While mushroom states of consciousness are highly refined and often transcendent and profound, the ultimate goal is to bring these insights into everyday life. That is the goal of any form of spiritually transformative work.
Mushrooms can bring the spiritual seeker right to the heart and root of his personal issues, especially if used consciously with spiritual intent and purpose.
Perhaps the seeker won’t get to the very core all at once, for most of our illusions and wounds are complex with multiple layers and aspects to them, but mushrooms will show seekers what they need to see and they will give seekers the opportunity to face themselves, often whether it is desired or not, and in doing so, they hold the power within them to make a profound and lasting impact that can cleanse a person’s body, heart, mind, and spirit. If the mushroom eater has done it right, and used the mushrooms as a tool, and not just as an entertaining light and psychic show, he or she will have a completely different understanding of who this person called “me” actually is, and his or her view of the world and all things in it could be profoundly altered as well. “Ordinary consciousness” is largely a product of our minds, our concepts, and our habits. What we normally perceive and contemplate about ourselves, the world about us, and others in it is a product of the constructs, beliefs, and judgments of our own minds. The world as we see it, including ourselves, is a representation that we create based on our sensory input, our beliefs, our values, our emotions, our concepts, our habitual ways of organizing experience. In a sense, we never actually see anything. Learning is work. Understanding our true self is work. Understanding the nature of the mind and our construction of reality is work. But it is work with profound rewards. To learn from mushrooms takes courage, dedication, and perseverance.They can be brutal teachers, for the truth is often hard to face. We wrap ourselves in so many illusions and self-generated lies that the mushrooms have to force us out of them to see the truth.
- If we are at peace with ourselves, why criticize others?
- If we can accept ourselves, then why would we try and change others?
- If we are comfortable with our own behavior, why would we try and change the behavior of others?
- If we are confident and firm in our own views, why would we always try and convince others that we’re right and they’re wrong?
We can choose to feel or think what we want, and we can choose how and who we want to be. It is our ingrained beliefs and attachments that limit our choices, often to the point that we forget that we have a choice and that the emotions and thoughts we are experiencing may be based on illusions, judgments, and criticisms.
Mushrooms help the spiritual seeker to perceive, understand, and make peace with the patterns that govern his or her own particular manifestation in the world.
Patterns tend to run on “automatic pilot” in the sense that we do not consciously think them through. Humans, as patterned beings, will do everything that we can to fit our experience into our pre-existing patterns, even if those patterns are unhealthy and harmful to us. Patterns seem to be on automatic pilot and even when we want to break the patterns, it is extremely difficult to do so. People spend years in therapy to trying to alter their patterns. Some succeed. Some don’t. It is terribly difficult to change a pattern when we are caught up in it, and most of the time we are not even aware that we are in a pattern. When we are aware, we tend to be judgmental of ourselves, which may make us feel like we’re doing our required penance, but that does not put positive energy into changing the pattern. It only puts energy into punishing ourselves, which is itself a pattern of reaction, thought, and feeling. What seekers see in the spiritual mirror is their personal patterns and how they create emotional resonances in their heart. Learning to work with mushrooms is learning how to work with these patterns and ultimately change them, if need be.
