August 6, 2022
Rockleigh, NJ

M, R and I tripped on mushrooms last night.  The trip started off nicely.  We talked about our intentions for the trip as we sat quietly, savoring the serenity, listening to music and settling in out on the deck as the light faded.  M was leaning back in a chair, me in the other chair, and R sitting cross-legged and serene on the deck carpet.  Visuals were syncing to the music and playing on the TV in the living room behind us in an energetic flow.  I talked about my goal of finding a lodestar, the thing that I would be willing to die for, and using that as a talisman to protect against harm.   

After about 20-30 minutes, we all started to feel the trip getting very, very strong, and began wondering if we had gone overboard.  I came out of a reverie and saw that R was no longer on the deck, and she was instead sitting in the half-light on the steps to the dining room.  I tried to go in to her, but something stopped me cold at the middle of stepping through the door, with one leg on each side.  I froze in that position and after a few moments felt pushed back onto the deck. 

As the trip kept growing, everything started to go wrong.  The music shifted into a strong strident and dark chorale, and we all felt the shift into a much darker place.  I tried desperately to change the music, but I just somehow couldn't find music that moved us out of this dark and deep and heavy genre, even as I shifted between playlists.  We all could feel ourselves and each other, the whole energy of the room, getting inexorably darker and rougher.  The music visualizer, which previously had been a source of smooth enjoyment and expansion, was suddenly this horrific, jerky, kaleidoscopic cesspool of jagged edges.   

We landed on or about the living room couch and retreated into ourselves as we felt our sense of self dissolve, regularly and repeatedly calling out to each other, checking to make sure we were each okay, that we were hanging in, and that we were going to get through this together.  I pulled myself in exceptionally hard and retreated behind a thick shell while I slowly worked to reform something from the scraps of my self that were all that remained, occasionally stirring myself robotically to play my part in the checking in, and reassure everyone that I was in fact going to pull through, that we all were going to pull through.  I had started to see, in that moment, how there was no ground -- nothing underlying the sense of self, nothing safe in this universe to lean into.  It was all a dream and an illusion.  I hadn't found my lodestar yet, and I felt lost. 

And then we started noticing the synchronicities, like when we would feel something shift in the trip and know with absolute certainty that the other two were feeling the exact same thing.  It hit all of us at the same moment, this sense of wonderment.  I remember repeatedly saying "What is this?" in the most awestruck tone, when we realized that this was something totally new, totally different.  This was not an ordinary trip.  Something different, something very different was happening.  We were connecting, in this incredibly strange way.  We were starting to integrate with each other, starting to vibrate at a frequency that was in perfect resonance with each other.  

It didn't work the way I would have thought telepathy worked, with one person speaking into another person's mind, or one person hearing someone else's thoughts.  It was that we were one mind, splinters of a larger whole, as though there was this other data channel that underlay reality that didn't rely on the abstraction of speech, and we were connected by that.  We all just knew we were in sync, and there was this strengthening feeling of coming together.  This feeling of wonderment, at what was suddenly happening to us. 

We started passing energy around to each other, almost half-consciously, mentally juggling it around in circles.  Each time a circle completed our perception would shift.  Something would peel away, and we would get this new, rawer view of reality that was just utterly impossible to comprehend, a lessening of distortion as to reality, but a fundamentally confusing and incomprehensible result.  After each shift, the incomprehensible would integrate and settle in, allowing us to breathe for a moment before the next shift occurred.  At first, it was amazing, this connection and flow, knowing that each of these insane shifts in perception of reality was happening to all of us in lockstep.  We felt our minds being drawn together closer and closer.  There was still a self that was separate and apart from each other, a tiny thread of being passing inside of ourselves that was our connection to something complete and perfect and huge; and the moment to moment sense of self and internal reality, the capacity for an "inner" internal dialogue, however distorted, was still there.  At the same time, there was a part of ourselves that was merging together into a new overmind, a connected and new being that felt bigger than the sum of our parts.  As the cycles continued, the overmind grew in strength and started to crowd out what was left of our individual selves.  We each felt painfully contracted, and we each knew with certainty that the others were experiencing the same exact thing.  The cycles started getting harder and harder, with each one ripping through us and forcing a whole new and increasingly jagged shift in perception.  I was covered in sweat, feeling my body working at multiple times its normal capacity to generate the energy to fuel whatever the hell was happening.   

And then the cycles stopped.  And there was suddenly something there with us, and it was massive.  R pulled deep into her shell, muttering about trust, and hid.  M and I faced what was there with us head on, feeling like our mental defenses were tissue paper in the face of a hurricane.  The strength and massive presence of this thing was so gargantuan as to defy description.  It's not that we were ants to this thing.  We weren't even specks of dust.  And yet it saw us, and it knew it had a purpose for being there, and suddenly we knew our purpose as well.  The entity started to feed on us, drawing out our vital energy. 

I mentally turned and looked back over my life, and then at the endless string of lives flowing out behind this one, and saw with stark, shocking clarity that every moment of every life from the very first, every condition shaping each existence, had been molded, and situated, so as to lead to and generate this exact moment, this act of creation and service.  The entity was using our energy to reproduce. 

The feeling was draining, but we were receiving powerful payment for our service.  Our minds were opening, the overmind flowing with awestruck reverie.  We were being exposed to a much bigger universe than we ever imagined possible, and from this perspective, reality as we knew it was so incredibly thin.  Everything that we knew, everything that we had previously thought at some deep deep level was really everything, was a substanceless illusion.  Just a different sort of dream.  We were open, thrumming with strength, growing and shifting and coming together, a new social-memory complex announcing itself to the universe; and shining like an enormous bonfire out into the heavens, attracting a lot of attention. 

Something much less nice must have seen us and decided to come pay a visit.  M and I sensed the same thing at the same moment, and looked at each other with a sense of panic.  R saw the change in us and felt the panic in the overmind, but wasn't directly sensing the attack.  Yet sensing the sharp spike in our panic, she drew much deeper into her shell, continuing to talk about trust, trusting that we would make it through this.  We were suddenly held like flies in a web, and this enormous, cold creature, this mind virus, had our minds and wills under its complete servitude.  There was no gratitude for service from this entity.  We were just food, and the more terrified we were, the better its meal.  The overmind continued to grow as the creature greedily fed on us, and as its pressure grew on our minds, something snapped in our individual capacity to comprehend reality.  The overmind was still intact, we were still sending clear data back and forth between each other, but all we were capable of conveying was our individual broken views of reality, utterly and irrevocably distorted and twisted, such that functioning in ordinary reality was utterly incomprehensible.  

We were each wrestling in our heads with what was happening to us, trying to come to terms with the fact that we had each made a terrible mistake, realizing the magnitude and horror of our error -- being trapped in a kaleidoscopic mental prison, in total servitude to this creature for as long as it bothered to keep us alive, and having us go back into the world as husks, spreading this creature’s taint to everything we touched.  We could sense the mind virus playing with us, deciding which future would be more to its liking.  The overmind flashed to a future of us stuck in this broken and distorted view of reality, as we were held together, collectively locked into this incomprehensible nightmare in a mental hospital for the remainder of our lives.  I flashed with sorrow on tomorrow morning, when Ellie awoke to find a bunch of gibbering idiots, who couldn't interface with reality in any meaningful fashion, in place of the sane adults she had known the night before. 

The overmind raged against that future, and we began to collectively push back.  We gathered ourselves together, like the three sides of a triangle, and started building ourselves up.  R reminded us to find our lodestar.  Our minds were in total sync, and we began to work together to collectively gain some solidity, some way to integrate this painfully distorted existence.  We fell into cycles, where we would work together to build up some solidity within this senselessness, and we would start to get a handle on the situation, and then it would fall apart.  With each cycle we were able to shore up our defenses a little bit better, and edge a little bit closer to getting a ragged grip on sanity.   

In a sense, none of it mattered.  Everything we were doing was on a backdrop of complete domination by this creature that continued to draw the life out of us.  There was total and complete existential dread.  We had exercised our free will in consuming those particular mushrooms, and we had left ourselves unprotected, granting this creature its unyielding control over our minds.  Despite this, we didn't despair.  With each cycle, we cheered each other on as we started to regain sanity, reminding each other that we could do this.  Increasingly communicating and connecting as one mind.  And as everything would start to fragment again amidst the mental pressure from the overmind and the creature, we would buttress each other through the storm. 

I started to feel horrifically thirsty -- an "I'm going to die if I don't get water in me in the next few minutes" kind of thirsty.  I desperately pulled together my sense of perception enough to get off the stairs where I had been sitting, and stumbled delirious into the kitchen and grabbed a glass of water.  I filled it, chugged it, filled it again, chugged it again, and then finally acknowledged to myself what was right in front of me.  I turned to the others, and told them that we were going to die.  M agreed.  It was starkly clear to both of us.  This creature had made its decision, and we were going to die that evening.  It was going to drain us down to nothing, and our bodies were simply going to give out.  We all railed about this, bemoaning our fate, throwing accusations around.  Me against M, for bringing these unknown mushrooms into our world, these things that were so different and beyond anything we had ever anticipated or imagined and that had locked us into an endless prison of the mind.  R, against me and M, for our violation of her trust, our implicit promise to keep her safe.  M against me, for my failure to guide us safely.   

I lay myself facedown on the tile floor by the dining room stairs, ready to die.  I was rapidly running out of vital energy.  I knew there wasn't much time left, and I rested my cheek against the tile, and thought about Ellie awaking tomorrow to three corpses; the destitution of her life as a result.  A river of sadness and remorse flowed out of me.     

I once again felt that horrible clawing thirst, and I painfully and jerkily levered myself up and went back into the kitchen to get water.  I filled a glass, chugged the water, filled it again, and then acknowledged to myself what was right in front of me.  I turned to the others, and told them that we were going to die.  M agreed.  And the exact same sequence happened over again, with M moving and saying the same things, R doing the same, and me following this robotic routine.   One loop after the other.  Each time, everything would be identical, but something would shift slightly around the edges, as if this strange time loop was slowly grinding away at something that needed to be polished or eliminated.   

Eventually, as I lay on the tile, waiting to die, I thought of Yiting, and felt such overwhelming sorrow at what I had done to her, this horrible mistake that I had made.  I had been at a moment in life when I truly had everything I could want from this life.  And this stupid, stupid choice was going to rob me and my family of all of that.  I accepted my death, accepted that the end had come, and was at peace with it, but the knowledge of the pain I was leaving behind for my family left me drowning in compassion and sorrow.  I wished with every fiber of my being that my family would not have to suffer that pain.   

Then I had a flash and knew what my lodestar was.  A lodestar isn't the thing that you would die for; it's the thing that you would live for when there is otherwise nothing but darkness.  Yiting was my lodestar. 

I felt the thirst coming back, the loop starting to reset again, but this time, I said no.  I put my hand down, and instead of painfully and jerkily rising like in the loop, I levered myself up smoothly and strongly, and I moved into the kitchen, rallying M and R behind me.  I told them that this thing was not going to defeat us.  We started working together, pushing back against the creature, buttressing each other and fortifying our will and resolve.  I saw that the first creature that we had encountered, the more benevolent one, had given us a great gift in opening us up to the universe.  There was a well of energy there for us to draw on, strengthening ourselves, restoring our depleted vitality, and using it as a mental cudgel against the creature.  Somehow, it was enough, and the creature left, and released its hold on us.   

We all stumbled to the kitchen table and sat down, with R having moved from a curled up ball by the fireplace to a curled up ball on the window seat.  We were silently communicating with each other, hanging onto each other mentally for support, and recognizing the wrongness of this whole situation, feeling shoved together, incredibly expansive and painfully constricted at the same time.  The gravity of the situation and our shudderingly narrow escape from certain death had left us shell-shocked, and we were still in a fundamentally distorted reality as we worked to integrate these new understandings and sensations as our minds continued to come together. 

M made a comment that maybe we should just go to bed; and as he said it, we all knew the laughable futility of that outcome.  R talked about trusting each other, and staying together through this, holding each other strong.  I tilted my head back in my chair, lifted it up again, and we looped.  The same thirty seconds with M's comment, R's comment, and me throwing my head back.  It felt like it happened thousands and thousands of times.  The universe was totally constricted around us -- there was nothing beyond what was immediately around our bodies.   We were in a totally separate pocket universe, cut off from reality, looping in time.  Although our individual bodies kept looping and the same actions kept occurring, our higher selves and the overmind weren't caught directly in the loop.  They were continuously flowing from loop to loop, allowing us to recognize the loop and see it happening, but leaving us utterly unable to stop it or alter its trajectory. 

We went from having just come to peace with our certain death, to now facing the need to come to peace with a fate much worse than death -- interminable and unrelenting purgatory, stuck cut off in this pocket universe repeating the same 30 seconds over and over again for the rest of time.  Under the relentless and unceasing assault of the loop, our individual minds started to blur and spread, while the overmind watched with concern.   

As we continued to gray out, the overmind noticed that although it was happening almost imperceptibly slowly, the loop was shifting with each repeat.  We each were shifting slowly, but I came to realize that we were doing this loop primarily for R, to help pull her out of her shell and give her as long as she needed to get there.  Somehow with this knowledge, I pushed back against the loop, and the overmind pushed with me.  Although the loop didn't stop, the overmind was empowered.  It was able to reach across the gaps in our conscious attention to fuse together only the shifting moments.  The loop was still running in the background, but our minds were able to jump across the unchanging parts of each loop and move with much more speed through the loop's evolution.  With this perceptual shift, our sanity stopped blurring out, and we started to solidify, individually and collectively.  I saw with stark clarity that something was starting tonight that would have reverberations for the rest of our lives, and the rest of many others' lives as well.  I saw the need to have Lauren and Yiting join with us in whatever this was ultimately going to be; that they were integral parts of our future success, although I only had a vague sense of what that really meant.  

The loop came to an end.  The overmind, with each of us individually participating, worked to rebuild reality piece by piece.  It was obvious that just as the pocket universe was ultimately a constructed thing, something that the overmind had unknowingly put in place to help us efficiently process what needed to be processed, so too was what we think of as reality.  It is constructed by the consensus of all of us.   

The constricted pocket universe merged gently into reality, and the expansiveness and spaciousness of reality was such a refreshing and life-affirming experience.   I saw that R was still in distress, although much improved from before the loop.  She needed more time.  So we changed things for ourselves, granting ourselves for as long as we needed it that childlike magical ability to extend out time and have it run much slower.  We talked and slowly started to feel ourselves coming down from the trip.  It was by no means over, but the peak was done, and we were on the downside.  We could all feel it.  We could feel the overmind starting to weaken and unravel, and our souls gently starting to untangle.   

As the trip wore off, R moved outside, and M and I sat at the table and talked.  We talked about the trip, and the unbelievable and life changing experience we had just braved together.  M pushed me to go check on R; to make sure she was okay.  I went outside and lay down on the grass beside her, looking up at the sky.  R and I talked and discussed what all of this could mean, as M came out and joined us under the stars.  I suddenly flashed on different futures.  Tonight hadn't just been about our service to that creature.  It was also about that gift it gave us in return.  We needed this evening, every aspect of it, including the mind virus attack, in order to overcome, to grow, to temper our individual selves into the strongest steel, and to forge ourselves into a greater collective.   

Something is coming — a choice for each of us, and for those in our closest orbit.  A choice to step forward, to come together, and to bring about lasting change to this planet.  We started to put together a social-memory complex last night.  We need to help it grow and spread, helping people learn to balance themselves and then having them join together in a balanced and harmonious whole.  An opportunity will arise soon, where we will see the next steps of the path.  If we choose to avail ourselves of the opportunity, everything will change.  We will gain the notice of the public as well as the notice of a lot of things that are not human.  We will be putting ourselves and our families at risk.  But we and our children will have the opportunity to do an immense and truly world-changing service to humanity.   

It is very clear that in this we have free will.  Each of us can choose whether or not to accept the challenge.  However, this is our path, and it is not easy to walk away from one's path.  The universe will keep throwing catalyst and the challenge at us, and I have a feeling that each time will be much more insistent in its consequences than the time prior.