On 5MeO-DMT

One year ago.

One tiny molecule. 45 minutes. 

A life forever changed.

Unlike most, when I know something is for me, I’m not one to look too much into it. Even when it means sitting with my most powerful psychedelic on the planet, 5-MeO-DMT. 

I had no idea what I was in for, and honestly, it didn’t matter. No reading, no podcast listening, or documentary watching would have been able to prepare me for this experience.

Apparently, they call it the God Molecule. And this seems quite appropriate.

About a week before the ceremony, I heard the Zen Buddhist phrase, “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

Now, I wouldn’t dare call myself enlightened, but I have, ever so briefly, tasted enlightenment. One pull from a pipe and the veil between planes of existence was pulled all the way back, and there was God. Not some personification of God that I was meeting or seeing, but the being of God. The experience of God. The all consuming, blindingly bright, all knowing, all loving, perfect truth.

Not a revelation, but a remembering.

An experience that allowed me to fully understand that phrase that I’ve repeated countless times since last June. Because, externally, not much has changed.

There’s still the menial tasks of physical life that need tending to. There’s still the feeding of mind and body, and there’s still the work to be done with others. There’s still taxes and traffic and the Real Housewives.

And at the same time everything, *everything* is different. Because you can’t be shown the singular universal truth and not be irrevocably changed.

You just can’t.

So for me, this has shown up in so many ways, one of them being the way that I’ve been learning how to truly love others. And I do mean learning- I see now that this is a practice to be crafted, each time a chance to see where I still have work to do.

I’m learning to no longer conflate attachment, approval, and positive expectation with love; understanding the truth in, “If you love something let it free”. And I am more easily remembering the truth, the humanness of the people that have hurt me, and those I cast judgment on. I more quickly open my heart and let them in. I’ve experienced instantaneous forgiveness.

This has shown up in the way I love myself.  The way I hold, and speak to myself. The magnitude with which I trust myself even in the moments where the dark is terrifyingly black and the nights are long. The way I don’t pretend that things aren’t awful when they’re awful. The way I don’t pretend I haven’t done something amazing when I’ve done something amazing. 

The way I am letting myself be big. And be even more of me (who knew there was more?! There’s always more.) The way I am stepping into more power and more love.

And of course, there is death… 

There has been the most profound shift in my relationship with death. Up until that point, it had been a unique one. One I was working on healing after spending so many years chasing it in the way we do every other teenage celebrity crush- idolizing and lusting after it without knowing anything at all about it’s true nature.

But my experience with 5-MeO-DMT sent me swan diving into working with, and speaking openly and often about death. 

So I began to serve the dying as a death doula. I got excited to be in the presence of death, because it allowed me to be closer to the co occurring truth and mystery that it is. Feeding people, changing them, praying with them, holding space as they move towards and make their final transition.

And while it has been humbling to serve these people, I do so as a means to better serve the living. Not only my clients, but myself, and everyone I come into contact with. 

Because I understand now how righting our relationship with death, (safe, loving, and indifferent death) is necessary for us to live our fullest life. When we acknowledge with humility and reverence the end that is coming for us and everything we love, we can loosen our grip just a little. We no longer feel the need to take any of this so seriously. We can more easily receive the bounty life has available for us, and the deaths we die along the way become less devastating; we accept more easily their role in our evolution.

Because, like it or not, death is the silent guest in every room. There is no life without death. And vice versa. 

Shhyyyoooot. 

One year ago.

One tiny molecule.

And a life forever changed.