A Quietly Seismic Interlude

Nestled somewhere in a July Whimsie, I made a comment about the Month of Medicine I was leading myself through, along with a promise to spill the beans.

Well, the beans aren’t spilling today. Nor will they anytime this month. 

Without planning to do so, the Month of Medicine has evolved into Psychedelic Summer. Which has been an intense period of release, reorientation, and growth.

The past two weeks though have been a quiet interlude. A deep breath of rest after stirring up and reweaving a lot of energy, which needed time and space to settle. 

There’s a common misconception around psychedelics that the drugs alone are enough to elicit change, growth, or whatever your preferred flavour of ‘result’ is. 

For when you return to earth, you’re faced with a choice:

Will you act on what you learned?

Or will you carry on as if nothing happened?

This is where integration comes onto the scene, which is often overlooked or not taken seriously enough. I was guilty on both counts in my earlier years of exploring.

You could be blessed with the most healing, freeing, and insightful psychedelic experience in all the land, but if you want those effects to stick, to last, to stand the test of time, doing follow-up work is required.

Spun into metaphor, psychedelic experiences open doors and flip stones. But you have to walk through them. You have to look at what’s uncovered. That’s been my focus during this quietly seismic two-week interlude.

In practice, this has looked like:

• Letting go of a long-standing income source that’s no longer aligned, without panic, grief, or scramble. Only calm, clarity, and trust. In return, I’ve begun earning what I’m calling Soul Money.
  

• Confronting—politely—the caretakers of Katsu (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), who doesn’t come around much anymore, sharing my concerns about her health.
  

• Nudging my singing escapades along in reaching out to a vocal coach. Lessons begin on Monday.
  

• Recognizing the shift in my internal operating system from force and grind to flow and resonance. And confronting the weirdness of how easy this feels.
  

• And perhaps most importantly, realizing that I’m beginning to believe in the impossible again. Which is a belief that changes everything.

Most of the above was borne from thoughts, feelings, and ideas uncovered in the psychedelic realm. But all could have stayed there. All could have stayed in fantasy.

Honestly, that would have been easier.

• Releasing stable income without a 1:1 replacement is a mythic gamble.
  

• Confronting Katsu’s caretakers was a big step for someone who used to prefer not rocking the boat, unless competition was involved.
  

• Working with a vocal coach isn’t necessary, but is a significant moment in proving my commitment to developing my voice, to myself.
  

• Transmuting one emotion into another, or into art, is a special kind of magic that requires the deepest kind of self-honesty I’ve ever climbed into bed with.
  

• Rewiring your internal operating system and updating your spirit’s software isn’t light, quick, or easy work. (I’m quite proud of how I’ve dug in here.)
  

• Nor is remembering and reclaiming a dusty, forgotten belief.

And alongside the above, I’ve kept writing, reflecting, whispering to the garden.

I share this to demonstrate what integration might look like in practice. This is how you walk through those doors and face what’s under the stones, whether or not psychedelics are part of your path.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander