James W. Jesso – May 2014, originally published by Psychedelic American in 2015, updated Jan 2016.
{Please note that though this is written in a formal essay fashion and contains some references, it is an informal essay. The content has not be adequately updated to include most recent advance in psilocybin neuroscience but as far as my knowledge of that science goes, the model remains solid.}
The Story So Far
In 2010, I began thirteen months of utilizing psilocybin mushrooms in an attempt to heal a (self-diagnosed) depression and borderline psychosis. I was riddled with shame, guilt and a sense of worthlessness. This illness was the result of a year of reckless lifestyle choices filled with substance abuse happening on the other side of the planet from my home, far from my normal support structures.
I was living in an ongoing party, ignorant to being ‘trapped’ until the inevitable damage of my poor choices laid their pernicious blows upon my psyche. After a year of this lifestyle, I eventually recognized myself as sick and knew that I needed help to emerge from the self-deprecating wallow I was festering in.
In seeking this help, and in some strange concoction of validations, I decided that psilocybin mushrooms could help me. So once a month, every month, I took an upper-medium dose of standard, straight from the zip lock bag cubensis, and went alone into the night. I asked to be shown my wounds and prayed for resolution.
There was pain, pleasure, crying, laughter, cosmic loneliness, and a seeming connection to a dimension of unconditional loving support. I journeyed the darkest, but also the most vibrant recesses of my psyche. I sat repeatedly through tremendous outpourings of potent emotions cascading from my subconscious in a cathartic process of finding that which I hadn’t realized I had long lost: confidence in being worthy of love.
When this thirteen-month healing journey began, I was living in my parents’ basement, angry at the world, unhappy with my situation, feeling horribly alone, regretful, and shameful. I was going out of my mind with the feeling that I had no one I could really talk with about my situation; I was suffering the tragic self-perpetuating abyss of perceived isolation from support that riddles the depressed mind.
At the end of these thirteen months, I felt as though I was thriving. Living on the other side of the country, I was involved with a vibrant community, had a stable job, was working towards a healthier diet, perceivably connected to my creative passions, happy, and comparatively resolved in the challenges I had entered a relationship with the mushroom thirteen months prior to address.
In 2011, I began writing down what I’d learned during this transformational period in my life. I mapped a construct for how I navigated the psilocybin experience towards the potentiation and successful integration of psychospiritual maturation[1] and personal healing. The hope was that sharing my story and what I learned might help others lost in similar situations.
In 2013, with the help of a crowdfunding community, I published my first book, Decomposing The Shadow: Lessons From The Psilocybin Mushroom. It presents a conceptual model for the psilocybin experience as it pertains to psychospiritual transformation and mental-emotional healing. That same summer, I traveled across Canada, teaching nineteen events (readings and lectures) in four and a half months. The lecture I taught was called The 4 Archetypes Of Psilocybin,[2] a restructured presentation of the model originally presented in Decomposing The Shadow.
Since then I have continued to expand and explore my philosophies through multiple essays, articles, podcast interviews, public presentations, an audiobook, and a book titled Soundscapes & Psychedelics (2014) [2016 edit: In 2015 I released my follow up to Decomposing The Shadow, titled The True Light Of Darkness. It is a storytelling narrative exploring the living reality of facing one’s darkness within the potency of a psilocybin experience].
In this essay, I will present the basic foundation of Decomposing The Shadow [2016 edit: and The True Light Of Darkness][3] as it was presented in my lecture series. It will also include concepts presented in later works, as well as updated perspectives based on recent research with psilocybin. This article will present an overview of my most updated construction of the 4 Archetypes model, as of the time of its writing, May of 2014.
Much of the information presented will be overarching statements for which you will find foundational explanations within my other work. It is presented with a rather complex literary style on the awareness that the reader of Psychedelic American [the journal in which this essay was first publish] does not need larger philosophical concepts to be overtly simplified.
Defining A New Model
That which we understand as “reality” is a set of experiential content resulting from an energetic feedback system of informational processing. All of reality is inherently meaningless information unconsciously rendered as a meaningful human experience according to the modeling systems, languages, encoded into the psyche. Information enters, gets calculated through the psychosensory nervous system, and is given meaningfulness according to the internal models used to render the perceived information. That meaningfulness is then attributed to the received data and interacted with as though the meaningfulness unconsciously generated were inherently true, and external. In summary, the models or languaging structures embedded in the psyche define the experiential content of one’s reality. [This process can be expanded to the realm of meaning as being an inherent quality of information prevalent in all life, though experiential meaningfulness as being a human-only experiential construct.]
This same process applies in experiences that transcend the normal operating grounds of waking-state consciousness, experiences ‘novel’ to the normal mind such as psychedelic experiences. The models that we apply to the novel information being processed will influence how it will be experientially rendered. The 4 Archetypes Of Psilocybin is presented as a model that enables the novel information of the psilocybin experience to be rendered and navigated as functionally applicable to one’s ongoing process of psychospiritual maturation. Specially, it offers an accessible means to understand, navigate, and integrate the shadow, or emotionally challenging aspects of a psilocybin experience. It presents a logical basis for integrating emotionally dark experiences [or experiences expressive of past trauma] as potentially the most beneficial to said maturation process, and in doing so, amplifies those experiences’ potential benefit and mitigates their potential damage.
Fresh models for the psilocybin experience are important, as the current prevailing models often hinder a direct accessibility to their psychospiritual value. The indigenous models of reverence to visionary plants are, for the most part, culturally inapplicable to the daily life of common Westerners (this doesn’t even begin to address the issues of cultural appropriation). The prevailing fringe models, unfortunately, often romanticize the visually symbolic elements of the novel information being offered as a reality of ontological truth (e.g. ‘there really are machine elves and jaguars roaming the mind and they are the source of wisdom I am receiving’). The academic models, though advancing towards an integral approach of psychedelics, often present psychedelics to the common person as only ‘tools to facilitate scientific research and address psychopathological issues.’[4] This leads to the assumption of psychedelics as merely for correcting psychopathological issues or for institutional research, which cultivates a disconnect from the average user. Finally, the common model for psychedelics within conventional ‘big media’ culture is that of demonization and/or marginalization.
Apart from the latter, each of these models – indigenous, academic, fringe, and conventional – offer potential benefit towards cultivating personal growth. The 4 Archetypes Of Psilocybin gathers the beneficial elements in each of these models, without appropriation, along with all relevant information available within the updated human knowledge base. While maintaining a discerning and healthy skepticism, these elements and related information are compiled into a model founded on both personal experiences and extensive study, and is presented with a contemporary language. The result is a model that enables effective navigation of the psilocybin experience for the benefits of processing emotional traumas and encouraging mental-emotional wellbeing through facilitating psychospiritual maturation, and in a way that fits within the lifestyle of the common westerner.
This model is not intended to be “this is how it is,” but rather “this is what I have found to work; take what works for you, leave what doesn’t.” None of us have the answers yet; none of us know what the psychedelic experience really is. Yet, as research, theories, and discourse furthers through the psychedelic community and into the public sphere, we further our capacity to ask better questions, and thus we get closer to a fuller understanding of what potentials the psychedelic experience truly offers. This is the intention behind my work, the 4 Archetypes included.
What follows for the rest of this essay is a basic rundown of the most updated 4 Archetypes model.
The Mushroom: What is it? What does it do for us?
As the experiential content of meaningfulness within reality (the rendered result of [raw] information, data, processed through the psychosensory nervous system) is generated by one’s internal models, establishing [a] basis for ‘what’ the mushroom is and ‘why’ one would use it within said models is of key importance.
“It really matters how you regard your guru. If you regard them as a dog, you’ll get the transmission of a dog. If you regard them as a normal person then you will get the transmission of a normal person. If you regard them as an enlightened Buddha; as a force of spiritual awakening in your life, in a sense transcending those other elements – which they may also be – but if you hold their inner essence as that enlightening presence then that is the transmission, that is the forward movement you can expect in your life.”
-Alex Grey at BurningMan 2003 Taken from The Psychedelic Salon Podcast, ep. 007-Grey
If one’s intention is to work with psilocybin mushrooms as a means to personal healing of past traumas or for personal development, I believe it is of vital importance that one approaches them with respect. With respect, one can offer the reverence or “regard” of the mushroom as the means to one’s intended personal growth. (Also, the experience psilocybin catalyzes can uproot one’s entire sense of self; going in without respect can present unfavorable consequences and thus the active application of respect can help mitigate those consequences.)
Furthering the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ in how one can “regard” the mushroom within the 4 Archetypes model; the psilocybin mushroom is a living organism that can activate four powerful emotional processes:
Increased Emotional Potency:
Turning up the ‘fullness’ of one’s experienced [feelings and] emotions, be it loneliness, sadness, joy, curiosity, grief, excitement, or religious wonder.
Altered Emotional Meaningfulness:
The change in emotional potency changes the meaningfulness applied to the perceived dataset of reality, engendering a different quality to its experiential content. These changes engage each other like a feedback loop rendered at one’s surface awareness.
Entrance Into New Environments And Realities:
This change in meaningfulness and content changes the very experience of one’s environment, whether internal or external.
Catalyzed Emotional Catharsis:
The increased potency and altered meaningfulness of one’s emotional experience catalyzes strong emotional currents to be actively expressed and exposed to an individual’s surface awareness.
In activating said emotional processes, the mushroom can be seen as a tool, teacher, or ally that supports a person’s healing and growth through cultivating four major results:
Retroactive Emotional Release:
Enabling access to long repressed emotional material, allowing those emotions to be properly processed and addressed.
Dissolution Of Mental-Emotional Patterns:
Removing the normal patterns of psychological defenses employed to maintain composure in the face of potent emotions, either light or dark.
Cultivation Of A Broader Self-Awareness:
By bringing both light and dark repressed material to surface awareness, along with its associated memories and patterns, psilocybin offers a fuller picture to the user as to what influences their personality [and behavior].
The Cultivation Of Psychospiritual Maturity:
The aforementioned emotional processes, along with the stated results, combine to cultivate a dis-identification from negative patterns (strategies for ‘defense of’ and ‘compensation for’ embedded traumas) in the psyche, and allow for the natural re-identification with behavioral patterns associated to one’s [self-identify and behavior without] to the [defensive] strategies instituted into the psyche throughout life.
These emotional processes and psychological results can be correlated to four of the major neurological changes we have observed in brain imaging studies with psilocybin. The first three are based on observations made by Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris in his fMRI research with psilocybin (Carhart-Harris, Robin L., et al. “Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109.6 (2012): 2138-2143.), and the last is based on Dr. Rainer Kraehenmann’s imaging research (Kraehenmann, Rainer, et al. “Psilocybin-Induced Decrease in Amygdala Reactivity Correlates with Enhanced Positive Mood in Healthy Volunteers.” Biological Psychiatry (2014).). [I also associate the first three psilocybin capacity for increasing functional connectivity within the brain, Giovanni Petri et al., “Homological scaffolds of brain functional networks” Journal of The Royal Society: Interface (2014)]
Through the suppression of blood flow to the posterior cingulate, a major communication hub in the brain, the normally rendered meaningfulness of contextual stimuli, (e.g. ‘a tree is just a tree according to my conceptual frameworks for tree’) is lessened. This allows for cross-communication within the brain to enable access to meaningfulness associated with deeper psychological patterns (e.g. ‘that tree is just like the one I cried under when my childhood dog died’).
Increases of sensory activity associated with memories within the brain allow for the deep meaningfulness to be accessed and the attached memories to be relived at a greater sensorial depth and emotional potency, thus enabling a fuller connection to the emotions associated to those memories.
Through the suppression of blood flow to the medial prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain that associates context to adaptive responses and emotions (i.e. the normal patterns of behavior associated with emotional triggering), psilocybin lessens the strength of trauma-adapted behaviors or patterns. These trauma patterns are typically the cause of most mental-emotional instability. Thus, their dissolution can enable a processing of the heightened emotional content (catharsis) associated with the aroused and sensorially amplified memories, naturally helping to bring about emotional stability.
Recent research on psilocybin has suggested that it ‘weakens’ the amygdala’s processing of negative emotions in general. Looking at this research through the 4 Archetypes Model (and from personal experience), the reduction of the amygdala’s processing of negative emotions is specific to the negative emotions associated with the defenses surrounding trauma. Thus, the decrease in amygdala function allows for an openness in which challenging emotions (light or dark) can be experienced without the extra load of reactionary, second-stage emotions whose sole purpose is to defend from these initial challenging emotions.
Finally, I will leave you with the four archetypal experiences/lessons within a psychospiritually therapeutic psilocybin experience.
The 4 (Experiential) Archetypes Of Psilocybin
Archetype is a term introduced into the psychology lexicon by the late psychiatrist and visionary Carl Gustav Jung. From what I understand of his work, an archetype is the observable symbolic manifestation of patterns within the psyche that extends beyond the individual self. The symbolic manifestations and the terminology surrounding these manifestations are not the archetypes themselves, which exist only as formless movements of consciousness. Archetypes inevitably take on symbolic representations as they emerge to surface awareness. The use of archetypes or archetypal processes as a model for understanding the movement of consciousness within the psyche can help in identifying and cultivating an understanding of those movements.
Applying this concept to the psilocybin experience enables the rational categorization, navigation, and integration of these novel movements of consciousness. As I describe these archetypes, keep in mind that they are merely the logical construction of culturally accessible symbols (a model) to support the effective languaging of novel movements of consciousness within the psyche. The archetypes are not fundamentally separate sets of experiences, but are conceptually separated in order to better triangulate the subtle combinations in which they emerge within the psilocybin experience. These archetypes function as categories for the types of experiences and potential lessons that psilocybin may offer. Separate only in discussion, they seamlessly dance and merge within the experience itself.
The four archetypes of psilocybin are Surrender, Facing The Shadow, Uncovering The True Self, and Oneness. We will briefly explore each one, leaving their implications undiscussed and up to the reader to cross-examine these archetypes to the previously mentioned processes, results, and neurological changes.
Surrender:
The mushroom experience is an emotional experience. One’s emotions are always honest (though usually not based in accurate interpretations of immediate context[, but sourced in past trauma and superimposed onto the immediate moment due to some type of trigger present in the immediate context]). Thus, the mushroom experience is that of potent emotional honesty. The process of Surrender is that of releasing the conceptual control one usually attempts to maintain over the expression of said emotional honesty.
These mushroom-catalyzed emotions tend to rush like a waterfall, forcing one into acceptance and release, Surrender. This process helps support retroactive emotional release through catharsis. In turn, this can have beneficial effects on one’s maturation process through what I call Emotive-Psychosynthesis (explained at depth in Decomposing The Shadow [and exampled through my personal experiences in The True Light of Darkness]).
The act of Surrender, then, can work as a symbolic practice for learning surrender to emotional honesty in all areas of life, which would in turn allow naturally expressed behavioral patterns to be embodied without the ‘negative emotions’ usually attached to repression.
Facing The Shadow
The Shadow is the archetypal representation of the, feared, unaddressed, ‘dark’ or potentially traumatic emotions within the psyche, whose repression or evasion leads to the emergence of most negative behavioral patterns.
To Face The Shadow is to Surrender to the honesty of one’s emotional darkness by allowing the light of awareness to shine upon that which we most fear acknowledging about ourselves. Doing so allows for the emotive-psychosynthesis of repressed [or fragmented emotional content] and offers us a broader awareness of ‘what’ influences ‘who’ we are and why we act the way we do.
Uncovering the True Self
The True Self is not a defined identity, but a set of observations. In facing one’s Shadow and surrendering to emotional honesty, we are exposed to the truth that we all possess behaviors bred of unaddressed darkness [or trauma]. In this unearthing of darkness we are offered a window to the True Self, manifesting as an expression of who we are naturally, without the strategies of evading, defending, and repressing our emotional honesty, both in real-time and within a history of trauma; often with an otherworldly sense of acceptance, joy, [forgiveness,] and love.
The further implications of the True Self can be extended beyond that of the individual, into the metaphysical or religious interpretation of one as being “Truth” itself, The Divine, God, etc. This leads into the last archetype.
Oneness
The awareness and identification with the interconnectivity of all things, be it humanity as one large family, awareness of the integral system of the planet of which we are all part, or that of more cosmic, non-dual foundations. [Sometimes described as “oceanic boundlessness”)
This is the archetype that is most difficultly defined, as its essence is ineffable.
Conclusion
For the conscious user, there are several potentially beneficial shifts in behavior and self-identity that can occur through these changes, processes, results, and experiences occasioned by psilocybin. This includes increased capacities for courage, openness to living, creativity, perceptions of beauty, personal coherence[5], self-confidence, and so on. All of these changes are ones observed within myself as a result of how the mushroom experiences I underwent changed the manner in which I engaged my life. [Others have also shared with me having observed these qualities in themselves as a result of their work with psilocybin.]
In exploring the implications of this model and psilocybin in general, there are deeper discussions to be had about what the mushroom shows us about the nature of emotions and how we process them; how socially conditioned models for reality are embedded in the psyche; the gains and losses of our current conventional models; the neurobiological implications of experiencing spiritual wonder and identifying with experiences of Oneness; how all these elements relate to health of the mind and the physical body; and even the potential mutability of reality as an experience in general. Of course, there are many more wonderful questions to ask and explore, questions I continue to be excitedly engaged by and explore through my writing and research.
May the discourse on psychedelics continue to be expanded, refined, and progressed, and allowed to continually enlighten and inspire us.
….
[1] Introduced by Neal Goldsmith, Ph.D., this term represents the process of becoming aware of strategic compromises employed in childhood as a response to wounding experiences, and embedded into one’s identity. The maturation process is that of dis-identifying with said strategies and re-identifying with the behavior patterns of one’s naturally expressed, unwounded self; the unique self that would emerge without whatever strategies were instituted into the identity from childhood traumas. It is as natural a process as a flower blossoming in the spring.
[2] One of these lectures is now available as an audiobook through my website.
[3] All further uses of “[]” are representative of edits or additions made during a review of this essay in January of 2016
[4] At a time wherein the effort to change the dogma around psychedelics in the academic and conventional spheres, such a ‘hard science’ perspective is to some degree a necessity at this time.
[5] A term used in reference to the HeartMath Institute’s theory on heart wave variability and it’s connection to activating the parasympathetic nervous system.
