An old foot injury acted up (planters fascitus) and I ended up base camping at my fantastic camp site only a mile and a half in for the entire six days, after resting up the second day doing day hikes up the canyon and a side trail. I’ve never stayed this long at a single camp site and it was interesting in a way, really allowing me to get the feel of this place. On the fourth day I felt that my head was in about as good a place as my head can get. I call it the three day phenomenon. It was beautiful wilderness and beautiful camp at a bend in the river under the shade of an enormous oak tree. After three days in the wilderness I always seem to settle into a really good mental place, especially on a solo trip like this. I had brought with me 4.1 dried grams of Cambodian psilocybin mushroom and on this fourth day I woke thinking about the mushrooms. I felt slightly nauseas. It seems like every time I’m going to take mushrooms I wake up feeling slightly nauseas - maybe it’s fear? While I have never really had a “bad trip” with the mushrooms, I always fear them. Not only is the ego death scary, in this case I had not done a large dose for almost a year and I had a deep and abiding feeling that they (I think of the mushrooms now as “The Elders”) were going to hammer me - for my own good, of course.

It had been about a year since my last large dose experience, which had been back in Virginia, a lifetime away now. The voices that I heard that I now realize were not so much voices as the thoughts of an entity that cohabitated my being for a few months back in the Spring of 2007 after a few large dose experiences close together. This entity (the voices) left me in June of 2007 "saying" when it left "You Are Done".
in its typical cryptic fashion while flooding my body with the warmest, most loving rush of feeling - like a big, heartfelt hug. This is relevant here when I am challenged with, "Why are you back here, you KNOW" and I think that mushrooms have done what they can for me and I am done with them for now, anyway. They have done so much, more than enough. Gratitude upon gratitude, love upon love.

Sipped a big cup of coffee while I waited for air temperatures to come up and then when the temperature got up in the fifties, I made a tea of the mushrooms. I had not done this before and steeping them in hot water ended up putting the cup in my cooking pot, making a kind of double boiler since you do not want to boil them, and reheating them several times because the broth looked so thin. When I was done, the ¾ cup of broth that I had left after straining off the solids was still fairly thin looking, slightly yellowish. I held my nose and knocked it back about 10:30. I had been mashing the mushrooms for about an hour trying to squeeze out all the psilocybin that I could and the remaining ground up pieces of soggy mushroom sitting in the bottom of my coffee funnel had a distinct blue hue to them in the morning sunlight. This made me wonder even more about the potency of my broth and I told myself that I would probably end up having to eat that mushroom mush before this was all over. I really wanted to try a mushroom broth just because I had never consumed them that way before but to be honest I was having a hard time getting up my nerve to take another large dose and I knew that this method would not yield the highest dosage - in other words, I was dancing around them kind of chickenshit. I had experience the power, the ego death, and I feared it plenty, like a savage before his god. Once I crossed over, everything seemed to go just fine.

I usually go through a period of chills and so retired into my tent to wait and see what would happen. Usually, they kick in after about forty minutes when eaten and I suspected that with drinking they might kick in a little bit quicker. They did. Just as I was starting to think that perhaps this broth had been as weak as it appeared, somewhat reluctantly contemplating eating the remaining blue mushroom mush, about thirty minutes after drinking it, they began to kick in. I immediately sensed then that the broth “worked” after all - it was coming on pretty strong. I had to overcome a not uncommon impulse to make myself throw up in an effort to stave off the effects - yea, I’m not a brave psychonaut! I lay in the tent then trying to relax and feeling them come on stronger every second.

I began to hear a slight crackling sound. Here we go! I think kind of wildly.

I breath deeply, drawing breathe into the bottom of lungs and bringing it up until they are full and then releasing it from the top of the lungs down until empty. I try to concentrate on my breathe and to keep it even and smooth and to not think; to just not think at all. But of course I do think. The mushroom that I took was from a single mushroom that had been about 45 grams wet, my biggest one. So being an American after all, I had thought that well this must be “the one”. Bigger is better, right? As I lay there, I reminded myself that I knew this mushroom, that is was nothing to fear. I visualized it in my mind, this particular mushroom growing, pulling it gently from its casing, holding it in my hand, noticing again in my minds eye how it was bigger than my hand, how beautiful it is, golden brown colors ….
That seems to assuage my fear a little and while I continue to deep breath, concentrating as best I can upon each breathe, I began to give myself to the effects. I know that at this point I really have no choice. My choice had been made thirty minutes earlier and now I am in the hands of what I had found to be a great and mysterious and frightening power. I was glad that I didn’t feel the need to fight it any more. I feel a little nauseas and crawl feebly out of my tent swaying slightly on hands and knees and feeling vulnerable outside the tent even a few feet, like some small animal might feel vulnerable outside their hole. I found then that I did not really have to throw up after all - it was just the restlessness kicking in, my mind beginning to squirm as though in a somewhat desperate effort to escape the confines of my own skull.

That crackling again, there it is …

Let me out! My mind screams, wanting to tear off across the dry wilderness or scream away into the sky. Easy I tell myself, swaying gently in the now warm shade of camp ...

…sinking legs struggling deep down into the sandy earth - ah, sitting, just sitting … Sun driven winds blow me away across the dry land all in a whoosh and I am flowing out of self in waves like the ripples from a pebble tossed into a pond. Dancing the one dance now, the immaculate rhythm of it all, possessed of all things and all things possessing me and all in a constant motion. I, the earth, take one great breath and this is day and with one great exhalation it is night … in and out, constant motion of the earth, constant breathing, on and on for eons of time ...

Red cliffs with subtle purple shades smile above against an electric blue sky, smiling between the rich green spring growth along the Gila below, smiling like a brother would smile, a warm, brotherly love kind of smile.

The Great Gaia mother of us all tells me that She was born of this earth, that She is of this earth as we are of our bodies, that She is not the earth itself but the spirit of the earth itself, as we are spirit and not this body itself. And yet of course She is the earth itself and She is us all and we are also our bodies ...
“I am the mother of your body,” she explains to me, “but I am not the mother of you, you who are eternity have no mother, no father".
I fall then forehead onto the sandy earth softly crying and wondering what lessons this place strives so violently to teach me - am so shallow? I should have seen, yes, of course She is not "my" mother. I wanted our Gaia Spirit to be my mother, though. It is only a natural feeling, I tell myself reassuring. It is nothing to be ashamed of …

And eternity smashes open everything with a blinding white light …

“Why are you back here,” The voice of the mushroom Elders addresses me sternly, almost annoyed - an unusual, impatient tone for the Elders? I am taken aback by their tone and before I can think of what to say or even to “look up” - I think in reality I am still fallen face first into the earth - the Elders add emphatically, “You KNOW!”

When they say “KNOW” it is as if someone punches me in the stomach. My mind reels with it: Know what? I could not imagine. I look up and am on my knees before a great, bone white pillar backlit by a blinding white light and I somehow feel that the Elders voice has come from this pillar - there is nothing else, after all?

“But I do not know!” I address myself to the enormous white pillar, “that is why I am back?”

And then the Elders sigh a wordless exhalation, as if grown so very weary of me and the likes of me. I understand that it was their way of saying, “go ahead then”.

Suddenly I am weightless, at the place where we all come, the place beyond bone, beyond stone, the place where we have no staff to lean upon and no shield to hold up against the blows of fate - eternity. No womb, no birth, eternity. Eternity imploded and exploded at once and I feel as if I am gasping for air from the unfathomed ecstasy of it all. I draw away at last in wonder … not sure at all how much real time passes as time ceases in eternity - so much of what i think of as myself, so much of what I think and believe ceases in eternity - but some core continues and this core I can only think of as my spirit or highest self. But why am I such a child if I am eternity? No, I sense that eternity is beyond the scope of our physical universe, this physical universe and our 4 billion years of evolution are but a blinking of an eternal eye. Again the sheer magnitude of eternity hits me in the chest, even though I thought that I had pulled away, and again it takes my breath from me. I bear down into it, inwardly concentrating my being into a laser like beam - What is this eternity? How? Why? Locking onto this with all my being and bearing down into it all with a sharp, laser beam of pure, unadulterated questioning.
?
As my mind grasps at something it seemd to glance off - what about love? - but glancing, glancing off - as if being stripped of every possible inkling of reality ... What about my mother, my father, but no glancing off, glancing away, nothing to grasp onto here, nothing here at all until eventually my hands stop reaching out for a hold and just fall, or fly, can't tell ... What of this earth, the great Mother Spirit of this earth? But no, nothing, glancing, glancing off like the bright white light of eternity glancing off of this finely polished stone pillar above me - the glancing, glancing at every point just I am glancing off of everything, almost sparkling and drawn onward and away and deeper and glancing endlessly off of everything and just on and on … but "what" is glancing off - I am light, pure light, but I am, and the glancing off shows me the nature of my eternal being - pure light ....

The thought strikes me that death is not my father. An odd thought to grasp onto to, an odd anchor in eternity? I dismiss this thought like in meditation, watching it come and go, “death is not my father” the kind of thought that is capable of sucking one’s mind off into a dark and fruitless places. I glance off of this thought consciously. I make a choice.

I knew then that I was here on this earth to learn lessons of eternity, lessons helpful to negotiating eternity, and I saw that this unique physical reality of ours, this earth where one sentient creature eats another sentient creature alive, where all who enter, enter through a woman’s womb, born of blood and pain into this often brutal and senseless place, this physicality of ours teaches us lessons for negotiating the infinity of our own being, the endless halls of our higher self - the self beyond this body, beyond even our souls. This world teaches us how to exist for an eternity, how to cope with what could become the hell of eternity by teaching things that are so crucially human on this world like creativity, music, art - the power of imagination. Imagination like magic opens eternity up, billowing the sails of infinity with an endless source of creativity. Here we also learn lessons helpful to an eternal being - such as beginning and end, separation, suffering, despair - though not pleasant, still unique and potentially valuable lessons for an eternal being.

What about love?

A very sweet but confident female voice says softly, “David,” tapping her finger on a table at the same time, very gently, so that I must listen carefully, “David,” she urges gently, patiently, “Come back here, be here, be now”. Love is not a lesson here, she seems to say, you are love, always have been love, you only have to recall what you are ... like you just felt ... so David, come back here, now ...

Yes I see clearly what she is saying and open my eyes and thinking, “is that the voice of eternity now?” Laughing at myself. But It was not the voice of the Gaia mother? I become aware of myself physically again. Even though my hair had been tied back, I have to gather it up and tie it back up again, all a mess. I have sand all over my face and neck. The sun is quite warm. I look around for a second recalling where I am.

Oh, yes. Camp is right over there, maybe forty feet away ...

“Where are you going?” the voice of eternity asks again, just as patiently, tapping her finger ever so gently upon that table. “Come back here, now, after all, where is there to go?”, she insists, laughing playfully so that I laugh along with Her - yes, where is there to go?

Good one, eternity.

The sun feels wonderful, instantly taking the temperature up from about sixty in the shade to eighty. After brushing myself off, I find two sticks and clap my sticks together and cry out a song about the cliffs, about the river. (It was a good thing at this point to be so far out in the wilderness and alone) I feel that I am communicating with the ravens and turkey vultures circling high overhead. I feel the message of eternity flowing through me, “be here, be now,” the most important lesson perhaps that this world (which is nothing else if not distracting!) has to teach an eternal being.

Inexplicably, I think of shaman then and cry out happily, giddily, “O you shaman, you!” I guess I know that the shaman must also come to this place of white stone, white bone, to this place of blinding white light where nothing is hidden, where there is not the slightest shadow of self in which to hide and suddenly it just makes me laugh and laugh, those crazy shaman ….

I feel through this energy how profoundly much I do NOT inhabit my own body. I feel how all of my life I have rejected the fullest expression of my being. I did not really possess my self. I pictured myself then standing alone in long, white robes, a drooping white hood keeping my face in shadow. I was not living, I was observing. I was not the character, I was the writer. To have observed so very much and yet know so very little, I wondered a little shrilly. It was kind of terrifying. I feel as though I could slip into insanity here like breaking through rotten flooring into a dark and horrible basement.

I am beginning to come down, hard.

I feel myself coming down through layers, the sensation of down, of returning back to this earth, returning slowly layer by layer of reality to my actual body collapsed now in the shade overlooking this bright field. The Gila turns a bend to my left under the cliffs and a ribbon of new green spring leaf follows it in the form of various blooming plants drawn intimately close to the precious water of the Gila. I see it frothing white in places. I hear the cascading of water. Birds sing around me. The winds sigh through the canyon. It is utterly and completely beautiful.

What could I have done to have sentenced myself to death? I wonder, thinking about my suicidal past?

Why would I want to punish myself by blowing my own head off! There it was, right there. Somehow I did not feel that I have a right to live.
Who am I to live? But why should I not live - what have I ever done to deserve a judgment like that from my self?

As I continue down, back down, wrestling with these personal questions, grappling with the reality of my own dispossession. Was I always like this? It seems not. I recalled being a careless child through a horrible childhood. Something in adolescence then - but what? Hormones? I do not recall any trauma. Sure I had the bad childhood but who doesn’t? But I felt how I could never give myself to anything my whole life long and I felt how this was because I never did possess myself to give. I was just watching this self, floating along rootlessly. No wonder I felt no joy! You have to possess your own being to feel joy! As I continued down through the layers over a number of hours, I began to think of myself in the 3rd person - “we’re coming down now” I would think, as if to emphasize the disassociation.

Have I rejected my incarnation? I wondered, not that I believe in reincarnation.

I began to wonder if I had ever truly inhabited my own body? No wonder then that my experiences with these mushrooms were so compelling - this was the only time that I felt connected, their powerful body high sending psychic roots deep into this earth as well as far out into space, ha ha ha

Otherwise, I was not connected, fundamentally not connected and so for hours I wrestled with this as the Spring winds added their constant sighing to the cascading of the river. What would it feel like to be connected? Perhaps if I try hard enough I can imagine connection ...

I grow morose.

This is what I came here for but am already sick of my self and weary to go back to thinking of nothing. Back to that place in my self where eternity is only a word. That is the place where I feel comfortable, the place that I am used to ...

The only answer was to be here and be now. That feels a little to much like a bumper sticker to me: “Be Here, Be Now” and as soon as eternity stops tapping Her finger and calling me back, I drift more and more out of the moment as I come down. I feel hollow and depressed.

Here and now? Obviously the only "answer" to be had in all of this, here and now, but yet I feel let down - what did I expect, a magic carpet or something?

The come down is jagged and hard and painful, as if cramming myself back into a broken jar or squeezing through a window full of ragged, broken glass. I feel that fully inhabiting my own being is hopeless - actually, what I think is : “We will never inhabit our own being!”

And even though it is a beautiful Spring afternoon, I sit gloomily in the shade feeling quite helpless and hopeless. I feel sorry for myself, for being so close to eternity and yet so far away.

I was just there and it was so real, I insist to myself but almost not believing it already.

How could I be eternity - hell, I am not even really here?