How I Became the Austin Soul Coach
Michael Ebbinghaus • May 26, 2022
From Deep Pain to Deep Calling
Curiosity is the most vital part of ourselves that we can be in touch with. It is a deep longing and knowing within that calls us to places, ideas, and people beyond our comprehension. When curiosity is encouraged and tended as a flourishing garden, it can be a rich source of animation and inner power throughout the lifetime. When it is stifled and discouraged, it festers as a lingering wound that increasingly demands our attention and disrupts the false desires we’ve moved towards.
My curiosity has always been incredibly potent. There were unseen realms that called to me that I could not articulate. I wanted to know everything about the world and its creatures, as well as myself. How was it that I was having the experience of being human? What did it mean that everyone else was having their own particular experience of what it was like to be them?
I’ve carried these questions with me for most of my life. The more I traverse, the more I realize that life is the answer.
Curiosity in my case was mistaken for intelligence, though the two are often interrelated. What intelligence meant for me, however, was that I was naturally gifted, that I could know things more easily and work at the solutions with lighter effort than most. There was a way in which I was treated as special that did little to serve me and my community. Thankfully things that are not true come apart, and though it was a difficult and long process, eventually I outgrew such a crude definition of intelligence and was able to allow my curiosity and creativity to bloom more freely.
"When curiosity is encouraged and tended as a flourishing garden, it can be a rich source of animation and inner power throughout the lifetime."
That did not come without great sacrifice and suffering. My identity had been built on a foundation of quicksand, and when the circumstances no longer reflected my reality, my neat little ego concept imploded. I knew that there must be something wrong or deficient with me, that I was unworthy of love and even of life, and flirted with and nearly danced with suicide at the age of 20. However, the thwarted attempt to end my life revealed that the world was not so separate as I had been taught to believe. I witnessed a miracle that night that made the infinitely interconnected and compassionate nature of the Universe perceptible to me. It was the first miracle I noticed, and it would not be the last.
It is difficult in the modern era to justify a spiritual path. Our technological powers have grown so monstrous, our ability to manipulate physical reality so effective that the ego usurped the throne of the Almighty, something that Frederick Nietzsche proclaimed with the death of God. Beckoning to a greater power became a taboo, a way to ruin one’s career or land oneself in an asylum. Non-ordinary states of consciousness and many psychological processes were simply marked off as aberrations and illness. My own struggles with depression have been cast in the light of funky brain chemistry that can be remedied, after some trial, error, and deterioration, with the help of medication.
"I witnessed a miracle that night that made the infinitely interconnected and compassionate nature of the Universe perceptible to me."
When one awakens to the interconnected, sentient, and benevolent nature of the Universe, one knows that nothing occurs in aberration. The process which we might label “depression” is something within me that requires my attention and consciousness. Through the process of coming to know this other within and by confronting the figures and energies I encounter in my dreams, fantasies, relationships, and visions, I have come to know another side of the mirror. There is that which I think I am, the one writing these words, maintaining this website, eating, drinking, and eliminating, and then there is the ineffable totality of what I actually am, something that could never be named because it is the one doing the naming.
We are tied to a greater consciousness than our own, and that consciousness can become our consciousness if we humble ourselves to receive it
while simultaneously accessing the power of the Unconscious to move deeper and upwards. This process is a holy marriage of conscious with unconscious, solar and lunar consciousnesses, masculine and feminine, ego and shadow. By surrendering to the Unknown we come into more intimate contact with what we truly are, we solidify and gain confidence and clarity in our being, which permits further surrender and contact, and you get the story.
"By surrendering to the Unknown we come into more intimate contact with what we truly are, we solidify and gain confidence and clarity in our being, which permits further surrender and contact, and you get the story."
This process is not linear or pretty. It does not always magnetize compliments and admiration from our peers, partners, and families nor bring us financial wealth or outrageous fortune. The first leg on the spiritual journey is often referred to as a descent, and we will have to venture into greater depths than we ever imagined possible. Contrary to popular belief, the Dark Night of the Soul is almost never the initiation,
though it feels that way. The Dark Night of the Soul is not until a much later stage after we have already progressed deeply into our descent. The paradoxical nature of life, consciousness, and experience reveals that the deeper we step the greater heights there are to be seen. By the time we reach our Dark Night, we will have tasted spiritual ecstasy, beheld visions of our life purpose or mythopoetic identity, and be resourced enough to be brought to this great confrontation with immense suffering and the wrenching pain of our separation.
It is only through accepting this crucial fact of our reality that we can come into union with the Most High.
As someone that walks this path, breathes his process, and studies the way, I know that each individual’s journey looks different. I know that what is going on within that process may look strange, aberrant, and diseased from a contemporary standpoint. My role as guide and facilitator is to give credence to this process, to listen to it and teach those under my care how to listen to it themselves.
Through this crucial mirroring the soul’s call might be heard, and a process set in motion that may undermine the desires of the ego but fill the Spirit. I am of the opinion that the more people are in relationship to this crucial and unconditioned part of themselves, the greater peace and prosperity might be shared amongst all beings of the Earth.
This is the value of what I offer. When the voices of well-meaning friends, partners, and community attempt to keep you embedded in what you were, I see the potential of what you could be and place the responsibility of this potential in your hands. I see your traumas and sufferings not as things to be consoled away but wounds to be pressed so that the light may enter. I do all of this with the tact and compassion of someone who has been there and acts not from a place of ego but of sovereign intuition.
Only you can discover who you are, and through the many tools, practices, and ways of being I have encountered (and will continue to learn) throughout my life, you too will find the task of fully incarnating as Spirit the only one, ultimately, of moving towards.
Contact me today
to begin or deepen your spiritual journey and rediscover what you were born to do.
The Sentient Soul
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What is Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy? Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) is a modality that uses low dose ketamine alongside talk therapy to access non-ordinary states of consciousness, helping clients process trauma, depression, and anxiety in a new and deeper way. One of the most common complaints about traditional psychotherapy is that it can take a very long time for unconscious material to surface, even after a solid relationship has formed with your therapist. While there are techniques we utilize in our practice that do not require substances (e.g. dreamwork, sentence completion, automatic writing/drawing, etc.), the introduction of intentional medicine work can reliably shift one into an altered state of consciousness, catalyzing access to unconscious material. After a brief introductory period, you will take ketamine under supervision from your therapist either in-office or virtually in the comfort of your own home. The therapist will guide you to take your own journey as well as direct you towards areas that might benefit from exploration in an alternate perspective. Learn more What is Ketamine? Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic acting primarily on the glutamate neurotransmitter system. This differentiates it from the traditional psychedelics like LSD and psychedelic mushrooms which are much more prominent in the serotonin system. Ketamine increases neural plasticity, meaning that the brain becomes more flexible to change, open to new insights and behaviors. Ketamine has been used for over 50 years as a surgical anesthetic. It has no impact on the respiratory system, making it one of the most safe and effective medicines available. It is classified as a WHO top 10 essential medicine, and it is so safe that it is still the anesthetic of choice for children. It is a schedule III medication approved for off-label use in assisted psychotherapy, meaning a healthcare professional must be supervising in some capacity. Screening is essential, see below for more information. How KAP Works One of the things we like to stress is that the medicine is taking you to a place within yourself. It is not the ketamine "doing" anything other than relaxing your emotional defenses and allowing for exploration of consciousness. That said, you will feel a degree of relaxation in your body as well as your mind, which allows things which we keep buried to come up to the surface. By shifting into an alternate state of consciousness, we are able to sublimate many of the barriers we have in place that remain opaque to us. Oftentimes simply allowing this material to surface creates greater harmony, and you ma find yourself saying "Oh - this is what I've been afraid of for so long? It's not so big and scary after all." This is not always the case, of course. The nature of what is hidden can also be very painful, which is why the presence of the therapist as well as the therapeutic relationship is imperative when first working with alternate states of consciousness and healing trauma. What Does KAP Treat? Ketamine's claim to fame comes from its potent and immediate anti-depressive effect . While this requires lifestyle change and further exploration - greatly benefitted by depth psychotherapy - this can be incredibly helpful to those experiencing treatment resistant depression. It does this primarily through breaking up rigid neural networks (enhanced neuroplasticity), limiting one's ability to ruminate. Ketamine for depression can be powerful, indeed. In a meta-analysis of over 2,500 patients, it was found that 45% of people had significant drops in clinical depressions inventories, with 30% in remission. The benefits were often sustained at 6-month follow up. Ketamine-assisted therapy can be helpful for those who experience post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD . The clinical evidence here is quite strong, with multiple meta-analyses and an open label study showing durable and significant reductions in PTSD symptoms in as many as 69% of respondents and up to six-months' follow up. Ketamine for trauma is widely studied and efficacious. Anxiety is also significantly reduced after brief KAP treatments. In a glimpse, ketamine can treat: Treatment-resistant depression PTSD and trauma-related symptoms Anxiety and existential distress Addiction and maladaptive coping Spiritual exploration or life transitions What Does Treatment Look Like At Ebb & Flow Depth Psychotherapy, we believe in the importance of a strong therapeutic relationship to help sustain the positive effects from ketamine treatment. To this end, prior to any medicine session, there are 6-8 preparation sessions (this can be reduced to 2-4 if you are already working with another therapist). From there, we will conduct two initial dosing sessions with an integration session in between each. We would then conduct another 6-8 dosing sessions, also with an integration session in between each. Our Approach During each session, you will be gently guided into your body utilizing a simple meditation or, if preferred, ambient music. We utilize sublingual lozenges, tablets which will be dissolved and swished in the mouth for 10-12 minutes, then spit out. This offers a psycholytic approach rather than a psychedelic approach. We prefer the psycholytic approach for two main reasons: 1) This helps to make ketamine-assisted psychotherapy more affordable, as the presence of a medical professional such as an RN is not needed as they are in IM (intramuscular) or IV (intravenous) injections. 2) Psychedelic ketamine therapy can be effective, but in our hustle and bustle world, the subtle work often gets overlooked, and it is the subtle work that carries us the farthest. If you’re seeking a full psychedelic experience, I often recommend doing so on your own time and terms, ideally in nature or a supportive setting. There are few practitioners I would trust to guide me through such an experience, and they come at an extraordinary financial cost more often than not. With psycholytic ketamine therapy, we are nudging gently and entering into an altered state but not breaking open the doors of reality. Through the experience and through the journey you've taken thus far, which includes your triumphs and your traumas, we will expand not only on who you are but who you are meant to be. Your exuberant and mature presence is sorely needed in this world, and it requires reconciliation of our darker nature and highest aspirations. Who is KAP for? Ask yourself now: "Am I in a place where I am ready for deep self-exploration?" "Am I open to the idea of letting go of things which both pain and comfort me?" "Can I remain off of substances and away from process addictions (such as pornography, over-eating/bingeing and purging, sex, etc.) for at least three days?" You may not be ready for KAP if: Are experiencing active psychosis or mania Have untreated Bipolar I or II disorder Have a personal or family history of schizophrenia Are currently struggling with active substance dependence If you are in a grounded place and ready to make shifts in your life, KAP may offer the support you've been looking for. Ketamine Therapy In Austin, TX - How to Get Started Contact me today for your free consultation to see if ketamine assisted depth psychotherapy might be right for you. Myself and the fine clinicians over at Journey Clinical are ready to help you find deeper meaning in life and be the change in the world you wish to see. We conduct ketamine-assisted therapy in Austin, Texas as well as virtually all over the state. Reach out to us today!
