Some thoughts that occurred to me while reading this:
I think some atheists reject religion simply because they don't find it logically justifiable rather than because of the behaviour of believers.
I've seen Iain McGilchrist talk about finding his ideas in kabbalah in a lecture. I'm not sure if he's written about it, as I haven't got around to his books yet.
I don't know much about kabbalah, but 'right' and 'left' in kabbalah refer to the diagram of the sefirot, the ways God is manifest in the world. The left side is associated with kindness and expansiveness, the right with justice and boundaries. Btw, in the language of Jewish mysticism, Elokim is the name for God-as-power/justice. The Tetragrammaton (four letter name of God) is the name you would associate with the 'right'. (This is the alternate, Orthodox explanation for the names of God in the Torah that is central to the Documentary Hypothesis. I do not accept the DH, for various reasons).
I'm Jewish by birth, but not at all outspoken... ;-)
Aside from the first 11 chapters of Genesis and Job, Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) reads to me like history rather than allegory/myth, by which I mean, not that it is literally true (although I do see most of it as fairly literally true after those first few chapters), but that it seems to me to be telling the particular story of the Jews, not a mythological, general story of mankind and the individual's inner life. As Robert Alter points out, almost all biblical characters who appear for long undergo character growth, not in a stylised, 'hero's journey' way, which is more a historical mode of writing than a mythological one.
Little in the Torah or classical Jewish sources suggest that Abraham and the Israelites were chosen for kindness or ethics and there is a rabbinic source that the Jews are the *least* inherently ethical people (therefore a greater achievement of God to make them good). The main counter-text is Genesis 18.19 "For I have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is just and right..." but the emphasis there is on Abraham's commitment to raising ethical children, not that they were inherently ethical.
Are you planning on sharing more of your journey as you take the conversion classes?
Thank you for sharing this! I have so much to learn. Yes, I'll write about the journey eventually.
Haha, my husband had a mushroom trip where the mushrooms told him Jews need God more than other people in part to keep them in line. I shared that in a previous essay (where I also said that Jews seem to be unusually capable, and that meant they were unusually capable of both good and evil) and another Jew pointed out that was in the Talmud. I think both my husband and I have become better people since we started believing in God. It makes a better story, doesn't it, if the Jews were one of the least ethical people, and God interfered and changed their course. And yes, I think most of the stories in the latter books are a family history -- I'm just not sure where that starts? Maybe with Abraham? I haven't read nearly enough, but I've seen interpretations both that Abraham was real and that his story is a metaphor.
The left side of the body is controlled by the right brain and the right side by the left -- but the little of what I know about Kabbalah I find confusing. I read somewhere that In Kabbalah the right hemisphere is the "masculine" part of our personality, and the left the "feminine", but that sounds as wrong to me as Leonard Shlain's assertion that the left is masculine and the right feminine. I think the right hemisphere contains both the divine masculine and divine feminine, but maybe depending on the sex and biases of the interpreter, one might see the right as masculine (if they see masculinity as superior to femininity) or feminine (vice versa).
Someone shared a diagram of the Kabbalah tree of life with me with Timothy Leary's 8 circuit model of consciousness layered over it. My brain kind of broke. Kabbalah makes me feel a bit stupid. I think this was it, if you're interested -- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/94505292157323247/
Yes, it's a better story if Judaism improved the Jews. Also, it explains why so many Jews (devout ones, not just the self-haters) find other Jews so hard to get along with. We tend to have strong personalities!
I think history in the Torah starts with Abraham, although maybe some details (particularly numbers) are deeply symbolic and non-literal throughout. I can see Abraham as a metaphor more than, say, Isaac, but I think even then some of the details don't fit an easy pattern. I've been thinking a lot recently that religious Jews see the Hebrew Bible as history, whereas Christians see it more as metaphor.
I find Kabbalah confusing too (especially that diagram!). I think in Kabbalah "masculine" and "feminine" are not being used in the biological sense of "male" and "female," but that's the limit of my knowledge. In earlier, Talmudic, sources, God's "right" hand is His kindness and His left is His justice simply because most people are right-handed, so the metaphor is simply that God's kindness is stronger than His justice (in the "judging and punishing" sense).
I am more of a mixture of religious rationalist and religious existentialist. I'm less interesting in understand God and more interested in making religiously-meaningful choices and finding God in interactions with others.
I just read it ... what a fantastic essay, thank you!! She really nailed it. "Social autism" is a useful term, it's really what I'm talking about (mostly) when I refer to "autism" in my essays. I'm going to use that term moving forward (with attribution).
It's not really stealing, but I do sometimes wish "Aspergers Syndrome" still existed to draw a line between the two. If you read Kanner and Asperger's original papers, you'll find that "geeky introverts with poor social skills" as a somewhat accurate description of the kids they studied and dubbed "autistic". But "autism" nowadays is used as umbrella term and there is much more low-functioning autism ("classic autism" or Kanner's autism) and that "autism" is much more severe than it was in the 1940s. Both Kanner and Asperger also describe sub-clinical "autistic" traits in parents and family members (geekiness, poor social skills, coldness, lack of affection). "Autism" is basically an umbrella term for a cluster of traits that have multiple causes: cold parenting, early childhood emotional neglect, poor nutrition, lack of sunlight and low Vitamin D, pharmaceutical and environmental toxins, chronic stress, vulnerable "risk factor" genes, heavy metal accumulation, poor sleep, pineal gland calcifications, excess screen time, excess time reading books, social isolation, early childhood brain damage to certain areas etc. So the severity and presentation of the "autism" depends on which factor(s) are causal.
"family members (geekiness, poor social skills, coldness, lack of affection"
That's my family. I call them cold fishes. Should they be labeled as though it's an illness? Why? Everybody has a cross to bear. Do we really want all of them in the Big Shrink Bible? Cui bono?
And muddy the water for the really autistic? I apologize for pushing this, it's been my pet peeve lately, and I want to understand more.
The detail in there about the entity appearing to you around the wifi was very compelling for me. The same area in our living room where the wifi is at is also where the entities seem to manifest for me.
So bizarre! I wonder what's up with that. Maybe I should entertain the "conspiracy theory" that WiFi is toxic a little more (see https://romanshapoval.substack.com/). On one of the rare occasions where I've tried LSD (I don't care for it and think psilocybin is the superior medicine), I had panicked moment where I was convinced the trees were telling me that the WiFi at our cabin was slowly killing them.
Woof. I'll have to finish this some other time. Way too intense for where I am right now.
You are leading a wall-to-wall psychedelic lifestyle. How very weird...
One of my rules is not to mix stuff... and you do with abandon. A turn off.
Dunno. If you had this kind of a relationship with alcohol, people would be urging you into rehab, no? If your life revolved around it.
I will write more once I have a chance to reread this and digest.
Oh, before I run off... for depression, more movement and more sun is invaluable. Plus St. John's Wort works quite well. I used it for SAD when I lived in cloudy Hudson valley. Also niacin. And I was concerned that you are treating (maybe?) your body pains for symptoms rather than looking at the underlying stuff, the roots... if you are having this in your early thirties, you will have massive issues in your 60s.
So... kinda surprised myself... thought I'd be more positive in response here.
There is a part three coming. I realize this doesn't exactly make me look good, but I wanted to be honest. But I guess the thing is, my physical and mental health is SIGNIFICANTLY better than it was before I got into psychedelics. But that could be maintained while using them far less frequently and more intentionally, and that's the direction I've been heading in since fall 2023.
The chronic pain has been around for as long as I can remember! I fell off a staircase when I was a year old and cracked my skull. Pain is in the shoulder and neck on the same side I landed. It was exacerbated by Ibuprofen abuse (I'd take them for headaches/migraines, but they make pain worse in the long term). I don't touch Ibuprofen now. I use a combination of yoga, massage, acupuncture, and topical essential oils to manage the pain now. It used to bother me constantly, and now I regularly have days where I don't even notice it. The reason ketamine was so dangerous for me was because I quickly came to associate it with pain relief -- long term pain relief, it loosened up my shoulder so much it felt like a miracle in 2020. But as per the Frozen metaphor, I went too far, and needed to come back to Earth.
It seems we need to mutually clarify some stuff, going forward. I do understand from your story that you are grateful to the mushrooms for a whole lot of stuff, and especially you being able to dig yourself out from a hole, healthwise. My comments are directed to who you are now, and I do not wish to pooh pooh any of your past. I think you've come through some crappy times really well.
Please understand that my comments regarding health issues you are experiencing come strictly from a place... well, I am heavily into remedies, and into thinking through the crappy medical paradigm we are in the midst of, and so when I hear of someone's health issues I tend to comment, suggesting this or that. :-) Myself, acupuncture has not helped but chiropractic has. Provided the chiro is gifted... there are charlatans out there as well.
If you were trying to make yourself look good rather than be honest, I would not be coming here... :-)
See previous reply! But also kind of funny because I had the opposite experience with acupuncture and chiro and thought the latter was kind of a scam -- I guess it really depends on the practitioner and what the underlying issue is.
Totally. When I was young, I went to a chiro guy three times a week, had good insurance then... it was a total waste. Did nothing. :-) But then, how else would I learn?
- Alcohol is a dangerous drug: you can overdose, it causes liver damage, increases cancer risk, causes hangover and withdrawal symptoms, depletes nutrients, increases cravings for unhealthy food, increases risk of violence, makes some people feel depressed, and is so addictive it can be deadly to go cold-turkey. It's been argued it's more dangerous than cocaine. (I rarely drink, despite being from a family filled with heavy drinekrs -- because of mushrooms).
- Magic mushrooms repair cellular damage, encourage healthy eating and behaviours, and make you kind of peace-and-love-y. You can't overdose and there are no withdrawal symptoms if you stop taking it. It's basically the safest substance out there, including over-the-counter drugs and psychiatric medications.
- Ketamine is not completely safe (as I note) but it's still way safer and less addictive than alcohol.
So it's not really the same thing. It's just that alcohol use and abuse is normalized whereas psychedelics are not. But comparing mushrooms to alcohol is comparing a plant medicine shown to have numerous health benefits and has been used for thousands of years to a neurotoxin that has no health benefits and frequently results in illness and/or death for chronic users.
I wasn't comparing it to alcohol. I am alarmed how much your life revolves around the drug(s).
Alcohol does have positives, btw. When alcoholics die of cirrhosis, their veins are said to be clear and smooth like a newborn's! Just for example. But it is definitely a different risk. As Paul saw, that was not my point.
The other issue your story brought up for me is... this stuff, this magic, shouldn't it be used as a sacrament? Not something to pop two or three times a week cuz the person is feeling a bit down or off? Or as the looneys in Silicon Valley do, any damn time they feel a bit less creative than they'd like.
Many years ago, I went through a period when I used pot a lot, kinda routinely. If I had my life to live again, I would skip that...
I didn't know that about alcohol! I think there are social benefits too, but since the mushroom madness of 2020, I'm way more sensitive to it than I already was so I rarely drink anymore.
Most of this stuff I'm addressing in part three (and I actually cut a chunk out of this part that will eventually be used in an essay about my concerns regarding synthetic psychedelics). I smoked too much weed from about 2016-2020 (mushrooms helped me stop) and yeah, I'd skip that too. It helped a bit with the pain issues but wasn't worth it.
The defensiveness isn't really coming from being upset people think I used psychedelics too much and irresponsibly ... I admit that, and it's what I was trying to convey here. I just reflexively defend psilocybin because I really believe it's one of the most powerful medicines out there and while yes, I used it way too much and was reckless, I still came out the other side healthier, happier, more connected, braver, and even a bit wiser. (I DO NOT make the same claim about ketamine or marijuana, despite the benefits for pain. And I kind of think LSD is just dangerous, but admittedly I've only tried it a handful of times because I'm not a fan).
Yup. They say the reason the French can eat all those creamy fatty sauces all the time is because they wash it all down with a glass of wine. :-)
Also, alcohol produces GABA and helps sleep. Key is... a bit! And beer has lupulin in it, so it helps with sleep and breastfeeding, it relaxes a person... hops are a cousin of cannabis. The dose is everything!
As far as what is dangerous, IMO... DMT. I sat for someone who did it, and that cured me of any curiosity in that direction. Awful stuff. The hypesters call it a spirit molecule. Riiight... more like a demon-possession molecule...
Oh lord, DMT ... I've tried it a couple of times and I didn't like it. Ayahuasca also releases DMT, but it's very different. I'm not sure about ayahuasca either. I've only tried it three times (in a proper ceremony setting, I don't think that one is safe at all to try outside a ceremony run by someone who knows what they're doing), and the third trip was probably one of the most incredible healing experiences of my life. But the serpent spirit I saw ... I didn't get the sense that she was "Good" in the same way I do the mushroom spirits and the "Great Spirit" I describe in this essay. There was a darker edge to her. She frightened me a little. But she also healed me so I am grateful for that. It was a brutal experience though.
I think there is a reason they did elaborate ceremonies for aya in the Amazon, having guides, hedging it with certain kinds of songs etc. They understood the dangers, coming from long tradition. Too many people now who style themselves "shamen" -- too much bullshit everywhere...
Sorry for getting defensive ... I know I was using psychedelics too often (especially ketamine), and I was deliberately trying to show that in this part of the essay. It's not that I feel the need to defend my behaviour so much as I want to defend mushrooms because even if I did use them too frequently and in too high of doses, they restored my physical and mental health, they helped me develop healthier habits, and they helped me come to believe in God (or at least decide to believe) -- and the third part of this essay is about how I recognize that I need to develop a spiritual connection outside of psychedelics.
To clarify, I'd make mushroom tea (or eat mushroom chocolate) 1-2 times per week during the stretches of peak use (with the exception of June 2020, when it was 3 times per week). Most of time, the doses were between 0.25 - 1.5 grams, which is roughly equivalent dosage-wise to 1-2 alcoholic drinks (assuming 5-8 would make you black-out drunk, which it would me).
I actually think 2-4 drinks per week is too much alcohol to have. And using mushrooms twice per week is too much too. There is a part three coming. I'm not planning on ending this series with "and I learned nothing!"
The beings you are seeing are not benevolent, they are demons. They are deceiving you and manipulating you. All of the stuff you are doing is causing doors to open, doors that should not be opened. Yoga, mushrooms, ketamine, pot, etc are all ways of opening those doors to other dimensions, dimensions that are very dangerous. The shadow person that you keep seeing is a demon.
I am highly offended by your talk about Mary and how she conceived, in fact it is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is stated as an unforgivable sin in the Bible. Mary conceived Jesus from the Holy Spirit, not a man.
My advice to you remains the same. Seek Jesus and ask Him to forgive you. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you (not under the influence of drugs). In fact, you and your husband should both do this together. Start reading the New Testament daily.
I am very concerned for both you, your husband, and your children. Please heed my advice before it is too late. These beings you are in contact with are pretending to be kind and caring but they are not, they have one mission, to take you to hell and you are making it easy for them.
The demons are responsible for developing and promoting the fundamentalist ideology which you are expressing here. Most Christians have no idea the level of demonic influence and infiltration there is within so-called Christian institutions.
I mean, she's probably right that the dark haze was a demon. It felt like a demon. Thank the Great Spirit for giving us palo santo, frankincense, and myrrh to ward such things off!
I take issue with any belief system that insists there is only one route to God. I also take issue with taking books too literally, since no God or spirit has written a book, all books are written by people.
The "being of light" I describe at the end of the essay is apparently a common vision, both on psychedelics and under other altered states (e.g. illness/fevers). Some people think he's Jesus. Others, an angel. Some, an alien. My assumption that he was my husband speaking to me telepathically is pretty stupid in comparison.
The "many paths to God" belief is a myth to keep you from Him. If I were to stand on the corner where there was a fork in the road where one road went to God and the other to hell, but chose to guide you to the road to hell by saying both go to God, where would you end up?
If that "being of light" was Jesus, you would know it, He is unmistakable.
Yet, at least according to one book I have which describes people seeing a being of light similar to the one I saw (which responded to my "who are you?" with an immense feeling of love) and being convinced he was Jesus. I clearly misunderstood who he was because I wanted my husband to be there and was thinking irrationally. So maybe he was Jesus and my lack of Christianity prevented me from understanding that. Maybe he was an angel. Maybe he was part of my own psyche.
I really don't know. Whoever he was, he was clearly trying to help me.
I sure hope so. I have heard of demons that pretend to be benevolent beings. I have also heard that people who leave their bodies without the protection of God or God actually doing the removing, are like a person jumping out of a boat into the water with a small cut leaking blood. Like sharks, demons smell the scent (or lack of protection) and make a beeline to engage you. They want an open door or portal into your space.
I pray that the being you encountered was Jesus showing Himself to you. He most likely wouldn't engage fully due to your altered state at the time, but he possibly wanted to reveal Himself to you. My hope is that you reach out to Him by reading His Word and ruminating on it. Some of the most powerful Christian witnesses I have heard are those that were saved from the New Age, their experiences have helped so many people. That book I recommended is written by a woman such as that.
Did my point about palo santo being closely related to frankincense and myrrh make you question your initial stance on it? As I described, I've used it to ward off dark spirits and it seems to work quite well.
Fundamentalist ideology?? Really? You not following Christ does not make me a fundamentalist.
I do know that there is demonic influence in some churches, most are under attack from the enemy. They infiltrate for a reason, to stop what is working against them, think about it.
I don’t. I oppose ignorant fundamentalists who pervert his words because they are uneducated morons and judgmental jerks possessed by demonic spirits impairing their ability to understand the Bible like a grown-up.
Meghan
Quite the “herstory” you are sharing … brave and gracious of you to express your personal perspective
We celebrated our Winter with shrooms in the Kootenays last week
-23 at night -9 during the day but sunny and dry
For me it was a body experience with only 20%visuals
Rewarding and relaxing
Nothing if import revealed
Looking forward to the next celebration outside in Spring with the earth having verdant regeneration
Tusen Takk
Jon
Some thoughts that occurred to me while reading this:
I think some atheists reject religion simply because they don't find it logically justifiable rather than because of the behaviour of believers.
I've seen Iain McGilchrist talk about finding his ideas in kabbalah in a lecture. I'm not sure if he's written about it, as I haven't got around to his books yet.
I don't know much about kabbalah, but 'right' and 'left' in kabbalah refer to the diagram of the sefirot, the ways God is manifest in the world. The left side is associated with kindness and expansiveness, the right with justice and boundaries. Btw, in the language of Jewish mysticism, Elokim is the name for God-as-power/justice. The Tetragrammaton (four letter name of God) is the name you would associate with the 'right'. (This is the alternate, Orthodox explanation for the names of God in the Torah that is central to the Documentary Hypothesis. I do not accept the DH, for various reasons).
I'm Jewish by birth, but not at all outspoken... ;-)
Aside from the first 11 chapters of Genesis and Job, Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) reads to me like history rather than allegory/myth, by which I mean, not that it is literally true (although I do see most of it as fairly literally true after those first few chapters), but that it seems to me to be telling the particular story of the Jews, not a mythological, general story of mankind and the individual's inner life. As Robert Alter points out, almost all biblical characters who appear for long undergo character growth, not in a stylised, 'hero's journey' way, which is more a historical mode of writing than a mythological one.
Little in the Torah or classical Jewish sources suggest that Abraham and the Israelites were chosen for kindness or ethics and there is a rabbinic source that the Jews are the *least* inherently ethical people (therefore a greater achievement of God to make them good). The main counter-text is Genesis 18.19 "For I have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is just and right..." but the emphasis there is on Abraham's commitment to raising ethical children, not that they were inherently ethical.
Are you planning on sharing more of your journey as you take the conversion classes?
Thank you for sharing this! I have so much to learn. Yes, I'll write about the journey eventually.
Haha, my husband had a mushroom trip where the mushrooms told him Jews need God more than other people in part to keep them in line. I shared that in a previous essay (where I also said that Jews seem to be unusually capable, and that meant they were unusually capable of both good and evil) and another Jew pointed out that was in the Talmud. I think both my husband and I have become better people since we started believing in God. It makes a better story, doesn't it, if the Jews were one of the least ethical people, and God interfered and changed their course. And yes, I think most of the stories in the latter books are a family history -- I'm just not sure where that starts? Maybe with Abraham? I haven't read nearly enough, but I've seen interpretations both that Abraham was real and that his story is a metaphor.
The left side of the body is controlled by the right brain and the right side by the left -- but the little of what I know about Kabbalah I find confusing. I read somewhere that In Kabbalah the right hemisphere is the "masculine" part of our personality, and the left the "feminine", but that sounds as wrong to me as Leonard Shlain's assertion that the left is masculine and the right feminine. I think the right hemisphere contains both the divine masculine and divine feminine, but maybe depending on the sex and biases of the interpreter, one might see the right as masculine (if they see masculinity as superior to femininity) or feminine (vice versa).
Someone shared a diagram of the Kabbalah tree of life with me with Timothy Leary's 8 circuit model of consciousness layered over it. My brain kind of broke. Kabbalah makes me feel a bit stupid. I think this was it, if you're interested -- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/94505292157323247/
Yes, it's a better story if Judaism improved the Jews. Also, it explains why so many Jews (devout ones, not just the self-haters) find other Jews so hard to get along with. We tend to have strong personalities!
I think history in the Torah starts with Abraham, although maybe some details (particularly numbers) are deeply symbolic and non-literal throughout. I can see Abraham as a metaphor more than, say, Isaac, but I think even then some of the details don't fit an easy pattern. I've been thinking a lot recently that religious Jews see the Hebrew Bible as history, whereas Christians see it more as metaphor.
I find Kabbalah confusing too (especially that diagram!). I think in Kabbalah "masculine" and "feminine" are not being used in the biological sense of "male" and "female," but that's the limit of my knowledge. In earlier, Talmudic, sources, God's "right" hand is His kindness and His left is His justice simply because most people are right-handed, so the metaphor is simply that God's kindness is stronger than His justice (in the "judging and punishing" sense).
I am more of a mixture of religious rationalist and religious existentialist. I'm less interesting in understand God and more interested in making religiously-meaningful choices and finding God in interactions with others.
You have it backwards. kindness is on the right
Right hemisphere (McGilchrist's work) or right side of the body (left hemisphere)?
Hey, Meghan, you may find this of interest.
https://off-guardian.org/2025/02/23/somethings-wrong-donald-trump-was-right-about-autism/
I just read it ... what a fantastic essay, thank you!! She really nailed it. "Social autism" is a useful term, it's really what I'm talking about (mostly) when I refer to "autism" in my essays. I'm going to use that term moving forward (with attribution).
Glad you like it! How does "social autism" differ from "geeky introverts with poor social skills"?
On the same "spectrum", really -- social skills come from lots of early childhood interaction. Geekiness is often a result of social isolation.
I understand... but, does that justify stealing the term from the real autistic people?
It's not really stealing, but I do sometimes wish "Aspergers Syndrome" still existed to draw a line between the two. If you read Kanner and Asperger's original papers, you'll find that "geeky introverts with poor social skills" as a somewhat accurate description of the kids they studied and dubbed "autistic". But "autism" nowadays is used as umbrella term and there is much more low-functioning autism ("classic autism" or Kanner's autism) and that "autism" is much more severe than it was in the 1940s. Both Kanner and Asperger also describe sub-clinical "autistic" traits in parents and family members (geekiness, poor social skills, coldness, lack of affection). "Autism" is basically an umbrella term for a cluster of traits that have multiple causes: cold parenting, early childhood emotional neglect, poor nutrition, lack of sunlight and low Vitamin D, pharmaceutical and environmental toxins, chronic stress, vulnerable "risk factor" genes, heavy metal accumulation, poor sleep, pineal gland calcifications, excess screen time, excess time reading books, social isolation, early childhood brain damage to certain areas etc. So the severity and presentation of the "autism" depends on which factor(s) are causal.
"family members (geekiness, poor social skills, coldness, lack of affection"
That's my family. I call them cold fishes. Should they be labeled as though it's an illness? Why? Everybody has a cross to bear. Do we really want all of them in the Big Shrink Bible? Cui bono?
And muddy the water for the really autistic? I apologize for pushing this, it's been my pet peeve lately, and I want to understand more.
The detail in there about the entity appearing to you around the wifi was very compelling for me. The same area in our living room where the wifi is at is also where the entities seem to manifest for me.
So bizarre! I wonder what's up with that. Maybe I should entertain the "conspiracy theory" that WiFi is toxic a little more (see https://romanshapoval.substack.com/). On one of the rare occasions where I've tried LSD (I don't care for it and think psilocybin is the superior medicine), I had panicked moment where I was convinced the trees were telling me that the WiFi at our cabin was slowly killing them.
"God’s power over human events primarily comes from our awareness that we (are) being observed."
This is an amazing insight.
Many amazing insights you're sharing, thank you.
Agree about carpets.
When I was very ill with mumps as s child (early 70s) I saw a set of spirits around my bed. They were debating my face and decided to let me live.
Can't wait to read part 3 of this!
I'm glad they decided to let you live!
I can't take credit for this insight, the mushrooms told me 😂
Debating my fate. I can't edit the first comment.
Woof. I'll have to finish this some other time. Way too intense for where I am right now.
You are leading a wall-to-wall psychedelic lifestyle. How very weird...
One of my rules is not to mix stuff... and you do with abandon. A turn off.
Dunno. If you had this kind of a relationship with alcohol, people would be urging you into rehab, no? If your life revolved around it.
I will write more once I have a chance to reread this and digest.
Oh, before I run off... for depression, more movement and more sun is invaluable. Plus St. John's Wort works quite well. I used it for SAD when I lived in cloudy Hudson valley. Also niacin. And I was concerned that you are treating (maybe?) your body pains for symptoms rather than looking at the underlying stuff, the roots... if you are having this in your early thirties, you will have massive issues in your 60s.
So... kinda surprised myself... thought I'd be more positive in response here.
Thank you for sharing so openly.
May you have a healing healthy day. :-)
There is a part three coming. I realize this doesn't exactly make me look good, but I wanted to be honest. But I guess the thing is, my physical and mental health is SIGNIFICANTLY better than it was before I got into psychedelics. But that could be maintained while using them far less frequently and more intentionally, and that's the direction I've been heading in since fall 2023.
The chronic pain has been around for as long as I can remember! I fell off a staircase when I was a year old and cracked my skull. Pain is in the shoulder and neck on the same side I landed. It was exacerbated by Ibuprofen abuse (I'd take them for headaches/migraines, but they make pain worse in the long term). I don't touch Ibuprofen now. I use a combination of yoga, massage, acupuncture, and topical essential oils to manage the pain now. It used to bother me constantly, and now I regularly have days where I don't even notice it. The reason ketamine was so dangerous for me was because I quickly came to associate it with pain relief -- long term pain relief, it loosened up my shoulder so much it felt like a miracle in 2020. But as per the Frozen metaphor, I went too far, and needed to come back to Earth.
It seems we need to mutually clarify some stuff, going forward. I do understand from your story that you are grateful to the mushrooms for a whole lot of stuff, and especially you being able to dig yourself out from a hole, healthwise. My comments are directed to who you are now, and I do not wish to pooh pooh any of your past. I think you've come through some crappy times really well.
Please understand that my comments regarding health issues you are experiencing come strictly from a place... well, I am heavily into remedies, and into thinking through the crappy medical paradigm we are in the midst of, and so when I hear of someone's health issues I tend to comment, suggesting this or that. :-) Myself, acupuncture has not helped but chiropractic has. Provided the chiro is gifted... there are charlatans out there as well.
If you were trying to make yourself look good rather than be honest, I would not be coming here... :-)
See previous reply! But also kind of funny because I had the opposite experience with acupuncture and chiro and thought the latter was kind of a scam -- I guess it really depends on the practitioner and what the underlying issue is.
Totally. When I was young, I went to a chiro guy three times a week, had good insurance then... it was a total waste. Did nothing. :-) But then, how else would I learn?
Regarding the comparison to alcohol --
- Alcohol is a dangerous drug: you can overdose, it causes liver damage, increases cancer risk, causes hangover and withdrawal symptoms, depletes nutrients, increases cravings for unhealthy food, increases risk of violence, makes some people feel depressed, and is so addictive it can be deadly to go cold-turkey. It's been argued it's more dangerous than cocaine. (I rarely drink, despite being from a family filled with heavy drinekrs -- because of mushrooms).
- Magic mushrooms repair cellular damage, encourage healthy eating and behaviours, and make you kind of peace-and-love-y. You can't overdose and there are no withdrawal symptoms if you stop taking it. It's basically the safest substance out there, including over-the-counter drugs and psychiatric medications.
- Ketamine is not completely safe (as I note) but it's still way safer and less addictive than alcohol.
So it's not really the same thing. It's just that alcohol use and abuse is normalized whereas psychedelics are not. But comparing mushrooms to alcohol is comparing a plant medicine shown to have numerous health benefits and has been used for thousands of years to a neurotoxin that has no health benefits and frequently results in illness and/or death for chronic users.
I wasn't comparing it to alcohol. I am alarmed how much your life revolves around the drug(s).
Alcohol does have positives, btw. When alcoholics die of cirrhosis, their veins are said to be clear and smooth like a newborn's! Just for example. But it is definitely a different risk. As Paul saw, that was not my point.
The other issue your story brought up for me is... this stuff, this magic, shouldn't it be used as a sacrament? Not something to pop two or three times a week cuz the person is feeling a bit down or off? Or as the looneys in Silicon Valley do, any damn time they feel a bit less creative than they'd like.
Many years ago, I went through a period when I used pot a lot, kinda routinely. If I had my life to live again, I would skip that...
I didn't know that about alcohol! I think there are social benefits too, but since the mushroom madness of 2020, I'm way more sensitive to it than I already was so I rarely drink anymore.
Most of this stuff I'm addressing in part three (and I actually cut a chunk out of this part that will eventually be used in an essay about my concerns regarding synthetic psychedelics). I smoked too much weed from about 2016-2020 (mushrooms helped me stop) and yeah, I'd skip that too. It helped a bit with the pain issues but wasn't worth it.
The defensiveness isn't really coming from being upset people think I used psychedelics too much and irresponsibly ... I admit that, and it's what I was trying to convey here. I just reflexively defend psilocybin because I really believe it's one of the most powerful medicines out there and while yes, I used it way too much and was reckless, I still came out the other side healthier, happier, more connected, braver, and even a bit wiser. (I DO NOT make the same claim about ketamine or marijuana, despite the benefits for pain. And I kind of think LSD is just dangerous, but admittedly I've only tried it a handful of times because I'm not a fan).
Yup. They say the reason the French can eat all those creamy fatty sauces all the time is because they wash it all down with a glass of wine. :-)
Also, alcohol produces GABA and helps sleep. Key is... a bit! And beer has lupulin in it, so it helps with sleep and breastfeeding, it relaxes a person... hops are a cousin of cannabis. The dose is everything!
As far as what is dangerous, IMO... DMT. I sat for someone who did it, and that cured me of any curiosity in that direction. Awful stuff. The hypesters call it a spirit molecule. Riiight... more like a demon-possession molecule...
Oh lord, DMT ... I've tried it a couple of times and I didn't like it. Ayahuasca also releases DMT, but it's very different. I'm not sure about ayahuasca either. I've only tried it three times (in a proper ceremony setting, I don't think that one is safe at all to try outside a ceremony run by someone who knows what they're doing), and the third trip was probably one of the most incredible healing experiences of my life. But the serpent spirit I saw ... I didn't get the sense that she was "Good" in the same way I do the mushroom spirits and the "Great Spirit" I describe in this essay. There was a darker edge to her. She frightened me a little. But she also healed me so I am grateful for that. It was a brutal experience though.
I think there is a reason they did elaborate ceremonies for aya in the Amazon, having guides, hedging it with certain kinds of songs etc. They understood the dangers, coming from long tradition. Too many people now who style themselves "shamen" -- too much bullshit everywhere...
I don't think Erin's point is that mushroom's are like alcohol, so your reply seems to purposely miss her intention:
Anyone reporting they used *anything* as much as you did here is alarming.
...Let alone a powerful psycho-stimulant, no matter how natural and wonderful you think it is.
...Let alone when mixed with two other powerful substances.
You report near-constantly 'making tea' as if you are having herbal mint or something...
Whether you call it a drug or natural medicine, it is undeniably too powerful for the consistent and casual use you describe here.
Sorry for getting defensive ... I know I was using psychedelics too often (especially ketamine), and I was deliberately trying to show that in this part of the essay. It's not that I feel the need to defend my behaviour so much as I want to defend mushrooms because even if I did use them too frequently and in too high of doses, they restored my physical and mental health, they helped me develop healthier habits, and they helped me come to believe in God (or at least decide to believe) -- and the third part of this essay is about how I recognize that I need to develop a spiritual connection outside of psychedelics.
To clarify, I'd make mushroom tea (or eat mushroom chocolate) 1-2 times per week during the stretches of peak use (with the exception of June 2020, when it was 3 times per week). Most of time, the doses were between 0.25 - 1.5 grams, which is roughly equivalent dosage-wise to 1-2 alcoholic drinks (assuming 5-8 would make you black-out drunk, which it would me).
I actually think 2-4 drinks per week is too much alcohol to have. And using mushrooms twice per week is too much too. There is a part three coming. I'm not planning on ending this series with "and I learned nothing!"
The beings you are seeing are not benevolent, they are demons. They are deceiving you and manipulating you. All of the stuff you are doing is causing doors to open, doors that should not be opened. Yoga, mushrooms, ketamine, pot, etc are all ways of opening those doors to other dimensions, dimensions that are very dangerous. The shadow person that you keep seeing is a demon.
I am highly offended by your talk about Mary and how she conceived, in fact it is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is stated as an unforgivable sin in the Bible. Mary conceived Jesus from the Holy Spirit, not a man.
My advice to you remains the same. Seek Jesus and ask Him to forgive you. Ask Him to reveal Himself to you (not under the influence of drugs). In fact, you and your husband should both do this together. Start reading the New Testament daily.
I am very concerned for both you, your husband, and your children. Please heed my advice before it is too late. These beings you are in contact with are pretending to be kind and caring but they are not, they have one mission, to take you to hell and you are making it easy for them.
I am praying for you Meghan.
The demons are responsible for developing and promoting the fundamentalist ideology which you are expressing here. Most Christians have no idea the level of demonic influence and infiltration there is within so-called Christian institutions.
I mean, she's probably right that the dark haze was a demon. It felt like a demon. Thank the Great Spirit for giving us palo santo, frankincense, and myrrh to ward such things off!
I take issue with any belief system that insists there is only one route to God. I also take issue with taking books too literally, since no God or spirit has written a book, all books are written by people.
The "being of light" I describe at the end of the essay is apparently a common vision, both on psychedelics and under other altered states (e.g. illness/fevers). Some people think he's Jesus. Others, an angel. Some, an alien. My assumption that he was my husband speaking to me telepathically is pretty stupid in comparison.
The "many paths to God" belief is a myth to keep you from Him. If I were to stand on the corner where there was a fork in the road where one road went to God and the other to hell, but chose to guide you to the road to hell by saying both go to God, where would you end up?
If that "being of light" was Jesus, you would know it, He is unmistakable.
Yet, at least according to one book I have which describes people seeing a being of light similar to the one I saw (which responded to my "who are you?" with an immense feeling of love) and being convinced he was Jesus. I clearly misunderstood who he was because I wanted my husband to be there and was thinking irrationally. So maybe he was Jesus and my lack of Christianity prevented me from understanding that. Maybe he was an angel. Maybe he was part of my own psyche.
I really don't know. Whoever he was, he was clearly trying to help me.
I sure hope so. I have heard of demons that pretend to be benevolent beings. I have also heard that people who leave their bodies without the protection of God or God actually doing the removing, are like a person jumping out of a boat into the water with a small cut leaking blood. Like sharks, demons smell the scent (or lack of protection) and make a beeline to engage you. They want an open door or portal into your space.
I pray that the being you encountered was Jesus showing Himself to you. He most likely wouldn't engage fully due to your altered state at the time, but he possibly wanted to reveal Himself to you. My hope is that you reach out to Him by reading His Word and ruminating on it. Some of the most powerful Christian witnesses I have heard are those that were saved from the New Age, their experiences have helped so many people. That book I recommended is written by a woman such as that.
Still praying for you Meghan.
Did my point about palo santo being closely related to frankincense and myrrh make you question your initial stance on it? As I described, I've used it to ward off dark spirits and it seems to work quite well.
Fundamentalist ideology?? Really? You not following Christ does not make me a fundamentalist.
I do know that there is demonic influence in some churches, most are under attack from the enemy. They infiltrate for a reason, to stop what is working against them, think about it.
I am a Christian and have been since I was a child.
What kind of a Christian opposes the words of our Lord Jesus?
I don’t. I oppose ignorant fundamentalists who pervert his words because they are uneducated morons and judgmental jerks possessed by demonic spirits impairing their ability to understand the Bible like a grown-up.
John 14:6 "I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me".
Pretty hard to "pervert" that.
Also, Christians don't name call other Christians, especially when they read the Bible "like a grown-up".
I know you have heard Jesus' second commandment reference "love your neighbor as yourself' Matt 22"-:39
We need to live that out.