Jim Harris
speaker
92 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Oct 2024
last heard Oct 2024
Jim Harris’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
Yeah, yeah, it was a milestone.
nerve recovery from a severe accident like mine is thought to more or less wrap up after about 24 months. And so by about two years out, whatever disability someone has is probably what they're going to be left with for life. And so that was a milestone that I had in my head. And right as that two-year anniversary hit, I was laid off from my job, and the 2016 election had just happened.
I broke up with someone that I'd been dating, and a pet died, and it just felt like there was all this kind of like series of...
tragedies that any one of would have been hard and then in aggregate was really destabilizing and part of that I ended up in this depressive state where it felt like compared to the life that I had led before my accident pre-injury that nothing was ever going to be that good again that I had like hit some sort of a high water mark and that things were never going to be that happy that joyful that connected that successful ever again
And that felt pretty despondent. Like, wait, what is the point of any of this if it's just a downhill slide towards the grave from here?
Yes, I think so.
It's hard to answer what a definitive end point for that was, but it felt like a long, slow crawl back out of a hole. In some ways, I still face some of those challenges, though I don't think I'm depressed right now. But I think there was a real reckoning with some of my worldviews and values where some of the ways that I understood myself felt like I hit a dead end.
And it's an uncomfortable shift to find new ways to see the world, new ways to find oneself.
Yeah, I did. I started seeing a therapist. I saw a psychiatrist and was prescribed antidepressants. I was really only on them for a few months. and then weaned off of them and had begun building some self-care routines and structure into my life that seemed to support me better than those drugs did.
It wasn't that I didn't like them. It was just like it didn't feel like a solution. It just felt like a Band-Aid of like this is absolutely helping, but this is like palatative. This isn't. something that's offering me a new way to move to the world. And being on antidepressants for life didn't seem like something that I wanted. But I do think they really supported me in
an awful lot of journaling and reflection and contemplation and starting a personal meditation practice. I've attended meditation retreats and some spiritual retreats and like engaged with the things that would have seemed very woo to me prior to my injury. And then since then have found ways to be like, this doesn't have to be
the only lens that I view the world through, but maybe there's some real value in having a sense of spirituality, of having a place for mysticism, of seeing the world in a way that's a little bit more alive than a really rationalist viewpoint might describe it.
Life still felt difficult and adrift, kind of without the vibrancy or the sense of purpose and meaning that I felt like I'd had previously. So that's how I ended up. signing up to go drink ayahuasca with a shamanic group with some gentlemen who had flown up from Peru.
I feel like I sort of had a fitful start, like my body's reaction to that ayahuasca. I didn't feel like I experienced a physical recovery from those ceremonies. The first night I came in with some jittery nerves and an awful lot of hopes and expectations and apprehensions, and nothing happened for me. And that felt frustrating and a bit alienating.
I had the same little Dixie cup of weird tea as everybody around me, and other people around me are clearly experiencing something that I'm not. But I still feel very... very sober, very grounded in like consensus reality. Things have not shifted. I don't feel different. I feel impatient and a little let down. And I've made all this time and effort to be here. And like, it's not working.
I was hoping for some sort of salvation and it's not here. And then on the second night of ceremony, I had experienced like 90 minutes of transcendent bliss and that didn't feel like it answered any of my big existential questions that I felt like I had walked into the space with. But it did feel like a real beacon that it was a search worth continuing, like a inquiry that was just at the start.
I didn't. I didn't. I feel like I went, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but just had like a kind of extended feeling that was like orgasmic in some ways, but not in any sexual way. Just like a real feeling of joy and bliss in my heart and in my tummy and in ways that is... It feels vivid to think back to it and it's really hard to put into words.
There was a solar eclipse in 2017, and a young man who I was friends with and who I looked up to drove to the path of totality. And then that night, after leaving wherever he'd viewed the eclipse from, I was in a car accident and passed away. And I was pretty gutted by that.
And one of the things that I looked up to him for was he was part of this men's group, this closed group, where he was, I think, the youngest person by a fair margin. And I really wanted to be part of it. But they weren't interested in taking new members. They had this small collection of people.
And so then at his wake, somebody said something to me about like, oh, I always want to be part of that men's group. And I was like, wait, he did? And the two of us started chatting and somebody else nearby was like, oh, yeah, that men's group sounds awesome. I wish I could be like, wait, wait, what's your phone number? We can do this on our own.
Showing 61–80 of 92 · page 4 of 5
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