Bob Wilson, senior architect at Caddis Collaborative, recommends Michael Pollan’s bestselling book How to Change Your Mind.
Bob Wilson, senior architect at Caddis Collaborative, is at a rich time in his life, a time that calls for introspection and invites transformation.
Bob is in his early fifties, and in recent years, he has experienced numerous life challenges – becoming a father being the most significant. The loss of his own parents years prior to his daughter’s birth has emboldened his resolve to do everything he can to be fully there for her now and down the road. A renewed focus on his physical, cognitive, and emotional health has become central to that aim.
Bob’s exploration of growth and change ultimately led him in part to the ideas expressed in Michael Pollan’s bestselling book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.
Pollan’s approach – particularly regarding psilocybin and microdosing – is something Bob might like to explore in a controlled setting. Bob says, “Pollan’s ideas about the potential benefits of psychedelics really seem to resonate with some of the areas that I’d like to address.”
Especially exciting to Bob are the ideas of personal transformation, mindfulness, connectedness with others, and letting go of the ego. As Pollan states, “The sovereign ego, with all its armaments and fears, its backward-looking resentments and forward-looking worries, was simply no more, and there was no one left to mourn its passing…. I was present to reality but as something other than my self. And although there was no self left to feel, exactly, there was a feeling tone, which was calm, unburdened, content.”
Reading Pollan’s book has already opened Bob’s mind to a world of possibilities. Manifesting those possibilities into “meaningful change” is the next real challenge.
Bonus read: Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, by Peter Attia, MD.
