I just reread my last post and felt inspired to share my update. Three months. A lot happens in three months when you live with a fervor like what was ignited in me when beginning on my spiritual path. Enough that makes writing an update feel increasingly daunting but here we are at last.
I met a therapist on my second trip to Costa Rica in June. There are certain moments and interactions in life that are a fork in the road. The impact not obvious at first but later you realize that it set you down a new path, one that splits life between before that moment and after. One that a whole new journey unfolds from that you couldn’t have envisioned. Meeting Salimeh was one of those.
We immediately connected. I felt seen more quickly than I ever had by a stranger, especially a woman. It’d been over a year since I’d met with a therapist, and ones I’d tried in the past weren’t fits. I was unable to connect with any at the depths I was seeking, and few had an understanding of psychedelic medicine. So, I resorted to navigating this path on my own—learning from bumbling trial and error (which you’ve had the luxury of witnessing on this blog…), challenging psychedelic experiences and integration attempts through my own reading, research, and self inquiry.
Salimeh met me in my depths in our first conversation, I immediately saw we would go where I was headed and further, saw that she is a rare combination of experienced guide, licensed therapist, and wise spiritual teacher.
I began meeting with her weekly. We started with the standards. Talk therapy stuff, weaving through unprocessed trauma and emotions. Suppressed memories from childhood that were still unconsciously driving me, many that had been uprooted from psychedelic journeys after which I never got the full integration support to process.
I now realize these were still surface layers, and that much of talk therapy is that—analyzing stories associated with the past and with identity, i.e. ego gripping. It’s worthwhile to go through these for the same reason we call it a journey. This stage is a milestone needed to cross. To get where? Enlightenment. Awakening. Consciousness. Awareness. Satori. Moksha. No-self. There are many words for it, all just signposts for a way of living that is liberated from mind-made conditioning and ego-driven suffering.
After a few weeks, the next stage was letting these layers go. She helped me to transcend identity stories, take ownership of resentments, release memories of past, and connect with a deeper, bigger truth. The Truth that makes childhood memories or even a relationship to a parent or sibling or partner feel small. The Truth that began at the dawn of time and will continue to live far beyond when my physical form gives out. The Truth that is in me, that I am a manifestation of, that words can only feebly point towards, that one must let themselves feel to know.
It was our ayahuasca journey that really took me there. She offers a rare format in which her client’s healing is the focus, so I had the opportunity to sit with and receive guidance two-on-one from her and her co-facilitator, Melchor, a gentle and kind medicine man from Sound of Light in Florestral.
Sidenote: Most ayahuasca ceremonies take place with a group, including the ones I experienced earlier this year. As a hypersensitive empath, trying to go inward amidst the energy of 10 or more people going through an aya experience was a feat for me. This intimate, personalized setting with Salimeh and Melchor enabled an opening and depth that I didn’t get in past experiences. However, it’s not the traditional way of working with this medicine, which I believe is important to remember when choosing psychedelics and the setting. To receive and honor the thousands of years of Indigenous wisdom that this work comes from, I’d endeavor to experience that format if you feel called. This was specifically designed for me at this stage in my journey and for empowering the work with Salimeh.
I learned many things from that experience, and more from my time with Salimeh in preparation and integration. But two words capture the essence.
Trust and surrender.
To what? This is where it gets difficult to put in words. Partially because there aren’t words for it, partially because it’s for you to uncover for yourself. If and when inclined, we all find our own version of spiritual connection that resonates. God or Goddess, Universe or Source or Consciousness, Mother Earth or Spirit or Soul, Brahma or Buddha, the list is endless, and the answer is yours. More, the answer doesn’t matter. What matters is where it comes from. Ideologies, books, media, peers, parents, or inner being? Detached unconsciousness, or your present intuition?
My parents took me to church every Sunday growing up, Christian Methodist. I hated it. The scratchy white dresses on my skin, repetitive chants in my ear, and rows of glazed eyes glued to a guy at a podium, molding like warm clay to his words.
It all seemed so odd and unnatural and rigid to me. Mostly I saw it as a bunch of rules to follow and I was never good with those, especially after asking ‘why’ and not hearing a clear answer. So, when my mom gave us the choice to continue going or not come age 15, I swung in the opposite direction. Atheist, non-church-going, judging and resisting anything with simply a drop of religion from then on.
What I realize now is I was rightly running from the shadow of religion: divisive dogma that represents misinterpretations of the great Truth. A set of ideologies and belief systems that instead of helping us transcend the collective human insanity, has contributed to it for centuries. Has participated in a long period of patriarchy, violence, and divisiveness that is at last beginning to shift.
Setting that rabbit hole aside for another day…a fascinating realization I came to is the great Truth that lives under all religions: the fundamental oneness we all share. The unwavering light and unconditional love that connects us, holds us, is us. The inexplicable depth and complexity that is life, to which we are witnesses, and creators. The timeless eternity that is this moment, that is every moment. The window into that Truth that we can find in stillness, presence, and deep consciousness, when we make space to tune into it.
This is what I’ve connected to since my last post. A post about the fear that comes from venturing into the caves of shadow work and ego death, and attempting to integrate what had dissolved, what I now realize never existed. When you experience losing yourself (your idea of yourself) it’s scary. Die before you die as the saying goes. At that time, my next question was the common integration follow-up—who am I now? Ah, the insatiable ego simply returning for a new identity, not knowing how to live in this world without one. It’s a question that answering would just bring me back to the same origin. Instead, I’m now learning to surrender and trust.
The responding work I’m amidst now is letting go of the incessant questions my type-A, achievement-driven mind so loves to ask, that I imagine are playing in your mind as well as you read this:
If I live in full surrender,
Will things still get done?
Will I be as productive?
How will I meet all my goals?
Will I still create for the world what I’m meant to?
Eckhart does a better job than any in responding to this:
“Whatever action you take from a state of inner resistance (which we may also call negativity, anxiety, fear) will create more outer resistance, and the universe will not be on your side; life will not be helpful. If the shutters are closed, the sunlight cannot come in. When you yield internally, when you surrender, a new dimension of consciousness opens up. If action is possible or necessary, your action will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence, the unconditioned consciousness which in a state of inner openness you become one with. Circumstance and people then become helpful, cooperate in the peace of inner stillness that come with surrender. You rest in God (or insert your own word here).”
My lifelong aversion to religion is what kept me stagnant and confused, hitting a wall in my growth journey as I sought something new to grip onto to replace what was released.
The pinnacle of spirituality, the real gateway to nirvana, is opened through a connection with something bigger and greater than words, definitions, explanations, the mind-made self. With something that can only be felt. Surrendering to the potent truth that I am nothing and I am everything—that is, the egoic me, the ideas about who I am, is illusory, and the spiritual me, the consciousness and awareness I bring to this life, is everything.
What has the impact been so far on my life? I’ve tapped into a new level of clarity and intuition, making decisions in moments of ease vs. weeks of intellectualizing. The biggest—moving out of Los Angeles after just a year, leaving California behind after a beautiful and formative 6 years, and taking off to travel for a while. Stay tuned for how it flows from here.