Meditating on Psychedelics
The Meditating on Psychedelics Simple Ceremony is a way of bringing the intentional practice of meditation together with a psychedelic catalyst. It’s an approach that, due to its unique function, is different from the recreational, or even medicinal, use of a psychedelic entheogen. Think of it as a spiritual & contemplative practice.
This simple ceremony involves a progressive movement through these 3 phases of practice, Preparing, Journey, & Integration, each of which are made up of 3 smaller movements:
Preparing
Energy
Time
Space
Journey
Intention
Sacrament
Meditation
Integration
Closing
Journaling
Reflection
Preparing
The Meditating on Psychedelics Simple Ceremony is a way of bringing the intentional practice of meditation together with a psychedelic catalyst.
Energy
In order to have a successful journey, we need to have the fuel for it. If you don’t you’re going to stall out, or worse yet, crash. Do you feel you have the energy needed to go through this journey?
If you’ve been preparing for the ceremony in some explicit way, it’s likely that you will have the energy to proceed. If you’ve been really busy & frenetic, haven’t had time to prepare, or have done a ceremony recently enough that you still feel sapped from the last one, it’s likely you don’t. Psychedelic experiences can be quite taxing, so having some energetic reserves to tap is really vital for not getting out of whack.
Time
Another important thing to plan for is how much time you’ll need to adequately explore, recover from, and integrate the psychedelic experience.
Each substance has its own unique life cycle. The active effects of some substances can be quite quick, as in the case of DMT whose main effects are often measured in minutes, rather than hours. Other substances, like LSD, can go for several hours, and can hamper one’s ability to sleep. So make sure you’ve set aside plenty of time for the actual experience of working with the sacrament. I once made the mistake once of not scheduling enough time for a mushroom journey and ended up tripping in an Uber on the way home. It was probably weirder for the driver than me, but it was disruptive to need to leave the practice container early.
After the psychedelic experience it’s also helpful to put aside some time to rest & recover. In my experience the short term recovery process takes at least a day, and the longer term recovery (feeling totally back to “normal”) can take up to a week for most people. In the short term it’s good to drink a lot of water, chill, and allow the mind and body to settle. Longer term it’s helpful to not have any major commitments coming just after a psychedelic experience. For instance, I wouldn’t recommend doing 4 journeys over the course of a month, with the last one being less than a week before you’re organizing & hosting a major conference with hundreds of attendees.
In terms of integration, it’s really hard to know how long it might take to fully process the experiences, insights, etc. of a psychedelic experience. Some things may not get integrated at all, but time & experience are the great integrators. Personally, I like to give myself at several months between psychedelic experiences for integration. This isn’t a recommendation, more a recognition that it takes us time to make sense of and embody important insights. If we have too many insights to process, and not enough time to do so, then the reality is that they don’t stick. When people don’t make time for integration it’s usually a sign that they’re chasing the high. That’s not useful when working with these substances in a contemplative manner.
Space
To begin the ceremony we turn our attention to our physical space. The reason being that we want our outer space to reflect & support the inner space we’re looking to bring online during the ceremony.
On a practical level this means picking up and making sure the space is clean and beautiful. It also means setting the appropriate mood, in terms of lighting, sound, & smells. It includes finding a comfortable place to sit during the ceremony and making sure you have space to do other things, like stretch or lie down.
Another important element of the space is a physical focal point to direct one’s attention to (i.e. a simple altar). The altar can be designed in whatever way you’d like, but at a minimum I'd suggest having a candle on it that you can light during this phase. Other things people often like to include are: incense, statues, pictures, flowers, rocks, other natural objects that have some sort of spiritual significance, etc. If you are doing the ceremony with others it’s also nice to co-design the altar. Meaning that everyone contributes something of significance to it.
In the same way that we take care of our space when friends, family, or a lover is coming to visit, so too with this phase of the ceremony we take care of our space and invite in the beloved presence of own deepest intention.
Journey
Intention
“Everything rests at the tip of motivation.”
— Tibetan Buddhist proverb
What’s the most important thing? What am I here for? What is my deepest intention? Each of these questions moves us toward clarifying our deepest intention for participating in this ceremonial practice period.
This phase is spent relaxing into the space we’ve created and contemplating why we’re here. And not just why we’re here, but why we’re really here!
But contemplating isn't enough—we must also express our aspiration. So this phase involves personal reflection on our motivation for participation, whatever that may be, as well as an outward expression of that intention. If you’re with others that often means sharing your deepest intention aloud with one another. If you’re alone that means writing it down or recording it in some other way.
It’s also good during this phase to plan out what type of meditation practice, and how much of it you’ll be doing during the Meditation Phase.
Once our Intentions are clear we take the...
Sacrament
Once we have connected with, and have communicated, our deepest intentions we then take the sacrament. Here, sacrament simply means a ‘sacred substance’. We are relating to the psychedelic as a substance which can help reveal and deepen our experience of sacredness. Or more precisely, a substance that can help eliminate the false notion that there’s anything which is not already sacred.
Practically speaking, during this phase we initiate the “trip” by ingesting the substance. This also brings up the very important point about dosage. There’s huge variance here in terms of assessing an appropriate dose for a particular substance. With more natural substances (such as mushrooms or ayahuasca) it can be difficult to measure the active dose, or to know just how potent a particular dose will be. Here, it’s helpful to do some research beforehand—erowid.com is a great resource for this—to understand where the substance was sourced, and if it has been utilized before how it went.
After taking the sacrament we enter into...
Meditation
After we’ve taken the sacramental substance we move on to formally practicing meditation. I'd recommend something like a 30-60 minute practice period to begin, just after ingesting the substance. You can obviously go as long as you like, but this is a starting suggestion, and it’s based on entering into the active phase of the psychoactive experience with a meditative mindset.
Depending on how you want to structure your experience you can choose to do more or less formal periods of practice during the journey (make sure you set your alarms beforehand!). You can also experiment with a more formless type of practice. This isn't the same as just hanging out and playing out our habitual patterns. Rather it’s a broadening of the understanding of what meditation is and what it includes. Now we can begin to relate to everything as meditation in a more free form and spacious way. Our interactions and our spontaneously arising experiences become the meditation. Whatever we do is meditation, a fresh and unbounded way of relating to life.
Integration
Closing
At some point the arc of the ceremony will start to come to a natural end. As we “come down” the first part of this phase involves recognizing that things are coming to a close. Use your intuition to recognize when things are ending and acknowledge it. It’s always possible to prematurely assume that things are wrapping up, and since some of these psychedelics can come on in waves I’d recommend waiting a bit, even after you think things are coming to a close.
In the very final moments of closing you can extinguish the flame on the altar and bow to formally close up. This physical gesture marks the final end point of the formal ceremony. It brings closure.
Reflecting
After the ceremony is complete spend some time reflecting on how it went, either by yourself, or with your fellow psychonauts. Make sure and look back at the intention you set and reflect on how the rest of the session related to that intention. What was experienced and what is being learned? And also, what are you grateful for? Gratitude is the practice of recognizing what’s good. It breaks us from the spell of cynicism and shines a light on our unrecognized areas of privilege.
Journaling
One way to make your reflections more powerful is to journal them. Actually spend some time writing down your reflections, making note of any earth shattering insights, especially those that you'll want to continue working with in practice. Integration is definitely the hardest part of this process, as it involves taking deep existential & psychological insights and translating them into compassionate action.
Vincent Horn is an American dharma teacher in the insight meditation and Pragmatic Dharma lineages. He’s also the co-founder and host of the Buddhist Geeks podcast, exploring dharma in the age of the network. “Meditating on Psychedelics” was first published as a teaching of the Heart of Insight open source dharma lineage.
ψ संघ