The Clench...and Psychedelics: Part I

At this end of this past week’s group I wrote on my notepad, “Let go of the struggle and have faith in the process,” which now as I look at it, needs some explaining. It came out of the ideas of people who were talking about their psychedelic journeys that meeting. One spoke about the fact that “letting go” corresponds to two clenched fists turning into two open hands. Sound good, except that open hands don’t hold anything, suggesting that “letting go” means being okay with having nothing. There are philosophies that talk about groundlessness, but having nothing is not actually the most appealing notion in the world, as anybody in Las Vegas would tell you. But then the trip showed another stance that hands can take, one of openness, the receiving hands. They are neither clenched and uptight, nor are they flat and empty, but cupped and ready. 

 We approach so much of our lives with metaphorically very clenched hands. We struggle. We struggle to survive, to do well, to impress, to excel, to be above shame, and in the wellness culture we struggle to improve ourselves. Ever had this headache – that you struggle to get away from the struggling self? It’s not entirely our fault I would say, we are born into a culture where our basic education gears us towards striving and struggle. How often do you hear a parent or a teacher tell a kid, “Good job!” They are saying it with very positive intentions, but they imply that the kid is in a rating system, and this time they have done well enough to duck the bullet of humiliation that comes with doing a bad job. Tomorrow, however, is a new day, with new possibilities for failure and embarrassment. We are all of us, all the time, feverishly working on getting our 6th grade homework in on time. 

 And the letting go that we sometimes try to do while tripping, is a letting go of this clenched-hands mindset, where we see our own selves as an object – an object of success, or failure, of accolades or derision. In normal life we don’t have the luxury to live as part of things– part of the forest when we walk through it, part of the towns and cities that are our homes. We are too busy improving, and when we try to improve or change, let’s say change a bad habit, when we try do so with clenched hands, we try to criticize our way to improvement, perhaps even into enlightenment. “I said I wouldn’t eat any donuts today! I said I wouldn’t lose my temper! I said I wouldn’t get lost in ruminations” And look at that, I just did.” This stupidity is what we would love to let go of, and to the degree that we can, we are sparing ourselves unnecessary suffering, because this good job/bad job evaluation has nothing to do with the process of change. It’s just a stick to beat ourselves up with.

 But, just letting go of self-scolding does not make for a process of change. It may, if we could achieve it, leave us with empty hands, not receiving hands. The second tripper in last Tuesday’s group addressed that question when they said that they saw how the act of engaging with all this evaluative stuff, rumination, and even digging around in trauma memories, was useless. To them, it was simply: don’t engage with the devil and his machinations, turn to God and pray. This may or may not be your symbol system, and if it’s not, no matter, the basics are the same. We tend to approach our life issues in the closed-handed way, straining, and trying, and blaming ourselves when things don’t go right, probably exhausting ourselves, when in fact, the process of change is happening quite independently of that strenuous activity. We should put our energy and our will towards that process of change, and water that garden, not the weird Addams Family garden of self-blame.

 Next week: Part II!