The Protectors

I find these entries hard to write sometimes.  I avoid them.  Part of me thinks that if anyone reads them they will think I am absolutely crazy and part of me just struggles to put it down on paper because it forces me to think about everything. But I know that putting it down, the good and the bad, the weird and the factual, is important for my own healing.  My words on paper are always a way I have purged what is in my head and that must continue for my own personal growth. If you have read along this far in the blog a sincere thanks.  I know it is not always easy to take a tiny peak into the inner workings of my brain.

I have been thinking about something I read saying that the layers of mucus in your nose can shield you from viruses etc entering your body thru those mucus membranes.  I started to wonder if my very thick mucus could be possibly blocking some of the spravato from entering my system.  I also read that the medicine is intended to enter the body that way and that if it goes down your throat it is useless.  I always feel like I am swallowing a lot of it with my chronic postnasal drip so this time (I know…better late than never right?) on session 15 I decided to blow my nose before the treatment and also to not inhale deeply.  Just squirt and breathe normally. So I went into the bathroom for my routine pee before I started and I remembered to blow my nose. 

Back in the chair I settled in rather awkwardly.  I was in the end chair by the far side furthest from the bathroom again which I don’t care for but at least the playlist was perfection. I really should have asked the nurse what the name of the playlist is because it is my favorite. 

I do my squirt and wait.  I actually held my nose closed like I do when I am afraid I will sneeze it out and I did that with all 3 doses.  On the last dose I actually did sneeze after I left go of my nose but I tried to hold it in so I didn’t sneeze it out all over me. So all doses on board, I reclined my chair. And then I entered the most intense trip to date.  The Ketamine black was the blackest black I have ever seen.  It was indescribable and even beyond the deep intense black I usually experience. 

It was so intense that, for the first time, I started to question what I had done.  I will say that everything was very vivid.  There were colors I usually do not see and everything was very clear.  It was not like a dream.  It was like I could reach out and touch what I was seeing.  At points I had to tell myself that it wasn’t real and that it would be over soon but kept wondering when that would be.  It was like I had buckled into a roller coaster and just wanted that ride to end. 

Don’t get me wrong, it was not necessarily bad and now that I am in the light of clarity I can see that it was a means to an end.  The more intense my trip, the more I can extract, the clearer things are.  So I would not change it.  It is how I am going to heal.  I just need to strap in and dive for the results that I want. I was able to do that this time. It was almost like a bungee jump.  I was strapped in and safe the whole time and I knew that but it was, at the same time I jumped into the abyss and it was an intense dive down into a place I had never been before.

I want to say that every trip, even the less intense ones, are just a series of images.  Most of the time they don’t really seem to fit together and half the time I am like WTF am I even seeing.  It also doesn’t help that I don’t remember most of it, so when I do see something that really resonates with me amongst the chaos I try very hard to remember it, to store it, for later to analyze. 

The things that stood out to me the most at first seemed like not much but after I was more awake and could focus my thoughts they became more meaningful.  That is why I always recommend writing things down and really allowing them to resonate with you beyond the trip.  Talk to someone. Your friend, your spouse, a therapist in those early minutes after the treatment when things are still fresh and clear as they often diminish and disappear as the amnesiac effects of the drug kick in.  You will gain so much from that.  It is that bonus healing that I feel you are cheating yourself out of if you just want the drug to do all the heavy lifting and you don’t want to do your own work in this.  This is the work part.  Do it.  It is the gift your mind is giving you if you are willing to open it. 

My gifts this trip were profound in many ways.  And some I am still uncertain of but they stood out to me, like the giant white Ganesha with its many arms.  It was covered in pink flowers (2 colors…white and pink…that I have never experienced in a trip before) and it was reaching out and gently grasping white balls of light as they passed by and eating them.  It felt strange, peaceful, but strange. 

I saw green grass squares that all fit together in a beautiful pattern.  Each one different.  I saw and felt  connection between the squares.  Like a drone shot slowly lifting above it all, the images pulled out to reveal the whole canvas of hundreds of perfectly manicured and designed squares fitting together.  I am at the center of them, part of them. I felt love at the center, a kiss and the connections built out from there.

Now you may think that sounds beautiful and it was but the bulk of the trip (and all the others) is much darker.  Monsters, etc. I am not a rainbows and unicorns person.  I wish I was.  I wish I was the person who sat in that chair and felt peace and calm the whole time.  I am not.  Jym informed me that no one he knows sees rainbows and unicorns and these trips are rarely without a strange or scary element. Since this is my first real experience with psychedelics there is a learning curve and I think I often have unrealistic expectations.

I keep hoping for the rainbows but for me my trips are usually quite dark.  Even the colors (purple, red, dark greens…and not pink or pastels.) I also see a lot of monster creatures. This time it was bug people.  Like people who transformed or were dressed as (?) bugs but still with human characteristics.  I didn’t get that at all and it was just unpleasant.  I hate bugs.  But later Jym said that lately I have been dealing with a lot of stupid people who “bug” me so maybe I manifested that people are bugs. LOL.  I like running my trips by him.  He often sees things I don’t.  I find it extremely helpful to share things with him as he helps me sort through things I am either unable or unwilling to. He is quite a gift as well to me in this. 

But the most profound discovery of this trip that stood out against the others was what I am calling the tower of protectors.  Last week’s session was filled heavily with a theme that I have seen woven into many of my trips lately.  What I called the “well”.  It is a tower around me.  I am inside in the middle.  But not like I fell in.  Like I am cocooned in it, protected by it.  I am firmly standing on the ground and looking upward. It always starts with faceless people standing side by side in a circle around me.  They are in robes of some sort, long robes with wide hoods.  I can see or sense that they are of human form but they are covered, their faces set back inside the hood in the shadow.  On this trip I could see the skin and an image of one of their faces but I do not recognize them. They are wrapped in dark robes but they do not feel dark or ominous.  They feel protective.  They are 20 times my size.  They rise up and tower around me in their circle.  It is a solid circle shoulder-to-shoulder their robes leaving no light between them.  They are not all the same height creating a cityscape line almost with the tops of their heads as I turn my gaze upward. I see sky above them but not a cloudless blue sky.  Always a disturbed sky.  A dark sky filled with fire.  In my previous trips this tower of people morphs into stone (thus my “well” description).  But in this trip the tower of people was more pronounced.  I recognized them the whole time as these human form protectors.  When inside this intense trip the clarity was greater than before so I was able to pull things out that before were hazy. 

As I am describing this to Jym on our drive home Jym asked me how many there were.  I did not know.  But I guessed and said 12.  Jym replied “Like a clock”.  Yes.  (he is so wise) They are like the hands of a great clock.  They are powerful.  They feel powerful. They feel protective. I don’t know who they are or why they are protecting me.  Only me.  There is no one else there with me.  I am alone. I am special to them somehow.  But what I can see of their faces does not seem familiar.

I sat in the car feeling its hum on the road trying to sort through everything thru the after haze of my trip and tears came to my eyes.  Many years ago Jym and I lost a friend suddenly.  His death had a profound affect on us.  In an attempt to heal months later when nothing else had worked I sought the guidance of a clairvoyant, someone who sees and communicates with the dead.  She was a conduit to the universe that we cannot see.  I was really there to find peace in his death which I received in spades that day.  I left there with no question that she was communicating with our friend. She knew things that even I did not know at the time like she said he was walking with my husband by the water.  At that moment my husband was at a church and he saw a pond and was walking along its shore. It solidified to me that she did indeed see and hear what she was saying she did. But there was also something, an aside, that stood out to me.  Something that I did not really understand at the time but it resonated with me and I have always remembered that moment vividly.

She said “There are angels around you. Many angels.  Most people have an angel, sometimes 2, but yours are very different.  They are many and not the usual small angels.  These are powerful.  They are big.  Great angels. I have never seen this before. They are telling me you have a purpose.  A great purpose.  They rise up behind you. Very tall (she looked toward the ceiling) They are guiding you to that purpose.  Trust them. (she paused as if listening) You know in your heart already what it is.” 

I did not.  I still do not.  If indeed I am surrounded by some other worldly beings expecting my greatness they are woefully disappointed.  That was all I was certain of. I have begun to doubt as the years drag on, that this was even true.  Don’t get me wrong. The whole thing sounds farfetched.  Like she tells everyone this (although I know several people who saw her and she said this to none of them). But over the years instead of inspiring me to some destined greatness, it made me feel all the more a failure.  As if I am now not just letting down myself, my family, my community but the whole universe. 

But as I reflected on this vision that appears to me multiple times now in my trips, I finally realized that the tower of beings I am seeing is them.  They are not traditional angels of our films and paintings with the white wings and ethereal glow.  I am not even sure I would call them angels.  But in our limited earthly dictionary I suppose that is what they would be.  To me they are protectors, great protectors of the universe.  I do not see them in my daily life.  I have not felt them. My only connection to them has been in these fleeting moments flashed amongst the chaotic images popping out of some old sack in my brain. 

There are 2 ways I can look at these trips.  That they are just a random extraction of 52 years of memories and junk being unpacked as if from a forgotten attic.  Or they are as a portal, an open doorway to the universe which our waking minds cannot access without assistance. I have always believed that as children we are born with a deep connection to the spirt world.  I believe that the door is left cracked but as we grow, that door is slowly shut and when we reach an age of consciousness that door is sealed closed and we are unable to access it.  People who are clairvoyant to me are simply people for whom that door has never closed for whatever reason.  To me, it is possible that our brains, which utilize only a small portion of their capacity, have a place in there that can possibly access the connection to that realm and drugs like psilocybin and ketamine can maybe unlock that door for us even if only temporarily. 

I know this sounds like I am simply assigning crazy reason to chaos and maybe I am.  But I am just throwing out possibilities.  I don’t think anyone knows the full extent of the brain’s function and certainly not the way our human bodies can connect to the spiritual universe.  The clairvoyant said that I was capable of hearing the universe if I knew how to listen.  I believe we all have that capacity it is just stunted by the tiny boxes we put ourselves into in this vast unknown universe. 

All of my weird speculation aside, I don’t know what I am seeing with the protectors.  Is it the reverberation of a miniscule connection to the spiritual universe deep inside my brain unlocking that long closed door for brief instants and allowing short bursts of light beyond?  Is it just a residual of the brain trash I am sorting through popping out of a dusty trunk, a forgotten memory from years long passed?  I don’t know.  But it was something that has resonated with me deeply to the point of tears as I made this connection outside of the bounds of the trip.  It is much for me to consider on my journey forward.

And there is one thing I know for certain.  The answer to my brokenness is inside of me. It is locked there.  I also feel that my connection to the universe is being restored slowly but is absolutely necessary.  For so long I had lost the knowledge that there even was a connection. It is hard to be in this place sometimes where I can see the extent of the damage I have been living with and existing in.   But at the same time it is hopeful that while I recognize what is broken, I also am beginning to see a path toward fixing it.