Both Can Be True
Sally joined our Summer Solstice retreat in June '26. In the integration circle, she described a shift in perspective that had occurred during the ceremony and I was struck not only by the truth of the insight, but also by how this shift in perspective is often at the heart of people's experience when they have taken a high dose of mushrooms. Thanks for accepting the challenge Sally and committing this insight to writing.
The Summer Solstice retreat with After The Rains was, on most levels, indescribable. And yet I've accepted the challenge of trying to describe the most beautiful and life-changing part of it for me: a lived experience of understanding.
After relinquishing control to the mushroom experience, I felt deeply connected and in tune with those around me, my own body, and the natural world. It felt like that connection could extend as far as I was willing to let it.
Through observing beauty everywhere, looking at the stars, dancing, listening to music and, most importantly, paying attention to the feelings within my body, I found myself drawn to questions that seemed to offer conflicting answers:
• Are we insignificant or important?
• Is this feeling I'm experiencing coming from me or from Oliver?
• Do I want to help my friend for her sake or for mine?
• Am I smiling because I'm overwhelmed with joy, or because I want Oliver and Carla to know I'm okay?
• Is this experience deeply meaningful or completely ridiculous?
Again and again, my mind would offer me two opposing possibilities. And every time, the answer came back with extraordinary clarity:
Both can be true.
In everyday life, holding two truths at once can feel like hard work. You usually have to consciously move between perspectives, and it can be difficult to hold them together. During the retreat, though, this understanding wasn't something I was trying to think my way into. I could feel it. It was held with comfort, acceptance and complete clarity.
It felt so important that I wanted everyone to experience it – to understand it not just intellectually, but in the way I did in that moment.
On the most beautiful level what this showed me was that I could deeply love and care for others, and that this was both for them and for myself. Both could be true. It even felt as if somehow that was the same thing.
And the reverse was also true.
Loving and caring for myself isn't simply permissible - it's a gift to everyone and everything I'm connected to.
For a very practical, “non-hippy” person this could sound far fetched or even conveniently self-serving. But this wasn't an idea I reasoned my way towards. It was something I experienced physically, and that's the part I believe. Even now, if I can't always hold onto that complete knowing in everyday life, I know that for a few hours in the foothills of the Pyrenees, I truly understood.
Self-compassion isn't selfish. It's a gift.
I've been trying to grasp that for a long time. There's a proverb from the Asaro people of Papua New Guinea that I really connect with which explains why I feel can accept this on a much deeper level after this experience.
"Knowledge is only a rumour until it lives in the body."
Thank you so much to Carla, Oliver, and everyone on the retreat for creating such a safe, generous and deeply human setting. It meant the world to me.
