DOSE:

15 - 20 fruits

oral

Mushrooms

(fresh)

BODY WEIGHT:

161 lb

This experience took place some 3 months ago, in a small mountain village in central Mexico. The place was/is called Huautla de Jimenez, which is located in the northern part of the state of Oaxaca. For ending up in this place I have to thank Gordon Wasson for his pioneering work in the field of ethnomycology. The account of the following experience was written the day after the actual velada (mushroom ceremony) took place.

So here I am! What an experience the velada was. Truly transformational, spiritual, sacred and above all very very much a teaching experience. The day before the evening’s ceremony was spent walking in the great and beautiful mountains of Huautla in deep contemplation. All day I felt as though something profound was to be revealed to me in the night’s velada. Little did I know how right I was. Looking back to how yesterday developed, starting from my morning meditation, which revealed the roots (at least partially) of evil within my soul, everything seemed to appear as though predetermined. I guess listening to my heart is the path necessary for me to take.

After the meditative walk in the mountains in the afternoon, I returned back for a nap before the night’s velada. As I woke up feeling refreshed it was 7 pm, so it would not be long before it was time for me to embark upon this spiritual quest, which would turn out to be one of the most profound, if not the most profound, experience of my life. I walked out to sit on the curb of the little grocery store the family of the late Maria Sabina run, to look at the sun set behind the cloud-covered mountains. As the sun made its way below the horizon I could not tell where the heavens begun and earth ended. I felt mesmerized and more than ready for my visionary quest.

The sun had now set and I made my way to my sleeping quarters to stretch out a bit, to make my body more relaxed for the upcoming event. For sometimes the transition period from one level of consciousness to another tenses up my body which might have some negative effects on my mental state as well. As it happened I had barely begun stretching when the curandero came to me. It was time. We first bought some copal and a candle for the velada, and from then on everything moved on very quickly. I took all my offerings, some white flowers, copal and the candle to the altar in the small hut which was the “official” site for veladas, as far as I could tell. I barely had time to put warm clothes on (as it gets quite cold up in the mountains even in summer time) as I was given a banana leaf topped with a fair amount of the local fungi. I was sat down in an armchair in front of a shrine filled with Christian icons (new traditions melted in with the old). My curandero instructed me to eat all the mushrooms as he lit up the candle and the copal incense. He recited some prayers in Spanish, as far as I could tell, and blessed me with the smoke of the copal. At this time I had finished the nińos santos and was meditating upon the sacred spot in my heart, feeling the sincerity of my maestro.

After the rituals the man left me in peace, telling me that the visions would come in 10 – 15 minutes. I sat back relaxing my self and giving thanks and appreciation to the mushrooms. I guess one could call what I was doing praying. For me it felt more like giving praise to the unseen forces that govern our existence. But then again I guess it’s all the same. We just give different names for these experiences.

The first waves were hitting my body hard as my “guide” came for his second visit. I still had no visions though, so this is when he offered me some more mushrooms, which I accepted. Though I knew by the effect the little friends were having on my body that I was well on my way towards a deep experience. The waves of bodily transformations, as I call them, were so profound that I felt compelled to resort to humming to calm myself. This, I had learned from previous experience with mushrooms , would most likely calm me down. And so it did. By now the visions were taking a strong hold of my psyche. The beginning was the usual stuff of thoughts being manifested as visions. Kind of like dream sequences in very rapid succession. My mission now was to make sense of this information overflow. So I sat back comfortably putting my palms together and bringing them close to my face, so that my index fingers touched the bridge of my nose. In this position I started deep concentration aiming to focus on a particular image or episode. After awhile I managed to clear some room to see an underlying theme in the visions. This vision behind the overflow of visions was of a road or a path. It seemed clear to me that my job or mission was to proceed along this path, to where I did not know nor how. I felt my self stuck. This was not an unfamiliar feeling for me. In fact I have come a cross this feeling quite a few times while exploring the states of consciousness achieved through the mushrooms. Only difference now was that I somehow realized my situation and started looking for alternate ways out, so to speak. The answer came to me in a flash. “Use your voice to navigate!” it was saying and indeed this seemed to do the trick. I was moving again, now into different states of consciousness. This brought with it a very profound sense of well being.

As of the chronology of the following events I’m not quite sure, but let us focus more on the actual experience. After having passed through this “blockage” the shaman entered the hut again to do some more ritual stuff. I guess he realized I was well on my way to the world of visions, since he quite hurriedly and purposefully came up to me first with the bowl of burning copal and then with the white flowers I had bought to the ceremony, blessing me as he moved the flowers at different parts of my body. I thought I made out words beckoning for the spirits to let me through, though this is all a bit vague. What is not vague though is the sensations which followed shortly after my “benefactor” left the hut. For what he had done truly made me feel blessed. For a moment I thought the reason why he was so hasty (almost to the point of being apologetic) was because he saw some divine spark in me. And it was true that I did feel somewhat like the divine spirit had landed in me. But this was no time to slip into a megalomanic daydream. My purpose was and is not to boost my ego to gain power over other people. As I realized this, an overwhelming wave of empathy towards all living things came over me. And it was such a beautiful sensation that I started to cry! As I cried the feeling of connectedness to everything deepened and at once I felt loved and love towards all life everywhere! I have read of these experiences but now here I was, little o’l me, having this experience of unity with humanity and nature in general.

Shortly before this epiphany I was enveloped by deep feelings of love towards my soul mate Kris. This could have helped me with opening my heart to still deeper levels of love. Even writing this, a day after, brings me much comfort and hope.

As I cried the experience deepened. I was now in a full blown visionary experience seeing geometrical patterns resembling Maya inscriptions on a green background. I also kept seeing snakes everywhere in my visionary field. At point insects, mainly spiders started crawling into my visions. I remembered reading that insects should be avoided in shamanic journeys and the spiders did seem to have a somewhat ominous feel to them. So instinctually I started blowing them of my body and sure enough they disappeared. I was now left with what I considered to be some kind of divine or super-conscious information. Which I felt was a gift from the Mayan elders none other ... I felt deeply humbled. But the information given was of a sort I could not understand. For what my primitive mind could make out, the images seemed to be of some kind of machines. Kind of like the calendar wheels of Maya calendar round, which I have seen in books and on the internet. Around this time nausea hit me. This was a totally new phenomenon to me while on mushrooms. First I thought it would pass but as it persisted I decided to go out of the hut to vomit. My visions at this time, however, were so strong that I could hardly find my way out, let alone find a place to vomit. Since I didn’t feel comfortable vomiting in the middle of the footpath I just knelt down for a bit out side the hut, letting the fresh air seep into me, eventually taking away the nausea.

The next episode might have happened right after the crying episode or then after I got back inside the hut after feeling sick.

This was probably the most profound experience of the night and maybe even my whole life. I now felt enveloped with great energy flowing into me and out of me. This was an experience that I would call the re-connection with my totem animal. Since while this energy started flowing into and out of me my visionary field was filled with images of wolves. I actually felt like I was transforming into a wolf. This was a greatly empowering experience. And since I felt it to be a re-connection with my totem animal it was not the least scary. I felt it more as a great blessing a gift. What really made this experience most profound was that as I felt this energy within me and around me I could also hear all the dogs in the area howling and barking like crazy! Even while having this experience I wondered if these two things were connected, if the neighbourhood dogs could actually sense this wolf like energy coming off me. My instinct told me that this was indeed the case. This feeling was made all the stronger by the fact that as this flow of energy started calming down, so did the neighbourhood dogs. Everything was very calm after this surge of energy settled down in me. I could see a vision of a calm female wolf nursing her cubs. This made me realize that at the same time as being a fierce predator, wolf is also a very loving and protective animal. The image of the nursing wolf mom still lingers with me (even now after 3 months).

Next I needed to move outside to take a long overdue leak. I was a bit apprehensive of wondering out in the dark, but as I would soon find out this was just the thing I needed to do. As I got to the edge of the footpath I was met by a view I could not have even dreamed about. I was looking down and over a valley surrounded by rising and falling mountain tops. I saw few houses built on the slopes, now resembling small light filled islands of life dropped into the forested slopes. Next I turned my attention to the skies, already crying by the pure beauty of what I was witnessing. I was overwhelmed. I still can’t find words sufficient to describe the beauty I was beholding. It was as if the Great Spirit herself was giving me a most wonderful gift, a gift that was the art that life itself is. I could see lightning light up the sky at a distance and hear the great roar of thunder sounding like a roar of a celestial lion. The stars shone in brightness and colour never before seen. And among all this was I, little o’l me. A part of this all! Not least bit separated from it. Once again I felt very very deep and profound connection with our planet and looking upon the stars also with our whole universe. For as I realized and the mushrooms were telling me, we are all of the same source!

After this I retired to my sleeping quarters to ride out the last waves of visions. It would be another few hours before I fell asleep, but the most profound part of the experience was over by now. The last part of this “trip”, like so many before, was spent going through more mundane matters, though some visions still appeared. Most notably the recurring images of snakes and a quite persisting vision of rats, which annoyed and baffled me for some time, finally I decided to look into this vision a bit more closely and as it happened this vision told me the story of rats, how they are a very persistent rodent and very hard to get rid of, causing a lot of harm. I started thinking about ways of getting rid of the rodents, finally seeing that snakes were the answer. They would eat the rats but would not cause a lot of harm to people. Here again were the snakes!

As I said in the beginning this experience happened some 3 months ago already, and I wrote down the “story” I have put forward here the day after the actual velada, on 1st of august. These months passed have brought with them a lot of new insights into the experience, but I felt that I wanted to submit this in the way it was immediately felt, or as much so as possible.

Exp Year: 2010	ExpID: 87889
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Feb 14, 2022	Views: 1,138
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