There Is Only One Diagnosis

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the book that mental health workers use to make diagnoses, lists 157 psychological disorders across 947 rather dense pages. But we all know that there is only one diagnosis for humanity: the thwarted wish to give and receive love. Everything else is just mopping up the details.

Whatever kind it may be, love with a partner, the love between a parent and a child, the love of a friend, or the love of the natural world around us, the great joyful exchange is the act of seeing and being seen in all the fine and complete details. That fact of love is, I believe, what psychedelic experiences will sometimes show us – that love is what holds everything together, or even that it is the everything that is held together. Once you have that, what more do you need than a vegetable patch, a few friends and a nice warm fire? The destructive materialism we are mired in now is feeble compensation for actual connection.  

Where to begin? One place is to allow ourselves to mourn lost love, the many years and moments when we did not get to savor the joy of seeing and being seen by another. The staleness of what we call ordinary life, its missing magic. To mourn where love has not flourished is itself a labor of love, it is a process that moves through our bodies and asks only to be witnessed. To feel the ache in our hearts without undue comment or commentary, and to let that ache – or whatever it may be for you – to move, change, grow, stay the same, or what it will. To be a steadfast witness to the motions of the heart.

When we are able to mourn for our own lost love, for all the expression and joy that never took place, a stronger interest in the fellow sufferers around us can grow. The love we crave and hold inside us is ready to dance more intently with others. That secret rose inside us is what psychedelics have the potential to awaken and express. If we have had the good fortune of being in bliss, we may remember to keep a good hold on it when we return.

How does my love grow?

Ask the holly bush.

Where did my love go?

Follow the bee.

Will the night last long?

Only the blood-red moon knows.

What does love ask for? 

To be seen, and to see.

 In the quiet of the night

I hear it rising

The great wise salmon

Of the Western Sea.

True death, true life

Is all we long for

In the whirlpool of folly

That we struggle to flee.

 Down the long wide valleys

Of the moonlight

The bitter and the doleful

Ghosts are howling

For the love they once cherished

But allowed to slip free.

If of love

You would be given

Let love be,

Let love be.