DOSE:

1.75 g

oral

Mushrooms

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

165 lb

Title: First time, for the second time - eyemask, headphones, and a low dose
Subtitle: 1.75g

7:30pm, one Saturday evening in May of 2019

Note: phrases in double-parantheses ((example)) are phrases that feel less than precise in describing the actual sense of the idea, but more precise words elude me.

It began with anxiety. I intended to eat the mushrooms earlier in the day, and enjoy a light trip, testing the waters before a bigger step in the future. But some friends stayed longer than I realized they would, and I ended up losing the daylight I had hoped to use to wander in a slightly altered state.

I ate the mushrooms at 7:30pm, not long, maybe 20 minutes, before our guests left. I thus had minimal time to prepare. In those 20 minutes, I put hopes into words on a page in a journal - mainly intentions around examining an overarching tension of late. I’d not call it anxiety, though at times I get anxious. But this tension has me forcing things, out of tune and out of time.

As things got disorienting, I realized I hadn’t prepared 2 basic logistical issues - privacy and music.

The first was easy enough, though I should have taken care beforehand. The latter, however, had me scouring the internet as reality gradually becomes less certain of itself. Not a great situation to be in. I was aiming to get the Johns Hopkins psychedelic playlist. But a series of technological obstacles resulted in realizing a simple alternative - Mercan Dede. I also realized at this time that I should leave the living room where wife and child were playing, to be uninterrupted.

I should mention here - my M.O. was to be eye mask, headphones, lying down. That is, a “deep” internal exploration. I quickly came to realize the potency of minor distractions: the internal world takes time to develop - and each interruption takes me back to square one (including changing albums in search of the right album!).

Finally, I was lying in a bed, in a private space, in silence, with Mercan Dede on headphones.

I slipped on the mask, my eyes closed and -

it began with an expansion - the mindscape extending in all directions. The music took this landscape and pulled it through and intense choreograph, creating a dancing architecture of mind-matter. At this low dose, colors were not too vivid; it was more darkness - though when I noticed it, an entity turned up the lights a bit.

There was a moment here when the experience was telling me that I could trust myself, that I didn’t need to write everything immediately (typical habit of mine) - in fact, that I was not here to be historian or stenographer, but the one who goes into the jungle.

A major theme throughout was trusting the ((non-verbal aspects)). It does, in fact, relate to the original intent to confront my ((chronic)) tension.

As things progressed from here, several topics were addressed.

Practice - my movement practice was revealed in a clarifying light… I saw how practice could be such a deep experience, a profound experience, a truly fulfilling one. I saw how expansive it truly is, if it’s approached with a kind of mental presence (I suppose I set aside “mindfulness” in search of a better container).

Patience - this came up in the “bed-dance” (coming up)

Gratitude - I realized how amazing this human system is. Specifically, that it’s not easy to fuck it up. I can tense up, change how I breathe, and in advanced situations, more physiologically surprising changes can occur. But I can’t kill myself by imagining it - the mind has amazing control, but not full admin rights to wipe the hard-drive. This was an actual fear of mine. SO a new concept I have for myself is levels of admin rights to our physiology - I can ask for more, with practice. But I can’t reverse peristalsis with mind alone, and if I could, through practice, probably I’d have no desire to while tripping (just like I had no desire to drown myself).

Beauty = gratitude. But gratitude extended beyond this. I would stop often (after the bed/mask) to be in gratitude. And I realized to perceive beauty is a kind of act of gratitude - sensorial gratitude, perhaps? And I saw how much of my tension of late is the absolute absence of gratitude in my life. Phenomenologically, to be grateful is synonymous with beauty, patience, and fulfillment.

A map - during the come-down, I left myself a treasure map, to try to return to the “Dorado, city of gold”. But I also doubted the value of a map - the map is not the territory, and experiences aren’t pills to be swallowed.

Entities - I felt like I was coming up to the inter-dimensional door / barrier of some ineffable thing, something that was distinctly OTHER, not in an alien sense, but in a creator/manager of the universe sense. I had NO desire to knock. I came barging in once, a long time ago, and the defensive retaliation left me psychologically crippled for a long time. Fair enough, lesson learned - don’t barge in on others.

Much of the experience consisted of a dialogue - self with self, self with entities, etc. I lack the language to provide coherent structure/order to the nature and variety of ((qualia)) here.

The bed-dance: as the music played, the mindscape cavorted and coalesced and transformed before me, I realized that I could still feel parts of my body, and thought that was a sign I was not fully immersed. At first, I tried to strengthen the experience, by tuning out my body-sense. But I let my toes wiggle a bit, and marveled that this took me deeper, into an experience where feeling, mind, and movement, were experientially unified (analogous maybe to the idea of “phenomenologically synonymous” previously applied to beauty/gratitude). It gave me a glimmer of insight into the contemporary dancer’s world - the sensorial is bigger than I realized!

This dance began with small micromovements, but it evolved until my arms were swimming in a space above me. They would fatigue, but I realized fatigue is not as important here as the experience.

There was a relation of movement to the music, but not how I normally dance - it was much more patient. In no rush to make a big gesture, the smaller gestures were keenly felt (As I write this, I realize that the awareness of the quality of patience in this moment resulted in a profound internal re-experiencing of the concept of patience in general; the same happened with other concepts - I would come to recognize them in the experience, and the experience would take me on a roller coaster through the Platonic form of that concept). This would be ((interfered)) with if I looked directly, or tried to do the thing myself. I had to let “something” possess me.

But that something did give me room to play, when I asked. I was curious to see what would happen when I engaged the tremor system to shake (something I’ve been experimenting with in my movement practice). It was intense, interesting, and led me to try also the “twitch” - that is, to fire everything at once, in the briefest moment possible. What would that look and feel like? I got it a few times, and the result got me thinking that maybe there would be a pleasure in seizures. Maybe not.

Discursive mind - A lot of content here. Lately I try to deal with an overly analytic and highly discursive mind through meditation. I try to observe and disconnect from thoughts. But I began to appreciate here a major misconceptualization on my part. It cast some doubt on the need to approach meditation and stillness from the perspective of silencing that mind. I struggle to find the right words for it, and hope to explore this more next time.

Not to say the entire time was epiphanies - there were some delusions as well, such as asking, from a very ego-istic frame of mind - “what if I AM enlightened?”

So the moment came, I decided - time to get up. Every mere act, walking, stretching, lights, toilets… I was experiencing gratitude towards. The sudden realization that I had no reason to worry about my safety (from someone trying to violently kill me), at that moment, baffled me, baffled me into pure gratitude.

I wrote in a notebook, but the thoughts still felt very loopy. I was hoping to capture some wisdom - but part of me felt that whatever I caught would be lingering shadowy aftereffect (what’s the word for the form of a thing left behind after it has left a physical space?). Still, I wrote a bit, and left myself a treasure map of sorts.

Eventually, took a borrowed marijuana pen and some ginger tea outside, and sat watching the sky, trees, walls. I observed that if I looked “straight”, I could see clearly, but if I let my eyes “relax”, things would get weird. I thought of how in search of a strong trip, I imposed a sort of value judgment - that a strong trip is a thing which visually overpowers, that takes you fully beyond, in the sense of the objective world melting away. I’ve had LSD trips where patterns on the floor spiraled up to greet me in 3 dimensional space… there is something childishly fun in walking through the objective-world-turned-into-an-amusement park by my acid trip, but I’m not sure it’s particularly useful. But why the desire to see this kind of disruption of reality, when the objective world itself is so amazing and surprising itself (despite our ability to familiarize and adapt to it).

I sat there a while with a simple sense of happiness. Still something felt missing, and I wanted to be with family. So I went inside and suggested we watch some good old Game of Thrones together. It felt a bit banal, and later I regretted not seeing the experience through fully to the end, into sobriety.

ONE MONTH LATER
The main thing that remains prominent of its own accord, from the experience, is this observation/realization that senses are not separate from the rest of an experience. That the sensory is not cleaved, in some sense. This is most apparent now in my meditation/sitting practice: when I sit and observe thoughts/percepts/etc, they don't feel separate from the rest of the experience. Overall, this helps me move in the direction of the state I'm looking in.

[Report self-published at Shroomery Jun 2019]

Exp Year: 2019	ExpID: 113252
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 34
Published: Jul 4, 2019	Views: 1,406
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Mushrooms (39) : Alone (16), Entities / Beings (37), General (1)