Redefine Success
For our first retreat, the profoundly wise ritualist and somatic coach Rachel Blackman suggested to our 12 intrepid journeyers to find something from the surrounding grounds and growths to use as an offering for their symbolic altar. The altar for our retreats serves as a repeated point of joint attention, consisting of flowers of diverse colors and compelling shapes, laid upon a cloth bordered with doilies and surrounded by candles. Its presence marks the opening of our group’s circles of connection and it receives the conscious and unconscious intentions of the group. Our retreat was located in the heart of a nature preserve abutting the North Sea in the northwest of the Netherlands. There would be a bounty of wondrous detritus shed from trees, birds and sprouted from the fecund earth to select from.
Often part of the revelatory delight during a retreat is noticing the hidden or dual meanings that are revealed by altar items through the course of the week and in the aftermath of two guided psilocybin journeys. A dried leaf shaped like a hand begins as a symbol for the force that binds and later becomes the source of liberation. A shell whose Fibonacci sequence marks perfectly spaced layers of protection to a vulnerable inner child’s secret vault, then transmutes into a staircase leading him out towards the peace and the harmony of nature.
Before the group arrived, I was able to take a walk along the pristine pathways winding through the reserve towards the sea. The light salty touch of the morning mist had the effect of stabilizing and holding my anticipatory excitement about the retreat like a proud uncle, eager to see what the week would bring for me. Amongst the steady march of bovine hoof prints and sine waves left from bike treads, a perfect semi-circle section of bark lay on the earth like a tunnel for ants and insects. The top of the tunnel was decorated with an array of lichen in subtle hues of green seemingly painted with watercolor-like delicacy and nuance. It seemed a bit bulky for the altar, but it was, as Rachel had prompted, something that my senses just loved, just because. It felt like the perfect memento of ecological beauty to offer the group.
Our journeyers were composed of a disproportionate number of intellectuals, independents and care takers. A fabulous combination in our eyes, but nonetheless a group that operated with their deeper needs for care and longing for connection buried even deeper, under more protective platelets of self-proficiency, privileging of others’ needs and a thicket of bookishness. As the retreat began, the facilitation team could see all their potential for interconnectivity and community, but worried if the group might get out of their own ways to find each other. Would they get to revel in the bliss of their co-created communitas?
The first of the groups’ two psilocybin journeys was for lack of a better term, crunchy, and surprisingly intense. Journeyers who we predicted might have a smoother first ride experienced existential crises, others battled through kaleidoscopic dimensions of ancestral dramas, and the room was as a whole restless, agitated at times trying to find its equilibrium or more likely surrender and feel into its disequilibrium.
In the facilitation team debrief afterwards, we began to knit together the projected energetic fragments we collectively absorbed in the room. As facilitators, we can never know fully what any of our journeyers experienced, however we can importantly put words to our own observations and in doing so help our team and the journeyers begin to do the impossible task of carrying across knowledge downloaded from states of psychedelic consciousness and nonverbal energetic rhythms. We certainly saw people’s evolutions starting to occur, however the group remained in our mind’s eye singletons with their boundaries intact. Our questions still remained unanswered, would they decide to come out of their shells and embrace the social cure that group retreats can provide? And, what could we do to help them do it?
During the set up for the second ceremony, Rachel, casually admiring my sizable altar offering, asked me if I knew that lichens are extremophiles. Extremophiles! I had never heard of the word, but was already in love with its hyperbolic sound. She explained that lichens have been found to survive in extremes of temperature and climate, lying dormant in the arctic for extended epochs, only to reanimate and flourish once their conditions for growth are right. Astrobiologists have hypothesized that extremophile species like lichens provide clues about the possible existence of life on other planets. They figure if these types of hardy, discerning species might have been able to survive the solar radiation and arid conditions found in the galaxy, they might have also been able to survive a ride on an asteroid to reach earth.
As she spoke, we both understood. Our group was a collection of extremophiles, survivors of harsh conditions, lying dormant awaiting the right nourishment, and proof of something extraordinary and transcendent in the universe. They reminded me of the many, many extremophiles in the form of adopted children I had worked with throughout my career as a family therapist. These are species I know and love deeply. Their discernment in coming out and connecting only when the conditions are right is unimpeachable.
When we opened the group circle around the altar before the second ceremony, I offered my new understanding of this group of journeyers and its hyper-intelligent, lichen-esque boundaries. It seemed bit by bit, share by share, as we then went around the circle, this remarkable group saw themselves in this metaphor and then found the light and water from each other to say more, to reveal more and helped each other prepare for what became a collective journey of great depth and joy. The room found its frequency and tone in the second journey and allowed for great chasms of darkness, grief, and heights of ecstasy to emerge in one another.
Thank you dear lichens for an unforgettable maiden voyage.
With gratitude,
Courtney
Ikaros Project Co-Founder
