Prepare to Be Unprepared
On expecting one thing and receiving another, in life and in psychedelics.
Interesting start of the year…
This month I got to witness some really frustrated humans. While working another ibogaine retreat, I saw people get into uncomfortable places, mostly within themselves, but, as they do, those states tend to ripple outwards. I didn’t expect things to go smoothly (I’ve given up on that idea after last year) so I wasn’t surprised. I just felt for them and did my best to make space for what was there.
Which was mainly this: complete and utter disappointment.
People come to ibogaine with high expectations these days. That it will “fix” them, that they will meet their ancestors, revisit their childhood in movie-like visions, receive clarity about everything all at once. It’s not unique to ibogaine I guess, you see it across the psychedelic field.
But outside of the field it’s also common.
In life, I mean.
We all carry ideas of how life should go, what we worked for, shown up for or paid for. We have expectations of how our lives should feel. And, sometimes they simply feel different.
This gap between expectation and reality is fertile ground for disappointment. And it’s easy to start pointing fingers when you’re there. At life, at other people, at ourselves. The more attached we are to a specific outcome, the more painful it is when reality takes a different turn.
That dynamic becomes especially visible in psychedelic therapy. If you enter with the idea that something specific needs to happen, that this trauma must be healed in that way, or that afterward you are supposed to feel lighter, clearer or better, you are kind of setting yourself up.
Because it might happen like that.
Or it might not.
Often, something entirely different unfolds. Unexpected or confusing, uncomfortable perhaps, or more slow and subtle than you thought. And sometimes magical in ways beyond what you could have ever imagined. Not better or worse, just different.
Different is not as bad as we tend to think it is. It just is.
The Pitbull
I had a conversation with my sister recently. In my family, she’s affectionately called the pitbull. When she has a vision, a plan, a job, a journey, she locks her teeth into it and makes it happen. No matter the resistance, doubt, obstacles or detours. And she’s had a lot of success with this approach. In many cases, what she imagined life would look like actually did turn out that way.
(A Dutch city girl from a bohemian nest, she dreamt of prairies and horses, and became an Idaho cowgirl for a while, chasing 300 cows through snowy mountains. She got herself into Hogwards after. Once she imagined me in a baby-blue bridesmaids gown (highly unlikely…). She made it all happen: I admire her fiercely…)
Whether it felt the way she imagined is another question.
We might tell ourselves: If only I have this, I will feel like this. But then we get it and might feel something else entirely: good, bad, empty, a complexity we didn’t anticipate.
Now I’m not a pitbull but I have visions too, ideas of how I’d like life to be. At the same time, I’m open to unexpected doors. More than once I’ve left all plans behind to dive down a rabbit hole that appeared out of nowhere, changing the course of my life, again. I tend to enjoy that.
When I’m healthy and emotionally stable, not knowing what’s coming is actually my favorite part of being alive. The horizon filled with surprises, some beautiful, some horrible, and others I couldn’t have imagined .
That wasn’t always the case. Not knowing used to terrify me. Without trust or faith, uncertainty doesn’t feel that great, it just feels overwhelming.
But in recent years I’ve been experimenting with a different assumption: that life has an intelligence far beyond my own. Not something I fully understand or control, but something I can listen and attune to, if I sharpen my senses. Something that can guide me, if I’m willing to be led. And something capable of presenting me with exactly what I need, even if, in the moment, part of me is thinking: Really? THIS is what I need?!
I’m still learning how to flow with that.
It may sound a bit “woo woo.” But the idea that we can plan our future, and how we’re going to feel in it, sounds equally fantastical to me.
Psychedelic Work as a Training Ground
Working with people in altered states of consciousness has repeatedly been teaching me this lesson. The most skillful way to enter a psychedelic journey seems to be with humility, curiosity and a basic sense of trust. Without rigid expectations.
Willing to be confused, upset, or overwhelmed. Ready to do the work that’s being asked of you, whatever form it takes. Knowing that intensity will pass, like everything else.
So if it asks you to purge, you purge. And if it asks you to feel your big sadness, you go there. You open up. And, as best as you can, you surrender to it.
If “nothing” happens (at least nothing your mind considers important) you go with that too. You accept it, relax into it. You don’t fight.
(This one, it seems, is one of the harder experiences.)
In a sense, learning how to accompany people through psychedelic journeys has been quietly teaching me how to live my life.
Over time, patterns become visible. You start to see where people struggle, where they feel fulfilled or frustrated, where the human mind is helpful and where it almost always gets in the way. You see how quickly resistance amplifies suffering, and how much becomes possible when someone stops fighting what’s already happening.
Life, too, seems to respond better when we meet it this way. Like psychedelic experiences, it doesn’t respond well to demands or rigid agendas. But when we approach it openly, without insisting on a particular outcome, and willing to engage honestly with whatever arises, something can begin to move. Not necessarily toward comfort or clarity, but toward a more honest way of feeling and being “here”.
Enthusiasm as a Compass
Instead of making resolutions or setting goals, I’ve been thinking about what I want to be guided by this year.
I recently learned that the word enthusiasm comes from the Greek en theos: “in spirit,” or “the gods within.” And thinking about this changed how I started listening to life. I find that when something genuinely enthuses me, there is life force there. Energy, movement, a sense of alignment. The “spirits” get excited. The gods say “YAS! - That’s where we want to go!”
You can, of course, do many things without enthusiasm. You can choose studies, people, careers, whole lives because they look good, make sense, pay well, feel safe or are expected of you. But when curiosity, joy, or aliveness are missing, those choices rarely nourish you. They might function but they don’t really feed.
So I pay attention to enthusiasm and strong attraction. I also pay attention to strong repulsion, which often signals something unresolved. Something worth looking at at least. Even discomfort can be interesting when met with curiosity.
A flat, dim “whatever” is where life force drains away. It’s where the gods exit the stage and leave you alone with your ideas of how life should be (and the disappointments that follow).
Running an Experiment
That’s why the experiment I’m running now is different. I’m testing the hypothesis that “this might be painful, messy, scary, or confusing” is not a reason not to go somewhere. And that whatever emerges is workable, not because I’m exceptional, but because life itself is intelligent, and I’m just a small piece on a much larger board.
So I might as well flow with what’s moving through me, trusting that life unfolds for reasons, even when I don’t understand them (yet).
Which echoes a concept from Eastern philosophy: Wu Wei, “non-forcing” or “effortless action.” which is about staying close to what’s actually happening and responding from there, instead of trying to bend the river into a shape it doesn’t want to take.
I notice how much energy I waste when I push against the current, insisting things unfold faster, cleaner, or more comfortably than they do. And how different it feels when I stop fighting and let myself be carried a little, adjusting my movement instead of trying to control the water.
I’m definitely not a pitbull…
(Maybe I’m a fish?)
(*Going with the flow. Staying flexible...)
This brings me back to a question that comes up in my work with psychedelics:
“How can we open ourselves to the integration that wants to happen, instead of the integration WE want to happen?”
Which mirrors a larger question about life itself:
How can we live humbly and attentively enough to participate in the life that wants to live through us, instead of clinging to the one WE imagined?
Blob of the Unknown
There’s currently a large blob of the unknown in front of me. Like any human mind, my mind doesn’t like this at all. I have sleepless nights where my mind races ahead, building futures out of past experiences, creating elaborate game plans, trying to find solutions and imagining paths that might keep me safe.
I’m letting her do it. Letting her run ahead, go wild and get dramatic, like a toddler having a meltdown on the floor in front of me. I know it will pass. My worries, my thoughts, my big emotions, they always do.
In the background, I’m practicing something else: staying present with what’s actually here, now. Realizing I don’t need to know what life will look like in a week, or a year, or five. I don’t know, and am not capable of knowing anyway. None of us is.
As I’ve been learning from Buddhist teachers over the years, growth often happens in the uncomfortable space between knowing and not-knowing. Sometimes we rush decisions not out of clarity, but to escape the unease of uncertainty. Looking back, many of our choices were shaped more by fear than by presence or wisdom. Staying with not-knowing is a practice.
Which is also why I run this experiment.
Because what we cannot offer to ourselves, we cannot offer to others. If we can be with a wide range of emotions: darkness, confusion, vulnerability - without drowning, blaming or freaking out, we become more able to sit with others in the same way. Which is something I hope to become better at with time.
(Accompanying people in life, death and psychedelics, that is…)
Preparation Reimagined
So this year I’m trying not to plan ahead, predict what’s coming or manage any outcomes. Where I can, I’ll try and loosen my grip on expectations too.
I read an email from James Clear this morning, which said:
“The ultimate form of preparation is not planning for a specific scenario, but a mindset that can handle uncertainty.”
So as I find myself staring into the abyss, another wide-open field of unknown outcomes, I’ll just be holding on to hold this:
To be ready
is to be willing
to be unprepared.
Whatever emerges is workable...
Sometimes ditching the script is the only way to get a good story. I like how you think.