tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451920464092183110.post7194968412310314218..comments2023-09-19T08:18:44.838-07:00Comments on The Messiah's Blog: Falling Down the Entheogenic Tunnel AgainDhusharahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16429563425998297239noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451920464092183110.post-2654183049675586182013-11-10T15:47:12.139-08:002013-11-10T15:47:12.139-08:00I agree that sacred fungus has a lot to teach huma...I agree that sacred fungus has a lot to teach humanity. I too believe in taking the direct route rather than spiritual experience being filtered through a religious path, although I have taken Buddhist initiations, wandered as a sadhu in the East and made an apocalyptic journey to Jerusalem for the millennium to set the tradition straight on sexual reunion and natural reflowering.<br /><br />Serotonin psychedelic are showing us something pivotal about how consciousness is generated and how individual experience relates to the universe at large. Mushrooms are pivotal, both because they are natural, and because, by comparison with the other natural power 'plants' they have the best fit as a sacrament which is both powerfully 'enlightening' and neither toxic nor the 'hard road' that peyote and ayahuasca provide.<br /><br />What we need to realize is that it is the conscious brain that manifests these weird properties we experience on psychedelics, so it is itself 'destined' towards psychedelic experience in its own evolution - which has something to do with the 'doors of perception'. I have gone into this in depth in my monograph "Entheogens, the Conscious Brain and Existential Reality" - http://dhushara.com/psyconcs/, which also deals with synthetic psychedelics and other complementary agents such as the dissociative anesthetics.<br /><br />In essence, each of us has a microcosmic relationship with the cosmic totality, through our subjective consciousness, the nature of which is a 'vision quest' undertaken throughout our lifetime. Religions try to capture this to harness it to moral and social purposes completely unrelated to the actual quest about social control over large populations and reproductive control over women. Hence the messianic quest, which lies at the creation of major religions, is quickly stamped upon and subsumed to the religious orthodoxy, with the prophets banished, killed, or left crying in the wilderness in sackcloth and ashes.<br /><br />Nevertheless the root driving force of all religions is the mystery of conscious existence. Hence it thrives on the stuff of myth and magic, from the Garden of Eden to walking on water, invoking imaginary realms of heaven and hell in frank opposition to the 'sap and dew' realities of the natural world, which is debased as a bestial manifestation of flawed existence, particularly sexuality, which is seen as the enemy of male aspirations to eternal life.<br /><br />The irony in this is that the messianic quest IS the vision quest of discovering the roots of our own incarnation and our conscious unity with the cosmic totality extending beyond our mortal coil. Thus we find ourselves right at the centre of the cyclone and the buck stops with us. We each can save the world through fully understanding this immense secret. Many people go mad trying to understand this or become grotesque cult leaders, while traditional religions strive to suppress all new innovators, claiming Jesus is the Son of God and Muhammad is the last prophet, under pain of death.<br /><br />Why I think mushrooms are very important in this existential equation is that they enable each individual to experience this inscrutable 'living truth' without being told a filtered or censored story about it, or having to adhere to any moral or religious imperative. This is the 'democratization' of spirituality. Western civilization has sought to repress it essentially because it opens Pandora's box on the confinement of Western culture despite its pretences to emancipation. This was particularly true in the time of Leary and Kesey when society was a narrow channel driven by men in pork pie hats, but it remains true to the extent that in a scientific age, when we have discovered the Higgs boson and decoded the human genome, psychedelic research is still with a few exceptions banned, as well as its use as a visionary sacrament socially, and consciousness remains the greatest enigma facing the scientific description of reality.Dhusharahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16429563425998297239noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451920464092183110.post-328733696681339282013-11-10T11:58:49.591-08:002013-11-10T11:58:49.591-08:00Hi Chris ... I've actually been aware of your ...Hi Chris ... I've actually been aware of your work and observations on the tradition of the sacred mushroom since at least the mid-90s. Reading this post today, I suspect we are more or less 'birds of a feather' in regards to this mushroom. I was drawn to the mushroom at a very young age--about 13 years old, one day while purusing through various books in my middle school library I came upon the image of a woman incensing mushrooms over a copalero. In retrospect, I now realize the image was of Maria Sabina as photographed by Alan Richardson. The image had a very peculiar and powerful effect on my psyche, I immediately knew 'this is what I'm about.' Later that same day, I was walking into the boys locker-room and a friend of mine stopped me and handed me a bag of what must have been cubensis mushrooms. It was one of the earlier and more absurd synchornicities that has accompanied my interest in these mushrooms; I went home that evening and ate the entire bag--we estimate ~7grams, and my life has never quite been the same since. <br /><br />About four years ago now, I spent a year studying the mushroom tradition in Huautla de Jimenez. In the interim between age 13 and age 33 when I finally visited Huautla, I spent time studying Buddhism, Sufism, lived for a time as a Theravadan monastic in Thailand, studied the NAC peyote tradition on the Lakota rez in South Dakota, studied yoga, drank ayahuasca with shamans in Peru for 6 months etc. But I ultimately consider the mushroom to be my primary spiritual teacher and ally, and consider my very first experience before the Mazatec altar as the consummation and completion of my spiritual quest/journey. That is not to say I am not growing or developing--which would be absurd, but that what the mushroom has shown me--particularly working within the Mazatec vehicle--far and away dwarfs and transcends any insight I have gleaned from other paths. From the time I first saw the image of Maria Sabina, to the very first time I sat before the Mazatec altar it was clear to me that this imagos of the sacred had been nothing short of a guiding angel in my life. During that night, as I stood before the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, I saw an energy--almost like honey-light, descend from the image of the Virgin and enter my heart. When it entered, I fell to the ground in a state of erotic-bliss, but Eros in the divine sense--in the Greek sense--the winged god of ecstasy. In that experience it was very clear to me that I had directly received the transmission of Sabina's tradition, precisely as you describe in your blog article here. So, I know precisely what you mean here ... as absurd as that sounds.<br /><br />Feel free to contact me at mycologica7@gmail.com - or I recently established a twitter account @mycologica to talk a little bit about the sacred mushroom tradition-which I have directly experienced as being perhaps the single most powerful gnostic-vehicle there is ... <br /><br />It is actually quite rare that I encounter someone--as you expressed in this blog post, who HAS in fact connected with the mushroom at the level you are describing. I hope to hear from you! Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09277283347055660752noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-451920464092183110.post-42364111695619896072013-09-04T21:18:15.476-07:002013-09-04T21:18:15.476-07:00love you, Chris. janelove you, Chris. janejaneykhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06193090813720907596noreply@blogger.com