Following the Owl

(January 2022. I wrote this story for a Vocal contest— the challenge was to write a piece of fiction about a barn owl. Of course, I didn’t need to write fiction, because I already had a story involving an owl from my first year in the bus. Truly, I have been following the owl for over a year now. There is much more to say about the events of this story, and many related events and thoughts that rightfully belong here; the 5000 word limit really restricted me here. One day, I will add to this story, and make it more full and complete, allowing the content to dictate the form instead of vice-versa. But this is a great story as is; read on for a window into my psyche, as well as thoughts on fiction, appropriation, psychedelics, and meaning-making.)

All stories are fiction. Even memoir is a form of fiction. There may be some non-fictional world outside— there may be— but once linked with the lens of our listening minds everything is understood as a story. A story is a string of neurons, and those neurons do not perfectly mirror the world witnessed. Memory authors and alters. Even the story I listen closest to, and speak from— the story I tell myself about myself— is a fiction. Myself, in fact, is fiction.

This fact that I am fiction is not meant to be received negatively. Honestly, it is a form of freedom. The fictionality of the self does not imply that we are fake, or lying, or somehow less than something true. We are true— true fictions. In fact, as true fictions we are more than merely true. We are imaginative.

So, imagine I believe the following story to be true.

I did not expect to see an owl. I expected to see a dolphin.

It’s the full moon, and the moon shines over Craggy Wash. The moonshine shows shadows and shrubs among stones. It shows two dozen people sitting in a wide circle on a rocky flattish clearing. It lights my blue schoolbus up the hill, Starry Night painted across her side. Her light blues and dark blues are bathed in moony blues, as the bright navy blue sky is bathed in moony blues. My bus belongs here; this starry night belongs behind my Starry Night. I have been home here for nearly a month, living near this loose confederation of 20-50 nomads in buses, vans and RVs in this random bit of the wasteland. It is beautiful and red in Craggy Wash, and I was very happy waking up there every morning to work on Nelson’s bus, or to work on my own bus, or just to be alive in the desert.

Three of our witchier friends are running a full moon ceremony in my gravvelly backyard. Never had so many of Craggy Wash’s loosely affiliated nomads come together in one event. I was genuinely excited to be there, and was impressed by the power the three girls were wielding; I wanted to support them, and was curious about what they would do with the powers they’d gathered and set in motion. The normally loud, indepedently-minded nomads were listening with respect and reverence.

One of the girls, Genevieve, began to lead a guided meditation meant to induce visions of a spirit animal. Before I tell the rest of this story, I feel I ought to clarify my thoughts on this term. Many people lately have claimed that the term or idea of ‘spirit animal’ is inherently appropriative of Native American cultures. I certainly do believe that many white people in New Age movements and the like have historically and currently acted appropriatively towards elements of Native American cultures, and that there are many who wrongly commercialized and profited off of these cultures in dishonest, unfair, colonial, and plain uncool ways. I understand people’s moral reaction to that injustice, and I feel the same way; however, I don’t believe that the term ‘spirit animal,’ let alone the general idea or phenomenon, is itself inherently appropriative. Human cultures have practiced varying forms of animistic spirituality for a very, very long time— long before we even started writing. Some of the earliest cave paintings feature half-human, half-animal images. That animal ‘spirits’ have lessons to teach us, that they exist in our minds and thus as part of us, is something that human cultures all over the world have understood for millenia. Visions of animals are real; they are a natural and even essential part of human psychology, part of the experience of being human. We animate the world in order to communicate with it; we anthropomorphize animals and in so doing become more like them. We make them part of us. Everything in nature has something to offer the human mind, and animals are the easiest to imagine speaking. Humans have long recognized that the hawk, the serpent, the lion, the sheep, the crow, the coyote, every animal has something to teach humans; every part of nature has some potential correspondence in the human mind; we learn to recognize parts of ourselves through imaginary representations of others. In the form of an animal mentor, we can access and integrate parts of our composite selves which otherwise may be difficult to listen to. This is a deep mechanism of the human psyche, an important way we make sense of our world; it is ancestral, and it is an inheritance shared by all humanity, regardless of tribe. 

Something like a ‘spirit animal’ concept shows up in most human cultures throughout the world; think of Egyptian gods depicted as half-human, half-animal; think of the natural spirits of Shinto; think of indigenous Australian tribes and their animal totems; think of European barbarians and their pagan religions; think of the ceremonial animal masks made by cultures from Africa to Pasifika; think of the many Greek myths featuring Zeus taking different animal forms; and, of course, think of the rich traditions of various North and South American cultures featuring some sort of meeting with a spirit animal teacher. All of these cultures, and so many more, have traditions involving communication with a spirit, or a part of the individual’s psyche represented by an animal image. No one of these cultures owns this essential mode of human experience; it is shared by all. Any person’s interaction with any sort of animal mentor or manifestation is inherently valid. I would only consider it appropriative under a very specific set of circumstances. Ignorance is not appropriation; we engage in many deeply-rooted human traditions without always knowing their rich histories; sometimes, things are so universal that they become invisible. Of course, it is always best with any cultural practice to learn as much as possible about its history and context, because it allows you to engage more richly with the ritual. But the general concept of having instructive, spiritually impactful animal visions is deeper than any one cultural tradition; it is a basic archetype of human understanding, and as such needs no cultural justification. Who among us has never had a strange dream featuring a talking dog, or a fox leading you into the woods, or a rooster who reminds you of your dad? These are real experiences, genuine visions in the truest sense, and they ought to be heeded. They are important, if coded, messages from yourself and from others. It would truly be a tragedy if, due to fears of ‘appropriation,’ people from cultures all over the world stopped accessing this essential mode of experience, stopped thinking about their dreams in a spiritual way, stopped listening when spirits seem to be speaking, stopped embracing the universal and broad and deeply human idea of a spirit animal in any of its many manifestations. This would be a monumental loss of a core human feature, and unnecessarily impoverish the spiritual lives of everyone.

As the guided meditation began, I tried my best to follow along and give myself fully to the experiment, to genuinely act as if I believed it were all true. I expected to see a dolphin, when the time came to meet our animal mentor. Dolphins had long been my favorite animal; they’re intelligent, social, and playful, three traits I value in myself and in other humans. For a long time I identified with dolphins, and I imagined that a dolphin would be my patronus. The meditation moved along, and I tried to stay focused. As the meditation went deeper and deeper, and we moved from introspection about ourselves to an open field, we were led up to a moment when we were to encounter a spirit. And the crazy thing is, I actually saw something in my mind’s eye in the moment I was prompted to do so. Something actually popped into my head out of nowhere, a real image, even though I’ve never been much of a visual thinker. But it wasn’t the dolphin that I had expected to see, even though I’d primed myself to think of dolphins, even though I had been picturing them earlier. Instead, with no clear associational provocation, I was presented with an owl, a white owl, bright and unmistakable against the dark backdrop of my closed eyes.

My first reaction was resistance. I was expecting to see a dolphin, and I felt like I’d done something wrong. I tried to conjure up a dolphin, tried to make my experience match my expectations. For a few moments I tried to consciously visualize dolphins, before realizing that it just wasn’t the same. The owl had appeared. I had not consciously made it appear, which made the visitation feel all the more real, all the more consequential, all the more authentic. I stopped trying to whip up a dolphin image, and returned to the blackness of unconcretized inner vision. Opening myself up, I made a mental apology to myself and to the owl, and hoped the owl would return. As I had been doing all this, I had been missing a lot of the rest of the meditation, the parts intended to help us communicate with our new teacher. I was able to see the afterimage of the owl I’d seen before; I sort of remembered what it looked like; but it didn’t hit me with the same force of presence it had earlier; already, it felt like a memory more than a presence, as artificial as the dolphin I’d tried to whip up. Due to my initial resistance, I do not think I got to connect fully with the owl that night. The meditation ended, and I was left intrigued by my unexpected vision of an owl, while also feeling like I hadn’t come to understand anything about it besides the fact that it existed, that it was a real spirit trying to communicate with me, or at least a real figment of my imagination. The owl felt elusive; but, at least I knew there was an owl to chase.

After the full moon ceremony, I talked about how I’d seen an unexpected owl with Genevieve. She, also, had seen a white owl. I found that interesting, but it didn’t explain anything in a useful way. Time passed, and I forgot the owl. People’s vans and buses got built out more and more. Eventually, most of us moved out of the Craggy Wash BLM Land and went our separate ways. Genevieve told me about a friend of hers who was organizing a monthlong intentional community event on a large piece of property in southern Arizona. I got in contact with the host, and was invited to come, even though I couldn’t afford to pay like most participants. I went back and forth about going; I decided no, for a while; but, eventually, I committed to coming, knowing very little about what I was putting my faith into. The community involved about 15 people living in tents, vans, RVs, and buses around the large property, with the host’s house available for kitchen and bathroom use. There were lots of really interesting people gathered there, and I grew to like the group. Funnily enough, Genevieve and the other people I’d known previously all left a week into the month-long event, while I stayed. A chain had led me to that land, and though none of my old hands still held me, after that first week I knew I was in the right place.

The land was gorgeous— 60 acres of wild desert in the mountains of saguaro country. This wasn’t the empty-seeming gravelly wasteland of Craggy Wash; this was a rich desert, full of life, as green as it was tan. There were saguaro cacti everywhere, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. The median age of the cacti was well over a hundred years old; some were easily 200, 300 years old, maybe older. These were ancient, wise creatures, the likes of which I’d never known before. I think the grandfather saguaro on the property may have been over 400 years old. It is almost impossible to find private land available in America with old-growth trees, since they were mercilessly logged for generations, but nobody found a way to capitalize on the saguaros; they survived the onslaught of civilization just as they survived many periods of desert drought. To walk around this often-silent land was enchanting and humbling; the saguaro-studded desert teemed with life, which would occasionally burst the silence to perform. Gilded flitters lived in holes near the tops of saguaros, while white doves floated high in the sky. Bats swooped around at night, and we had to be careful to not let bark scorpions or the crafty desert mice into our rigs. At the edge of the property ran the Gila River, a rich riparian strip wetting the wasteland. I had never lived somewhere that felt so sacred.

It was soon revealed that a centerpiece of the month would be an ayahuasca ceremony led by a shaman the host knew. I went back and forth on whether or not I wanted to do it. On the one hand, it seemed like an amazing opportunity to get to do something I would not have been able to find on my own, something unique and potentially life-changing based on the testimonials of my new friends. On the other hand, ayashuasca seemed like the mother of all psychedelic drugs, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it yet at 22.

I had been interested in psychedelics for a long time; I researched them intellectually from a distance for years before first trying them at 20. I believed in their potential based on science and faith before having the kairos. Of course, once I tried mushrooms for the first time, I was not only a believer but a born-again evangelist; and it wasn’t long before I realized that I liked acid even better. I experimented with both of these drugs many times; I also had a couple wonderful trips with 2C-B. I enjoyed pure MDMA twice, and while it isn’t technically a classic psychedelic it definitely has powerful healing potential. In the coming years, MDMA therapy and psilocybin therapy for PTSD, depression, social issues, and more will have profound impacts on society. Psychedelic substances, many of which are natural, can produce powerful experiences, help people heal trauma, help people heal addictions, and help people feel more connected to themselves and others. Psychedelics don’t give you anything you didn’t already have, they simply unlock latent powers. They allow different parts of the brain to connect with one another, they create new neural pathways, they open you up to new experiences. They allow more of your neurons to talk to one another. Taking psychedelics heats up your brain to a high-entropy state, like boiling water; everything can touch, everything can talk, new connections and formations can take shape. At the end of the trip, you cool down and integrate the changes through annealing. Old habits break, new understandings of the self coalesce. Psychedelics are one of the only ways that adults can access a bit of what it was like to be a child, to access that radically open mind capable of appreciating change and generating novelty like nothing else in the universe. 

Eventually, I decided that I was a yes. It felt like the universe was giving me a unique opportunity to have this special experience in a beautiful, sacred place. Plus, I would be surrounded by people I’d gotten to know, so it would be a safe and familiar container. I figured I might not get a chance like that again; if I waited until I felt ‘ready’ for ayahuasca and sought it out, I’d end up doing it in a strange place with strangers. No, this was the time, this was right. I was no more ready then than I would be if I waited years; I wanted to embrace my opportunity. It felt narratively, meaningfully right. I expressed my desire, and the community rallied to support me, covering part of my portion of the donation to the shaman and his assistants to book the visit.

In the weeks leading up to the ceremony, we were given instructions on dieta, the special diet followed in order to prepare our bodies for the ayahuasca. We were expected to abstain from all other mind-altering substances, including caffeine, weed, and alcohol; we were expected to abstain from red meat and excess salt, two of my favorite things; we were also expected to abstain from certain spicy foods, as well as certain semi-fermented foods containing a specific amino acid, which were both in some way contraindicated with ayahuasca. The goal of the dieta was threefold: to prepare our bodies to handle the intense experience and minimize the chance of complications, to enable us to optimally process the ayahuasca and get the most out of it, and to put us in the ritualistic mindset, psychologically priming us to have a powerful spiritual experience. This, to me, was the most important function, the social-psychological one. Ritual, especially shared rituals, is one of the primary means by which humans enter into what Emile Durkheim called collective effervescence, that feeling of being connected to a larger whole, the whole being the tribe, the tribe being a synechdoche for the universe. By spending two weeks ritually preparing for the ceremony, I put myself into a self-created psychological environment conducive to having a profound experience. It was the classic psychedelic emphasis on set and setting, heightened by the religious rituals and connotations. I took the dieta more seriously than anyone else in the leadup to the ceremony, because I wanted to fully give myself to the ritual in order to discover its potential. 

By expecting a profound experience, you make it more likely that you will have a profound experience. By believing in something, and acting sincerely as if it were true, you often discover that it is true. If the hypothesis involves yourself, your belief, and the actions that stem from that belief, then it’s worth experimenting by temporarily and contingently adopting that belief in order to discover if it really can be true. If you’re willing to accept the consequences of being wrong, and to change your belief accordingly, then it’s worth believing in things, even if there’s only a small chance they turn out to be true when the rubber hits the road. That’s how we discover amazing things, and share them with the world. It takes a certain epistemic humility mixed with idealistic hope. This comes with embracing the fictionality of ourselves, embracing the fact that we are co-creators of our own reality. This is the essence of William James’ Will to Believe, an essential aspect of American Pragmatism. The best of American philosophy has always been concerned with navigating real human experience; the creation of the new world has always involved both idealism and pragmatism.

The ceremony weekend arrived, and so did the shaman. The shaman brought his whole family, as well as some assistants and some other people who were also going to participate in the ceremony. Everyone set up their own little area of blankets and pillows in the large room where the ceremony would take place, a small building that was normally a yoga studio. There was a mix of ayahuasca veterans and first-timers like me. The veterans all spoke of ‘the medicine’ reverently, often referring to it as Grandmother Aya, or just the Grandmother. I was struck by the consistency with which people described the medicine as having agency, as actively working with your body and communicating in intentional ways. They told me how profoundly the medicine had changed their lives, how they’d cried, laughed, processed old traumas, come to know new and old parts of themselves, experienced profound ecstasy and, more often than not, purged through frequent vomiting and occasional diarrhea. I was warned never to trust a fart. All of these expectations entered my mental landscape. The shaman gave a talk explaining how the weekend would go. There would be two nights of ceremony, and integration activities during the day. During the ceremony nights, we could choose between a Peruvian and a Hawaiian ayahuasca blend, and we could choose a dosage between 1 and 5. Every two hours, the shaman would give a call for another round, and people could bring their cups up if they so chose for another dose. Over the course of the night, while people sat or laid down in their spots and went on their personal journeys, the shaman and his wife and a few other musicians would perform traditional music, songs known as icaros. Their children, a magical 5 year old and a precious baby, were with them. They were old hats at this. Their presence added something beautiful to the setting, something youthful and pure.

As the first ceremony night began, I started off with a low dose, a 2 of the Hawaiian. I spent a few hours not feeling anything, just sitting soberly with my expectations, lying down in the dark thinking about the traumas I wanted healed. A second small dose didn’t seem to change much. As I laid there, waiting, I heard an owl hoot through the open doorway to my right. It sounded close; later on, other people would mention that they’d heard it too. I had not heard any owls in the three weeks I’d been there. But, believe it or not, at the time I didn’t think much about it. After a couple hours I went back up with my cup and took a 3 of of the Hawaiian. And after that… well, it’s hard to describe. A hallmark of the religious experience is ineffability. I don’t want to force it too much and try to relay everything that happened; I have some reservations about what that sort of reporting would do to my memory of the experience. I don’t want to collapse an indescribable complex of experiences, or replace it with a limited bucket of words. I’ll say this, though. It helped me find my true voice. It’s good medicine. And I am always.

The second night got off to an inauspicious start. I didn’t sleep well, and I had a pounding headache in the hours leading up to the ceremony. I almost didn’t want to do it, despite how amazing the first night had been. But, with the help of some tea and native herbs, I felt better by the time the ceremony began again. This time, I went for the Peruvian, and my plan was to take all 2’s, since the 3 of Hawaiian had been more than enough to send me melting into infinite bliss and the warm colorful darkness of the waiting room of souls. I figured that I would go until I puked, since most people seemed to have made good use of their provided purge buckets the night before. I anointed myself on each of my chakras with a little bit of ayahuasca from the bottom of the cup, and I meditated with different chakra stones. It’s worth it, believing in things; it’s worth it, making life feel meaningful. I worked through my body, feeling myself in different ways. As the night went on, I started feeling more courageous, like I was holding the medicine well, like it liked me. I took a 3, and still felt giggly and joyous, still felt capable of handling myself, still felt like I was holding the medicine well. I surprised myself and took a 4 at the next call. I laid down, and continued listening to the most amazing music imaginable.

Eventually, I had a vision, I was in a vision, the most vivid vision I have ever had in my life. I was in a snowy field, in front of a snow-covered tree. Perched on one of the snowy branches was an owl, a white owl, a massive white owl. It had yellow eyes, and they stared directly at me. They stared directly through me. They saw everything I was, and knew. I stared back at the owl. I opened myself to its gaze; I met its gaze; I did not flinch, intimidating as the predator’s eyes were; I showed the owl my courage. The vision shifted— the owl, flying through the air, in a blizzard— it dives into a snowbank, disappears into white silence— it reemerges, flying, with a mouse caught dead in its claws. We are back in the field, and there is no mouse. The owl is on the branch; its third eye is purple; its eyes are all purple. They are staring into me, and I am staring back. I see— I see. I am worthy. This is my teacher, and I have a lot to learn. The massive owl launches into flight, flies directly at me, flies directly into me, and I merge with the owl. 

I open my eyes. I am sitting up now; the owl is sitting up now. There are wings behind my shoulderblades. I turn my head, slowly, around the room. It feels as if my head could swivel forever; it feels like I will never blink again. I swivel my owl head slowly and gaze at the figures in darkness around the room. They are all experiencing their own journeys. They do not see me gaze at them, but I do, and I realize that attention itself is a form of love. I realize that I am beaming loving awareness at each of these figures just by turning my owl gaze towards them. I would like to keep them safe; I will not let any bad spirits in through the open doorway to my right. I feel more connected to the room than ever, feel aware of every person around, feel more love than I knew I could feel. I feel perfectly at peace, and know that the medicine loves me. I am a white owl shaman. The song changes, and a new, more upbeat tune takes hold. Across the room, I hear Peter ask if anyone wants to dance. I am instantly on my feet, I am dancing, I am the white owl dancing, I am fully masculine and fully feminine, I am beautiful. I have never felt more comfortable in my body. We sit back down, but I continue to react strongly to the music. Eventually the shaman issues the last call; I go up with my cup first, down a 5 of the Peruvian, and walk out the door. We were not supposed to go outside for long, but I knew I would be okay, and I knew the shaman knew. Besides, if I did finally purge I would rather have done it outside. But, I didn’t. I looked up at the universe, and felt as if each star in the Milky Way contributed to this moment. I danced with the immaculate stars, and the stars danced with me. I have never felt such ecstasy in my life. I had all the power I’d ever need; I didn’t need to be healed; I was more than healthy; I was a magnificently powerful owl, and my wings touched the stars. As I danced I cackled and giggled like a madman; the wind moved with me and loved me; I would zap my arms and attention towards a certain star, and that star would twinkle. I was the white owl; I was electric; I was bliss; I was always. That long ecstatic moment is forever always.

Since that night I have been following the owl. It’s funny, the way you start noticing patterns when you’re looking for them. I meet people I like who turn out to have owl tattoos, and I think ‘Of course! I’m supposed to follow this person.’ I see owl symbols, and know I am following the right path. I talk to people about the owl, and often they have clues of their own to offer me. A friend painted the owl on the back of my bedroom in my bus. Sometimes I feel like I am failing the owl when I don’t practice the lessons that ayahuasca taught me. But I know that the owl and I are forever entwined, and I will never be rid of it. Last week I returned to that property in the desert on my own. In the silence one night I heard a hooing in the distance, then another. I followed the hoos to a large powerline structure, not 20 yards from the yoga studio where the ceremony took place. I see a silhouette in the darkness. I approach. Two massive shapes fly away into the night. I am not yet ready; I must keep learning.

The most common owl in Arizona is the barn owl. I do not know whether the dark shapes in the night were barn owls, but it doesn’t really matter what kind of owl they were. It’s best not to be too strict in interpreting one’s visions. I will follow the owl in whatever form it takes, and wherever that meaning-making can take me. The intentional attention that following the owl engenders in me is in itself valuable. Maybe a genuine supernatural entity has visited me, and is purposefully leaving me clues that I don’t yet understand. But ultimately, it’s not important whether I was visited by an actual spirit, or if the owl is a manifestation of some part of my psyche. If spirits are real, then it is a magical world; if our brains are capable of containing such rich depths to explore, then it is a magical world. Meaning-making is a form of real magic. I do not know what the owl means, but following it is meaningful. What matters most is believing in something, anything at all. I will follow my belief in the owl wherever it leads.