There was an item on the BBC World Service yesterday, broadcast on my local NPR station, KPCC, at lunchtime yesterday, about the effects of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide, or LSD, colloquially known as Acid.
The reporter without any sensationalism described people's varying experiences whilst on the drug, saying that they can be akin to a spiritual awakening or that, depending on one's state of mind, can be quite terrifying.
She went on to say that the experience very much depends on whether or not one wants the doors of perception opened, or if that extreme form of otherness, that letting go, is absolutely what one cannot handle.
It's all about the ego.
This is true in all human interaction and experience.
It seems to me that our biggest problem as a species is our ego, and the thing we lack, the thing we need so much, is compassion, the compassion that puts the well being of another's state of mind above ones own, be that person friend or stranger.
I used to fear letting go of my ego, thinking that I would lose my sense of self, of who I am.
This is what stopped me doing many things in my life, and also meant that I didn't try acid until I was 28 years old, and it would've been the most god awful trip were it not for the selfless act of a friend spending the whole time with me, and in a similar psychedelic boat.
For the past year I have been practicing meditation, 20 minutes twice daily, and partly through this, partly through realizing that I had for much of my life been denying my true self, I began to let go of my ego.
Here's what happened - I stopped judging people, I stopped taking offense, I stopped getting angry, started instead to see the other person's point of view, no matter how much it came from a place of anger seemingly directed at me.
Arguments between two people are between two egos vying for pole position.
Two people, two countries, it's the same thing.
Replace the ego with compassion and everything else will follow, and one day we will all be melting guns and playing piccolos.
Letting go of the ego is finding the self, the true beautiful creative self, and dropping the infant state tantrums, the past pain.
War is over if we want it.
As for LSD, it's still not for me but as most right thinking people know, it and all drugs are part of life, of who we are, so let's quit that war too.
xo