DOSE:

oral

Cacti - T. pachanoi

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

155 lb

Here is an account I shared with a friend recently. The events of this experience occurred in the fall of 1983. I still recall the trip with crystal clarity. I was twenty years old at the time, living in Northwest Alaska.

To my friend:

I have told you that J, V, and I started a vision quest. We used sacred plants, meditation, and study of theology and philosophy. After J and V moved away, I was on my own. I continued to seek spiritual knowledge. Before J left, however, there was one trip he and I took on San Pedro that was a major turning point in my life.

We had received about three pounds of fresh San Pedro in the mail. We fasted for 24 hours while the plants dried. We also cleared our minds of daily worries with plenty of sleep, calm visiting, and meditation. We had been studying many ways of knowledge, theologies, and philosophies that whole summer.

J had developed a preparation method whereby we cut the cacti into half-inch thick slices to make stars. I crafted a dehydrator out of a cardboard box with oven grates mounted inside for shelves. I cut a hole in the box and ran a hair blower into it on low for about a day.

We then ground the stars in a grain mill to make a powder. We could see crystals of mescaline in the bright green powder. To take it, we simply put tablespoons of it in our mouths and choked it down with distilled water.

At that time of my life, I didn't mind the bitter taste of cactus too much. I did not get sick at all. I was very determined and dedicated to understanding the nature of personal reality. More recently, however, I get so nauseous that I cannot stop regurgitating for hours; that leaves me with no energy left to do anything but sleep.

During the trip, we decided to meditate together in a darkened upstairs bedroom at our old house next to the airport. we faced each other and locked hands about shoulder level and stared at each others eyes.

After a while, I started seeing a light shining on the wall behind J as if there were a bright flashlight on his back that shined on the wall and moved clockwise. the light shining off the wall back-lit his hair which look frizzy and orange. Then his face and neck covered over in what looked like an insect carapace made of gray pewter.

This startled me quite a bit! I wondered what I was looking at. I became frightened. Then it came to me suddenly that I was looking at the Ancient One. The original liar. The author of lies and the evil that comes from lies.

I decided to take a stance of confidence and inner knowledge that I am indestructible and that my spirit is good and should not fear something inherently weak. I straightened and stiffened my self in preparation to confront this being.

'It's time to do something normal,' J suddenly said as he let go my hands and stood up.

This confused and confounded me. I didn't know until later that he had seen the exact same thing on me from his side, but he could not face the evil that I was prepared to explore and destroy if needed.

Later that night, we could not keep on the same groove. I was prepared and determined to learn the truth of existence. J could not let go his mind and ego control. We parted ways, and I went back to the house to my room next to the room in which we had meditated.

I turned out the lights and wrapped a blanket around me and sat in the dark. I tried to divine the truth of personal reality and who or what is God and how the universe came to be and my purpose for existing.

My mind kept attempting to go through all the different philosophies, theologies, and religions I had studied and see if they made sense in terms of direct experience of reality. None did.

During this time, the universe would suddenly change and become made out of different visible light/energy patterns. The patters were interlocking, and tiny but clearly defined and visible in my altered state.

The first to appear was what I describe as a South-Pacific pattern like one sees on Hawaiian and Samoan art. The next was a triangle with a concave bottom line. The next was the Mexican or Aztec kind of pattern one can see on Mexican blankets.

The next was startling, as I could see off in the distance a spinning, white-lined, pentalpha coming toward me from the upper left. It was bouncing off an unseen black floor and when it bounced, small pentalphas would spark off the points.

The last was counterclockwise, interlocking swastikas. It was at that point when my desperation to understand became such that I decided that life was not worth living unless I understand its true nature.

I got a pillow and laid on the floor. I could hear the TV my brother R was watching in my parents room down the hall. I suddenly realized that everything being said on the TV was about me in the most intimate way. It was as if there were two lines of meaning in every word and sentence. One was the original meaning and intent of the words, and another that revealed a very personal and intimate dialogue about my life and motivations for the things I had done to that point.

Even the Poli-dent commercial laid bare my most secret and unseen motivations and reasons for the things I did. I pondered that for a minute and I could have listened and learned profound things about myself, but decided that was puny stuff and did nothing to reveal the true nature of reality. I put it out of my mind and continued to search for meaning.

Alas, I could not find The Truth. When I realized that I had no way to use my mind to find it, I decided to give up. I decided I would lay there until I died or they came and put my body away in a rubber room. I was not going to keep living a life without meaning.

My mind and body relaxed. I felt myself settle into a peaceful acceptance of my state.

'I Am The Way The Truth And The Light,' a voice said to me in that exact moment of acceptance.

It was a male voice I heard with my ears. I recognized it from the Bible, though I would later learn the verse actually says, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life,' but that is what I thought it said at the time. I also think that 'Light' would be an even better word for that verse at any rate.

My instinct told me to repeat that verse to myself over and over while stressing each different word and seeing how the meaning changed with the different stressed words. After I did that, I realized the voice had shown me where the answers are: they are inside me!

I got up and put on my coat against the cold Northwest Alaskan fall night. I must go find J and tell him the good news! We need look no further that our inward spirit for the spiritual answers we seek!

I set out on the crisp night air, the sky full of stars. The moon was nearly full, and it was made of the interlocking South pacific patterns in orange and red.

I found J at a Christian friend's house discussing the finer points of the message of Christ. I stood rapt and eager for attention until they let me interrupt.

'I have finished my journey!' I said to J.

'How can you finish a journey you haven't even properly started?' He asked of me.

Again, I was dumbfounded that he would not let go the control of his mind, even though he had admonished me earlier that night that we must give up all our concepts to see what lies beyond. Now he would not allow himself to learn from his acolyte.

Later, as I pondered the astounding vision, I wanted to learn more about that verse and what it means. I decided to become a Christian and started attending The Church of God.

Months later, I found that the pastor had no clue what the Spirit was, or where to find it. He was concerned with maintaining control of his dogma and congregation. I left the church and went on to become an alcoholic and drug addict for many years.

I wanted to expand on the light/energy patterns I mentioned.

As I said, I have seen those patterns in different cultural art from around the world. I have never heard of anyone experiencing all of them at a single time like I did.

Perhaps my purpose in life is to pave the way for others to learn the true nature of reality. One of the most startling and astonishing consequences of the idea of omnipresence and it's twin, All Things Are One is that I may be the only real person in existence!

Consider: if there is a Creator and it is omnipresent, it is present, throughout, and conscious in all people, looking out through our eyes at itself. It is both the killer and the killed, learning things that it could not learn any other way.

Consider: If all things are one, and all emanates from within, you are not separate from me, nor is anyone else nor any thing. You are a creation of the Psyche projected out from the center of my being with no existence apart from me!

This, of course, applies to all who exist. Everyone's psyche exists at the very center of the cosmos.

Looking at that night from now, in September 2014, it brings me sadness for how far I strayed from that stance of power and the security of inner knowing. I now have been using another plant ally, though a life of addiction and tremendous loss has tempered my confidence.

I will get to the true nature of reality and why the creator did what it did later...

Exp Year: 1984	ExpID: 109067
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 21
Published: Feb 23, 2017	Views: 1,799
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Cacti - T. pachanoi (64) : Small Group (2-9) (17), Retrospective / Summary (11), General (1)