I've been doing some writing so I thought I'd drop by and share some of it with you guys.
I have always felt that something has been missing from my life. When I was younger I thought that most people are content in their lives and that I was an unlucky exception. At first I assumed that this missing thing was a girlfriend. I spent most of my early teenage years believing that I would find completeness in companionship. It was not until my later teen years that I would finally establish a successful long term relationship. While this brought me some happiness I still felt this empty feeling. I turned my attentions to other things such as academic pursuits and entrepreneurial money making, in hope that they would fill this void. While I was successful in both these areas and they did bring short term satisfaction every time I completed an objective the void remained.
I began to notice that most people had this void in their lives, this made me very depressed, as in my reality at that time there was no point to existence. I had hit an existentialist brick wall. I even started to abuse drugs and contemplate suicide. However one day something happed which brought me hope.
I had used psychoactive mushrooms a few times before. Most ‘trips’ I took were simply for amusement, but one trip I took in autumn 2005 was different. Before the trip I had felt particularly unhappy and hopeless. A good friend of mine came over to my house and we smoked some cannabis and boiled some ‘liberty cap’ mushrooms in some water. We drank the liquid and waited for the effects to initiate. Immediately I felt that something was different, like some sort of switch had just been flipped inside me. I suddenly felt some form of happiness and hope which began to grow. Having taken ecstasy and cocaine I have some form of understanding of what artificial happiness can feel like, this feeling was different though, like the feeling came from within my chest and my belly rather then from within my head. Instead of a doped up stupor I felt awake for the first time in my life. I felt so alive and everything looked some beautiful. My thoughts were as if truths were being progressively revealed to me in my head. I had no paranoia or anxieties and I felt in love with everything and everyone. I felt that if everyone felt this feeling there would be no wars and that everyone would be at peace with everyone else. I felt that I had achieved temporarily what Buddhists call enlightenment.
As the mushrooms wore off the chain of truths began to slow down and eventually stop, although for weeks and months the positive thoughts stayed with me. Best of all my reality had changed. My previous way of thinking was that I understood all that life had to offer me and that I could never be happy. This night proved that there was more to life then this and gave me hope that one day I could find true happiness.
Over the following year tried many times to recreate this experience of ‘temporary enlightenment’ with magic mushrooms. While many of these experiences were positive and insightful, none of them flipped that enlightened switch and sent me onto that heightened awareness and state of consciousness. I began to slowly sink bank into depression and my old way of thinking. The path to self fulfilment was once again unclear. Was that autumn night the highlight of my life? Was that the most awakened state I will ever achieve? Was it even real? The memories of that night were starting to become blurred.
Just as I was starting to forget and give up on ever reaching that state, I reached an even higher one. In the summer of 2006 I travelled to Amsterdam with my girlfriend S. We purchased a box of ‘Gulf Cost’ mushrooms each from a smart shop (mushrooms are legal there) and went to see a movie. I consumed the entire box while Steph consumed half. The mushrooms were much stronger then expected and we both began tripping heavily at the start of the movie. At first I felt as if I was becoming mentally ill and that I would no longer be able to function in society properly, like I had developed some form of scitsophrenia. I did not want to worry Steph so I tried my hardest to keep my self together for her. I remember myself telling her “We’ve done far too many drugs, we need to stop forever!” After the film was over we somehow stumbled back to the hostel. I was beginning to be able to manage the trip now and we got into the top of one of the bunk beds we were staying at and layed on our backs. We were playing with each others hands in the air when something beautiful occurred.
That enlightened switch suddenly flipped again inside me. I saw my hand and Stephs hand touch, much like the hands touching in Michelangelo’s ‘Creation of man’. There was some sort of divine shimmer around our hands. This is impossible to explain properly and I think only people who have experienced this will understand what I’m talking about. I was silenced by the beauty of it. This was the closest I have ever been to god.
For around the next two hours I felt like some sort of new Jesus. I thought about him a lot and his life and teachings started to make sense (I have never been very religious, especially not Christian). I felt like truths were coming to me faster and faster. Whenever I thought about something I saw it in a new light. The bliss within me was expanding filling me with more and more rapture. I felt like all life is connected together and that there is some sort of divine consciousness which sometimes temporarily possesses people at times in their lives and at this point it was inside me. I felt that this was the inspiration behind every human invention or thought. At the time I came to some realisation that the meaning of life is hidden within the question “what is the meaning of life it’s self”. At the time this made perfect sense in some form of non verbal way, but now its meaning is not clear. I came to many truths that night which I wish I had written down, but are now lost until I reach that state again. The reason why the meaning of life truth stayed with me was because I focussed on it a lot more then the others, once that clicked into place I used it to reach others. Like some form of divine logic. When I started telling Steph that “I am the new Jesus, I understand the meaning of life” she probably thought I was just tripping hard, but looked happy that I was having such a good time. I felt very close to her, like she was some sort of fairy spirit guide that had come along for the ride.
At first I believed that now that the switch had flipped it would remain that way. Like I had achieved enlightenment and it would be with me for the rest of my life. As time went on I can to a new realisation that this state was only temporary and that eventually I would soon fall asleep again, but that it wasn’t a bad thing and I shouldn’t be afraid. Me and Steph lay down and hugged. As she fell asleep in my arms she began to twitch like she was having a bad dream. I felt like I could feel her pain. I began to slowly withdraw from my enlightened state. I felt very cold and lonely leaving that awakened state and to fall asleep again, but I still knew that it was nothing to be afraid of and that it was a necessary pain to reach that state again.