Turning On The Culture
My nephew Lonnie was touched and grateful I reached out to him to tell him to be careful. “I’ve been there myself,” I said, remembering the 1970 anti-draft demo at Fort Dix. I knew first hand how, in a split second, one could get caught in a human riptide and pulled under tumbling flesh and poison-tasting gas.
Lonnie lives with his wife and twin girls in Minneapolis, not far from where Renee Good met her end. But then, with Alex Pretti’s death, we were suddenly in new territory.
He assured me he’s keeping himself and his family safe (i.e., staying on the outskirts of protests, with escape plans in mind.) But apparently his relationship with one of his best lifelong friends (who’s a Trump supporter) may have ruptured beyond repair from a recent phone conversation.
Many – though by no means all – of us in the psychedelic community feel called upon to take action and take to the streets to demonstrate our opposition to what’s taking place in our land and around the world. But the only way I can get aboard that train is if it’s hurtling towards peace and the kind of evolution we so desperately need as a nation and a species. I’ve become wary of reactivity, intellectually lazy demonization of the other side and the contagion of hate on both sides. I’ve seen too much of it in my life, and it has landed us where we are now.
A Path Forged By Elders and Saints
Gandhi and M.L.K. Jr. have paved the way we need to walk. My favorite psychonaut of all, Richard Alpert, a/k/a Ram Dass, taught universal love and put it to good use as he got involved in peaceful political demonstrations on behalf of gun control and protesting the Rocky Flats nuclear plant in Colorado.
Likewise, the protests in Minneapolis were non-violent, with tens of thousands putting their lives on the line out in the streets in sub-zero weather. Notably, they were also effective, as, along with the national outcry, they resulted in a negotiated withdrawal of ICE from Minneapolis.
We can learn from this.
A New Map
Ram Dass referred to his true political beliefs as “off the map.” Perhaps he was pointing us in the right direction.
The psychedelic vision, as I see it, can include acting from the kind of moral outrage that we saw in Minneapolis. As Marianne Williamson declared, “Sometimes love says ‘NO!’” But sheer opposition isn’t enough, and it can sometimes metastasize into hate and violence. The relevant issue isn’t about what we should “resist” or are against, but about what we are for.
John Lennon (another psychonaut) and his song “Imagine” pointed us off the map of incremental change and towards a truly transformational shift in consciousness. He understood that to be warriors of the heart, soldiers for peace, subversives for sanity – that’s the path we should dare to follow.
To me this means that the purely political realm, with its oppositional politics and reactive action, is understandable but insufficient. King’s vision, and the world he and Lennon dreamed of, will emerge out of what’s transpiring in my heart and yours right now; in how we regard (and treat!) each other, including and maybe especially those we disagree with.
A change of heart is the heart of change, and a truly positive and sustainable r/evolution will only stem from an outbreak of rampant empathy, compassion and understanding.
This begins by raising our consciousness. If I want to encourage people to not “other” our immigrants, for example, I’ll be most effective if I begin by not othering them.
There’s No “Them” There
Because in truth, there’s really no “them” there at all. If we got threatened tomorrow by hostile alien invaders from outer space, we’d recall our human commonality in a New York minute. Well, we are being invaded – by alien forces of social media (where conflict entrepreneurs supply us with our daily dopamine hit) and toxic partisanship. They are likewise threatening our existence by undermining our sense of commonality and connection. I find it healing, therefore, to regard our current struggle as being between “us” over here and another “us” over there.
(Psst – don’t tell anyone, but this means that if we’re ever going to be able to tackle a divisive issue like immigration, for example, we’re going to have to actually – OMG! – sit down and listen to those we disagree with. Listen with empathy, curiosity, and respect, and without trying to convert them. And having the intellectual courage to seriously consider their point of view, as opposed to simply dismissing them as bigots and morons.)
Beyond Pendulum Politics
I happen to think it’s time now for truly radical change. But do I really believe that replacing hard-right politicians in Washington with a hard left opposition would solve our problems? Hasn’t our history demonstrated that this would only lead to the next swing of the pendulum? Isn’t it time to aim for something off this old map?
I don’t claim to have all the answers here, but I am on a quest to find some good questions.
Here are a few:
- If I oppose, for example, ICE, with hate in my heart (a friend of mine recently referred to them as “Gestapo”) and curse and spit at them on the street, is that true opposition, or is that joining them in spirit? Isn’t the best protest against cruelty kindness?
- In a world rife with war, isn’t there a better world waiting for us, the one we’ve been quietly nurturing in our ceremonies and our hearts? Could it be that when you and I “practice medicine” we practice peace? Aren’t we making peace with our shadow selves, our partners, each other, our bodies and the natural world? Could our journeys be seen as prototypes for the new world we all know is possible because we’ve tasted and lived it?
- Are we wasting our time trying to persuade others to change their minds when we suspect that what is really called for now is a fundamental change of heart? If so, how do we elicit that?
- Is attempting to repair a collapsing system the best use of our good energy?
Perhaps as we change our minds, we change the world. And perhaps here in the US, land of us-and-them, the only real change is a revolution back to us. And one based on the psychedelic vision of a radical, happily contagious interpersonal generosity. One that asserts and insists upon tolerance and love.
A Higher Love
What if, for example, millions of people across the political spectrum arose tomorrow and said ENOUGH of vitriol and demonization, suspicion and media-induced bitterness and hatred?! What if we instead received our information from our higher selves rather than from our divisive devices and our screaming screens?
“Culture is not your friend,” Terrence McKenna warned us. So we need to turn on the culture, because there are vital truths being omitted from consensus reality. We need to challenge the parameters of the current debate, the false choice between two sides. Because if the only stand I take is against “him” or “them,” then he and they are still setting the terms for that debate.
Aren’t the medicines calling us now to a higher vision beyond our divisions, back to remembering our fundamental human commonality and our true selves? And back to the indigenous wisdom that recognizes our connection to the planet, which begs for a radical activism on its behalf before it’s too late?
Our differences, while necessary to grapple with and learn from, do not have to define us. We can dare to recognize “them” as another “us.”
That’s revolution. That’s the psychedelic vision writ large across our psychic landscape. That’s worth taking to the streets to spark the only kind of change that will truly change anything – one worth fighting, living and dying for.
Gandhi and King were both inspired by their spirituality to a higher moral calling to put their bodies on the line and stir their people to do the same. Their political activism came from the inside out, and laid bare the brutality of the systems that oppressed them. By reminding us of our universal and fundament connection to each other, old paradigms crumbled.
They say that it’s always darkest right before the dawn. Perhaps what we are witnessing in the culture at large right now is just so much pre-dawn panic. So many of us are frightened and frantic as we grope in the dark, even as the flame in all our hearts grows. By joining them together we will light the way.
Possibilities for true change begin to jell when we come together. Possibilities like the powerful solidarity demonstrated in Minneapolis, which resulted in negotiations leading to positive change. Possibilities that give us the sense now that there’s something in the air, that there’s a greater awakening afoot. “This,” says an 82 year old Native American chief named Phil Lane, “is the most profound hope carried in all of this: the outer world can change because the inner world can change. And when the inner world changes, time and space simply catch up with what the spirit has already decided.”