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Reclaiming the Body Awakening the Soul
Mushrooms - P. cubensis & Cannabis
Citation:   B-Rad. "Reclaiming the Body Awakening the Soul: An Experience with Mushrooms - P. cubensis & Cannabis (exp102093)". Erowid.org. Nov 3, 2020. erowid.org/exp/102093

 
DOSE:
3 g oral Mushrooms (dried)
    vaporized Cannabis  
    vaporized Cannabis (edible / food)
BODY WEIGHT: 160 lb
A week before my trip I purchased an ounce of blue-cap mushrooms for my friends. After a disappointing trip on 3.5 grams, I decided to have a solo trip to finish off the spare 3 grams from the ounce I had bought. The morning of my trip, I took my last final exam of the 1st semester of my sophomore year in college. As soon as I finished the final, I got some lunch and began making preparations for my trip.

I have taken salvia twice and shrooms twice before, all with mostly disappointing results. I had learned from my most recent shrooms experience about a week before that I tend to project into the future too much and create expectations of the way certain events will play out; if these expectations are not met I am prone to disappointment. However, I have never consciously realized this because it’s just the way I’ve always thought. I also wasn’t aware that in addition, this is definitely not the way to do psychedelics – the only way to have a good experience is to be fully present and fully express yourself. In light of my mostly sad and disappointing trip last time, I decided to create a theme of happiness around this trip; I would not make the mistake again of planning out every activity I would do during the trip and when, but instead I created a list of possible activities I could do at any time and let my inspiration guide me to do exactly what I feel like doing.

Since I was tripping by myself, there was no reason I needed to pay attention to group dynamics since I would be alone for the peak of the trip and could do exactly what my mind and body were urging me to do at that moment. I had a full day to treat myself and my soul to a fun time and a spiritual journey, but I wasn’t expecting anything to happen. The only thing on my mind was embracing the mindset and enjoying my day; after that, whatever happens happens. Before ingesting the mushrooms, I created a playlist of feel-good songs that always put me in a relaxed mood and have emotional ties to important people in my life. I prepared a weed edible for later by dissolving a half gram of toasted cannabis and some vaped bud in melted coconut oil. I was now ready for my personal day of fun to begin.

I have over the months become an increasingly spiritual person, reading about theories of consciousness and the soul by such people as Amit Goswani, hearing the truth about psychedelics (especially DMT) from people like Joe Rogan and Graham Hancock, and educating myself on the true purpose of psychedelics and their usage in shamanistic cultures. Although I wanted more than anything to make sure I had a great trip, I was still hoping for a highly spiritual experience because I have been very interested in learning about the mind-body link lately and how Eastern medicine and philosophy interacts with our Western paradigm. I have been reading a lot about the chakras and the concept of an event called the Kundalini Awakening, where each of the seven chakras becomes fully opened in succession in an incredibly personal and spiritual journey lasting from one day to months long. I suspected that I had been slowly starting my Kundalini Awakening, since I have been growing as a person a lot after recently entering my twenties. I have been constantly realizing things about myself, life, and the people and world around me after curtailing my cannabis usage from up to a gram a day every day to vaping/eating only a few times a week. I have begun meditating and practicing yoga, exploring my body and my mind and what they are trying to tell each other in my unconscious. I have essentially been priming myself to have a mind-blowing psychedelic spiritual experience while also integrating those activities into my daily life.

At about 12:45 I ate the mushrooms that I had attempted to pre-digest in lime juice (a la Lemontek) to intensify the trip and shorten the come-up (this strategy seemed to be entirely ineffective, but I most likely didn’t do it the right way). I sat down on my couch in my dorm room and started playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a classic game from my childhood that I always love picking up for fun. After about twenty minutes I could already feel that familiar uneasiness and general weirdness of the world that shrooms always give me during the comeup. At this point I started sweating and getting unnecessarily anxious about nothing at all, while trying to convince myself that it is a normal part of the trip to be worried about what might happen. I continued playing Zelda until T+0:45, when I began seeing mild visual distortions and my mind started moving faster and faster. I was quite worried at this point because not only was I already worried, but the hallucinations had begun to appear despite skipping the traditional super-high shrooms giggles stage. I figured this might be a part of taking a solo trip and I longed for my friends to return from their finals already, despite the fact that I knew they wouldn’t be back for a few more hours.

This worriment reached a point where I was unable to play the game anymore, so I saved the game and turned off the TV. I decided to lie down and be one with my emotions, to see if the blue-cap shrooms (more emotionally intense as opposed to visually intense gold-cap shrooms) could be trying to get my body to do something. I felt an intense discomfort in my body that was making me squirm around, so I lay on the couch and tried to feel myself from the inside out. I embraced my emotions by following the urges of my body to move in a certain way and make certain sounds. Seemingly instantly, I became overwhelmed by some of the most intense sadness I had ever felt. Although it was unpleasant, it somehow felt good to just FEEL it and I was communicated by another being to just let it happen and not fight the feeling. I was transported back to a time in my childhood where I was wallowing in misery after being humiliated for something and I just wanted to be by myself. I was crying so hard I was moaning, and this ancient feeling became replicated in the trip. I remembered that my mom wanted to enter the room to comfort and love me, but even though that’s what I really wanted, all I could do was work off my sadness until I exhausted myself.

I did the same thing during the shrooms trip. I rolled around on the couch, moaning and bawling harder than I had in many years. I felt all of the sadness I’ve been keeping back as emotional baggage in my life come to the surface and pervade my being. Memories of being the small and weak kid rushed back to me, along with all the misfortunes I encountered dealing with the effects of that on my life. I thought back being a toddler, born into a dysfunctional body that I couldn’t trust; I had a deathly peanut allergy that always worried me and socially distanced me from eating events, along with allergies to tree nuts, milk, eggs, and wheat that caused feeding me to become a chore for my parents. I thought back to my environmental allergies to grass and mold, and my allergies to cats and horses that made me unable to enjoy being at people’s houses who had pets. I remembered all the way back to my severe eczema as a toddler that required my parents to pick my skin free of cysts in an incredibly painful process. I felt my sadness as intensely as I could, despairing in the fact that I was so unlucky to have this misfortunate body and that it was all so unfair, and that I was seen as a weird kid because of my bodily problems that affected my social standing. I felt sad because of the fact that I never had any true best friends as a child; that I was always at the periphery of social activity because I was “weird”. After I cried and cried and couldn’t cry any more, I looked at the tear-stained pillow and smiled. I thought it was finally over until my face contorted into sadness again and I cried a few more tears, finally saying goodbye to the influence of this helpless inner child in my life that has held me back from becoming my true self.

I lay back in relief, smiling at myself for the goodness I had just done to my body. No sooner did I feel this relief than a pit of discomfort formed in my belly, signaling that something wasn’t quite right. I tried to feel this discomfort as intimately as I could, confused by the fact that I thought I had purged myself of all negative emotions. I contorted my body into the shapes it was compelling me to; I buried my face in my pillow and thrashed around. Feelings of intense hatred, along with the phrase “I HATE YOU!!!” running through my consciousness, compelled me to kick the edge of the couch in a childish flutter kick of tempter tantrums rolled into a singular emotional experience. I felt hatred and evil pervade my body, and I directed my anger towards this feeling and felt it grow stronger and stronger and begin concentrating into a little ball inside my gut. I felt this hatred become directed towards anybody in my life who made my life miserable, at a close friend who abandoned me after my exchange student returned home to Germany during my senior year of high school, and at the little kid in me who held me back so much. I directed my hatred towards the kid who was misfortunate enough to have to deal with the physical problems I was born with and the emotional problems that resulted.

After my tantrum was over, I was left with a contorted face and an extremely discomforting feeling in my stomach. It felt like evil itself was trying to escape my body and I needed to help it get out. I immediately took this as a sign to get to the bathroom and stick my face in the toilet. I whipped off my shirt, kneeled on the cold tile floor, and peered into the toilet bowl. I began feeling this ball of negativity bubble up inside me, and felt my stomach begin to signal it needed to heave. As I was about to attempt to embrace the retching feelings, someone walked into the bathroom. Although I was locked in a stall and totally fine, I got confused and thrust myself out of my experience in order to act normal for a second. I turned around, pulled down my pants, and peed into the toilet bowl, then contracted my body and shuddered harder than I ever had before while waiting for this person who seemed to be invading my very own consciousness to leave.

After I heard the door close, I turned around and peered into what seemed like the pit of hell; the stench of residual poop and the sight and smell of my own urine convinced me that this right here was the portal to the Underworld for the purposes of my negative emotions. After several unsuccessful dry heaves, I thought back to a memory of when my mother told me to just get it out, that I’d feel so much better when it was out of me, while she patted me on the back. I summoned one mighty retch and vomited my demons out of me. I spat out the taste of bile and within seconds, was overcome with joy. I gazed at the physical manifestations of all my negative emotional baggage from my reserved childhood and started laughing at it. I stuck my tongue out at my hatred and joyously made fun of it for being confined to Hell forever. I finally felt purged of all my negativity and sins and stared at the happiest face I could’ve possibly seen in the mirror. I ran back to my room grinning with a smile that nobody could wipe off my face.

I immediately put on Lotus, a trance song that always brings out extremely positive emotions in me and has been known to induce states of ecstasy in my mind, because I have tied playing this song to times when I am just incredibly happy and want to celebrate that happiness. I lay down in peace and felt an opiate-like contentedness wash over me and relax my body. I then felt the effects of the absence of all the negativity that my inner child had been projecting onto me; for the first time, I truly felt at one with my body and safe and confortable in it. I felt a sense of personal power rise within me and communicate to me that I am strong and wise and desirable and happy and can do anything I want to do. For the first time I felt confident in exactly who I am and wanted to show it to the world. My mind communicated to me the meaning of the human will and told me that as long as I stick to my true self and display only that to the world, the world will take care of me and love me. I thought back to my various sexual partners and was shown exactly what sex really truly is as an act, and how to have an incredible and transcendental experience every time. I was shown what it means to be truly satisfy a woman and be satisfied myself, and that there is no reason that this can’t happen every single time with the right partner. I felt pure love wash over me and basked in my extreme fortune. Goodness pervaded my consciousness and I couldn’t wash that damn smile off my face. But when the song Lotus came to its extremely peaceful middle section and heavenly tones were whispered into my ears, my intense feelings of love and happiness took a new turn. Pride emerged. My mother, who was there to comfort me while I just wanted to throw up as a child, appeared to me. She gave me a warm hug and congratulated me for finally getting to this point in my life. My dad appeared and my brother appeared, and welcomed me into the sacred realm. Our family hugged and shared our happiness together.

But then my frail old grandmother appeared in my mind and gave me a weak smile. Although I was still only emitting intense love, I became worried about her. Her face changed back to the more youthful way it was when I was a child, and she smiled and kissed me on the cheek. I knew then and there that the only thing she has to live for is to love her grandchildren and see them succeed, after my grandfather passed away seven years ago and left her living by herself for years. She sees her grandchildren as the success and spawn of the one child, my father, who she devoted all of her love to help raise. All she has to give is love. I felt her misfortune that she has trouble walking in her old age and can’t enjoy life much anymore. She told me she wouldn’t be here much longer and I felt despair.

Tears began streaming down my face in the most raw emotional experience of my life. I despaired from her eventual departure from this earth that I knew I’d have to face someday and felt my face shift quicker than I could comprehend between sadness and happiness for her that she’d be in a better place someday and be reunited with her husband. I saw her return to her youth as a child, running around carefree in a beautiful flowery meadow, basking in the sunshine, utterly happy. I reached out with my hands and told her out loud that I’d miss her and accepted her eventual passing away. Once I had done this, my dead grandfather appeared by her side. I missed him to no end, which is something I hadn’t fully realized in the last seven years. As an immature 12-year-old, I didn’t feel my emotions and proudly watched his burial tear-free while my sobbing grandma tossed roses into his grave. I had assumed that real men don’t cry. I looked at my grandparents finally together again and I began sobbing. All of the grief I had never expressed rushed at me at once. I finally grieved his death, preparing myself for the fact that not everybody will always be on this earth and that sometimes it’s just time to go. Waving goodbye, I returned to myself and enjoyed the last minute of Lotus, enjoying the fact that I had just had the exact incredible spiritual and emotional journey I had hoped to have while on mushrooms.

With my new outlook on psychedelics and what they can do for a person and their life, I wrote a lengthy text to my mom. I told her that I’m tripping on mushrooms and that I’m being very safe about it. I told her that I’m fully in control of my life and she doesn’t need to worry about it. I told her that I love her and my whole family and that I need to tell her about this experience since I’ll be working in a career that involves the mind and I will need their undying support. As a neurologist I’d need to be intimately acquainted with the mind and spirituality, and psychedelics can be a necessary tool to explore one’s consciousness safely and without the thousands of hours of experience that masterful proficiency in deep meditation requires. I let this typed-out text sit on my phone as I made more realizations about how I am an awesome person and have the power to do incredible things with my life, which eventually morphed into the most realistic sexual fantasy of my life with an amazing girl I met on the other side of the world. Finally I looked at the text to my mother that I had typed out and worked up the courage to send it, knowing that although it was scary to admit using psychedelics to my parents, it was the right thing to do to move my life forward because my parents deserve to know if they’ll be supporting me in my future career choices. I finally pressed the send button and felt an emotional cord around my very being unravel and free me, knowing that now that I can fully admit all aspects of the real me to my family and have them understand my motivations for all of it, there is no reason I can’t display that to the world. I felt liberated once again.

As soon as I hit send, my door opened. Expecting to see my roommate S or friend L, two of my best friends, I was instead surprised with my friend A, my closest female friend, who had also just left that same final exam with S just a few minutes behind her. I gave her the biggest, happiest hug I could give, and proceeded to tell her all about my new mindset towards life. I knew that if I just enjoyed the trip and continued to be myself in all aspects, I would keep having an awesome trip. At about T+2:00, S walked in and after an extremely happy greeting, I proceeded to tell them the story of my emotional spiritual experience, of purging myself of negativity and of discovering my true self. Midway through telling the story, another best friend C walked in and I restarted the story. I noticed myself using copious amounts of body language into my speech and injecting lots of emotional inflection into my storytelling, something I have never been able to do well. I snuggled up with my friends, feeling unending love and empathy. I told my story more with emotions and body language than with words, because I was having trouble speaking while tripping and because communication to me at that point was purely an exchange of emotional states. Words couldn’t do justice to what I was trying to say and I realized that words cannot always accurately convey meaning, often losing meaning or conveying a message completely different from the intent. I was in awe with my friends at how well they could understand me by just spreading endless empathy towards them.

I decided that the rest of the night I’d just live entirely in the moment, without overanalyzing everything that happens to me and will happen to me. I wouldn’t censor my speech for the sake of social harmony, because if I am truly the person I want to be, any dissonance will be welcomed as a reflection of who I am and I will still be loved endlessly. If anybody disagrees with me, I should stand up for my principles because I truly believe in them. I should be morally strong enough that nothing I do or say should ever need to be questioned by anyone else. With my newfound ability to live in the moment, I told me friends I loved them and that my heart was telling me to go play in the snow. I went outside with my Frisbee and slid around on my boots, gliding my Frisbee along the ground and admiring the creative lines its edges made in the snow. I found a beautiful moonlit spot of the purest snow and collapsed back into it, knowing that the snow would catch me and I’d be taken care of. I didn’t even care that my pants would get wet. I made the most beautiful snow angel of my life, like the ones I loved to make during snow days as a child.

I went back inside and vaped some dank weed with A, S, and C, before consuming my edible. I knew (which turned out to be right) that the edible would mildly resurrect my psychedelic mindset for the rest of the night. We played our favorite videogame Super Smash Brothers before dinner, and I thoroughly enjoyed the visual effects of the screen appearing to glow outwards. Before heading over to the dining hall I decided to treat my body well and did some relaxing yoga in my room. This felt extremely therapeutic for my body, intimately connecting the thoughts in my mind with the feelings in my body.

The rest of the night I practiced my newfound skill of living in the moment, observing how much happier I was in general and noting the extra memories that could be consistently made by not adhering to the strictest schedule. I realized that humans need to integrate all these lost parts of themselves to truly master themselves; it isn’t easy. Living in the moment and ridding myself of expectations was my big challenge to overcome, and mushrooms helped me get to a place where I could take that to heart and begin practicing it in everyday life. That night I ended up eating a piece of steak with my hands, sledding down the college driveway with a saucer I stole from the dining hall, telling my friends how I really feel about them, and doing only what my heart told me to do and nothing else.

When my friends started drinking and wanted to go play Risk in A’s room, I decided to stay back and meditate alone in my room for a while. I listened to soothing music by Ravi Shankar and let my mind wander. Instead of directing my mind towards the things I wanted it to think about, I just let it wander free and show me only the things it was creating in that moment. I saw incredible mental visuals and scenes and felt happy and amazed that my mind had the capability to do these things. The weed edible definitely did resurrect the psychedelic mindset and continued to allow my mind to roam free and make wonderfully diverse connections with itself. I gained total body wisdom, feeling channels of energy through my muscles and allowing that energy to flow with subtle changes in what my consciousness was directed towards. I hugged myself and massaged my back. I cared for every muscle in my body, appreciating the wisdom my body had bestowed upon me that day. I delighted in the fact that I had freed myself from the chains of my childhood sadness and discovered my true self. I figured out what it really means to access your inner divine and display that to everybody around you; the inner divine is the idea that you can physical manifest anything you can direct your consciousness towards. Despite previously feeding off primarily my upper chakras, I underwent an awakening of each of my seven chakras in succession and unified my entire being. I had the experience of a Kundalini Awakening that Eastern philosophers know is so important to the development of the awakened human being. It is in integral part of the pathway to Enlightenment. In my trip and afterwards, I felt only boundless love and endless happiness, towards myself, my friends and family, and all of mankind.

Exp Year: 2013ExpID: 102093
Gender: Male 
Age at time of experience: 20
Published: Nov 3, 2020Views: 1,056
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Mushrooms - P. cubensis (66) : Entities / Beings (37), Therapeutic Intent or Outcome (49), General (1), Alone (16)

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