Non-Ordinary Consciousness

Psilocybin mushrooms carry a lot of social stigma in western culture. Most people probably associate them with hippies in the sixties, and I personally did not know anything about them until I started researching them about two years ago. Through reading several books about them and researching them online, I realized that not only have they been used for thousands of years by indigenous people, but they are often revered as extremely sacred, and used for various healing ceremonies. Fast forward to the twenty-first century, there was recently an article on the front page of the New York Times explaining how mushrooms are being studied at top Universities to help patients with cancer. Many people describe experiences on mushrooms as one of the top 5 most profound days of their lives.


The experience that I am about to discuss was the fourth time I ingested Psilocybin mushrooms in my life. It had been about a year exactly since my 3rd, when I took my fourth trip on Oct. 3, 2009. I have had many profound realizations during and after experiencing Psilocybin mushrooms in the past 2 years. Because I did not write reports online about my first 3 trips, I will incorporate some of the knowledge I attained during those experiences, and which I remembered during this most recent trip.

I will write this report in a way that hopefully anyone who has not tripped before can understand. I find it is highly beneficial to read trip reports, in order to learn about others experiences in different situations and places. So hopefully you will enjoy this story and understand my views. I believe the actual experience is ineffable and must actually be experienced, but I will try to articulate it. I recommend taking caution with any psychedelic/entheogen and start with a very small dose, only in a safe, natural, outdoors location, with at least 6 hours of time, where I know I will not be interrupted, and only with a positive, open-minded outlook. Also, I treat the mushrooms with respect and don’t mix them with any other foods. I agree with Terence Mckenna that not eating for six hours and then eating them straight is a great way to experience the true effects. Fasting for longer than six hours previous to a trip will likely induce a very intense experience even on a small dose.

I went into this trip, wanting to get more insight into a good way to live my life, which is focused on activism to help the Earth and it’s inhabitants, (many of which are currently suffering)in whatever way I can. On my previous 3 trips, I learned a massive amount about myself, western culture/consumerism, and my connection to the land, other people, and other species. On all three, my friends and I ventured around wooded areas during the height and then while coming down, local shops and residential areas. On these trips I realized how I negatively affect other people when I make fun of them, and I was able to empathize with people I saw as “others.” I realized how most people are constantly self-conscious and aren’t truly comfortable even around close friends, because of their socially constructed egos. I also realized that the Earth is inherently abundant and magnificently beautiful if we only change our perspective.

For this experience, I wanted to take a higher dosage, and mainly attempt to keep my eyes shut and ponder in a meditative state (still in out in a natural setting). I planned to take about 4 or 5 dried grams, whereas previous trips where around 2 or 3. My friend Dan and I planned to do it on a pleasant, non-rainy day, and then Saturday came along and we seized the opportunity. I ate a few pieces of fruit for breakfast around 9 am, and then didn’t eat anything until the mushrooms. Around 3pm, we biked out a few miles from our campus to state game lands. We biked around the cornfields and soybean fields, and found a strip of trees, with a little hangout spot inside, scattered with large rocks. We parked our bikes and got comfortable, then ingested the mushrooms at 3:35 pm. I had about 4 or 5 grams and Dan had about 1.5 to 2 grams.

I sat cross-legged against a large tree’s trunk and started meditating. I got uncomfortable, so I decided to lay down on the rocks and dirt, as Dan was doing. I put my jacket over my eyes, in hopes to see some visuals. After probably 30 minutes of not feeling anything, the feeling started to creep up on me. It starts as a warm buzz, somewhat similar to a beer-buzz, but seemingly on a much higher frequency. It felt like such a seamless transition from my normal state, to this altered state of consciousness. It wasn’t like one minute I’m not tripping, one minute I am, I just eased into the higher state of awareness. I sat up from laying down and took off the jacket and I knew the mushrooms were taking effect. I was extremely jubilant and excited to remember and re-feel what it is like to trip, since it had been exactly a year since my last experience. I wrote a few things down in my notebook, at this point during the trip:

“Oh boy oh boy oh boy!- I have picture in my head of some 8 year old kid with blonde hair in a commercial at the kitchen table smiling, waiting for his mom to serve breakfast.”

I wrote this because that’s the feeling/image that came to mind due to my excitement of tripping, paralleled to young boy’s excitement for mom’s pancakes. Next I wrote:

“It’s so weird returning to this realm. Right now I’m only a little bit in. It’s coming on fast, its awesome. It’s like returning home to a welcoming place, as if returning to the Shire in Lord of the Rings.”

Then after thinking about modern society and all of the laws and rules we constantly obey, I wrote: “There’s no fucking rules! All these fucking restrictions, always people telling us what to do! We are free!”

I then imagined a rastafari shaman (similar to Bob Marley) explaining the intricacies of life to a western person. I wrote him saying, “Put some color into your life ma brotha. Your living in black and white. The key is diversity. Diversity in all directions. Most think there are only 4 directions. Ma brotha, dere are many directions.”

This may be hard for people other than myself to understand. What this meant to represent for me is how multidimensional, complex, and diverse life is, but how the western perspective reduces the complexity and narrows in on a sliver of reality. As a result, our own are lives are thus reduced to being boring and unfulfilling. The rastafari shaman seems to be advocating spontaneity, creativity, and diversity in all aspects of life.

When Dan returned from a short walk, I was telling him and also exclaiming in general, “Wow I love mushrooms! Thank you so much mushrooms! This is so awesome!”

As it turned out, I decided not to lay down with my jacket over my eyes and Dan and I decided to explore the intermingling woods and cornfields. As we started walking, the shroomage was fully flowing through me. My senses were awakened from their dulled state, induced by city-living. Every single thing was vibrant and happy to be alive, from the trees exploding with fall colors to the little, green clovers on the ground. It seemed as thought I was seeing everything more directly and the invisible boundaries between me and the world had dissolved. My field of vision expanded and color contrasts were much more pronounced, and it was as if I was seeing colors for the first time.

We walked up a path and marveled at the surroundings which we were immersed in. The internal drive to explore this mysterious world, which I, and I believe everyone had as a young child, had returned. There were so many things we could do, every direction holding different adventures. As I reached a long path, I started sprinting as fast as my legs could possibly carry me. It felt absolutely amazing to run, I had this huge smile on my face, like a little child running in a game of tag. I felt super-alive and like Forest Gump running for the first time, but instead of breaking out of metal leg-casts, I was breaking out of my societally conditioned, rigid sense of self.

I had the sense of being a wild human, like indigenous people. I remembered back to thinking about people in our society and how they grow up and have to find jobs. Also, how we are restricted and put into some stereotyped personality, which governs how we live. I thought about Americans claiming to be free. I thought of how indigenous people know what it truly means to be free, in feeling connected with the world around them. I was thinking of all these stupid restrictions we have in our society, and people above us on the hierarchy literally shaping how we live our lives. We think we are free, but we are withheld in invisible ways, the way we talk, interact with others, think, judge other people and cultures, eat, carry ourselves, see nature as observers, not participants. We think we are free, but we are not. For example, my friends and I were taken to court by the Pittsburgh Police for writing and drawing with sidewalk chalk. The worst thing about our oppression is we can barely sense how we are oppressed. We can sense something is wrong but we can’t quite put our fingers on it. Often we are close to the answer, but then we are sucked back into denial or distraction. We must find where the bars of our prison are, and begin to escape. These prisons are perceptual prisons, mental prisons, habitual prisons, social interaction prisons. There was never such a thing as social awkwardness until we became so separated from each other and ourselves that we forgot how to interact.

Dan and I balanced on this set of pipes on a path with trees on either side. I found this fuzzy green seed thing, and I kept it in my hand. The green fuzzy thing was moving and wriggling through my hands. It was very similar to one of these:

http://www.rainkc.com/_ccLib/image/plants/DETA-521.jpg

It was like a DNA coil, and I actually dropped it, because I thought it wiggled out of my hand. Did it actually wiggle out of my hand, who knows? What does “actually” mean? Is there an objective reality, or is reality malleable and very multifaceted? These are questions I still ask quite often.

We ventured around the woodland area for probably almost two hours. I realized that life was all about every single thing expressing itself in its own way, in its own little niche. I discovered how each individual plant or animal contributes to the balance of the whole system of life. I looked around and said, “Those tall trees are just over there..doing their wavy thing, and that fuzzy is doing its fuzzy thing, just being.. as it is.” I looked at the trees and they would sway peacefully in the gentle breeze.

The boarders between trees and skies, flowers and grass, were oddly sharpened and melted. Different settings had different vibes and moods, shaded areas were cooler in temperature, and eerie-ish. Other areas had indescribable vibes, which English cannot describe. I believe indigenous languages are more keen in articulating such things. The whole area was radiating a blissful happiness to be in existence, which Dan and I were engulfed in. The whole day was calm and serene, leaves changing colors were amazing, sunlight radiating through the clouds and onto the corn fields looked really cool.

I realized that naming things take the personality and individuality away to a degree, and because I didn’t know the names of things, I could relate to them more intimately. I realized that naming and quantifying- just objectifies sentient beings.

It felt amazing to laugh out loud, and to just express myself. I felt a constant impulse to be creative in living, and express myself (whether through dancing, walking, beatboxing, or whatever). I just felt like grooving to the beat of life. I would beatbox and it would sort of set the mood, but it would also flow from the mood. Dan was singing and dancing and having a great time too.

I got a vibe, similar to other trips of… What are we waiting for? Lets change how we live now! I pictured activists who non-stop fight the system, many who are locked in prison now for doing tree sits and direct action in attempt to stop the destruction of the planet. I realized that we must build new cultures, instead of trying to destroy western culture. I got sense of global awareness and all the futile distractions and games Western culture (now spread almost everywhere) has set up to supposedly make us happy, but inadvertently devour the planet.

I deeply yearned (and still do) for everyone to experience life in this connected way, so that we could stop killing and enslaving humans, animals, plants, ecosystems, etc. Even just feeling that connection one time is enough to realize that it is real and always there. Having such an experience is life-long proof that everything is interconnected, interrelated, and interdependent. As Chief Seattle says, “Humans have not created the web of life, We are just one strand within it, What we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”

Eventually we headed back to the little area where our bags and bikes were located. We chilled for about a half an hour. I layed down on the leaf-covered ground and put my jacket over my eyes. Then after pondering for a while, Dan helped me up, I got all the burrs off of me, and we hopped on our bikes. Right before leaving the cornfields, we paused and saw a low, faintly yellow full moon in the light blue sky surrounded by clouds. I know that many indigenous people regard the full moon as a time of celebration, and it felt as if the full moon was watching over us, as we celebrated how awesome it is to be alive!

Biking back we passed some horses who looked extremely beautiful and majestic, and I thought of the wild horses who roam in the Eastern U.S. When we arrived back to campus, Dan went to go eat, and I went to a park to sit, think, and write about my still-occurring psychedelic experience. I wrote this at the park, “Clouds are amazing. (It was dusk, and there were overlapping light purple and dark blue and gray ones) 1st hand experience is key, oh shrooms are amazing. We sort of have the ability to see like this inside of us, but shrooms help bring it out. Haha, its 7:11. I took them at 3:35. Time is distorted. Oh, writing hardly does justice to experience. People will appreciate nature, if they are shown the way. Disclaimer: Never underestimate the pure wonder and amazingness and mystery of life!” I got a text from my friend Sam who asked me how it was and I called the experience, “extraordinarily and unspeakably profound and valuable.”

I am glad I wrote that disclaimer, and about my experience while tripping and directly after, because it seems that since the experience (and I found the same thing with my other trips), my egoic mind will try to convince me that the experience wasn’t really profound or very great. Not to mention that western scientific culture essentially denies the validity or reality of any transcendent experience. Also, as my friend Austin says, “It’s easy to downplay an experience that is not your own.” For any skeptics I recommend checking out a website called TASTE about scientists’ transcendent experiences, or researching psilocybin mushrooms on Erowid.org, and/or trying it yourself.

(I went back to my room after the park and wrote a lot of insights that I developed and gained from this experience;)

I was more conscious of clock time, but time was so irrelevant, I was deeply in the present moment. This concept of presence coincides exactly with the Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and especially with The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein, both of which I highly recommend.)

Psilocybin mushrooms let me see right through the culture of make believe that most civilized people live in. It as if our entire society is on stage performing a play, which I am normally playing along with. Then, shrooms allows me to go backstage and see that we are just pretending. We all believe in the same pretend things, like property and money.

While tripping I got sense of no ownership, property, borders, or restrictions in the natural world. We were on farmland, which is supposedly owned, and tended to by machines. I wrote “These mental constructs are obliterated by the strong connection with the wild earth, which does not conform to human’s culture of make believe.”

Mushrooms let us grasp magnitude. I was able to fully metabolize and grasp how beautiful life is and also how we are destroying life on Earth. I believe our everyday culture essentially keeps us in a certain state of mind, where we are not only separated from seeing our damage to the planet, but we are numb to it. Our culture revolves around 3 D’s, distancing, distraction, and denial. Without a direct feeling of our harm to other species, and the Earth, we are not likely to stop damaging them.

There are so many intricacies of life, and ways to express ourselves. It is only in our culture that we have been conditioned to think boredom is our default state. Many indigenous cultures have no concept of “boredom.” Slumdog kids in India playing in garbage dumps are clearly happier to be alive than a nine-year old in an SUV glued to a TV headset. I believe in western culture we have the disease of overstimulation, overconsumption, and oversaturation from television, videogames, and things like that.

The mushrooms experience has an uncanny resemblance to allegory of the cave, and experiencing shrooms is essentially stepping out of the cave and realizing that in our technological society, we are not seeing the full picture of life. All of the information is barely scratching the surface of the subject of non-ordinary states of consciousness, but hopefully in will provoke some thought and interest in the area. If you are planning to try psilocybin mushrooms, I recommend researching, taking caution, having a positive mindset, natural, outdoors setting, and not abusing them.

After this experience I increased my meditation practices as well as everyday mindfulness. I would like to add that I have achieved many states of non-ordinary consciousness without the use of any natural substances. I have reached tripping-like states through meditation many times and had lots of realizations and insights, just like a mushroom experience. Reading books by Eckhart Tolle are very helpful in reaching non-ordinary states, as I and many others have benefited greatly from Tolle’s teachings. In these self-induced states, I noticed that being aware of silence and space is very helpful in experiencing such a state. It seems that mushrooms helps show you what is possible to experience, and it is up to you if want to enter into non-ordinary states of consciousness fairly often.

I often wonder what can we do about all this crazy stuff going on in the world. What can we do about the fact that in America we literally waste 45% of all the food we produce, while millions are starving to death in other parts of the world? What can we do about the fact that the genocide in Darfur only got 3 minutes of air-time on CBS news in the entire year of 2006?!, Thousands of women and children were slaughtered daily, and it was essentially ignored, whereas Martha Stewart going to jail was discussed extensively nearly every night? What are our priorities these days?

I believe we must learn the full breadth of our situation, look this medusa of a culture square in the eyes, and not turn away. We must realize the roots of our problems and transform our way of relating to the world. I believe we must live as participants in nature, not observers. I absolutely recommend reading the Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein, which is online for free. If elements of this essay rang true with you, this book will definitely resonate with you, and it is online for free. Also, The Transition Town movement is in my opinion the most promising model for sustainable living, which we must achieve very soon. I believe meditation and other spiritual exercises are very beneficial. They are helpful in order to become grounded in being, and diminish our egoic-mind domination over our lives. I feel we must all discover how we can better ourselves and the world and work hard to make it happen. We must realize the incredible potential and opportunities that we have to create positive change. Thank you for reading about my experience and after-thoughts. Namaste.



I make videos about all these topics at http://www.youtube.com/user/CosmicRevolutionKS