I was just reading a blog posted by The !n(tro)verted Yogi about his first experience with mushrooms (the magic kind) and it got me thinking back on my experiences with them.  These days, for the record, I am completely sober.  I don’t even smoke weed anymore and I have no desire to.

When I was younger, I did a lot of things that weren’t exactly legal like shrooms or LSD.  The day after my friends would talk about their epic experiences while I was left pondering WTF about mine.

Anyways, I was reading about his and it brought me back to mine.  I left a comment on his blog about his but it dawned on me, from what I wrote that I didn’t see until after I read it back to myself… enlightenment.

I know what you’re talking about. I had done them several times in my youth. All of the experience ls were different ranging from being completely lost in a strange place with spooky trees and a road that never seemed to end.
An epic experience where I became one in the Universe and the blackness of the void was my backdrop and I was the sole musician, the writer. In that experience I was a vivid frog with fongers that could reach all the way down the frets of my guitar and I played like a master of the Universe itself. I could see the music (vibrations) leap off my guitar and float around. -I am pretty sure that in reality It was a mess but the experience was amazing.
In another I had an emotional breakdown amd found looking at myself in the mirror was depressing and butterflies were swarming but they weren’t beautiful.
Again, in another I was free. I climbed walls, could see the ocean stand still but the flowers were turning black.
In every experience though, a couole things were always present. I had to constantly remind myself to breathe. I could not stand the sound of my voice and at some point, the ONLY place I wanted to be was sober.
I have also done deprivation tanks. I ised to work at a medical message fascility that had them. They weren’t really remarkable but at the least, relaxing since I am a tense person all the time.
I have used binereal beats to enhance meditation. One note on that, if you do fall into deep meditation using those, be careful of the ones you use. For whatever reason, I used one and it was anxiety inducing even though it was labeled for relaxation but then with others, the experience was “soaring”. Past life regression. Apparently I was an eagle.
I look forward to hearing about your experiences. I have always wanted to go to mediation camp sort of thing but I cannot be away from my kids for that long.
You’re journey sounds like it will be very interesting. Also, once I wrote a whole thessis on the creation of the universe (i know, i was out of my mind) and by the end of it, my enlightenment was that it was easy to understand how some people can become insane and in the future, with my thoughts, I MUST be cautious so that I don’t fall down the rabit hole.

Spelling and grammar errors aside because I was replying from my phone (excuses, I know but still truth),  Illumination was there but I didn’t see it until now.

My truths, what I know but didn’t recognize then: I have a dark side.  I see death as part of life.  It’s obvious but sometimes I don’t realize how much of myself I give away in such brief thoughts.  To know me well enough, you’d know how beautiful I think that life is.  But what I don’t really talk about is how terrified of dying I actually am and how sad it really makes me.

I don’t live the full and exciting life that I wish I could.  I don’t even come close.  I don’t even have any friends really.  I have some people I speak a few words with now and then but really, it’s been a long time since I have actually had any pals to hang out with, talk to or have a drink with (the drinking part is actually a good thing though).  Still, it doesn’t matter.  I love life deeply even when it doesn’t treat me very good.

I have spent most of my life telling myself over and over again that it’s okay.  You’ll be okay and you’ll get through this and it will pass.  Give all things time and the pain will subside and you’ll be happy again.  I just have to wait it out.

Still, even in those times there’s always something worth holding on to.  Maybe it’s a rainbow, a butterfly, a flower, something my kid’s said, a hug from my husband.  All those little things ARE the BIG things to me.  I have the most interesting thoughts (at least to me they are) about the most random of things like the picture of the snail I posted yesterday.  Some people think the things I like or write about are stupid, ignorant and boring.  Okay, MOST people do but just because they do, it doesn’t mean it could stop me from liking what I just seem to like.

I am the writer of my life.  I can write it anyway I want to but the stationary in which we all write is the same.  We are all give a blank slate and what you fill it with is up to you.  Mine looks like a collage.  Others’ look like scripted works all thought out with precision and mastered.  Others are mosaics built upon other’s people’s lives, some are patterns, numbers or just dotted lines all rendering until they reach their final destination; the shredder.  Who knows what comes next but I tell myself, I remind myself that I was neither here nor there before I started filling this sheet but from what I put on it, I know a few things.

Life is a gift.  This one is unique.  I have no idea if it was crafted intentionally by a super daddy (sorry if that sounds offensive) or if we are just God’s illusion, a make up of it’s brain.  All I know is that it’s not unreasonable to believe that some sort of ‘life’ will happen again and we weren’t give just one sheet.  We are an anthology.

There is a voice inside my head and sometimes I am not sure who is who.  Of course, I have to be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole when it comes to this line of thought BUT it’s how I see it.  There isn’t just one person speaking inside my head but at least three.

There is the one who listens to it.  I am pretty sure that is me.  There is the one who issues the random thoughts that pop up in my brain.  Because, I am not even sure why I have such random thoughts, I insist that there is another person in there.  And there is the one who knows these things.

I had this dream once where I was two people at the same time.  Words can do it no justice but it was like this.  I was sitting across from myself who was looking at myself both at the same time (like a third).  The self across from me was in the hanged man position like you’d see on a classic tarot deck.  I was sitting cross legged across from me.

In my mind, I could hear myself speaking from both places knowing fully that I was in two places at once. Like telepathy.  When I woke up the space between my eyes was searing with pain.  It wasn’t just a dull ache from a headache, it was on fire almost like a brain freeze and I wondered if THAT was what people were talking about when they talk about the 3rd EYE.

Still, it brings me back to something that happened while I was not on any drugs.  What some call a vision.  When I hear of it happening to other people, I wonder how much of it could be true.  But because it happened to me, I can understand why it is so hard to differentiate between real and not real because the experience was real but other’s will tell me it is not possible.  However one decides to analyze it is up to them but for those who have had it happen, it feels or felt tangibly real.

For whatever reason it happened, I saw this Eagle or something like it.  It was massive.  Bigger than a jumbo jet and quite like silent wind, something you can feel if you’re listening.  Because, it’s hard to describe I drew it up.

And that’s about as close as I can get to describing what I had seen.  After this, I was changed.  People talk about these experiences changing them in some way and it happened that way for me as well.

I tried to come up with an explanation for it and temporary insanity is the best I can do but even if I did go loco for a minute, it doesn’t change the way it effected me after.  A few months later after I stopped shaking.  Yes, the experience shook me to the core because as beautiful as it was, to see something that surreal but not be on drugs and to see it in what seemed to be real everyday life, of course it fucked with me for a bit.

But I changed.  I got sober fast.  I mean, I wasn’t drinking or stoned or anything at that particular moment in time but in that time of my life, I was heading down a road leading somewhere that I really feel like this bird was veering me away from.  Was it divine intervention?  I don’t know but it still worked.

I quit all those things and those bad thoughts and I journeyed new territory in the way I think and feel about myself and when I feel like there is no point to anything or that I am not loved the way I feel like I deserve to be, love as in accepted for exactly who I am and all of my flaws, that something does love me and there is more to life than the terrible suffering we live in daily.

That the most random of things aren’t random at all.  It’s what we do with them, how we think about them that give them meaning.

And all this because I read a post this morning that reminded me that I am the artist of my own life and mine is a collage because there is so much that I find interesting and beautiful, I don’t want to forget them.