The Mystic in the Float Tank - Spontaneous Awakening & Integration w/ Beni Summers

So you’ve had a psychedelic or psychedelic adjacent experience. What comes next? This week we sit down with Beni Summers, Rabbinic Intern at Shefa: Jewish Psychedelic Supports, to discuss psychedelic integration, float tanks, Buddhist psychology, and Jewish mysticism as we cultivate a deeper understanding of ecstatic states and the fruits they bear.

"Something that floating taught me was that I have, or that we as people, have the whole keyring with every key attached to our being. I used to think that you had to go out and find the keys, in a book, in a pill, in a song - and yes, they're out there but they are already inside of us." - Beni Summers
 

Jewish Psychedelic Integration

• Rachel intros Shefa and the Jewish Entheogenic Society and how it supported her during her psychedelic explorations
• Aaron shares his early experience with floating and how it reminded him of his first mushroom journey
• Beni explains Shefa’s origins in a John Hopkins study where high doses of psilocybin were given to clergy of different faiths

Beni’s Story of Awakening

• Beni shares an early experience of spontaneous awakening that occurred after getting lost in the Sahara desert
• Beni’s horrific experience with hash cookies and how it led to a deep curiosity around the nature of consciousness
• How Beni turned to the contemplative arts of mindfulness and meditation in order to integrate his experiences of expanded consciousness

Floating into Revelation

• Beni’s introduction to float tanks, his initial disappointment, and the opening he discovered after his third float
• How Beni became interested in altered states of conscious through doing research on Dr John Lily, the investor of the float tank
• How the Buddhist orientation to the mind describes what is happening to the self when we have spontaneous endogenous awakenings
• How the sensory deprivation of the float tank allows the mind to focus on areas that are normally attention deprived areas and allow for personal revelation
• Beni shares his advice on how to have a powerful float tank experience
• Rachel and Aaron share their own experiences of spontaneous awakening