Before I get into the topic for today’s post, a bit of meta-processing….
First, I want to say that I wanted my $9000 back from Daniel Shankin. And it looks like I’m walking away without a dime. Daniel and I want different things, and we couldn’t come to an agreement. This blog is my effort to integrate that experience.
Peter Levine, the creator of Somatic Experiencing, says that emotions are the result of thwarted survival impulses. Healthy aggression – the impulse for self-protection – when thwarted, becomes anger. I am writing here so that I don’t become angry. I’ve got some healthy aggression around this situation, and I’m going to honor it.
Second, I want to further clarify, maybe just for myself, how I want to go about this. Writing is hard. I have other things to do. In the past I’ve struggled with perfectionism. And this is a difficult topic. The solution, I think, is to allow myself to show up here messy and incomplete. Thanks for the grace.
I also want to take a page from Shankin’s book. His newsletter “Red Things on Tuesday” goes out most Tuesdays. Notwithstanding that I’ve unsubscribed, I admire Daniel’s ability to run his content machine, teach his classes, and get a blog post out every week. So I’ll emulate that here in a further effort to learn something from him, and thereby get my money’s worth.
Ok. Here now is my account of the incident. I’ll try to keep commentary to a minimum. There’s plenty of time to wonder from every angle. For now, here are the facts as I see them.
The Tam Integration Psychedelic Integration Coaching Training took place mostly on Zoom. But in mid February there was an in-person retreat in Berkeley, California. The retreat was three days long – a Friday through Sunday, and included, on Saturday night, a changa ceremony with a couple of the folks from Sacred Garden Community.
On Sunday we had our integration circle. It ran long – about three hours – and I could see that one of my cohort mates – a woman about my age – was fading, checking out, glazing over. When the circle finally finished, we took a break for snacks and tea and bathrooms. The woman was sitting on a bench just outside the room, looking a bit worn out. Others were nearby, coming and going with their snacks. I sat down next to her and immediately offered to not be next to her. To be at the other end of the bench, or somewhere else entirely. She said I was ok where I was.
My intention was to offer a bit of simple presence and light social engagement. I knew she was interested in astrology because she’d recently started a group chat for the cohort on that topic. I know very little about astrology. I’d struggle to name all the signs off the top of my head, much less their order in the zodiac. But a couple of days before coming up to Berkeley, a friend had showed me the Co-star app at tea. I’d downloaded it and made an account.
Back to the bench. I asked this woman if she’d heard of Co-star. She hadn’t. I opened the app on my phone, handed it to her, and she started scrolling through my chart. I did not ask her to do this. I was not looking for a reading. But I am an open, curious, and playful person so her action wasn’t unwelcome.
As she scrolled she said, more than once, something like “wow, Peter, I really see you. You feel so deeply.” Your Mercury, she said, your moon, your Libra something something, and so on. “You feel so deeply.”
I said in mushroom journeys I’d had visions of being sort of like a clam, tentatively reaching out of my lonely shell to meet the world. Then she said, “but there’s a pearl.” Ah, I said, it’s funny you say that. I wrote a poem called The Pearl about my first experience with bufo. And I recited it.
(I put it in my prior post but here it is again.)
The Pearl
o god my god
my god my god
o thank you
o my god
and fuck you
fuck you
o my god
o fuck you
o my god
oo
o
god
my god
Let me go back for a moment. I don’t remember when exactly, but at some point before this, I think shortly after I’d sat down, I offered her my hand. I was sitting to her right. I offered her my left hand, palm up, and she placed her right hand into it, palm down.
I don’t remember exactly when or how the contact disengaged, but it’s possible, even likely, that I was looking into her eyes and holding her hand when I got to the ‘fuck you’ part of the poem.
Anyway, when I was done with the poem she said something like “so that’s bufo” and I said something like “well, you feel deeply and then, you know, things happen in life.” And then she saw Robin, Daniel’s teaching assistant in the cohort, and said “hey Robin can I talk to you for a second?” And she got up and left.