The Beauty of Resistance in Psychedelic Experiences

In my partner and my work with 5-MeO-DMT we sometimes have clients come through our doors who are intent on having “the 5-MeO-DMT experience,” with all the much-celebrated qualities of non-dual awareness, samadhi consciousness, or boundless unconditional love. And it’s sometimes these same people, after smoking a low dose of the medicine, who are confronted with the very human experience of going into fear, tensing up, “fighting the medicine”—in short, resistance. And resistance feels like just the opposite of those celebrated qualities of 5-MeO-DMT.

In our line of work there’s often a lot of talk about surrender: that the right way to approach medicine work is to fully let go of our desire to control our circumstances and soften ourselves to receive whatever the medicine wants to give us. And no doubt, there’s some kernel of truth here. That receptivity helps us ease repressed material out of the unconscious for integration into ourselves. The softness opens us to dissolving our old patterns and molding ourselves into something new.

But it has struck me that in all this emphasis on surrender, that there’s something important missing. In that resistance there is something quite beautiful and worth appreciating–a fiery quality. I am reminded of several clients who, on a very high dose of the medicine, snapped into a laser-focused lucidity, eyes open, speaking clearly and standing up, where the desire to be here, now, alive in this world, was of paramount importance. One could take the more clinical perspective that this was resistance or a failure to surrender, but another way to look at it is that what was awakened in them was a fierce warrior spirit. And following up, it has seemed that this resolve to face the challenges of life head-on, with full agency, is exactly what these people needed at this point in their lives.

One way I have seen this warrior spirit manifest, both in others and in myself on my own journeys with the medicine, is in what I call “big cat energy.” The jaguar, the tiger–these big cats have been frequent allies on my journeys, and the experience of welcoming this energy in is truly remarkable: feeling the growling rumble of the diaphragm, the heavy paws, the calm abiding rest with the ability to snap into agility and laser-focus on a moment’s notice. And this energy has often come to me at those moments when I needed that self-protection the most.

For a non-dual medicine like 5-MeO-DMT, I think we can easily fall into some very dualistic judgments about how it should be approached: with surrender versus resistance, or even the idea that the ego is something flawed and to be transcended and that everything that lies beyond the ego is good. But I believe that there is another perspective we can take that embraces both polarities: that holds both the surrender and the resistance as part of the same beautiful unfolding process, two essential sides of the same coin. It is a perspective that does not treat us as separate from the medicine, flawed and needing to be cured, but instead honours the play, the endless unfolding of ourselves and the medicine as we weave into communion.

On one of my early 5-MeO-DMT journeys I had an insight into the nature of suffering. I came away from the journey with a simple phrase, “our separateness is our struggle.” And what was clear to me in that moment was that I could choose to see myself alone, and apart, and in struggle with the world, or I could choose to see myself as one with the world, already in perfect harmony. There was a sort of choice in that, but that at a very deep level either choice was perfectly ok. That the struggle was simply a part of the great play of life, as sacred and essential as the union and unconditional love that could exist just a moment away.

This post was written as part of my commitment to writing a monthly article as part of my role as a Flying Sage Community Leader. The The Flying Sage is a Vancouver-based community organization centering around psychedelics.