Chapter 36
“If you want to shrink something,
you must first allow it to expand.
If you want to get rid of something,
You must first allow it to flourish.”
~ Stephen Mitchell (trans.), Tao Te Ching: A New English Version (New York: Harper Perennial), 2006.
In How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan relays one of the key “flight instructions” given by veteran “psychonauts” to people embarking on their first psychedelic trip: if you see a monster, go toward it.
As with all monsters, this requires defying our most powerful guardians—our desires and fears—as well as the conventional wisdom around monsters. At root, the word “monster” means a “showing.” He is always trying to show you something, even if he can’t articulate it—especially if he can’t articulate it. And he will not retreat from the stage until you get the message.
The monster’s medium—raging, roaring, rearing up—is his message. All he really craves is attention. It is hardly surprising that our contemporary culture is so monstrous: we live in an attention economy, where the latest form of manufactured scarcity is consciousness itself.
The art of monster-whispering requires not just courage and patience, but a heroic dose of imagination. Here, Lao-tzu calls it “the subtle perception of the way things are.” The way things are is not how they seem. The monster is not as he appears; or rather, he is precisely as he appears, if we look carefully enough: afraid.
So seen, he disappears.
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