Projection, Resistance and Entitlement in Psychedelic Journeys
Plant medicine journeys are ripe with lessons, opportunities and waves to ride. Navigating a ceremony can be a fruitful place to look out our relationship patterns and where we unconsciously project our fears and attractions onto others. Psychedelic ceremonies can show us how we react to challenging experiences and what our tendencies are when in difficult times. It is also important to consider how we relate to the plant medicine we have chosen to journey with and how we can improve our relationship and connection with these sacred plant allies.
Projection vs Ownership
Projection is a control pattern to keep ourselves from fully seeing the parts that are uncomfortable to acknowledge. Anything repressed or disowned within ourselves are projected onto other people or aspects of nature. This draws the attention outward, away from the inner space where these parts reside, wanting to be seen, and integrated with our core essence. Projections can be repulsing or alluring, sometimes with the projection containing both elements. Ceremony facilitators and group participants can be sites for such projection. However, the process of owning projection can be a powerful way to reclaiming aspects of our soul as we navigate a plant medicine journey. It is an opportunity to both see and own disembodied aspects. When we acknowledge and reconsolidate all that we have projected to others, we heal, by becoming more whole, more human.
Notice what in others (or in nature) repulses and allures you, and can you identify these qualities inside yourself? Projection is part of the path of growth. And it happens in ceremony all the time. We can start with this integration work whilst the ceremony is happening if we can stay aware of our triggers. We are asked to befriend these moments as best we can can.
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” - Carl Jung
Resistance vs Acceptance
It can be helpful to look at what is going on in these expanded states of consciousness as energy rather than labeling an experience as “good” or “bad”, and giving it a story. When we drop the story and connect with the energetic frequency and body sensations, there is less space for judgement. Thus, it can be helpful to regard whatever is going on internally as “light” or “dense” in energy. Both dense and light emotions are essential along the journey of healing and transformation. However, we have become accustomed to avoiding dense emotions. The healing journey is always characterized by the presence of dense, difficult and uncomfortable emotions, as well as with the light. Remember the story of the Hero’s Journey? When we avoid or deny our true feelings, we end up with psycho-emotional issues including depression, anxiety, disordered eating behaviours/adaptations, over-exercise, hyper-focus on how the body looks, or any other form of control pattern, addiction or distraction that cause numbing or disassociation. When difficult emotions are avoided for a long period of time, physical illness can arise.
In a psychedelic journey, difficult emotions and memories often emerge. In these moments, as challenging as it can be, we are asked to do what we have been conditioned against: to turn towards the emotions, instead of running away from them. In order to heal these wounds, that come with the denser emotions, we have to face them, and see them as teachers that have medicine and messages for our growth. Indeed, “healing is about better feeling, not feeling better.”
By allowing ourselves to face and integrate difficult emotions, we are able to live more fully and deeply and experience more joy, pleasure, and ease that are also part of being a human. By embracing this process in ceremony and outside of the journey space, reactions to life’s challenges will have less of a grip on us. Things will feel more manageable, as there is a knowing how to handle difficult situations more effectively and a trust that the dense will eventually and ultimately move into light. As a result, self-love, presence, compassion, harmony, connection, trust and self-honour become more frequent in daily life.
Reciprocity vs Entitlement
Honour for self, the body, the ceremony space, and the medicine is a key guide in the journey space. When we observe our language, notice if the words “taking the medicine” vs “receiving the medicine” are used. Language carries meaning, and a history of meaning, orienting us towards certain implications and consequences. “Taking” may imply overt or covert entitlement - a belief that one has an inherent right to something. “Taking” is not a sacred act. “Taking” is treating the substance and its spirit like something consumed for pleasure and recreational use. In this instance, “taking” does not leave room to establish and develop a relationship with the plant ally.
When we call plant medicines “tools” we are inferring that they are extensions and creations from humans, with the human as the source of its use, and value (usefulness). When we use “tool” to describe a living being, we are subjecting it beneath humans in value. How we language something reflects our relational orientation to it. Possibly we don’t even intend to do this. Perhaps we have simply picked up this language from those around us, people who also want to help other people have meaningful experience with psychedelics. So let us observe our words, the energy attached to the words we choose, and if there is room for change - with self-compassion, patience and forgiveness.
Experiences with psychedelics are beyond what we can control, whereas tools are things we can control, manipulate, improve, and use. Often our attempts to control psychedelics can lead to resistance and more pain. Psychedelics then are not tools.
Rather than “using” or “taking” how does “being in communion with” or “working with” change our relationship to the plant teacher, how we learn and relate, and how we engage with the world around us?
“Working with” these medicines is like an apprenticeship, that is, the act of learning from a master. “Working with [insert medicine of choice]” is a different approach where there is interaction, and where the sacred plant ally is a master and soul guide, and is well-equipped to guide us through this soul encounter experience. From this perspective, the plant spirit is recognized as a conscious being and highly evolved, and from whom we each have our unique lessons to learn during and after the ceremony.
“Working with” also points to reciprocity. Reciprocity is a worldview that connects us within the web of life, within living energy. A beautiful example of this are trees who inhale our carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, whilst us humans do the opposite. Reciprocity is about cooperation, mutuality and interconnection. The orientation is circular rather than linear. There is an ongoing flow of energy and maintaining balance rather than being goal-oriented, power-over, scorekeeping, competition, focused on tangible outcomes that we are so used to in Western cultures.
Let us also consider the indigenous tribes who pioneered and paved the way for psychedelic medicine, and whose practices provided frameworks for set, setting, integration and spirituality. For psychedelic companies, reciprocity and partnership should be built into their foundations, ideally it should be the intention, along with serving consciousness expansion and healing. If these companies take without giving back, there may be consequences due to a lack of balance.
How can we do better? How can we give back without really know how we will benefit? Reciprocity is about energetic giving and receiving without expectations extending between humans, all beings, amongst the natural world, and beyond. What is given is less important to how it is given. Reciprocity is of the heart. Reciprocity is true kinship.