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The elusive Buddhist concept of anatta, or non-independent self (non-self), is often difficult to grasp and leaves practitioners and students confused, and yet it is one of the three marks of existence that underlie Buddhist teachings. The other two marks are dissatisfaction or suffering, and impermanence.
“How can this thing I think of as me not exist? And if that is actually true, then who am I?”
I often hear this during ketamine sessions from clients as the ego dissolves, disappears, and reforms, leaving them sometimes frightened of dying or not existing, other times exhilarated at the freedom of being nothing and everything at the same time, no longer constricted within a small sense of self. The clients who come to me hoping for an “ego death” are usually the ones who scream and yell loudest when it actually happens, versus those who come with humility and willingness to surrender to whatever arises and unfolds. They seem to experience the true inner peace and freedom that come when they are no longer bound to conditions of their minds.
It is said we suffer when we cling and attach to the idea of who we think we are.
1) We continue to change and grow, so who we were is not who we are now, and who we are now is not who we will be tomorrow. Impermanence is nature, and we see it in nature from the smallest atom to the cosmos. To stay stuck rather than be fluid is to fight nature.
2) We are so much greater, more expansive, and ultimately more unlimited than we can imagine, so clinging to the idea of who we think we are leaves no room for the beauty and mystery of who we really might be to unfold and emerge. To become who we really are, we first need to become nobody (really let go of our beliefs and be open and curious about who we might be without conditioning).
We discover this fairly routinely during psychedelic therapy: We are far more and never actually the same as who we think we are.
Far more
In Zen, we use the image of a dewdrop to capture the essence of our true nature. Just as a dewdrop contains the reflection of the world around it, the self contains the whole of the universe as well, as we experience this directly in psychedelic experiences. The self cannot and does not exist without all other elements of the universe.
In a very fundamental way, all things in the known universe are made of various elements and are interconnected by the space between molecules. The difference between us and them, and you and me, is actually fictional and made into fact only by our thinking, causing disparities and great suffering.
Did you know you existed in your grandmother before your mother was born? You were stored in your mother’s egg, and she was stored in your grandmother’s egg, and so on. Some of us may have physically and emotionally distanced ourselves from our birth families, but there is no escaping their influence, good, bad, and ugly.
In a therapy that is about both us and everything, we can explore how we have become stuck in the very constricting and isolating experience of “me,” with all the aches and pains, traumas, sorrows, missteps and misdeeds, and heartbreaks. So many of us become overly attached to and hyper-focused on our pain and who we think we are. Many clients come to me desperately seeking peace, space, and freedom from the very heartaches they are obsessed with. Taking the both/and non-independent-self approach is healing, and ultimately liberating, because we unbind from our attachment to our ego and our suffering since we learn we are fundamentally so much more.
When the ego dissolves, and the cosmos presents itself in therapy, it offers the client an opportunity to discover who they truly are, way beyond and deeper than the limited boundaries of their perceived self. When the client sees themselves within or as trees, dirt, insects, rivers, lava, planets, and space, they develop an awareness of their connection to the world around them that carries forward after the session. This demonstrates anatta or non-independent self as well. Without sunlight, soil, plants, and animals, our bodies couldn’t exist, so our “self” is also made up of these materials.
When we discover we are fundamentally a part of nature and the cosmos and learn we are inextricably and undeniably connected to every human being on earth, we start to care more. Becoming nobody is actually good for humanity and for the planet. Dropping our limited sense of self allows us to humbly serve. It’s that simple. Psychedelic psychotherapy seems to not only help us heal from our individual traumas and wounds but also increase our compassion and concern for the welfare of life itself in its inexhaustible forms. We are at once separate, unique individuals and part of the whole, like a drop of ocean water is still the ocean in the shape of a drop.
Psychedelics Essential Reads
The freedom of impermanence
Nothing lasts.
Not a thought.
Not an emotion.
We are more than these fleeting phenomena.
In psychedelic therapy, we often become the observer of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sensations, emotions, and beliefs. We see their ever-changing nature and know fundamentally we are not these things. We simply experience these within our awareness and in our bodies. We are both the awareness and what is experienced simultaneously. This is a profoundly freeing way of being, as we feel what is present but are not stuck in it. We become fluid, adaptive, expansive, and able to hold all the parts in our wholeness. We don’t limit our understanding of who we are to these fleeting experiences or ideas of who we think we are. During this type of therapy, my clients often report feeling so much relief from the pressures and anxieties of trying to become someone, as they experience the true peace and freedom of just being exactly who they are.
