Recently, I embarked on my annual vision quest, wrestling with my concerns about turning 50 this year. A recurring theme arose for me: Have I been a financial failure?
I have never made very much money. However, I have grown my little bits of money and stretched the dollars skillfully. I have never gone into debt with my little non-profit. I even bought property in my early thirties after investing the money I made with a gardening company I ran while in college. Yet, the weight of the struggle over the past 25 years—to make ends meet to support my artwork and myself—was palpable. I could feel how much effort, time, and attention it took. I wept for all that effort and focus.
Throughout my life, I thought so much about money and made so little of it. I wept because I didn’t want to lead my children into an industry with so few resources.
Psychedelics allow you to feel the full weight of what is, and once you sit with that, you can decide what to do about it. So much of our lives is spent coping, pretending, and avoiding what is. Psychedelics, free of judgment, allow us to fall into the full weight of what is. This is why there is often crying in the journey. Once you fall into the full weight of what you bear, you feel your pain. This is cathartic. You can admit to yourself what you have been holding up and how that has felt. Then, you can decide whether to do something slightly or massively different in the future. Even slight changes can have massive results on the surface of your life.
Paramvir, my husband, says that I was wildly successful as an artist. I made a ton of quality creative work. I was an inspiration to many. I supported hundreds of artists. I survived on my work. If I had been in a more resourced industry, I would have been rich. Yet, as a soon-to-be fifty-year-old, I have to admit that I never made more money than a recent college grad.
During this journey, when I reflected on my life, I couldn’t imagine what I lacked. I have had amazing peak experiences, and a lot of them. I have created work I am very proud of. I have had a lot of colorful, entertaining, and lovingly kind friends. I have nurtured a family. I have lived a charmed life in so many ways. Why was this abstract concept of money important? It eventually dawned on me: It wasn’t that I wanted for money. It was that I had wasted so much of my life trying to make it.
This is my midlife crisis. This is the moment when you look back at your life and your work and wonder what it was all for and where it all went. The past simply disappears. We only have remnants. We have relationships with history. We have memories.
Was I feeling regret? Or was this simply sadness that this is what it took to achieve these goals?
Coming out of the journey, I realized that I am in the process of reinventing myself. I am rebirthing myself. This is hard work. I noticed all my tendencies that were put in place for a different goal. I need to shed them and find new ones that apply to this version of my life and self. Neuroplasticity is very useful for this. You see with fresh eyes all that you do without awareness because it is usually entrenched in habit. When you are no longer operating on habit, you can see it.
I came out of this difficult journey ready to move forth. I came out of this difficult journey with a clear image of the service I want to provide to the world and its importance. I will take as many people as will trust me by the arm and guide them tenderly into the depths of their souls to confront themselves, their lives, and their place in this living biome of Earth. Sure, it can be hard, but ahh… at least we can do this. We can transform.