3.5g Mushrooms Trip Report + Mystical Experience

[Unleash]

Here I want to give a trip report of my mushroom trip recently, as well as discuss a mystical expeirence I had while completely sober a couple months ago which somewhat ties into this. I'll start with the trip report. 

My Intention was: I want to see the true nature of reality and of myself. Show me where I am wrong about reality, and show me the truth about what reality is, and what I am.

Trip Report: I cooked a vegan pizza and used about 3.5g shrooms, maybe a little more, as topping. I got in my hot tub to relax before they kicked in, and I was in a good mood. When I started feeling the shrooms I was looking at pictures of my family in the room. Particularly I was looking at pictures of myself when I was younger. I remembered how much self hate I had for myself in those days, and I recognized that a lot of that is still deep inside me. I could see that certain behavior patterns, like subtly avoiding interacting with people while going on a walk, are still present. I realized that the younger me was innocent and deserved to be happier, and that I need to heal the child within me and let him go.

Then I started to reflect on my identity. I asked myself if the child inside of me was me. I looked at the picture of my younger self and asked myself if that was me. I came to the conclusion that the child is not me. It was a set of beliefs about myself that I held onto to protect myself. I can let that all go.

I tried to ask myself who is the one that is aware? I watched as I was contemplating and writing words down in my notebook. I tried to become conscious that I was not the one writing the words, but I was the one watching myself writing the words. I was able to realize that to a small extent, but more so I realized that I take for granted the perfection that my body operates with. The fine motor skills needed to write the words coming into my mind. The fact that I can eat and drink basically whatever I want and the body can process it just fine. I realize I take for granted the beauty in all of this, and that in some manner I disrespect this by feeing my body toxins. I eat relatively clean but still, I realized that the way I eat and treat the body is not in full alignment with the beauty of the body, and that I need to take better care of it.

I then realized it's not just the body that I take for granted, that I take for granted reality itself. I realized that I'm blind to the ultimate perfection of reality, although I've been waking up to this more and more. 

I then started to contemplate death. I became aware that I'm going to leave this world with nothing. So what is there to worry about? Fear is irrelevant in the face of death. I might as well enjoy the time between my birth and my death. I might as well spread as much love as possible while I'm here.

Around this time, I started to peak and stopped writing things in my notebook. I just wanted to bliss out and meditate, but I was having a real hard time being still in the mind. I would close my eyes for maybe 10 or 20 sec then open them. There was a feeling as though it was too intense, and also my awareness would go to a rather painful stomach ache when I closed my eyes. Part of that may have just been digesting the shrooms, but I'm sure part of it was the pizza as well. I realized that I'm not normally conscious of how what I eat makes me feel, and that the pizza made me feel like shit. I committed to listen to my body more and to take better care of both my body and psyche.

Once I started to come down a bit I was able to bliss out more, but I still had trouble meditating for any period of time. After relaxing for a bit, I decided to write my dad a letter for father's day, although it was really for both of my parents. I won't share what I wrote there, but they were both very happy with the letter.

As I really started to come down, I listened to some music, and then attempted to go to sleep. It was late, but I was still wide awake. I was feeling rather peaceful, then I became aware of just how much seemingly insignificant events can get stored in the psyche for years and decades. I recently reread the book "The Untethered Soul" by Michael Singer. He talks about samskaras in the book, and how impressions get left on your psyche by any event that you were unable to accept and release in the moment. He talks about how if you open these will come back up. I started to notice some pain in my heart while lying in bed, and remembered an event from over a decade ago in my childhood. When I was younger I used to collect a lot of pokemon cards. I had amassed a collection of binders full of them over the years. I started to get a little older and stopped buying them as much, but I'd still look at them every once in a while, and I still had an attachment to them. One day my mom, probably figuring that I was too old to care about the cards anymore, gave all of them away to a kid without asking me. This hurt me more than I was willing to admit at the time. I never told my mom I was upset about it, and I suppressed that negative energy inside of me. I realized how absurd it was to be holding onto this event for over a decade, and I was able to let it go completely. I then laid there waiting for other things to come up, and some more things did. I actually felt my heart burning, but I knew that it was a good thing and my heart was releasing pain it had stored inside for many years.

I think the biggest insights I got from this trip are that I am taking for granted the perfection of myself and reality, and that I need to take better care of myself and respect reality more. I also realized the importance of cleaning out my psyche - finding a way to let go of my samskaras. Lastly I reaffirmed to myself how important it is to contemplate death on a regular basis. Death is what makes life so precious, and contemplating death can help fear melt away.

Now for the mystical experience. Interestingly, I would say that this mystical experience was definitely more powerful than anything I experienced on this trip, or any trip I've done for that matter, despite being 100% sober. 

I was on a road trip, driving to visit my Aunt next. I was listening to Michael Singer's podcast series for the 2nd time through. In the episode I was listening to he was talking about how you're too lost in your own mind to actually live your life. He explained how you are not actually experiencing the event in front of you, you are experiencing the neurosis of the mind. He gave a couple examples, one of which being that you've never actually driven your car in your entire life, you've been too lost in thought. After he went through those examples, something clicked for me. I paused the episode, and I was brought to tears. It was as if I was actually living for the first time in my life. I was able to see what was going on around me with almost complete detachment from the ego. I just started crying at how beautiful it all was. Everything was just more sublime. After a while I put on some music and it was like I was listening to it for the first time. I became filled with a great sense of gratefullness and joy. For the next couple weeks, I was able to go through solid chunks of time where I was living like this. I was able to go sometimes hours at a time with very few thoughts crossing my mind, just living in the moment, feeling fantastic. It wasn't all day, but I was practicing becoming conscious enough to realize when I lost my awareness and bring myself back to it. After a couple more weeks, I returned home from my road trip. I was still in a great state of mind, however, then I started to get some ego backlash and backsliding. I started to play a little bit of video games, although I was still maintaining a great state of mind at that point. I convinced myself that I should pick up some weed to supercharge my meditations. I've had an addictive personality, especially with weed in the past, but I convinced myself that I was now conscious enough to use it in moderation, just for occasional meditation and sleep. However, this was not the case - pretty quickly I turned into a zombie for a few weeks. I was meditating daily but besides that I wasn't doing much productive. I just started watching youtube and sports all day. I lost that great state of mind that I had due to the dopamine toxification. My recent mushroom trip gave me back some of this amazing awareness, and I'm now more committed to this work than ever, because I see what is possible with this work, even though I'm just scratching the surface. I'm still able to tap into that great state of mind, or mindlessness if you will from time to time, and I'm confident that I can live my life like that permanently if I work hard enough. 

One last thing I was wondering is where do we draw the line between mystical experience and awakening. That mystical expirience was so powerful, and had such a profound impact on me during that time that I was tempted to call it an awakening. However I know that I still have much much deeper to go, so I came to the conclusion that this was just a very powerful mystical experience. 

[Unleash]

I'm not on the forum very often so there's one more interesting experience I'd like to share and get feedback on while I'm here. Early this year in January, I was meditating. I went into a very deep and peaceful state. Then suddenly, I felt like I was on the brink of losing my mind. My heartrate skyrocketed. I tried to calm down and lay in bed, but my heart wouldn't let up. Eventually I went into my parents room and told them I didn't feel right. My dad put his apple watch on me, and my heart rate was upwards of 150 bpm (my resting heart rate is around 55). I tried to relax, but my heart rate kept going up, to upwards of 170 bpm at one point. I thought that I was having a heart attack and that I was going to die, my heart was palputating out of my chest. At one point I accepted my death, that brought me some peace, but still did not lower my heart rate. My parents called the ER, and I was able to calm down a bit when the paramedics arrived, but even after they hooked me upto IVs my heart rate was still above 150. They brought me into the ambulance to go to the ER, and at this point I was pretty sure I'd be okay, and I'd already accepted my death anyway so I was completely calm, yet my heartrate was still high. After a little while in the ER, my heart rate slowed to the point where I could return home. The doctors didn't know what it was but they said they thought I was sick with a virus. I had also just stopped vaping a week earlier, so my mom chalked it up to nicoine withdrawls. Personally I doubt it, I had zero symptoms up till that point. Is it really possible that this was the ego's defense mechanism to awakening? At first I had just accepted the doctor's explanation that I was sick with a virus, however upon thinking about it more, it is quite strange. Before this happening I can distinctly remember going into a very peaceful state in meditation, and then feeling like I was literally about to lose my mind before my heart rate elevated. A few days following this incident, I went to the doctor to get a physical. They said I was completetly healthy, good blood pressure and everything, nothing wrong.

Edited June 17 by Unleash

[Yimpa]

@Unleash did at any point did you realize what is imagining heart rate, the ambulance, Apple Watch, dad, etc?

[Unleash]

@Yimpa I think I did realize it in a sense. I realized that dying wasn't so bad, and just felt that I would merge back into everything in the moment that I accepted my death. I'm not sure that I fully realized what was imagining all of it, but there was actually a great sense of peace when I accepted my death. And the experience definitely gave me a better appreciation for life. I felt lucky to be alive in the days following that, and I still do. 

[Soul Flight]

@Unleash Thanks for the post.

The heart rate could be kundalini awakening. It could be a reaction to your enlightenment work. The subconscious may be revolting. It could be a panic attack. It could be the virus or just some random thing anyone could get. But maybe nothing is random Lol! We are the architects of our own life.