(This is Part 17 of a series. Go back to Part 16.)
Another example would be the lesson I learned from psychedelic drugs. During the 80's I experimented with all sorts of psychedelics, from acid to mesculine, ketamine to ecstasy to mushrooms. (Ecstasy is not a psychedelic, but it is closely related chemically to mesculine.)
And I discovered something interesting. Invariably, when a trip turned bad, which happened perhaps 10% of the time, it turned out that it was my own resistance to the trip which held the undesirable experience in place.
For instance, one time in 1984 I had a particularly nasty experience on ketamine. I called the experience "electric blue," because everything took on a harsh neon light brightness. Meanwhile, a sound like a very loud buzz saw rang in my ears. And everything and everybody seemed malevolent, dark, evil.
Moreover, the trip was supposed to be over in 45 minutes, and yet it was 2 hours later and the unbearable "electric blue" effect was still continuing full-force.
I began to wonder if my brain had undergone some sort of permanent change from which it could never return. I began to seriously consider that this noxious "electric blue" effect would be my moment-to-moment experience for the rest of my life, and the thought filled me with despair.
The breakthrough came when I finally accepted reality instead of resisting it. "Okay," I finally said to myself, "this is God too. If this is going to be my experience from now on, so be it. This is God too."
And the remarkable thing is that the terrible "electric blue" experience immediately lifted. It became apparent that my own resistance to the experience was what had kept the suffering in place. Once I surrended to reality and let go of my ideas about how reality "should" be, the experience immediately shifted—by itself.
In fact, at one point I became quite adept at assisting people in "flipping" bad trips into beautiful ones. In every case what needed to be done was to get the person to let go of their resistance to what was happening. And in that surrendered, non-resistant place the trip would often become indescribably beautiful.
This principle applies just as much to our inner parts:
Recently a friend of mine was complaining that she was having bad dreams. Several times a month she would have a nightmare about a time in her life that was very traumatic. She explained that she did everything she could to push these dreams away, to minimize them, to stop them from occurring, but nothing seemed to be working.
The suggestion was to fully accept them instead. As far as I can tell, every entity in this universe is craving to be loved, accepted and appreciated. That includes those parts inside ourselves, representations of past traumatic experiences, that feel unloved and unwanted.
These unwanted, "undesirable" parts will keep trying to be loved, noticed and appreciated until they are. They will keep attempting to enter consciousness one way or another. This is not a hostile act; they are simply trying to get what you yourself want—to be loved, noticed and appreciated. Once that happens, then they can relax at last—and will most likely fall asleep at your feet, so to speak.
As with the "bad" drug trips, the thing to do is to fully accept what is happening, let the internal resistance to reality melt away, and see whatever is happening as also part of the divine—which it is. And then act from there, or rather, let our action arise by itself from there.
As I've said elsewhere, a surrendered approach to life doesn't necessarily mean that we spend our life sitting on the couch. On the contrary, our energy frees up tremendously and we can often serve at a higher level from a surrendered place, from a place that recognizes the inherent beauty and rightness of reality exactly as it is, moving from one perfection to the next.
(This is the end of Part 17. Go to Part 18.)
—jim sloman, 1.22.03 for 4.14.03
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