Qalia - PMI Integration 2026-06-24
Welcome
Wystan invited me to talk about one approach to integrating your experiences.
You have all been exploring your awareness through the lens of awakening. I hope that it has been interesting and fruitful so far.
The question I would like to address is how to integrate what you have been learning. Not just digesting your experiences so far, but one approach to extending your discoveries into an ongoing, lifelong path to stable awakening.
About Me
50 years Buddhist study, practice and teaching.
25 years study and practice in the Dzogchen nature of mind teachings.
Dzogchen specializes in recognizing the nature of mind, empty luminosity.
At the moment, we are living in a state of ignorance, not knowing our empty, luminous, and perfect nature.
When we recognize the nature of awareness as empty luminosity, duality collapses, and confusion and suffering naturally resolve.
The insight of emptiness removes the subject, so there is nothing to be separate from anything else.
This recognition is called rigpa or insight, and is the most profound realization possible.
The goal is to live in the state of rigpa all day long.
Our awareness is already nondual, already perfect, so we are not creating a special new state.
We are letting go of the delusion of duality and recognizing that awareness has always been and will always be nondual, perfect, and wonderful.
I began exploring nature of mind practice with psychedelics for 25 years while dancing and on solitary retreats.
I got busy and took a decade off from psychedelic meditation research.
Four years ago I tried LSD again and had a very profound experience.
Then I attended a Psychedelic Buddhism conference, and no one knew how to meditate with psychedelics. I realized it was my job, so I retired from IT to research psychedelic meditation full time, starting with LSD.
Three years ago, I discovered 5-MeO-DMT and began researching it.
About the PMI Community
I published A Practical Guide to Psychedelic Meditation in February, 2025.
I founded Psychedelic Meditation Institute one year ago.
We have 300 subscribers and a very active and connected community.
We have a full Psychedelic Meditation Course with 25 classes and Q&A on all aspects of the practice.
I am currently teaching a Facilitator Training Course.
I give everyone the instructions in 90-minute Zoom sessions.
All of our members have access to the medicine world wide.
I’ll pass you on to one of our facilitators and they will guide you for your first 3 hour medicine session over Zoom. They will teach you how to use the medicine safely and responsibly, and coach you through your first medicine session. After that, you will have the confidence to navigate your own solo medicine sessions every week in a safe and productive way.
Once people have the medicine and know how to safely practice on their own, they can join the Essence Love group on Signal with 150 members. We are an interesting, warm, and insightful community of active practitioners. We share session reports, ask questions, and share insights.
We have gatherings every Sunday for classes, integration circles, and group medicine practice sessions.
We have Shared Rigpa community practice sessions over Zoom every other Sunday.
Dyad practice for one hour: sober, medicine, simultaneous. Group shared rigpa.
Shared rigpa practice is ideal from a teaching point of view.
We are transmitting the awakened state between community members.
Most people practice have a weekly solo medicine practice.
We recommend a daily sober meditation practice as the integration practice for weekly medicine sessions.
When you join PMI your are joining a wonderful community, have access to a complete body of teachings, and can join in weekly community practice sessions with the medicine. You will feel fully supported in you journey to awakening.
Two Transformations
1. From the unhealthy subtle body to the healthy subtle body.
The combination of the medicine with IFS understanding speeds up the process of emotional healing by a factor of 10 over conventional talk therapy.
2. From the healthy subtle body to the nondual wisdom body.
Combining the medicine with the understanding of empty luminosity transforms dualistic consciousness into nondual wisdom 10 times faster than sober meditation alone.
Essence Love Practice
The medicine is very somatic. It lights up the subtle body, and anything in it.
Vivid nonconceptual feelings in the body. Not subtle! In our face.
IFS recognizes Self, Self-awareness. Self is not a part and cannot be damaged or burdened.
Some of our parts have become burdened with emotional traumas or feelings that we could not resolve when we were young.
We exile these difficult feelings from our lives as best we can.
We fear that they may become triggered, and when they are triggered, we hate them.
Being triggered means that we could blend with a part and be flooded with its suffering.
The practice is to notice that we are blended with a part and become Self-aware again.
Within Self-awareness, we have agency, choice. We don’t have to hate and fear the part.
We can turn toward the part, welcome it, and give it attention and love.
The parts love the attention and respond by unwinding into okayness.
Since the medicine is so somatic, we can vividly feel this transformation from suffering to okayness.
Learning to welcome and care for our parts is a learnable skill that happens quickly, in only a few sessions.
Welcoming and caring for our burdened parts is a vital life skill both with and without the medicine.
Weekly emotional healing sessions with the medicine gradually unburdens all of our parts.
Three Kinds of Meditation
In order to understand the transformation to the nondual wisdom body, we need to talk about how meditation works with consciousness, how consciousness interacts with the medicine, and how the medicine assists meditation.
1. Mindfulness using an object for support.
2. Mindfulness not needing an object for support.
3. Nondual nature of mind practice.
1. Mindfulness using objects of the 6 consciousnesses as support for being present.
What is awareness? Awareness is knowingness. The 6 consciousnesses are 6 channels of knowingness.
The 6 consciousnesses are awareness, so everything is our own nondual awareness.
2. Mindfulness not needing an object as support.
Self-awareness is easy. Remember that we are aware.
Analogy of a candle flame. Awareness is aware of itself in a nondual way.
How do we become Self-aware? We remember that we are aware.
Exercise to test whether Self-awareness depends on the visual consciousness.
→ Be Self-aware, then close and open eyes while sustaining Self-awareness.
What do psychedelics do? They amplify awareness in different ways.
Some amplify the visual consciousness. 5MeO does not amplify the visual consciousness very much.
5MeO amplifies awareness itself, so Self-awareness becomes very clear and stable.
Low, medium, and high doses of 5MeO.
Sustaining Self-awareness in low, medium, and high doses: not lost, and no fear.
3. Nature of mind practice.
Awareness is featureless, like a perfect mirror.
1. Be Self-aware.
2. Look for this Self-awareness.
3. Not find Self-awareness anywhere.
4. Let the not-finding continue.
Then nonconceptual not-finding is rigpa, nondual awareness.
Session Outline
Essence Love practice for 30 minutes.
- The body acclimates to the medicine so there will be no nausea later.
- The mind acclimates to the medicine so we relax into medicine space.
- Parts may become activated in low doses so we can care for them.
Nature of mind practice in moderate doses.
Go to the top end of our confidence zone in every session.
Stack moderate dose puffs every two minutes so we arrive relaxed and alert.
Puff, wait 60 seconds, feel into it, and ask two questions:
1. How do I feel? Do I have bye-in from all of my parts?
2. Do I have the inner desire for more medicine right now?
Clear bright Self-awareness. Look and recognize super clear nondual rigpa.
Be. Just Be. Nothing to do.
Neuroplastic training in nondual awareness shows up in daily meditation and life.
Follow up with an instruction session with me. I’ll provide a private link to the video of this talk and my talk outline to everyone here.