Origin Story
The Flying Sage Journal - #1
Hello & Welcome 🧙
Hello beautiful human. Welcome to the first edition of The Flying Sage Journal! My intention behind this newsletter is to offer you personal insights and learnings of mine while also serving as a key to access perks and benefits within The Flying Sage community. If you are curious to learn more, you can find the about page here. You can also learn more about The Flying Sage itself here.
In every edition of this newsletter, I would like to open with a direct excerpt from my own personal journal. Since this is the first edition, I thought it would be fitting to go all the way back to the start of my journey with using psychedelics.
It comes from a period in my life in between high school and university. A time where I was beginning to experiment with psychedelics in a more profound way which lead to great insight but at the same time, a bit of destabilization as I did not have a lot of support navigating the psychedelic space.
Over the years I have become more familiar with the psychedelic terrain and have come to understand just how important integration is. I hope my journal shares in these newsletters will resonate with some of you out there who are also on your own journey exploring psychedelics and how they can help serve as tools for a better life - whatever that looks like for you.
Feb.12.2015
“Is it just an escape from isolation? Is the spiritual mind a welcoming environment for the anxious individual? I feel like I have began my way down a rather uncertain path and I don’t recognize myself these days. I don’t really find lots of stuff funny anymore either. The range of things that humour me has become narrow or at least that is what it feels like.
I am too aware of my own thoughts. I experience them like a movie but the image is always flickering with sensations of doubt. The theatre itself is confined and does not have many films to select from. The story is a bit repetitive and lacking momentum. But this is my story at the moment.
I often come up with theories as to why I have developed this attitude but none of them really stick. Most of my thoughts do not make it out into physical form.”
So here I am. 7 years later, and doing my best to put things i n t o w o r d s. I have always loved writing and I am now at a point where I am excited to share more of my journey with YOU! A lot has happened in the past 7 years. I graduated from UBC with a Cognitive Systems degree. I started a business. I worked with MAPS Canada for 3 years. I’ve connected with many incredible beings that have taught me more than I could imagine. I’ve loved and had my heart broken a few times. I have experimented with a lot of psychedelics (both in recreational and therapeutic settings). I’ve travelled to 16 countries (mostly by myself). I have lived this wonderful, magical thing called life the best way I know how and I am thrilled for what’s to come. If you would like to join me on this journey and directly support the work I am doing, please consider subscribing! Hope you enjoy the rest of the newsletter…
Community is Foundational 🤍
The Flying Sage is focused on building psychedelic community and you might be asking… why? Here are some reasons why I think community is foundational to a bright future with psychedelics…
Community is bottom-up. Although working directly with governments and policy is essential to pave the way forward for psychedelics, it’s equally as important to inform and educate the people that we interact with everyday. Community models allow us to affect change at a grass roots level and this means building a more secure foundation.
Community is intimate. I believe the future of healing happens first in our immediate circles. One of the biggest lessons from the psychedelic experience is that we can heal ourselves. When we come together in community we can outsource some of our healing to the collective. We can actually tap into the intelligence of the group and this is where connection and well-being thrives.
Community empowers experience. Healing through community prioritizes sharing and being vulnerable. In this way, community draws our experiences out into sacred containers where those experiences are given power.
The Primacy of Direct Experience 🎭
Following from this idea, I would like to try and summarize an interesting lecture from the legendary Terence McKenna. This lecture was held in June of 1944 on what he calls the primacy of direct experience.
For McKenna, this powerful concept is intimately entwined with his interpretation of the meaning of life. Expanding on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and what he calls “care for the project of being”, McKenna argues that transcendence is ultimately found through our senses.
Not through scripture. Not through lecture. Not through gurus. But through the felt presence of direct experience alone.
The main point being that as humans in today’s culture, we need to reclaim our experience if we want to expand our awareness. We need to honor what our conscious experience offers us. This was the tune back in 1944 and I would argue the same rings true today. In fact, with nuance on the decline and attention spans drastically dwindling, developing our internal compass is essential.
McKenna articulates that most of our systemic problems are a result of “deadening of feeling” and "if we could feel the agony of what we do, we would stop doing it”. I think this is an interesting point to stress as psychedelics are often championed for their ability to provide access to feelings of interconnectedness. The scientific literature has since supported this but to what extent to people actually change their behaviour based on “feeling interconnected”? I think the data on this is currently lacking.
There are also interesting parallels here with the concepts that Jamie Wheal covers in his latest book Recapture the Rapture too. For both McKenna and Wheal, they emphasize a need to enrich our lives with more frequent access to peak states derived from tools we all have at our disposal. Tools like sex, psychedelics, dancing and travel.
The ramifications of this are powerful. We literally have everything we need to bolster our awareness and expand our consciousness right within the temples of our own living bodies. Transcendence is an inside job.
I often think about what McKenna would think of the current world we inhabit. It’s so fascinating to hear him speak of the potential of something like the internet to connect the world before the internet had really taken off. Towards the end of the lecture Terence ponders about the future and hopes that “where spiritual advance is discussed, I want psychedelics to be discussed. Where transformative social visions are put forth, I want psychedelics to be part of the agenda.”
I hope he would be happy about the progress that has been made. I know I sure am.
To wrap up, I thought I would leave you with a couple direct quotes from this lecture worth pondering on:
“We need to live our lives in the light of the assumption of an open future, not an absolutely free future but not a determined future. An open future in which acts of human authentication—acts of human authenticity—push forward the universal project of the conservation of novelty.”
“Shamanism is the science of direct experience and it’s laboratory is the human body”
- Terence McKenna
Also, just for fun, here’s a picture of me from 2016 in Madrid wearing a Terence McKenna shirt because McKenna is the OG.
Sage Wisdom 🌀
To close off, I wanted to highlight some wisdom from Zhuang Zhou (also known as Chuang Tzu or Master Zhuang), my favorite ancient Chinese philosopher. My favorite thing about Zhuang Zhou is his ability to speak in poem and paradox.
“Once upon a time, I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.”
- Zhuang Zhou
This passage really speaks to me. It not only emphasizes the importance of dreaming but also the significance of being the creator of our own realities. What does it spark in you? ⚡
Farewell Until Next Time
Thank you for reading all the way through. I hope you have enjoyed this first free sample of The Flying Sage Journal. If you would like to read more things like this, gain access to perks in our community and also directly support the work that I am doing, then please consider subscribing and sharing this with a friend.
I would LOVE to hear any feedback you have on this newsletter too. Please feel free to reach out to me directly: michael@theflyingsage.ca
With psychedelic love and gratitude,
- Michael 🤍