The seed and the soil
Trip reports can range from absolutely terrifying to utterly orgasmic, all within the exact same retreat setting.
Psychedelics are intimidating, especially if you've had some rough rides with them, as I have. Even, and indeed especially, the most seasoned practitioners hold a profound respect for the experience, and stay humble to its power.
In very general, potentially oversimplified terms: psychedelics magnify whatever you're currently feeling, good or bad. They also have a tendency to surface things we've become unaware of - past trauma, or hidden inner power - bringing them to the front of the experience whether we invited them or not.
Whatever a substance opens up, it's the state of your own mind and spirit going into it that determines which direction the experience takes. In more esoteric terms, I see the psychedelic realm as psychosexual. The chalice is the cosmic Yoni - the respectful Sanskrit term for the spiritual archetype of the vagina - and it's also the soil. Your spirit, entering it, is the seed: the male counterpart, or more directly the semen, the male essence. What grows depends on both, but it's the seed that decides the direction more than the soil does - your mind, your current-moment spirit, is what the whole thing grows from, under the profoundly catalysing influence of the substance itself. It's why trip reports of the same substance, like Ayahuasca, can range from absolutely terrifying to utterly orgasmic, all within the exact same retreat setting: the differentiator is the mind under the influence.
Gaia Sagrada
Let me tell you a story that perfectly captures this differentiation in experience. It's rather poetic, actually.
When I was in Ecuador, I went to a psychedelic retreat with quite an impressive itinerary: four Ayahuasca ceremonies, two San Pedro ceremonies, and one sweat lodge. In Latin America, sweat lodges (also known as temazcal) are fairly commonplace, but this one was special: in it we consumed both Ayahuasca and San Pedro, all in a pitch-black earth sauna...
The story isn't really about the sweat lodge, but by the end of it I was curled up like a baby, and born anew when I crawled out on my hands and knees and sat around the fire for hours, unable to speak. It was at that retreat, Gaia Sagrada, that we had two San Pedro ceremonies - both in the same setting, though two completely different personal experiences.
The keys to heaven
San Pedro is a mescaline cactus, much like Peyote. It's considered a sacred plant among many of the same communities that consider Ayahuasca sacred: San Pedro is the grandfather, Ayahuasca is the mother. In English, San Pedro means Saint Peter. In the Bible, Saint Peter is the saint who holds the keys to heaven, in accordance with the authority bestowed on him by Jesus.
The San Pedro ceremonies were conducted during the day. We sat around a sacred fire in the maloka, the circular ceremonial hut, and took turns to speak our truth in front of the master of ceremonies. If it was your turn, you'd go sit on a rug on one side of the fire, and on the other side was the San Pedro shaman, Christine. Then the floor was yours: you could talk about whatever you liked, and you'd receive insights in return.
Communal healing
One girl who was actually exorcised in front of our eyes... as Christine did her work, we all felt so relieved.
Given the promise of spiritual wisdom in our lives, most of us opted to unpack our trauma in front of everyone - though it wasn't "trauma dumping," it was beautiful. Here was a bunch of former strangers going deep on the experiences that had shaped their lives, all received with love. We had people who'd recently divorced, or were thinking about it. We had people who'd experienced profound childhood trauma, to the extent of witnessing the deaths of family members. And then we had those who were just plain unsure of themselves. The range of experience was vast. It was communal healing, and as each speaker moved through their emotional journey on the makeshift stage, there was a real lifting of weight for everyone, palpable in the room. I recall one girl who was actually exorcised in front of our eyes, all with the aim of letting go of the spirit of her father, who'd recently died: as Christine did her work, we all felt so relieved. It was a theatre of emotions - incredible.
It also gave me a new perspective on the modern idea that trauma dumping is bad - it can just be an excuse not to hold space for people.
Not for me, though. Strangely, when it came to be my turn, I didn't feel much relief: it was mostly unmemorable. Though I'd greatly savoured listening to others talking, sharing my own feelings about unworthiness and so on didn't seem to satisfy me so much. It felt to me as though, in the intentional sharing of my sadness, I was encouraging my spirit to look in this downwards direction I was so used to. It all just felt like another conversation with my dad (who was a psychiatrist), albeit while tripping under the influence of ceremony-grade psychedelics. I guess I've grown immune to talking therapy.
The gates of heaven
I had them in the palm of my hands
Having felt nothing the first time, I decided to try something completely different for my second San Pedro ceremony: project an entirely different spirit from the stage. I'd been travelling around with this little backpacking guitar, and had already played at the end of the Ayahuasca ceremonies. I noticed that no matter how difficult my experiences during the Ayahuasca ceremony itself were, when I'd play and sing my heart out at the end, I'd fully lift my spirit and deliver myself and everyone else in the room from whatever bad thing they were going through. It was a profound example of how the state of your mind influenced your own experience: left to its own devices in my little ceremony bed, my mind was totally inebriated, but with the targeted intention of channelling beautiful music, I was full of clarity, and played better than usual.
And so I decided: instead of sharing my sadness, I would share my music.
I took to the rug: surrounding me were my fellow souls sharing this grand experience, and on the other side, across the fire, was Christine. I ran through the songs on my EP - The Only One, Alone With You, This Hell, There I Was, Waiting For Your Call. I'd already played these exact same songs during the Aya ceremonies leading up to it, and with no shame whatsoever, sang them with full heart once more.
I had them in the palm of my hands - except perhaps the girl I'd confessed my love to only a moment before (note to self: don't do that at a psychedelic retreat while you're both still tripping). Palm of my hands: the room was completely enraptured. They cried their eyes out as I sang This Hell, a song I'd actually written after a tough Ayahuasca retreat, whose refrain goes "God please show me the way, 'cos I'm lying here in a pain I can't feel again." It seemed to perfectly fit the moment, considering we were all taking turns to talk about our deepest pains, and all longing to feel relief from them.
To this day it was one of the greatest experiences of my life; it ticked off so many umami things for me. I sang my original songs and had the audience completely loving it. It was beatific: full of divine light, in the beautiful setting of the Ecuadorian Andes, around a sacred fire. Saint Peter had opened the gates of heaven.
Same setting, different spirit
Does this mean there's no good reason to have bad trips, and that we should all just learn to bring the good vibes?
My spirit in that moment was full of direction and power, completely impervious to negativity: in fact, as I write this and channel the spirit of that moment, I know that negativity didn't exist at all - sadness was being transmuted into story, and dreaded inner silence into music. The concept of potential "negativity" only exists to me now as I recreate it in words from my current sober, worldly mind. It was a huge contrast to my experience from the first SP ceremony, which was full of focus on my intractable neuroses that I'd tried (and failed) to resolve throughout my entire adult life.
Here we have two psychedelic experiences with a near-identical setting: same person, same place, same drug, same dosage, same communal activity. The difference was the spirit brought to the experience by the participant. In the first ceremony, I put my energy into another attempt to resolve my perceived trauma; in the second, I put it into music. Though I didn't have a bad experience in the first ceremony, my experience of the second was incredibly positive.
It's tempting to draw a simple lesson from that. Can we conclude that our experience under the influence of psychedelics is completely under our control? Does this mean there's no good reason to have bad trips, and that we should all just learn to bring the good vibes? The answer is nuanced, and I'd lean towards not encouraging this line of thinking.
One of my old fraternity friends once said "being a pussy is its own punishment" after I failed to down a beer in the required time, and that saying has stuck in my head ever since. You could argue it's true that being a pussy means lacking the resilience of spirit to keep things looking up, and that a negative experience is what happens when we stop fighting. The only problem with calling it out so bluntly is that it lacks compassion.
People often have complex inner lives, and difficulties they've carried for a very long time. To say that such individuals are weak because they can't summon a positive spirit in a given moment solves nothing; it just piles onto the existing backdrop of negativity. It's kinda like telling someone to "chill out" in the middle of an argument; we all know that rarely works, and we often get the opposite in response. A better approach is to hold space for people who are having difficult times, rather than expecting them to smile on command. To be more crude: if you lose your erection during sex, you probably aren't going to get it back if your partner berates you, but it could happen if you both settle down and get real comfy with each other again.
Compassion
The seed doesn't force the soil - it waits for the right season.
Here's the honest version, not the easy one: your mind shapes the experience, and that's real - but it isn't a switch you can just decide to flip.
Really, I would have loved to conclude this article as simply as saying that the key to heaven is in the vibe you bring. Though I think there's some real truth in that statement, we have to be careful in how we communicate and absorb that teaching. It doesn't make you weak to be inclined toward negativity and neurosis: in some of us, the pain runs too deep.
Though my own experience of the two ceremonies was profoundly better the second time around, you have to bear in mind that for me, that moment happened naturally: I'd already performed in the Ayahuasca ceremonies, loved music, and was totally game for it. There was no forcing, no obligation to bring the vibe, no ulterior motive other than my natural appetite. I've had plenty of Ayahuasca ceremonies where all I wanted to do was stay locked in the bathroom.
In conclusion: don't blame yourself for any perceived lack of positivity in your life. Don't take it personally if you can't meditate, or don't have good trips. Be kind to yourself and take your time, all whilst remembering how much power you will have when you're ready for it to return. The seed doesn't force the soil - it waits for the right season.