Don’t Kill Your Ego, Utilize It
The Flying Sage Journal #8
Intro
This past week I took a little trip to Vancouver Island with my partner Gabrielle. It was much needed opportunity to relax and slow down my pace a bit. We spent a lot of time enjoying nature as we explored the beaches near Sooke and on Denman Island. While I was gone I flipped through my journal and found the following passage I wanted to share with you…
Nov.29.21
“The bigger things are, the more energy they take to move. Lately I have been continuing to hold as opposed to do. I have come to appreciate that the art of leadership includes holding all the pieces carefully in mind. It’s not about doing all the work. It’s about having consistent clarity which can be achieved through prioritizing health, community and the spacious nurturing of ideas. It’s usually best to step back and let others take the lead once you have created a safe space for others to do so.”
Flying Sage Updates
I am really excited that The Flying Sage seems to have reached it’s first stable ledge from which I can step back slightly to look at all we’ve created and I suspect a large part of that has to do with how the community has stepped up. It’s beautiful to see how far the community has come along since we launched it in my parent’s backyard back in August 2021. We are running an average of 5-8 in-person events now in Vancouver with plans to expand this and we have a dedicated group of core community members that make it all happen. I am super grateful for Gabriel and Jason who help the keep this train moving along. As well, I am grateful to our other volunteers Brittany, Laura, Jovan, Aravind and Xanthe who have been supporting in other ways more recently.
In the next couple months we hope to develop a couple new flagship monthly or bi-monthly dance events which will top off our Vancouver offerings. I want to be mindful that we do not have too many events and I think we might be approaching that point soon, both from the perspective of overflowing our capacity as a team and also overloading the capacity of our community.
Once we have everything locked here in Vancouver, then the plan is to start exploring other cities The Flying Sage might like to fly to. We’ve already put out some feelers and have got some good responses. If you are reading this and would be interested in starting a Flying Sage chapter in your city, please reach out.
Now that we have the community foundation created, I am also excited to start turning my attention toward product development. I have a couple product ideas that I think our community could really love but instead of thinking, wishing and hoping, I feel the best thing to do would be to ask our community directly so if you are a member with The Flying Sage, keep an eye out for some product polls coming soon and vote for what you would most like to see!
Psychedelic Science - Denver
From June 16th - June 22nd, MAPS is going to be hosting the largest psychedelic gathering in history in Denver Colorado. Psychedelic Science is going to bring together professionals and psychedelic leaders from across the world to convene, share knowledge and explore the rapidly expanding state of the psychedelic renaissance. I honestly don’t know exactly what to expect since I have never been to an event quite like this. I attended the Psychedelic Psychotherapy Forum in Nanaimo a few years ago and the Canadian Psychedelic Summit last summer at Hollyhock but those gatherings were tiny compared to what this will be.
Overall, I am hoping it will be a great opportunity for me to make some connections in the industry and to meet people that I have only ever known in a ZOOM screen. Although I am sure there will be some interesting talks and discussions, I am most excited for the people I am going to meet and the conversations I am going to have.
Some questions I have going into the experience…
What is their target audience for this event and what level of familiarity with psychedelics do they assume from their audience?
How much content will be geared towards decriminalization vs legislation?
How will sponsors be represented?
In addition to simply attending the conference and getting the most out of it, I am excited to also be co-hosting an afterparty with good friends Louis Belleau and Jack Bunce who are the bright minds behind How To Use Psychedelics (HTUP). Louis also developed the PsyGaia hypothesis which you should check out if you are interested in how psychedelics promote nature relatedness. The intention with the afterparty Afterglow is to create a ceremonial and high energy dance event to facilitate connection and celebration for those attending the conference. If you plan to be in Denver, you can check it out here. It will be by select invite only and if you are reading this, you are invited!
Don’t Kill Your Ego, Utilize It
It’s common for people to go into psychedelic experiences wanting to kill their ego. After all, one of the most prolific benefits of psychedelic use is the age-old “ego-death”. While I believe this experience of ego-dissolution is common with the psychedelic experience and often unavoidable, I think it is also important for psychedelic voyagers to properly couch this phenomena in a grounded understanding of themselves and their psyche.
The ego is not something that should be destroyed. It’s not even something that can be destroyed. Psychedelic experiences can give us temporary experiences of ego dissolution but as we come back to baseline, the ego resurfaces and comes back online, sometimes even stronger than before.
For every person who’s ego relaxes its grip following a potent psychedelic experience, I would argue there’s another person who’s ego actually becomes tighter and bigger. This tightening can often be the result of strongly identifying with the persona of “someone who has killed their ego”. Folks can develop a bit of a superiority complex around it and the tricky thing is that the ego is sneaky! This process of further identifying with the ego can actually occur while someone wholeheartedly believes, and feels, they are moving towards openness, presence and peace.
Another issue I have seen (and experienced personally) is that ego-dissolution experiences can cause you to vilify and other your ego, treating it like something that needs to be removed. I remember after some of my first ego-dissolution experiences, I got onboard with the idea that the ego needed to go. Psychedelics gave me an increased awareness of my ego but I used that awareness like a radar; constantly attuning to when I was acting “from a place of ego” and then mentalizing and doing my best to avoid such moments in the future.
It took me at least 2 years to finally come around to the understanding that these anti-ego behaviours were actually doing me more harm than good. The ego is not something that needs to be suppressed, it needs to be integrated just like a psychedelic experience. Our efforts should be directed towards developing a healthy ego and I would argue the awareness you can gain from an ego-dissolution experience can help with this.
Remember, the ego is there for a reason! Many reasons actually. Our ego helps us ground ourselves in the world and form identity. It helps us distinguish from self and other and while it may be true that a non-dual understanding of the world seeks to dissolve this distinction between self and other, navigating everyday life and everyday people requires us to do the ego dance… so the invitation here is to use psychedelics to help refine and utilize your ego, not kill it
Finally, I would just add that this concept relates to the more general idea of transcendence as well. It is common to sometimes conceptualize transcendence as an opening and moving upward but what if transcendence also included closing and moving inward? It’s hard to maintain this when the word transcendence has linguistic connotations that tend to physically turn our head upwards but I think it’s important to hold both of these notions in hand together. Liberation is as much about our minds as it is about our bodies.
Farewell Until Next Time
I hope you have enjoyed this free edition of The Flying Sage Journal. If you would like to read more things like this, please consider subscribing and sharing this with a friend.
I would LOVE to hear any feedback you have on this newsletter and what I have shared. Please feel free to reach out to me directly: michael@theflyingsage.ca
With psychedelic love and gratitude,
- Michael 🤍
Appreciate the piece on ego. So true.