Surrender Vs Ego

On a psychedelic trip we often come to the point where we’re faced with challenge of surrender. For many, this process of letting go, defines whether their experience is positive or negative. So what does surrender actually mean? Who are we surrendering to? And Why?

Firstly (from my perspective), a psychedelic experience is meant to free the user from the ‘normal’ boundaries that their ego sets for the experience of the world. In this normality, the sense of reality is bound by the accumulation and constraint of socially/personally set rules for the interpretation of sensory experiences. Red is red; blue is blue; water is liquid; people are individuals, etc. One of the ego’s main jobs in everyday life is to make sure that the individual is safe; and rules/boundaries infer safety. During the psychedelic experience, the mind tries to free itself from these rules and boundaries and to experience the world in its infinite possibilities. The process of surrender is in essence the battle between the ego’s desperate plea for order and the mind’s desire for freedom. The more you surrender, the more you begin to hallucinate. Yet, this is only a ‘hallucination’ if you allow for the connection to normal rules to be maintained.

As you set your mind free, ‘normal’ rules begin to dissipate. You see and feel connections, flows of energy and experience emotions in rawer, more alien forms. In the beginning, you think “I’m tripping” but, in actual fact, you’re not. If reality is what you make it; if we really create our own truths, then that moment when all your natural laws are being re-defined, is real. Green is blue; you feel what you normally hear and see what you normally dream. In that moment you are free; both a blank canvas and the artist with the potential to paint in any colour.

Remember the time you took Ketamine while on a psychedelic experience. Remember how you started to trip harder? Ketamine is a dissociative which can act to sever the ego from the self. The intensity of your hallucinations increases because in this moment you unknowingly allow your associations with personal boundaries to waiver. Similarly, the experiential, often positive reset you attain from Nitrous (Nangs) can be understood in terms of using an external stimulus to aid/force a surrender of the ego-hold and the initiation of a new, less constrained experience.

Imagine that we are like televisions, with antennas tuned to channel ‘normal’. Imagine that like the TV, there are hundreds of other channels available, which can be viewed if only you possess the remote control. Well then, you are the remote control and psychedelic experiences act as the batteries...