All Will Be Revealed

In our normal lives we live in a state of ego illusion. We take our concept of ourselves and perceive everything through this particular lens. We conceive ourselves as a limited physical body, separate from everything else "out there." Mushrooms change all that. They allow us to see through the "veil of perception." As they start to work, the boundaries between physical and mental, self and other begin to blur. There is a sense of losing control, but that is only the limited ego concept of self melting away. There is then a powerful transpersonal expansion of self into everything. You see yourself stripped of all limited conceptual illusions to reveal the pure essence, the Christ Consciousness within you. As we see ourselves, so we see the world. The world is a mirror, a reflection of ourselves. You can then have the experience of seeing the absolute perfection in every tree, rock and human being. You see the oneness at the core, stripped of the perceptual clothing and illusory differences. When your being transcends such boundaries, you feel an immense freedom from the weight of judgement taken off your shoulders, and at the same time a sense of incredible power. The mushrooms show us that we are the only ones who put the shackles of judgement upon ourselves, and we have the power to throw them off and at once be free, by embracing our whole Self. This is the freedom of being in the present moment. The past and future are but concepts that have no reality. The only thing you can ever change is your reality in the present moment, for that is truly all that is. The possibilities for manifestation are only bounded by your imagination to conceive them. At the height of mushroom consciousness is the awakening to the dreamlike quality of reality. Trees and mountains sway with the wind, and clouds form according to one's thought and intention. The formerly solid boundaries and sharp corners of reality are seen to be as malleable as a lucid dream. There is the sense of "coming home" to a state of being that is more real, returning to a place that was there all along, waiting to be realized. There is also the notion of dying to one's former illusory self and waking up or being reborn into a more expanded awareness. If one completely sheds every concept of self, and steps out of every box of me and not me, and lets go of any particular phenomenal form arising moment to moment, all that is ultimately left is pure awareness - the non-judgmental Witness to all that is, in it's ultimate perfection and beauty.

Embracing the whole Self: The mushroom experience brings us face to face with the reality that the ego is not in total control, perhaps even that the ego is an illusion. What is this deeper Self, this genuine I, this Buddha Nature or Christ Consciousness? This our true nature shining forth once the ego melts away. This is our subconscious divinity. Now since we go about our day to day lives believing we are so and so or such and such, who is this and not that, our divine nature hidden deep inside cannot just come out and pronounce itself to the world. But neither does it sit idle or hide. It is our true Self and wants to be known and consciously realized. The subconscious acts itself out through our subconscious actions. We unknowingly put ourselves into the exact situations that allow us to confront our repressed shadow. When we embrace and own our shadow self we become whole. There is no longer any dis-ease. The wound is healed. Now here is the key: the divine act is in seeing that we were subconsciously putting ourselves in a situation and playing a role, but that we were ultimately something much greater - the creative power behind it all. We saw that the universe organized around us in order to make that dis-ease very real, perhaps even producing physical symptoms. During our Dark Night of the Soul, or climactic spiritual death, we realized that we were and are living in a drama of epic proportions. We then begin to recognize the dreamlike quality of reality when we see our subconscious fears sym-bolized in the seemingly "outer" world. Waking up to this means gaining lucidity, or awareness of the dream, within the dream.

This is an incredible reveal-ation, especially for those of us who are steeped in scientific materialism. In a random universe where consciousness is a mere epiphenomenon, a chance product of chemical reactions, there can be no coherent order between separate physical objects. From this point of view, there can be no cosmic meaning to our choices or significance to our lives. In such a disenchanted reductionist world, it becomes possible to destroy the planet and it's people with no compunction, for you are not "them" or "it." Through this lens there are only parts, as disparate and lifeless as the mechanical cogs of a clock.

After a strong mushroom experience however, such a disenchanted cosmos seems utterly ludicrous and naive. When one vividly sees the boundaries of self and other vanish as if fog before the sunshine, one realizes there is only one being, one Self, and one coherent whole that is absolutely perfect. There is no shadow "other" to hate, only your deepest Self to love and have compassion for. You vividly see that thought influences reality. Thought is reality. You see the handiwork of the creator absolutely everywhere. In the clear light, every being shines with brilliance. Every act is a divine act. And in the end, all will realize that they are the one, the light, the source of infinite creative power.

A higher dimension awaits us. Our greatest fear is that we are more powerful than we can imagine, for the responsibility this confers. If we are to ascend the stairway to heaven, we must give our presence of being the attention it deserves, and recognize the magical power of our thoughts, for in them is contained the power and will to create a new earth.