Ego-Dissolution and Healing:
My Journey into That Possibility
My path to becoming a clinical psychologist has been circuitous. I began grad school on a research path and when I decided on psychotherapy, all that was open was clinical research. What I knew about psychotherapy mostly came from being a client, something I continued for most of my professional life. Practicums I took were in the counselling division of Ed Psych, and no one there at the time was a suitable model for me. My skills development started in offshoots from groups I co-led with a brilliant young prof studying “mythological parallels In T Groups”, and a variety of experiences at Esalen Institute, the Gestalt Institute of Canada, a short stint in a Bioenergetics Training Group and escaping from a cult called The Center for Feeling Therapy in Hollywood.
I learned from those experiences, “First Do No Harm”. In following that dictum, I focused on developing listening skills and came across a seminal article by Gene Gendlin, The Experiential Response (1968). From there I came across his work on what was to become the foundation of my practice, Focusing, and the core of my dissertation. It was Gene’s invitation to visit him afterwards that cemented my career. He taught me what “experiencing” was all about, how body-centred attention was critical to healing and how theory can be helpful, but don’t mistake the map for the territory.
So, when I agreed to contribute to John’s idea about Blog Posts, I decided to start with the territory, a critical part of my psychedelic experience.
The Journey
The three of us prepped well and were excited to sit for each other. We were on retreat in a lovely Gulf Island setting with four others. All seven of us ate together on Friday night, shared spontaneously what seemed relevant to this adventure and, with some trepidation, retired to our rooms for tomorrow’s journey. We met as a group the next morning, passed the talking stick and shared our intentions. Two of us would be the first to ingest five grams of magic mushrooms. The others would sit for their team mates and journey in the coming days. One of my sitter friends made ginger tea to settle my stomach as it absorbed the medicine. I brought it to the circle to cool while we shared and readied ourselves. As it was my turn to consume it, I remember how anxiously fixed I was on the quantity of mushrooms sitting in my cup. I drank and scooped up all the bits on the bottom of the cup to make sure I took it all, then sat in quiet attentiveness awaiting the next person to do the same.
Soon it was clear that it was time to go to my journey space, lay down near my friends, put on the eye shades and listen to the Hopkins playlist I had chosen. I remember vividly trying to be my own therapist, encouraging myself to relax and breathe in a way I’ve so often invited clients to do during difficult moments, but noticing that it was becoming difficult to do. I recall at some point hearing something like a duplicate breath. It seemed that as I concentrated on lengthening my exhale, I heard another parallel exhalation just a moment later. I became confused, “Who is breathing that breath?”. In my confusion, I began to fear that, “I” might forget to breathe, and without my careful attention and explicit intent, “the body” would forget, stop breathing and “I” would die. Urgently, I tried to remind myself to “relax, just trust, let go and be open”, but I was frightened to trust that my body or something would keep me alive as this other something was taking over. It was as if “I” was being taken by something outside of “my” control. I don’t know how long I was in this state, this fear of dying, unable to do this thing called “trusting”. At some point my body seemed to be in some sort of shock, I think contracting spasmodically, or at least feeling like it was, when something felt like a painful realization that “I” was unable to trust. I think I announced, still hanging on to the studious, therapist part of me, something like “I have no Basic Trust!”.
Soon, as we all know, that split faded, and the “I” dissolved into that vast repository beyond the illusion of self. I’m a California boy from the 60s and have played with and been bitten by many and various psychedelics, but the visions in this therapeutic context unfolded in wonderous ways that powerfully reinforced the potential research had suggested. In addition, it highlighted what Bill Richards, perhaps biased a bit by his Christian heritage, invites us to consider in his book, Sacred Knowledge.
As a psychologist, I knew that this ancient “mind manifesting” process was, yet again, to become a cutting edge of Western clinical practice. I knew that this was the edge at which I wanted to develop before I retire. Most importantly, I’ve come to know that, for me, this is what will teach me how to live in my final years and help prepare me to die.
Challenges Arising
In the weeks following, the notion of “ego dissolution” came to fascinate me, particularly how to prepare myself and others to make that transition. I had had an opportunity many years ago to possibly enter and explore nondual or selfless states. I spent a month in a Meditation Center in Sri Lanka. A forest monk I met during that time offered to take me into his hermitage and teach me Buddhist practice. He said, however, I must first practice loving kindness for one year before he would take me. I couldn’t practice loving kindness for one hour and soon fell away from my mindfulness practice much too easily when I came back. I have turned to some non-medicine ways now to come into the moment, mostly through my breath like I was taught or yoga which I’m beginning to learn. Currently, my fascination with nondual awareness also takes two other forms: finding better ways to prepare my SAP clients to “let go” into it and engaging in the empirical study of selflessness.
Like many of us, that has taken me to self-experiment to see what I could learn about letting go. I started with 5-MeO as a quick entry. For any of you unfamiliar with 5 MeO-DMT, it is a powerful psychedelic that, depending upon dosage, can rapidly bring about ego loss and may induce a profound mystical-like state. It is derived from a wide variety of plant species and is most notably found secreted from the glands of the Colorado River toad. “Five” as many of you know is like taking a booster rocket to get anywhere. Micheal Pollan wrote a fascinating piece on his experience on Five which he referred to as “the worst journey” of his psychedelic pilgrimage.
A friend of mine and I experimented with it on a sit in the woods around his place. It scared me, frankly. I’m still curious, but it is not, in my opinion, a way to assist psychedelically naïve folks into letting go of self, although some see considerable merit in it as a therapeutic tool. I’ll wait to see what the research tells us. I also saw from research and anecdotal reports that adding MDMA to psilocybin or hippy flipping can ease the transition and may reduce adverse reactions. My personal experience and that of colleagues suggests it has promise. Unfortunately, given the FDA’s requirement for Lykos to do another clinical trial, that won’t be in the cards for some time.
I have also turned to the empirical study of nondual awareness and have found Letheby’s Philosophy of Psychedelics to be a helpful guide to review research and theory. The work of Carhart-Harris and his teams and, particularly the late Roland Griffiths, Bill Richards and the Hopkins crew have been inspiring. This work underscored what we’ve all known intuitively. Mystical-type experiences play a critical role in outcome. Carhart-Harris’ work has demonstrated that you can’t get there if you can’t let go of the illusion of self. The “dread of ego dissolution” derails the whole show. So, I want to know more about this critical step to broaden my understanding and practice. My brilliant friend, who is now emeritus at U of Alberta, and I are developing a Selflessness Questionnaire we hope may be better than what’s out there. We hope to examine the dimensions of self that dissolve and their impact on our understanding of ourselves and our world through psychedelics and dreams.
Reflections From Practice
But like with all of us, it is the experience of my clients that inspires and informs me. At present, my approach to preparing SAP clients for ego loss is through breathwork or mindfulness practice, where possible, and body-centred exploration of memories of spontaneous experiences they might have had, such as during meditation, giving birth, making love or soaring with a piece of music. Here, however, I feel my practice is in its infancy. I welcome suggestions from our community to build a more extensive repertoire.
Most inspiring has been the opportunity to sit with clients in their journeys. This year I had the privilege to assist an SAP client along with a wonderful TheraPsil trained team, consisting of Dr. Mike Concannon, an ER physician and ketamine-assisted clinician as the prescriber and the talented psychedelic Nurse, Natasha Fearnley as our co-sitter. We came together to accompany this woman who was recovering from a life-threatening illness and a long-standing depression. She has consented to my writing of one of her visions.
In the difficult journey that ensued, our gutsy client reached out at times for reassurance and comfort while being carried into many moving visions. One vision in particular stands out for me. In reference to it at the time, she said, “I see empathy through the eyes of others!”. I will never know the full depth of that experience, but in integration the next morning she reported a vision of someone from an old relationship. That person came to her and was soon to be followed by the vision of a multitude of eyes. As I listened, I thought of the eyes of “the other”, reflected in the eyes of all humanity. It appeared as if she saw herself through the eyes of the multitude and became that multitude. She was them and they she in a deeply compassionate union that, whatever its meaning, seemed maintained in the months that followed. She reported, for example, a greater openness and interest in others than her previously withdrawn periods allowed. More importantly, she showed a level of self-compassion I had not seen so prominent in the difficult and grief-stricken months proceeding.
The depression and anxiety were dramatically relieved after the Spring medicine session. I have continued to follow up with her, at times sharing my delight and surprise at her remarkable response and letting her know that should difficulties arise, please let us know. Recently, she noted that although she is much better than when we first met there have been some difficult days and she thinks another medicine session would be helpful soon.
There were many transcendent moments in her visions, particularly of a union with Nature, the Earth and creatures of personal significance, but apart from their meaning, it is the change in relationship with self and others that especially stands out for me. Yes, her being-in-the-world may have changed in a way that has a spiritual impact and by decentering from self it may release her from negative ruminations about herself. In addition, there appears to be greater “openness to experience”, often cited in the literature along with “psychological flexibility” which shakes up maladaptive beliefs. She also experienced significant emotional release, weeping, for example, as she was deeply touched by “the beauty!” as fearful visions passed into it. Many factors likely lead to a beneficial outcome, but the impact of a simple, more compassionate relationship with herself and others is an important shift.
Once the ego dissolves and the vast repository of personal and collective stuff comes forth, unimpeded by that story, that self we think we are, life-changing things can happen. Whether this supports the predictive processing model of the brain seen through Carhart-Harris’ entropic brain hypothesis and Relaxed Beliefs Under Psychedelics model and/or the depth psychology of Carl Jung, one clinical fact remains. The key is successfully transiting the dissolution of self and remaining curious to what comes out of the vastness in which it swims. I have much to learn to properly integrate what comes, but the ability to let go into that dissolution is the first thing I want to facilitate for myself and others when I sit. The rest is unpredictable. A trusting relationship with the sitters who are truly “present”, of course, is also critical to the personal and spiritual transformations that may occur, but it comes in its own way from the miracle within once the “I” gets out of the way.