Source: The UK Psychedelic Society.

On September 28th it was a year after the psilocybin ceremony. I celebrated by rewatching The Mind Explorers, buying an LED mushroom lamp from Ikea 🙂  and thinking about what continue learning a year on after that amazing, life changing experience.

I did have a powerful spiritual experience, although it is known that whatever is on your mind before the ceremony and whatever setting you are doing it in influences the experience, and I was doing it in a guided ceremony with spiritual elements. Everything that I have seen on that day – have I looked beyond the veil and seen the truth or was it just the product of my mind? I don’t know. Nobody does.

The experience itself was not easy and not anything I would want to repeat any time soon. I was partially paralysed and wept through most of it (the trip lasted for 5-6 hours), both from sadness and joy. Mind you, I did not know as much as I do now about psilocybin. This is why they recommend researching it thoroughly in advance – it prepares you for what to expect and reduces the chance of a bad trip. 

In the beginning I experienced both dying and being out of my body which is cool in retrospect, but terrifying at the time. Being sucked into the darkness with hellish shapes and sounds while desperately trying to stop it and crying out for help was very scary. It taught me to let go. It took a while but I did eventually surrender and let the void devour me. 

Once I let go, I went to stage #2 – I saw a two dimensional plane, like a massive canvas, where neither time nor space existed. All universal and human history existed there, both past, present and future. I saw the creation of the universe. I saw the duality of our existence – I learned that Christ and Hitler, Buddha and Stalin, good and evil are the two sides of the same, each of us has both good and evil in us. I felt incredible compassion for all human beings. I felt the weight of humanity’s suffering. I saw that we create both good and evil and the law of dharma means one can not exist without the other and so any act of creation will always lead to both. 

Creation for the sake of creation. I remember questioning – why do we do it then? Why not stop the dharmic wheel, the suffering and plunge back into nothingness? I was told that this is all we’ve got – creation for the sake of creation or nothing. If we stop creating, we stop existing. We go back to the darkness. And so the wheel goes…

I then felt unity and oneness with everyone and everything and had a strange experience where I was in the minds of other people around me – I saw them, the real them, I saw their thoughts and I knew that we were not separate. How can you ever hate or even dislike someone after learning this? I remind myself of this when I run into someone negative or annoying. Krishna in drag as Ram Dass puts it.

After I received these teachings and teachings pertaining to my personal life (namely around love addiction), I moved to stage #3. This is where I saw the famous white light that people see as they die. I felt an all encompassing love, to myself, others, the world, the universe. The universal love. I wept with awe, joy, I felt warm, loved, held and I merged with the light. My whole experience could be summed up as a triptych – the void, the creation and the light.

So what have I learned, how have I changed and what effects do I see a year later? 

1. I have more compassion for myself and others. I feel less separate and more loving. It’s easier to see the light in others and myself.
2. It is easier to get out of my head. I feel more free from my mind. 
3. I acquired a therapist like voice. It is brutally honest and very insightful. 
4. I am more still: knowing and being rather than doing and becoming. 
5. I live more from my soul and less from ego. I feel more than I know. 
6. I feel alive more. I feel joy more. My life is more purposeful. 
7. I feel the divine in everything. 
8. I am less afraid. Especially to act. 
9. I am more creative. 
10. My love addiction is better.

Below are my notes and one of the poems I wrote immediately after the experience.

***

I cried my eyes out

For all the beauty we created

And all the pain we created.

I was Hitler and Buddha.

I created them all.

I created you all.

And I wept at what joy

And what horrors

We can create.

The creator! You!

When you can create anything,

Choose light.

Choose love.

Bring us home with you.

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