Knocked off My Ass!

This is my first 'real' experience. It may be long and boring to some so you've been warned.=) I had recently taken up gardening of the sacred shroom because for the past year I have been going through a process of enlightenment, so to speak-and this is one of the places my search has taken me. I am one of those people who was raised in a strict fundamentalist religious home and it wasn't until the past year, after a family tragedy that I began to change my entire perception of what 'this' is all about and who/what God is. My stance has been adamantly anti-'drug' until several months ago when I actually took the time to research instead of swallowing all the propaganda fed to us.

Well, I used PF spores (they have been more than kind to me!) and began my gardening about six weeks ago and had pretty good results. I decided to sample a tiny amount of the fruits a couple of times and had some very good and enlightening experiences-but I know now I didn't even hit a Level 1 these times, although I felt free and loving and wonderful and a couple of the overlays of this reality were peeled off and I got a glimpse of a deeper reality-and it was more intense than any green thing I had smoked. I tried the herb a handful of times in my life, but nothing-NOTHING prepared me for what I experienced the third time I took a real dose of the mushroom! This is something one must experience for themselves, and I would implore anyone reading this who is considering dosing for the first time to heed the following advice which has been given countless times by the experienced ones who frequent this place:


-Do NOT trip alone the first time-have a close and experienced friend act as your guide! I cannot emphasize this enough! If you trip alone and it is your first time I must say that the experience will knock you off your ass, and that is an understatement. Very few people have the cajones to accomplish a first time trip alone and come out of it in one piece. There aren't many things I fear-nightmares don't bother me, scary movies don't phase me, but there is some potential fear and panic to be had here if you allow it. I almost confessed to someone when I was peaking that I had dosed and I was going to dump my garden out and never, ever do it again. I mean I was going to go on my knees and confess and ask for forgiveness and beg for help to get me through this! That would have been very, very bad! Also, this is a very intense experience and there is nothing in this world that can really fully prepare you for what you will experience if you have never taken psychedelics or drugs before.


-If you have a frisky Chow dog you refer to as 'The Beast', it is best to trip someplace where the dog is not. My sweet dog became a feral, beastial creature and at the very time I was worrying about her sensing my current state, she bared her teeth and kind of snapped at me while I was petting her, and let me tell you, that was NOT pleasant! It was like she could sense something different about me when I had that thought, although she wasn't afraid of me after that, albeit somewhat reserved and she continued to come in the room with me. I had to walk her later on and I was still a bit wary of her-she was still this giant, primitive and very organic creature I barely recognized and there were all these colors undulating in her course-looking fur and she also kind of reminded me of that dog in 'The Mask' when he put on the mask and ran amok.


-This is a hard one, but try not to get sucked into negative thinking or time traps. Basically, on the low dose I took, you can avoid these, but it's not easy. I found time was trying to freeze frame and since I had read about the hell of time traps, I was able to avoid them or kind of jump over that chasm the few times it opened up for me. The negative thoughts are there, waiting to explore-it's best not to go there unless you want to deal with some heavy and unpleasant stuff. I wouldn't recommend it for first-timers.
-Contact with positive, understanding humans is kind of a must if you don't want to have that intense feeling of being utterly alone in the Universe and wondering what the point of all this is-it is disturbing (a great understatement!) and I don't recommend going there on a first trip either. Anyway, not for me, because I had planned to come out of this experience intact, or a more enlightened and understanding person, but not a drooling vegetable! I wasn't ready to have my ego shattered to pieces just yet.


Well, those are tips from a novice. I'm one of those people that didn't heed all the wonderful advice here-but I understand that until you experience this, you simply can't know what people mean when they say 'DON'T trip alone the first time' or 'Respect the mushroom' or 'measure the dosage'. Okay, I imagine the bored people got out of this story already, but here is my trip:


At 5:45pm I ingested two stems and caps of what appeared to be smallish mushrooms (that is why you weigh them because dried they look pretty small-duh) . Later I realized one of the shrooms I ingested was my 7" long beanstalk with the 1 1/2" cap. I felt it 10-15 minutes later. I was looking out the window and I knew it was hitting because I started noticing I was looking through a screen, and I usually block that out. I then got the mushroom walk-it kind of feels like you are walking on a rolling ship or something. I was getting restless, so I went in my room. BTW, I live with people who would be shocked if they knew about my garden or that I had tried this, and I soon realized that my state would be very difficult to hide from them! Well, one person wasn't home yet-and that was the person I was worried about discovering what I had done (yeah I know, poor planning on my part, but it worked out beautifully because everyone decided to go out to eat).

I decided to meditate and that is when it really hit! My head was roaring (I never have had a buzz that compares to this) and the tree outside my window looked like another world-kind of a thick jungle that had Buddhas in it. I had had a frustrating day and I could see this yellow ball of my emotions just hanging in the air. My curtains started looking really wild and were breathing-and I remembered being a baby and seeing things in this way. Then I saw a dragon in the pattern of my curtains. I laid down on my bed and looked up at the ceiling and the most amazingly beautiful, intricate, pearlescent, pastel-colored beaded patterns started to emerge from it-and they were emerging kind of like thousands of falling dominoes! You know those things they sell at office stores that have those boxes with metal pins and you put your face in them and see the outline of your face? Well, it was a lot like that, only rippling in these stunning patterns. It was more real than this present reality and I really never expected the hallucinations to be this intense, so utterly alien, yet perfect. My room had the feel of an Arabian palace as I sat on my bed-it was exotic looking.

I also began to get that alone feeling, as if I were the only one in the Universe and it started to get a little disturbing. Negative thoughts would come and I would start to get sucked into that line of thinking, and only when I realized this and attempted another path did this dark cloud that appeared to be over my head lift about 10 stories and everything became bright again. This happened a few times. I went into the bathroom and freaked at the size of my pupils! I looked like an alien. The only hang up I had was the fear of discovery, and there's nothing like HUGE pupils to give you away. Also, the bathroom wall was producing fantastic 3-D patterns in the plaster that would kind of pop out at me.


I became restless and did not know what to do with myself. To prevent discovery and to view nature in this state, I decided to grab my sunglasses, go in my backyard and study my tree, but that looked very bizarre-almost cartoony, and the sky was all different colors. There were also patterns on my backyard wall that were beautiful, like that blue carnival glass in color and in the shape of Egyptian figures or warriors of some tribe. Then, everything started to slant and it was like pixels were missing and trying to fly away like tiles of a space shuttle and I didn't think I was ready to see what lie underneath the GUI that is this world. Someone described it aptly when they said it is like taking apart a computer and seeing what really is underneath or makes it work. I went into the house, trying to hold on to my sanity (or ego?) and thought 'What the hell was I thinking??? People do this shit??? WHY???' It was very intense. I decided to try to come down, so I grabbed some food to nuke while wondering if I had the framework or foundation to come out of this sane. I was also sardonically thinking how arrogant I was to believe I could handle having this reality stripped away and have something utterly unfamiliar and alien revealed to me-something I had never even imagined. Also, I sadly realized that I was still a 'bot-programmed by society to accept this waking reality as the end all and be all-more so than I had thought. Well, this must have been the start of the peak because I forgot about my food in the microwave and went into the bedroom to e-mail my best friend (in another state)…I needed human contact-from someone who would understand!


My computer turned into this sinister entity that kept making her address disappear just as I was about to send. By some miracle I sent some jumbled, panicked e-mail to her. That is when my dog came in and I started petting her while at the same time realizing 'the Beast' fit her more than I imagined! I don't know if I hallucinated her snapping at me or not. The walls had white, roundish, swirling designs popping out of them and the carpet was all kinds of colors and I could see every course fiber of it and the more I stared the more it seemed to become a swirling mass I would be sucked into! Well, I found if I stared at ANYTHING too long it would start to have infinite depths, and I had to look away-it was just WAY too intense. The wood shimmered pearlescent colors. Patterns emerged everywhere. The thought that I had 5 or 6 more hours of this was unbearable! I finally decided I had to call my friend rather than rely on e-mail and she stayed on the phone with me for over an hour and a half! I'm telling you, everyone needs a friend like this. She remained positive and told me to get a stuffed animal and look at it and just relax, and we talked. I could see every detail in the stuffed bunny and was intrigued that someone had actually sewn this. I kept making analogies about life using the carpet, because it was all around me and my main point of reference. I could see this Earth full of God consciousness in forgetfulness trapped in 3-D matter (illustrated by the carpet) and that there are pinpoints of light whose job it is to raise the consciousness and free the God consciousness from this dense, entrapment of matter-it was scary, but knowing there were pinpoints of light (people who are awake and enlightened) placed in strategic locations gave me great relief. I saw religion for what it is-marketing 'god' or idols, because I felt that God is Everything and vast and so beyond our comprehension that there was really no point in trying to figure It out-but rather, just love other human beings and creatures and nurture relationships and experience this particular plane to the fullest. I saw the very philosophy behind organized religion no different than the basic world 'power paradigm' that keeps people entrapped in matter (exceptions being those spiritual philosophies that tell us to seek God within). Monotheistic religion seemed silly and I saw how the monotheistic religions have many idols rather than just the one they think they have. I now have more respect for the polytheistic religions that have various archetypes of the different facets of what we call 'God'. Religion is a silly game-kind of like people telling you that you can only have 'God' if you play their game of hopscotch, for instance, when all we have to do is look inside us and around us because this Energy is everywhere and enmeshed in all creation and infinite. Also, this Energy I'll call 'God' seemed so pure, loving and unconditionally giving and the idea that people were trying to sell a piece of this sacred Being and put restrictions on It through a religion was appalling and ridiculous!


I could see how one act of kindness on this 'savage' planet would make it all worthwhile (I know, this is weird stuff)-because an act of kindness that seems small and insignificant is like an exquisite fireworks display in other dimensions or the REAL reality-and there are millions of acts of kindness here, but even if there was just ONE in all the thousands of years we have been on Earth, that ONE act of kindness would make the hell we go through here totally worth it. I realized the importance of loving and treating everyone with respect, compassion, love and kindness-that was really strong. Even the way you say someone's name, or speak to them or look at them can affect them-those seemingly insignificant little actions are far more powerful than we think!


Anyway, in great relief I felt myself gently drop from the peak, yet the hallucinations were the same-the emotional intensity had lessened significantly and I really couldn't describe to you what the peak is-you'll just know when you reach it. My short term memory was gone for the first couple of hours an it really didn't matter-I was still alive and possessed awareness. Also, after 3 hours and for the rest of the trip I couldn't stop rambling! The last two hours weren't as bad, but there was a time when I would just go off on tangents rambling about heaven knows what. Afterwards I felt so alive, boisterous and I was cracking jokes and expressing myself in ways that were different from my usual self, yet it WAS myself. I felt deep love for everyone. All in all, it was a beautiful experience, even though I kind of wimped out by not letting go completely and using my friend as a grounding wire/crutch. Our friendship is now much closer and I understand things about her I only guessed before-she is one of those pinpoints of light, and that can be a lonely place because many people aren't ready to free their consciousness yet and fight it. I truly felt I wasn't quite ready for a more intense experience at this time-it was enough at the time to even experience this state of mind, never mind explore it fully! It was like riding a roller coaster with my eyes screwed shut and my nails gripping the safety bar and having a person next to me gently trying to get me to focus on the good aspects of the trip. I have learned that next time I will be enjoying this enlightenment with others of like mind until I feel comfortable enough to explore on my own-and I'll open my eyes and take my hands off the safety bar! You actually EXPERIENCE things and they no longer are concepts, but become realities. This is a beautiful gift and I believe another strategically placed tool to help us free our consciousness if we so choose.