I had just checked into my studio that I had booked through Booking when Marcel rang the doorbell. A few weeks earlier, when I had finished my last project, I had booked a truffle ceremony online and today was the day that this place was going to take place. I wanted to listen more to my subconscious and see if I could find some career advice there. After all, I had just turned 40 and decided this was a great time to learn something about myself and my future.
Marcel introduced himself and briefly explained what was about to happen. He asked how I felt and went over the answers I had filled in online in preparation for this day. I asked how ‘legal’ this was, especially for when things would go wrong. He said he had been doing this for 5 years and it was perfectly legal. In the Netherlands you are allowed to use all kinds of drugs, only you are not allowed to sell or own them all. Magic truffles can be sold, however, and this was what I was here for. Moreover, nothing had ever happened during the 5 years that he practiced this profession. That reassured me because I had to admit that I was a bit nervous after all. I asked him if I couldn’t get a higher dose because there are different levels. I wanted to silence that damn ego of mine and experience how it would feel not to be my ‘imaginary self’ anymore but my ‘real’ self. Since I had never taken truffles before, he advised against this and we went for the level below which you hallucinate and experience the world in a totally different way but still remain your imaginary self. Marcel had brought a tea with the truffles containing the active ingredient Psilocybin mixed with some herbs, vitamins and extra minerals. It tasted good. We connected his phone to the Bluetooth speaker in the room and chose which style of music I would listen to. He also said that he would be there for me during the session and that if I found him threatening I could ask him to sit down a bit further. While we were doing this I felt it coming up and he made me smell mint. I lay down on my bed. Marcel installed another lamp that generated fluorescent colors that were constantly changing. He was going to fill the room with all kinds of smells during the trip as well because they could arouse certain feelings or images. I closed my eyes and left on my inner journey.
The whole session I had a very familiar feeling. I was still myself and was able to control what happened, Marcel had told me that in advance and it turned out to be true. I was in a colorful fluo 3D universe (by the lamp?) when I closed my eyes, where everything was possible. I had the feeling that I was dreaming but still awake. When I opened them or when the music stopped it felt like I was waking up again and again. I consciously kept them sometimes because I didn’t want this to ever stop. I could feel sad/anxious and happy, I could smell like never before. I saw incredible things, things that belong on a canvas, real works of art. I had the feeling that I wanted to know what life on earth meant but that I wasn’t allowed to know and certainly wasn’t allowed to take it with me to the ‘real’ world. In the beginning I was completely in it as if I was experiencing it myself. Later I watched more from a distance what was happening. It was a blissful feeling. Sometimes the music stopped for a moment and Marcel tried to ask me questions about the things I wanted to know during my trip. However, I noticed that I was having trouble getting out of my words and struggling with the earthly things. I wasn’t on earth and now I didn’t want to occupy myself with banal earthly things like a job or my future .
At one point I saw my brother and mother crying and felt their grief and tried to take it away. It was as if I could take away their sad energy from a distance.
It felt as if I had been here a million times, in this world I experienced with my eyes closed, as if I went there every night but now could remember it a little better. Although during my trip I was already aware that I wouldn’t be able to remember everything or even ‘had to'(?) forget everything. At one point I experienced a very blissful feeling when I said that I was going to draw all this and show it to the people in my real world. And a little later I said to myself that I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to share it anyway. I saw a kind of wolf/indian with 3 or 4 faces in one. It was hard for me to think of my wife and children, they were too earthly. I was not in the earthly world. I couldn’t think of a job either, or was drawing this unearthly world what I had to do? Discover the artist within myself and share it with the earthly world?
I could use all my senses and evoke all the feelings I wanted. I felt like everything was okay, everything I did. That I could make my own laws and I didn’t have to participate in that world with all its rules that make no sense and only serve to serve others or make them rich.
Time did not exist, it felt as if I had already traveled for days, but when I was early to the real time only 2.5 hours had passed and it also felt as long but in earthly terms (I know !?!?!?) I can hardly describe with words what I experienced because everything is so different than on earth, literally as the first sentence of the Tao describes it so beautifully: “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao”. Everything I try to describe comes a long way from what I have experienced. Your brain is literally tripping too. During a trip, the Psilocybin stops your default mode network (DMN) in your brain. This part of your brain can think about the past and future, and is therefore responsible for your ego because who are you?; The person you were in the past and what you are going to do in the future, right? Because this part of your brain becomes less active, other parts of your brain communicate with each other, so you experience reality completely differently and new brain connections are made. It has been discovered on brain scans that people who have meditated all their lives can make this DMN part of the brain inactive. How wonderful it must be to be a Buddhist monk
I also understand that if you have a depression, you can let go because you feel/see different things, get different perspectives and experience everything differently as a result. I also have more respect for my body, I really feel what I eat now and that it is good/healthy or not. I also wanted to get rid of my sugar addiction because Psilocybin could also cure addictions. I notice that at the moment it is easier to leave the refined sugars for what they are. I now ‘feel’ more with my whole body that it is not healthy for me.
I heard Marcel cleaning up and he started talking to me. We discussed what I had been through and he told me some more things he had experienced during his trips. We said goodbye the way we had to, by a firm hug. He advised me not to go outside yet and if I did it anyway pay attention because sometimes you could concentrate too hard on one thing and wouldn’t realize the rest. I also had to let him know later that night how I was doing. Whatever I did, I had a severe headache. I think this was because I hadn’t been lying on my own pillow during the 5 hour session and had gotten a headache more often. Luckily I was allowed to take paracetamol, only these were still in my car. For my safety I decided not to take it. So I was clear and not so off the planet that I didn’t know what I was doing after the session.
The hours after the session I still wasn’t ‘back to normal’. I lived a little slower, very consciously and completely in the now. When I ate fruit, I felt the saliva piling up in my mouth, I was aware of everything. The papayas, mangoes, coconut and pineapple tasted delicious, it was as if I ate them for the first time. I could look at my own hands for minutes, I saw that my hands seemed smaller than I had always thought and they were not as strong as they used to be. When I looked in the mirror I saw that I was redder and I saw veins on my forehead (due to a raised blood pressure?).
I looked at my mobile phone and experienced the screen differently because the light and the letters behaved ‘differently’. Or had this always been the case and had I never really looked? I could see many more details and concentrate on something for a long time, like a child who gets something new and gets totally absorbed in it. I was more aware of what I heard and smelled. (At the moment, 2 days after the session, it’s still like this but unfortunately it’s a lot less anyway). For example, I heard a wicker rack standing in the room crackling by itself every now and then and I was very aware of the ventilation in the bathroom. I also noticed, for example, that the background behind your WhatsApp messages moves when you move your mobile phone, I had never noticed that before. I could also keep looking at the ‘online’ icon under a person’s name in WhatsApp as if that was the only thing that existed on earth.
I didn’t get clear answers during my session but I feel excellent and confident. It really feels like ‘do what you really want to do without caring what others think’. I know it sounds cliché but now you also feel that because you have experienced it differently. I’m also more empathetic and can empathize better with others. I feel more. I see more. I live more in the now. I have more respect for the planet and I feel very connected to the universe. It’s as if you realize that what we humans make of it is just something tiny in this universe. The universe doesn’t need us, so you decide if you want humanity to continue to exist and if we should move to Mars because it’s too hot here. You feel that there is much more than what we are allowed to experience as humans here and that there are totally different physical(?) laws than those we know as humans. Everything is energy and you experience that during a session at first hand. You feel that time is very relative and our life is just a small thing for the universe and actually means nothing, so you have everything under control and above all you don’t have to be afraid. What can happen, only things your own brain tells you.
Later, when I looked at some notes I had written down in the past about everything I still wanted to experience and what I still wanted to change about myself, I saw a lot of things that had to do with my ego. It made me laugh a lot. 6 hours after one drink I saw the world differently than before. Who or what do I want to be? I’m just who I am and I just do what I want. I don’t have to worry about what others think of me, and I certainly don’t have to put it down. I have to do things because I like them, not because I’m ‘better’ than before or than others. I do things because I feel them for myself at that moment.
Finally
If you live in the NOW, you are not making lists, you are doing what you feel good about at that moment. Living in the NOW is very conscious living.
I consciously chose to write this down and share my adventure because friends and family around me were worried about this session. I can assure you this session was something to remember forever.
I also want to thank my wife for giving me this and for letting me take a break from my family to throw myself into this adventure. There is always the fear of the unknown, but I am convinced that this unknown will give me many more instructive adventures. And that’s the best thing there is, being able to learn something new every day.
“We’re all energetic (spiritual) beings who have a human experience.”
May the Tao be with you!