I tried to shift myself out of this fear, but to no avail. I was working hard to keep calm because the whole of myself, even my body, was terrified. What I had seen had shifted my understanding of my world. I got up to use the bathroom, thinking that by moving my body perhaps my experience would shift also. But when I made my way back to my mat, I found I was still gripped in fear.
Finally, I remembered that I could call on a spirit helper for protection and advice. This turned out to be quite an interesting experience. I called for Jesus, to whom I had not related much since I was a child. He seemed to have the sort of benevolence, love, and power that would protect me from the reptilians. I also called for the spirit of a horse I once had, thinking that its force and energy would help me. Neither Jesus nor the horse appeared.
I then thought about contacting my father, who had died two years before. As I did this, I remembered an experience from my childhood that I had not thought of for ages. My father had badly frightened my mother by coiling up a dead rattlesnake and putting it into our freezer where she would find it. Upon remembering this, I wondered if perhaps he was somehow connected to the reptilian people. If he wasn’t, he certainly was a trickster and could not be trusted. This was the first time during the evening that anything personal entered into my experience.
Then, all of a sudden, S appeared to me. This was surprising because I was under the impression that spirits who come to help are the spirits of the dead. But I had been doing experiential personal work with S for quite awhile and had a very deep trust in his presence. I was also aware of his own history of journeying into nonordinary states. I wondered if I had somehow contacted his dreaming body, as Castenada would call it. Seeing S helped me immensely. He told me that I was safe and advised me to take an interest in what I was seeing. He said that I had passed through the door into another world and that the information I was gathering was important in understanding our position on this planet. So, with his help I was able to relax, calm down, and let go of the fear.
Having people or places just appear occurs frequently in my inner work. They seem quite important, so usually I make efforts to allow them and not control them. However, the reptilian beings were still making me too uncomfortable with fear, so I did opt to remove myself from their world.
Soon after, the shaman leading our circle asked everyone to sit up and we began our first round of song. Each member of the circle would in turn allow sound to come from him or her, which would reflect their experience. To me, my voice sounded like that of an old American Indian. I found it very soothing.
I was very thankful for the singing and I did not see the lizard people again after this break. When I again lay down on my mat, my second question, about illustrating Tarot cards, was addressed.
I saw myself lying on the floor. There was a cylindrical hole in my chest over my heart. In the hole was a can, which was filled with the blood of my heart. Resting in the can was a paintbrush. I knew I was being told to paint with the blood of the heart.
I did not get a specific answer to my other question about restlessness, or at least not one that I understood, but I was exceedingly calm the next day. Perhaps my extra energy was scared out of me during the experience!
I felt rather timid about sharing my experience of the lizard people with the group because it seemed so strange. I was shown something that is hard to understand and also hard to explain, but I knew that it was connected to the primitive reptilian brain that we all have. Sometimes now when I see a cruel situation or hear someone spouting disconnected, loveless words, I think perhaps they’re coming from the reptilian influence.
I had gone much deeper than most of those around me. My sensitivity to entheogenic substances is very high and a little goes a long way. I now keep my doses light in guided journeys so that I can participate by staying in relation to the circle and guide.
The shaman walked into our circle the next morning wearing a black shirt with two green lizards circled on it. I laughed. I realized that he had been wearing it the night before.
Some years later, I do not think I would experience the same kind of fear in the reptilian people’s world if I should ever encounter it again. Now I always begin with contacting my personal helper spirits and animal guides prior to undergoing entheogenic experiences, so I know that I am always safe no matter what I see.
I have often pondered the above experience. Perhaps I peeked into what the ancients called “the world of the salamander” (the element of fire). I notice that my restlessness becomes the strongest when I forget to connect with the things around me on a deep level. Keeping things impersonal was a characteristic of the reptile beings.
As for the Tarot cards, I have been steadily working on them and with them for a number of years now. It has been a wonderful journey.
I WAS HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH THE SUN
EVAN PSILO
In the late summer, this psy-trance DJ and human rights activist makes an inner journey far, far from his home in New York City to vast alien realities. Then he returns to his body and explores with wonder its “systems of cyclic and fractal organic intelligence.”
At about 1 a.m., I ate 8 grams of dried mushrooms, alone in my apartment. I lay on the bed to relax and meditate. In about 20 minutes, the fungal medicine began to seep its gnosis into my muscular system. I started to stretch and feel lethargic, but still a little nervous. Suddenly the rush came on, but my body was still tense with what I felt was an accumulation of emotional issues. I turned on my stomach with my knees bent to my chest, a position I’d seen in certain prayer forms, and I began bowing and rocking while mumbling and breathing heavily, my hands clasped in prayer. I engaged in thoughts, questions, and paradoxes that had been on my mind recently.
I was crying and praying feverishly when a tremendous tidal wave of energy came cascading in from all directions. Then there was a thunderous explosion of lightning in my head and I had a vision of massive iridescent storm clouds rolling and tumbling toward Earth from outer space. It was cosmic in scale, like a nebula. Awed, I asked, “What is this?” The response was, This is the storm that is coming—you know! I gave a huge scream like I was coming out from under ten thousand pounds of pressure.
Then commenced the visions. I was on my back and a wave of silent eternity began to cover me like the shade of a cloud. Behind the silence was a distinct presence of movement. I saw I was lying on the floor of a forest. My body began to dissolve into the soil, merging with the Earth. Ten thousand maggots began to eat my flesh, but the feeling was one of unimaginable ecstasy. As my flesh was returning to the cycles of life, I felt a new sensation of my spirit also returning to some forgotten home.
I sank down into the Earth and became a river, which flowed into an ocean. I was continuously experiencing more space to be conscious in and more life to be conscious with. I started wandering through various visions.
An old friendly Rastafarian couple appeared and looked down upon me in a kindly, parental fashion. Then an old man came to stand beside me. He seemed thousands of years old. He offered me his hand and as we walked he showed me many beautiful things, which made me feel very humble. I asked him about the singularity, or eschaton, and what that was all about. He said nonchalantly, Oh, that! He slowed down as if to say, Get ready for this! I felt a rumbling and saw, appearing over the horizon, a big luminous sphere like a great churning furnace of creation. It had networks of moving lights on it, like the sun, and I couldn’t look at it very long. I knew creation wasn’t finished.
Then I was a miniscule spaceship traveling at high speed through vast alien realities. The awareness in my body released itself into a geometric freedom of which it was composed. The defining attributes of crystalline, biological, technological, and mathematical principles merged into constantly changing objects and devices, each with a life of its own. All these were flying by and whizzing around along an endless galactic highway, passing through futuristic cities and technologically expanded realities. In the cities
were pyramids made of luminous circuitry. There were majestically decorated aliens moving about, utilizing their technological interfaces with expert grace.
I thought I should check in on my body back on Earth. As I lifted the hair that was covering my face I found that somehow I managed to get myself into a very awkward position in the opposite corner of the dark room from where I was originally lying down. I rubbed my forehead and saw hundreds of eyes layered together like cells. In the space in front of me I could see gorgeous, morphing mandalas made of eyes and multidimensional jewels. I tried to focus on the surroundings in the apartment and saw eyes on everything. All matter and substance was alive and overflowing with personality.
I went to the roof of the apartment building to enjoy the air and stars. Looking up, the stars seemed to be transmitting messages between them. I could see little lasers of information crisscrossing on spiraling bits of light. One star zoomed right up to my face, like a computer-processed image of a white sphere, then disappeared. Images came from space of gearlike numeric systems, alien mathematical hieroglyphs, and cosmic calendars. I understood the goal of the Mayans and the purpose and challenge in creativity and science. I looked at the moon and it was surrounded by a mandalic vortex of colored light. This delicate geometric grid served specific functions based on the angles of the intersecting lines. I had never seen anything like that in nature before.
As I sat on the roof I explored this new enhanced state of perception and creative flow. One vision was of a particular individual, who could be considered a shaman, resting under a tree with mushrooms growing all over his body. I thought about LSD, which I once used regularly. Through a display of comical images, the changing hallucinations made fun of “the mild twentieth century chemical that makes psychedelic snobs,” comparing it to the vast eons that the mushroom makes accessible.
Then I was introduced to some beings that seemed to be from a future where, through their emotionally honest relationships and their technology, they would travel back into time, into history to explore various realities from different perspectives. They would search events and relationships and patterns in different times, such as chanted mantras or collective scenes, to find rare portholes of cosmic information or particular patterns valuable for developing future programming.
I navigated through various archetypal realms of the collective human subconscious as it manifested as complete realities. Reality felt as if it were made of flowing tactile emotions. When I got up to stand, I was surprised by an enormous weight on my shoulders, like I was lifting the entire city as I stood. Finding my balance, the weight became comfortably a part of my body.
I went back down to my bedroom. As I lay down again I felt the shifting weight in my muscles and bones. My body started to burn a little and I couldn’t help but squirm and move like a gigantic creature. As I found my breath, I also discovered the endless wonders of biology taking place in a million different places inside my body, which I could freely explore. I was flowing through my blood circulation and with various electrical impulses that traveled along nodes and intersected pathways and grids, causing wonderful uncoilings and spastic releasing of tensions in my body that I understood had been building up for years. I was filled with wonder at the incredible systems of cyclic and fractal organic intelligence and the myriad cellular forms vibrating with purpose. It was amazing to comprehend the massive organism in which I live.
I started to make sounds I had never heard before. Every shift in resonance and tone led to strange significance and new, textured sounds. The sound was not a separate thing but an open channel of the biological, temporal, emotional, the light, color, and form.
My cat scratched the door and I let her in. With eyes wide open she hopped through mythical and fantastical appearances. She perched on my shoulder and purred. With her permission, I fell into her being. The purring was no simple fleshy vibration; it was a resonating echo in a cavernous abyss, home to a timeless ecstatic life. Her purring was as loud and strong as a generator that keeps the planet’s heart beating. When I became separated from her by reacting with awe, she kicked my tranced butt out of her sensitive universe.
I suddenly felt like I was wasting time and the peak was beginning to subside, so I went back up to the roof. The sun was rising and the sky was ineffably beautiful. The air and colors and details of everything were alive, filled with light and beauty. I looked at the tops of some buildings and they literally smiled with their architecture, moldings, and windows. They stretched upwards and outwards on top, as buildings do in cartoons.
I lay down to enjoy the clouds and the sun. The clouds seemed enthusiastic to show what they could do. I could interact with them and guide which way the winds would take them, making spirals and shapes in the clouds that were real and not a perceptual distortion. I squinted my eyes to the sun, which poured forth rich, brilliant energy and warmth. I was having a conversation with the sun, receiving intelligent information and wisdom from our star. I saw curved flares being slowly emitted from its surface. I felt how different dimensions coexist beyond our conventional understanding of space and time. I contemplated dark matter as space spirit. I had numerous revelations dealing with different stunts and wonders of the infinite and the balance between simplicity and complexity, repetition and change. I also felt very connected to the collective happenings, of outside activity, so I decided to go to the Park.
I walked a couple blocks to Central Park. The trees and plants and stones were radiant with thriving life. I could see the growth happening before my eyes. I even tried to communicate with the Gaian spirit, but it felt new and strange to both of us to try to communicate on a personal level. The cooperative communication and general awareness exhibited in the ecological matrix of life was stunning enough as it was.
I sat down by one of my favorite waterfalls. As I relaxed to the sound of falling water and slowed my breath, I straightened my back and, like a xylophone, seven ascending tones clinked up my spine, “tink tink tink tink tink tink tink!” The freedom in that core moment of alignment was peaceful and astounding.
A woman was sitting behind me and when I looked at her she seemed to blossom like flower petals blooming in time-lapse. She embodied various mysterious goddess archetypes. I let myself gaze at her briefly, but I sensed fragility in the air, so I decided to move on. Looking back again at her she removed her hands from her thighs and released what I can only describe as babies: birdlike newborn entities of the space spirit that I previously mentioned that flew into the air. Whether they were malevolent spirits previously possessing her or new autonomous consciousness born of her, I couldn’t tell, but she seemed elated after this occurrence.
The marvelous way in which we are all communally involved and closely connected became apparent to me. I felt the potential for great healing and delicate forms of loving communication, but also the potential for evil magic, selfish manipulation, or spirit possession born of fear. Waves of children laughing and the busy chaos of daytime in Manhattan filled the air. I went back home to contemplate and rest from this exciting trip.
The next day my vision was incredibly acute, sharper than I remember it ever being. I also found out that the previous day the sun’s solar flare activity was higher than it had been in a hundred years.
The physical healing I experienced from that trip was amazing. Serious muscle tensions had been completely released. I was more in tune with my body as a result of the mushroom medicine. Psychological fears and habits that I had carried with me for years were healed. The visions I had experienced were enough to keep my imagination and intellect busy for years.
The mushroom experience is sacred because it is real, a part of the wonderful workings of organic and ecological intelligence. Mushrooms are healing medicine and a most remarkable tool for religious or spiritual understanding. Sensitivity, empathy, humor, and intuition are enhanced. So-called psychic experiences and precognition can be normal senses in these states. The tryptamine hallucinogen experience is timele
ss and cosmic; the essential consciousness of life and love and all that they entail become apparent and important in these experiences.
Any powerful tool begs a mature and humble approach. The experience offered by mushrooms may seem archaic, but it must be studied if we wish to develop the sciences of psyche and soma. This and other cherished methods of developing awareness must be protected and defended, in the name of science, religion, and the creative imagination.
SHADOW, BE MY FRIEND
GANESHA
This forty-one-year-old actor and healer communes with spirits of plants, water, stars, and lizards. He meets the great god Pan and gains insight into the union of Nature and Spirit.
I was invited to participate in a medicine circle to be held in a natural setting of the Sierra Madre Mountains of California. The medicine was to be the sacred mushrooms, the “Little Princes.” All of the shamanic circle work I had done up to this point had been indoors with a rather formal structure. This event would be looser, with freedom to leave the circle during the journey to commune with Nature. There would be three rounds during the evening, times to come together around the fire and share our experiences.
The group leader thought of himself as a guide, both in the physical world, taking us to a special location, and as a guide to the inner wealth of Nature to be found there. It would be a gathering of medicine men and women contributing equally to shaping the event in the moment.
I had formulated certain intentions to take to the circle. I wanted to move more into my higher self, but I did not want to use spirituality to evade looking at my Shadow. I also wanted to determine if my sexual life brought my best self forward. Further, a relationship had just ended for me, and I wanted to ask the medicine to affirm my life path. I wanted to review my behavior over the past year of this relationship with equanimity and clarity, so that I could learn any inherent lessons. Never one to scrimp on intentions, I would also ask for vision around my healing work, to be able to love more, stay open to others, and be more generous in my giving.
Sacred Mushroom of Visions Page 25
