Warning this is long - feel free to skip the first few paragraphs which set up my mood, if all you're after is the "meat" of the trip, to where things get very odd indeed.
11am Monday 4th September 2006
A barrage of things no doubt had influence, in terms of packing, on the shape of what I experienced; Amy's pregnancy, having the best sex we've had during the first trimester (very bonding and tension relieving), re-watching Roger Corman's "The Trip" and thoroughly cleaning the kitchen, bathroom and living room. The previous Friday I experienced a trippy feeling of disassembling after waking up and I have found meditation far more focused as of late.
My morning routine was as usual, except that I had nothing to eat at all and probably even more cups of lemon and ginger tea. After Amy left for work I completed my first bout of meditation and after preparing the living room and getting washed and dressed I finished watching "Waking Life", listened to Bill Hicks "Salvation", looked through the following books: "Top 100 Star Plants", "Transfigurations" and "Sacred Mirrors" by Alex Grey, the last two being very influential in some of the religious imagery that was to come up.
To help create more of a smooth segue through the onset I turned on the lava lamp and started playing Shpongle's "Are You Shpongled?" just after my second round of meditation, therefore fifteen minutes before dosing. As per the usual routine I dosed at 11am, 5g of the Sjamaan powder in a tall plastic cup 4/5 full of orange juice.
I wandered around the flat during the early stages, which I find to be the best way of working off nervous energy. Typically I had to have one final crap just as unease and nervousness roamed my body and mind. The living room felt too claustrophobic so I opened up the curtains. The weather had been bright and sunny, with little cloud coverage, first thing, but now the sky had clouded over a bit. It would alternate all day. I played with my spiral trip toy whilst lounging on sofa, shaking off tingly energy by mainly toe tapping to the music.
Looking in the bathroom mirror, checking out how much I was tripping, I saw the usual bluing of my face again, raised veins, energy emanating and radiating outwards from my outline, the shape of my skull was incredibly clear. My features weirdly distorting, joking about the vanity of looking at my reflection I told myself that I'm an ugly sod, which really highlighted how comfortable I am with how I look these days, especially due to my new short hairstyle!
Trying different positions on the sofa (on my back is the only really comfortable one - otherwise my neck is strained) with closed eyes, whilst facing inwards towards the cushions I could see spiders scuttling along a long narrow space. I stated out loud "There are spiders in the corridor of time" which made me laugh due to its daftness. I imagined a tripped out conversation where this was of great import "Are there?", "No!", "Good!" Later the phrase had meaning, after thinking about the associations that the mind throws up, regarding aging and time; the notion of cobwebs building up through the passage of your life.
The transition through the onset was almost effortlessly smooth, achieved by lying on my back with eyes closed from very early on and breathing calmly and deeply. The closed eye visuals slowly evolved, and what must have been due to the influence of both my spiral trip toy and the words "This is a sphercular vortex, spinning, spinning, spinning....like this" on "Are You Shpongled?" an, at first, pale green, then progressing to become multicoloured, electric field of subdued patterns began to rotate and was accompanied by the delightful sensation of spinning without the nausea.
I kept my eyes closed for the most sustained period of time I have ever achieved. On the one occasion I did take in a view of the room all initially seemed normal but gradually, progressively began to distort and a grid like pattern emerged all through my visual perception.
Flowing into the peak a highly detailed, abstract narrative was being playing out before, or perhaps within, me. I had a total sense of abstraction from body, and as the accelerating amount of visuals, thoughts and emotions reached an infinite number I was aware that the total wealth of detail was far too much to hold in my mind, I could feel much of it slipping from my memory as it was occurring. Jump cut into the kaleidoscopic flow were glimpses of my reflection, full body, as if I were looking down at it, in a rippling water surface, the image grainy as if on 16mm film.
Emotional waves of moods, colours and sounds all merging and cross fertilizing, I experienced the development and progress of a soul being played out, flowing like a stream of consciousness yet I had the sense of a progression through defined stages. I vividly recall swimming up through organic colours with angels, here depicted as naked, curvaceous, womanly women. During this ascent I caught a glimpse of small, young girl, as if I were passing by her, upwards. She looked like a member of Amy's family, possibly representing our potential child if it's a daughter, and seemed to be holding the hand of someone unseen.
On my journey ever higher I passed by St Paul and other icons of religious and spiritual import, recognising that I was not literally seeing them but that these were signifiers of spirituality. They must have been drawn from the Alex Grey paintings I had been looking at earlier. I eventually emerged in the shallows of a shore, with foliage all around and nothing but a view of the sky beyond a set of stone steps and an archway. I knew that I was in heaven! This amused me highly, as on one level I believed this was happening and yet I also knew it wasn't. In the waters at my feet floated a painting of what I recognised as God, although it actually looked like a painting of Jesus by Alex Grey.
Then I realised that I am God!
This brought a sense of intense happiness and relief, alongside knowledge that this was all a metaphor for some deeper meaning, a slither of which struck me a little later.
At this point the concept of a "me" separate from the rest of reality, the clear light, Buddha, the Godhead, what-have-you went out the window.
I found myself wandering through what looked like the forest of my mind, synapses and brain tissue looking like an infinite array of stalactites and stalagmites connecting, forming many openings, somewhat vaginal, although that only struck me afterwards as a means of description. I encountered whom I now refer to as "The Mushroom God". He appeared to be rooted into the surroundings by organic, plantlike, root-like tendrils extending off his body and especially his head.
We held an extended conversation, which though relaxed and casually friendly I am certain was about the meaning of existence and a definition of what reality is. Parting he told me that I'd forget everything we had just discussed about in a second, but that it didn't matter. Just as he moved on, with the look of being painted and repainted further and further away, and I was thinking "What an odd person" I realised I truly had forgotten and my memory of the encounter was fading to what little I have noted here. I smiled in acknowledgement of this bizarre occurrence, amused that I'm not supposed to be able to remember and happy to have known what was said, if even for only a forgotten moment. To an extent I am sure this was a figure of great importance, in my mind I find myself describing it as the mushroom representative equivalent of Salvia!
I was hit by a feeling of an impending chance at ego loss/death. I closed my eyes and focused intensely. With a sense of being in a religious environment, with clerics surrounding me, an opening in a geometric pattern of reds, purples and golds, formed and more patterns flowed into this. My ego/soul felt like it was being squashed/compressed and was moving through this/into the opening, which appeared to be an infinite tunnel, looking very rich, the colour gold very much in evidence. I had to open my eyes and retract from this as it felt far too peculiar. During and after this I found myself questioning "What is ego loss? What does it mean?" I wasn't sure anymore. I couldn't quite get my head round the idea, it seemed somewhat ludicrous!
I must add that all these experiences during the peak seemed utterly normal and I accepted them with casual ease. It took a while for the enormity/bizarreness of them to strike me.
I had the feeling of viewing the surface layer of myself, thinking "What an odd person I am", from a deeper layer, with a stronger connection to the whole. I understood reality in terms of the metaphor of it being like a tree; we think we're merely leaves on the tree, but even they are just an outreaching from the whole. Our surface level is the outermost extremity of God, Buddha, whatever, tripping and death and other transcendent states reveal that we are really the whole/God on the deepest level. Our everyday existences are just Buddha's fingers poking through into the fabric of this illusion, our life just a finger puppet show.
I spent/wasted a fair amount of time 90 - 120 minutes in considering whether or not I should redose with some of the Koh Samui powder. Considering what I had just experienced, looking at the (mycelium) white light shining brightly from within the tie dye and the variations of painting styles occurring in the environment around me; pixilation, big bold slaps of paint, soft focus cloudiness, I decided that I was definitely still tripping quite hard enough.
During the lull of a fairly boring track, "All is Harvest", on "Alice in Ultraland" (the very art nouveau cover purred with energy when I looked at it) I had feelings of guilt about skiving off work with a "cold" in order to trip. I got quite stuck in a loop of questioning the morality of it all, initially I repeatedly remarked "I don't care", which was an utter denial as I wouldn't have kept returning to the train of thought. Initially this annoyed me, I simply did not want to waste any time during the trip on this irritating matter.
Experience has taught me that if something comes up in a trip it must be confronted and worked through, so eventually I went with it. Guilt and worries about bad karma gave way to the realisation of how the company I work for doesn't value its workforce, treating us as fairly disposable. I rationalised that therefore if they think I'm disposable, see how they manage without me and vowed to not only take the next day, but until Thursday off, which was a deft piece of intuition as I would ultimately need these days to regain my energy and assimilate what I had experienced, somewhat. I saw my skiving as a minor strike of political import and half jokingly I tried to transmit to others in the office team "Do likewise".
Work was much on my mind as I also obsessed over the rudeness of people in another department who kept calling me "young (my name)", condescension the subtext. I devised many responses to one of the perpetrators, a man rather on the fat side of the waistline; tubby, fatty, porky etc. I became quite violently pissed off, which released a steam of frustration, which was rather the point. Ultimately I realised that karma will catch up with them. this lead me to feel in the same vein that the beauty of the trip I was undergoing warranted my actions in taking back some time for the hard work, not just at the office but caring for Amy throughout her first trimester. My frustrations about work segued to extreme gratitude for the heavily spiritual journey I was on and I said my thanks aloud, understanding and appreciating how tripping keeps me sane!
Having talked about it over the weekend with Amy, I spent a great deal of time contemplating applying for the admin/bookkeeping job available at the local stables we ride at. I indulged the romanticism of idea of working by a log fire, with nature surrounding me but ultimately knew that dealing with large amounts of another person's money is a no-no. A shame, but my dad has instilled in me sense of security and responsibility. It would have been far too much stress and have the potential for complications.
In response to all this mental hassle regarding jobs I asked aloud, only partially seriously, "Can't I just have a private life of tripping, fucking, reading, being with babe & baby etc. Do I have to work?" Sadly, of course I do!
I had placed in my pocket a sugilte crystal, its properties are that it aids forgiveness (which perhaps helped me balance my ire about work), represents spiritual love and wisdom and opens spiritual perception. It kept falling out of my pocket, which it had also done during my previous trip), every time I realised it had fallen out and had to look for it, it gave me pause and set me back on track to focus on clearing my mind and letting the trip run on unimpeded.
"Alice in Ultraland" was mostly a fantastic choice to listen to during the peak, the multilayering of sound and emulation of psychedelic rock a nearly perfect inspiration. As I was nearing the last quarter of the trip the weather became beautifully sunny, the sublime "Maggot Brain" album played and staring out at the blue sky, sun and clouds, laughing, it felt utterly right to be there in that moment chilling and tripping. "Radiodread" was excellent. I was quite caught up with it, singing along to pretty much every track and the first track's lyrics with tripping became quite apparent. Stuck trying to choose what to listen to next I almost forgot that I had made a Grateful Dead compilation especially for this occassion and it was the perfect accompaniment to the last couple of hours before approaching baseline.
The horrible notion of my dad being beaten up and or mugged, which was quite upsetting, hit my mind. This developed into an appreciation of the man and what fucking excellent bloke he was and is! I noted how he often complains now about the slow deterioration of his body. Time and aging riffed as themes in my mind, thinking how strange, odd and cruel what time can do to us can be. I recalled the phrase "Spiders in the corridor of time" which took on a melancholy meaning, representing aging and the fleeting quality of time and life.
* * * *
I am still perplexed as to what to make of the magic mushroom psychedelic experience and lean equally toward the notions of it being a psychological exploration or a spiritual investigation (perhaps both, or even one and the same thing), which is not to say that I feel either torn, or entirely balanced in how I classify the journeys I have had. What I am certain of it the integral value my regular excursions have.
Amongst all the bizarre details of this trip what leaps to my mind with clarity was a moment of contemplation. Before I began investigating magic mushrooms my psychology could at best be described as shambolic: prone to depressive mood swings, vacillating between alcoholism and chain pot smoking, utterly misanthropic and a feeling of being "at the end of things". Bleak! On this day I experienced an understanding, a reminder, of how over the past three years, through thirty plus mushroom doses, I have restructured, grown and set myself on a path through life which is more spiritual than I ever thought I would ever be and certainly rewarding. The choice to become parents, the joy at this prospect and the anticipation of meeting the person currently growing in my wife's belly are very much a result of the work I have done with the mushrooms.
As I stood I could sense floating before me segments which represented all the elements of my being which I have corrected, mended, built upon due to tripping, each emanating, transmitting telepathically, its meaning in the, beyond words, highly detailed abstract. Slowly each of these pieces drifting into me, slotting into place, eventually forming a whole, a feeling of completeness humming from every particle of my being joined with immense gratitude towards the gift of cleansing and growth that the mushrooms have bestowed upon me.
One of the primary themes of this trip was an affirmation of my motivations for taking magic mushrooms. I am committed to continue as an explorer of the realms psilocybin takes me to, for no other reason than it continues to make me a better person.
--------------------
"You've got to get hold of the thread of marching time, pull the fuck thing down, get on the end of it and pang yourself to the infinitude of absolute mind"
Ken Campbell - Furtive Nudist
"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced" - Aart van der Leeuw
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