The push to decriminalize psychedelics and other non-pharmaceutical drugs, including even “weed,” means that we have to be even more aware of our own tendency to assume that psychedelics, “unlike alcohol,” “unlike opioids and other Big Pharma drugs,” are innocent. Anything or anyone that pulls us off-center, can be dangerous.

And yet, we can’t just sit there, doing nothing! Daily life continuously pulls us back and forth; like spinning tops, or spastic bobble-heads we are jerked to and fro; or, with more awareness, like sailboats, headed in a certain direction, we use the wind coming at seeming cross-purposes to push us back and forth, continuously correcting.

In any case, whether consciously or unconsciously, IS how we learn, by going “too far” in one direction, only to shift and go “too far” in another, often opposite, direction. Indeed, only through our “mistakes,” do we learn. And sometimes we have to make one mistake not once, not twice, but over and over again, in order to see the pattern that negates the growth intended by our natural, brilliant aliveness.

I found this Bernard Guenther post of particular interest, given that I am one of the few remaining members of the generation that, back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, “tried everything,” and “the further out, the better.”

PSYCHEDELICS AND PSYCHOPATHS

About 24 years ago, when I was experimenting and working a lot with psychedelics and medicine plants, I thought they were the solution to the world's problems. Like many other fellow psychonauts and Terrence McKenna enthusiasts back then, I believed… pic.twitter.com/IL1hVW9Qx2

— Bernhard Guenther (@veilofreality) May 25, 2023

I post Guenther’s full post below, given what I see as its importance.

 

I’m no stranger to psychedelics; nor am I to psychopaths. Even at 80 years old, I’m still learning that not all  hearts are open.

Or maybe I should say, not all people have souls? Plus, I find myself asking, do clones have souls? And, are, or are some psychopaths, actually (“negative,” i.e., self serving) ETs in human form? How many remorseless ones are actually puppets, manchurian candidates, MK Ultra mind-controlled slaves from birth?  Still call them psychopaths? On and on. The seemingly clear distinction between psycho- and socio-, innate or learned, blurs. In either case, it’s always damned difficult for us, of pure heart, to actually have to admit that not all (seeming?) humans can be reached; that not all harbor inner beauty behind the socially-constructed, socially-accepted, facade.

Furthermore, it’s not just women who wear “make-up” — as in make-it-up!

Confession: beginning in late 2021 and going through late 2022, I and others who live in Green Acres Permaculture Village were subjected to increasing tension, secrecy, and stress, due to various recently arrived individuals who, like spoiled apples, were tainting the entire nest. If you want to keep the distinction between psycho and socio, then I doubt any of these individuals were actually psychopaths; but likely they were sociopathic, their difficult childhoods, unprocessed, having rendered them toxic to others, at least to the extent of, even when in sweet, or helpful disguise, they were actually acting in service to self alone.

It was a rough ride. Not just individuals undergo significant learning experiences! We weathered it; and, looking back, I’m grateful to have encountered and survived at least a small slice of the viral mental/spiritual/emotional contagion that seems to increasingly infect our entire society — for how long? The last 20 years? the last five years? Again, Wittgenstein: how do you know when anything actually begins? We can always retreat further into the past, to widen any frame, any context; this, in turn, alters, deepens the meaning we ascribe to the situation as a whole. Plus, or related: unlike the off-on digital AI world, there is never, ever, a clear dividing line between before and after in a mysterious organic material world of continuous entangled interdependency. As in time, so in space: and this includes the so-called, still sanctified “scientific method.” There is no such thing as a “controlled experiment,” since all boundaries, at some level, are porous. Nature, the Universe, is ONE undivided whole.

As a result of our year-long trial by fire, we now know that as individuals in community, we can survive even this tricky, even at times, I would say evil, onslaught, assuming that 1) each of us remembers to continuously pull ourselves back into our own center, rather than get pulled, to and fro, by others; 2) each of us learns to speak up when necessary, to speak truth as we see it; and 3) each of us vows to pay attention to our own shadow material, knowing that, at least at some level, this is what’s being engaged during such toxic interactions. This, gets projected; this, then, needs to be acknowledged, taken back, and integrated. The sting subsides; sooner or later, even the most toxic infections that appear to be only coming from others, fade away, as long as we do our own inner work!  

Here are two essays that might help here: one on centering, the other on processing.

CENTERING_ Beyond the Path of Polarity

Personal Processing

 

And here’s Guenther’s post in its entirety. If you’re on twitter, some of the comments are also stimulating.