Mamma and Mushrooms
How ancient sacred medicine can provide deep ancestral and generational healing, a better understanding of the ego, life and death
This article is written with the intention to educate and entertain, and not provide medical advice. Please seek your own medical advice when it comes to your personal health.
Like the outer skins of an onion, through every single connection with this medicine, we begin peeling back the deeper layers of our personal programming and learnt behaviour, and start to reveal the complexities of all the events and emotions that have led up to our present identity, relationships and belief systems.
Staying open and getting comfortable with going deeper into our own journey is no easy feat - much like anything in life - but once we choose this path and set the intention to work with discipline, treat ourselves and others with love (this doesn’t mean letting people walk all over us), set boundaries, practice mindfulness and bask in laughter with friends whenever we can, we’ll always come out the better for it.
Mushrooms are truth. They sustain life in ways quite incomprehensible to many a human mind. And when we truthfully and consciously integrate all of our favoured healing practices and modalities (sound, ceremony, plants, garden dancing, touch etc), we allow ourselves to enter into a mysterious and eternal softening of the soul. With le shroom, we come home. This is an embodiment practice, a remembrance and a profound rediscovery of our power. Of who we’ve been, not only on this planet, but in the history of the universe and in our past lives - if we’re open to it.
I hadn’t dabbled in psychedelics as a teen or in my twenties, I was more accustomed to using alcohol as an escape, cocktail in hand, dancing whenever I had the chance and nabbing a fag off someone whilst outside taking a breather from the dancefloor. I had fun, sure, it’s what many of us do in this society, right, and I wouldn’t change what’s happened for the world, I’m not a person who has regrets. But I won’t drink alcohol again (not for almost three years now) and this is not said to be self-righteous (we all have our little vices on occasion 😉), I just know my truth these days, after many years of being confused, and this will look very different for each and every one of us. I also understand that we all make our own daily choices and they’re not always in alignment with our true self or health, and slowly we learn what’s holding us back from our true potential.
Generally, drinking was a reductive experience for me and relatively damaging on an emotional, physical and physiological level. I was physically ill a lot, in fact most of the times that I’d drunk beyond my (small) limitations (which wasn’t ever an amount that could render me unsafe or unconscious), I was sick. And as a cocktail fiend at the time, the amount of white sugar that I was blasé about consuming was just ridiculous. As I looked back, I started to question why this behaviour is normalised, conformed to and accepted as the standard for coping with modern, city life and pressures.
Before receiving multiple signs and messages to venture into the world of psilocybin and ceremony, I’d done a fair amount of personal development and worked with various practices over previous years - EFT, sound therapy, counselling, tantra, meditation and mindfulness - which led me to getting more comfortable with venturing into the darker depths of my soul and looking at my insecurities.
In order to heal at a core level - we’re talking inner child and shadow work - it actually became a necessity for me to move ahead in this area of work, and something that I had asked the universe for, not fully realising at that moment how things would manifest in real terms. This being said, when my energy fully merged with this ancient medicine in a more supportive role, I was humbled and found solace and strength through each and every interaction. And, it certainly isn’t all rainbows and fractals that’s for sure.
‘A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realism of consciousness, transcendence of verbal concepts, or space-time dimensions and of ego and identity’ T.Leary*
As I was catapulted into my own personal awakening and conscious self-healing at the end of 2019 (however cliche it sounds, when this stuff happens, it bloody happens alright), I had made a promise to myself to actively listen to my intuition and thereafter, I continued to meet people and see things every day that led me in the direction of this medicine. And, whilst being open to more expansive experiences in life (perhaps prompted by my decision not to travel), it felt very much aligned with what I needed to do to step forward on my path.
How It Began
My first experience was a low dose with a friend, just to understand how it would influence my brain and move through my body and cells. I wanted to understand if it would trickle its way through my system like Mary J does. So, as soon as I felt their vibration, I knew this was a world that I would delve into more independently and nurture my own relationship with them in solitude.
Over time I did a lot of slow, self-study in safe and controlled environments, working with different varieties - foraged and grown - to work on ancestral and intergenerational wounds that came up for their final goodbyes in my lineage. This work was necessary for me.
‘How to break out of personality into new realism of consciousness; and how to avoid the involuntary limiting processes of the ego; how to make the consciousness expansion experience endure in subsequent daily life’ T.Leary*
The beauty of self enquiry is that it can be very enlightening, yet equally painful. But, as many of us are doing at the moment, we continue to explore this realm, because once we know, we can never look back. Moreover, I was in awe of the feeling and experience of psilocybin actually fixing the neural pathways in my brain and removing the barriers around my heart, alongside supporting my self awareness and generally expanding my consciousness. Set with my intentions, it was a death and rebirth every time I went into ceremony, and fear soon released any grip it had on my day-to-day thoughts and movements. This, in turn, evolved my own understanding of mortality and my relationship with dying, which has made me live life with more grace and gratitude than ever before.
I worked steadily to learn the fundamentals of integration, ceremony, nature, music and sound - sound is hugely important for me in ceremony, I’m a very auditory person, but also the silence of nature is a blissful accompaniment to journeying. And, later on, I was grateful to have the opportunity to invite my mamma into this healing too and did a few ceremonies with her. We also started her on microdosing to help reduce anxiety and as a general mood boost, especially living in this whole new world of ours right now. I then began sitting for friends and later supported others who were called to this space.
Many of us are unable to express visceral or traumatic memories with language (i.e. talking therapies) and instead they get played out through the body, often in detrimental ways. So, having the chance to use this medicine and our body to effectively channel energy and our nervous system responses outwards, can be a healthy approach to healing.
Once the medicine activates in our brain, we have the opportunity to better observe our stress responses (if we live in fight or flight mode all the time, this can build up some seriously detrimental energy in our system) and address complex childhood and developmental trauma which may have led to our adult experiences of anxiety, depression, obsessions, compulsions or mania. This isn’t about looking for a transpersonal or mystical experience, we are here to connect with our true self and oftentimes that goes deep and can be uncomfortable.
We can also observe the relationship with our ego - defense mechanisms, codependency and reactions - and let go of old narratives and attachments. Here, many of us believe in ego freedom over ego death. We don’t need to destroy the ego, we just need to ensure that it’s not making our choices for us, over listening to our heart. I feel it’s a question of observation and balance.
What I’ve Found
It’s vitally important to take time integrating these learnings, visuals and messages, otherwise we might end up floating away with the clouds and dissociating from reality, which isn’t helpful or safe for anyone. We incarnated on planet earth, so we might as well be present and create a life we want to live, even if that looks very different to the life others choose. We all have different paths to pursue.
There are also multiple resources online, videos, communities and groups where we can speak openly, safely and come together to share our experiences, and understand the power of such ancient practices and medicines when used consciously, ethically and intentionally. And we can have mush fun exchanging stories and finding our soul (fungal) famiglia online.
Physically
For me, I’ve experienced that some of the visuals don’t leave my vision. When I now close my eyes, I continue to see fractals, rainbows and sacred geometry most days, which shifts your perception of what reality is, perhaps because you’ve opened a portal to another realm and that connection doesn’t just disappear. And I sometimes get headaches the day after ceremony, but usually my physical body is calm in this space, minus a shake or two and big old blubbing (crying) releases. I also work with a banging playlist and move, drum or dance if I need to shift excessive stagnant energy out of the body.
‘When tripping he hears not ‘music’ or ‘meaningful sound’ but acoustic waves. He is struck with the sudden revelation that all sensation and perception are based on wave vibrations. That the world around him which heretofore had an illusory solidity is nothing more than a play of physical waves’ T.Leary*
Emotionally
I’ve experienced states of utter peace, sadness, bliss and pure love of self and the world around me. My insecurities quickly seemed to disappear, as my traumas were confronted, acknowledged and released. This is alongside many other conscious self-care practices on a daily basis too, like healthy eating, exercise, breathwork and play - this isn’t a one-stop shop for healing in my opinion. And then, a lightness ensues, having shed much baggage and personal stories that I either created or adopted from others and the system along the path that is life - no blame here, it’s just once we can observe it, we can change it. Cravings and addictions then slowed down and even disappeared. Attachments and longing to ideas and ideals got released, and anything outside of the now seems unimportant.
Over time, I realised I had so much love to give in my life, but didn’t fully understand this, or feel safe to express it, so it somewhat ate me up from inside out as it wasn’t being released. With this medicine, alongside sound therapy which I was working consciously with at that time (particularly on my heart healing) we can learn how to centre into our heart space and fully open up after building up layers of armour over our lifetime. We can learn how to ground ourselves in our own body, mind and soul experience wholeheartedly, which nourishes our desire to immerse fully in our own depth and understand who we are and what we came here to do - which won’t be for everyone I understand (scorpio rising over here!). I now see my mission and purpose clearly.
Many people have come to all of these realisations in life without this medicine or any other healing practice, which is great. However, many others cannot and I was one of these people.
Spiritually
Everyone has their own connection to spirituality, soul, faith and the universe. I don’t think it’s uncommon to feel connected to a higher power, something much more potent than words can ever describe, especially in the times we live in now.
Today, my intention is to fully surrender to the unknown (this can have me itching and scratching sometimes, it’s not easy), which for a person with previous anxiety and attachment issues, has been incredibly liberating and I feel reflects in my current choices, actions and how I move forward into the future. Today, I lean into presence and live life now, not tomorrow, nor the day after, which is a magnificent feeling and achievement for me - complete mindfulness, presence, acceptance and love of just being. That productivity anxiety and ‘doing’ BS that can follow us through life can be such a burden, so it’s a beautiful feeling to come home to self and understand how to slow down, relax and do nothing when it’s needed.
For many people, psilocybin supports personal expansion in ways that can’t really be put into words, nor should it be. Life is vibrational, frequency and energy and I feel we could all benefit from training our intuition more, connecting with our third eye (pineal gland) and listening to the calls from the depths of our being to heal and integrate our inner child, shadow self and come back to oneness. Love is the only way.
If you fancy a chat to exchange ideas and thoughts after reading this piece, let me know. You can reach me on here, email, Instagram and Facebook.
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*Source: Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner and Richard Alpert - The Psychedelic Experience
