My Heroic Dose
My Heroic Dose
Five Grams, Alone, in the Dark
Last Christmas, I took five grams of mushrooms by myself and realized I was God.
My spiritual awakening started with my first experience with psychedelics in 2016 and ever since then, I have been a huge fan of using mushrooms as a tool for going within, finding answers, and, of course, mind expansion.
On each of my mushroom journeys, I experienced some sort of revelation and life-altering perspective shift. There’s a saying that the medicine finds you when you’re ready and, with mushrooms as my medicine, I have had some of the most profound experiences of my life. Before that day last Christmas, I took varying doses of mushrooms, anywhere from .2 grams to four grams, but I had never attempted what Terrence McKenna called a “heroic dose” which is five grams of dried mushrooms, alone, in total darkness.
Amanda Lyttle
The Heroic Dose always intrigued me, and I believe this is an experience you have to work yourself up to. I would not recommend anyone do this by themselves if they have any hesitation. Before my heroic dose, I felt confident in my familiarity with the mushrooms and the experience, and I was ready to embark on the journey of a lifetime. This confidence, however, didn’t necessarily prepare me for what I was in for.
I prepared my space with a yoga mat, candles, a galaxy light, and palo santo. I made my five-gram tea and drank it in my room in near darkness. To my surprise, the medicine hit me fast! It happened when I was just halfway through my cup. I then found myself moving into an altered state of consciousness and felt overwhelmed by the lights, so I turned everything off. It was like the mushrooms forced me into complete darkness.
At first, I was in a child’s pose on my yoga mat. I could feel myself going in and out of consciousness, like I was dizzy and disoriented, but also giddy at the same time. I was starting to lose perception of where my body was oriented in space. I sat up and stared at my statue of an elephant meditating and it was amazing to watch as it and everything became fluid.
I could see the energetic fabric of the universe holding all of these perceived solid objects together. I was saying to myself inside my mind, ” I did this to myself,” “I’m by myself having a psychedelic mushroom trip on Christmas”, and “What an interesting experience”. Those three phrases kept circling in my mind as if I put them there to comfort me and tether me to the physical reality that I was about to leave behind.
Oversoul--art by Alex Grey
Somehow I ended up on my back, lying flat, and as my eyes closed everything in my room completely dissolved into the void and I entered another dimension where I was viewing myself from multiple perspectives. I then heard my voice speaking to me. I was immediately aware of how fabricated everything was. Then, all of a sudden I was experiencing extreme discomfort because I had to poop badly. My voice said to me, “Relieve yourself, it’s not real. Just relax and let go.” It occurred to me that if none of this was real, why not allow myself to just shit on the floor? I couldn’t even perceive my body in space anymore. So, I did it, I shit myself and, as soon as I did, everything completely collapsed and I found myself in an entirely different dimension.
It was like I was lying flat on a giant gear system inside of what could have been some sort of giant magical clock, and everything was made up of intricate golden light and colorful patterns. There was a rhythm like a clock ticking and everything was shifting to the rhythm in a magnificent infinite pattern. My voice was illuminating all of the areas in my body I was holding different stories about who I was and how limited my perception was. Each story was wrung out of me one by one like a rag. It felt like every part of my body was being cracked open and replaced with complete ecstasy like no pleasure I had ever felt before.
My ego was obliterated piece by piece and I merged with everything completely. I was everything–everything down to the illusion of time I had created. Thoughts of different people kept coming into my mind and she would say, “Yep, they’re you too. All of them. No matter what. It’s all you. It has always been all you. This is your story, nobody else’s. The other people in the simulation are all just characters you scripted into your story.”
I saw all my judgments, expectations, and comparisons creating a limited reality where I feel like I’m required to do things I don’t want to do–where my worthiness is conditional. I realized none of these things are true or real and it also occurred to me that emotional energy was what was feeding the stories–energy like a battery powering the simulation computer.
I was shown that these experiences were planned out, and chosen by me from before this journey even began. Laid out in divine order so that I could experience the entire range of human emotions. I was shown that no experience is inherently good or bad when you’re eternal. They are all just experiences, and the more that I judge one as good or bad, the more I will limit myself from the ecstasy of it. All of the emotions are intense pleasurable sensations. It is wildly exciting, and erotic, to be a human being.
Eventually, after all of these revelations and realizations, everything became quiet and I zeroed in on the nothingness of my true nature. I realized that when the entire simulation dissolves, it is just me—my consciousness. At that moment, at the peak of my experience, there was nothing, no perception of time, space, or reality of any kind. Just what some of us refer to as God. It finally made sense to me why the Bible says, “In the beginning, there was only GOD, then God said let there be light.” God couldn’t even experience itself as darkness without creating the light. Without the light, there is no darkness, because we need the contrast to perceive it.
As I watched from that zero point, I could see the emotional energy it requires for me to create the holographic reality I observe. I could see that everything is in a divine order that is ineffable. I had a complete understanding that free will is an illusion, that I (God) created the entire universe, and that everything I will experience has already happened and is happening all at once.
The experience brought me a level of peace and trust that I hadn’t ever had before. As I began to come back into my created version of Mandy’s reality I started to get excited to talk to people, to feel feelings again, to struggle. As my reality formed around me and I felt the familiar comfort of my limitations, I could feel a sense of inner peace beyond description. This experience completely changed the way I interact with reality. I have a new level of appreciation for everyone and everything in my experience because I put it there. I wouldn’t be able to experience love without the contrast of loss, courage without the contrast of fear, or joy without the contrast of sadness. My entire human experience is rooted in contrast.
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