Psychedelic Detour

There is a story about a man who kept taking acid, hoping to see God. Finally he succeeds, and God tells him to stop taking acid.

I feel a bit like that man, after my most recent ibogaine trip. Granted, nothing as dramatic as the big "G" showing up transpired; it was more a case of what didn't happen. There were no big revelations, as I had hoped - rather, I felt that I've had as much insight as I need for quite some time already, and my task now is simply to make use of it, to actually do the work. A radical suggestion, to be sure.

The ibogaine started off very promisingly. I rented a cabin in a remote area for several days, and two close friends who had previously attended an ayahuasca retreat in Peru (and been quite helpful to me there) were my sitters. When the drug started to take effect, I felt a lot of subtle energy effects, most notably a pulsing in my head, followed a few moments later by a pulsing in my chest - I interpreted this as my third eye and heart chakras being activated. Between the pulsing and the more general energy effects occuring in my body, I felt as though I was being probed by a transpersonal entity. Then I got my first vision: a strange angular creature with a two-dimensional leopard mask where its head should be threw hopes of light at my third eye; the moment they struck me, a tunnel of white light opened in front of me. It looked exactly like depictions of the tunnel in Near-Death Experience reports. And then...nothing much happened. I had a visionary period of a few hours, but resisted going fully into it. I only felt a little afraid - I had the detachment that seems to happen in ibogaine trips. Nevertheless, I couldn't completely let go into the experience. This is a recurring issue for me with psychedelics. The same thing happened with ayahuasca, although in that case I was able to work with it to some extent, and got some very useful insights. In this case, although I was shown some things about my past, psychological issues etc., there was nothing new. Interestingly, the issue that came up both times in lower-dose ibogaine trips (400 and 700 mg., compared to 1000 mg. this time) did not occur in this case, leading me to believe that I have dealt with that to a large extent. The main thing I remember from the visionary period this time, aside from the fascinating initial image, was many strange angular creatures crossing my visual field, seen from the side - and as each went by they would turn their head and look right at me.

A few days later I read something by Ken Wilber that seems very relevent to what I experienced - and didn't experience - with the ibogaine.

It is this primal resistence to unity conscousness that we must approach, and not unity consciousness itself. For until you see precisely how you resist unity consciousness, all your efforts to "achieve" it will be in vain, because what you are trying to achieve is also what you are unconsciously resisting and trying to prevent. We secretly resist unity conscousness, we covertly manufacture the "symptoms" of nonenlightenment, just as we secretly produced all out other symptoms on the different levels of the spectrum. What on the surface we fervently desire, in the depths we successfully prevent. And this resistence is our real difficulty. Thus, we won't move toward unity consciousness, we will simply understand how we are always moving away from it. And that understanding itself might allow a glimpse of unity consciousness, for that which sees resistence it itself free of resistence. -Ken Wilber, The Simple Feeling of Being, p. 123.

I feel that I have long been attracted to psychedelics as a way to push into spiritual awareness, but my ego feels very threatened by that prospect and so at deeper levels I very successfully resist it. Psychedelics have been a very important component of my spiritual path - in fact, they got me started on the spiritual path in the first place - but at this point I think my best bet would be to take a slow, steady, deliberate approach to dealing with my blockages, and cultivating a conscious relationship with witness consciousness (primarily through a regular vipassana practice - I plan to do an hour a day of meditation for the forseeable future).

Some time back I decided it was absolutely not the correct time for me to do another ayahuasca retreat, so I will not be going to retreat in Brazil in January which I mentioned previously. Now I have decided that psychedelics in general are not a useful technique for me at the present time. Down the road I anticipate working with ayahuasca, and possibly ibogaine, again. Meanwhile, two of the members of my ITP (Integral Transformative Practice) group are seriously considering doing ayahuasca retreats. I'm very excited at that prospect! It will be great if they try it, I'd love to hear how it goes for them.