🍄 We would have gone in there

I've been in Scotland since Saturday. I was in Edinburgh for the Psych fest, and walking through town on the Saturday evening, I passed a run of Chinese places, a noodle bar with the windows steamed up, and something in me just went.

We would have gone in there.

That was the whole thought. Mum and I would have clocked it, checked out the menu, and probably gone in.

We did city breaks together. We would arrive somewhere new, and the first real job was finding the best Chinese food in the city. Chinatown in London. A noodle place in Amsterdam. A ramen bar in Vienna. It was just what we did, and we were good at doing it together. Sitting down opposite her with a pot of tea and far too much food ordered. That is what comes back, more than any of the cities. Her face when the plates arrived.

So there I am on a pavement in Edinburgh, cracked open by a restaurant I have never set foot in.

I only feel this because of what we had. If those meals had been ordinary, if the company had been thin, if I couldn't still see her across a table, I would have walked past and felt nothing at all. The place would have been any other place.

The sadness is made of the same material as the joy. It is the joy, arriving late.

It's a strange one, though. Those memories are precious to me, and they are also the reason a noodle bar can take my legs out from under me on an ordinary Friday. They are two sides of one thing.

I wouldn't swap it. A version of my life where a Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh means nothing to me is a version where those years meant less.

I notice the same shape in psychedelic work.

People go in wanting a difficult feeling lifted off. That is of course totally understandable. It is often why we are there.

Take the anxiety away. Take the heaviness away. Make this stop.

And oftentimes, the thing that helps is the opposite move. You stop trying to get rid of it, and you turn towards it instead. Not bracing against it, not analysing it, just letting it be as big as it actually is and staying there while it moves through you.

What people find when they do that is rarely what they expected. Underneath the difficult feeling there is almost always something they loved. The grief is about the love. The guilt is about the caring. The anger is about something that mattered and did not get protected. The longing is about how good it actually was.

You cannot take one out and leave the other sitting there. They are the same object, seen from different sides. Which is why trying to delete the painful half tends to flatten the whole thing, and people come out of that feeling less rather than better.

So the ache is not a fault in the system. It is what love does when the person is gone and the loving still has to go somewhere.

You do not need a session for any of this; you can try it. The next time something catches you sideways, see if you can stay with it a few moments longer than is comfortable. Do not fix it. Do not explain it to yourself. Just ask what it is made of, and what might be underneath.

Maybe you'll find something you would not give back.

A reflection for you today:

What still catches you sideways?
When it happens next, can you stay with it a little longer, instead of moving yourself along?
And what do you find when you ask what it is made of?

What did this bring up for you? I hope you'll reply and tell me about it.

📚 Microdose of Wisdom

"No mud, no lotus."
— Thich Nhat Hanh.

🎵Psychedelic Supplements

Overtone-focused version of Sacred Knowledge leans towards resonance and sustained tones, featuring gongs, Tibetan singing bowls, didgeridoo, and related textures.