Shrooms Report #2

[RossE]

Good morning all.

A couple of days ago I did my second mushroom trip, my first one was back in February, which I wrote a long report about. I've linked it here if you want to see a comparison: https://www.actualized.org/forum/topic/8405-shrooms-report/.

I went into the trip with a lot of intentions, the overarching one being to have insights about life. More specifically, I was after the experience of emptiness, God; to have insights into my beliefs, my meditation practice, my career, family and relationships; how I can be a better person; what ego is; what suffering is and how I create it; the usefulness of mathematics and the justification for having such a thing as maths at all: I'm going to be a maths teacher so it'd be pretty interesting for me to get a deep understanding of its validity in our world.

This trip was not as enjoyable as my first trip - there were less "meditative" effects and my mind was pretty chaotic for most of it, which has its own benefits I guess, but I'd have prefered a calm mind. I'll start with what happened in the trip then go to the insights I got, of which there are many. I should point out that even after a day of mainly contemplating and writing down what I was experiencing, I can't really describe the most intense parts. The insights I write are what came to me both at the time and just after I came "back"- some of them may seem a little far fetched but I'm just going to say it how I see it, and saw it at the time.

I ate 1.7g of dried mushrooms on an empty stomach, at about 5:15pm. I'd meditated for 90 minutes that day and walked to my friends mainly through lovely scenery so I was in a good place. There was only me and my friend there and he was pretty quiet in his room all night. About 15 minutes after I took them I went through to a bedroom to be alone for the trip. Around 30 minutes later, my senses began to heighten a little and my eyes felt bigger, some objects in the room were more pronounced and there was a silence beyond all my sensory fields. Despite all I was hearing, seeing etc, I realised there is much more "room" in those fields for more items, and I sensed the place in which those items would arise in - I'd call this the silence. Around 45 minutes after dropping, the room became warped and I felt slightly sick, but I knew it wasn't going to lead to vomiting and it didn't. The last thing I wrote down at this point was at 6:12pm when I wrote "When you say outside world, what exactly are you talking about? Which outside world? This is the world you are in." 

The shrooms stepped up a level. I remember looking at the goals I had written down for the trip and thinking how silly I was, how immature the person that had written these goals down was. There was a feeling of "after this trip I'm going to finally grow up, I'm going to finally stop with the bullshit." This created a kind of division within me, and brought out a cynical side to me. The Cynic really took charge for a while as I was sitting there - I was questioning the government, the education system, food, social media, basically all systems in Western society, and dismissing them all. I was picturing everyone I knew as being bought into an invisible "system" which didn't really exist - it was a kind of consensus, an agreement to do things a certain way, i.e. have a 9-5, get married, raise kids, wear clothes, believe what's in the news, and so on. I realised that this is arbitrary and the repetition of these patterns have established the system as a solidified force; the belief in the system reinforces the system and brings more people into it, like a positive feedback loop. I have seen this in everyday life but here it was taken to a new level, like I'd arrived in my country for the first time ever and everyone was possessed. Why it was so poignant is because I realised we are all just animals experiencing a game, there is no reason to have the everyday fears we have, to believe that things must be done a certain way. If you've read Don Miguel Ruiz's book The Four Agreements, it felt similar to the dream of the planet he describes. I guess the very important thing I can take from that is to use the system when necessary, but not to be attached to it, or to take ANYTHING that the system encourages as the truth.

I think just after this, the shrooms really hit me hard. At around 7pm I remember sitting in a chair, looking out the window and slowly losing my grip on reality. I didn't know what my thoughts were referring to. I'd have many thoughts about things, be it my friends, my hobbies, my personal development, etc, and I'd realise that none of those things were in direct experience, and I didn't know what they were actually referring to in reality. My hands looked superhuman size at times and the "twisted" shroom effect that you hear people referring to was really there - I'm not sure how to describe this other than it fucks with your memories and perception of reality - noises seemed in slow motion and the room started moving and warping, in addition to my thoughts being made to look totally meaningless. I realised I didn't know what was going on - what is this game we are experiencing? Where is everything? What are we here for? I got up from
my chair and started waving my arms around in the air saying "I... I just dunno... I dunno anymore" and laughing in disbelief.

I went through to my friends room to ask him what was going on and he just shrugged his shoulders - he looked very fat and lazy, kind of like a walrus. I stood in his room for about half an hour, looking out the window at the trees, my city's castle, the buildings, the cars, the people walking, the sky and realising I had no idea what was going on. What is everyone doing? Where are they going? In addition I began to lose my grip of time - I could tell the time on my watch but couldn't calculate how long ago I had taken the shrooms, how long I had been tripping, how long I had left. Time seemed like an agreement, similar to the system I mentioned earlier. I remember wondering if my friend was judging me for all this - then realising that THAT was just a story in my head, and immediately I didn't care what he thought.

I went back through to the other room and there was more confusion, more losing track. Except now things really began to crumble. I started to lose my balance, and realised that gravity is an illusion, a limitation placed upon the game we are part of. I looked out the window and realised that I couldn't go anywhere if I jumped. This is an extremely difficult thing to describe, but if you've had the experience you'll know what I'm talking about. All that really remained as a concrete thing was my visual field and my body sensations, everything else went out the window. 
My ego began to really cling on, it grasped for anything that it could - science, my friends, spiritual teachings, but those were being ripped away from me. They were just thoughts, just a blip in my sensory field which meant nothing. Which of them was right? None of them are right. They're just stories. The rug of my life was being pulled away. I began realising a lot of energy - through hysterical laughter, rolling around on the floor frantically, and crying. 

I didn't really know who I was at this point. I didn't know what life was. I was lying on my friends floor and knew that my ego was being torn away from me. I just closed my eyes and took it.

What does ego death feel like? Gravity didn't exist. Time didn't exist. The world didn't exist. All that was there was a pure field of potential, a pure void of energy. I realised that all of existence was this, just a field, just a potential for something to happen. You may call this God, if you want. I was certainly shouting "oh my God" over and over. I wouldn't say it felt infinite to me, just that there was nothing there at all.
How long this lasted, I don't know. It was like being in a soup, except the soup is a possibility of existence. The mind kept coming up with things, scenarios, people, which would stay for a short time then just dissolve away into the void, the soup. I realised that I create my own reality - my projections, my ideas, my thoughts. It creates the characters in my life, the places in my life, it even creates me every second. I agree to these ideas and they come forth. I saw history
flash before my eyes - Einstein, the Romans, the Beatles, Newton, and so on -  and realised they were all a manifestation of the same energy which I'm experiencing now, they're all actors.

The ego came back as I was lying on the floor. It felt like being re-born again. Time came back, gravity came back, visual field reappeared and everything felt solid again. My body reappeared, as if from nowhere. It was crazy - I feel a bit reluctant to say that I saw how I was created, but that's how it felt. I saw how self and world are created from basically nothing, put here by God to experience itself as something other than what it really is. I saw how all the characters created in my life are perpetuated by the ideas and memories I have of them.

I was pretty much back from the trip now and the shrooms had worn off. It was 10pm and I'd no real idea where the past two hours has gone. Physically, I felt like I'd just gone 12 rounds with Mike Tyson. I was just done, I felt foolish for messing with God, for all the ideas I have, for all the beliefs and baggage I carry around every day. It was an extremely humbling experience. Just then I went and got my phone and started apologising to all my friends, I felt a lot of gratitude for them and realised that all the poison I'd sent them, all the ideas I had of them, all the judgements I make about them are just wrong - so, so wrong.

I have a lot of insights from this - about God, and some personal ones. I'll stick to the ones about God. God is doing its best to remain anonymous, to experience itself as separation. It created us all. The patterns we have - in society, in our beliefs, our emotions, in our ambitions, in our approach to life - all helps to perpetuate this separation. We all conveniently forgot some time ago, probably in our first two years of life, that we are the empty source. It couldn't be any other way. Anything good we do in our lives directly serves God. Be it getting married and having family, having a business, exercising, curing illness, it all helps to build up our identity, keep the separation running, and to continue the separation for much, much longer. I now have a more sympathetic view to the social systems we have. Even the "negative" ones - fast food, war, extreme nationalism/patriotism - serve God: they enforce and reinforce the apparent separation between us all.
The ego IS separation, the ego IS life! It is created so that God can experience itself through separation! When you are re-born and you see the structure of the ego emerge, this becomes quite obvious. And it's not something that needs tobe bragged about, it's not some divine understanding, it may seem that way. You can only fear death if you mistake your true nature for that of a permanent body that will rot and decay eventually. The truth is that you will return to the
source, to that same place we all go, and where we came from at birth.

It was a very heavy trip, I may abstain from shrooms for a while! When I came back, I was just crying, I didn't know what to say, I just sat and contemplated what the fuck I had experienced. I was surprised it got this deep from 1.7g, but I still recommend shrooms highly. Even if the trip itself is tough, you will most likely still have a lot of insights.

If you got this far, thanks for reading. 

[Leo Gura]

All pretty much on point. That's the truth of things.

You had a rather deep trip for just 1.7g of mushrooms. You did a lot of heavy existential probing here, so it must have been quite overwhelming. In future trips, you can spend more time focusing on individual facets so you can get a better grasp of each one.

Shrooms are quite twisted. Hard to really understand things fully on them. Other substances like AL-LAD are clearer and they don't screw with your memory as much as shrooms do.

You have yet to glimpse the full magnitude of God/void as Absolute Infinity. That will be quite the thing to glimpse.

Welcome to real spirituality. The portal has opened.

[RossE]

@Leo Gura Yeah, I did not expect to go that deep at all, it kicked my ass! I've heard that these sort of experiences happen on 5g+ doses. It was very difficult to understand, which is why I claimed that my insights weren't necessarily true or I didn't necessarily believe in them, because the experience was semi-distorted by the thoughts I was having. Thanks for the tips.

How did you feel for the next couple of days after your first breakthrough 5-Meo trip? Yesterday and today I've felt very devoid of energy and have slept a lot, not done many of my usual activities.

[Martin123]

4 hours ago, RossE said:

@Leo Gura Yeah, I did not expect to go that deep at all, it kicked my ass! I've heard that these sort of experiences happen on 5g+ doses. It was very difficult to understand, which is why I claimed that my insights weren't necessarily true or I didn't necessarily believe in them, because the experience was semi-distorted by the thoughts I was having. Thanks for the tips.

How did you feel for the next couple of days after your first breakthrough 5-Meo trip? Yesterday and today I've felt very devoid of energy and have slept a lot, not done many of my usual activities.

Youre integrating a lot of energy. Take it easy for as long as you need. After my first shroom trip I spent almost 2 weeks in bed mostly and the integration still isnt over just yet.

[RossE]

@Martin123 Thanks for the advice. I don't have much on right now so I'll be taking it easy as you say 

What was yours like?

[Martin123]

@RossE look up tripreport on my profile

[Leo Gura]

@RossE Didn't affect my energy like that.

[Truth]

10 hours ago, RossE said:

God is doing its best to remain anonymous, to experience itself as separation.

Love this quote.

I have yet to try shrooms but the trip reports people have on them is always so fascinating and inspiring to me. 

[Leo Gura]

10 hours ago, RossE said:

I went through to my friends room to ask him what was going on and he just shrugged his shoulders - he looked very fat and lazy, kind of like a walrus.

This! *thumbs up*

Ahhhhh.... The non-self-actualizing walrii of the world

[RossE]

@Leo Gura Hahaha yeah fuck the walrii! He's not even fat in the slightest, I must really have been tripping hard.

@Truth It is a cool quote I guess, but it's not as sexy and spiritual as it sounds. Look around at all the systems you have in culture. Almost all of them propagate separation if you look close. They run on separation because that's how humans experience life. Hell, most of my life runs on separation. When you experience the truth of God, the separation becomes obvious. It couldn't be any other way.

You really should do shrooms if you can get your hands on them and you're willing to do a solo trip with no distractions and clear objectives. In those circumstances I can't see how a person into spirituality won't have insights over a 5/6 hour trip.

Edited June 3, 2017 by RossE

[RossE]

@Outer My explanation, from my experience of shrooms, about you forgetting how to use money, is that you see through the artificial systems that are created around you. They seem ridiculous.

You see things as they are: for example, a person handing another person some paper with some marks on it. But in our everyday experience, because of our programming, we create a whole concept, an emotional and psychological narrative about money - how much money we have, how much we need to have, how much we want, how much this costs, how everything is too expensive etc etc etc. A lot of this is probably subconscious because we've used it for so long.

Of course, the amount of concepts created and energy you attach to them depends on how developed you are. Shrooms rips the most basic concepts away from me, maybe it's the same for you! It sounds like it from your description.

[Leo Gura]

@RossE Yeah, I've had that experience on shrooms where I look at a clock and laugh because the notion of time is so ridiculous. It's just a spinning thingy!