♈︎ Aries Edition

Intro

Hello everyone, thanks for joining me again. This is the Aries edition of my newsletter. Last month I participated in a plant-medicine ceremony. This was a real ordeal for me. It was challenging, and integration has been a gradual process. It’s been difficult to find the words to explain what I experienced, even to myself, but I know that it’s the most important thing I’ve been through for some time so I will try. The plant-medicine I consumed was iboga, which is a very long-acting psychedelic and, in Canada, is not illegal. I was with a group of 4 other individuals looking for healing, spiritual connection, or initiation of some kind and our ceremony was facilitated by a professional.

Chapter 1: Ego-Death

I’ve come to understand that the central event I experienced during ceremony was an ego-death experience. For the first hours of ceremony I was witnessing visions of vast beauty and sadness. Murals suspended in space. Animals swirling in great patterns of life, evolution, and eventually, extinction. I came to call this “reel” of visionary imagery - “Planet Earth: Annihilation.” It was documenting the last animals of any species as they huddled together the last of their warmth, and when they were gone, a jewel of all that being was released into the universe - a record of all that once was. Then the visions shattered, like a mirror into a million pieces and I was thrown into confusion. I believe this was the moment of ego-death, and I cannot remember what happened after that for a long time.

“You have to die to who you thought you were, so you can become who you actually are.”

Ego death. It helps explain how helpless and lost I felt during the first days of integration, and the experience of putting myself back together over the course of a week. “Why would you want to experience that!?” you might ask, and honestly - I didn’t! But you know what they say about these things; you don’t always get what you want! You get what you need. Now, on the other side of re-membering myself, I have no regrets. In addition to the suffering and loss-of-self, I also experienced a tremendous sense of grace in this process. In the week following my ceremony, I had moments of wondering if I’d ever feel like myself again - if I’d gone too far, or “broken my brain,” and daily life was a real challenge for a time - I’d lost my articulation! But as one by one all the parts of myself that I love returned, I gained a new and deep sense of trust in myself and in the universe. It was actually better than just becoming the same as I was before. As my parts returned, I was given some agency. “Do you love this part, and welcome it back to your identity? Or do you want to release it instead?” It turns out I lost nothing that was core to who I choose to be, and I was able to release some ailments, attitudes, and thoughts that were hindering my capacity to experience joy. So through the ordeal of losing my “self” and watching it gradually return, I’ve gained a greater sense of self-love and a deeper sense of trust in uncertainty. I consider it quite a gift. The content of the visions is something I’m still processing, and I hope to somehow turn into art.

Chapter 2: The Importance of the Availability of Plant-Medicine

My younger years were influenced by such personal heroes as Terence McKenna and Tim Leary, who have so eloquently described the inalienable birthright of humans for “cognitive liberty.” My friends and I saw through the propaganda we were being fed from the first day we were told by D.A.R.E. that smoking pot was a gateway to heroin addiction (thanks erowid.org!) So I’ve never lost too much sleep over the legal status of these things, and I wouldn’t have been dissuaded if my iboga circle was an underground affair. But there was something really interesting about participating in this group which was legal, out in the open, not underground; who it’s available to changes dramatically. One member of the group I was in was an RCMP officer. One of their colleagues had done this medicine not long before and reported back how profoundly helpful it had been in processing the trauma that they see on a regular basis in the course of their work. The facilitator said that actually, almost every time he does a circle, one member is from the RCMP. Clearly there is a need for support and healing around trauma here that is not being adequately met - and if they were to go to an underground provider, they’d risk losing their jobs. It gives me a sense of the importance of the legalization of psychedelic medicines and psychedelic assisted therapy for the health of our society as a whole. It feels pretty wild to me that I went through the most challenging and intense psychedelic experience of my life - beside a police officer who had never tried a psychedelic or even smoked cannabis once. We were supporting and rooting for each other as we worked through our ceremony, our pain, our challenges, which is kind of beautiful you know? There was no “us and them” feeling, just two humans willing to suffer consciously in order to heal and to grow.

I’d like to recommend this really interesting podcast about ibogaine:
48-Hour Miracle: Ibogaine's CURE For Addiction, Mental Health & Spiritual Crisis | W. Bryan Hubbard & Robert Gallery #496

The host (who is very familiar with plant medicines), is speaking to two guests who I would never expect to be exploring psychedelics about how profoundly ibogaine has helped them and impacted their lives. This is so interesting to me, seeing the impact of this kind of thing on people that I might have assumed would be completely against it. And I really like this little overview of the situation the host gives:

“There are a lot of people who are really hurting and …these (plant) medicines can really help people in profound ways that we don’t understand. We’re used to going to a doctor, getting a pill to mask the symptoms. It doesn’t really work, it causes other symptoms, you take another pill, you mask those symptoms and all of a sudden you’re left hollow and empty and disconnected from the heart-centred place that you know yourself to be and the life that you’re here to live. Then there’s another path, an older path, a traditional path that can be woven in with the modern medical path and we’re starting to see those convergences happen now thanks to this burgeoning psychedelic renaissance.”

Chapter 3: Breadcrumbs and The Tempest

So I mentioned that a chunk of time is missing from my memory. While this bothered me at first, I’ve come to some acceptance about it. Keep in mind that I had a professional facilitator so I’m not anxiously worrying about what I did. But the space in my mind is actually functioning as an engaging mystery, and an attractor of synchronicities. The experience of ego-death happened in the first of two iboga sessions. There was a day of rest in between, and I can’t remember anything of the second session. But one of the few memories I can find of the day-in-between is of finding and reading a short story called The Tempest by Kahlil Gibran. It was a powerful, beautifully written story and I remember it pretty well. It’s one clear memory amongst a haze, something to go on, and it must have informed my experience that night to some degree. It’s my breadcrumb. I was telling this part of my story to a friend, when he said “Do you know what the next song on this album is called?”
“No, what?”
“7empest.”

On the day I came home I had drawn a mandala in my sketchbook to try and start the integration process, and then dismissed it as “a chaotic mess.” I opened the sketchbook a week later and thought “Ohhh! It looks like a storm. I drew a tempest.” There have been a few others, synchronicities around this phrase and concept. I’m intrigued, and maybe it will lead to some memories if I follow the thread.

Anyways, there are a bunch of other topics I wanted to get to, but I’ll save them for the next one - so stay tuned! Thanks for reading, and feel free to reply if you’d like to connect.
Until next time,

Clark

What I’m Reading:
Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin
&
The Tempest by Kahlil Gibran (in A Treasury of Kahlil Gibran)

What I’m Listening to:
King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard
I’ve been enjoying this awesome recording of a concert I was at last year. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORyhZLKugOU

www.clarkmcmillanpainting.com