Shvat: Worlds Upon Worlds
As the longish needle went into my arm, I sang aloud, as a prayer, as an intention, “Be’ahavah,” '“with love,” the last word the kohanim say before reciting the Priestly Blessing, before my high-dose ketamine journey began. With a ringing in my ears, supported by pleasant music, and expertly facilitated by a professional staff, my experience began to unfold with a cascade of impossible colors and forms. I remember asking myself (was it my Self doing the asking?) “How many worlds are there?,” and suddenly felt as though I was dancing through many of them, if not all of them, endlessly.
As part of my ongoing professional development, I have been learning a method of psychotherapy for the past six months which culminated in an experiential training with the legal, physician-prescribed substance ketamine. In a very comfortable, sacred setting, each participant of the program was able to have two experiences as a “sitter” and two as a “journeyer.” The sitter/therapist is directed to attend to the needs of the journeyer, to dote upon them whether its just making sure they have all the pillows they need, to offer a hand when it is requested by the journeyer, or to simply be a witness to what is unfolding for the journeyer. As we are in training, we are released from providing psychotherapeutic assistance, and invited to attend as an apprentice and not intervene as a teacher. In this delicately attuned container, journeyers find their places on soft tri-fold mats bedecked with even softer blankets, and draw down the mindfold as the prescribed low-dose ketamine lozenge dissolves or the intramuscular dose of ketamine is a delivered into the shoulder. “Be’ahavah,” I whispered to myself, the doctor, the ketamine, my sitter, the teachers and students in the room, the room, the earth below, the earth, the Creator of the earth.
Otherworldly travel can be a common experience on high-dose ketamine, and as I learn more about this particular medicine, I have been able to learn how to explore the terrain it with more curiosity and less trepidation each time. The alchemy of the music, the medicine, and my spirit passed me through one world to the next, each of them with a particular color, aesthetic, and even feeling tone, with my inner ballroom dancer doing the Viennese Waltz through each of them, fast and graceful sweeping turns with an upward gaze through the color wheel. A world that…sounded like…coffee? Ok, yes, here we are. A world behind my mindfold covered in eyes? Good morning, Ezekiel. A moment where it was clear in my mind’s awareness that the indigenous teacher in the room had once given my mother a book to give to me so that I would find my way back to this room. Space, time, and reality bending—each time I enter into this space, I feel as though I get a hint of a glimpse of what our saged elders were able to describe through their divine service, contemplation, and ecstatic practice. I am the student, again and again.
OK…so, other worlds, dancing in coffee. No great insights about my life and my situation. What is the benefit, then, to such an experience? In the moment I sat up, reconnected with my dear sitter and the room around me, I felt that conscious, loving care all around, receiving me and feeling nourished by it. That would be enough! But as I began to integrate my experience, what came very quickly was that this kind of world-dancing, beyond it being exhilaratingly beautiful, was type of inner expansion of the potentiality of my reality. In the shadows of the election and the fires and the ceasefire/hostage exchange, raising young, precious children in harsher and harsher environments, my ketamine journey obligated me to deeply feel that there are so many more realities possible than the one that I am currently inhabiting. When the outside world constricts, my inner worlds expand—a world that felt like bread!—and I vector toward the light of the possible.
May the Light of All Worlds continue to guide us through shadow and light to bring what is above below, and elevating what is below higher and higher.
Hodesh tov,
Z
