Disclaimer: the events described may or may not have happened, to me, someone else, a magical space monkey or what ever.
A couple of years ago I was studying theology with the intent of becomming a priest in the evangelical Church of Sweden. Due to various personal reasons I was becomming more and more insecure about if this was the right life choise/calling for me. I decided to rake a break in my studies and work as a volonteer at a retreat and meditation center that was also the home of a christian community. The easiest way to describe the lifestyle there is to say its like a monestary, with prayer and work throughout the days. If someone would have told me the trippy experiences I would go through during my two and a half years at that place, I would not have believed it, by far.
Even though I had had serious times of doubt and feelings of abandonment from God, I had been a conservative christian for about eight years and really, really sought God wholeheartedy at various places, denominations, weird prophetic prayer groups in basements, bible school and so forth. I had pushed myself through ascesis till the point of serious suicidality at one point, and experienced lustfull, deeply enjoyable and satisfying feelings of devine love that is accessible through the well traveled way of christian mysticism. These experiences i still cannot really explain.
I fell in love with the life in the retreat and meditation center at the second day being there. I eventually joined the community, took woves to stay at least four more years and decided to convert to the Catholic church, wich the community was in the process of doing themselves at the time of my arrival. For six mounths I floated on clouds, the happiest I had been since high school, where I had become depressed due to two family members being severery Ill. One of them, my father, eventually died, and the other, my brother, lives on with recurring violent psychosis.
About one and a half years in, I had become interested in the potential healing powers of the shamanic brew ayahuasca. This was not part of my usual field of interest, but a friend had spoken very well of it. At that time another volonteer, who would become one of the dearest friends of my life, approached me and asked if i knew a way of attaining ayahuasca. I looked around and found a way to get a chemical version of it, made of the two essential chemicals of ayahuasca. It could suffice, even though the traditional form seamed more attractive.
Another day, one of the other volonteers wanted to see a movie with me, and she chose a documentary about ayahuasca. She was really in to it it turned out, and she would also become one the people i hold dearest in my life. Yet another day, a wonderful new volonteer arrived, who, as it would turn out, manufactured ayahuasca. Soon enough we had our brew, and my two new friends and I started our adventure.
Now, a little bit of background information. My two friends had, in record time, managed to become a couple and moved in together after knowing one another for three weeks. The day before they moved in together (or she moved in to his apartment to be precise) they had consumed ayahuasca in a room at the retreat and meditation center. She then had an experience of him beeing evil, like a coworker of Satan. This of course was no pleasant experience for him and it became the starting point for a never ending total mayhem of a relationship, that actually probably was not the ayahuascas fault. She was just simply put wild. Real wild. The wildest, most awesome, sometimes scary godess of a woman I ever met, with some kind of allmost supernatural field of erotic attractiveness to her that seemed to make men, and sometimes women, fall like dominos around her. Now he was no quite little lamb either. I have never met anyone with that amount of adhd in my life. He practicly climbs the walls, emotions running wild, a recovered drug addict and former serious criminal now on the path of intence meditation, psychological healing, NA meetings and every kind of group therapy, yoga, zen-groups and so forth you can find. And he is also one of the two most awesome, insightfull, humble and loving persons I have met. But they pretty much moved in together because she needed a place to stay, and they have been going through chaos ever since. Personally I am a sort of calm introvert, kind, mild aspergers guy, and the interpersonal chemistry when the three of us hangs out is just friggin awesome. Its a kind of chemistry that would raise the dead, and for me that is kind of what happened. I rose from waiting to die so that I could hopefully get to the christian promise of heaven, to feeling alive and enjoying life in a whole new way.
Now after my two friends moved in together and started having sex, he was no longer allowed to recieve the communiun according to the dogmas of the Catholic church. This led to a sort of finalisation of a process of leaving the traditional faith of christianity for him, and a further commitment to a non-dogmatic approach to buddhism and the zen tradition, via teachers like Ram Dass and many others. And I was starting to get influenced by this to.
So he and I drank the horrid tasting brew of ayahuasca, and she was kind of a sitter for us, although a bit drunk. I felt awfull, anxiety and nausia getting stronger and internal images flying by fast. I tried to throw up for a long time, and after finaly purging out my stomach content and angst into a bucket with the background music of the most beautiful hare krishna mantras, for a brief period I felt euphoria and saw in my chest a wonderous chrystal, shining with light from the devine. I became aware of positive sides of my personality, after so many years of self loathing. It then took me a week to recover from the exhaustion if the trip. And then i tripped again, this time alone, and in my mind I went through the entirety of my life for several, excrutiating hours. The theme of the trip was that it was I who had experienced all of the different phases in my life. I had become so fragmented through life taking so many different turns, it had felt like my memories had happened to someone else and that my personality was split into different pieces. Now they merged back into one again. This trip was if possible even more excrutiating. But it would turn out I had just scratched the surface of something and was to go deeper into the rabbit hole.
But first, arround this time I visited a place called Christiania in Kopenhagen, Denmark, with some friends. Christiania is a form of self governed, semi-anarchistic subsociety within society, where the inhabitants make their own rules regarding the use and sale of a specific green, globally very popular herb. This herb, after ingesting it in a cake, made me aware of how strongly I longed for deeper relationships. I had been living without creating any strong bonds to anyone, in shallow relationships, due to fear of abandonment. And now I was connecting to my two new friends in a way I hadnt done in such a long time. One day the fear struck me like lightning. We hung out, and suddenly I was convinced they no longer liked me. In reality that wouldnt have been the end of the world even if it were true, but my psyche went kind of bananas. Dark thoughts and feelings came over me like a flood, and no matter what I did, for one week the pain just kept hitting me, my body screaming danger of abandonment. I realized I had developed a pattern of insecure attachment due to three mayor experiences of abandonment in my life. Suddenly a lot of my behavior earlier in life made a lot more sence, and I could see clearly the brokenness of my self. I borrowed a book on the subject, got a therapist and realised that the only way I could heal from this was to face my worst fear. I had to ask my two new friends that I had come to love, if they liked me or not. I had to keep trying to create bonds to people, even if my feelings screamed I had to keep distance to all. I asked them, and they told me they love me, and that they too struggled hard with the same fears of abandonment and insecure attachments. As a matter of fact, they had just started to read the same book as I had about the topic, and they suggested we read it together. My anxiety dissolved. I started to make huge progress with these fears of mine.
Now before we get to the most intence and wonderfull trip I had yet to experience, I shall describe another kind if wierd but awesome thing that happened next. I had been experiencing some really strong heart palpitations for about a year, and went to see a doctor about it. He said it was stress lelated, wich makes sence considering my job was seriously stressfull. However, I had also developed a strong interest for advanced nutrient therapy, so I also went to a nutrient therapeut. She took a mineral analasys of my hear, and concluded I had a severe deficiency of boron. I eventually started taking mega doses of this nutrient, and noticed it regulated allot of my health problems. Not only did the heart palpitations cease when I took it, but my restless legs dissapeared, and above all, I felt better. Since high school, I had for some reason felt hung over every day, weather I drank or was sober for years. And with that feeling of being hung over, was also the feeling of shame that normally accompanies hangovers. It turned out boron regulates hormonal levels, especially testostoron. Higher boron intakes raises testostoron, and I think I had had a testostorone deficiency caused by boron deficiency. I started feeling great. Real great, even though the stress of my job wore on me more and more.
Now to the fun part. One of those days, I was working in the office on the reatreat and meditation center, feeling great and like a changed man, when an old friend of mine enters. He had a different aura than the last time a saw him about a year back. Something humble about him, with the look of someone who had struggled allot with his deamons and his ego, that used to be kind of massive to be honest. He told me he had had a really wild time lately spiritually, that had been great, or even awesome. He asked me for advice about a spiritual exercise he could perform while beeing in a retreat the next couple of days. I told him a christian form of Bible meditation, and he responded that he would not do that, since he was no longer a christian. I told him that another thing one can do for spiritual growth is to take psychadelics, not sure how he would react to this idea. He then got up, closed the door to the office, and told me the reason he had been having such a great time spiritually lately was because ha had been taking psychadelics. He told me he had a huge pharmacy at home, and invited me to visit him and either just hang out, or trip. I accepted the invitation.
A little while later, I was becomming so overwhelmed with stress at my job I started to think about the good swedish options for taking a paid sick leave from work a couple of months. One of my bosses then gave me two weeks extra hollidays instead. I planned a journey, first to my anthroposofical relatives to explore anthroposophy that successfully combines christianity with buddhism, then to my old friend with the pharmacy, and then to my two new friends whom I like so much. It was to be a very cool journey.
Off I went, explored anthroposophy, and then arrived at my old friends apartment. And we did psychadelics. Allot of psychadelics, while he tought me about his discoveries in hinduism, different gurus, and of course about Terrence McKenna whom he was doing serious research on at the university. At the peak of my best trip, I experienced that I was my uncle, then my brothers, my mother, and then.. everybody. I was everybody, and everybody was me. All different nationalities, genders and ages included. During my time of integration afterwords I also realised that I was God, like everybody else, and all that is in creation. But in my trip, I asked God who he was, and He answered kind of like: right? Who am I? I also would like to know. I was kinda hoping you could tell me? Then I asked again, and he responded with endless hallucinations of everything that is. God was simply everything that exists, the beeing in itself, and therefore not a seperate entity seperate from all else. Everything seamed like one.
Now this took a while to process and integrate, but the following week with my two new friends was amazing. I was swimming in love and happines, that I hadnt felt in such a long time. I was starting to like myself. We meditated together, visited a zen-group, did yoga, but mostly just hung out and talked. I was completely changing my views on religion, and realized I probably couldnt stay at the retreat and meditation center and in the community that I had taken vowes to stay with for another three years. But this all resolved itself as I really hit the wall stress-wise when I started working again. My hands chivered, I had lost my apetite and allot of weight and sleep, and my batteries were just drained, empty. All the work was like huge mountains to climb every day. I tested high on burout syndrome at my therapist, and eventually wasnt able to work anymore. My boss gave me a paid sick leave for seven days, I moved out under good understanding terms and booked a meeting with a doctor for getting a paid sick leave for a few months. And oh, I also got a really cool job offer for when Im feeling better. I think things will work out well. Other cool stuff have also happened, but I wont write about everything. I can just briefly mention a couple of scenes; one of my new friends sitting naked in a cabin, on ayahuasca, feeling pure love from God, while the other friend putting unusual things in her vagina. Or… no you know what, I should probably stop there. Its been insane, I mean litterally at least a few diagnosis involved. And its been awesome. So many laughs. Anyways, things seem to allign pretty well now. It feels good to be alive.