DOSE:	2 - 3 g	oral	Mushrooms - P. cubensis	(dried)
		oral	Chocolate

BODY WEIGHT:

175 lb

Psychedelic Reflections

The other day I decided to plunge deep inward again by way of a psilocybin trip. It had been quite a while since I last tripped, but I wasn’t necessarily aching to either. Instead I try to wait until I feel it calls me.

I partook of probably somewhere between two and three grams of dried psilocybin cubensis, which I had prepared long beforehand by coating them in melted chocolate and cooling them, creating small, round cakes roughly 2” in diameter. Before I ate them, I made sure to take a moment to specify my motives and what I hoped to gain from my experience. I strongly believe that it is extremely important before going into any psychedelic trip to state your intentions. Prepare your mind, know what you hope to achieve, and try (although it is easy to forget once one is gone) to keep those in the back of your mind, as to not fall into a dark space. So I quietly prayed over my two cakes, closed the blinds, took a deep breath, and ate them.

I prepared for my journey by doing some breath work and stilling my body and thoughts. I subscribe to Terence McKenna's preferred way of eating mushrooms which was usually taking a “heroic dose” (five grams) and sitting in silent darkness. So I sat up at attention with legs crossed, in my bed, and quietly meditated. After about half an hour of meditation, I could feel the shrooms slowly start to take their effect. It's always so bizarre—the onset of the body high. There's always a sort of weakening feeling in my throat and a tingling sensation all over my body, like I can feel the entities within the mushroom begin to awaken , slowly rearing their heads, and coming alive within me. As the feeling grew stronger, I opened my eyes to get a sense of where I was in the process. I fixed my eyes on the faint light seeping through my shaded windows. The tiny, lightly colored spots of my brown and white polka dotted window curtains could be seen swimming and flowing around within each other, pulsating, creating what looked like mild imagery of faces in the mix. And as I continued focusing on my deep breaths, I could notice that the walls were too breathing with me. A slow expand and contract of rippled brick. With a feeling of elation for the journey to come, I quickly reached for my bandana, tied it around my eyes as to block out any excess light, grabbed my iPod with a prepared playlist of music, and released my hand from the helm.

After the typical onset of light swirling color spectrums and misshapen circular ring patterns, the swirls and colors, in collaboration with the music, began to take form and paint a picture; a setting, which began to take shape of the “world” I now found myself in. Multi-layered beings made of light and neon lines, seeming to go on forever (or as far as I could see, at least), began emerging and then falling from sight repeatedly. With multiple, repeating pyramid structures lining in patterns behind them, they appeared Egyptian, or somewhat resembling Native Americans, and they almost always appeared to be hailing, crying out upwards toward the sky. As I watched, I wondered why or what they called out to. What were they trying to say? They seemed to have a sense or urgency in their faces, but they never seemed to be able to make a sound. Many of them donned different animal headdresses. One had the head and beak of an eagle atop his crown, with layers of feathers cascading down. Another, the head of a wolf or similar animal. One interesting thing I noticed was that they never had a solid face or body—they were created by patterned lines of colored light. There was this sort of grid work of lines that came together in lined patterns against a peppered black background to form the beings. If the lines were stripped away, you would no longer be able to see them. They would just be silhouetted black ghosts, lost against the dark abyss. As I fixed on these lines that were creating everything I was seeing, I could see that I too was connected to them, connected to the grid work, and I could then see that I was a part of it all; congruent with the makings of this world.

After this went on for a bit, the Egyptian motifs continuing, a more solid world began to form. I noticed what looked like a giant robot(still made of these neon colored line patterns) wearing a nemes headdress and standing behind what looked like a towel hut at a resort. Suddenly I found myself lying on a poolside lounge chair, surrounded by beings, that appeared to be ecstatic about my presence. Lively and elated, they began to embrace one another and continue with the festivities that had started just before my arrival. Everything moved in what felt like slow motion. One after another, they came up to me and seemed to be so excited to greet me and shake my hand. They seemed as though they had been waiting for me for a long time and were celebrating that I had finally made it to their realm. One of the strangest things was that many of these entities were merely jeweled silhouettes; one-dimensional in shape, faceless and featureless, glistening and beaming with light reflected from the sun. The party endured.

I began to wonder about the pertinence of everything that was going on at this trans-dimensional resort. “Is this all you guys do? You just party and drink cocktails? There must be something more to learn here”, I asked. A funny thing about psychedelics like psilocybin or ayahuasca is, whether or not I know it, I am communicating with them. By eating the mushroom, I am welcoming it to communion with my being and once my body absorbs it and it is coursing through my system, the gates of communication have been opened, I believe. When I ask it questions, it answers.

Somewhere after my query, one of jeweled-silhouetted beings (that had a strong feminine spirit about it) came up to me, held the bottom of my face in her palm, and slowly directed my attention to my right. As my head turned, the entire resort setting slowly dissipated and faded away until it was gone. A few entities appeared to be climbing through a small, wooden doorway that led to a dimly lit spiral staircase made of stone. They were coaxing, urging me to follow. Although the narrow passageway had a very eerie feel to it, I decided to pursue. I found we had entered into these dark, dusty catacombs. [At this point, my conscious self grew nervous, as I was under the suspicion that these entities may be malicious or mean me harm. I was a bit worried that the trip was about to take a very dark turn. As much as I knew it was a bad idea to, I felt my self starting to resist and fight it, which is never a good thing to do.] Once in the dark underground passageways, we continued on for a bit until we came to a manhole which led even deeper underground. There appeared to be no light emitting from this dense chasm. I grew increasingly uncomfortable and wanted to go back up but they insisted. Without words (I feel psychedelics often communicate through visuals and by showing you what they are saying rather than using verbal language), they ensured that everything was going to be fine.

Trusting them, I began to climb down the rusty ladder into the dark abyss. Before I knew it, the ladder had faded from my vision and the entities appeared to be hovering over me, aiding me in lying down on a table in what felt like some sort of medical room. I began to struggle and fight against them… hard. If I was concerned about things going awry and taking a turn for the worse before, by now I was certain that I had sealed my fate. With one entity on either side of me holding my arms and shoulders down, another holding my forehead with one hand and softly stroking my hair with the other (as to calm me perhaps?), a fourth stood over me with a jeweled chalice. I began to notice there were many of these beings in the room with us, standing around and watching. Most of all, I noticed their gleeful, smiling faces. Although I could not really make out any facial features on any of them, I could feel their warmth and jubilance. The being stroking my hair proceeded to pull my mouth open while the being with the chalice slowly began to pour its contents into my mouth. As the cup began to tip, what poured out glistened and shone like the birth of new stars from the center of a nebula. Still in slow motion, and again one-dimensional in shape, the glittering substance flowed into my mouth, down my throat and filled my entire being. It was at this point that I began to radiate this new inner light, almost unbearable to feast upon with my own eyes, which then lit up the darkness of the room until that underground cavern was completely gone.

Now, in what felt like the warmth of some outdoor setting, all the entities that were around in the room began to make their way to me, again proceeding to shake my hand but this time with a sense of congratulations. One after another, they all seemed so excited to laud and commemorate me, and always with the shaking of the hand(I found that so peculiar). It wasn’t until after all of this that I realized, at some point, I think while I was on the table, that one of the entities was saying something like, ‘You asked what you were here for. You wanted to understand the real business and get down to it. We were going to take our time with you but you asked, so we obliged.’, again, without actually speaking. How bizarre…

Anyway, as more of these entities continued to come up to me, I noticed that many of them were saying goodbye. It felt like the end of a party where everyone, exhausted from such an amazing time, gathers their things, hugs and says their farewells and shuffles out the door. But I felt so saddened to see them leaving (I was also sad because I thought it was all over and I was on the cusp of sobering up). 'Wait! Don’t go! We were just getting started', I said. Part of me wondered where they were going, another wondered why they all had to leave. After such an unnerving and incredible experience, I was ready to mingle with them all and ask more questions in an effort to try and understand more about this place they reside in. So many questions to ask.. TOO many. But it seemed that was as far as that part of the trip went.

There were so many other parts of the trip that were worth noting, but I will leave them out for now as this has gone on long enough. There is a lot to reflect on and ponder its meaning in my life, so I will be digesting this experience for some time, while trying my hardest to recall all the amazing imagery I had seen and making an effort to integrate that into this reality through whatever artistic means seem appropriate. I feel like I learned a lot from this experience about navigating the space, how to approach certain situations, and the right questions to ask. I learned what things to stray away from (ex: If they’re trying to tell me something, I don’t think they like when I cloud their message with music, interrupting the communication. I found them almost offended whenever I would do it.) and as usual, I learned that fighting against the trip only makes it worse. This is a general rule of thumb, but it’s always better to just go with it. Be with it, be with the moment, let it unfold, and instead of fighting, just knowing that I can still control where it goes simply with my thoughts. I am interested to see how I will be greeted when I arrive next time.

Exp Year: 2013	ExpID: 101117
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Feb 19, 2023	Views: 239
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Entities / Beings (37), General (1), Alone (16)