Introduction
With all thanks to Marcel. He has prepared me in an excellent way for – and guided me during the trip.
Throughout my life, a single question has been and still is central; who am I really and what is consciousness? I have always felt that these so-called unanswerable questions can only give a satisfactory response if you dare to equate the human imagination at least with the superpowerful outer sense. With paintings, poems and dramatic philosophical texts I have tried (and continue to try) to express the imagination of deep cosmic connectedness. In addition, a youth trauma plays a role as a means of pressure to depict (and experience) a deeper origin of consciousness and reality. Questions of meaning such as traumatic experiences have always made me curious about means of expanding my consciousness. The use of weed also helps me to better express my imaginations.
The trip
I just take a throw and say that 80 percent of the trip can’t be grasped. That leaves me 20 percent to describe. Immediately after the trip I wrote down a thread of impressions in keywords. My trip experience follows the music playlist of Marcel’s mobile phone, his scent diffusers and his rotating light/color nozzle.
Here’s my report in rough terms. Then I make an attempt to formulate what I have learned from it or become wiser.
A continuous pulsing of beautifully coloured and undulating form fields that then swell up again and then diminish again. Fields filled with unfathomable figures and signs that continuously divide, merge, separate and then merge again etc. A rhythmic pumping and swirling of liquid velvet textures in brilliantly changing colour streams with orgasmic fountains of scarlet and ultraviolet. These alternating currents contract and ripen open. Then an infinite spine of reptiles emerges from a bottom of rows of teeth that fade away again. I see the dying dragon passing into the face of mercy. What a majesty in a procession of flared colours, a cosmic parade of forms groping for their birth. They yearn to be born. In palaces, princes and princesses are cast in gold and purple and then eaten and swallowed up in the eternal cycle of digestion. I see you womb, mother of healing, mother of primal mating in your sacred confirmation of purple.
A short rest in the pulsating fields. Then a new unrest begins. On the big board game satyr and clowns appear – Micky Mouse-like figures with mean grimaces. Then insects crawl into restless crevices and fish and snakes hurry away. The contours of the swaying pink carmine field change into a sharply increasing palette of shades of brown and dark green. Something new is looming. Once again everything is swallowed up by a large monster that then dissolves again and transforms into new formations of gracious shapes. The cycle keeps repeating itself in this way: golden children are transformed into beasts, swallowed and digested etc.
Conclusion
I interpret the trip I made as an encounter with the history of my own body that is, of course, a body like any living being. Presumably the trip offers the possibility to unlock the oldest part of the brain (the reptile brain). My digestion and spine formed the framework through which evolution unfolded to me filmically (in partial visions). I have witnessed the horrible beast of which I am and am part. But I have experienced in the experience of this trip that this enormous beast (evolution) is at the same time the deepest grace and possibility for further growth.
The day after the trip I decided to take a walk through Haarlem. I was not planning to visit Teylersmuseum. Yet I walked there spontaneously. Before I realized it, I stood eye and eye with essentials from the trip: fossils, skeletons, shells etc. I was particularly touched by the so-called ammonite. Unconsciously I draw and paint this form all my life. How happy I am my new ammonite consciousness.
A few days after the trip I made a painting (crucifixion 26) in which I incorporated my organic adventure. You can find it on my account on Instagram.
Gus Ambrose
Edit by triptherapy
The artwork belonging to the trip is shown below. By the way, are you curious what other art Gijs Ambrosius makes? Then click on a link of your choice:
