We are all Mahsa Amini.
Using lessons from psychedelic medicine, psychology, and spirituality in this challenging moment.
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Woman. Life. Freedom.
**I have created a document of how we can help the protesters in Iran. You can find it here.**
This week, I was going to write about how transcendent states allow us to feel we are interconnected to everything, especially nature.
But something didn’t feel right. Try as I might, I could not focus. I couldn’t muster excitement about the topic.
The reason is that over the past month my mind has been clouded with a maelstrom of emotion – awe, inspiration, rage, fear, sadness – as I have watched the Iranian people, especially women, stand up to the savage “Islamic” Republic of Iran. Every day I scroll through the harrowing videos and stories so that I can help amplify their voice and let the world see the barbarism they face on a daily basis.
So, instead, today I will write about how I’m trying to use this moment in time to apply the lessons I’ve learned from psychedelic medicine, psychology, and spirituality.
The event that launched these woman-led protests was that a lovely young woman named Mahsa (Jina) Amini was so viciously and inhumanly attacked by the “morality police” that she fell into a coma and died – all because she was allegedly not wearing her headscarf correctly.
Iran wasn’t always like this. It was never an Arab or Muslim nation. Indigenously, we are Zoroastrian. A vast majority of Iranian women reject the headscarf, or hijab (an Arab word). The country used to be an open and free society before 1978 and Iranian women and men wore the same questionable 70’s fashion as the rest of the world.
Then, one day, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the regime suddenly announced that women could no longer leave the house without covering their hair with a headscarf (lest they incite such passion in a man that, heaven forbid, he can’t control himself).
Not only that.
They had to wear long, loose coats that covered the shapes of their bodies.
Not only that.
They couldn’t sing.
They couldn’t dance.
They couldn’t laugh loudly, be in public without a male escort who was family, listen to music, and so on and on.
The regime also forces individuals who identify as homosexual to have gender reassignment surgery.
Violations result in torture and death (which, if you can believe it, still includes stoning).
Overnight, The Handmaid’s Tale became a reality.
Since the protests started over a month ago, more girls under 18 years old (and of course many others) have been killed by the regime, with some so brutally beaten that their skulls were cracked and crushed in. Students have been shot at and taken to “psychological evaluation centers.”
All for having the audacity to ask for respect and equality for women, for freedom, and for a life worth living.
I am a child of the Iranian diaspora. My parents left Iran for a United States education before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. When the revolution happened, their families warned them not to return.
When I was thirteen years old, I visited Iran with my mother. While visiting a tourist site with our relatives, my headscarf fell back from my forehead just a tad – seriously, just an inch! I also may have (stupidly) given a dirty look to one of the Basiji, or “morality police.” I was a budding feminist at thirteen years old — what can I say? The Basij officer waited for one of my cousins to call my name so he could learn it, and then he called me by name and demanded that I pull my headscarf forward. Luckily, it ended there. The experience shook me to my core, though, and still evokes a very specific fear every time I watch videos of the morality police.
I could’ve easily been Mahsa Amini. I think about that a lot.
I used to think that I was not at all personally (emotionally) affected by the Islamic Revolution and the diaspora. This is where the lessons from psychedelic medicine, psychology, and spirituality come in for me.
While attending a protest in LA for the cause, I realized that I could not say the chant, “Woman! Life! Freedom!” without choking up from overwhelming emotion by the second word. Why so much emotion, though? In the past, I wouldn’t have bothered to think about it.
But now I know better. As I’ve been writing in this newsletter, emotions, if not expressed in a healthy way, turn into demons and wreak havoc. So, I’m trying to practice what I’ve been preaching, and have been leaning into the emotion. That simply means that when a wave of emotion arises — which happens all throughout the day — I just let it flow, which sometimes includes crying or being angry. I’d rather not be crying, of course, but the emotion is there in my body, whether I acknowledge it or not. So, I’d rather express and work through it now than deal with the consequences of suppressed trauma later.
I also know that emotions and feelings are trying to tell you things. I reflected on mine and found the following reasons for the tears:
I weep for the suffering and fear and bravery of the Iranians.
For women collectively.
For our (the Iranians in the diaspora) feelings of helplessness.
I cry for all the holidays surrounded by grandparents and cousins that I (and many, many others) never had.
That my parents were ripped from their families.
That I can’t ever visit Iran again (and bask in its beautiful historic sites and culture) until the Islamic Regime is ousted because I have spoken out against them on social media and would likely be targeted when I landed.
I mourn that true Persian culture — which celebrates poetry, humanity, mysticism, and connection (Rumi! Hafez!) — has been suppressed and muted by thugs forcibly implementing a culture of oppression.
I cry out of frustration that I don’t know where to direct my anger.
I despair that humanity will never improve and will always be driven by reactions to fear. Why is it so hard to look at someone in pain and ask yourself, “How would I feel if that were my daughter or sister or mother?”
The entire point of this self-work is not only so that you can live a more fulfilling life by resolving personal issues, but also — and maybe more importantly — so that you can show up for others and for the world from a calm and centered place. The more we improve our inner worlds, the more we improve our outer worlds. But that doesn’t mean you must wait until you’ve addressed your personal problems before you show up for others. How we show up for others while in our own pain clarifies who we are.
I think of this when I look at the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Basiji (their police force). What personal emotional trauma are they expelling through their violent acts against the citizens of Iran? It takes anger and fear to brutalize another human. Would they even be capable of committing such atrocious crimes against humanity if they were able to process their own pain? (Don’t get me wrong here. I am currently struggling to feel compassion for anyone related to the regime, and I have evicted them from humanity for now. Hey, we’re all works in progress!)
I’d like to think that if I were in Iran, I’d throw on the green “freedom (azadi!)” bandana I created for the 2009 protests and join them in the streets, but when I see videos of five men grabbing a woman who is resisting for her life and throwing her into an unmarked van to be taken to a correction center, I question my bravery. I feel sheer terror all the way from America. I bow down to the women of Iran who take to the streets every day with incomprehensible courage.
Spiritually, I try to remember that there is no light without dark. That without these challenging moments, we wouldn’t know what kind of bravery lies within. That sometimes we have to lose things to know what’s at stake. And that sometimes it takes videos of people of all races from around the world cutting their hair in solidarity to be reminded that we are all Mahsa Amini.
But I also remind myself of the cyclicity of nature, human events, and the Universe. All things have their time, and then they die. The chants from the Iranian protestors have been, “Death to the Dictator,” and “Death to the Islamic Republic,” so we know where they stand. And I stand with them.
Woman. Life. Freedom.
** I have created a document of how we can all help, in ways big and small. You can find it here.**
Image credit: m_melgrati (Source)