Part 1

Chapter 1 - Troubled

It was as if the entire universe had expanded around me. But, then like a rubber band would, it snapped and collapsed against me, and I fell into an infinite sadness where there was not even room to breathe and all my movements were constricted and miniscule. My legs felt heavy and my eyes would feign sleep until my head hit the pillow. Suddenly my body felt uncomfortable and I was stretched out over a dark ocean and all I wanted was to see someone on the shore.

I told god to fuck off. I fucked off the idea of god. Fallacies were everywhere, contradictions everywhere. There was a pain inside my heart and I cried so much, I could not sleep for days. There are children dying of hunger, wars in ‘his’ name, women mutilated, queers killed, abused abusive men. Our house burnt down in the early 90’s in Srinagar. Since 1947 we have been killing our selves, driving stakes deeper and deeper into ourselves. I did not so much care that God had seemed to abandon me; I still spoke to him when he would not answer back. Then I saw, through the recognition of my own depression, the pain in the world, and I knew if he existed, I was never going to be on his side. Fuck you. Fuck off. I was atheist; it helped to dull some of the pain. Only then did the nightmares begin to subside. My sleep however, was gone.

Chapter 2 - Medicated

I felt a voice. It was a kick in the head. As if I had spawned it. It did not say anything relevant; just ‘remember my password’. It was like I was thrown out of my body and then hauled back in again. I wish I could write the way I felt. For that microsecond I managed to stretch into two people at one time. As if, maybe, it was me in two simultaneous seconds that somehow skipped some time and coincided in that one tripped second. I was thrown out and pulled back in with a gigantic force that probably cannot be equaled by any sort of energy man has produced. Maybe I am going crazy.

I realized, albeit years later, the psychiatrists with whom I met through the insistence of my counselors all decided within a span of twenty minutes that I needed to be put on an army of medication. I told him that who I was in person, and who my body and mind are, are two separate entities, behaving differently, reacting differently and thinking differently. I realize only now, how he and he and he latched on to what I said about this. They did not pay as much attention to anything I said, until I spoke about this duality. It seems absurd that they found this absurd. They must be right though. 

With the prodding of my very worried mother, the seemingly gentle convincing of my therapists, and, in complete honesty, my desperation, I willingly obliged, thrice, to become a breathing zombie.

Chapter 3 - Insanity

I did LSD one full moon New Year’s night in Goa. All my friends were doing it; I was the only one who had not yet. My best friend/sister pressured me to exchange the California Sunshine I had with her Double Dipped Shiva. A few hours in I freaked out. I would talk about it more, but it would suffice to say I was terrified. My friends were of no support and seemed quite annoyed with me. It took me two years to process it, and every time I thought about it my nerves would start trembling. I had touched something inside me that had been prisoned, this insane, dark, twisted, angry wildness. It had come screaming forth, insisting on my insanity, and I was terrified.

Chapter 4 - Love

Two years later I did MDMA for the first time, with the same group of friends. All my friends were doing it; I was the only one who had not yet. My best friend/sister pressured me to take the little capsule she had made with rolling paper, storing the crystal powder delicately inside it. Twenty minutes in, the way I saw myself began to change, rapidly. My heart had flung open, as had my body, my emotions, my nervous system opened up in a way I truly believed it never could. I felt pleasure ripple through my organism, so dry before, and parched. Rivers flew through my dusty veins. I felt love radiate out of me, oozing like molten hot honey liqueur out of every orifice, every pore, melting down my skin, up my skin, into the ground, into the sky. I could talk, and laugh. It had been so long, so, so long. I had not died! Not yet!

Chapter 5 - Limbo

It would be wonderful if I could just stop existing all together. Not die. Just suddenly not be here anymore, like I never was here. I want to just stop existing like I was never here so no one will miss me and no one will be glad of my absence either. They would just be sweetly ignorant of my once breathing, living, wasting organism/orgasm. It would be wonderful too if I could be allowed to feel drastic emotions, ranging from all corners of the world. To feel all extents of everything, all at once, and it would be wonderful because that would mean I am really living, and it would remind me to breathe and stay alive. But I stay stuck between conditions and primal instincts, disallowed to live fully, disallowed to just stop existing entirely. To be lingering here, like a zombie on relaxants, it fills me up with a greater sadness, and I recline into invisibility so even when I speak, people interrupt because they don't even see me, so the voice they hear they ignore, they think it’s in their head.
That makes me sad too.

Chapter 6 - Movement

I had to get out. I had to get out, I had to leave and be far away from these people. I recognized they loved me and they were not caring for me in the way I needed to be cared for. I needed to be somewhere else. My desi girl American dream was so far away, my heart had been aching and dreaming of that country since always. This is not exaggeration. I had been longing to be here since as far back as I remember, it ached in me, I had fever dreams of being here, I missed this place I had never been to. Yes, I am part of India’s post colonial hangover. Yes, I am “apro rani nu dikri,” growing within a westernized, well educated Parsi family. I cannot deny these influences. Neither can I deny the deep inner knowing within me that kept repeating “you need to get out.” I had tried. India did not fit, Singapore did not fit. The United States still felt like a pipe dream. I had been so depressed, fighting back anxiety from the withdrawal from getting off my medications thrice, cold turkey. I was sure I would eventually kill myself. Like Sylvia, like Kurt, I would one day be able to bear no more and choose the time of my departure. However, before that happened, I had to get out.

I found a teaching program in Greece in 2011. I left for Europe. Looking back, I do not know how I resourced myself through the anxiety of travelling alone all the way to the island of Crete. I could not eat, I took shits until all I was passing was clear water, my body trembled sporadically, and I cried so much until I reached my room on the island. As the days passed, without even realizing, I had started feeling calmer again. My window looked out onto the pristine beach on my right, and the gentle snow capped hills on my left. Breathe. You are ok.

I went to Italy after Greece for two weeks. My last stop was 5 days in Cinque Terre on the north west coast. On my last midnight, after packing and a quick shower, I headed into the square under the apartment to get a last breath of the Cinque Terre night air there in Riomaggiore, the first of the five villages. The sky was a midnight blue black and littered with stars. From the edge of the square I looked down into the little dock and the restaurant accompanying it. I received a warm goodbye from a group of Italians, completely unaware of my presence, down at the docks standing with their hands pressed to their hearts, singing loudly, joyously and presumably under the influence of some Cinque Terre luscious red wine, the Italian national anthem. The sea was so clear, in the night light too I could still see the rocks of the sea bed for a couple of feet until it got too deep and too dark.
There was I, barefoot, braless, hair out into the breeze, wine in hand, on my own, smiling to myself. Smiling! To myself! How strange.  As I watched orange embers from fires fly with the breeze in the dark of the night, I was again very simply content.

Chapter 7 - Return

I was working on my very academic applications for psychology PhD programs at NYU and Columbia. Aren’t those were impressive names? My dad loved telling people “she’s applying for a PhD at NYU! At Ivy League schools! She’s going to be a doctor.” He was so proud, and I felt so good. Unfortunately for my dad, and unbeknownst to me yet, I liked doing and reading about drugs so much more than making him proud. I know what book it started with, Don Lattin’s The Harvard Psychedelic Club. I felt things inside me moving. Wait a second, these are academic professors doing LSD and writing about its proven amazing effects. Wait. A. Freaking. Second. I started learning about more of these people, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, Ken Wilbur, Staislav Grof, Walter Phanke, James Fadiman… I was sitting with my boyfriend (at the time) on top of his building one evening, flitting through the last few pages of Huston Smith’s autobiography, Tales of Wonder: Chasing the Divine. As I shut the book, I felt everything shifting. I looked up at the boyfriend and said, “Hey. I think I am in for a slow spiritual slap across my face.”

I went home and deleted all the work I had done on my applications.

Then I started looking.

I found California Institute of Integral Studies.

Part 1 (II)

Chapter 8 – Arrival

I am accustomed to looking different. I forget this to assimilate. At the T-group retreat in Petaluma, during the icebreaker exercise Kathleen Brown says, “I am a person of color.” The people of color in the circle step in. I see the Indian American girl across from me step in. Wait a second. I stepped in hurriedly. Suddenly I felt like a Crayola crayon. Person of color? What color am I? I asked a peer. She told me I am brown. Is that the color of my skin or the name of my ethnicity? She did not seem to understand my question. I was the only Crayola in my T-group, and also the only foreigner. I felt moved to share how I felt; no one spoke back. I could not speak in that group. I did not even understand what was going on. I hated all of them, each of them. Even now, around them I clam up and shut down. It was not even just about the Crayola. I kept being prodded to talk, put on the spot, how do you feel? How do I feel? I feel like not telling anyone I have known for less than a month at the very least how I feel. I feel like telling them that they are not giving me a choice and I feel trapped. I feel like I need to show up to please you, so that you feel a certain way, so that you can have a certain experience of me. I feel like no single person in that group knows what it felt like to be the one single other. I hate them all. This is my first experience of CIIS. I hate them all. Every time I come to school, I am anxious, sweating and afraid. May be I should have stayed on the medications, I think to myself sadly.

Chapter 9 - Assimilation

Gestalt class, with Lu Grey in room 1 Church Street Integral Counseling Centre. My minds are travelling too fast to really understand anything about Gestalt. I am too afraid of being called out, my body, mind and spirit are working overtime to assimilate rather than learn. I feel stuck and float-y. The little bits I gather somehow make sense to me when I think about the psychedelic journeys I have been on. Lu Grey never calls me out, until the last day in class. Other people are asking these complex questions and giving her their adoring praise. She turns to me, asks me, do you have anything to say? Nothing? Holy shit, I think. I tell her, gestalt is like psychedelic experiences. Isn’t it? She says yes, she seems expressive in her yes in a way that feels so validating to me it is just amazing! Are you interested in working with psychedelics as a therapist? She asks. Of course, I say. Great, she says. My heart is smiling.

Chapter 10 – Awakening

 “Who dares misery love,

And hug the form of death,

Dance in destructions dance

To him the Mother comes.”

-       Vivekananda (1898)

It is fall 2014, just a year since I got here. Mark Fromm told me last week in our apparent feedback session that I would be an average therapist. The only other feedback he gave me was that I used minimizing terms a few times, and that I should have a softer appearance so my client can trust me. He repulsed me. I also believed him. In therapeutic communications we were matched with a partner who would be our client for 5 weeks; Mark had observed my first dyad with Rae (name changed, of course). He showed up almost menacingly, looking straight at me while walking slowly towards me. Granted at this point the memory of him coming to sit with us has an exaggerated Sith-esque undertone, but embellishment aside I do not like being seen at all, let alone by a Sith Lord. I mean, esteemed professor. The next week in my anxieties I found myself in a blind spot with Rae. My mind was fumbling through its Rolodex of therapists things to do right now. Parts work? Parts work! I had seen Lu do this in the spring, and now I feel lost enough to try this myself. I am suddenly sharply focused as I set this up and invite her to put the part she was speaking about on the chair. I notice how smoothly I do this. She had not tried it before, and beginning with a quizzical look she transitioned smoothly into an emotional monologue at the empty chair that was actually quite full. Virginia Satir (re)introduced the idea of ‘thirdness’ or ‘third energy’ that is created from contact. As I brought awareness to the thirdness as I was experiencing it, I started changing how I was listening, how my body was listening, everything chaotic seemed to collect at this one point and start streaming into a steady stream. It was not just the thirdness. It was this recognition and work with energy that had brought something straight back into the present infinite now.

Chapter 11 - Inquiry

The few minutes before reaching school my superego will generally sneak up on me. My relationship with my superego is awful. She speaks louder than I can think sometimes. I had developed ways to interact with it, where it would be a struggle, and argument, a process of stifling, punching each other out. I am not quiet! I am protected; I need to feel comfortable to open myself. It is hard to let people look at me. I had tried to make it quiet or reasonable, but the stress with which I usually had wrangle it to be nice to me was not peace providing, just parley between pirates. In Mahaffey (1990) speaks of Ramana Mahrshi’s approach to Vedantic Self-inquiry;

“When other thoughts arise, one should not pursue them, but should inquire: “to whom do they arise?” It does not matter how many thoughts arise. As each thought arises, one should inquire with diligence, “to whom has this thought arisen?” The answer that would emerge would be “to me.” Thereupon, if one inquires, “Who am I,” the mind will go back to its source and the thought that arose will become quiescent.” (Mahaffey, 1990)

This is Alzak Amlani’s Inquiry into True Nature. This shifted something in me. I have asked these existential questions of myself many times over my life. I had never asked it to the thought though.

Walking to school, the block of CIIS becomes visible to me, I panic with the thought of the shame I may feel if I am not able to interact with people and my class. My mind floods me with the overwhelming pressure of everything I could do or say wrong reminding me I am not worthy of being, I am a terrible being. Something in myself remembers that question and I immediately turn it to myself and ask, “who is asking this?” I feel myself fizzle into complete silence. I am already at the door now, and I feel confused. What just happened? My superego is a phantom, and I only just realize it? I suddenly remember there is space in my lungs I am not using, and my shoulders are hanging ahead of my feet. I realign myself and breathe deeply, I am still amazingly confused. I felt all that heated fear just fizzle and… disappear? Where did it go? There is no time to search, I am a few seconds away from my class, but my hips seem to suddenly swagger. I sit, uncomfortable with how my body suddenly feels fluid. I imagine myself melting carelessly over my chair like a Dali painting.

“In Nisargadatta’s view, inquiry is essentially a path of negation. He insisted that it is crucial to know what you are not. His approach also enjoins the seeker to go deep into the felt sense of I am.” (Mahaffey, 1990).

Chapter 12 – (Untitled)

I feel not further away enough form school to be writing this paper and give proper mention to the things I later will want to say. I’m trying to gather academic information, but fuck it. I have been cussing all through this paper anyway. I cannot remember so many of my classes. But I remember things that struck me, and moved me, and made me shudder and scream and giggle. I remember the times I have felt alive. CIIS made those moments happen for me.

In the summer of 2015 I went for a workshop led by Bill Richards. He is the psychologist at John Hopkins University, conducting the research on the effects of Psilocybin to reduce anxiety for terminally ill persons. He talked of psychedelics, Walter Phanke, spirituality and divinity. Half way through I realize that sitting behind me is Don Lattin – he wrote the Harvard Psychedelic Club. The reason for me being at CIIS was sitting right behind me at CIIS. How spectacular, or something!

Holotropic Breathwork with Stanislav Grof, he sat near me as I went inside/outside, came back to Kali. Ayahuasca, finally teaching me self-love. My deep, deep work with Kate brought me back up through the thick veils of depression and isolation. I learnt how to listen again, not just to the social material world, but also to the inner queendoms and kingdoms inside me, my soul, my spirit. At the breathwork with Stan I sobbed incessantly. Guttural screams came from deep inside me shattering at my voice box and tumbling out in grunts and yelps and growls. It’s been two years since then. For years I believed I would kill myself eventually, the nonsensical pain would overpower me, wrap around me and strangle me. That death wish was another wish marred by misdirection, narcissism, shame and loneliness. I was wishing for spirit, for the divine, cosmos seeking. The murkiness unwrapped around me and I was left with me, opening up, being conceived and birthed at the same time. Remember when I wanted to die? I just wanted to feel like I was breathing again. I, child of no country, of no birth. There was never chord to connect me to a home, to a man, to a child. I. Expressionless. Bound with energy. I. Infinite. Born of the universe, of endless space. I. Forever evolving fetus, forever evolving androgynous baby-being. As I learnt again how to listen, how I needed to be, I come back to love.

"We’re not our skin of grime, we're not our dread bleak dusty imageless locomotive. We’re all golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed and hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset. Spied on by our eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sit-down vision." (Allen Ginsberg, 1956)