As the sun was setting, we decided it was time to start back. Our feeling of awe and appreciation for the continually unfolding beauty of the natural landscape remained strong and our energy was high and positive. The clouds were thickening and spectacular intermittent flashes of lightning pierced the sky. As we drove out of the area, our amazement and wonder at the divine beauty of the landscape deepened. The skies rumbled and flashed with thunder and lightning. The group of horses we had passed on the way in was there to see us safely on our way, and we paused briefly to whistle and click our good-byes to them. A long drive down dark rainy highways brought us back to our hotel late that night, where a warm shower and cozy bed awaited us. We thanked the spirits for their gifts and fell into a welcome and dreamblessed sleep.
For the next several days I experienced a distinct afterglow, a heightened appreciation for food, sex, and the simple pleasures of human interaction. I told my mother how much I had enjoyed the ruins, and how the trip had shown me why her father (my grandfather) had loved what he called “the Indian country” so much. I felt a strong emotional connection with her and with my grandfather when I shared this with her. Perhaps in some mysterious way, I had called in my grandfather’s spirit to facilitate my own heightened awareness of his birthplace. It is a land where ancient spirits dwell in the rocks and ruins, and the air hums with magic and mystery when one is attuned to their frequency with the help of the fungal ally.
MY HEART WAS THE DOORWAY TO GREATER VISION AND AWARENESS
ABRAHAM L.
In these accounts of mushroom experiences, a therapist in his forties identifies with and learns from his clients’ heroin addiction as well as the regressed confusion of the insane and the suffering of his Jewish ancestors.
I was forty-one years old when, in a solitary, ritual setting I ingested the mushrooms with the intention of reviewing my life, personal relationships, and my work at a methadone clinic. After some initial body and emotional processing, I moved into experiencing an ecstatic appreciation of life and the flow of energy that was moving through me. Every moment was a beautiful birthing, rich with experience and information at all levels.
Remembering my intention to look at my work, I thought about heroin addiction. I wondered how heroin addicts actually feel, drawn so powerfully to the experience of their drug that they make great sacrifices for it. I opened to a kind of empathy for them, and for the injustice done them by the persecution and criminalization of their pursuit of a particular state of consciousness through a particular substance. After all, I was engaging in a similar pursuit through the ingestion of the mushrooms. I wondered if we were doing the same thing. I started looking at my bias, that what I did was okay, while what they did was sick. I began to see heroin addicts as possibly even more devoted to their quest for some experience of oneness than I am. Would I give up everything, even face ridicule and social isolation, for what I am seeking? In some ways they seemed like devoted spiritual seekers who have become martyrs.
At that point I noticed that I was doing a lot of thinking. My thoughts seemed very interesting and exciting and the insight about judging heroin addicts seemed useful, yet I lacked a sense of my full body. When I moved more into my body, I recognized that the way to explore this issue was to ask to experience what heroin is like, since I had never tried it. I asked to have this experience in a prayerful way and opened myself.
After a short while, I was no longer thinking of this issue, but I noticed that I was feeling kind of flat. No pain, and kind of pleasant, but without the ecstatic “birthing of the universe” feeling that I had experienced earlier. I wondered if the journey had ended, but I definitely felt I was still in an altered state, just without any sense of wonder or aliveness. I then remembered my request and realized that I was experiencing the pain-less but joy-less experience of opiates.
As soon as I made this realization, I noticed that something was half in and half out of my chest. I had no real reaction to it, no fear, and no inclination or motivation to do anything about it. However, something in me was rising to question whether this was a healthy thing to allow. As I started to say, “Wait a minute!” the many-tentacled thing took on more life and tried to get deeper inside me. I knew I wanted it out, but I didn’t know how and couldn’t make it reverse itself. I felt powerless and impotent.
I opened inwardly for help. The next thing that entered my mind was the Beatles refrain, “All you need is love.” At first this seemed silly—then I got it. An energy, a pink light that I can only describe as Higher Love, started to flow through me. The more aware of it I became, the more I opened to it, the more powerfully it flowed. The creature began to back out of my body. At each step of its withdrawal I felt more myself, connected to my spiritual energy, as though I had been in a trance and had awakened.
The creature moved to a distance several feet from me. I felt strength and commitment in relationship to it. When I sat up and focused intently, it turned into a beautiful woman, very sexy and seductive. I felt aroused and drawn in, but when I became aware of being manipulated, the being became very fierce and scary. It made other shape-shifting efforts to put me off balance.
I called on all the strength and wisdom of my spirit allies to support me. My vision expanded to a global view of this creature connected to a world-wide network that had tentacles into the addictive behaviors of all humans—not only those involved with drugs, but with all manner of greed, violence, and war. I faced the Beast, evil, the Devil, saying simply, “Keep your distance.” I saw heroin addicts as just some of the instruments through which this entity sucked up power.
I asked for guidance and was told that I could not destroy it. Instead, I was to learn from it and keep very conscious of its nature and activity. As it was a part of the evolutionary journey of all humanity, I needed to learn to be with it in an appropriate relationship, to come to terms with it. It seemed to have a purpose in a planetary sense. Also, I understood that I was not alone. The energy that had come in to rescue me earlier was part of a network of light-worker beings of which I was one. This was an initiatory experience that I clearly remember.
As I returned to ordinary consciousness and my work, I have continued to be aware of this encounter. I more deeply respect and understand the Twelve Steps of AA, which are helpful teaching to so many self-defined addicts. I remember my own feelings of powerlessness as an isolated personality in the face of this force that intended to take me over. I remember the Higher Power, the great love, which, when I turn to it, frees me from the grips of the demon. I feel great compassion, understanding, and empathy for the addicts of the world, so easily seduced by forces ready to sap life-energy. And finally, I have made a commitment to align with that network of Beings who are engaging the dark forces and channeling the energy that liberates us.
Many years later, I was reconciling my relationship with my older brother, who was a homeless schizophrenic man. As I sought to connect with him, I remembered the above experience and found comfort in the teachings of the mushroom. Early researchers of psychedelics believed these substances could help therapists understand the experience of the mentally ill. I’ve verified the truth of this for myself, and pray that such research can someday again be conducted.
This time I was forty-five years old and in a group in a ritual setting. As I began to feel the effect of the mushrooms, a wonderful feeling of relaxation came over me. I was seeing beautiful patterns synchronized with the music. Some of the patterns appeared like Jewish letters and symbols streaming across in blues, golds, and silvers, colors I associated with Jewishness. This seemed to validate my recent explorations of my roots and my intentions to celebrate the Sabbath and Rosh Hashanah.
Then I became concerned with noises I was hearing from other group members. I became confused about whether I should be helping them. This confusion seemed familiar, in that I often feel uncertain about whether to reach out to others or stay in my own process. In this instance, the confusion seemed like an unsolvable puzzle an
d I saw myself as incapable of making any decisions or choices. I soon found myself in a chaotic place, unaware of where I was or of my surroundings.
The music was passing through me, saying, “There is no time,” in long beautiful refrains. I noticed that I was singing these words, although there was no intention on my part to be singing. It was happening through me and I was observing. I again became aware of my surroundings and the presence of the group. I became more conscious of my part in forming the sound as I entered into a cocreative process. The sound felt like the vibration of Life, that was creating me, then coming through me with my added inflection. I noticed that I could move my mouth slightly and send the message in a particular direction or throughout the room. My thoughts could shift the message itself, so that it (I) would sing, “We are beyond time; time is no more.”
I was alternating between periods of peace and periods of confusion. Sometimes I had no understanding of where I was, only that I was in a place that I could not comprehend. I felt I was being initiated into this place beyond space and time, beyond death, and that there could be no going back. I had a feeling of being stuck in a confusing puzzle, with a feeling of shame that I was lost, which only made me more confused and lost.
In moments of lucidity, I looked out and saw that we were gathered in what felt like an ancient circle, the circle that has always been, and that by our focused human ritual, we were assisting the process of creating the world. It was clear to me that indigenous people had participated in such ceremonies aware in a humble way of their role in cocreating life.
I was rolling on the floor, babbling. The group leader was asking me to move to another place where I could make noise and be less distracting to the others. The prospect of moving seemed inconceivable, since I was experiencing myself as something like a gaseous mass of foam, without form. With his reassurance that I could do it, I felt feet and legs take form as my attention was directed to them, and I could walk, with assistance. As I saw my body manifesting from thought, the notion that “thought directs energy” took on new meaning.
Away from the group, I lay down, went very deep, and became aware of being pure awareness or consciousness—except for one tiny area of holding. This was not “me,” in the ordinary sense, feeling tension somewhere in “my” body or mind. This was just some identity aware of something “down there.” As my awareness touched the tension, it released and I was flooded with an orgasmic sensation and a feeling of ecstatic oneness. As I returned to more self-identity, it occurred to me that it had lasted a very long time and I was amazed at how sustained and nonspasmodic it was. (I later realized that I had urinated, that I had released all tension in my bladder.)
I was in a very confused state again, moving my hands in front of me to the music and playing with being God or being related to by God, talking and singing aloud. I realized that I was crazy, and that this is what people are put into asylums for. I was experiencing true madness, yet I was comfortable with it. I realized that I was lying in a separate room from the group because of my madness, in the same way that people are placed in asylums so their madness won’t bother other people. I felt a connection with inmates in psychiatric wards working through similar processes. I was conscious that I had an advantage, being in a supportive environment, and that I was in a process of working through my madness to true sanity.
I felt great compassion for my mad colleagues as I patiently danced through spiritual development. I was coming to terms with a paradox of being God and being related to by God at the same time. I also explored the nature of the guru and how people can relate to the guru as God at the center of the universe running the show. I played with asserting my godness against the guru’s godness. I understood that those who have gone mad experiencing things along these lines have been doing humanity a service. I knew that I was moving through a stage, and that I would soon be able to relate my godness in more skillful ways than lying in a bed waving my hands in front of me, giggling and talking with myself. But I was content with my present condition.
I was dealing with infantile processes. I was learning, without concepts of what I am, that I was distinct from everything else, learning to express or assert my distinctness. I saw that my “orgasm” was very much the way a baby would just let that bit of tension go, to rest in the oneness.
A little later I realized that I was tired and that I was returning to time-space reality. My judgment mind started to question whether I had learned what I needed from the experience, but I also knew that it was time to assimilate, rest, and reconnect.
Five or six years later, I was actively working with people engaged in fostering dialogue between Jews and Arabs, working to bring an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. This vision has given me insight and empathy for the pain and fear at the root of Israeli behavior. I understand the primacy of healing the heart for peace in the world.
During this session, which was in a group ritual setting outdoors in the mountains, I did a conscious journey to the world below ordinary reality. I became aware of the entanglements of many past relationships with roots like knots, tight and painful, but they were being disentangled and untied. A weary, frustrated feeling filled me and this healing work seemed endless. I felt heavy in my heart. I remembered that in previous journeys, my heart had been the doorway to greater vision and awareness, so I moved into it with my breath and awareness. I became aware of my father and his father and the cold armor that separates us, as men, from certain emotions, especially painful emotions. I could see the stiff, defensive heart posture that prevents me from having deeper relationships with women, and I felt this armor dissolving and releasing.
I decided to go to a deeper level to explore the lessons that underlay this experience. I immediately sensed my Jewish ancestors and became aware of the collective Jewish heart that connects to all individual Jews, including myself. I realized that part of my early disaffection with my family and the Jewish community was an aversion to the heart-pain of Jewish suffering. As a young person, I sensed that this unspoken pain was a cause of the separation of “my people” from “the other,” the goyim. Since I rejected this separation, I also rejected the pain, but now I was able to feel the agony of centuries of persecution, alienation and isolation, of being the stranger in a strange land, and of the Holocaust.
For the first time, I understood, felt empathy for, and accepted this pain in my heart. Instead of being overwhelmed, I felt expansion, ease, and comfort in accepting my place in the scheme of things. In accepting my connection to my people, I was accepting myself as I am. I recognized that I chose to be born a Jew and that there was a karmic purpose to this choice. Without any clear instance of past life memory, I felt that my own heart-path was in tune with the group awakening now going on amongst the Jewish people. I felt a merging of my karma with my people’s experience. I recognized that my work as a Jew was more than utilizing Hebrew ritual or prayer; it was to hold awareness of this connection and to open my heart as an act of planetary importance.
The lesson of acceptance of purpose and ancestry could not have been clearer and I knew I could avoid it only at my own peril. I asked my ancestors what I could bring forth from this experience and I was told, “Open your heart, open your heart, so that I and you and all our people and this planet may be healed.”
Almost twenty years later, I am teaching workshops and leading groups with the theme of the compassionate warrior. The goal is to open to the deep sources of spiritual strength and compassion within and integrate this with engagement in social and political work in the world. As I began teaching these classes, I realized that I have been developing the skills and awareness I need to manifest my vision. I recognize that such inner work is vital to bringing justice and peace into the world. I feel deep gratitude for the mushrooms and their teachings. They have shown me ways to be present with strength and love in the face of great darkness and evil.
IT WAS THE DIVINE PLAY OF HIDE AND SEEK
JASON
SERLE
Journeying with the mushroom in a focused, humble, sacred manner brought this man to a profound state of timeless emptiness, filled with knowledge. The sense of a separate self falls away and he feels ecstatically merged with others.
Although I had taken the sacred mushrooms on a couple of occasions previously, this was to be the first time that I approached them as a sacrament for the purpose of healing. I was dealing with a certain disease within myself that manifested as a subtle confusion as to who I really was and where I was going. This is no doubt the dilemma of mankind in general, but for each individual these fundamental questions find their own particular expression or focus. For me, the question that played a leading role in the play of my mind for some years was that of free will. Although I could conceive of many possible answers, I could settle on none. So it was with this question that I approached the sacred mushroom one night in May.
My partner was on holiday and I was at home alone. I had prepared the room with a simple altar of objects of personal significance and a comfortable mattress with plenty of pillows. It was about ten o’clock on a Sunday night, so everything was silent and the room was in pitch darkness. Having spent the day fasting in quiet contemplation and having bathed as an act of ritual purification, I ingested 5 grams of Stropharia cubensis in the silent darkness. After slowly chewing the mushrooms and sipping on freshly squeezed orange juice, I lay back to await the effects.
Sacred Mushroom of Visions Page 27
