The exquisite wonder and beauty of everything

My photo, showing the magnolia petals fallings already

This NYT article is about Dr. Roland Griffiths whose cancer diagnosis has allowed (caused?) him to savor life more.  The "gift" of enhanced appreciation/conciousness perhaps was aided by his own past or current psychedlic experiences.

As the founding director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, Dr. Roland Griffiths has been a pioneer in investigating the ways in which psychedelics can help treat depression, addiction and, in patients with a life-threatening cancer diagnosis, psychological distress. He has also looked at how the use of psychedelics can produce transformative and long-lasting feelings of human interconnectedness and unity. One could surely classify his achievements using various medical and scientific terms, but I’ll just put it like this: Griffiths has expanded the knowledge of how we might better learn to live.

Now he is learning to die. Griffiths, who is 76, has been diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic colon cancer. It’s a diagnosis, in all likelihood terminal, that for him has brought forth transcendently positive feelings about existence and what he calls the great mystery of consciousness. “We all know that we’re terminal,” says Griffiths, who since being diagnosed has established an endowment at Johns Hopkins to study psychedelics and their potential for increasing human flourishing. “So I believe that in principle we shouldn’t need this Stage 4 cancer diagnosis to awaken. I’m excited to communicate, to shake the bars and tell people, ‘Come on, let’s wake up!’ ”

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In spite of that, life has been more beautiful, more wonderful than ever. When I first got that diagnosis, because I work out regularly, I watch my diet, I sleep well, this came out of left field. There was this period in which it felt like I was going to wake up and say, “Boy, that was” — to put it in psychedelic language — “a bummer, a bad dream.” But soon after that I started to contemplate the different psychological states that would be naturally forthcoming with a diagnosis like mine: depression, anxiety, denial, anger, or adopting some belief system of religious outcomes, which as a scientist I was not cut out to do. I went through those, exploring what life would be like if I inhabited those reactions, and I quickly concluded that that was not a wise way to live. I have a long-term meditation practice (Griffiths practices Vipassana meditation) and the focus there is on the nature of mind, of consciousness, and one comes to see that thoughts, emotions, are transient. They’re appearances of mind that you needn’t identify with. That practice — and some experience with psychedelics — was incredibly useful because what I recognized is that the best way to be with this diagnosis was to practice gratitude for the preciousness of our lives. Grasping for the cure wasn’t useful.  

You talk about your cancer almost as if it’s a gift. Does that mean you don’t have regrets about what’s happening? My life has never been better! If I had a regret, it’s that I didn’t wake up as much as I have without a cancer diagnosis. It’s been incredible. There have been so many positive things: my relationship with my children, my grandchildren, my siblings, my wife. 

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So I did a session with a psychedelic4(He used LSD) and went into that explicitly asking a couple of questions. First, asking myself, “Is there something I am not dealing with?” The answer came back: “No, the joy you’re experiencing is great. This is how it should be.” Then I asked a question directly of the cancer. I’m hesitant to talk about it because it’s reifying the cancer as “other,” and I don’t hold that the cancer is some “other” with which I can have a dialogue. But as a metaphor, it’s an interesting way to probe that question. So I asked the cancer: “What are you doing here? What can you tell me about what’s going on?” I got nothing back. Then I wanted to humanize it, and I said: “I really respect you. I talk about you as a blessing. I have had this astonishing sense of well-being and gratitude, despite everything that’s happening, and so I want to thank you. This process, is it going to kill me?” The answer was, “Yes, you will die, but everything is absolutely perfect; there’s meaning and purpose to this that goes beyond your understanding, but how you’re managing that is exactly how you should manage it.” So then I said: “OK, there’s purpose and meaning. I’m not ungrateful for the opportunity, but how about giving me more time?” [Laughs.] I got no response to that. But that’s OK.

How else have psychedelics, both studying them and using them, helped prepare you for death? Our first therapeutic study was in cancer patients. Ironically enough, these were cancer patients who were depressed and anxious because of a life-threatening diagnosis. The findings of that study were profound: A single treatment of psilocybin (Psilocybin is the psychoactive compound found in some mushrooms. After we spoke, Griffiths mailed me a medallion embossed with an image of mushrooms and inscribed with the phrase “May you remain aware of awareness.”)produced large and enduring decreases in depression and anxiety. I’ve had some limited experience with psychedelics since then. But what did that teach me about my diagnosis? We’ve now treated hundreds of participants with psychedelics and before sessions, one of the key things that we teach them is that upon taking a psychedelic, there’s going to be an explosion of interior experiences. What we ask them to do is be with those experiences — be interested and curious. You don’t have to figure anything out. You’re going to have guides, and we’re going to create this safety container around you. But here’s the trick: These are not necessarily feel-good experiences. People can have experiences in which they feel like they come to this beautiful understanding of who they are and what the world is, but people can also have frightening experiences. 

The preparation we give for these experiences is to stay with them, be curious and recognize the ephemeral nature of them. If you do that, you’re going to find that they change. The metaphor we use is, imagine that you’re confronted with the most frightening demon you can imagine. It’s made by you, for you, to scare you. I’ll say: “There’s nothing in consciousness that can hurt you. So what you want to do is be deeply curious and, if anything, approach it.” If your natural tendency is to run, it can chase you for the entire session. But if you can see it as an appearance of mind, then you go, “Oh, that’s scary, but yeah, I’m going to investigate that.”

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So you have this sense, near the end of your life, of waking up to life’s real meaning. What’s the most important thing for everyone else who’s still asleep to know? I want everyone to appreciate the joy and wonder of every single moment of their lives. We should be astonished that we are here when we look around at the exquisite wonder and beauty of everything. I think everyone has a sense of that already. It’s leaning into that more fully. There is a reason every day to celebrate that we’re alive, that we have another day to explore whatever this gift is of being conscious, of being aware, of being aware that we are aware. That’s the deep mystery that I keep talking about. That’s to be celebrated!