🇬🇧
Buddhist Geeks Guide
HomeTrainingsRetreats
English
English
  • ☸️ What is the Buddhist Geeks Approach?
  • ☠️ The Warning Label
  • Meditation
    • ⚙️ Modular Meditation
    • 🔯Several Ways to Meditate
      • Concentration
        • Teachings
          • Concentration is a Super Power
          • The Process of Purification
          • The Phases of Concentration
          • Access Concentration
          • Deepening Concentration
          • Directing & Sustaining
          • On Selecting a Meditation Object
          • The Feedback Loop of Concentration
        • Guided Meditations
          • Discovering your Concentration Object
          • Focus on Breath
          • Kasina Meditation
          • Focus on Joy
          • Focus on "1"
          • Focus on Walking
          • Focus on Dishes
          • Focus on Email
      • Mindfulness
        • Teachings
          • The Six Senses
          • The Four Categories of Experience
            • 1) Body Sensations
            • 2) Charge
            • 3) Mind States
            • 4) Thoughts
          • Immersed in Experience
          • At Home in the Body
          • Patterns of Feelings
          • How to Cool the Flames of Anger with "RAIN"
          • Letting the Practice Do You
          • Opening Beyond Thought
        • Guided Meditations
          • Expanding the Field of Mindfulness
            • Mindful of Breathing
            • Mindful of Body
            • Mindful of Emotions
            • Mindful of Thinking
            • Mindful of Experience
          • Mindful of Standing
          • Mindful of Walking
          • Mindful Walking Outside
          • There is Driving
          • Mindful of Grocery Shopping
          • Mindful of Procrastination
          • Mindful Work Break
          • Mindful Meetings
      • Heartfulness
        • Teachings
          • The Divine Abodes
          • Learning to Be a Good Friend
          • Faces of Compassion
          • Natural Joy
          • Balanced with All That Is
          • Heartfulness Phrases
        • Guided Meditations
          • May Love Arise
          • Heartful of Forgiveness
          • Heartful of Kindness
          • Heartful of Compassion
          • Heartful of Joy
          • Heartful of Equanimity
      • Inquiry
        • Guided Meditations
          • What is This?
      • Awareness
        • Teachings
          • Doorways to Awareness
          • The Paradox of Being & Doing
          • Feeling to Infinity
          • Living from the Place of Emergent Presence
          • Presence = Embodiment + Awareness
        • Guided Meditation
          • The Space of Awareness
          • Expanding the Field of Awareness
          • Loving What Is
          • What is Awareness?
          • Embodied Awareness
      • Embodiment
        • Teachings
          • The Wisdom of the Body
          • Six Points of Posture
        • Guided Meditations
          • Finding Your Seat Sequence
            • Six Points of Posture
              • Balance
              • Alignment
              • Attitude
          • Preparing the Ground for Just Sitting
    • 🧬15 Meditative Dyads
      • Concentrated Mindfulness
      • Concentrated Inquiry
      • Concentrated Awareness
      • Mindful Inquiry
      • Mindful Awareness
      • Heartful Concentration
      • HeartMindfulness
      • Heartful Inquiry
      • Heartful Awareness
      • Awareness Inquiries
      • Embodied Concentration
      • Embodied Mindfulness
      • Embodied Heartfulness
      • Embodied Inquiry
      • Embodied Awareness
    • 💦3 Forms of Meditation
      • Silent Meditation
      • Guided Meditation
      • Social Meditation
    • 🍄Meditating on Psychedelics
      • Preparing
      • Journey
      • Integration
  • Wisdom
    • 🙏Modes of Practice
      • Formal Practice
      • Life Practice
      • Spontaneous Practice
    • ☯️ Practicing with Polarity
      • Movement & Stillness
      • Emptiness & Form
      • Self & Others
    • 🌓The Phases of Insight
      • The Seeking Phase
      • The Effort Phase
      • The Breakthrough Phase
      • The Disillusionment Phase
      • The Equanimity Phase
      • The Completion Phase
    • 🌊Waves of Wakefulness
      • 1. Glimpse
      • 2. On Demand
      • 3. Always Already
      • 4. No Escape
      • 5. Integration
      • 6. Emergence
  • Ethics
    • 💡Transparent Generosity
    • ☸️ Open Source Dharma
    • 👩‍🏫 Buddhist Geeks Teacher's Code of Ethics
    • 💟Reconciliation Process
Powered by GitBook
On this page
  • Energy
  • Time
  • Space
Export as PDF
  1. Meditation
  2. Meditating on Psychedelics

Preparing

The Meditating on Psychedelics Simple Ceremony is a way of bringing the intentional practice of meditation together with a psychedelic catalyst.

PreviousMeditating on PsychedelicsNextJourney

Last updated 5 years ago

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