Tripping Over Myself with Love

I am writing this in San Diego airport while waiting for the 19:15 plane to Heathrow. I look out over the runway at a burnt orange fade that begins at the point that the Pacific meets the sky. An urgency to write about the last 24 hours came to me. A need to capture the detail of what often becomes clumsy approximations as memories fade and words fail. I am also writing this with a neon green pen that has a fluffy pom-pom at the end that bounces back and forth as my pen scribbles across the page. All of my usual implements stopped working the moment I came to put pen to paper, so I visited an airport souvenir shop. This was the least conspicuous model I could find. And hey, a workman never blames his tools. 

*     *     *

The night started with Jarrod, Rose, Dave, a human called Sam, and a labrador called Sam. We restlessly stoked the fire as we waited for the LSD to kick in. I was staying at Dave’s house. A beautiful suburban home with a pool out back that served as the ideal safe space for this experience. However, most of us considered ourselves veteran psychonauts and so we would be venturing to San Diego’s expansive botanic gardens, Balboa Park, for the screening of a light show in an Imax theatre. 

Dave sat quietly smoking a joint, while Jarrod and I riffed about the night’s plans as the remaining adventurers arrived. Now that the whole party was here, Jarrod stood with one hand on his hip while another clumsily tapped at a phone to order an Uber. I was grateful for his leadership as technology had started to take on the nightmarish face-of-Kali energy it has while tripping. 

By 7:30pm we were in an Uber speeding down the 805 freeway to the sounds of chart music. I cringed at the clash of tone between the onsetting mellow, sensitive head space of LSD and the screeching synthesizers of Ariane Grande. We watched from our sci-fi spaceship cabin as smooth liquid metal objects battled for space on a brightly lit road 8 lanes wide. The cartoon contours of our visuals softened into the natural surroundings. Trees, water, clouds, fire, all appeared gracefully in my awareness, while the concrete structures and skyscrapers that rose at either side of the highway seemed discordant and out-of-place.

Yet, this shock was oddly thrilling to me. I imagined that I was in a self-driving car in a not-too-distant future. The honking horns of angry commuters became the echoing robotic cries of a herd of competing AI super-beings. I spotted one owned by Uber, another by Lyft. An ancient taxi AI trundled past and a voice somewhere inside me said, “Some sentient machines just can’t let go of the past eh”. I burst out giggling into the silent car at my own joke as others turned their heads and smiled goofily .

Finally, we arrived at Balboa Park to merge with another small group of voyagers at the entrance to the Imax. I met a woman dressed in a brightly patterned poncho and mustard yellow chords. Immediately I got the sense that, unlike me, she had no closeted love of psychedelics. Here was an advocate, both in clothing choice and profession. Someone with a trained scientific mind and the cosmic perspective of a psychonaut.  

And then there was Professor Play. The knowing shaman with a look that penetrates into your soul and a precise intelligence that cuts straight to the point. The times that we spoke sober were nearly as psychedelic as our chemically infused conversations. 

In our lack of an immediate direction the group was drawn to the shining interior of an inactive fountain. As we huddled around the still water we lacked sober leadership to galvanise and direct the group to its desired location. LSD had eradicated those aspects of our personalities. No one wanted to move because we were fine just where we were. 

In fact, everything was fine just the way it was.

At some point we found ourselves collectively flowing towards the Imax. Beginning to clumsily negotiate the bureaucracy of orderly lines and seat selection. A few of us misunderstood the concept of a ticket booth and tried to order snacks. With the remaining sense and sobriety he had, Jarrod quickly ushered us into the theatre to take seats that were propped backwards so that we could look up at the domed ceiling where the light show would be projected.

For the first time since we had left the house, I fully appreciated that I was on LSD. A twinge of paranoia made itself known in the pit of my stomach. I saw myself as if from the outside in a room full of sober art critics. This fear was eradicated by the start of the light show. Someone sprayed lavender on her hands, Prof Play looked back at me with a gleeful grin on his face, his dark eyes wide open; Dave reclined his chair a little further.

The composer, James Hood, took to a small area at the front of the theatre where a red carpeted stage was bordered by roped golden posts. The floor flowed into his purple jacket and brown hair as I tried to focus on what he was saying. He was British, with a soft, southern English wheeze of a voice, rounded by the comforting glow of American compliments. He was saying something about how Californians “just get it”, how “we all need what we are about to see . . . especially now”. As he exited to the left, the room became dark and a booming pre-recorded version of his voice filled my consciousness with its texture and what felt like absurdity. 

The voice told us to switch off the rational mind and allow our subconscious to interpret the images and sounds that we were about to see. The ceiling suddenly filled with brightly coloured visuals which melted into a thousand singing fractals. I could no longer distinguish between my normal waking perceptions and the effects of the LSD as I was thrown into a realm of shapes and concepts. My dual mind failed to grasp something solid and instead collapsed into a non-dual, multi-sensory roller coaster.

*     *     *

I seem to comprehend the function of matter. The way that it is animated within causal chains of energy that drives everything from the oceans, to the formation of galaxies, to the computational device that allows me to type up the scribbled notes in this pad of paper. Energy leads to consciousness, that much is clear from the existence of me in this universe. 

Our habitation in this mammal shell depends totally on our nervous system, a physical structure that takes in and interprets sensations as we interface with our environment. But, the structure decays, withers and dies. Its absence leads to no identification with the body. One day my physical form will be repurposed. 

Suddenly fear is present. An uncertainty that naturally leads to insecurity and attachment to things that make me feel real and lasting. Longing, desire, and all of the tricks of self-conscious life conjure our separateness and self-importance into existence because of a sense that the environment we are caught in is outside of our control. I saw that I could engage and attempt to eradicate this fear by elevating the importance of my temporary manifestation of self. This might involve comforting feelings of superiority over nature or I could create hierarchies in the human species, allowing an inflated ego to roll over whole civilisations of people for the sake of making them “other” to confirm my “Isness”, my realness. I notice that the need to locate oneself in an “us” comes from the aching fear we feel at the temporariness of our identification with physical form. 

Suddenly an aspect of who I am steps outside of that fear, looks at it, and giggles. All of the pettiness can and does fade away when placed within the perfect harmony of the universe. This thing we are caught in holds all polarities - good and evil, us and them, human and non-human, life and death. I see that I can dance within these realms as something that is not quite the “I” that I thought I was.

I am the universe looking through the lens of the perceptual capacities of a human body at its creation and marvelling. Sometimes my life is terrifying - relationships are fleeting, living is precarious, and health fluctuates -  but if I allow that way of looking to take over, I am back in the realm of the Hungry Ghost, a land of no abundance – grasping at what I think will save me while ignoring the capital T truth - which is:

I am not meant to be saved in this form.  

I sigh audibly with the weight of this understanding, holding within me both the terrifying implications of this understanding and the excitement of a new way of thinking about what I am.

Are these thoughts real or are they an illusion caused by the LSD? The meditator in me knows that it doesn’t matter either way. Who cares, it’s all part of the same illusion. Whether by my regular chemical processes, due to a complex technological projection system, or through ingesting psychedelics, it’s all generated images that we attach meaning to so that we can communicate across the barriers between minds. We reduce a chaotic fluctuating oneness into discrete sounds and images and order so that we can describe our interpretations of reality to someone else. We desperately want to connect with each other, but the task seems insurmountably difficult.

*     *     *

My philosophical reveries end at the sound of the return of James Hood’s booming voice. I look around at my tribe to find them emerging from similar depths, blinking and touching their bodies as if to make sure they have landed back in the right one. The visuals absorbed our attention and the music melted our emotional core into pure synchronous being. Joy, passion, and peace danced in front of our eyes in forms that allowed us to sit back and observe from a God’s eye perspective.

One of my companions sits up suddenly and says, “What!”. Turning to us with shock she repeats, “What!” Sam is leaning forward, chin in his hands as he looks up at the blank screen and shakes his head. Jarrod winks at me, noting the awe emanating from my face as he begins the shepherd’s duty of herding us out of the theatre and back to our favourite fountain. 

Sam is filled with energy and I watch as he climbs and then hangs sideways from a lamppost in an incredible display of physical prowess. Someone else is walking around the fountain in circles, muttering and laughing. Dave has managed to negotiate the snack booth and emerges from the Imax clutching a huge carton of popcorn that we all descend upon like vultures.

Boarding our return Uber home, we engage our driver in the same love filled language we can’t help but speak to each other. By the time we pull up at the house he is laughing and smiling with us. 

What a night, I think, as Dave’s labrador Sam attempts to climb into my sofa bed with me. I hold his face in my hands, his yellow eyes filled with love, and whisper, “Thank you for this chance to play, connect, and understand”. 

Then, another realisation hits. 

Happiness is only real when shared. 

The thought struck me as at once incredibly trivial and profound. How had I not seen it before? 

"It's all about other people. That's why we're here". 

I spoke these words into the uncomprehending face of Sam the dog, yet I was speaking it to Jarrod and Rose, to everyone, to LSD, and to the gift of life itself.