Living and Embracing Paradoxes & Polarities

By Emma Pearson

November 3, 2024

All images generated with a lot of coaxing of DALL.E

20 August 2024

And so on to my second LSD trip.

This was in early April this year, just a few weeks after my first experience, and I had been invited (“because we like you!”) to join a very small group of psychedelics facilitators and sitters-in-training for a “mini-dose” journey. The language around doses feels a little relative but I understood a “mini-dose” to be about a third of my “standard” dose, and definitely higher than a microdose which is truly tiny. The day was a sort of educational experiment for all attending in terms of, “what happens, what can happen, what might happen with this dose?” And for those of us working with clinical populations, “What kinds of people, in what situations (e.g., terminal diagnosis, or nudging towards end-of-life) might benefit more from a mini-dose than a standard dose, which can feel just a little on the wild side.

(Read about my first LSD experience write-up here: http://www.widowingemptynests.com/2024/08/17/longing-separation-devastation/)

In the days before, I reflected on my intentions/invitations, which were about living and loving the paradoxes and polarities in my life:

  • Letting pain go and letting love in
  • Releasing Mike and Julia while relishing their gifts

I had a bit of creative fun with alliteration, and summarised it with:

  • Loving and letting go
  • Releasing and relishing
  • Creating and contributing
  • Grief, gifts and gratitude
  • Thresholds and cusps

(Perhaps, in a future lifetime, I might become a good Buddhist?!)

I also brought to mind all of what I am most grateful for, and I had a long list – including the love of my parents, Mike, my kids, Medjool, my siblings, my friends, my family, and of course my dog and cat; my stonkingly good health, strength and resilience; my luck in life – yes really – despite it all, I feel I am a lucky person. Some is around “luck of the draw stuff” – including where and when (the times) I was born, the family I was born into, being educated, having lots of skills and interests, my virtues, talents, character, and all of my connections. And some is that, for as long as I remember, I have felt such awe, joy, privilege at having this chance to be alive. Seriously – the chances of NOT being born are so huge!

The day was shorter and less trippy-wild, but powerful nonetheless. I was able to stay more present to my thoughts and my mind’s wanderings. The whole experience was more cerebral and less physical and emotional. It was as if my mind, my brain, had short, sharp bursts of clarity. (I can see how micro-doses of LSD can help with focus and creativity!)

It could have been a few words or a phrase.
…an insight
… an idea for something coming up
… an invitation to consider
…or even a feeling or sensation

There was not a lot of emotion. Mike was barely, or not even present, though Julia was very much so at one point. When Julia was present, I had a sense of energy and life pulsing, sparkling, gently raining down on me from above, through me, then soaking down into the earth till no longer visible. It was beautiful, felt beautiful, and felt beautifully sad. Altogether.

I saw, in my mind’s eye, these letters and words come together and separate:
Nowhere – Now Here – Nowhere – Now Here – Nowhere – Now Here – Nowhere – Now Here –
which feels like the biggest of all paradoxes that life invites me to hold and carry…. My loves, the memories and people… both nowhere to be found, and yet also now here…always coming and going, with me even when they are not.

I spent a while enquiring into my professional life and where my work is going – it’s shifted so much these last tumultuous years – and I had the epiphany that the cycle of Loss …. Grief…. Regeneration…. Love is at the heart, is the core, of all of my work – whether in coaching individuals and teams in organisations, in grief coaching, Journey work, hospice work, in my book-to-be, or in my upcoming “Mortal Leader” immersion. Well of course!

And increased trust, in my rather dry year, that my work is my work is my work is my work, and whether paid or not, it’s good work, and I will get paid enough. Alright then. I choose trust.

I had multiple insights around my roles of “mum” and “auntie”, as well as how to host and facilitate a three-generation family and friend gathering that was coming up some weeks later.

And finally, the invitation and permission came to “be more light”, to be lighter, to bring forward more of my naturally “light” Enneagram Seven traits, which got rather covered over, what with all of the darkness that flooded into my life.

Yes indeed – I am having fun with DALL.E and seeing what can be created…
does she have the right number of fingers?

Yup – I can tap into that.
I can tap into her.
I am still that woman.
Let’s bring her back on stage.

About Emma Pearson

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