Several years ago, at the peak of my “seeking an answer” days, I brewed up a mighty interest in psychedelics. With the eruption of information surrounding their potential to reset the brain and heal painful patterns that had proved to be immune to “by the book” methods, I found myself both terrified and utterly enthralled by the resurgence of hallucinogens. Something within me had very much heard the calling of these mysterious guides, but I wasn’t about to go to a festival and down a couple mushrooms that had been living in the shirt pocket of a guy named Cedar. The very neuroticism I was hoping to remedy through altered states caused me to maneuver this path in the most neurotic way possible. I purchased what might as well be called "The Starter’s Guide to Psychedelics”, How to Change your Mind by Michael Pollen, and began insisting that everyone around me get it too. I scoured the internet for success stories and reassurance that I wasn’t marching towards my own doom. I researched the effects on the body, what and when to eat prior to/after a trip, and how to maximize my integration process. With the intensity of a journalist in pursuit of a hard-hitting story, I questioned others who had first hand experiences and basked in secret delight if any of them alluded to some sort of awakening. I fixated on the promising phenomenon that many of us lifetime seekers latch onto- ego death- and fantasized about the moment my usual consciousness would disintegrate and be overtaken by the unclouded eyes of enlightenment.
I felt adamant that I choose the right kind of someone to trip alongside me and (intensely) invited certain people to fill that role. After one (mostly) failed attempt with what proved to be some pretty weak mushrooms, I made an even more thorough plan for my first big psilocybin journey. I enlisted a friend who had also been experimenting with altered states and told me about a pretty incredible occurrence from his own dance with these magical fungi. In the midst of his journey, he sat down in front of his typewriter (as the Lord of Vancouverites in Fisherman Beanies commands one have) and began to write a children’s story that seemed to pour out of him as naturally as one fills their glass from a pitcher of water. Upon reviewing his words, he realized that not only was it a very whimsical and coherent story, it also RHYMED, which had been completely unintentional. Hearing this gave me heightened expectations surrounding what could be channeled through my own experience. I kept a pen and a paper nearby, ensuring I had a canvas on which to pour the very profound insights I would surely be having. I insisted on listening to a playlist that would both lift me up and pull me deeper into the mystical realm without being overwhelming. I measured out a precise measurement of mushrooms (researched, of course) on a tiny scale and made them into a tea, which I sipped with awareness and ritualistic intent. My friend set himself up to be a supportive but non intrusive presence by sitting nearby on the floor, writing songs and drinking tea. I laid in his bed, and waited.
The most nerve-wracking part of the entire experience occurred in this period of releasing my rigid grip on the steering wheel and allowing myself to be transported into the great unknown. There was a building of giddy anxiety as new energy began swimming through me and I felt myself being pulled into its currents. This transitional phase was short lived, however, and I soon found myself engulfed in a state that tossed aside every ounce of worry that had led to this point. It was as though I had tuned into the purest frequency of all that is and detached from the layers of forgetting and conditioning inherent to being human.
I put my headphones in and closed my eyes, allowing myself to melt into my inner landscape. I was met by many playful entities made of colour and light who existed as inhabitants of this world as well as the makings of the world itself. They swirled in a display of motion that formed a continuously shifting, glowing reality. Although I was never able to make out an individual being or see anything that resembled a body, I sensed the presence of many vessels of consciousness that were also one. I distinctly remember them being “whispery” spirits, which is something many seem to report in their interactions with magic mushrooms. They prominently possessed the energy of the trickster and seemed to take immense pleasure in benevolent teasing and putting on a bit of a show. Part of me was still waiting for the big moment where my known reality would be decimated by truth and I’d come nose to nose with God. I kept thinking something like “but where is the main guy?” I sensed that the light beings had the answers but simply giggled in response to my urgency and continued on in their seamless flow of world building. After the light beings faded away, this performance was punctuated by the projection of a jester, which could not have been a more direct visual encounter with the trickster.
I opened my eyes and came back to the physical world for a while, and for the most part everything looked as it always had with the exception of huge, googly eyes that had been placed on my friend and were rolling around in all directions. I spent a fair amount of time looking at myself in the mirror, and although my features hadn’t actually changed, my perception of them had. I became very excited upon the revelation that I looked SO ELVISH. At this point I also realized I had been overtaken by the sense that the all-knowing universe was smirking at my frenzied commitment to "getting it all right.” Through an avenue of communication that didn’t require words, I was being told that none of it really mattered at all. After eating some form of fruit and nut butter and giggling with my friend for a while, I felt the pull to once again go inward and returned to bed.
I merged back into the place that existed beyond the confines of my body yet all at once deeper inside myself. There had been a shift in tone, and I worked through some more serious content, but at no point did I feel afraid or unsupported. Nearing the end of the trip, the spaciousness and ease I’d been welcomed into began to fade, and I felt a building discomfort as I returned to my familiar state. I started to experience an insidious commotion of mental activity that added to the overall unrest. At first, I was unsure of what was going on and remember thinking “what is this narration?” I then realized it was the thinking track that is constantly being broadcasted within our own personal station. It was rumination, analysis, and manic attempts to figure out and control. Returning to a body that had been locked into survival mode for so many years was not an easy transition, but clearly showed all the layers of pain and discomfort I had come to accept as normal. One of the most important takeaways from the entire experience was that I now knew, or perhaps had remembered, another way of being, one that exists beyond the shackles of stories that keep us small and suffering.
Throughout the years of growing awareness surrounding these patterns, I have been able to build a layer of separation between myself and the insufferable tyrant of mind, who I now realize is ultimately just trying to protect me. When I catch myself spinning out and getting caught up in the affliction of being human, I often summon the trickster to pull me out. In the midst of particularly persistent periods of pain, I sometimes raise my hand to the sky and give a firm middle finger to the Gods as if to say “Hey fuckers, I know you’re there”, and take satisfaction in imagining their amusement. For those pursuing a spiritual path (although in reality, all of life is spiritual), it can be so easy to get caught up in pressure to do all the “right” things while contorting oneself into poses that leave little room to breathe, let alone fall. After my visit to land of whispery light beings, I had a look at the paper I laid out for myself, and what I saw in front of me was not a whimsical story, nor was it the poetic prose of a freshly awakened artist. The paper remained almost entirely blank with the exception of the phrase “None of it fucking matters MEGAN”, and even as I write it now I can feel the reverberations of the trickster’s laugh humming through me in invitation to drop all the striving and let myself be messy in the mystery.
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