Recently, DMT found me, as I understand is often the case, rather than the other way around. I'm 23 and since I was 15 years old, I have been in a battle with drug addiction and alcoholism that runs particularly in my dad's side of the family. Yesterday marked one year clean and sober from my addictions, which have been wide and varied, but always one thing or another. But about 10 months into my sobriety, I got a new room mate in the four bedroom house I was renting a room in. We really hit it off and it was clear that we thought along a very similar wave length, discussing philosophy, spirituality, what could be called "conspiracy theory", and of course, psychedelics. My experience with psychedelics until that point was next to nothing -- the only substances I had experience with that could be considered remotely psychedelic were MDMA and DXM, neither of which truly fit the bill.
One thread that runs firmly throughout my life since I was young is my pursuit of mysticism, occultism, philosophy, and spirituality. My personal practice has taken on a lot of shamanic influences from Hoodoo and Native American spirituality, but my practice is primarily Hermetic and Qabalistic in origin.
I have been attending AA meetings for the past year, and one thing that has been etching away at me needing some resolution is my complete lack of experience with psychedelics. At this stage in my life, I have long surpassed the addiction, escapism, and self medication that has marked my use of any other substances. I later came to find that Bill Wilson, co founder of AA (who is highly admired and respected among members) used quite a lot of LSD well into his sobriety and the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous (20 years in). For a while, I was unsettled by this fact. He spoke and wrote of its wonders, terming it "a spiritual experience" on par with the experience that led to his sobriety. It seemed incongruous at the time that an individual so highly involved in the formation of a group centered around recovery from alcoholism could possibly use a mind altering substance with impunity without it being considered a "relapse".
I was bothered on a few levels, here. I have a spiritual practice and history that lends itself unto the use of psychedelics for their potentially profound spiritual implications, yet I have a personal history of becoming self destructive with all manners of substances, and yet I am involved in a program of recovery co-founded by an LSD enthusiast. This subject of psychedelics was becoming increasingly more of an issue for me. I swore I must have experience with these before I died, but my sobriety meant everything to me and I didn't want to tread the dark roads I once did.
But then, my new room mate asked me, "Do you know about DMT?" Of course I knew about DMT! (so I thought) After having picked apart the archives of Erowid, I was familiar in parts with this substance. Apparently, he had performed an extraction himself a while back and asked me if I would be interested in trying it. My answer was reluctant and hesitant. This was not a decision to rush, so I spent a few days thinking about this choice. I did some reading and wanted to verify that this would be a worthwhile and safe experience that I could learn from, and one that would lend unto, rather than hinder, my growth. He had assured me strongly that this was like no other experience and that there was a reason this opportunity was coming along for me.
After a few days of consideration, I decided that I was willing to have this experience. I respected what I was about to imbibe, and understand that I was really diving into the deep end of psychedelic experience without having tested the waters first with something a bit... Tamer. But being a practitioner of magick, meditation, and other spiritual disciplines, I felt that this was an experience I could handle.
Though I will say that going into this experience with the right intentions and due respect to it was the best possible way to approach it, nothing in this world could have prepared me for that first time. We laid out in the backyard very late at night beneath the full moon, very light clouds in the sky, and a feeling of energy in the air. We prayed and meditated for a period before entering into the hyperspace, becoming mentally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared for this level of vulnerability. I took in my first deep inhalation, holding it for 10 seconds. A strange sensation washed over me. Something seemed a bit like salvia, but more lucid, more clear, more definite. I took a second inhalation, and at the end of holding that breath, I gazed with awe and amazement at the splendor of the world itself.
I will never forget how majestic the clouds looked. They danced and curled on their ends, swirling in perfect formation. Faces and forms appeared in them, and I readily understood that they had a consciousness and an intelligence of their own. I gazed in amazement at the trees, each part of their being danced and swayed in perfect harmony with everything. I saw faces and forms in the trees as well, and I could readily understand that they had a consciousness also. I gazed in wonder at the grass, it was as though I could witness them growing as I looked. They danced and swayed and as I gazed, I realized in a way I had only philosophized before that everything has a consciousness. Everything. The sum of all things was 1, everything was merely an individual expression of the same spirit, the same energy, the same fiber, but that it, and I, were all the same being. I could see layers of density behind everything. On the outermost, I could see light -- perfect light -- which was the quintessential fabric of existence. Behind the light, I could see several dimensions of density -- like seeing everything in a pre-created, pre-formative stage of being, and the successive stages everything goes through to materialize and manifest. I realized that everything we see is composed of this high frequency energy or light, if you will, but merely in a slower moving, more dense format, such that it appears to be tangible.
I saw a form in the sky that I could only understand as an image of the Great Architect, very Alex Grey-esque. In my mind, I made the connection that we are, in a manner, "limbs" or "probes" of the God source, all merely individual expressions of the same being, experiencing itself and its creation, and that we were connected to this source by way of an ethereal, umbilical connection.
My friend asked me to close my eyes. When I did, I was enveloped in a tide of perfect and elaborate artwork, expanding, growing, intensifying, shifting, folding in on itself, evolving, and changing in color and patterning. I was amazed at the level of perfect detail and intricacy, and the sheer vividness of this. It was as though I was traveling through a portal into a certain astral, spiritual dimension. It was difficult not to get lost in this perfection, and a moment later, my friend said "Now open your eyes."
Everything shimmered, danced, vibrated, hummed, sparkled with radiant light and life. "The beauty and power and magnitude of everything is just too much for me", I thought to myself. I really wondered when I would recollect, this being my first experience, I didn't know how much more I could handle.
I continued to gaze at the clouds that had amazed me so thoroughly. I watched everything gradually slip back into a "normal state", but the dividing line between DMT-eyes and ordinary waking consciousness was so impossibly thin, I was unable to write what I saw and experience off as simply a chemical effect. I had officially taken a good portion of my head philosophy down to my heart. It seemed like a reward -- finally getting to see what I've been chasing and believing for so long right in front of my eyes. It cemented certain beliefs I had, while it also clarified others. What I realized is, it was nothing short of a spiritual experience. It lacked the abusive, recreational qualities of other substances, by way of its sheer power and magnitude and the accompanying thought process, and it left me in a state of such sheer gratitude just to be in my skin, to be blessed enough to have the chance to have this human experience. To breath in the air, eat a meal, make love, have friends.
It was beautiful. And of course, this was all within 10 minutes on a sub-breakthrough dose. One of these days, I will describe my breakthrough experience. For now, let this suffice.
-Chris
"'Tis true, without falsehood, certain and most true.
That which is below is as that which is above, and that which is above is as that which is below, to accomplish the miracle of the One thing.
And as all things have arisen from one by the meditation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
The Sun is its father, the Moon its mother,
the wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nurse."
-Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus
All posts by the above author, HermeticShaman are fictional segments of a fictional fantasy book about fictional psychedelic journeys and travels to fantasy lands of wonder and imagination. Any resemblance to real events, intentions, conspiracy to commit illegal activities, or confessions of illegal activity are merely a convincing way to build up an epic plot line, and in no way represent the lifestyle or actions of the man behind the name.