, I’m so sorry if I haven’t been holding enough space for you and I’ve been too focused on me.”

I could see all of the micro-expressions in Steph’s face; they flashed from confusion to concern to disbelief. Then the corners of her eyes crinkled with laughter and pure kindness. “Oh my god babe,” she said. “You hold so much space for me. I complain and whine and you’re so patient with me. Whatever that voice is saying to you is a lie.”

Gentle tears started rolling down my cheeks. I told her about the images of falling short — my entire life laid out as a performance review with everything rated ‘needs improvement’. “The evidence seemed so real. I was so afraid I was failing you, that I wasn’t good enough,” I wept. The tears were a combination of not being able to shake the feelings of failure and unworthiness, and relief that I wasn’t a terrible person.

The serpent vine hadn’t been trying to teach me a lesson in how to be better, it had simply been showing me the energetic pattern of self-hatred. The faux-wise voice stating a ‘fact’ and then backing it up with a movie clip from my life was just a slowed-down version of exactly what I do to myself all day, every day. This wasn’t some psychedelic illusion, I was being shown my own self-hatred propaganda machine.

My tears continued to fall. Steph said, “Yes babe, you are so hard on yourself, and the truth is, you are so good, so kind.” I cried more. Steph was pouring out some high-octane love, and it was almost painful to take in. But I couldn’t discount it, because pure love never lies.

I was trying hard to receive what Steph was saying to me. I was focusing intently on tracking her words when the serpent vine gently said, “Don’t try so hard, just surrender. Don’t listen, receive.” I relaxed my body. I could hear what Steph was saying to me in a much deeper way — and it was an entirely different truth. I understood that this was my feminine aspect coming into balance — I was truly receiving. Normally I would hear the words and immediately try to relate to them with my mind. This time, I simply let them fall into my heart and rest there.

We continued talking and my tears continued to gently spill. Steph said to me, “You are worthy. You are good.” She said many other things I can’t remember. What I’ll never forget is feeling her overwhelming outpouring of love. My heart started expanding, painfully so. I was having the physical manifestation of that Leonard Cohen lyric, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Except it was happening in reverse — my heart was cracking open, and the light was spilling out. So brightly. The entire room was suffused with this golden, honey-like energy. All of that surrender practice was for this moment. I sobbed as I whispered to Steph, “Your love… is breaking me open.”

My tears continued to fall. I made some crack about crying all of the time (self-hatred). Steph said, “This cry is different babe… it’s a beautiful cry.” Indeed. Devastatingly sweet tears.

We laid there and snuggled for a bit. I could feel something fundamental had changed inside of me. I’d needed to name my demon — self-hatred — and recognize its face so that I could begin healing from it.

The serpent vine has worn off, but the insights remain. I’d love to tell you that I’m self-hatred free, but that’s not the point. I don’t believe we’re meant to eradicate parts of ourselves, but rather to learn to live with the fullness of ourselves — light and shadow, hatred and love. What I can tell you is that the feeling of being cracked open is embedded inside me now and in moments — it might be in a meeting at work, a conversation with Steph, or as I’m getting ready in the morning — it lets me know, gently, kindly, compassionately, to bring that shattering, golden light of love to my own darkness.

Add a comment

What is your view?

Send

Related posts:

LOVE SPELLS TO GET YOUR EX BACK

Hello!!! Do you need someone to help you cast a spell work, Like love binding, get Ex Back Spells, Money Spells and others?? I am Cheif Oduduwa,i am an origin of Gujarat,India. I am born with the…

What Does Your Ideal Life Look Like?

If you ever heard the phrase, “you have to ask the right questions” to go forward, then this is a question I would definitely suggest and recommend to ask yourself. I am heading up to the end of my…

Body dysmorphia

Body dysmorphia is so not talked about enough yet some of the most relatable shit in the world. I bet at least 3x a day you look in the mirror and say something negative without even realizing it! I…