Forecast for the Future

"Every individual without exception bears a potential writer within himself. The reason is that everyone has trouble accepting the fact that he will disappear unheard of and unnoticed in an indifferent universe, and everyone wants to make himself into a universe of words before it's too late. 

Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not that far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding."

- Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Week 5: Other People's Lives (Seem More Interesting than Mine)

Most of us are on a spiritual journey of some kind or another.



One of my best friends from childhood told me when I was home during Christmas that he had decided that he had reached a point where the only thing he could do for himself to make his life better would be to travel to the country of Gabón in Africa and live among the natives for a few weeks while ritually consuming the iboga plant. Sailing on iboga is on the wavelength of taking a trip on peyote, except harsher and more intense. It's also illegal in the United States. I was in disbelief when he told me he was leaving, but it was also clear that nothing would stop him. I've been worried about him for the past few weeks but finally he wrote me an email today:

hey dude!

yes, im more alive than ive ever been! Im going to be staying a bit longer...

I am still undergoing my initiation: I have had 2 iboga ceremonies and they have been very eye opening. Lots of excruciating pain and terror. it has been really good for me to face these fears. i have one more ceremony to do, and then i will be finished hope you are doing well my friend

-D****

I love "Very eye opening. Lots of excruciating pain and terror."--this should be a couplet I use to end a poem someday.

I can't pretend I understand what he's doing, but I can understand the idea that everyone needs to take their own path.

Click here for a great Salon.com article on a journalist's superpsychedelic iboga trip.

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