DOSE:

3 g

oral

Mushrooms - P. semilanceata

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

85 lb

Preparation: I was on a remote high attitude location (Kom mountains, Montenegro) in the middle of the forest for 5 days hiking, meditating, exercising, relaxing with my girlfriend. My intention was to clean reenergise and settle my energy-body and mind before I do a major session.

Intention for the session: Had a curiosity to see what could psilocybin bring on a higher dose in silent darkness as advised by Terence. Did up to 2.5g before always with open eyes and with music. Wanted to try the heroic 5g dose but wanted to be careful since Semilaneata are significantly more potent than Cubensis.

Key factors to make this happen: inspiration (Terence, Lilly, Andres Gomez), confidence (Lilly, Andres, previous experience, meditation practice), courage (advice of Terence and Denis).

Setting: middle of the forest, blindfolded in silence (the only sounds were those of flies and mosquitos)

Set - I was in good place, but quite nervous since previously I had quite destabilizing depersonalized derealized phases due to psychedelics, weed and at that time newbie intense meditation practice. I responsibly managed to think of everything that I will need during the trip and was able to memorize where I settled since on psilocybin once previously I got lost in nature.

Before ingesting - 40 min before I started drinking the tea I did a full-body breathing session (Burbea breathing with the energy-body).

Onset (30-40 min) - The body load waves were easily managed since I was already in quite an effortless and expansive state meditating both the week before this and during the onset of the trip.

The mushroom kicks in (30m-1 h) - All the meditation practice and obsession with the Dharma had paid off during this state, once the mushroom kicks in my awareness gets so strong that it is impossible as a serious meditator to get lost in the images for longer than a few seconds, this allows me to choose what I will engage with, what images and simulated processes I will let run on me, what I will just let be without feeding it and what will get actively eliminated or put aside through intention or evasion. This flexible approach allows me to not get lost in the personal drama and move beyond to explore or work on something I care about. Here it is important to mention that I learned the hard way that all the previous days/weeks/months are important for the trip experience, I worked on my well-being, relation to life matters diligently the period before a trip, everything counts, what I get during the trip is all that I managed to cultivate through intention/action.

Due to strong somatic awareness, I was able to detect in the area of the face the god realm that I embody, its a sensation of pure facial symmetry, beauty and masculine divinity, my initial reaction was that this is smugness, pride and superiority, but right now while I write this and reflect upon this experience I am not sure, maybe this initial reaction is due to my buddhist conditioning - there was nothing unwholesome in the somatic awareness itself, but I nonetheless associated it with negative fabrications - one thing I am sure of when I am smug and prideful I embody a similar facial somatic configuration, was able to be with it without feeding it, obsessing about it and maintaining or eliminating it.

Soon after that was able to notice the vibe and image of the other gods that significantly affected me with their presence in the last year. Here my initial reaction was not non-reactive mindfulness, I actually reacted and pushed this image/vibe away, since specifically I am not fond of this influential narcissistic person affecting me. My post-trip conventional insight (not the first time that I learned this but it's always good to remind myself through reexperiencing it, I usually have this insight on weed) from this experience is that we are run by the collection of unrecognised voices vibes and images that run in our unconscious, these are not just our own generated constructions that we call our ego but all the other constructions that were imprinted on our being from other egos that influence us one way or another in our life.

Since aliens are present in all podcast discussions today and since I listened to a lot of Terence blabbering I had a quite vivid encounter with a classic alien specimen (1979), the image was not so vivid as the vividness of the presence/vibe of this being. Part of me was "duh dude you are so uncreative" (once while hippie-flipping and listening to Tipper Ambient Mix I witnessed the most impossible hyperdimensional object that was infinitely more impressive and more creative than anything that I ever saw in psychedelic art, to say nothing compared to this already seen reconstructed cultural artifact of an alien creature). Since I could notice the field of awareness in which this image was happening I was able to be with it without freaking out or obsessing about it. Fear was not present, but a slight reservation since I am aware of the option of merging with it or getting overexcited and hence hijacked by an altered personality which happened to me before in my quite newbie times. Now that I reflect upon this with that mushroom quality of strong awareness it would be quite harmless - a childplay to merge with it. The problem with this happens in lower awareness altered states that lack the stability of attention and sensory clarity such as weed, merging on weed could give a schizo episode and quite dissociated altered personality that will live on its own terms.

Peaking 1h-2:30h

I did mushrooms many times in nature, but never this amount of it, never blindfolded and never without music. The weird vibe of the mushroom was stronger than ever, this was maybe due to the setting since the weirdness for me is always present when solo in the mountains (this was an ancient forest in the Kom mountains 1600 m above sea level still not ruined by humans). I completely merged with this weird vibe, I learned from the previous mushroom trip to approach it on its own terms as advised by Andres Gomez Emilson, the most precious advice, was able to stay present and non-reactive in complete nondual confusion, complete don't know mind. From time to time I had the usual comment when I trip - this is not the so-called emptiness as I know it, this is an altered state - this is the mushroom experience they are quite distinct (in 2018 I mistakenly thought that the mushroom altered state is a taste of the insight of emptiness which it only partly is since the mushroom obliterates your conventional self through altering it heavily, but it is still mostly present, the no self-experience is cleaner far less weird, the fruition experience is also quite something else and far less dramatic, weird, eventful, the mushroom experience in a way is strong awareness altered state which is quite distinct from the regular strong awareness meditation retreat state.

During this high weirdness I unintentionally nudged myself toward death (there was a meta intention to explore the edges of what is possible so I let my creativity to work toward this direction), one day I will cease to exist, feel that, I did not feel it as before, but I continued, I imagined the look of my face decomposing underground, a thought from Ken Mcleod occurred, "death can come at any moment", I repeated death can come at any moment, death can come at any moment, this might be the single last unit of experiencing, the highly weird vibe of the mushroom intensified I felt/imagined being decomposed by the mushrooms, this came from the non-stop forest encounters in the previous 5 days with mushroom specimens decomposing dead trees, also an influence was the story of the cordyceps-possessed ants and the Haitian stories of zombified humans. The earth/the mushroom started eating me quite vividly. I merged with the ground, it was intense but effortless, I was so much conditioned from my training to accept ego death that I gladly was fully there not interfering and not flinching at all while this happened, in a moment I realized that I am in a zombified (altered) state, I belong to the mushroom now, I belong to the forest by the mushroom/the forest/nature, I found this inspiring and soulful way of relating toward this highly unimaginably weird state.

Tripping blindfolded without music for the first time allowed me to finally understand the idiom "going within". My visual field always dominated my experience, followed by my external auditory experience. This was the first time tripping where my somatic spacious awareness dominated the experience. It was quite easy to have a complete awareness of all content since when I am dominated by the external visual experience inner eye images, voices and somatic experiences could easily go unnoticed for a long time. This ability came in handy since I was able to set aside personal drama, relationships, life difficulties and all the rest, was able to notice and eliminate egoic memetic influences by unwanted individuals, was able to not engage with the alien entity and direct the trip toward the intended direction. Viewed from the framework of neural annealing tripping blindfolded annealed me toward less engagement with the simulated external world, I am for now in a novel place of high equanimity with the 10 000 things (external reality) highly recommended. Also, blindfolded tripping brings me sort of naturalness and maturity with what happened, there is lack of post-trip grandiosity and lack of post-peak experience groundless mania, a sort of down to earth genuine love for ordinary life.

I could hardly recommend the mushroom weirdness vibe to anyone except to the psychonaut enthusiasts and adept meditators. I would recommend to beginners to never go with high dose first, but start even with miniscule microdoses and combine it with meditation. The gradual way makes sense to me after what I been through in this trip. Previously in my early psychedelic phase 2018-2020 I was evangelizing it to everyone to the point of ruining my relationship with my parents and close friends. Right now I would think 2, 3, 4 times before I recommend it to anyone. The state that I embodied was not pleasant, not unpleasant, highly unhuman to a point of unimaginable confusion - it's not useful in any way. If you push me I would admit that I have grown a weird personal fondness for it, but I am still concerned for the unprepared souls that will stumble upon it due to my recommendations.

After 3-4 hours of the experience, I was in a high maturity and ridiculously equanimous state to a point of having enough of this whole shamanic, psychonaut, spiritual endeavor/obsession and wanting to just go and explore the forest and the mountains with my girlfriend. When I came to her I was quite sober to a point of being natural and normal as if nothing happened. I was just having difficulty talking fluently and was stopping in pure awareness in the middle of sentences but that was nothing too dramatic. I am quite surprised that this journey hardly touched my integrated fabricated functional self, my first trips were quite destabilizing (not knowing how to use it - meditation is key! - doing it too often without time to integrate) to a point where I was unable to function for months and largely ruined my conventional life, which by the way is highly overrated.

Next time I will do 5g from the same stuff which is more potent than the standard cubensis.

I love my post-mushroom trip self/being, effortless open awareness is the default mode, psychedelics allow me to see/feel/relate to my life in novel ways, I definitely feel my somatic intelligence/intuitive intelligence is improved, social charisma and natural energetic dominance is significantly increased, my energy-body-presence is unmistakenly noticed and appreciated by others, social intelligence is improved, and aesthetic sense highly improved (only this last mentioned effect is well worth the whole endeavor).

Exp Year: 2023	ExpID: 117516
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 31
Published: Nov 7, 2024	Views: 15
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Meditation (128), Mushrooms - P. semilanceata (90) : Public Space (Museum, Park, etc) (53), Personal Preparation (45), Entities / Beings (37), General (1)