Psychonauts's topics - tribe.net

Seeking Suggestions for MAPS Bulletin Cover Art

David Jay — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:35:44 GMT

I'm in the process of editing the Summer MAPS Bulletin and am looking for suggestions for the cover art. I've been going through the art in the psychonaut and DMT tribe discussions, looking for ideas--but I haven't found anything quite right yet and thought that the people in this forum might be able to offer some good suggestions. There's a particular style of psychedelic art that we're looking for; that's friendly, not overly complex, without any religious overtones or unsettling aspects. Artists that have been used in the past include Alex Grey, Robert Venosa, Brummbaer, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Mark Henson, Santosh Varughese, Dean Chamberlain, and Brummbaer. You can view the archive of MAPS Bulletin covers at: www.maps.org/news-letters. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

posted in Psychonauts - 6 replies

Hi from the 4th Shamanic conference in Iquitos, Amazon

Dean — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:24:33 GMT

4th Shamanic conference kicks of in Iquitos, Amazon.

Hi ,
Well what an adventure so far. Im now in Iquitos and its day 4 of the 4th Shamanic conference
After completing an amazing 16 day shamanic tour in Peru it was time to fly to Iquitos one hour flight from the nearest road. Its hard to imagine this thriving frontier town in the middle of the amazon jungle was build and exists quite well without any roads connecting it to the outside world. Iquitos is the host to the 4th Shamanic conference and presents around 20 shamans and a few western philosophers. About 300 people have flown to this remote town to listen and get a direct experience from the shamans of the amazon and the power plants themselves, mainly ayahuasca. Last week Peru proclaimed ayahuasca a national treasure therefore keeping it out of the clutches of Americas desire to outlaw all power plants. On the first day 12 shamans introduced themselves and people could choose who they were going to drink the sacred brew with. It was a smorgasbord of shamans. I picked one to be my guide for my ayahuasca journey tonight in a thatched hut on the other side of the amazon river. There are 3 sessions planned over this 8 day conference so it not all talk.

I just returned from a 3 day trip to visit the Shipebo people and had an amazing night experiencing the ayauasca brew and 5 Shipebos chanting the mystical icaros.

Dennis Mc Kenna speech declared that ayahuasca was now going global in an attempt to get humanity to reconnect with nature and regain harmony with the natural kingdom.

I have uploaded the 4 days proceedings to my website www.planetearthinternettv.com Ill be uploading edited stories and camera tapes of the conference and sessions daily. For more info on the conference see http://www.soga-del-alma.org/ConferenceSite/

For the whales
Dean Jefferys

See my other websites and become a friend

http://www.planetearthinternettv.com
http://www.flightofthehumpback.org
http://www.myspace.com/whalingdontbuyit
http://www.myspace.com/deanjefferys
http://www.youtube.com/shaman1958
http://www.youtube.com/flightofthehumpback
http://www.shamansoftheamazon.com
http://operator11.com/people/9343
http://people.tribe.net/c5ad8e1e-af29-441b-9087-28fbaaacad09
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=590968500

posted in Psychonauts - 1 reply

To save the world

gamatron — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:34:45 GMT

« Modern man develops like an earth worm : a tube that swallows and leaves little piles behind it. If one day Earth disappears because man ate everything, he should not be surprised.”

I don't want to save the world.

I find those that want to save the world to be selfish beings. To want to save the world, we first have to create an idea of how the world should be like. To want to change the world, it is wanting it to match my ideas about how it should and should not be.
Me, I have no idea of which world I’d like to live in. Imagination, human memory being without limits, I can imagine an infinity of worlds in which I could live.
I would even go as far as to say that I like the world we live in, just as it is, just as I live it. For now, I live in this world, so I must make the best out of it.

Of course, I see things that can make me sad. I would be a monster if there wasn’t. Kids that have no childhood, hungry families, war on tv. I am a modern kid, I see the wars and horrors on tv. I know the world comes with it’s problems.
”The world is full of suffering” says the budhist mantra, “we all seek happiness” it keeps on chanting.

Too often, this suffering makes us incapable of dealing with things when faced with what we see as problems. We like to think of happiness, but we rarely live it. Happiness remains like a far away land, in which we only take refuge in our dreams, instead of living it right here and right now.
A simple truth is that the more we seek happiness, the more we go away from it.
Each continent of the world comes with it’s own set of problems. Wheter the continent is in development stage, or whether it is full on technological, nobody seems to fully escape this human suffering.

Each lives this suffering very personaly.

I do not want to change the world, I just want to live in it.

Me, I do not know anything. I travel the world barely touching the world under my feet. In the world, staying slightly detached from it. Every day discovery of the outside world helps me to relate better to my inner world. Every day, the both become more and more indistinguishable.

Me, I know nothing, and I like the world just as it is. I will keep on my little way, quietly and in music. I will keep on helping others when I can, not because of some sense of moral code, just because I feel like it.

I do not have any hope that my actions will give such and such result, for the simple reason that I can not tell the future. I do not have any hope that my acts could help or not, I do not have any hope that tomorrow things will be better. Hope is also a projection of things as we would like them to be. It is better to all together give up this selfish hope.
If I paint an orphanage, it is because I feel like it, if I give some rupee to a person that has less than me, it is because I feel like it.

Maybe I am just a selfish person, but really I think we all are selfish beings. Too bad ego has been rolled in the mud by most if not all religious systems. Ego became a dirty word, it became something we are supposed to get rid of.
Yet, this ego I have, is all I have, all I can hold on to. I can not seem to see it as something that I should get rid of. I can make an infinity of experiences with this ego, I can transform it, but never can I fully get rid of it.

This Atman of the Hindus, it is me, it is you, it is everything.
And Atman whispers: “I am nothing. I know everything. I am everything, I know nothing.”

So, let’s enjoy the moments that pass, me and my ego. We watch things pass by, we fully experience things, all while knowing that really, we do not know anything at all. We are alive, and it’s already a lot.

Fuzz and joy from the city of flags, Kathmandu, Nepal.

You can find the full article here.
http://www.fuzzytravel.com/manue/5968-save-world.html

posted in Psychonauts - 6 replies

Reality Sandwich

Maya — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:06:38 GMT

Reality Sandwich is a cutting-edge Internet magazine and community forum aimed at "evolving consciousness bite by bite." We publish news, essays, interviews, videos, and podcasts for those seeking fresh perspectives and new possibilites of living. Our subjects run the gamut from sustainability to shamanism, alternate realities to alternative energy, holistic healing techniques to the promise and perils of new technologies. Our central theme is transformation, as we study how a shift in personal awareness relates to the global challenges we face today. Unlike traditional media, Reality Sandwich encourages a dialogue between contributors and readers, featured in the comments section under each piece. We see ourselves as a visionary think tank, helping to genearate new ideas on important subjects of our time.

New articles posted daily at www.realitysandwich.com.

Also, join the Tribe: tribes.tribe.net/realitysandwich

posted in Psychonauts - 0 replies

New Mushroom healing attempt for self

bearsky — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:31:06 GMT

In two weeks I'll have another MRI but looks like I have an aggressive form of MS - not good. I at least have a good doctor now. I will do healing attempt before this next MRI with mushrooms. Figure that I do not have much to lose but I cannot say that I go into this with any confidence of success. I will put myself in their hands, in total submission, and ask that they help heal me in the name of love. As I posted earlier with last years "failed" healing attempt with my wife, I have a Blue Whale Spirit Guide who I hope will help also. So I do not go into this alone. The mushrooms have healed me emotionally and spiritually and for this I am literally eternally grateful. I am not afraid of dying but the thought of going through what I recently went through again - or worse, is daunting. I have to at least try. The way I look at it is that if they can heal anything physical, it would have to do with the nervous system. And in my wife's healing attempt last May there was the whole psilocybin fairy thing up and down my spine which I had a notion even then might have to do with MS. Weird stuff.
... I saw the mushroom path stretched out before me and there were dark parts hidden in heavy forest and looking into their shadow made me shiver involuntarily ...
some serious shit, I must say but I have to think that eternity is simply teaching another lesson just the same as a "trip" is teaching a lesson - sometimes this kind of teaching has some teeth, evidently
And thank you Terence Mckenna for having led me to both the recognition and the lessons of eternity.
While overall I am still more grateful than I am bummed, I do feel a little like someone just punched me in the stomach - followig the mushroom path

posted in Psychonauts - 5 replies

Illegal Desert Fishing (Sunrise Set)

protectiva — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:41:47 GMT

Nathan went home later that day, and I went to work. The image of that intense stare was transfixed in my mind. I tried asking my coworkers about what they thought it meant. They, of course, most of them being trained therapists had all sorts of theories as to what the dream could mean. I tried to think about how it made me feel, which was the Gestalt way to look at dreams, and it was really strange, it was a feeling that was good but mixed with fear, maybe almost like a drug high when you are thinking that maybe you took too much man, too much, but then thinking buy the ticket, take the ride.
I wondered more about who that man was, he looked so much like Avi, but Here and There had told me that it wasn’t him. I decided it would probably be a good idea to meet with Avi and see if I noticed anything or he could tell me anything. I thought I might as well tell him about the whole thing. I asked Nathan if he had ever mentioned anything to Avi and he said no, he hadn’t, but he was very curious to see what he would say.
“Do you mind that I filled the tank?” Avi asked, referring of course to the big yellow 15-pound nitrous oxide tank. It was one of his favorite pastimes to fill that tank. Well actually, it was one of his favorite pastimes to DRAIN the tank after filling it. Not that I blamed him, because I took him up on the offer right away.
“But listen to me though,” I said, “I need to tell you something really important. So, maybe listen first and hit the tank later.”
“No problem,” he said, “Is it something bad?”
“No, no, not at all,” I said, and in that moment I realized that none of it was bad, so therefore it must be all good, but it was not necessarily the cheery sort of good, more of a serious sort of good.
“Did I do something bad?” he asked again in the same vein.
“No,” I said. “You always think that.” And indeed he did. His mind was a lot like mine, always going to the worst case scenario.
I headed over to his house, listening to European drum-n-bass in the car. I was trying to think of how to best tell him everything. Avi was somewhat of a skeptic. I wondered what he would think. I didn’t think he’d think I was crazy, dismiss it like Chris Lopez would.
I knocked on his door and he opened it, wearing a dark blue T-shirt and warm-up pants. One of his standard outfits. I liked that blue shirt. It was a pretty color, one of my most favorite shirts that he owned actually. I had told him this.
“You look very nice,” he said.
“Oh thank you,” I said, smiling back. “That’s what I was thinking. I mean, about you.”
“You lost a lot of weight,” he said.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I did.”
I studied his face and he was definitely thinking something I had never seen on his face before. It was actually, I realized with not a small amount of jolt, the same look that hooded man with the black hair had when he met me, almost like he didn't recognize me. It was so much like that man's face that I wondered if he had forgotten who I was for a second.
“How much weight did you lose?”
“I don’t know,” I said. But I knew exactly how much. I had lost 55 pounds and counting.
“You look real different,” he said. “Real good.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“The months had been very good to you,” he said. “Seriously. You look really nice.”
“Well, thank you,” I said. I didn’t want to think too much about this line of thought because it was distracting. "If you don't mind, I really don't want to think about how much weight I lost and how fat i was, okay? Why don't we just pretend I was always slim like I am now and then we can not talk about my body anymore."
"Okay," he said, looking apologetic. "Don't get mad, it's not a bad thing, it's just---" he trailed off, and I glared at him. "Well, anyway," he said. "I am appreciative of the way you look. You look good."
"Well good," I said. "Let us discuss the matter at hand." I sat down on the couch and put my feet up on the wall.
“Let’s,” he repeated with a smile and sat down beside me.
“All right,” I started, “Now what I am about to tell you is really weird. So just try to listen with an open mind.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “I’m sorry though, and you’ll have to forgive me, but the last time I saw you, you looked very different than you do today. It’s… a little distracting.”
"I am sure I am not the first pretty girl who sat on your couch, so try to focus."
"Okay." He gave me that strange look again, like he had just met me. I decided not to address it anymore and just tell the story.
So I told him everything that had happened, starting with the strange email, the trip to the underground cave, the tent out in the desert, and ending with that dream.
“So this dude in the desert looked like me?”
“He looked exactly like you,” I said. “Except his hair was long and black. Everything else was the same.”
“I once did have long, black hair,” he said.
Hmmm, I thought. Interesting. “Did you ever own a purple, hooded robe?”
“No,” he smiled.
“Does any of this sound familiar? Have you seen or heard any of these things I’m telling you about?”
He shook his head. “No, but…” he paused. “I guess I’m not surprised.”
“Well what do you make of it? Especially that hooded dude, and that look he gave me in the dream. I can’t get that out of my head.”
“Hmmmm,” Avi was thoughtful. “He was in the desert.”
“Yes.”
“And then he was in your dream.”
“Yes.”
“But he wasn’t me.”
“Right.”
“And he showed you a picture of a crying fat man.”
“Yeah.”
“And you think it might be Josh.”
“Yeah.”
“Did I say it was Josh? Or the dude that looked like me, did he say it was Josh?”
“No.”
“And in the dream I looked at you and you can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Right. He looked at me. He's not you."
“Hmmmmm,” Avi looked thoughtful. “Well, it seems like it has something to do with The Don.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’d thought of that.”
“And you know he wanted me, right?”
“Yep.”
“You never met him?”
“No.”
“Did you think I was cute in the desert with the hood?”
I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Um, yeah. I did. What does that have to do with anything?”
“Nothing, I just want to make sure my parallel selves are desirable to beautiful women.”
“Okay,” I said. How stupid.
“Did you ever read Diary of a Drug Fiend? By Aleistair Crowley?”
“Yes, and I hated it. I’m really mostly interested in what you think of that hooded man. Who is he?”
“I don’t know,” Avi said. “I’d like to meet him.”
“You don’t think you've ever met him."
“Mmm, I don’t think so. At least not---well, no. But maybe we’re connected somehow. I mean, if he did look like me, I mean really exactly like me. Did he sound like me?”
“Yes. His voice was the same as yours.”
“Hmmmm. Wow. Well, I think you should meditate on it and ask for more to be revealed to you and you should keep your mind and body in real good working order so you’re ready. And I think you should wholeheartedly pursue your will. And then you’ll be good to go.”
“My will,” I said. “That’s Crowley, right?”
“Yes, among others. Many others."
“And if you think of anything new, you tell me.”
“Of course,” he said. “I probably will too, you just laid a lot on me, I don’t think it’s even made it through the first layer of my processing.”
“Okay,” I said, “Fair enough. So, let’s hit the tank.”
“It’s in my room,” he said. “Mark and Sean might be having people over, so I thought we should go and do it in there.” Those were his roommates.
I got up and he followed me.
“Your ass looks nice,” he said.
“I know it does,” I said.

The tank was sitting in the middle of his room.
“This looks like some sort of crazy subversive root beer float,” I said.
“It is,” he said. “It’s the most illegal root beer float out there. So let's go fishing."
We traded back and forth. He sat opposite me and kept his gaze pretty steadily on me, which was a new thing for him. Before he would just look usually look off to the side or keep his eyes closed, but now he was looking at me most of the time. It felt a little disconcerting but was still essentially welcome, even if did make me feel self-conscious.
I had to use the restroom. My ears were still buzzing with the shimmering crickets sound when I entered the actual commode-bathroom, a small enclosed space separated from the rest of the bathroom area. The buzzing sound of the fan mingled with the shimmering crickets sound and I was mesmerized by it for God knew how long. What is so great about drugs and bathrooms? I thought. They go together like peanut butter and jelly.
“You know what," he said, when I returned, his lips blue. Now his shirt was off. So smooth. What a subtle move. "You could always get what a lot of girls couldn’t,” he said. "Like, I mean, mentally. I never really appreciated it as much as I do now.”
“I suppose it takes the right kind of eyes,” I said. But also what I thought immediately after that was that 55 pounds really makes such a huge difference. People respond to beauty and will listen to someone that they perceive as beautiful more than they will listen to someone whom they don’t. People will listen to a woman with a nice slim sexy body more than they will listen to someone with a dumpy flabby body. I remember once I had a friend named Candace, who was very smart and had very strong and well thought out anarchist beliefs. She had made a speech one time during a political meeting and nobody really responded and then another woman stood up and basically repeated what Candace had said and everyone had hung on her every word and then went up to her after the meeting to talk about how good her ideas were and how they could put them into action. And the only difference between Candace and that other woman was a difference in level of physical attractiveness. “Or the right kind of body,” I added.
“Maybe both,” he said.
And with that, he leaned over across the tank, and he gave me a kiss, a really sweet, lingering, romantic kiss. But it actually wasn't, because I stopped it before it started. I turned my face away. I didn't feel like kissing him all fucked up on nitrous and him only wanting to kiss me now because 55 pounds were gone. I wasn't mad, but I was definitely not attracted.
He immediately bent his head to inhale straight from the nozzle, a dangerous move that can freeze your lungs. And he kept his eyes on my face. While he was inhaling, he continued to look at me, and the hollows of his cheeks stood out and his eyes looked so large and intense, framed by his dark and perfectly groomed eyebrows.
When he was finished he straightened up like he thought he was really cool. I took a hit off my pink balloon, and I thought...
That’s it, that’s the face in my dream…. That’s it. That’s important. But I couldn’t figure out if I liked the face or not. I either loved it or I hated it. Which was it? Which was it?
Everything around me went white and then I was standing alone again the desert, on a hill overlooking a valley. The sun was rising. It was cold.
“Hello?” I shouted, and the vast expanse swallowed my greeting, giving no response. I decided to make myself as comfortable as possible and watch the sun come up. Each day the sun is reborn, according to many ancient traditions. Each new day is truly a new dawn, a new beginning, a new chance to create what one wants. Sunrise is always such a happy time, it is full of hope, possibilities, an endless infinity as the great warmer of the earth makes itself visible. So I sat my ass down on the sand hugged my knees to me and looked at the birth of the new day.
“Katie?” I heard a voice say, but I couldn’t see anyone. “Katie,” the voice repeated. Was it God? I smiled and waved at the sky (as if God lives up there.) Then, I felt a hand shaking my leg and was aware of something supporting me that I was slumped against. Avi’s bed. It was Avi’s hand on my leg.
“How is it?" he said. I waited for what seemed like a long time to answer him.
“How isn't it?” was all I could say.

posted in Psychonauts - 1 reply

Mormon Tea

jonatron — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:32:41 GMT

In the high desert of southern California there is an over abundance of Ephedra growing everywhere. Since I got a sinus infection from a visiting friend. I figured 'Why take sudoephedra when there is an abundance of ephedra for free?'
I looked up and concocted a brew of "Mormon Tea"...
Wow it does what it's supposed to! Surprisingly it tastes good too. It's stimulant properties surpassed my experience with coffee. It totally cleared my sinuses and kept me focussed while I was drinking it.
Evidently you can make an energy drink if you combine with Guarana, Caffeine, Yerba Mate, Green Tea, and Cola Nut. This home brew sounds way better than commercially produced energy drinks. Especially since you don't have to use sugar to sweeten your drink. Plus you can choose your own proportions. I know that this isn't hallucinogenic, but finding and concocting is invigorating to the inner shaman!

posted in Psychonauts - 17 replies

"psychoactive honeys"

ssqtch — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:55:20 GMT

the term is no less amusing to me now than when I first heard it uttered and almost
instantly thought of a magazine or calander featuring sultry images of the women I've
known or met that use psychedelics.:) lol

but really.....

.. in one of his talks from palenque that I heard on the psychedelic salon....
christian ratsch mentiones having, several times, tried "psychoactive honeys"
- meanings honey that becomes naturally psychoactive, presumably by
inclusion of nectars from potentially unknown psychoactive plants.

I was just wondering if anyone else had ever heard of such a thing or know of more information
since this was the first mention I had ever heard of this phenonena.
...or was interested in being in the calender..hahaha

:)

posted in Psychonauts - 12 replies

High IQ Found Among Pyschonauts

Azazeal — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 19:39:42 GMT

I heard from a co-worker that people that have experimented with various perception altering substances have a remarkably higher IQ and tend to be very well educated. I was wondering. Does having a higher intelligence cultivate a curiousity about experimenting with such substances? Or, does the perception altering substances open one's mind up to other ways of veiwing the world and therefore causes an expansion of consciouness that leads to a higher IQ?

What do you think?

posted in Psychonauts - 50 replies

Pentagrammed Savior

protectiva — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:04:00 GMT

My brother's friend Russell was eyeing my bare stomach as I came in with a plate of cheese and crackers for him to snack on before we left. He did not even try to be discreet or smooth about it. I set the plate down and continued getting ready to go. We were going to Monster Massive. My brother could not go, as he had been naughty and had consequently gotten grounded by my parents, but his friend Russell offered to take me, as he had already planned on dropping by the house to take my brother. The plan was for me to meet up with my boyfriend Art, who was working the laser in the main room, and then of course, he would give me a lift home.

Russell had brought some mushrooms and we ate them as soon as got into the car. We stopped at In-N-Out Burger on the way to the party, because Rusty wanted some French Fries. He went inside and I waited in the car, as I was in no mood to be in a brightly lit fast food joint as the psilocybin began to take hold. Indeed it already was starting to take hold, and I watched in fascination as the bouganvilla we had parked in front of began to move and sway and then cascade like a green and heliotropic waterfall. Russell came back to the car and offered me some fries, very polite, and I shook my head and said, "These flowers look beautiful."

Russell smiled, but his smile looked predatory, and I didn't like it. I kept my bad thoughts to myself however, and continued to admire the flowers and mainly stayed silent and listened to the CD he had on, some dark jungle, and paid attention to the bright lights streaming by, and the trees reaching out on the side of the freeway.

We got to the venue and parked. Russell came and opened my door for me, which I also found very polite, but again felt predation underneath the gesture, but I thanked him anway to keep up social protocol. The mushrooms were working full force now, and I thought to myself, "Where's my ticket?" I felt in my pocket for it and was very happy to feel it's stiff paperiness. I had to check several more times before we got to the actual tickettaker, and then I decided I would just take it out and hold it in my hand so as to avoid repetitive checking and pocket-searching. I gave the girl my ticket when we got to the front, and Russell's eyes immediately began surveying the crowd, ferreting out the cute raver girlies, the blonde visor crew, admiring more bare stomachs, pert breasts, and shining dilated eyes.

He mumbled something to me, which I didn't understand, so I asked him to repeat it. "You have a boyfriend right?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Okay, well, go find him, I gotta go." And he poofed off in search of vagina.

The room I was in was the hardcore room, and it sounded like the DJ was spinning not just hardcore but terrorcore, very loud screaming and guitars over the blasting high-level beats, BPM was way up there. It was not so very pleasant to listen to. I remembered something another boyfriend had said to me once, how he had taken a bunch of DXM and went to a Slayer show. He had said this also had been a less than pleasant experience, as he had somehow gotten up to the front, and was being crushed against the barriers, unable to move or process anything. And he said that he kept wondering if they were filming a video at this concert, and he wondered if he was going to show up as some totally out-of-it dude for the whole world to see.

"And now every time I see a Slayer video," he said, "I always wonder if there's some poor bastard like me up there in front on too much DXM cursing his luck."

I began to wonder I was going to get out of this hardcore room. I walked the perimeter of the room and could see no exit. This was surely not the main room, and there were no lasers. It was very hot, no ventilation, no way out. Around me, people were in their Halloween costumes, bleeding in black and wielding scythes, axes, pitchforks. I suddenly began to get very scared. How could I ever find Art? It felt like I was in hell--boiling hot, horrifying screams all around me, bloody creatures and demons everywhere and no possibe way out. I couldn't think. I began to panic and then I was able to settle down from the panic and just began to cry. I curled up in the corner with my Kikweared knees drawn up to my face and wept like Alice in Wonderland when she is sure she will never find her way home.

"Are you okay?" a male voice asked.

I looked up, and standing over me was a man with long brown hair, parted down the middle and a beard. He was not bloody and not carrying a weapon. He was wearing a green shirt with a hemp necklace and brown courdoroy pants. His eyes looked kind and concerned. He looked like Jesus Christ and smelled heavily of marijuana.

"No,' I said. "I am scared and sad."

"Why?" he asked. "What happened?"

"The person I came here with left me and I have to find my boyfriend. He's in the main room with the lasers, but I can't figure out how to get out of here. It's scary here."

"Awww," the man said, kneeling down and patting my knee. "I can take you there."

He offered me his hand, and on his hand he wore two rings, one on his thumb and one on his ring finger. One was a pentagram, and one was a mushroom. I took his hand, and he puled me up, then put his arm around me and guided me into a corner of the room that I swear I had been to before. There was a swarm of people all waiting to get out of this very small doorway. We inched our way through the bottleneck and eventually broke out free into what looked like an empty, brightly lit mall.

"There," he said, "We made it out. But I can see how you would have gotten scared. That was really crowded, hard to push through."

I nodded in agreement.

We went up some escalators, and then we entered another room where the doors were much bigger and the flow of human traffic was basically unimpeded. The man found the laser apparatus and walked up to it, and sure enough, there was Art, concentrating and looking busy and happy.

"Does this belong to you?" the bearded man asked, and Art turned his attention toward me, tearstreaked in a blue wig.

"It does," he said, and smiled, stepping down off the machine. "Thank you. What happened?" he asked.

"I couldn't get out, and i got scared."

"Awww," said Art, making the same noise the man had made earlier. "Thank you for bringing her to me," he told the man. "What was your name?"

And then I really don't remember what the man said his name was, but he shook Art's hand, who also had a pentagram ring on it, and turned to walk away. I wiped at under my eyes, and took Art's hand.

I was so thankful to that man, whoever he was. I was reminded of that quote from somebody, I think it might have been Scarlett O'Hara but it might have been somebody else from Streetcar Named Desire, but anyway, it went

I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.

And that was the day that Jesus saved me from hell. =)

posted in Psychonauts - 12 replies

Shamanic intensive Training Course in Bolivian Andes & Amazon

Miguel — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 13:29:24 GMT

Sacha Runa Collective offers two Month-long Shamanic Intensive Training Courses a year
(Jan/Feb and August) in the Bolivian Andes& Amazon (www.sacharuna.com).
The course is indeed Intensive and deeply transformational.
It is intended to help train those people who trully want to entrust themselves to Spirit
and dedicate themselves to Service.
No prerequisite is necessary, except the absolute determination to face oneself
and do what is needed to allow spirit to flow through us and bless creation.
The next one is August1-30.
Have to fly in and out of la Paz, Bolivia.
Application letters are due ASAP.
The next course is Jan/Feb 2009

For serious apprentices who intend to become full fledged shamans and
conduct medicine ceremonies, at least 4 courses are recommended but it
ultimately dependes on everybody's skills.

For a description of the course, please visit www.sacharuna.com
Blessings:
Miguel A. Kavlin

posted in Psychonauts - 6 replies

LSD after mushrooms bad trip

brad — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 00:41:14 GMT

When i was 15 i did mushrooms 5 times throughout that year. The first 3 trips were incredible. Awesome visuals, awesome thoughts, awesome feelings. THe last 2 trips were absolutely terrible. I had extreme panic attacks, wanting to kill myself to end the terror I was experiencing. It was extremely intense. I feel I was rejecting what was happening to me and couldn't let go of my ego. I was thinking about eternity and felt i could never escape consciousness even in death and was afraid to die. Sometimes i will have minor panic attacks on Marijuana as-well and my first "Bad Trip" reminded me of that feeling of my first panic attack while high when i was 14. Otherwise I am 19 now and can smoke pot fine, whenever I feel panic coming on i know exactly what to do to no let it manifest into something terrible. I keep remembering the greatness of a good mushroom trip and I re-read my trip journals i made. I want to trip again and really want to try LSD. Is LSD more intense, more of a complete mind fuck, then mushrooms. Cause I feel totally mind fucked on mushrooms. If I went into the trip knowing i was going to have a good time, with that panic possibly lingering somewhere in there. Would i be able to handle the Acid, and be able to fight off bad thoughts. Are you in control or does the drug take over

posted in Psychonauts - 43 replies

Death Dream Like Dimitri

protectiva — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:00:05 GMT

I had a dream one time, where I was on a beach with my friend Gloria. In the distance, we saw a large tower, and it looked interesting and inviting so we walked up to it. Some people in white lab coats met us at the foot of the tower and asked us if we wanted to be in an experiment. We readily agreed and they led us up a very tall wooden spiral staircase and into a room with a wooden floor with two comfortable chairs in it that faced a window overlooking the beach. We sat in the chairs and we people in white lab coats came up to us with eyedroppers and asked us to stick out our tongues. They administered a liquid that was in the droppers and then they told us that what they had given us was a poison that would cause us to die.

"Don't worry though," they said, "You will enjoy it."

Gloria and I looked at each other and shrugged. I said, "Can't go back now," and then I held her hand and we waited.

Then all of a sudden, the window disappeared, the room disappeared and all I could see before me was an Alex Grey-type grid , rising up, and I felt like I was falling into it. I felt the deepest sense of awed peace that I had every felt in my life. I closed my eyes in the dream and still all I could see was the grid, growing taller and taller, bigger and bigger and coming closer and closer. I felt like I was entering it and I felt thankful, and then I woke up in my bed (actually a bed at my folks' house) and I had tears in my eyes. I had never had a dream where I had died before, and it was honestly very beautiful and I was sad that I woke up.

I have never danced with Dimitri, but I have been told that these experiences are somewhat common with him.

I have never really been afraid of death, but ever since that day on the beach, I am not only not afraid of it. I look forward to it. =)

posted in Psychonauts - 4 replies

Lost in the Cosmos, Saved by the Nitrous Peddler

protectiva — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:21:26 GMT

I was driving to my friend Daryl’s house in Fountain Valley. He had given me new directions on how to get to his place, claiming them to be easier than the way I usually took. Sometimes not the most brilliant when it comes to directions, I ended up getting very lost (not helped by the fact that I was discussing lesbian matters with my dear friend Jenna on the phone and being distracted). So, I hung up with Jenna, after I told her I was lost, and helplessly watched as I crossed street after street of names I absolutely did not recognize. Being lost sucks. And my handy GPS was back at my apartment in LA, unable to help me here in Orange County no matter how much it wanted to.
Suddenly, I saw on my right-hand side a shop I recognized. Amusingly enough, this was the shop where Avi and I went to get the nitrous tank filled when we felt like getting goofy. We were in there so much, we were regulars, the owners knew our names and always offered us beer, tequila, chips, and good conversation whenever we went in. So, I pulled onto a side street, parked, and entered the little shop.
It was Friday evening, at about 7:30pm, the place was filled to the brim with Westminster cholos waiting to get their tanks filled so they could get goofy,or more like tonto, necio. There were not very many females in there, as is always the case, and, as usual, I was the only mediahuera in there, everyone else’s blood vessels were brown blood only. It feels strange to be so conscious of one’s ethnicity and usually one only IS aware of it when everyone around them is different. Or I suppose I shouldn’t speak for others, but as for me, that is the case.
One of the workers, Ryan, a thirtysomething broham type with bright blue eyes and dyed brown hair smiled when he saw me. He looked surprised, and then he looked excited. I had never been in the shop without Avi.
“Where is Avi? What are you doing here without him?” Ryan asked, flipping open his Sidekick and looking at a text message or an email or something.
“He’s not here,” I said, “I am lost. Can you please tell me how to get back to the 405?”
Ryan was distracted as a bald man with Sharpie eyebrows and a lip piercing handed him a tank. “About an hour, bro,” he said. The bald man nodded and left. “Um,” he said, “Yes. I think you want to go—hold on let me check google earth.”
He went over to the computer and said, “It has to load.”
Just then a large, Latino-looking man with glasses came in and set a very large yellow nitrous tank on the counter. “Hey!” Ryan said, smiling brightly, “That thing is huge? You want the whole thing filled. Did you get those mushrooms.”
“Yes and yes,” the man replied. “Be careful that tank’s hot.”
Ryan reached out to bring the tank behind the counter and he quickly withdrew his hand. “Fuck!” he said, shaking his hand. “What’s wrong with that thing?”
“It’s been baking in my car,” he said, “And it’s like a hundred degrees out.”
Ryan quickly grabbed the tank and brought in the back at top speed, “Shit,” he said. “That things was fuckin’ hot. Anyway, okay, here’s google earth. So, did you come in here looking for me?” Ryan asked me, raising his eyebrows.
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“So are you going to get naked or what?”
Some of the cholo guys looked over like they were suddenly very interested in the conversation.
“Probably not,” I said, graciously smiling.
“Oh well, fuck it,” Ryan said. “Okay, here, you just need to go back this way on this street that you came on, and then make a left at the light. Got it?”
“Got it,” I said.
“Listen,” he said, “You can come in here anytime. You can come in without Avi anytime. But that guy’s a cool cat though, tell him we say hi.”
“I will,” I said, and headed out the door.
On the street there were several cars parked, and I could hear the whooshing sound of nitrous escaping up and down the block. Most of the customers there were younger, still lived with their parents, so it wasn’t like they had the privilege of enjoying the tanks at home. I walked past a blue, older-looking Honda Civic and caught the eyes of a pretty cholita chick with dyed-blonde wet scrunched hair, mid-teens, probably. She was holding a pink balloon up to her mouth. I smiled and she lowered the balloon, smiling back.
As I walked past, I heard a female voice, probably hers, yelling, “Yeah! You good from the back, mama! Shake it!” I had on supershort daisy dukes and I guess she liked what she saw. I gave her a little shake and she whooped with approval.
Goddamn, I thought. When was the last time a sixteen-year-old girl told me to shake my ass? I couldn’t remember. In fact, maybe that was the first time that had ever happened. I got in the car, feeling mighty proud myself and my ass, and I went back down the street the way Ryan had told me.
Some other bald dude in a big black truck and black sunglasses slowed down to let me over into the left turn lane, so I rolled down my window and yelled thank you.
“Hey, where are you going right now?” he said, in a heavy Cheeched-out accent.
“To my friends house,” I shouted, “To do very bad things!”
“Let’s go then,” he shouted back.
“You wouldn’t want to go, it’s going to be a bunch of dudes,” I said, as the light turned, and I started to go.
“Awwww, too bad,” was the last thing I heard the bald dude say. Or at least that’s what I thought he said. And I thought that I really liked the superbrown parts of Orange County. It feels so friendly and so naughty at the same time.

posted in Psychonauts - 2 replies

Musical Refresher...

brilliantsoma — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:14:17 GMT

I really appreciated a thread over a year ago where people shared the music that was potent to them....

There is infinite music out there, and some artists have absolutely amazing work. Especially in dream states, I have become very sensitive to music and the energy that it is. Often times I can feel/know and tune into the being of the artist. I have had the honor to be in some GORGEOUS+++ dimensions with the help of music.
Some of my fav creators:

Shulman
Brian Eno's ambient works like Drawn from Life, and The Pearl
Bluetech
Carbonbased Lifeforms
Roger O'Donell
Cliff Martinez's soundtrack to the movie "Solaris"

I would love to read your favorites as well.

Blessings of abundance,

Soma

posted in Psychonauts - 14 replies

In Honor of Mr. Carlin

protectiva — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:15:07 GMT

I don't know for SURE if Mr. Carlin was a psychonaut himself, but I damn well wouldn't be surprised if he was. I cannot tell you how many times I have played his voice in the blacklight glow of my apartment while by myself or with others, enjoying various letters of the alphabet

D to the X to the M
L to the S to the D

and many other combinations!

This man was not only hilarious, but he was brilliant, insightful, and brave. Not necessarily the handsomest guy on the planet, but his mind made him sexy beyond belief to me and I regret that he died without me ever getting to kiss him--not that he will ever know or care about that, but it's damn true for me!

Sometimes things are inexpressible so you kind of have to halfway express the feelings you are having, so it does not exactly do him justice, but I think of him with a certain amount of reverance and awe. Indeed while it would have been great to kiss him, it would have been a great and fulfilling honor to shake his hand, look in his eyes and say thank you.

Gilmore would say
shine on you crazy diamond.

Love that man!

posted in Psychonauts - 11 replies

military on acid

allillusory — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:52:47 GMT

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=517198059628627413

posted in Psychonauts - 7 replies

Saint Albert and the angel tears

allillusory — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:57:55 GMT

Alex Grey on Saint Albert: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7Lyxb-gj4&feature=related

posted in Psychonauts - 1 reply

Plant consciousness metaphor

Stephen — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:04:15 GMT

I had the thought, as I was driving, that my car is a dense and evolutionarily advanced body that is being guided, directed, and driven,
by me, a more subtle, soft, and spiritually aware intelligence...and I took the metaphor furthur, connecting this idea towards the notion
that in a sense, we could be a "car" that plants "drive." This idea connects in a sense to that human beings came after plants as cars
came after humans. Humans more subtle than cars, plants more subtle than humans, humans have the directions for the car, plants have
the directions for the humans? Agree? Disagree? What do you think?

posted in Psychonauts - 43 replies

Entheogens from water

Solari — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 03:50:56 GMT

Scientifically controlled tests of magnetically altered water demonstrate a potentiation of glutamate decarboxylase which is probably the primary route to psychoactivity via pineal and pituitary gland stimulation. I have several self-styled shaman friends who love this simply made stuff for inducing altered states. It most obviously boosts melatonin and serotonin but also probably increases pinoline and other glandular goodies. The gultamate decarboxylase study is further linked at the end of my article.

www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/...ion.htm

The "trap water" phenomenon is sister to the "Orme" or orbitally rearranged monatomic element subject that is described in detail here:

www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/index.htm

Within the master site there is another earlier device I made:

www.subtleenergies.com/ormus/...rap.htm

The two primary Yahoo groups devoted to the subject are below:

tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ORMUS_SWG/

tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ORMUS/

posted in Psychonauts - 16 replies

NLP RCG

Shadoan — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 14:34:58 GMT

My favorite sight these days, for thought, and participation in idea exchange towards real change in daily active modes
http://www.radicalchangegroup.com

posted in Psychonauts - 10 replies

ø¥ø World Bridge III™ ø¥ø July 11 - 13 Deerfields, NC

LiqViz — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:02:46 GMT

Come dance with us in the mountains! Another year of amazing tribal/neuro trance under the stars at Deerfields, NC. Bring your art, vibe, rituals, dancing shoes, and meet us on the floor for trancendental communication through sound and movement. It's been a rough trip, but thanks to the community, World Bridge III is happening!

Here is the line up for your rageing pleasures!

"LIVE"

Somarobotics(Psykomunity, Anomalistic, DARK)
Dyalien(Alpha Centauri, Fractal Cowboys)
Greg On Earth(Mistress of Evil)
Primordial Ooze(TOUCH Samadhi)
Unwashed Tomato(Unwashed Recs, Anomalistic)
Dragon(Touch Samadhi,Dharmaharmony.Com)
cinderVOMIT(AtlPsy,GBO,Anomalistic Rec, DARK Rec)

"DJ/Sound Manipulators"

800 Deathsticks (Unwashed, Anomalistic)
The Andychrist (Unwashed, Anomalistic, DARK)
Medisin (TOUCH Samadhi, Medimonks)
Lexi (NY)
Uzi(nutz&boltz)
Aktif(Mindoutpsyde)
Artemis(Unwashed Records)
Aastral(Those People)
Pyite(AtlPsy, Anomalistic Recs)
Puskara(AtlPsy, Anomalistic Recs, Unwashed Recs)
Psyonic(Psybertribe Recs,Those People,Touch Samadhi)
Myrkabah(Those People, Black Magik Recs))
Axis Mundi(Independent)
Nod(TOUCH Samadhi, AtlPsy, Those People)

Printable flyer at http://www.thosepeople-asheville.com/images/worldbridgeiii/worldbridgeiii.pdf
More information, directions, and presales available at
www.thosepeople-asheville.com

posted in Psychonauts - 0 replies

MS and Mushrooms

bearsky — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:18:18 GMT

I refer here to thread from Psilocyin Mushroom tribe: http://tribes.tribe.net/psilocybin/thread/46c43cf6-22bd-4e81-b44a-449d0ee1a1b4

I posted here on 6/7/08 and then on 6/20/08 I had an attack which put me in the hospital for a month that was eventually diagnosed as ADEM (acute dissimilated encephalitis) and also MS. Perhaps I am delusional but there seems to be a relationship between the posts and I find it all uncanny. Last Spring, after a series of high dose mushroom experiences, I gave myself to what I consider to be the Plant Mind of the planet, our Gaia Spirit Mother of this planet in a private, blood ceremony that I took and continue to take quite seriously. It was after this that I began “hearing voices” which I think were the or voice of the mushroom elders - or mushroom ally. The voices concentrated on my spiritual well being, healing me emotionally and spiritually as well as teaching me and nurturing me during a really difficult time. They also showed me love like I have never known. One of the many things they “said” was that “Love is the only power you possess” And as usual I had to fill out their message as they seemed to have difficult time with language. What they meant was that all other power that we think we have is illusion and the only power we actually have in this world is the power “to love” a verb. I think of this constantly. There is only one answer to every question and the answer is Love. It is corny as hell yes but there it is.
In the hospital in Lubbock, Texas - a four hour ambulance ride from our little mountain village in New Mexico, I was in ICU for two weeks and at one point the neurologist, who at this time did not know what was wrong with me, told my wife that I might not make it. I had lost my ability to speak but was lucid. I was stiff as a board, paralyzed from head to foot, muscles constantly contracting. My wife and I had spoken of this eventually and both agreed that if something like this happened we would want to know so she told me. I realized that what she was saying was that the neurologists was really saying that I might die. At this time, I was on IV steroids, IV antibiotics and IV antiviral since they didn’t know what was going on with me and were covering all the bases. I had no fear of death whatsoever and I directly attribute this to my mushroom experiences. My wife cried and she never cries - she from Texas, Dammit. The fact that she was crying really made it sink in. She never cries except for something to do with animals, especially dogs.
I told her not to worry. That death was like walking from one room into another, and our finances were taken care for that eventuality.
This made my experience with the mushrooms real to me. At some level even for me, my mushroom inspired odyssey of the last year was not legitimate somehow but this experience in the hospital brought it home to me. I thought: I have died before, I know how to do this. I felt no need to struggle or fight and just gave in totally, as I had done with the mushrooms. If I live, I live, if I die, I die, was the thought. I would wake and hear the nurses out on the floor a few feet away speaking quietly about who died during the night. I would see it was morning by the clock. My wife, Jana’ would usually be sleeping in a hard backed chair with her head rested on a pillow on the railing of my bed. I would think, sort grinning ironically, that I was alive another day. I had a strong sense that there was nothing I could do. The mushroom had given me an inner understanding of my eternal self. They made eternity a reality for me. I knew at the deepest level of my being that this body, even its attending soul, is only a vehicle for my eternal self. The mushrooms gave me this gift - what is this but possibly the greatest gift of all?
I felt as though I were on a small ship sailing out at sea, at the whim of the currents and the winds, with no sail just drifting along.
One morning I heard my neurologist outside the curtain and he exclaimed in a high, almost childish voice: “the latest MRI shows no further damage” evidently speaking to my ICU nurse. Jana’ had stepped away. I thought, that’s nice, he does care. I could hear that in his voice. Also, I could hear how much he had not been sure if I would make it. I realized then how little the doctors could really do. By this time this neurologist was convinced that it was the IV steroids that was doing the trick but I was still on IV antibiotics and IV antiviral medication since we were waiting on the results of two spinal taps from labs in California.
Now I am home and can walk with a walker around the house and should have a full or almost full recovery from this attack but will have to really do The Tighten Up with nutrition and exercise. All and all, I really do feel fortunate. For some the steroids do not have such a dramatic effect - it could have went the other way. So I have reason to feel fortunate. I am so glad to be home. It is only 56 degrees out at 10:30am and very dark and cloudy. We have been getting blessed rain pretty much every day since I have been home. Listening to the rain is awesome, as beautiful as any symphony.
The odd thing is that I felt since last Spring that I would be called upon to sacrifice something significant. I had an ominous feeling about all along. This feeling came after I gave myself to what I consider to the Plant Consciousness of the planet, dedicating my life force to the needs of our Gaia Mother. I did not and do not regret this decision, which I made with a blood ceremony and continue to take very seriously. I think this MS thing is the sacrifice, although I regret how Catholic that sounds. In an odd way it is like trading meaning, purpose and direction for MS, and I am convinced that while not something I choose or want, the MS will make me a better writer and a better person - again, a small price to pay in this world but the blink of an eye in eternity.
My boat is just a little banged up is all.
“Following the Mushroom Path”.

posted in Psychonauts - 1 reply

Psilocybin Healing Attempt May 2007

bearsky — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:48:44 GMT

I post this again because I just got out of a one month hospital stay during which I almost died and was diagnosed a year after this experience with MS - a little uncanny to me given what I had written and experienced almost exactly a year earlier. This is fourteen pages, heads up.
Healing Experience 05/26/07
DOSAGE: 6 grams dried psilocybin mixed cubensis strains. The cakes were mixed when put in fruiting chamber and I was not around at harvest to try to identify, including lots of Aborts, stems and nasty pieces: for this particular Experience I thought that the knurliest, nastiest, abortive pieces, the better.
(Mind) SET: mixture of fear, self-doubt, determination and Chutzpa. We had closed on our house and I had paid up all the bills for a month just in case I ended up in a mental institute from this experience. I was physically exhausted from both preparing to close on the house as well as my annual killer sinus infection. This particular Saturday morning was the first possible moment that I could have attempted a healing. In retrospect, I should have waited a week or two. I had spent hours during the last two days canceling and paying off credit cards, steadily chipping away at the unexpectedly enormous task of “dropping out of society” –it sounds so irresponsible and one would think therefore so easy, like growing pot (it’s just a weed, right?) but in fact is not the least bit easy. What I now think of as the mushroom entity which cohabited my body for a period of approximately four months vied for my attention which was fully committed to taking care of Jana’ and managing everything else, including an extensive “finishing” of our two year remodeling project. The pressure was unbelievable – it was not until the four months were almost over that I truly felt I was not going to go completely insane. Up until this healing experience and until the mushroom entity/entities (whatever it was it was not “individual” like us but a “collective”) left me on 6/19/07, I had been getting a lot of extraordinary information. I wrote it all down diligently but for the most part still had no idea what “it all meant” and this was frustrating at the deepest level. It is not lost on me that I dedicated the remainder of my life force to something, which I did not completely understand, and to a cause only faintly understood. This is faith in action, I believe: I had that mustard seed of faith. Something in me recognized the value in taking the mushroom path and this same aspect of myself recognized the value of the mushrooms visions and “words”, regardless of whether or not I fully understood them.
I woke nauseas and at first seriously considered putting it off to the next day. I walked over to the 7-11 next to our motel along a path strewn with panties and used, discarded condoms and got a cup of coffee, walking back to our motel along the same path. Jana’ was still sleeping just to the right of me and the large pile of dried mushrooms sat before me on top of my notebook where I had written intentions, invocations, petitions and declarations in preparation for the healing experience. My stomach settled down a little so I decided to go ahead. Other than the specific, emotionally charged, prayerful, writings, I practiced no other ceremony, having decided early on in my entheogen usage for better or worse not to “make a big deal of it”. While I self consciously avoided outward ceremony, I reread my invocations and did my best to center myself internally. The sun is not the sky, I told myself, not in my eyes – the sun is in my mind. I had also assigned a picture of a Blue Whale onto my laptop screensaver and many times just looked at it there before me, closing my eyes trying to visualize the whale. I was not yet certain that the Blue Whale was actually be my power animal. Even if the Blue Whale were my power animal, I had no confidence that I could “control” the power of six grams insofar as having the presence of mind to “consciously” call upon the Blue Whale once “inside” the trip. (If you’ve tripped on Acid or whatever, do you have the presence of mind to focus on something you thought of before tripping?) In my one breakthrough high dose experience, I had been instantly transported to what I can only call another reality. My concern was that if I were to be similarly “transported” in this experience, I would not be able to take any kind of control in the experience at all, definitely not enough to have a premeditated, “conscious” thought. This in itself would not be in any way bad, but would, I felt, preclude me from any healing of my wife. I feared getting “lost in the trip” believing that I must stay conscious for this healing to work. I cannot say why I felt this way exactly. In the instances of shamanic healing which I had read the shaman was always conscious. In my breakthrough experience it had been like being in a dream only much more realistic – cohesive, organized – but I felt no more ability to take control of the experience than I have ever felt the ability to take “conscious” control of a dream state. So I focused on the Blue Whale often during the previous evening as well as this morning, looking at the Blue Whale screen saver and then closing my eyes trying to visual this picture. I had never been able to visualize anything until recently and now my visualizing ability was not strong but vague. I felt that somehow everything depended upon this Great Blue Whale spirit guide. Only a few days before this, I had recalled a long forgotten dream from almost thirty years earlier. At that time I was on a deeply spiritual path and was in the habit of keeping a dream journal. One night I asked God to give me a symbol, which I could have for my own, as a testament of our relationship. (I have always been of the opinion that it never hurts to ask) That very night I had the most incredible dream of my life. I recalled completely the dream and wrote down in a long lost dream journal. In the dream I was an awed child on a dock when the side of the head and the enormous eye of a Great Blue Whale rose up out of the water shimmering in the sunlight more beautiful than anything I could imagine. I reached out in my child wonder and touched the Whale just above the eye, stroking it with my tiny child’s hand. I felt as though the Whale and I were both basking under the blessed auspices of God shinning down as the sun. Everything was whole. Everything was perfect. I felt total ecstasy, total love. How on 02/25/07 I could have “forgotten” that dream is beyond me. In that experience I had desperately sought spiritual help from within the experience, to no avail. I had even called upon dead relatives. The fact that I did not make this Blue Whale connection then baffled me. Perhaps losing this dream from my adolescence is the perfect symbol for losing my way in my life. I hadn’t thought of it in years but I recalled that even at the time I knew that this was an important dream, although I did not then associate it with a animal guide, being ignorant of such things then. I “thought” of it during a period when I was asking for a power animal very much with the intention of calling upon a power animal to help with this healing attempt which I had planned for Jana’. There was little doubt in my mind that this was my power animal and that in a very real sense it had been “given” to me again. When I was originally given this I was not coming from any Shamanic tradition but more of spiritual Christian tradition. I did recall that in my fatherless, lost, little white, suburban boy way, that what I had asked God was exactly a spiritual guide – just not using traditional native terminology.

SETTING: I will keep this one short: almost as bad as the mindset, one room motel in a pretty lousy part of town – already mentioned the path to the 7-11, you get the picture. Dubious set, terrible setting.

I feel there must be some context before reporting the experience itself. This experience was a straight out a healing attempt on my part. Jana’ had a rare complication to a surgery that caused almost constant nausea such that for two and a half months she could not eat or drink, even water. She was kept alive with intravenous nutrition and hydration with a stint in her arm in a home care situation with regular nurse visits to at first our house and then a series of motels as we waited (and waited …) for medical care that never came. In our opinion her surgeon had abandoned her – our Gastroenterologist said that this was common with this type of surgery when the surgeons had the admittedly rare problem such as Jana’s and the term used in the business is “cut and run”. Although pursuing both standard medical care and alternate medicine in the form of a Biofeedback/Hypnosis Clinic run by a team of doctors and clinical psychologists, we had no diagnosis, no course of treatment; precious little relief and no surgical “fix”. So it is important to note here that we were awaiting at the time an audience with the purported expert on this abomination of pure free market greed masquerading as a medical procedure which my wife had suffered - just want to be clear that we were aggressively pursuing “normal” medical care for Jana’ at the time. I had not said it out loud but at about this time I had gone from being deeply frustrated and angry about her horrendous suffering over these months to actually fearing for her life. It was just dawning upon me that she may not be so much recovering from an unfortunate surgical complication as dying. Part of this was my being so consumed with the extraordinary tasks at hand and part of it was my – misplaced – faith in our vaunted American medical care system. From one week to the next assurances came. Maybe this, maybe that, and before we knew it months had passed with nothing to show for it.
This Experience was on Saturday only a week after closing on our house – the first big commitment to what I could not help but think of as the mushroom path, just a pinch of tongue and cheek. I had gone to a chiropractor that Thursday and had a good experience that really seemed to help my back. Then I noticed later that afternoon and into the next day, Friday, the day before this Experience, that I was extremely emotional and I had several truly cathartic and healing emotional experiences, accepting and integrating long disintegrated aspects of my emotional self. I must add as relevant here that one of these powerfully integrative experiences involved my own desire to heal. I had always interpreted my “healing fantasies” as self-aggrandizing “manic” symptom of my manic depression. While I had these “manic experiences” only once or twice a year, they were always the same in kind: I would find myself fantasizing about healing “humanity”, discovering a cure for cancer, for example. These fantasies could be quite elaborate or just involve a laying-on-of-hands of someone around me who happened to be sick or even someone I saw on television. I had learned even before the mushrooms to use my fantasies as indicators of my feelings, many of which I have difficulty feeling directly: partly a man thing and partly genetics, I would guess. But I have learned to work around my own dysfunctional emotional state and pretty quickly now recognize my fantasies for the feeling status they represent. (If I “found myself” fantasying about bashing someone’s head in I was angry. Instead of interpreting this healing fantasy as a symptom of mental illness, I simply saw it now as a legitimate if latent desire to heal. There is nothing dysfunctional about such a fantasy. It beats all hell out of spontaneously fantasizing about destructive behavior. Also, these episodes lasted literally only minutes and again happened only a couple times a year. Because a psychiatrist had told me that this was pathological, I had believed it to be so: yes, a clear sign of mania. I did not consider myself a Shaman in any way whatsoever. What I had faith in was the mushrooms. I hoped in fact that somehow the mushrooms could work in spite of me personally to heal Jana’. It was on this day that I fully realized or accepted the fact that I am already completely healed insofar as I can be and that now if was up to me to take it from there: Live! Create! Grow! This chiropractor cracked me good and I am convinced released energy somehow locked up in my spine/nervous system, although I absolutely hate the New Age sound of that! This energy is not metaphysical but is somehow a physical part of our world and is no less real than were microbes before we developed the technology to apprehend them.
This attempted healing was out of desperation. In all probability, the reason that my wife could not even swallow and water, more or less food, having to be kept alive by intravenous nutrition and hydration supplied by a 24 hour feed through a TPI line into her upper arm, was a mind/body reaction by the nervous system caused by the trunks of the very sensitive Vagal nerve being cut in one of those operations with a ninety nine percent success rate. This is what I had come up with after finally getting involved more in what was happening to her after realizing that her doctors were essentially doing nothing for her. She had already found hypnosis to be helpful but not curative. This fact and a strong suspicion both from her surgeon and my own reading on the matter that there was some kind of mind/body connection problem, led me to believe that the mushrooms could be helpful. I know they can be curative of most emotional problems of non-organic nature. I do not by any means consider mushrooms a panacea but I had been thinking about this since becoming convinced that there was some mind/body connection fix out there that could help Jana’. My opinion right now – subject to change without notice – is that the mushrooms themselves cannot cure a physical injury. I have read of instances where Shaman taking the mushrooms and harnessing their power, performed feats of physical healing. A little over a month after the experience, I now consider myself a bastard Shaman: that is, I healed myself but have not had any training beyond that, no Father to teach me the ways. Fatherless and teacherless, I relied completely on the mushrooms to guide me. At the time, I not only did not consider myself a Shaman of any sort, I found this idea offensive. Just eating some mushrooms in the suburbs does not a Shaman make! I have done considerably more than that. I have healed myself using my unorthodox, bastard techniques and that is the first step for a Shaman. I deserve my title of Bastard Shaman. I would just note that I came to this conclusion after the attempted healing experience and ironically enough in spite of its apparent failure.
I admit that at this point I consider the healing Experience a failure and even though I fully expected failure there was a part of me that wanted success as much to heal Jana’ as to confirm the extraordinary reality of what has happened to me. That having been said, elements of this were definitely a success: the Blue Whale actually turning out to be my power animal; my ability – twice – to manifest the Blue Whale after having “gone in”; and the way the experience unfolded exactly as I evoked in writing– all three of these aspects really amazes me, still. On the other hand, Jana’ and I could look at it from a different perspective and call it a success since it was not long after this that she did turn the corner – no help of the medical community. In fact, not long after she got an infection in her pic-line which went untreated for three weeks – more doctor incompetence and ended up with Jana’ in the Hospital in a potentially deadly situation with this infected line running up her arm to with only inches of almost inches of her heart. It was when some days later when released from the Hospital that she began to turn the corner. While I was relieved beyond words when Jana’ did turn the corner, it sure would have been nice if it could have happened, say, within the first week after this healing Experience. I remember afterwards telling Jana’ that there was a strong theme of time throughout the experience and that I felt the mushrooms were saying that it was going to take time to heal her. The only thing the medical community was saying was that she would “probably” recover on her own but it could take up to a year.
Jana’ was suffering a very real kind of extended torture – I would do anything at that point to make it stop. She didn’t want anything to do with a psilocybin enema I had devised after a little research. It was my belief that the mushrooms could possibly help her if she herself took them. I told her that I knew it was a long shot but at worst would do nothing at all and that with the amount that I would be giving her she could be assured of at least a good trip, if not some healing or even help with healing, possibly. What can I say: I saw it as a win-win. But evidently the psilocybin enema is a hard sell. What is with this fussiness about the enema? If I thought an enema of any kind might heal me and or enlighten me and knew that it was harmless what the hell: stick it on up there and let it rip, baby. I guess after nine months before 02/25/06 having eaten such an array of vile and disgusting brews that the thought of being able to get the same trip with an enema instead of having to drink down two cups of San Pedro Cactus goop – well, let’s just say that a nice warm enema sounded doable to me. (Please try cooking down a whole cactus and chugging its thick, vile sludge for yourself before you judge!) I know how to prepare a psilocybin enema and since I have had almost no stomach distress eating large dosages of both fresh and dried psilocybin, I seriously doubted there would be any nausea involved with an enema administration. I explained to Jana’ that at the dose I would give her – the equivalent of five grams dried - she would basically be unconscious within a matter a minutes and I would be there to keep an eye on her. But such an idea was overwhelming to her at that point, spending her every waking minute either puking or trying not to puke.

So after Jana’ made it clear that there would be no psilocybin enema in her future; and given that I knew of no Shaman and that in indigenous society’s expert at the use of plant medicines the healer not the patient may be the one who takes the mushrooms; I decided to try it myself, waiting only to close on our house and get ourselves into as secure a position as possible before attempting it. My last high dose experience had been transformative but took at high toll, causing true mania with no sleep at all for five days. My thought was that if we stayed physically touching during the experience that our emotional connection and physical connection might allow me to act as a conduit for the mushrooms to do their magic. I had by this time complete faith in the mushrooms but in no way considered them a silver bullet: in other words, my apprehension in this healing experience was not so much for the mushrooms as for myself. I knew they would help Jana’ if they could. I had felt their incredible love, compassion, and power. I just really did not know if they could heal this problem. If the problem really was a body/mind, disconnect involving the nervous system (nervous systems are the mushroom’s specialty, mind you) I thought it is possible. I know for a fact that these mushrooms can heal emotional sickness and what my wife had in terms of her complications from surgery was, from everything I could gather, some kind of mind-body disconnect. Not exactly the same thing, but one has to stretch, right. I am not talking about again any new age crap. I mean a disconnect from her stomach being partially – mostly – amputated and the Vagal Nerve being cut – a physiological phenomenon creating a mind/body disconnect within the profoundly complicated and intimate neurological relationship of the stomach and the brain, a physical, not psychological condition. Because I had become convinced of this body/mind issue, I hoped the mushrooms could help. Her two brains – the one in the stomach - (the stomach with so many neural connections it has been called the second brain, I had learned) and the one in the head back in perfect sync so she could stop vomiting. This was also clearly to me some kind of nervous system problem and the mushrooms very realm is the nervous system – if they could possibly repair anything of our physical body, it would have to be something to do with our nervous system. In this realm physical and emotional merge seamlessly. Only the most rigorous scientific reductionism or most outrageous religious dogma can pull them apart, one way or the other. My main point here is that I had some reason to believe that the mushrooms would help, not just a baseless new age fantasy.
This Experience was without a doubt the weirdest ever and was very different from my breakthrough experience. The second, deeper part did fall into a familiar altered reality characterized not by psychedelics but again a completely altered state of reality– a reality seeming to existing beyond our conscious bounds of space and time. The Experience at the beginning resembled less my recent large dose mushroom experience than LSD trips from some thirty years ago almost. Honestly, this Experience disturbs me at many levels, not the least of which was the profound sense of personal failure. You have to accept at least that in my mind – crazy or sane – I believed this could help Jana’ and I definitely felt that I did not do my best and let her down here. I’m not obsessing over it or beating myself up over it but feel it necessary to get down every aspect of these Experiences no matter how personal, uncomfortable or even insane sounding or unflattering as they may be. I do not know how to say this other than that I fear that I didn’t bring enough love to the table. Maybe it will be clear when I go into it, but I guess I feel as though it came close and somehow I was the problem – as if I were a weak connecting wire which was not strong enough to convey the energy from the mushrooms into my wife, maybe allowing it to bleed out, like a spark plug wire with a microscopic hole.
I have been called upon to write this all down and I have made a blood oath to the mushrooms to do whatever I can do to serve them out of a sense of gratitude the likes of which I never knew existed: no doubt in my mind that this gratitude is EXACTLY the feeling of countless other human religious converts over the ages; and even though I still consider myself an atheist, I believe I understand their feelings now. I just believe, subject to change, that the power I am dealing with is an intelligent life force sprung from what I now conceive of as “The Plant Consciousness” and that the Plant Consciousness is vastly larger, older, smarter and far more spiritually mature than our own human consciousness. I also suspect that this Plant Consciousness may be one and the same with the Planetary Consciousness – Gaian Consciousness. They may have been so closely allied for so long that they are virtually the same now, like an old soul-mated human couple perhaps. I am just not sure, yet.
I wrote my intentions and an invocation wherein I called upon Love Itself to heal Jana’. I also called upon my Great Blue Whale spirit to guide me in this healing; believing before “going in” that if, any success was to be had the only chance in hell hinged entirely upon the Blue Whale. The mushrooms would get me “in”, the Blue Whale would guide me, and then … well, I would have to wing it at that point. I planned this out a little more like a military campaign than a psilocybin trip or even a healing. I had never done anything like this with mushrooms before, never even considered it. I put the most spiritual force that I could into it before “going in”. On the one hand, I really did see this as a long shot. On the other hand, anything worth doing is worth doing right, so I went for it. I said that I wanted no enlightenment this day; no pretty colors or visions; no spiritual wars: I wanted only to heal Jana’. Part of my invocation, which I took quite seriously on this Saturday morning …
Proceeding with love and gratitude
In my heart -
My sword in my hand …
Not a very good Haiku but sincere.
I wrote thinking clearly of Maria Sabina and her power chants, only performing this quietly while my wife slept and before I took the mushrooms, not after. I felt it necessary to bring as much personal power to bear upon this as I could – the exact opposite of my previous approach to a hallucinogenic mushroom experience which was open and supplicating. In this above Haiku, I seem to have concentrated all my ignorance, pretension and ego: this also is me trying to assert myself spiritually. In fairness to my self, it should be obvious how well I understood my own inadequacies in this attempt. On the other, the risks were minimal while the rewards, while a long shot at best, were considerable: you can not really imagine what a bummer it is to either be puking or nauseated 24 hrs a day … even a chance of helping was well worth it. I have to note that I felt it necessary be more of an Aggressor than a Supplicant, the exact opposite of previous approaches: in my notebook amongst my stoned scribbling is my demand upon Love, commanding love to heal her. At this point I could not sincerely bring myself to pray to God, but I could pray to love. In retrospect, I wonder if this was the correct stance? I was truly winging it and going with what I felt would give us the best shot: lot of faith in the mushrooms and a lot of hope in the Great Blue Whale. Really, it was not my style personally but I had a strong intuition of how to conduct the healing. Anyway, with a single reference to the aforementioned “sword haiku”, the mushrooms laid my ego to waste. Early on in this mushroom path I decided that there were some things that for better or worse I was just not willing to do because they made me feel too uncomfortable. It is for this reason that I did not and have not danced around with feathers chanting or beating drums. This is a good thing because Jana’ would not have tolerated that even from a real Shaman. She was pretty sick throughout this and mostly asleep and I pretty much was able to leave her that way throughout the whole experience, which was good. I have evolved a totally eclectic set of preparatory behaviors that I find helpful. The truth is that up until this healing Experience, such preparations were minimal. The main thing I did was pray. I would enter a prayerful state and, I believe, give myself, and open myself fully to the Experience.

05/26/07 Healing Experience

Starting eating six grams of dried psilocybin mushroom at 7:30am and finished at 8:05. I sat at a little table next to our bed in the motel, looking at my Blue Whale screen saver on the laptop screen and drinking 7-11 coffee quietly. Jana’ slept just to my right and the dogs slept on the floor. After I finished my coffee, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. The Little Flowers are pretty funky tasting. I looked into my eyes in the mirror. I wasn’t sure if I was feeling anything yet: my biggest fear as always was that nothing will happen. My second biggest fear was that something would happen. I rang a little turtle, brass bell close my left ear, then close to my right, nothing. I noticed in the mirror a talisman Jana’ gave me which I wear 24/7. It is a dark dinosaur tooth maybe ¾ inch long but is actually the tip of a much larger tooth, the tooth of the largest carnivore to ever walk the earth, one hundred million years old. Hair stood up on my neck and then a charge of animal fear rushed through me. The largest carnivore to ever to walk the earth! I grabbed the talisman intending to rip it off but as I touched it, immediately I thought that I could use this. I just told myself to cool it. I knew that according to indigenous Shaman while most of us guys would immediately want to go with something like a Grizzly bear or a Lion for a spiritual animal guide, these were as likely to eat you alive as to help you. They are the providence of the most power Shaman and Healers. I believe this stuff. Every fiber of my being wanted to rip that thing off and get away from it. I think the mostly indigenous Shaman of our world have the most accurate and meaningful comprehension of reality. This is why the dinosaur fetish freaked me out and I couldn’t believe that I had been wearing the thing for a year without giving this aspect a second thought. As I have said, I was convinced that this healing called for forceful, aggressive power. Anyway, it is just a fetish, nothing to fear, I told myself. I tried to focus on using it to provide power in the coming experience and to let go of my fear of it.
I closed my eyes and grasped the talisman firmly but gently with middle finger, fore finger and thumb of each hand. Immediately my mind filled with fantastic hallucinations. I had not seen anything like this since my adolescent experiences with LSD. I was awed. What seemed to me to be Mayan masks appeared. The masks were almost twice the size of a human head and resembled a human skull. Upon each mask there were blood smears as if someone had taken their palm and pressed it into fresh blood and then smeared the mask with a human hand sized smear longer than wide. Each mask had smears in the same places, one upon each cheek almost vertical and horizontal smaller smear across the chin and then the largest horizontal smear on the forehead over the eye sockets. Each skull mask appeared to contain a real human skull inside, its blank eyes staring out of the mask’s blank eyes. There were thousands of these masks and each was identical but each appeared to be smeared individually so that while the patterns were the same on all the thousands, each was individual; perhaps representing a individual human life. I could see each mask separately and all together equally well. I had some sense that these represented human individuals’ long dead – maybe all individuals? – especially when the thousands seemed to turn into hundreds of thousands and then millions and all the while I was in front of the bathroom mirror with my eyes “closed”. The skull mask were just expanding outward seemingly into infinity from a point at the center of my “vision” when they began to slowly form into vertical shapes which morphed into double helixes – two of them – each made up of countless skull masks with the skull strands of DNA slowing revolving around themselves like bands of a barbers pole. These two revolving columns of DNA like strands composed of the skulls really began to take on a cohesive form and the forms drew my “eyes” upwards as they began to spin like two columns of tornadic clouds. Whoa! My eyes snapped open no doubt a second before unconsciousness. This is why you should be lying down not standing up, I reminded myself. I had been sure that I had at least five minutes to play with. It had come on really fast. Okay, it got me. I had not even come close to this kind of visual experience on my other psilocybin trips. It was almost as if “they” were trying to draw me in. “I” noticed that the helixes were drawing me up and that the circling motion was what I had felt in my breakthrough experience just before entering an alternate reality, and unconsciousness. I would experience I whirling upward that … seemed … an awful lot like what was happening … and I said, no! No! Somehow I sensed the seduction of it all, skulls forming double helixes for god’s sake, who among us could resist that. In any case, the instant that I recognized what was happening, I had called upon the Blue Whale, never before having been able to “visualize” anything and much to my surprise, the upward spiraling helixes that drew me into unconsciousness morphed immediately into a Blue Whale much resembling the one on my computer screen. Wow, I thought. The Blue Whale then morphed further until just its one great eye filled my consciousness, as a zoom lens can fill a frame. It was then that I snapped “awake”, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, grinning ear to ear.
Wow, the Blue Whale. The eye of the Blue Whale.
(The eye of the Blue Whale appears to be for me a portal – I have since tried to full my mind’s eye with it again without the use of mushrooms but as yet to no avail)
I knew it was about time to lie down, concerned that I could lose consciousness at any moment. I couldn’t help smiling as I shuffled over to our bed where Jana’ lie sleeping. I was sure that I would be out for a couple hours and tried to drink as much water as I could, finally laying down next to Jana’ in the fetal position facing directly the motel clock’s big, red, digital numerals on the nightstand. I pulled Jana’s hand over my side and she hugged me gently, her hand almost exactly over my heart. That will do nicely, I thought. I looked at the clock and it read 8:50am. I closed my eyes and the alien thought popped up, “you won’t need your sword today” a damning reference to my obviously presumptuous assertions of power, I thought: imagine the most humiliating thing that has ever happened to you. When “they” said, “you won’t need your sword today”, I felt my ego just crumble. It seemed to me to be the first time that the mushrooms had thrown a punch at me. I know this sounds oversensitive on my part given the seemingly innocuous statement, but that was very much how I took it. I felt some nausea but it wasn’t bad enough to worry about. The stuff with the sword bode ill to me, as well as laying low my ego. It is hard to explain but goes to the point of my trying to use personal power here – the sword – and my being aggressive rather than submissive. I had felt this was necessary but these few “words” uttered by the mushrooms inside my mind instantly laid waste to my plan. Clearly, if assertion was the way to go at all, it was not for me in this instance. I tried to relax, looking almost forward to “unconsciousness” and that other state of reality. I felt a tightening in my chest when I closed my eyes, a surprise somehow even though I had felt it before. This tightening produced a very specific kind of fear I call elephant on the chest fear, and it was as though I could both feel and hear the elephant coming to sit on my chest. O God, I thought, here it comes. I have to be honest, I find this elephant on the chest thing terrifying. I tried to concentrate on breathing deeply and counting breaths, trying to relax my body. There was no where to run since the elephant was inside me. In spite of the fact that I had lived through it before, it still frightened me. As this elephant fear subsided, I had the unmistakable thought that I was entering a realm in which I have no power whatsoever; where I in no way belonged. I glanced at the dials of the clock, 9:00am. I felt beyond frightened at this point, all confidence gone. I just kept breathing deeply concentrating on my breathe and being open.
The elephant sat on my chest, again. Abject fear now, the feeling of death. I couldn’t run and it was clearly no use to scream so I just died.
No more than a couple minutes later, I whispered to Jana’ who had just stirred, “The little psilocybin fairies are locking and unlocking the millions of neural connections up and down my spine, it almost tickles. They are like children, so light and innocent and glad to be alive. They work joyfully and have billions of neural connections to manipulate. I admire their total love of what they do and total joy in life. I only wished I could live my life like these little fairies …”
And my wife said that was really nice, taking this first morning news very well. I told her to keep her hand on me and don’t worry. She went back to sleep immediately. All fear disappeared when the psilocybin fairies began fluttering up and down my spine. I had never felt this before or heard of it but it felt very real. The elephant vanished. The fairies were so full of love and so full of life, exactly as human children are when playing happily on playground - how could I be afraid?
(In retrospect, I wonder it what was happening was not a healing of me, of my nervous system. This is definitely a believer’s point of view. I had a MS scare earlier and it was still up in the air as to whether or not I could develop MS. Also, as I have said, I did go to a chiropractor so perhaps they could have something to do with that. I noticed also in reviewing my various invocations that in one I had written, “… heal Jana’ and I …” adding myself into the mix in my exuberance. This aspect nagged at me and over a year later, I had a severe MS attack becoming at one point completely paraplegic and almost dying from it. I am dealing with the aftermath now - June of 2008. This attack hit almost exactly a year after this healing experience - the attack hitting out of the blue on May 20th 2008.)
Without really thinking about it, again I fingered the dinosaur fetish with both hands as I lie on my side, and again came the spiraling skull helixes picking up as if where we left off in the bathroom. I felt myself drawn up into the vortex again and knew all too well that meant unconsciousness.
Immediately I called upon the Blue Whale. I am not here for the pretty colors, I proclaimed in my mind. In the name of love I ask you to heal Jana’, concentrating as much as I could and again seeing the otherworldly vision of swirling double helixes formed of millions of dead human skulls slowly break up and transforming into the Blue Whale, his side and head seen through air bubbles coming up from below with his gigantic body and bubbling up to the near surface of the ocean, his one eye staring right at me. I could not believe that I had conjured Him again, and my elation at this success suddenly found me in another reality witnessing what appeared to be an electrical storm in hell itself. I looked down as if I were God upon a pathetically tiny, frail and emaciated old man standing precariously in tattered rags upon the very tip of jagged mountain in the midst of this hellish maelstrom. Lighting and thunder and wind thrashed the frail, little man. His wisps of long, thin white hair on the sides of his head, a similar few strands down his back, white strands hanging from his ancient chin, and his last few pieces of what appeared to be a white cloth robe, all whipped wildly around him like the torment itself. I was thinking, what does it mean? Clearly, this meant something but what? I looked into the wretched old man’s eyes closer then, recognizing myself instantly and alarmingly. My god, that is me! I cannot describe the mixture of alarm and amazement at discovering that this was a vision of myself. Then I saw that his eyes – my eyes - were not wretched at all but absolutely blazing with defiance – no other word for it, blazing defiance. His body – my body – frail as it was stood firm and seemed to be saying, “fuck you,” to hell itself. Bony ribs protruded from an emaciated chest. I really couldn’t believe that it was me in this vision. I can’t tell you what a heart stopping effect this “vision” had upon me – truly startling. It was as if hell itself had pulled out all stops to destroy this old man – me! – but he – “I“ - stood implacably against it. I vaguely wondered if this was another effort – like the sword comment – to destroy my ego.
Pretty much just as I realized that the defiant old man was my self, I seemed instantly transported to yet another reality. This time there was no spiraling upward, just snap and there I was. Now work with me here because this part is really, really weird. Just to describe what happened I have to take some poetic license. While the mushroom “voice” is very succinct and direct, the mushroom realities can be pretty outrageously complicated. For instance, when I say that the Blue Whale is standing at my side, I on his right side, I don’t mean that a one hundred foot long, two hundred ton whale is “standing” next to me. Only that in fact was what happened in this part of the experience. I guess that in exactly the same way that my own body was not “there” but curled up on a bed next to Jana’, neither was the Whales body there – WE were there, our eternal selves, the Whale and I.
We were in a dreamlike place – vague, grey and white. It kind of reminded me of one of the old cheesy star trek sets. We “stood” upon this vague grey/white fog below two men who stood above us upon what appeared to be a much more substantial white, stone platform. These two men were obviously the “healers” to whom the Blue Whale had brought me, amazingly performing his prime function as a power animal in guiding me in this spiritual realm. Here is where you have to again suspend disbelief for a moment - the two “healers” were what I can only describe as old CEO’s. I guess you could say that these two old, Anglo-Saxon men, both balding, both – for some reason – obviously corporate-status-quo types seemed to me to be masquerading as healers. I knew the mushrooms had a very strange sense of humor and wondered if this were not some kind of irony. I did not have the sense that they were retired doctors, but retired CEOs – the symbolic embodiment of what could be called my nemesis if there ever was one! They were the exact antithesis of what I expected. I couldn’t have been more incredulous if they had been the Olson twins.
Evidently, the old bald dudes in what I thought of as just ridiculous white robes thought considerably less of me than I thought of them. I was completely disoriented within the experience, thinking, “what the hell is this?” One of them said to the Blue Whale “standing” to my left, “is this what we are expected to work with now?” in a way of talking over me which disregarded my being most profoundly. The Blue Whale shrugged, as if to say, “what can I say, he’s with me.” There was no doubt that these two would have nothing to do with me if it were not for the Blue Whale. There was a look of disgust on their faces that I couldn’t even begin to articulate. The two were so indistinguishable that they seemed to function as one and I had little sense of their separate identities, to the point where I cannot recall the one or the other specifically. I was completely aware of the absurdity of all of this and was just dumbfounded. After a pregnant pause in which I perceived that somehow the Blue Whale had considerable pull with these two, whatever they were, and that they seemed to feel compelled to help the Blue Whale, if not me or Jana’, they both sighed disgustedly. “So be it,” the one nearest me said (on my “right”). He made three wide, dramatic circles with his right hand, reminding me of when Ed would introduce Johnny, that same kind of “flourish”, and when his arm came around for the third time, I felt a jolt of energy jump from my chest exactly where Jana’s hand still rested and into her hand.
Instantly I “woke” up, lying on my side looking at the red dials of the clock: 9:05. It seems that I was hardly out at all. That surprised me. I had really expected to be out a couple hours. It was definitely over.
Jana’ was still asleep. The dogs were asleep. I was perfectly lucid. I lay still for a while just running it back in my mind. Finally I stood up. Man that was weird. I felt fine, a little tired. It was an hour and fifteen minutes since I finished eating the six grams and I had no problem walking at all. I put my right index finger to my right temple and pressed gently as I closed my eyes– a wash of color exploded, wow! It’s working still, I whispered, smiling. I opened my eyes and again felt totally lucid. Man this was weird. I knew that I could lie back down and trip out or just stay up and trip out but I just choose not to – I had made a commitment to use these mushrooms to heal Jana’ not to trip myself. I did choose to go back to the 7-11 for another cup of coffee. I had felt that jolt of electric energy seemingly bounce from my chest into Jana’s hand after the third flourish of the “healer’s arm” and this seemed to indicate some kind of success. I had to resist the urge to wake her up and ask if she felt better. On the other hand, I was left with a very odd feeling – ominous mixed with befuddlement, maybe. I didn’t at all feel as though what had happened could be characterized as any kind of success. I felt that something was … just somehow wrong … but I couldn’t begin to articulate this feeling. I felt fine walking over and back and immediately wrote up the experience enjoying my coffee while Jana’ and the dogs still slept. It was only 9:30am after all. It was relatively easy to write but I wrote in the form of a totally loose prose poem.
At some point it came to me that at exactly two hours after finishing the six grams, which would be 10:05am, I should put a drop of my own blood in a teaspoon of yogurt and have Jana’ eat it. I felt that this would give her access to the Blue Whale as a power animal if she wanted it at some point but can’t tell you why I thought this. It would also give Jana’ an inoculation of psilocybin, even if only symbolic with no potential for intoxication of course from such a minute amount. This concept of inoculation seemed very important. It seemed crucial. From about 9:40 until 10:05 I obsessed over the two hour time frame, sensing that within this entire obsession was a message about time, somehow interpreting it as meaning that the healing would take time. Something about the skull masks seemed to refer to time also. It definitely was not what I wanted to hear. It was a long twenty five minutes. I then found that I have a natural resistance to self mutilation. I finally managed to get a drop of blood just in time and convinced my sleepy wife to wake up to a teaspoon of plain yogurt topped with a bright, red drop of my psilocybin blood at exactly 10:05am. What a lucky woman she is. At this time it was hard for her to eat anything at all but she sipped this tiny amount of yogurt with a little protest and went promptly back to sleep and the healing experience, such as it was, ended.
I suffered no ill effects, no hyper mania, from this large dose.

posted in Psychonauts - 1 reply

Night Shade (D))

polka dot — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:02:37 GMT

, Anyone have a check list or link site, or book, recommended
for the diet and substances to refrain from in preparation for
(D )) experiment,

posted in Psychonauts - 4 replies