My kids have been taught in school that they have a bucket. They are taught to fill their buckets so they have the internal resources to be effective students. I like this metaphor. I like that they are being taught to manage their emotional lives.
I used to take MDMA with psilocybin because I was afraid of the Void. I was trying to have a good time after all and being thrust into a zone in which nothing I was work-a-holicing toward was worth it - well, it wasn’t a good time.
Today I felt super disenchanted with everything in my life. I had to really sit with this because I really don’t feel this way often. An existential crisis of emptiness. Is my usual enthusiasm for just about everything I am doing blind? Is this the truth that I am somehow covering up with ‘good’ neurochemistry most days?
I went to sleep, awoke in the middle of the night and began to polish my empty spiritual bucket. Let’s assume that nothing I am doing is worth it. Let’s assume that everything is meaningless. Let’s assume none of the effort I am putting out will come back to me with any real value. Empty, empty, empty. I am cleaning out and polishing this emptiness. It is so clean of hope, belief, meaning, faith, commitment, integrity, effort. I could walk away from absolutely everything in this state of mind and it would be … uneventful.
But then I come home. My daughter shows me a book she wrote about a Queen who lives in a castle with her daughter. They throw parties together. Okay, I’ll put this in my bucket. This is undeniable. How special to be so special to her for this period of time. Then my son decides to take a shower because I’m taking a shower and hugs me, ‘I love you mommy.’ Okay, this gets to stay too.
At the workshop I taught to Highschool students today - I thought, maybe I’m not a natural teacher. I found the students annoying initially, holding their phones while standing on my sculpture in shoes. But there was this one emo student, a moody sixteen year boy. He seemed to think this workshop was a pile of shit. But then I saw his curiosity peak out. His interest grew. He was resonating with my motion sculpture. By the end, he said we was surprised by how much he liked this process. It was new.
I am not sure if I will continue to teach, but connecting with someone through my artwork, that is a very sweet nectar. I will keep that.
Tomorrow I will slowly begin to add other things to my polished, clean-of-hope-and-faith bucket. I wonder how my living art project will transform as I reevaluate the elements in my life. If they don’t fill my bucket, they should probably not be in my life.
This is what psilocybin, on its own, is good for. It can drop you into the Void. It can put you in your emptiness. And it may not be fun in the moment, but it can be a really useful part of cleaning up your life.
Recently there was a study on how taking MDMA with LSD or psilocybin can help guard against psychedelic distress. Are we making the same mistake we so often do? We are softening the edges, taking away the challenge, and expecting to get all the benefits anyway. I agree that it is more pleasant, more fun. But I don’ think the results will be as deep or meaningful. I don’t think you can gain the benefits of facing the Void without sitting in it for a bit - shutting down the meaning-making machine for a while so it can restart again and locate what is actually fulfilling.