LEARNING AND PSYCHEDELICS

How to Learn

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few." - Shunru Suzuki

Remarkably, many people are never taught how to learn or are taught highly inefficient ways to expand their knowledge and skills. Formal education often relies upon simple repetition to teach, regardless of the limitations of this approach. The popularization of “life hacks” has begun to open people’s minds to alternative learning strategies, which often focus on approaching skill building or decision-making in novel, and counter-intuitive ways with great success.

One approach to learning that has proven highly effective when combined with psychedelics is to view every topic with a “beginner’s mind”. This is not a new concept, originating in the Zen concept of Shoshin, but many life hackers have gravitated to it due to its effectiveness.

The premise is simple: regardless of prior experience, if one approaches every learning experience with a beginner’s mind, the chance of deep learning and radical breakthroughs are maximized. One adopts an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions regarding any subject, despite one’s own level of knowledge. One also assumes that every person one meets has the potential of teaching something new, even if the student is better educated, more experienced and more intelligent than the teacher.

Note, the beginner’s mind never requires you to defer to another’s opinions or expertise. It merely requires one to approach learning with as open a mind as possible. Step one is to attempt to fully understand the material that is being taught, and step two, which only happens after you understand the perspective of the instructor, is to evaluate whether to incorporate the information into your life or behavior. With such an approach, the worst case outcome is that you now understand a different person’s perspective. The best case is that you have learned something valuable to improve your own skills and life.

The Expectancy Effect

Psychedelics display a remarkable “expectancy effect”. The expectancy effect means that the experience you anticipate having is the experience you will have. If you expect a deeplt religious experience, you are likely to have one. If you expect to have joyous fun at a music festival on psychedelics, that’s exactly what is likely to happen. And if you expect to start to change your life through personal growth, or become closer to your spiritual goals, you are very likely to do so.

Because of the expectancy effect, it is important to approach a psychedelic trip with intentionally: regardless of the type of experience you want to have, you should formulate a clear vision of your expectations and desires prior to the psychedelic experience. Doing so will maximize the chances of you having the experience you desire.

You Remain in Charge

Often people are surprised by how much control they have during a psychedelic trip. If anything at any point stops feeling good, you can change your emotional state and mental process by changing your environment and changing your focus. Be sure that everyone you are sharing your experience with has read this guide on assisting during challenging trips.

The first step of dealing with a complex or challenging trip is to ask yourself whether you are OK with the challenges or complexities. Often great personal growth occurs during experiences that have moments of challenge. So your role in taking care of yourself is to balance growth opportunities with unnecessary or unhelpful emotional pain. Be kind to yourself, and if the trip is not heading down a fruitful path, change the course. You can always return to what you were working on a little later in the experience.

To re-focus a challenging experience, first, move to some place with more light. Natural light is best, but even a well-lit room with warm light will impact people substantially. Put on upbeat, happy music. Assuming you have companions on your journey, ask one or more to sit with you for a short time and talk about upbeat things (and respect their need for personal time as well). Do not try to explain what is going on for you, the goal is to change your focus away from whatever is feeling challenging, and the quickest way to do this is to focus on what brings you most joy. Make sure they understand that the role they are serving is not to understand your pain or challenge, but to help you move to a different emotional place. Enjoying a beautiful view, recounting a great meal you shared, or talking about something you both are looking forward to are the types of things that will help you move on. Sometimes it takes a bit of persistence, but we have never seen anyone not able to move beyond challenging emotions to a better place with a little dedication and patience.

Objectivity of Psychedelics

Ego dissolution/ego-death is a central concept in mindfulness, Jungian psychology and most forms of mysticism. On higher doses of psychedelic drugs, people often feel partial or total ego-dissolution: the “I” disappears and the person’s consciousness transcends to another place in a phenomenon that is challenging to describe, and is often described using vague wording and imperfect analogies (here’s one of the better treatments). But in simple terms, in day-to-day life, each of us is an “I”, and we are constantly observing the world from our personal perch. During ego dissolution, the “I” is simply gone. The world remains, and the tripper is an integrated part of that world and no longer a third-party observer.

The role of ego dissolution has become a focus of scientific speculation and analysis. A groundbreaking article, The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging, published by in 2014 by a group of the leading psychedelic researchers active today considers a wide variety of scientific and philosophical topics related to psychedelic compounds. One theory advanced is that during partial or total ego dissolution, the brain is susceptible to change because the “I” is not there to cast judgments, which allows the brain to indulge in novel thought processes.

What is clear from our years of practice, is that the brain on psychedelics facilitates observation without evaluation in a powerful way. We have seen people have breakthrough moments of what life could be like with a clear differentiation between observation and judgment during psychedelics, and then through post-trip reinforcement, have integrated this novel thought process into their daily life. One frequently quoted philosophical statements is “The ability to observe without evaluation is the highest form of intelligence.” If this is true, then psychedelic drugs absolutely have the ability to enhance higher intelligence in a single trip.