Psychedelic School Lesson- Nonduality
Use “Yes, and” Thinking to Navigate Strange Times
In my last post, I discussed the importance of the value-neutrality of psychedelics. Psychedelics aren’t 100% “love and light” for everyone. Psychedelics, like most things in life, are good and bad at the same time. Psychedelics can teach us that opposites exist at the same time and aren’t mutually exclusive (nonduality), thus helping us take off the blindfold, revealing better takes on reality.
You Already Understand Duality and Nonduality
This is what the yin yang symbol teaches us. Duality exists, and opposites exist. Yet the two polarities comprise a greater, inseparable whole (nonduality).
Our brain finds this conundrum to be too much cognitive dissonance to handle. How can inseparable opposites exist at the same time? Our brains can’t be bothered with sorting out all this complexity, so we often resort to simpler thinking. This manifests as binary thinking (yes or no, black or white, good or evil) with zero room for nuance. Thinking like this gets rigid, sterile and dogmatic.
Our brain isn’t always our best ally and it leads us into traps. Take this picture for example:
How LSD and Nonduality Gave Me Ontological Shock
I went to Woodstock 1994 in Saugerties, New York. On Sunday, I had taken some Jesus Christ blotter acid. Whoa. During the afternoon, in between bands, a painter came on the main stage. Hundreds of thousands of us were told he was painting Jimi Hendrix, on this giant canvas that must have been at least 5 feet square.
The painter took 3 paint brushes in each hand and began a furious rush to paint Jimi before the next band came on stage. He dipped, he slashed, he dashed, he flashed. I couldn’t believe he could paint so fast, on a giant canvas, with enough perspective to see what he was doing. He finished.
No one saw Jimi Hendrix. Everyone wondered, “What the hell?” Some people booed, others jeered and leered the painter. I didn’t see Jimi. I figured I was duped or something. Then the painter said he forgot something. He rotated the canvas 180 degrees. Yahtzee!
The iconic Jimi Hendrix image of him wearing his bandana, playing the Star Spangled Banner at the original Woodstock exploded off the canvas. This guy painted a masterpiece, with 6 brushes, 2 hands and upside down in about 10 minutes or so.
My brain melted, oozed out my ears and seeped into the ground beneath my feet. Bye.
The first level of ontological shock was trying to rescue enough neurons to figure out how he painted it upside down. Then the nonduality hit me. The Hendix painting went from nothing to everything. In fact, the painting was nothing and everything at the same time.
Psychedelic Culture Has Changed, Not the Wisdom
After the Woodstock mind fuck, the nonduality seed was planted. I didn’t come to full terms with nonduality until I started using plant medicine over 2 decades later. Taoism intrigued me, I read the Tao Te Ching, and it clicked doing some integration work. Nonduality is a rather common spiritual theme in psychedelic culture, although it may not seem that way.
During the 90s and early 00s, psychedelics weren’t about healing trauma. None of that existed. Psychedelics still enjoyed taboo status, thus the cultural framing involved more New Age themes: ancient wisdom, the occult, sacred geometry, gnosis and esotericism. Psychedelics were more about an individual path to lifting the veil via consciousness expansion.
The healing and trauma narrative driving today’s revival marginalizes the esoteric context of psychedelics. The death of any type of subculture in the United States has helped as well. But vestiges still exist, otherwise After Skool would be so popular.
Nonduality is an ancient concept, and one of the 7 Hermetic Principles (4- polarity). The 7 principles come from The Kybalion, which purport to be the teaching of Hermes Trismegistus. As legend goes, Trismegistus may be a later incarnation of the Egyptian god Thoth. Thoth was the god of wisdom, writing, art, science, magic and knowledge among other things.
Yesteryear’s psychedelic subculture made you feel you were learning occult or esoteric knowledge on your own. Add this to school curriculum I say. But, just as I thought I had a grip on understanding nonduality, this happens:
Even a Broken Clock is Right Twice a Day
This is true at all times. However, some periods of history challenge us to the extent that stimuli overwhelm our brains and we reject likelier realities that are more complex and complicated. We take a thought and catalog it as “lost” or “found.” This binary thinking creates a rough reality which is prevalent today.
A while back I spoke about Terrence McKenna and his novelty theory and time speeding up. I’ve spoken also about the liminal space that we find ourselves in right now. I saw Ray Dalio recently say that we may be entering a time warp, and in 5 years we won’t recognize the world we’re in. We’re living in some wild and weird times, and it’s affecting the way people think and perceive reality.
People no longer realize that “even a broken clock is right twice a day,” as my dad used to tell me. And isn’t just about everything broken now? So the wisdom resonates even more. Yet America’s cognitive fitness is about as good as its physical fitness.
The Hunger for Simple Narratives Comes from Fear
Amidst the chaos of our times, people hunger for simple narratives. It’s radical today to have heterogeneous political views, which is normal for most people. Tribal thinking, herd mentality, and culty behavior are du jour and don’t allow for nuanced reality.
“Either-or” and “yes-no” thinking abounds. The thought homogenization and siloing is killing us. Have we all pasteurized our brains? The polarization continues, so it seems that way.
I can’t blame anyone for falling into the polarity trap these days. Our brains aren’t designed well to begin with (see cognitive fallacies and biases). What’s causing a lot of this highly processed thinking? Fear.
People feel afraid. There’s a lot of drastic changes happening, and bigger ones to come. This all means uncertainty, and the unknown translates into fear. Aside from death, do humans fear anything more than change? I know I feel afraid sometimes with all the swirling lunacy today.
So if you feel afraid too, you’re not alone. Here’s a way to make one mind-manifesting change to your life to help navigate strange times.
Be a Trickster, Use “Yes, and…”
I’ve been noticing a smart and beautiful tactic being used by some people in the YouTube/podcast world. They embrace saying “Yes, and…” in response to someone. On a strict interpersonal level, this demonstrates emotional intelligence.
You find agreement and common ground. “Yes, and…” thinking validates the person who spoke prior and shows you listened. Now it’s easier for the person you’re engaged with to listen and respond in a level headed way.
Above all, “Yes, and…” thinking shows you have a strong grip on reality. You understand reality isn’t black or white, more so in uncertain times of change like now. One side can’t be correct about everything, while the other is incorrect about everything.
Polarization gets us trapped. We can’t admit we’re wrong about anything, and we can’t admit the other side is right about anything. From an esoteric perspective, I feel like it’s a cosmic prank being played on all of us to teach us a lesson. Don’t resist the change. Become the change, and embrace the trickster vibes using, “Yes, and…”
I don’t overuse or force using “Yes, and…” I do have it well programmed into my brain, and use it when I see a nifty opportunity. This conversational tool acts like a smooth salve, and may also help your ability to navigate confusing and complicated, cognitive waters.
Reality Is Black, and White and Infinite Shades of Gray In Between
Embrace the uncertainty of the times. Find reality’s ethereal color palette, where balance, grounding and sanity exist. Reality is black, white and infinite shades of gray in between. The line between yin and yang, or “The Way”, is where you want to be. Otherwise one day, 5 years from now, you might find yourself saying:
Afterword
To be clear, psychedelics aren’t required to learn the wisdom of nonduality. Meditation, yoga, float tanks, and other modalities work just as well. Heck, if you just have healthy, sound thinking, that’s all you need. The irony is that I know a lot of people who have done psychedelics, and don’t seem to have learned nonduality. So psychedelics are not a guaranteed path to esoteric enlightenment. Remember. Psychedelics are value-neutral and results may vary, right?