2) The Power of Awe — How to get it and Why it Matters
I wonder when they will bring my Jello?
Having touched on the potential healing benefits of awe in Part One, it is important to be aware of common traps.
While some scientists believe psychedelics are anti-addictive, others are skeptical, particularly in the case of people struggling with addictions, schizophrenia or psychosis. In a recent Rich Roll podcast, Anna Lembke, MD, a neuroscientist who studies and treats addiction, sounded the alarm. She doesn’t believe there is a pill that can give a lasting and meaningful transformative solution. Through her experience with addiction, she explains sustained, long-term spiritual awakening requires committing oneself to difficult and often painful work.
“A pill or substance may give you ‘a shadow’ of a transformation but not in the deeply imbedded neurological way that is necessary for sustained wellness and recovery. People want the spiritual awakening without doing the hard work to get there.”
In addition, she points-out that those suffering with addiction may be impulsive to any quick fix and repeat frequent dosing in a frantic “more is better” pursuit I describe below.
Despite the caution and differing views among professionals, there is unmistakable scientific enthusiasm around psychedelics. And, although their use is currently illegal at the federal level, in 2018 researchers from John-Hopkins suggested reclassifying the status of psychedelics, citing studies producing long-lasting results in the treatment of depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders.
To date, Oregon, Denver, Oakland, Santa Cruz, Washington, DC, and Somerville and Cambridge, MA have moved towards decriminalizing psilocybin. The state of Oregon both decriminalized psilocybin and also legalized it for therapeutic use.
Given this shifting landscape, it is strongly encouraged to hire a “guide” who can sort this out if you wish to get awed this way. Your guide should be able to direct you towards a positive experience, especially because psychedelics are considered “suggestible,” meaning your mind-state can determine the nature and direction of the trip. This feature supports the idea of a patient receiving psychotherapy-on-psychedelics in a controlled space. A skillful guide will use “suggestibility” when the experiencer is feeling uncertain. In such a case, the guide suggests curiosity and moving towards — rather than away — from stimulus. This “moving towards” fear or discomfort is reported to result in valuable, previously hidden insights and that is one reason psychologists are hopeful regarding a controlled, medicinal psycho-therapeutic use of these drugs.
The “more is better” fail
An awe experience is potentially life changing, and even a glimpse of awe can transform your life. It’s important to understand the dangers and risks involved when someone, especially with addictive tendencies, has an accidental awe experience. They may be tempted to reproduce the circumstances, expecting to reach awe again. But they misunderstand where their awe came from and attempts at reproducing the circumstances over and over can lead to unfortunate, and in some cases, fatal outcomes.
Suppose you find yourself on the edge of a 15,000-foot cliff in a wingsuit, about to jump? Or, you are hoping this next injection of heroin will give you enough relief from your current chaotic state to hit that perfect moment years ago? In these cases, you might still be trying to resurrect the circumstances of a joyful but accidental awe experience. When thrill, awe and relief seekers fail to recreate the state they are seeking, they may assume, “I just need to go higher, deeper, more, more, more.” Some of these awe re-constructionists might meet a tragic end and some could get caught in a web of addiction or a cult.
To illuminate this, let’s look at a more benign and amusing example of a mistaken cause of awe. It comes from a friend describing the birth of her first baby.
The moment her first baby was placed in her arms, she experienced an overwhelming “popping-open.” She was fully absorbed in deep bliss, encompassed in love. Understandably, she anticipated another close-up with awe at the birth of her second baby. But, while she said, “It was nice and all,” there was no awe. Upon the arrival of her third baby, she confessed one of her initial thoughts after delivery was, “I wonder when they’ll bring my Jello?”
How did her awe shrink to a merely happy occurrence at baby two and then tumble to thoughts for Jello by number three? In cases of accidental awe, like this example, she mistook the birth as the cause of her awe. But something else arose that blocked her awe at the births of babies two and three.
There is a mechanism that releases awe. We find the answer in the following somewhat diverse pathways to awe. The critical question is, what do these paths have in common?
