Heshvan 5787: Sitting as Apprentices
This month, we’re celebrating a year since launching our psilocybin retreat programs, first with the Idra Project in Oregon and, more recently, Tzohar in Colorado. By the end of this year, we will have held six retreats with fifty participants from across the Jewish world, coming together to find healing, connection, sacred space to celebrate and grieve, and for some, to seek the Divine in their lives. One of the most special aspects of our retreat design has been the inclusion of an Indigenous facilitator to help lead our ceremonies as we weave Jewish music and ritual together with his own. Beyond the powerful ceremonial integrity he brings to our retreats, the most moving contribution has been the way he speaks about the teachers of his lineage, all those who have trained him: the stories, the jokes, the serious warnings, the push and pull between a young student and his elders. In Jewish psychedelic practice, we have no unbroken chain of living teachers like this to lean on. Yet this kind of relationship is still within reach, through the rebbes and teachers whose spirits still live in the pages of their books, if we are willing to sit with them as apprentices.
Those who have followed my writing probably know well that my greatest inspiration in this regard has been Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, H"yd, the Piaseczner Rebbe, who lived in pre-war Poland and led his Hasidim in Warsaw until his murder at the Trawniki camp in 1943. His yahrzeit, the 4th of Cheshvan, falls this week, and it seems fitting to mark it by sitting with him once more as his apprentices. Few rebbes wrote so directly to their students. Hovat HaTalmidim is addressed to young people at the start of their spiritual lives, Hachsharat HaAvreichim to those a few steps further along, and Bnei Machshava Tova lays out a path for small circles of seekers committed to awakening their souls together. Then there is Tzav V’Ziruz, the Rebbe’s personal spiritual notebook—yechidus on a page, a private audience in which he confides his own doubts, struggles, and longings and invites us to learn from them. His particular style of writing and his lifelong curriculum of spiritual development give the feeling of a master teacher diligently guiding each student step by step, anticipating where they will stumble and meeting them there with both tenderness and demand. Even his sermons from the Warsaw Ghetto, buried in a milk can and recovered after the war as Esh Kodesh, carry the voice of a steady teacher determined to stay with his students amid tremendous personal and communal suffering. On their own, each of these works provides immense counsel for anyone seeking a life of interiority. Read together, they form a komah shleimah, a complete spiritual stature, with a guide who walks beside us from our first awkward steps through our darkest hours.
What follows gathers the Rebbe’s instructions into something we can practice. Though he never wrote about psychedelics, the states he cultivated through imagination, music, prayer, Shabbat, and, most famously, a quieting meditation were all meant to open the soul and integrate what it revealed into daily life. His words appear exactly as he wrote them, and the bridge to ceremony is mine. He speaks of God constantly. If that word doesn’t fit your experience, hear it as the holy or the deepest truth you can turn toward. All of this belongs inside sound harm reduction: screening, a trained facilitation team, and real integration support. Citations follow Sefaria’s chapter divisions, and for Bnei Machshava Tova I give the section and paragraph.
Preparation: building the vessel
Be careful! The Rebbe’s sharpest warning opens Hachsharat HaAvreichim (ch. 1). People who are moved only when inspiration happens to strike get flung about as if by כף הקלע a sling, between real longing and wallowing, a condition he calls hardly less dangerous than feeling nothing at all. A medicine can deliver an opening with no effort on our part, which makes his warning urgent. In harm reduction terms, he is talking about set, the inner readiness we bring. His curriculum aims at an awakening that comes בבחירה by choice, and preparation means becoming someone who can intentionally hold an opening long before the ceremony begins.
He asks that members of his circle feel real pain at their distance from God, keep a regular rhythm of practice, and be honest with themselves (Bnei Machshava Tova, Purpose §4). Before a retreat, ask yourself: What are my intentions? Will I commit to integration afterward? Can I be honest with myself? Then choose one trusted person, someone who can receive you exactly as you are without an agenda of their own, and tell them everything, "דאגתו ושמחתו, נפילתו ועליתו" their worry and their joy, their fall and their rise (Regulations §9). Plan to call them when you come home.
In the weeks before, practice a little each day. A sleeping body wakes in a moment, while the soul wakes only through steady effort (Hovat HaTalmidim ch. 9). Speak with God in your own words or in song, beginning with what actually hurts, or with a George Bertelstein's "clear and simple prayer": What are you grateful for? What is troubling you in this moment? What are you truly asking for?
Learn hashkatah, the meditative practice the Rebbe taught a student and his study partner in the mid-1930s (Derekh HaMelekh, appendix, "Inyan Hashkatah"). Watch your thoughts, staying present to sounds and body sensations without getting caught in their stories, until the mind empties. Say one verse, such as "ה׳ אלקים אמת" the Lord God is truth. Then ask for what you need in a few words aimed at the good you want to grow, said softly, because force wakes the ego. Let that last step shape your intention for ceremony. Practice with music, too. Take a niggun, close your eyes, and sing to your soul until it begins to sing by itself (Bnei Machshava Tova, Means §18).
As much as possible, come in joy. The prophet Elisha called for a musician to heighten his joy before he could prophesy (II Kings 3:15), and the Rebbe teaches that drawing down higher light needs "הרחבת הדעת ושמחה" expansiveness of mind and joy (Esh Kodesh, Pesach 5701/1941). He also passes on a Hasidic warning against fasts and self-punishment, which push a person into sadness (Mevo HaShearim ch. 5), so prepare gently. On the night before, practice setting your worries down for an hour (Tzav V’Ziruz ch. 22).
The closest the Rebbe comes to an external agent of awakening is mashke, alcohol. His circle may drink together to rouse the sluggish animal soul, our ordinary bodily self, "לא להשתכר ולהולל ח״ו" not, God forbid, to get drunk and carouse (Bnei Machshava Tova, Regulations §6). Even if only the mashke roused me, a Hasid reasons, part of my soul has been revealed, and "אחזיק בכנפה זה ולא ארפנו" I will grab this wing of it and not let go (Hachsharat HaAvreichim ch. 9). Taken with intention, preparation, and trusted company, what we now call set and setting, the experience is already vectoring toward holiness. Bypassing a real longing that asks to be heard, whether with whiskey or with a medicine, amounts to what he calls "מין הפלת נפלים של הנשמה" a kind of miscarriage of the soul (Bnei Machshava Tova, Means §11).
The Journey: turning towards the holy
Once the medicine opens the soul, stay turned toward God and let the experience unfold at its own pace. Analyzing one's experience, the Rebbe warns, is a misstep: "חקירה זו נפילה היא" this investigation is a fall (Bnei Machshava Tova, Means §6). Save the analysis for afterward, and stay with one simple question: how am I relating to what is being revealed? Let visions come without grasping for them, since the נפש המציירת image-making soul produces holy images by itself (Hachsharat HaAvreichim ch. 4). And lose your haste, as the Baal Shem Tov taught, without expecting or forcing a breakthrough (ch. 9).
In a challenging experience, remember that thinking inside a feeling feeds it, while looking at it from outside lets it fade (Hachsharat HaAvreichim ch. 9). Shift, if you can, from being inside the fear to noticing it. If that feels impossible, claim just twenty seconds, or reach for a verse or a melody to break the grip. Let passing thoughts drift by, "כי כל מה שירצה לדחותם הם יתחזקו בו" for the more one tries to push them away, the stronger they grow (Derekh HaMelekh, appendix, Pesach 5681/1921).
We still have agency in this exploratory state. The Rebbe notes that the same opening can carry one person into revelry and another into despair, and the direction comes from where each one turns (Bnei Machshava Tova, Means §18). For heaviness you cannot name, he recommends psalms, above all Psalm 51 (Hachsharat HaAvreichim ch. 9). In darkness he has his students hold "גם כי אלך בגיא צלמות לא אירא רע כי אתה עמדי" though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me (Psalm 23:4, cited in Means §11). Writing in the ghetto in 1942, he taught that God weeps "ובבתי גואי" in the inner chambers, and a person can find God there too (Esh Kodesh, Shabbat HaChodesh 5702). And whatever words break out of you in ceremony, ask for them to be written down by a guide or facilitator, "כי דבורים אלו ניצוצי נפשך הם" for these words are sparks of your soul (Bnei Machshava Tova, Guidance §3).
Integration: bringing it home
The Rebbe measures an experience by what changes afterward. As the medicine softens, while the inner ember still burns, look honestly at your patterns, "כי א״א לבדוק החמץ בלתי אם לאור הנר" for one can only search for chametz by the light of a candle, an image from the search for leaven before Passover (Hovat HaTalmidim ch. 9). Name one pattern and make a resolution about it. In the weeks after, when that pattern flares up, recall the ceremony vividly along with the commitment you made.
Every awakening is "התגלות הנפש חוץ מגופה" a revealing of the soul outside its body, and ordinary thought cannot grasp it (Bnei Machshava Tova, Means §8). Return to the image itself, and give it form through notes and sketches, piece by piece, until the whole comes into view (Derekh HaMelekh, Vayeshev 5690/1929). Clothe what you felt in a mitzvah or in study (Hachsharat HaAvreichim ch. 9), and in the body too, since a stirring "עולה יפה ומתקיימת" rises well and endures when the body works along with it (ch. 2).
A month later, ask "אם באמת מושל אני על עצמי עתה יותר מאשר לפנים" whether I truly rule over myself now more than before (Bnei Machshava Tova, Means §19). If not, continue your integration. Expect a dip as well. A Hasid returning home from a visit to his teacher often feels worse, the Rebbe explains, because a deeper longing has awakened (Mevo HaShearim ch. 5). A low mood that lifts within days is common. Distress that deepens or lingers, or anything that feels like what we now call an adverse event, calls for reaching out right away to your facilitators or a clinician.
Each of us, the Rebbe writes, has a מדה נפילה a falling trait, a weak spot where foolish ideas feel completely reasonable, and his chief example is the urge to glorify ourselves, something akin to the ego inflation that can result from a psychedelic experience. The remedy is to look at a thought again and again, and to hold our own cleverness a little more lightly. By the tenth look, he says, any foolishness shows itself plainly (Tzav V’Ziruz ch. 33). Insights from a journey deserve the same patience, especially the ones that flatter us, so give yourself a few weeks before acting on any major life decision.
The long walk
Heaven, the Rebbe reminds his readers, is a five-hundred-year walk from earth, so no one should lose heart when a single leap falls short, and no single ceremony will carry anyone there either. The higher seeing begins as faint glimpses that grow "ליותר בולטות ולעתים יותר תכופות" more vivid and more frequent (Bnei Machshava Tova, closing words).
Half of the books quoted here were buried inside milk cans underneath the liquidated and burned ghetto of Warsaw, while the other half were published and distributed among the Piaseczner’s Hasidim. Like a set of smashed tablets placed beside a new set, we have received both, and we carry them together as a broken-unbroken lineage. My prayer for the Jewish psychedelic community is that we continue to sit, as apprentices and elders in training, with the words of the tzaddik, amongst the living teachers in our midst, and merit to become ancestors for the generation who will carry this tradition beyond the page.
Hodesh tov,
Z
