Episode 4: What We Push Away
The Alien Within and The Sacred Stranger
T+1 Month: Shouldn’t things have settled by now?
I was told not to make any big decisions within the first month. It’s common advice after a deep psychedelic experience because so much gets stirred up. Energy moves. Emotions surface. Your perspective can feel clear, even luminous, but that clarity is not grounded. You’re still unfolding. Things are still moving.
Up to this point, I’d mostly experienced an opening.
Energy flowing. Connection.
Joy. Presence.
No radical impulses. No big disruptions.
Just this growing, steady sense of aliveness.
But then - one Saturday evening - tectonic shift.
The usual crowd outside the local club had gathered, loud and raucous as always. This happens every weekend. Normally, I hardly notice it. At most, it’s background noise.
But this Saturday it got to me. Really got to me.
I got angry.
Very angry.
A fire I hadn’t felt in a long, long time flared up inside me.
I turned to my wife and started venting - furious about them, those people.
I said I wished they wouldn’t come here.
I wished the club didn’t exist.
I wished they’d just disappear, how dare they disturb me!
She listened. Calmly. And then she asked one question - simple, direct, and impossible to ignore:
“What is it about them that’s really part of you?”
In other words - what part of myself was I projecting onto them?
Projection
My wife is a talented psychotherapist, and I knew, even in the heat of that moment, that her question was the right one. But I really didn’t want to hear it. Not then.
So I put it to one side. Let it simmer.
The next morning, I returned to it, now calmer, more grounded, more capable of meeting it with awareness. To be clear, in the past I wouldn’t have come back to this with ease, in fact I would have put it off for say a year, or, the rest of my life.
But since my encounter with Toad and 5-MeO-DMT I find I can’t ignore this stuff anymore. In this new state of presence I could see something clearly:
There was a conflict emerging within me.
On one side: a deep, undeniable sense of connection to all life.
A love for all beings.
A reverence for existence itself.
And on the other: distress.
Frustration.
A discomfort with the way things are.
Not just with the club-goers on a Saturday night, but with the wider world - war, injustice, the way we treat the planet. These external disturbances were now echoing inside me. They had become internal conflicts.
Who am I in relation to this?
Who am I in the face of pain, disruption, ignorance - even when I know that all of it, all of it, is part of the same sacred whole?
My wife’s question lingered:
“What part of you exists in all of this?”
It landed deeper than I expected.
It wasn’t just about the noise on the street.
It was about the parts of myself I’m still at war with.
Aliens?
There are people in the world who feel alien to me.
I feel disconnected from them - so distant that it’s hard to imagine we belong to the same species. And yet, I know they are just as human as I am. They are Source. They are God’s children. They are me.
I want to love them.
But honestly I fear them.
Their presence stirs anger in me, sometimes even hatred. Disgust.
And I see how these emotions, left unchecked, don’t just sit quietly.
They spread.
They feed more of the same in the world.
So I asked myself - what part of me exists in all this?
And I saw it.
There is a part of me that feels alien to me.
Unreachable.
Incommunicable.
A part I can’t seem to talk to, or trust, or integrate.
We have nothing in common.
We can’t be friends.
We can’t be neighbours, or family, or community.
We certainly can’t be lovers.
That part of me is alien.
It is there, taking what is mine.
It should leave.
It should go back to wherever it came from.
Where?
The depths of my shadow?
It’s the reason I don’t have what I desire.
It steals my time.
My energy.
My freedom.
My success.
My dreams.
I didn’t invite it.
And yet - it lives in me.
Who the fuck is this part of me?
And then the realization:
That part is also human.
That part is also Source.
That part is also God’s child.
I want to love him.
But I fear him.
I see now - I’ve spent years pushing him away.
Exiling him.
Wishing he would crawl back under whatever rock he came from.
Or return to some far-off planet where I wouldn't have to deal with him.
Because if he leaves … maybe I’ll finally be free.
But what if this is what’s holding me back?
Not the part itself, but my refusal to welcome it.
What is this alien?
What is it taking from me, and how?
Can I learn to speak with it?
Can I learn to love what I fear?
The Sacred Stranger
I couldn’t think my way through this, the rational mind had already tied this up in knots. I needed a different approach.
I take a piece of paper and close my eyes.
I rest the pencil gently against the surface and begin thinking about this part of myself; the alien. The one I fear. The one I need to reach.
Slowly, my hand begins to move.
I don’t guide it.
Something is forming on the page that I can’t yet see. My eyes remain closed.
When the movement stops, I open them.
A rough image has emerged.
I take some water-colour pencils, and begin to trace over the lines, adding form, shape, colour. Giving it life.
And then, I begin the conversation.
I ask:
What is your name?
Where do you come from?
How long have you been here - and why?
The answers come, almost immediately.
“I came into existence when you were a child.
I protected you from the world by creating fantasies.
Fantasy worlds for you to live in.”
You are the source of my fantasies? I ask.
“Yes.”
What do you want?
“To keep you safe.
I create new worlds for you when you are scared.”
So why is there conflict between us?
“Because now, you want to live in the real world.
You just don’t know how to do this yet.
And so, you’ve been pushing me away.”“This leaves a space - a kind of energy vortex.
And many different things can enter that space.
Good things. Bad things.”
Then why do I feel like you’re taking what belongs to me?
“I am your creative energy.
I belong to you.
You can’t manifest in the world without me.”
So why do I feel fear?
“Because you fear the space that’s left behind without me.
The world is a frightening place without creative energy.
And creative energy is love.
Manifestation power is love.
A world without love is not possible.”
Then why am I not doing what is in my heart?
Why am I not fulfilling my purpose?
“Because you don’t know what your purpose is, not really.
You forced a separation between yourself and your creative power.
You feared the world for a long time.
You lived to please others, to avoid the pain of separation.
But in doing so, you exiled part of yourself.”“The truth is, you were never separate.
You have a purpose.
A unique one.
As all do.”“You created me so I could build safe worlds for you to hide in.
And now you want to step into the real world.
But you haven’t yet learned how to separate from fulfilling others’ needs.
And until you do, you’ll keep pushing me away.”
There was a final message.
A clear voice, steady and calm - spoken not in words, but in knowing:
“The Toad Medicine, 5-MeO-DMT, has shown you the truth.
The unifying love that is everything.
Now you know: you can manifest from love.”“But before that can happen, there are two things you must do.”
“First, separate yourself from the needs of others.
Not from compassion - but from entanglement.
From the belief that your value is measured by how well you meet their expectations.”“Second, embrace your creative energy.
Welcome it back.
Integrate the part of you that you once feared.”“Reunite with yourself.”
And then - quiet.
Just the painting.
Just the page.
Just me.
Listening.
Breathing.
Returning.
No More Great Escape
The profoundness, clarity, and discomfort of this whole experience has really challenged me. Every day since, whenever anybody or anything truly annoys me, or when I react with visceral negativity, I’m presented with the same question:
What part of me am I projecting into the world?
And how is my energetic response affecting me, and affecting the world around me?
This continuous sense of connection, of oneness, of not being separate, is demanding my growth.
Bit by bit, it’s happening.
I’m increasingly feeling that I belong in the world
without having to satisfy the needs of others,
without being a reflexive response to their demands.
And at the same time, I recognize:
there is no separation either.
It’s an unusual state of being - to hold both realities at once.
But I must admit:
I’m feeling happier.
I’m feeling more confident.
I’m feeling things are changing, in a good way.
This experience has also taught me something essential about the assumptions we often carry after expanded states of consciousness. It’s something Jungians might call psychic inflation - the belief that having a profound experience makes us more profound as people.
It doesn’t. It reveals. It opens.
It’s shown me - clearly - where the real work lies.
The experience itself offers potential. But I must not confuse that potential with transformation. It isn’t the change. It’s the doorway, the signpost, the glimpse.
And now the actual work begins - on this side of the threshold.