Its just a hop, Trip, and jump to self love.
Reflections on my first - and only - ceremonial mushroom journey
Two years ago I was walking into a friends lounge room. My knees were creating a symphony with my chattering teeth; I had no idea what to expect.
When I had told people who thought they knew me at my core that I was about to embark on a scavenger hunt of the lost pieces of my soul they said:
“This will be good for you, because you need to give up control.”
It planted a haunting seed in my head: oh god was I really bad at surrendering?! Thats not what I was going in for…
I could smell Paulo Santo, I sipped cacao, and I shared what I was intending, while my beautiful friend held me with more than his arms:
“ I want to remember magic again. I feel hopeless and like I can’t feel myself. I want to remember my own magic”
At the time, I was still so deep in neo-spiritual culture that had me completely convinced it wasn’t low-key a pyramid scheme underneath its well meaning intentions and smiling face.
If I am going to be completely honest with you: the more of that work I consumed, the more I hated myself.
Hence: I was about to trip my way to self love.
I honestly, honestly, believed I was about to be put through the ringer. I had heard stories of bad trips over and over. But I knew in my whole body and soul that I needed to be there. I had developed a pretty mature relationship with plants as medicine in the last couple of years, I knew the risks emotionally and physcially (coming a long way from my festival rat days YOLO am I right?).
I all but inhaled my bowl of foraged goods.
Slowly, I felt a veil lift off my head. I laid down on the Moroccan themed carpet. It started to glow. Like a whole other set of symbols rose up from the floor, and I watched as they erupted from my skin in beautiful neon ivory. I ran my hands over my skin and sparks erupted.
Magic was written into my bones.
I had a small classic mushroom encounter that I affectionately remember as “rug land”, where a whole city emerged from the floor. I knew I needed to shift my attention else where but I knew rug land wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t watching it.
I still wonder what this “if a tree falls over in the woods and nobody saw it, did it make a sound?” moment means.
I’m open to hearing your thoughts in the comments
I finally turned my head and I started hearing things. Now, in my teens I dabbled in witchcraft and all sorts of tomfoolery, I lived across the road from a cemetery and spent lots of my time there (just girl things, right?). As you can gather from that, my experience of “hearing things” hasn’t notoriously been good vibes only.
I start looking around to try and see where this sound was coming from…
Until I realised it was from me. I’m singing.
I watch as my sound forms beautiful bubbles that bounce around in different colours. Some sink into my skin, some go towards the wall. This was the first, visceral time I understood how deeply frequency effects our bodies. I made different sounds with different thoughts. I watched what the sounds meant and how they impacted the space. I watched how what I said effected my body.
And it has been something I’ve been obsessed with since, but still not the most mind-blowing piece of this journey.
Shortly after this, I feel myself being pulled into darkness. I was no longer in the zone of highness that means your external world is shifting and changing, I was going in.
And I journeyed through my whole life - from womb to walking into this room - with the belief that everyone hated me.
It was so incredibly wild to watch this belief rather than unconsciously live it. To see how it coated everything. To see the ways I broke my own heart living this way. And when I got back to the present moment I was lifted out of my body into the cosmos. Where my “soul” and its “soul buddies” were all sitting around hittin’ what could only be described as a “void blunt”. I turned to my friends and I was like
“damn. I’ve had way too much of this dude, I fully thought I was Erica Perry who exists on earth and everyone hated me. It was wild. Thats not true!! WOW. I really thought that. I’ve had way too much”
And my little space friends were like “nah nah nah! have some more *cause peer pressure still exists in the alien realms obvi* and when you go back down, you can know thats not true and live your life knowing you are so incredibly loved”
Naturally, I took a hit of space and went back and relived my whole life with this knowing that I am loved. That there is nothing wrong with me. That I am doing a great job at existing. That I am not some cursed plague walking the earth causing everyone to have a bad time.
It changed how I viewed my whole childhood. How I made sense of my birthing experience. How I wanted to interact with my friends. With my lovers, with my exes, with people on the internet.
It took me off defence, and put me in offence for my life. I was no longer feeling like I was always starting on my back foot because everyone hates me and I am the worst.
I wasn’t taking the awful sensations that come from years of being a complete jerk to yourself, as absolute truth anymore. I was creating my own sensations, my own reference point. I was returning to innocence when it comes to my relationship with myself
It shifted my whole perspective, and I swear to god the room I woke up in was not the room I tripped in.
I wanted to share this, not only because its the two year anniversary coming up, but because I still think about it to this day.
How many times have I been so sure that I can see things clearly and truthfully and thats not the case at all? How many times did I think that manifesting your reality was horseshit because there are so many other factors that could effect manifestation? I didn’t even let myself question if some of it was true. That I could manifest a little even if I controlled nothing. That what I was manifesting was a relationship with my experiences.
It was really powerful to take this truth and attempt to integrate it. I wont lie, it comes in waves and sometimes I forget and convince myself I am the absolute worst. But mostly I can feel myself gathering up felt sensations and experiences to create my reality with. To know what my intentions are and how deeply that shapes my reality even if the impact isn’t what I expect it to be.
The reason I wanted to share this with you is because currently, the self help industry makes around $13.4 BILLION dollars a year. So not only do I know that we are all searching for answers to why life feels so bloody hard, but that we all want to be ‘better,’ to be cured of our pain and personality that was developed out of survival.
When I gained this new perspective in such a visceral way I saw the choice. I saw how believing that everyone hated me made that my whole reality and a self fulfilling prophecy even if it was denied by the person. I refused to believe that I was loved. That I was cared for. That people liked me. I saw that I could keep doing that, or I could believe that I was loved. That could be my truth now.
I could just decide, and then work on building that new relationship.
I had been in the spiritual industry and self help industry for nearly 5 years already when I took mushrooms in this ceremony, and this was the thing that made me want to get out of it.
I wasn’t interested in forging my own path before that. I didn’t think I could. I needed to earn it. Sometimes that was through degrees and training, and sometimes that was from being the most “heart opened” person in the room. I could never get there. I was so constricted trying to pre-empt what would upset literally everyone in the whole world because I honestly believed I was already starting at -100 when it came to winning brownie points that I was repelling and turning down opportunities because I had to keep waiting until I had built myself up to neutral again.
I was copying and pasting my relationship with myself based on everyone else’s feedback of who I was to them, that I couldn’t form my own relationship with who I knew I was.
Now we are nearly two years on and I feel like I am finally starting to get it. I have to remind myself still to let go of what others think. To remind myself I havent ever actually died from someone thinking mean things about me (even though I low key thought maybe it would happen from the “manifest your reality” girlies if they actually hated me).
Its this weird, thin line of understanding that you ARE special enough to have something to say, but you AREN’T so special that every single person is going to want to hear and agree with everything you have to say.
So, if we are in the same boat now, of wanting to love ourselves a little more and believe deeply that we are loved, what are we going to do differently? What is a micro step we could take? How can we do it right now?
PS. Reader discretion is advised pls don’t think this is a medical advice column and go out and do mushrooms to solve your self esteem issues… instead come to my events hehe.
STARTS ON NOVEMBER 22
A body of art is a powerful immersive experience using art and creative therapies to create reverence, connection and love for your body.
Write your own story, speak to and about your body with your own voice, and repair the relationship between the only home you will always have in this life time.
Spend 4 weeks bathing in the truth of your body, romancing your heart, and falling in love with who you are.
Oh I remember this day, and the phone call straight afterwards 😭