The Trip

As my cousin Joe and I walked along the luminous, green-dappled forest path, the sunlight’s warmth on my skin rejuvenated me and imbued me with a feeling of peace and well-being.
Thirty minutes had passed since I swallowed the tiny piece of blotter paper soaked in LSD. Joe, in order to be my guide, had not dropped any acid.
Joe had been my unofficial mentor in metaphysics ever since we ran into each other in an occult bookstore. We hadn’t seen each other since art school, five years earlier, and we discovered that we shared a mutual interest in Magick—-the art and science of causing change (in consciousness and the environment) to occur in conformity with will. Joe belonged to a secret lodge which practiced high ritual Magick in the Western tradition and I eagerly absorbed all the information he was willing to impart.
Recently, I had been given some acid and Joe had agreed to be my guide—-to stay straight and facilitate the trip. My intentions were to break through old psychological barriers of pain and trauma and reach healthier, more enlightened levels of awareness.
Now, striding buoyantly down the dirt path, everything around me, the trees, grass, rocks, even the very air, shimmered and vibrated as if revealing previously hidden animation. The environment took on a hyper-clarity—-every detail was sharp and precise. Solid objects became fluid and shifted and swirled. I sensed an immense, swelling presence—-an omnipresent intelligence—-behind the thin facade of my physical surroundings.
Joy and exhilaration accompanied these perceptions, yet, at the same time, I felt anxiety creeping into my psyche. Walking rigidly, I tried to ignore my escalating panic. Joe made conversation, but I found it difficult to respond. I would have to deal with my fear if I wanted to have a good trip.
“Joe...I’m afraid,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“What should I do?”
“Just be with the fear.”
I immediately began to relax. Joe had given me permission to just experience whatever I happened to be experiencing in the moment. In the past, when I tripped with other people, I never allowed myself to just go with whatever was happening to me internally for fear of my companions ridiculing or abandoning me. On the few occasions when I tripped alone, the anxiety and self-hatred that manifested were overwhelming and I resisted them, thus, never moving through them into the states of bliss and ecstatic oneness with the universe which I had read about but never experienced. I was determined that this time would be different.
I picked up a tiny, green, translucent inchworm and balanced it on the tip of my finger. Marveling at it’s fragility, I remarked, “You know...I could squash this inchworm right now...or...I could let it live; it’s all up to me.”
“Yes...it is,” said Joe. He understood the profundity of my seemingly inane statement. In that moment, I recognized that possessing free will was an immense and overwhelming responsibility.
Articulating the thoughts and perceptions I experienced during the acid trip is difficult; the nonlinear modes of consciousness I found myself in are very different from everyday states of mind and don’t lend themselves well to being strung out in linear sentences. While under the influence of LSD, information flowed into my brain in big chunks of holistic, all-at-once knowing. Some of it is now lost forever because, not being in the state of mind I was in when I received the information, I can’t access it.
The illumination triggered by the inchworm had facets and nuances to it that just can not be put into words. It was as if the entire phenomenon of free will with all it’s meaning and implications was contained within a single non-verbal cognition.
After we had discussed free will for a while, Joe and I continued along the sunlit forest trail. To one side of us, a wire fence revealed beautiful, grassy, gently sloping meadows which rolled away towards a farm in the distance. I could make out the tiny figure of a farmer riding his tractor. This idyllic scene was in sharp contrast with my still considerable anxiety.
At some point, I decided that I needed to stop walking and we sat down on the edge of the path. A nun came walking down the path towards us. I couldn’t tell how much of my inner turmoil was visible on my face and was afraid that the nun would react unfavorably towards me, so I lowered my head.
“Hi,” she said and smiled at us as she passed by. I managed a feeble “Hi” of my own. I must not have looked as fucked-up as I felt.
Insights about the crucifixion of Jesus, which, unfortunately, are now forgotten, suddenly flooded my mind and words came spewing out of my mouth. I didn’t have to think; the information was just there and I was a conduit for it.
“That’s the true, inner, esoteric meaning of the crucifixion,” Joe said, “Of which, that nun probably doesn’t have a clue.”
He then went into a diatribe about the sterility of organized religion and the ignorance and shallowness of the clergy.
Although normally I tended to agree with Joe, I was now seeing things from a different perspective. I said, “You don’t know what that nun is like. Maybe she’s really spiritual; maybe she has mystical experiences.”
“You’re right,” he said after a pause. “I’m sorry.”
Joe had been pretty malicious and I had criticized him for it, yet I was guilty of the same thing.
“You know what, Joe? I don’t say shit about people like you do, but I think it—-all the time.”
Being honest felt good. I was no longer hiding from my own reality. The way through my fear was to tell the truth.
A bizarre state of mind then ensued. It was as if I had been hypnotized and age-regressed to various points in my childhood, but the points were experienced simultaneously. I was twelve, seven, and three years old, an infant, and my present self, all at the same time. Each of these child-selves alternately spoke of their pain, anger, and confusion in an age-appropriate voice, except for the infant, whose pre-verbal thought processes I experienced as inchoate, primitive ebbs and flows of emotion, desire, and frustration.
I, or rather, my youthful selves, screamed and cried and rambled on for what seemed like hours. Each child’s pain had a distinctive quality. The twelve-year-old was resigned to his suffering; apathetic and despairing, he had already begun to numb himself. The seven-year-old was still in touch with the immediacy of his emotions, but was overwhelmed by them. He felt powerless and crushed by the forces that oppressed him and caused him pain. The three-year-old was angry and threw a tantrum. He wanted to know why. Why do mommy and daddy yell at each other all the time? Why does he feel like it’s his fault—-like he’s bad? The infant contributed a pervasive survival anxiety.
Eventually, the whirlpool of grief and anguish subsided and my mind became clear.
My hands were radiating a palpable energy. I tried to bring them together and found that I could not; it was like trying to bring together two powerful magnets whose poles were aligned to resist each other.
“Oh my god, Joe,” I gasped, “this is incredible.”
“You’re lit up like a Christmas tree,” said Joe, who was adept at seeing auras.
I played with the energy in amazement for awhile, then I wanted to walk some more. When I stood up, I suddenly had the sensation of falling and had to sit down again.
“You’re in the abyss,” said Joe. “It’s the space between paradigms. You might have to stay in it for a while.”
As I sat on the ground, waiting for the dizziness to pass, another profound illumination came to me.
“Joe, we’re all mirrors for each other; everything in the universe is a mirror for everything else.”
Again, words cannot adequately describe the enormity or complexity of this realization. It was as if it actually took up space; as if the very air around us was filled with this knowledge.
Everything is everything; all parts contain the whole; as above, so below; I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. I was quite familiar with this concept from my reading, but this was more than a surface intellectual understanding; it was a deep knowing in the very core of my psyche.
After this peak, I started to gradually come down. Joe and I sat in a field and I shifted into another interesting state of consciousness which, again, was akin to something I had read about: the Zen concept of “no-mind.” I wasn’t thinking about anything and I wasn’t dwelling on the past or the future; I was just being—-totally in the moment. I was completely at peace-—more so than I had ever been in my entire life. Yet I wasn’t drowsy or lethargic. I was dynamically and exquisitely awake and aware. I was simply existing and it was alright. Everything was alright. I, the world, the universe, was perfect and just as it should be.