Solo Psilocybin Journey; Beginning of Integration
Embarking on a psychedelic journey, solo, is a big deal. It’s more than a short walk in an urban park. It’s more like a day-long hike in a dense forest, or on an wide open desert. Preparation is the key to being able to face, engage and participate in the journey. AND coming back to share the experience with your beloveds. Set, setting, and intention are the runway. The smoother the runway and longer the runway, the further you can go for a ‘flight’. In other words, for my solo-psychedelic journey last Friday, it wasn’t a helicopter ride. I planned for a cross-hemisphere flight.
Set: Mental State
I’ve been craving a psychedelic journey for over a year. Yet, each time I had an open day, I didn’t feel a context to hold me, so I could let go. Recently, my life has been a slow unwinding and unraveling, and psychedelics can exaggerate that feeling. Last Tuesday during a 2-hour full-body massage (which is like a journey for me) I saw it. I saw my upcoming journey unfold. Imagine a leather-stitched bound journal with its pages fluttering open in a breeze. Another image that kept popping up during my massage was a long dining room table, solid and old. On top of the table was a lace tablecloth ruffling in a breeze. The upcoming Friday, I had wide open and chose to have a 4-gram mushroom journey.
Setting: Physical State
Friday, wide open day in my therapy office, building adjacent to my home.
4 AM, make 4 gm. mushroom tea. 4:44 AM (ish) begin consumption. Blindfolded. Playlist: Bus Ride to Gulu Radio on Spotify.
Wednesday, I bought local lavender buds to spread on my office floor. I imagined being infused with that fresh scent during my journey.
Intention: An Inspiration
Thursday, the day before, abruptly changed my intention, when my neighbors began taking down to the ground 4 large Douglas Fir trees that I see from my office window. We have 2 large Douglas Fir trees, which were a part of that grove, in our backyard.
New Intention:
Make peace with the violence of removing perfectly healthy trees.
The Journey:
Light. Sky. Openings. Down on my knees, in grief, this chasm fills with light. When I finally lift my head and barely open my eyes. Light fills me. Swirling, sparkling, vivid light is all I can see. My lungs, that were wet and heavy, suddenly feel light. My chest lifts. Air comes barrelling into my lungs. Gasping. Gorgeous. Light.
I didn’t want to see the gaping absence, left from 4 trees taken down to the ground. I didn’t want to see the holes and vacancy that used to be a grove of tall standing trees.
I was afraid of what I’d feel. The emptiness. The loss. The void. I kept a blindfold over my eyes. I could hear a flutter. A ping and clang of metal hitting up against something hard. Almost rhythmic.
Brilliant light dazzled at the edges of my eye mask. With a big inhale, I slowly lifted my eye mask. Wings. Every size of wings flapped and fluttered outside my window. Facing East. Sunrays so radiant made me blink my eyes.
Colors and movement so big and powerful tumbled my sense of gravity.
The sounds of TADA-VIOLA crescendoed inside my body. Maybe what it would feel like being inside a drum. Or maybe inside a hollow tube of a windchime.
Reverberations of a Sunrise.
Each color a tone. Each flutter of wing another tone. Each eyelash lifting as I slowly opened an eye felt like a harp string pulled and plucked. Vrrring.
I have cried so hard that the next breath was laughter.
This was bigger than that. Maybe this was more like riding a violent storm at sea in a tiny sailboat. Solo. The calm that comes after. Calm that breathes every cell in my body.
Return:
It is Monday. I meet with my Shedding Skin Writing Partner in the morning. My prompt: The empty space of light… (22 minutes of free write). We read our Shedding Skin pieces out loud to each other on the phone. While reading my piece a huge Woodpecker is eating outside my office window.
Thursday night before my solo-journey, I had the fortune of seeing Michael Meade live in Portland, Oregon for his new book debut: The Heart Of Transformation.
If there is any way to make sense of our insane world, right now, it’s with mythology. Michael Meade is the source, the human vessel for this knowledge of current ancient wisdom. He opened the evening describing the word apocalypse. Before Christianity, this word did not mean ending. In fact, ending is not a real experience, and our ancestors knew that. Endings bring beginnings. We live in a spiral, not a straight line (in my words). Oh! How I needed to hear that, see that, feel that. And have a room full of witnesses of how real it is that we are evolving, not ending.
My psychedelic solo journey did help make sense of my life, from birth to now. The mother that birthed me. The rough and chaotic childhood that I lived through. The Science degree, Transpersonal Psychology degree, the people in my life that helped me get here. And mostly, the right here, right now, right place, right way of my life that holds me. Even with the destruction around me, the beauty of all of it. Life and death. Violence and prayer. With a psychedelic perspective, there is room to breathe and breathing room for all of it.
Thank you for reading this far. Please know that you matter. Your presence helps make this world a little more liveable. I’d love to hear from you. Your comments contribute to human evolution.
Shedding Light,
Carola
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