One Time When I Took Mushrooms....

I believe mushrooms, ayahuasca and lsd are medicines because they have the power to put you in touch with parts of yourself that you didn't before understand. I believe bad trips are "simply" people confronting feelings and memories they've left buried. Mushrooms, like ayahuasca and lsd, are medicinal because leaving emotions buried our entire lives leads to health issues like cancer, stroke and heart attack. I also believe one of our biggest responsibilities during our time on Earth is to grow by learning more about how to give ourselves joy and follow our passion. To do that we must discover and confront the fears and false beliefs that (we use to) hold us back.

I don't take psychedelics very often. Probably only 5 times in my life. I was frankly scared to do it until I was 25 and in the Amazon in Peru with a shaman who could administer the medicine in a little hut in the middle of nowhere. I'll write about that another time. For now, I want to write about why I've liked tripping and share something I wrote once during a trip in 2016.

(This is me in Peru in 2005 with my oldest daughters' father and his aunt and uncle, who knew the shaman.)

I've liked taking mushrooms because it seems I become "more myself" when I do. I'm a channel so when I take something that raises my vibration, like mushrooms do, then every trivial thought melts away and I know I'm more in touch with the core of who I am. Every thought is from some higher and wiser place.

I wrote what I'm about to share a year and a half ago but, at the time, I went into the trip with a few questions that I wanted more insight for. I wanted to know how to cultivate more joy, how to be a better parent and how much healing I had left to do since I'd been working on myself for nearly a year at this point, trying to eliminate childhood conditioning. I was using a process called "Cutting The Ties That Bind" by Phyllis Krystal, if you're curious.

I decided to write down whatever came to me so that I wouldn't forget it. What came through was pretty insightful because at the time I wasn't familiar with most of the advice and thought I had been close-to-finished with healing my issues. Now, 1.5 years later, I can see how accurate this message was:

"There is much left to heal I’m sorry to tell you. Your misery loves company. Craves company so it searches for it in the lost selves of others. You simply need to be with your misery and you will no longer attract it in your companions. Their experience longs for validation just as yours does. If you validate your own suffering you'll close the vacuum and fulfill that purpose. It’s hard to love the miserable. You have to be with it. Meet it. Experience it and own it. That’s how to validate it. You have to go in it (feel it). I have found my misery. And it is very hard to sit with. I have to keep breathing. Remind myself to breath because it is so heavy that it’s easy to forget to do so. It is millennia old and I can release it ….I can ease it...by meeting it and loving it. Right now I have to choose it. Do I love myself as miserable and blocked up as I feel? Do I need another to come in and witness my misery or can I see it in myself and sit with myself in loving council? I can.

You’ll read this later and it will touch you then. You sense it now but the impact is for later. I love you. You are so precious and I thank you for working on yourself. It's a lot to bear and you do not do it alone. I feel it with you. Because you are never alone. So breath deep in those moments...and do not look for love from your lover. You are meant to feel it (love) from within. Your happiness is there. Feel it for a while like that. The vacuum is closed that way. The suffering has met it’s match...which was only ever your loving attention. All suffering is that way. Just accept it with your attention to it. Love it...don’t try to trump someone else's suffering with your own suffering. See and meet it now. You can close the loop for him. For others. Just be with it baby. I’m so sorry you had to feel it. And you do today. I feel it with you and hold you in your beauty. When you finish processing that. Hold others in their beauty...with their pain. "

Obviously it's not written in the most coherent/eloquent of states but some profound beauty is clearly shining through. It's hard to remind yourself to sit with pain when it screams for your attention but I'm getting better at reminding myself to do so. By doing this, that part of us eventually becomes satisfied that it will not be abandoned and then confidence and happiness can come through more powerfully. Sometimes (most times) sitting with pain means you have to let yourself cry and express anger. Always do this when you can. It is healing. My teacher told me running or beating the couch is a safe way to release anger. Unexpressed anger gets buried and creates all kinds of problems with your elimination system.

Thank you for enjoying these insights with me! Would love to hear your opinions or experiences. 😊