A Sacred Journey
A month ago I did something I hadn’t done in over 40 years — I took a sacred mushroom journey. Back in the old days I had ingested mushrooms in places as diverse as a beach on the Na Pali coast of Kauai, the Sierra Nevada, and a pristine river in Humboldt County. Now at 75 I was doing it in a different fashion and for a different reason. I would be lying back on a couch in a small room with a guide as I attempted to get to the root of my severe chronic pain in my cervical spine that kept me from all my physical and creative pursuits. It turned out to be a survey of my entire life, of the damage done, the lessons learned, and the enlightenment gained. There was a lot to cover. I was born with epigenetic PTSD from my father’s World War 2 experiences with Patton’s Third Army and the Battle of the Bulge. I added to that PTSD with my father’s severe binge drinking. I was also born edged on to the autism spectrum and spent part of my childhood with a sister with vegetative cerebral palsy. Countering this suffering was my deep love of my grandparents and of working in the fields with my grandfather in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada. I wept in gratitude for them and for the love I feel for my wife and daughter. In addition, there were also my mentors and teachers I met along the way, not great gurus, but rather kind, gentle people who saw me for who I was.
The sacred mushroom experience itself was not kaleidoscopic and exceptional. Rather, it was a recapitulation and embracing of who I was and the fullness of who I am. It’s not surprising that I didn’t see all the colors and forms because my everyday life is overwhelmed by my experience of color and form. Color emanates from some deep place within the reality of things and linear shapes like limbs and mountain ridges mesmerize me. I try to bring that sense into my creative work making studio furniture (which has been featured in high level shows). In the middle of the journey, the guide looked at me and said, “You really live in that expanded state, don’t you?”
The answer was, “Yes I do.” Thanks to the sacred medicine, I could look at it as a fact without desire or fear. In my life I had always looked for spiritual teachers to affirm me, but now I knew for myself. However, that was, and is, the crux of my problem with pain. The scope of my mind and awareness is much larger than the circumstances of my life. The vision is too large for one person to bear. The healing lies in constantly giving the vision away, but that requires someone to receive it. Giving and receiving are a necessary tandem, a duo of completion. My image of a perfect life is to revel in color and form making furniture for the rest of my life, but also to revel in sitting with you and sharing the vision of that which moves beneath surface of all things, revel in pointing you toward that which truly IS.
I’ve been there. I know. I embrace my suffering past so you can embrace yours.
