It's not like the habits I'd built worrying or caring about those things went away overnight, but they did very rapidly stop having top priority in how I directed my energy. That brought immediate and sustained relief.
I was instead reminded of my own capacity to appreciate simple aspects of life, stuff I'd come to take for granted. Suddenly I remembered that I could let go of all that stuff and that there was this whole ground of life under my feet and all around me, that it was there to support me all along.
Here are some examples of things that felt profound, that I relearned or maybe even had a chance to learn deeply for the first time ever:
- Just being outside in the park with a couple of friends gave me so much peace and joy. We sat and found pleasure in the most basic stuff. We giggled. We had our minds blown.
- Woah... look at those ducks, they live in this park. This is where they live.
- Trees are alive, breathing, and likely aware of us on some level or another. Their bark seemed like an elephant's skin to me. Life is everywhere.
- The sun and earth are locked together. It's up there all the time, just buzzing, and its energy is amazing and abundant. Like holy shit it's powerful can you believe that thing is up there? Don't look at it!
- Check out that man jogging. He's just pulsing with life and vitality. I want to jog! It looks so satisfying and quenching to be alive like that!
- Everyone has their own reality. My reality is different from your reality and that's just fine! If someone tries to come at you with their reality, that's fine, it's their reality! I have my own reality and you have yours.
- People are deeply remarkable.
- I can make some pretty nice rhythms with just a rock and a wooden back-scratcher. I can pretend that the rock is my friend. That's fine to do and it's fun. I can refer to it as "my friend, the rock!" and introduce it to my human friends, and this will be plenty of fun and is perfectly acceptable. No shame, just a little silliness that's all.
- At this time I'd made a habit of looking at my face in the mirror to check on different blemishes or see how I "looked". After my little mushroom journey, I remember looking at myself in the mirror and seeing through all my scars of age and my blemishes, looking into my own eyes and seeing myself, a living being with emotions and spirit and needs and vitality. It felt so good to just acknowledge my own basic being on a simple level. Maybe this moment could serve as a metaphor for the rest of the experience.
I didn't have any "negative" experiences except for one moment where I saw that there was some stuff inside of me that felt pretty shadowy, stuff that I could get stuck in if I focused on it. I decided not to focus on it and that was that.
But my intuition is that if I ever did eat mushrooms again and did have a "bad trip", it would most likely feel something like an intense grieving, realizing and processing difficult stuff I've accumulated over the course of my life and remembering who and what I care about.