Psychedelics and the Exploration of Acceptance
By James Eshleman, Founder of Center of All Directions
Life has handed me my ass on a silver platter in 2022. Over the last year, I learned a lot about myself, namely, the importance of self-acceptance. 2022 was the year of shadow work as I chaotically thrust myself into the abyss and experienced self-annihilation. It was a painful experience and along the way I rejected that pain, seeking to escape from it. It only made it worse. At the time, I thought I was handling it with some measure of skill. In hindsight, I was floundering. But through this deep intimacy with my pain, I’ve come to outline a very important process for maturity that I’m still integrating into my life. These are the steps:
1.) Awareness - There are many paths that lead you to self awareness. From relationships, to plant medicine ceremonies, retreats, friends, meditation, and even our pets can be modes of self awareness. In fact, when you get down to it, everything can be a mirror for the self. This is the beautiful thing of being human, we are conscious beings and have the capacity to see beyond our conditioned programming. Awareness is the witnessing of patterns, its a curiosity that leads us to understanding the story of our lives and how it is playing out across the spectrum of life. It’s in the witnessing of more than just what we have tended to accept as fact that we begin to see beyond the self imposed limitations we have set for ourselves. These self imposed limitations often act as mechanisms for safety, or predictability in an inherently unpredictable and chaotic world. AND because they are mechanisms for safety, when they become obsolete because we’ve grown in our capacity to manage chaos, they tend to hold us back and create suffering. Awareness of this suffering is a key to growth, but the doorway you must walk through is that of acceptance. Yet when the technology of acceptance isn’t there, we can find ourselves stuck between step 1 and step 2 where we have awareness of our patterns and yet lack the tools for self acceptance. I see many avid individuals in their healing process that end up stuck in the doorway, an open door without the capacity or trust to walk through it, between wanting to change but having no idea how to. So when there is awareness but no self acceptance, we can tend to lean toward self oppressive thoughts and beliefs about ourselves.
2.) Acceptance - Many of us have wounds that are wrapped up in acceptance. This is because, at our cores, we crave to be loved. As children we go through a narcissistic phase where everything that happens to us is our fault. We don’t have the ability to conceptualize that our parents are imperfect so when we don’t get the love we need, we believe we are inherently unworthy of love. As adults, we continue looking outside of ourselves to fill this need and it manifests in a variety of ways. Acceptance of ourselves in these moments is very difficult because it strikes a pain that has been with us since childhood, so we will often back down from the pain and continue acting out, often pushing away the very thing we yearn for the most. The power to change ourselves with acceptance is just as magnificent as the depth of the pain we feel when we don’t. My favorite story of the Buddha is when he was meditating underneath the Bodhi tree in the moments before his enlightenment. As he sat there, he was facing his demons, one by one. They would appear and question him and his pursuits to become enlightened. He would respond by simply making space for them at the tea table where he was sitting, like an adult making space for a child throwing a tantrum. The invitation disarming the demons. Until the last demon appeared and asked him, “what makes you, of all people, worthy of enlightenment?” You might read that as a complicated question. But the Buddha responded with a simple answer, “Because I come from the earth.” This sentiment is at the center of a wholistic expression of self-acceptance. You need nothing else to be worthy as a human being on this earth except for the fact that you come from the earth. So, make room for your demons at the tea table of your life. There is no greater invitation of love.
3.) Integration - The essence of integration is observation, witnessing from a place of non-judgement. Though you’ve made space for and accepted your demons, they will continue showing up and testing you. But as you stay observant and witness all of the ways they show up to control your circumstances, you become more free from them as they now feel your love. Its a slow burn, usually. The most important consideration to keep in mind is the orientation toward creating space between a stimulus and your response. The stimulus being the situation that calls forth your demons, and the response being your conditioned programs to control those situations to ensure you get what you believe you need according to these programs. It is in this liminal space between stimulus and response that you meet your true self, a totally resourced version of you that is capable of giving you everything that you need in any moment, so much so that freedom and love are the only outcome. Having a coach or a therapist can be a catalyst for exceptional growth in this stage of maturation as the third party is able to reflect back to you the parts that you might otherwise miss due to our natural ability to breeze over the assumptions about life that we are constantly making which all help to uphold our unconscious programming. I provide coaching services that incorporates this entire teaching.
4.) Commitment - This is the part of the process that allows you to create the life you truly desire. In the space between stimulus and response, you discover the values you must live by to experience freedom and love. Without commitment to these values, you’re a ship without a rudder, being blown about by the wind and moved by the tides of the sea. You may end up where you want to be by happenstance of the wind and tides but you’re just as likely to end up off course as the winds and tides inevitably shift out of favor. Commitment requires a conscious effort to stand for that which supports your freedom, you must be willing to hold the rudder when the seas get rough, steering the ship through conflict and pain with a steady regard for the direction you intend to go. If you’re not committed to values, you’re committing to the comfort of the known and familiar which keeps you from getting what you actually want.
5.) Outcome - Once we put these pieces together, the more mature and integrated version of us begins to take root, and our life organizes around this state of being making us more available to all elements of life and gives us a chance to manifest all that is meant for us. It’s an unfolding, and the key to this process is patience as you’ll inevitably make mistakes. Those mistakes deserve acceptance too.
How does all of this relate to plant medicines? This process is highly effective in a transformational container. It aides in the acceleration of growth that can occur. The Natural Medicine Health Act is opening doors for people like myself to utilize our deep and meaningful processes in service to others in the community. Please get in touch if you have any curiosities about this process of maturation outlined above and how it can be used to accelerate your path of growth and embodiment.