March 31, 2025
Dear Leland and Everett,
I undertook my first true psychedelic experience on Friday. Full disclosure: my first vision stemmed from a guided MDMA experience that I undertook in an effort to pursue some healing and insights. I’ve done two MDMA “journeys” thus far, including one I have yet to discuss (something I hope to rectify soon). Some folks don’t consider MDMA a true psychedelic, and describe it as more of an empathogen. On Friday I did another journey, this time with psilocybin.
I’m not entirely sure how to explain *why* I decided to take psilocybin. On the simplest level, it was just something I felt drawn to do. I’ve talked about following that “little voice”, and I felt as though the voice was leading me in that direction. As with all things, there are multiple true answers, so I’ll offer another. I’ve been feeling a bit stuck of late. As I’ve mentioned, my visions mostly stopped almost a year ago. I sensed the visions stopped for a purpose, and that I was 1) meant to practice patience and sitting in uncertainty, and 2) being invited to find other ways to learn, to know, to discover truth. Recently I’ve sensed a pending breakthrough, but sensed I was somehow blocked in terms of finding (or, perhaps more accurately, receiving) it. On some level, my hope was to break through the blockage, so that I might at least get past the feeling of being stuck. Finally, I’ve been feeling my energy build of late. I recognize this feeling, because it fits a pattern. From my teenage years, I’ve experienced cycles of burnout followed by periods of recovery. Then my energy starts to swell, and I inevitably take on new challenges (usually posed to me by other people in the form of a new job or other life change). The new challenge starts well enough, but over time I overextend myself and experience burnout. I’m beginning to feel the temptation to go sign up to solve someone else’s problems again, and I sense an opportunity to take a different path this time, one better aligned with my true purpose and gifts. The problem: I have very little sense what that path looks like, nor how to find it. And I’ll admit, I’ve been getting a little impatient.
You will likely remember that I took an overnight trip, and (unusually) didn’t give you guys much explanation. I wasn’t entirely sure how to explain what I was headed to do. But you guys were excited enough to spend the time with your mom, so didn’t seem too worried about my departure. Your mom and I have taken enough overnight trips (normally to catch up with friends) that this wasn’t entirely foreign to you. Psychedelic journeys are pretty vulnerable, so I wanted something from you to help anchor me. Everett generously agreed to let me take Rainbow, one of his squishmallow stuffies. (This was an act of true bravery and generosity: Everett, you cried to your mom that night, worried I might forget to bring Rainbow home. When I texted your mom to tell her I was returning home, she called minutes later so that you might ask whether I remembered to bring home Rainbow. I cannot express how much I appreciated the gesture of bravery, sacrifice, and love in letting me borrow Rainbow for the night.)
I do these journeys with a guide. Partly this is because the experience is, again, sufficiently vulnerable that I want someone watching over me. From my research on the topic (which has been pretty extensive), “set and setting” matter hugely in terms of dictating the type of experience one has, and the value one gets from the experience. So I use a guide who knows how to create the setting, and guide my preparation such that I might get as much value from the experience as possible. Like past journeys, we started with a brief ceremony. Similar to my experience with the St Ignatius exercises, the purpose of the starting ceremony appears to be setting the container such that I might experience transformation within.
The overall experience was anything but linear, making it hard to describe; I will do my best. The first thing to call out was that the experience was less visual than I expected. There was a brief (few minute) period where I saw flashes of colors and shapes. Irregular patterns of shapes would appear on a black background (I was wearing eye shades, lying flat on my back), usually in bright and vivid colors. The shapes would linger for several seconds while the colors would change, normally rapidly, and normally from bright colors to either duller or earthier colors. This only lasted a few minutes.
The overall experience broke into four parts, collectively lasting close to eight hours. The first section was the most intense, and I remember it the least. I remember saying “I feel energy stuck between my throat and my chest”, which is not language I normally use: I don’t normally sense energy blockages within my being; my bodily observations tend to be more rooted in physical sensations, or things we might describe using scientific terminology. I remember my body moving, and periodic vocalizations. My ego was tempted to remember this as more dramatic than it was: at one point I started ‘remembering’ my body movements as convulsive; doubting this interpretation, I asked my guide later, who confirmed the movements were not rapid nor dramatic. My guide experienced this section of the journey as me releasing energy, which she described as mostly occurring via vocalization. When I first began, she was sitting in a chair off the end of the bed past my feet; she later shared that she could feel the energy coming out of me in that direction, enough that she felt compelled to move in order that the energy might have space to get released. So she relocated her chair off the opposite end of the bed. The energy release came in waves. It felt multidimensional, as strange as that might sound. After each release I felt a moment of peace, assuming the experience was over. Then another wave would begin. I felt each wave in a different, fairly specific, point within the three dimensions of my body. The waves were uncomfortable and tiring, as if parts of my body were resisting the release. Over time I came to resent oncoming waves, wishing the experience to be over. The one thought I recall, which later became a theme of the overall journey, was that the mess was all perfect. Elements of the journey that felt imperfect (for whatever reason), along with my life in general: I sensed greater messiness than I am normally willing to acknowledge or face, but also a sense that the messiness existed in exactly the ways it needed to exist. I found myself mentally coaching myself, but also your mom (about our life in general) and my guide (about the journey in particular): the mess is perfect. What did that mean? The shortest answer (and this becomes another theme of the journey): I don’t know. There were not specific elements of mess, just a general awareness.
After awhile I sat up and removed the mask. Partly I was getting up to use the restroom, partly I needed a break from the waves of discomfort, and partly I sensed that the journey was moving into a new stage. After using the restroom I lay back down with the mask off; for whatever reason I did not want the mask on. At this point energy continued moving, but the waves were much smaller and less uncomfortable. My eyes looked at the ceiling, where I almost sensed energy appearing in places that corresponded with where I was feeling parallel sensations in my body. Over the course of this stage, I felt energy moving down my torso, from my upper chest to my lower chest to my stomach. At the end of this section I passed gas a few times, as if that were the final release of energy needed. As the energy moved down my body, my eyes followed the energy in parallel down the ceiling, such that my eye orientation shifted gradually from straight above me to eventually staring at roughly the point where the ceiling met the wall. The waves of peace and discomfort continued as I continued to process and release energy. I yearned for the process to complete and to experience sustained peace. The thought eventually occurred to me that the goal of sustained peace was likely elusive: the cycles of peace and discomfort seem somehow inextricable to the human existence. I experienced the waves of comfort and discomfort partly as a dance between masculine and feminine energy; partly as a dance between me and others (mostly your mom, but sometimes the guide, sometimes the two of you, and sometimes the world at large); partly as a game of chase across dimensions, with chaos emerging for a moment, to be found and smoothed out, only to emerge in another form from another dimension, even if less pronounced with each emergence. At this point I started having truly bizarre thoughts along the lines of “this already happened, and was always going to happen, but no it didn’t; it always was, but no it isn’t. How can this be? I don’t know”. While I’m still mostly confused by these thoughts, they sorta track my thoughts about free will versus God’s will. Somehow I sense we have free will, but an overarching plan to the universe unfolds with or without us; we get to decide if we are in participation and harmony, or if we are in conflict and suffering. Finally, during this section I continued to have thoughts along the lines of “the mess is perfect”. I sort of imagined painting with poop, or watching feces squirt in random direction from behind me, projecting out in front.
In the third section of the journey I physically turned around and lay facing the opposite direction as before. Until this point I don’t think it had occurred to me that the “mess” (and at this point I had started replacing mess with “shit” in my internal monologue) was invariably coming from behind me. And so, without realizing why until I turned around, I was responding to an invitation to turn around and face the shit. At this point I wasn’t sure what to do with the shit, or even if I was supposed to do anything with this shit; all I knew was that I needed to spend some time facing the shit, letting the discomfort dissipate in the process.
In the last section, I put the mask back on and started describing some of what I had experienced. Nothing felt linear, so I felt as if I were piecing together fragments. But themes emerged. One, of course, was “I don’t know”. Lots of contradictions or uncertainties presented themselves, and I kept returning to “I don’t know” (later, I found this deeply unsatisfying: I came into the experience seeking answers, and the recurrence of “I don’t know” frustrated those expectations). Another was the idea of facing the mess in order to see it for what it was: scaffolding that helped bring us to this point, but now we can let it go in order to move on to our next stage in evolution.
Co-creation was an ongoing theme: I experienced the journey itself as a co-creation between my guide and me, and I kept thinking of my life as a co-creation between your mom and I (with the two of you playing a growing role over time). I felt a deep desire for others to join me facing the mess in order that we might co-create from that place. Here I found myself confounded by another seeming contradiction: on one level I needed others to join me in co-creation; on the other hand I recognize the *need* isn’t the type of codependent, controlling need I have known thus far. How could I need others but not need them? I don’t know, though with hindsight I notice that while it expressed as “need”, it felt more like allowing destiny to unfold in the right ways. I spent a lot of time envisioning your mom and I growing old together in co-creation, as co-creators of our lives together. We took turns setting the container and transforming within the container. Sometimes neither of us were ready, and we experienced conflict. But we understood this was okay; part of the scaffolding that needed to emerge that we might let it go. This all felt inevitable, as if it had already happened, only no it hadn’t, and maybe it wouldn’t. I don’t know.
I saw myself emerging from the experience as a rather large, bright ball of light, wearing a mask. The mask was my physical body, such that others might recognize me in this dimension. Wearing the mask invited me to embrace my frailties, the imperfection of my earthly form. In particular, I found myself, throughout the experience, trying to plant seeds such that I or others might know how to follow my path. At this point I recognized that I am likely to continue to obsess a little too much, as in these letters, attempting to plant breadcrumbs in the hopes you (or others) might find them and they might support you in the process of finding your path. I sensed the invitation was to be a source of light, such that others might find their own path without need of the bread crumbs.
Though I couldn’t have articulated it at the time, I later realized that part of turning around to face the shit is turning around to shine my light in invitation for others to join me. From my second vision, I assumed that this part of my journey was to walk my path, toward the distant billboard; I now sense that, for now anyway, I am invited to turn around in invitation that others might join me, facing the mess, experiencing life in co-creation. I sensed as though I had healed as much as I can in isolation, and that I need to support others in healing in order to heal further; indeed, I almost sensed that my longevity requires others to heal, as strange as that might sound. The story of Exodus has been with me recently, and in retrospect I experienced elements of that story. After Moses led the Israelites out of slavery, they spent 40 years in the wilderness. I had always interpreted that period in between as God’s punishment (indeed, that is how the story is told, at least partly). What I now realize: after escaping bondage, the Israelites needed to release the trauma they had internalized over the centuries. They weren’t ready for the promised land, and needed a period of adjustment before they were ready. Ironically, I’ve long clutched onto the hope that I might emerge from this spiritual journey like Moses from the mountaintop holding stone tablets containing God’s truth. I’ve repeatedly been disabused of that notion, and something about this journey seemed to shatter this illusion once and for all. What occurs to me now is that emerging from the mountain with the tablets didn’t even work for Moses: the people weren’t ready. They had taken to worshiping other gods, prompting Moses to throw down the tablets in anger, breaking them. Similarly, even if I (and we) experienced God’s truth right now, we are not ready for it. We need a period of adjustment, facing into our mess that we might see it for what it is: scaffolding that brought us this far. We can love and appreciate the mess, and let it go in order that we might eventually find the promised land.
I sensed that we are like particles of light: attached to the sun (God), and yet somehow separate at the same time. How? I don’t know. If I understand particle physics correctly, the particle of light exists as a probability distribution of location until it is observed. Similarly, we exist as a series of probabilities that only reveal themselves as we experience life. Thus why I experienced growing old with your mom, and not, all at the same time. We don’t know, and the truth will only reveal itself over time. There are likely dimensions where your mom and I grow old together and dimensions where we do not, but how we experience this dimension is yet to be determined. I emerge optimistic, but there is little point in being attached to an outcome.
Similarly, I cannot get attached to anyone’s decisions. Each of us has the opportunity to choose light, co-creation, abundance, at any and all moments. Similarly, we can choose fear, shadows, and scarcity at any moment. We get to choose, over and over and over. I cannot choose for anyone else; I can only choose for me, in this moment.
I sensed an invitation to sit at the intersection between light and dark. Imagining myself in that place, I felt tremendous tension, and realized that light and dark are pulling apart right now. In retrospect, the words that come to me are “the Great Sorting is underway”. Sitting at the intersection, one feels that pull. But from that place, in co-creation, we let all of the beautiful and horrible things out of us. By letting both the light and dark within us to emerge, we allow ourselves to see the darkness for what it is, that we might let it go. But through the act of creation, of expression, we allow the parts out of ourselves that they might get sorted. We can choose to sit at the intersection, release, and free ourselves to merge toward the light. Or we can hold onto our darkness, and allow the darkness to pull our souls with it. We get to choose, over and over and over.
Finally, I felt an opportunity to live in abundance. I am enough. You are enough. As we join the light, we grow the light exponentially. I felt an invitation to share from a place of abundance, and to invite others to share from a place of abundance. I found myself wondering which comes first, like the chicken and egg conundrum. I noticed more resistance to inviting others to share from a place of abundance, and wondered if that were where I should start. But then I found myself wondering if I first needed to share in order to unblock myself, in order to get the cycle started. Ultimately, I don’t know. But I found myself trusting that I would know when the time comes.
I found myself holding onto Rainbow at various points throughout the experience. Rainbow served as something of an anchor, reminding me who I am and who I love. Thank you again for sharing Rainbow with me.
The recovery from psilocybin was faster than MDMA. My last two journeys I felt pretty exposed, porous even, well into the day after the experience. This time, though exhausted, I felt mostly recovered by the evening. I partly regretting deciding to stay the night: at that point I found myself really wanting to reconnect with you two and your mom.
The next morning I woke up, had a small breakfast, and debriefed a bit with my guide. I packed up the car and went for a brief hike. At one point I felt an invitation to touch a tree. I wandered off the trail to the tree, putting both hands on it. I felt energy flow out of my body to the tree. I turned around and pressed my back against the tree, and again felt energy flowing from me to the tree. I returned to the trail, and a few minutes later felt an invitation to touch a dead tree strewn above the pathway. I reached up and put my hands on it, and felt a different energy moving as compared to the living tree. I came near a creek, and sensed an invitation to sit in the sounds of the rushing water. I felt drawn to a rotting, fallen tree, where I sat and closed my eyes, listening as the water rushed by. I continued on the path until I came to a bend in the water, a place where the land pushed out over the water. I walked to the edge and found myself holding parts of my body out over the water, as if letting the water wash away unwanted energy in my body. I pushed forward my hands, the top of my head, my feet, and various parts of my back. The experience felt strangely cleansing. The entire hike felt as if I were following a script, and I were merely being called to play my role. Is this what living in presence feels like? I don’t know.
I got back in the car and let your mom know I was coming home. When I arrived I requested help bringing items in from my car. Everett came running out, and hugged me as if he had really, really missed me. Somehow I had anticipated this, and I picked him up, hugged him chest-to-chest, saying “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah”. We went for lunch at our favorite Korean restaurant, ran some errands, and watched a movie together. It was a pretty wonderful day, and I felt as if the four of us, but especially your mom and I, were in co-creation together, creating this wonderful, magical day.
We shall see what comes next. Will I succeed in becoming unblocked and unstuck? I don’t know. As with God, there is a saying that journeys give you what you need, not what you want. I sense that to be true in this case. I found myself saying to my guide: it felt as if everything happened, and nothing happened; and now, we get to decide.
With a couple days of hindsight, I find myself facing many of the same struggles and temptations as before. But I also find moments of enhanced clarity, moments where new ideas emerge. If nothing else, I sense a few things crystallized for me Friday; these were percolating ideas that finally took a more tangible shape that I can more fully articulate and understand. And every so often I experience a moment where I feel something reminiscent of the journey; in these moments I’m reminded to get present and pay attention, and I’m finding that, much like previous journeys, the tangible learnings often come later.
I love you both. Thank you for granting me a night to go off and do some self-exploration. Thank you for behaving well for your mom in my absence. And than you for being two of the best spiritual teachers I will ever know. I love you.
Love,
Dad
Letters to Leland 