Wow, hello there and welcome.

Tell us a little bit about your experience with entheogens and DMT.

Hello! Thank you!

Well, let's say that the movie's better than the book.

Born and raised in Western NC, a video game addict from ages 9 to 14, learned a good lot about the limits of the human body doin' that. RuneScape! Hahaha, far out times. Good'uns, though, as they all are depending on the perspective.

Started smokin' pot at age 12, a little while late, but happy 4/20!

Ate LSD for the first time at age 16, October 10th, 2009, I didn't learn the meaning of the word entheogen until some time near the end of 2012, watched Tool and Rob Zombie videos and sprayed cut-open glow-sticks all over the side of a geodesic dome at night-time, the glow stick splashes were nigh indistinguishable from the stars. There was a toothbrush/toothpaste holder in the bathroom of the house, the holes for the toothbrushes were circles, and the hole for the toothpaste was a half-circle, all on the top end of a green cylinder, totally looked like a smiling face, which was a really like, evocative moment. Sort of an unconscious realization that y'know, Existence is a pretty happy place'n'stuff. Moreso to say, that whatever one projects onto Existence is what one will perceive.

I went and worked on a farm in Cali back in 2011, I reckon I'd say I was in a very low state of consciousness at the time and when I ended up back in NC I got all tripped out, and discovered like, getting caught in mental loops. Far out. I was playin' my guitar on King St. in Boone, NC for a month or so, Dec '11 - Jan '12, hangin' out, havin' a good time, trippin' out, giggling at ducks and then being bewildered when a whole flock of them that frequented a lake around there all came up to me, walking across the ice to me, then all of them synchronizing their quacks at me, having humbling experiences and whatnot, enjoying the magical synchronicities that life had in store. Saw a freakin' fire-breathing dragon! It was drawn on a wall, in chalk. That's always funny to say. I also found a strange little bouncing ball outside the chemistry lab on campus at ASU, it was literally the squishiest thing I'd ever seen, and when bounced it'd fly like, thirty feet in the air. I'm sure that it was some sort of Flubber that'd been lost by the Chem. folks.

I've seen a lot of things that I have no idea of even how to begin explaining.

After hitchhikin' a little bit around out west, CO to So. Cal to No. Cal, and through an epic synchronicity running into some kids I met in Boone in a town called Carmel-by-the-Sea on Highway 1 on the Coast of CA, I ended up on a couple different farms where I was introduced to a lot of different styles of thinking, had described to me concepts of God that actually made sense, not as some feller up in the sky, tossing lightening bolts, but as a sort of unity with existence. "What you and I see is Ben, holding a hose, water travels through the hose, through the air, into the soil, the soil absorbs the water, the plants absorb the water and the nutrients from the soil, which then travel through the plant using xylem and phloem to the parts of the plant that need it the most. The plant grows, and eventually gets to the point where it's harvested, processed, consumed, and the particles that made it all up go back into the cycles of life. The way a Hindu sees it is Vishnu is Vishnuing Vishnu, Vishnu Vishnu, Vishnu. Vishnu!!!" Things started making a lot more sense when people talked about things like Spirituality and whatnot.

I got tripped out there, a lot too, ended up locked in a bathroom with a broken door-handle, I was in there for a good thirty minutes, and being stuck in a bathroom for that long, one begins to ponder the inner-workings of doors and whatnot. "Well, what is a door? The door is but the sum of its parts, the wooden part, the hinges, the individual pieces that make up the hinges, and the handle." With that, I closed my eyes and imagined how my actions, the pressures exerted by my hand and whatnot upon the door and the handle were affecting the inner-working parts of the handle, and doing that, the door opened.

I'd lose focus on the tracks of conversations that didn't really mean anything, and sort of zone out around there, and when I did, occasionally I'd see like... How to describe it. Funnels of energy below and above objects and people connecting them to an indescribable source.

I also saw an interdimensional rift open up, at first all the kids I was with and I thought it was a chemtrail, but one dude and I kept watching it, listening to the Grateful Dead and it began to pulsate and move with the music, we were talking about it, like, "Dude, yeah, that's definitely an interdimensional rift, there." Then the other kids who weren't tripping as hard, some not tripping at all, got out of the van and, well, it stopped doin' it.

There was this one feller on that farm, him and I were working out in the field, using tree glue and plant tape to re-attach felled limbs, I took only as much plant tape as I thought I'd need, and he, seeing this and seeing me having, like, a hard time getting it tied, he was like, "Dude, you've got so much more to work with here, man." I took it on like, a much deeper level than the way he meant it, because I'd always had confidence issues, and it felt like five tons of flax, removed from my shoulders. There's lots of psychological shenanigans in my family, severe issues of co-dependence, which, when one is surrounded by growing up, one just sort of grows into until one really realizes the, uh, implications of it all. Far out stuff, psychology and the mind.

Before I was at that farm, I ended up at somethin' called a Lunar Burn up in Susanville, CA, it was a three day thing in the High Desert near the NV border where a buncha' folks got together around campfires and we all caught the Solar Eclipse, drank mushroom tea there for the first time as the Solar Eclipse was happening, fun time. I learned a lot about Sacred Geometry, Chakras, Kundalini meditation, all sorts of meditation stuff, got a bigger grip on the energy that lies within and around everything while I was travelin' with them folks.

When all tripped out there, I went to my first Rainbow Gathering, up in Weed, CA. It was a really far out experience, I remember standing in a creek, there was stones in the shape of a peace sign sticking out from the water, and I stood in the peace sign for hours, it was epic. I saw a real communal attitude there, although I was only there for a day, it was so epic. On the farm, I'd been pushing myself too hard, and ended up realizing the potential of negative infinity. (the infinite range of positive and negative exists within all of existence )

Long story short, there, I learned a lot about myself and respect for others.

I ended up on a different farm, where I came up with the black hole idea. I smoked methamphetamine for the first time there, and something came to me like a flash of light. It was a same kind of flash of light that I'd had the first time I'd ever smoked Cannabis. The notion that everything I'd ever been institutionally "taught" about these things was but fabrication, whatever the subjective "it" is, "it" is what "it" is, "it" ain't what "it" ain't, perhaps most importantly, though, "it" is what gets made of "it," if anything. At one point there, one of the fellers and I were walking through the woods and I was talking on and on and on and on and on, he was like, "Inner monologue, hippie." Which really got me to thinkin'. He also inspired me to talk in haiku for a day, which kept me mostly silent up until the point where I started like, slurring and adding syllables to things and making faux-haiku about the subjective nature of syllable length. I remember the first one I really put some thought into, though, was when I'd gone to sleep for the night, "Haiku in the dark. Light, however, all around. Life can't be measured."

Far out stuff.

I had a quarter pound of pot and a half ounce of hash from my work over the year, I hitched into San Francisco and had a good time, gave it all away, squatted in the park for a minute, raged Haight St. a whole bunch, got thrown into the SF Psych ward for a good hour or so after a sergeant, an undercover with his hand on his gun under his shirt and five beat cops with nightsticks drawn... Well, it's a long story. The sergeant asked if he could search my backpack after, me having shown him my ID that I had to retrieve from said bag, he saw a half-gallon plastic bag. (It had in it incense that I'd ground-scored from a DSO show at the Fillmore) Me, not having any reason not to let him to search it, but also being bored, told him, "Well, Officer, I conditionally accept this search on the grounds that prior to aforementioned search, you provide me with proof of your probable cause." At this, the sergeant got pissed, the beat cops started clearing people out of the area as the sergeant pushed me back, once, twice, three times. As it was happening, I was laughing at the complete and total absurdity of it all, and cheerfully asking people nearby, "So, who wants to be a witness in a police brutality case?" People were stoked about it, the ones who hadn't yet been cleared of the area were all about it, volunteering left and right. The sergeant pushed me up until the point where one of his buddies came up behind me, cuffed left hand, then right and said, "We've got to get this guy out of here!" On the way there, I asked what I was being charged with, met only with silence, and informed them that their actions were making them open to prosecution in a criminal kidnapping case. They brought me to the holding cell, where I had a wonderful time making their lives hell, "Excuse me, but I'd like some water!" Poking fun at their motto, "Oro en paz, fierro en guerra" (Gold in peace, iron in war,) Yelling haiku, laughing like a madman, making fools out of all of them; as they knew as well as I did that they didn't have anything to hold me on, making rhythm with my bare feet and the handcuff chain. After a while, a feller came into the room separated from the holding cell by a thick window, where I saw this feller searching through my bag, which I'd dropped. I mockingly said to him, "Well, officer, I'll tell you the same thing I told your sergeant, I conditionally accept this search on the grounds that prior to aforementioned search, you provide me with proof of your probable cause." He became visibly enraged, and in one swift motion, raised the bag high above his head and threw it, slamming into the concrete floor. I sat there, whistling, laughing, quoting Nelson Mandela, Ghandi, and MLK Jr., having a wonderful time, and after a while, the same fellow who'd attempted to search my bag came into the cell with a sheet of paper in his hand, now wearing large, black sunglasses. He said in what seemed to be the most authoritative voice he could manage, "I'm going to read you your charge, are you going to listen?" "If you speak, you will be heard." Already being but a foot from him, he stepped closer in an aggressive manner, "You don't F**king give me orders!!! I'm going to read you your charge!!! Are! You! Going! To! Listen?!" "If you speak. You will be heard." I replied with the same gleeful grin that hadn't left my face since the whole affair had started. He stormed out of the room and came back a good five minutes later, "Well, we think that you're a potential danger to yourself or others, we don't think you're safe to be out on your own, we're going to take downtown for a psychiatric evaluation." I simply laughed at them as they uncuffed me and put me in a car. We arrived, and I found the looks I received to be increasingly comical as we approached the psych ward, me in cuffs. We got there, I was uncuffed, they put all of my belongings in a plastic trash bag behind the desk and I just stood there, wondering what to do. I asked at the desk, and was told to just take a seat anywhere I'd like, and was told that there was a reading room. I took a seat in one of the swanky leather chairs near the door, and after a few minutes, they brought me a tray of hot food, it wasn't like, stereotypical hospital food, either. A nicely breaded pork chop, garlic mashed 'taters, what seemed to be canned string beans, and what hopefully wasn't GMO corn along with a fruit cup and an apple! So, I ate up, and when I was done, like five minutes later, they brought me another one! Neat! I was stuffed after that'un, and began to really observe my surroundings, I watched as patients went to the counter and received mind numbing antipsychotics and other strange pharmaceuticals and observed a young woman rocking back and forth in the corner. What caught my attention the most was the rhythm being tapped out from the other side of one of the padded cell doors. It was clear that the staff viewed it with a sort of derision (on a side note, the mentality of the staff in that psych ward was, well, quaint to say the least. There was a charge to the air, and they knew that if a patient was there, then there was absolutely no question about their sanity. An atmosphere of "us and them." It was far out, a wonderful time.) and realizing their attitude towards what was in actuality, a really wonderful complex poly-rhythm, I joined in with the person, tapping on the wooden arms of the chair, tappin' my feet, whistlin', havin' a good ol' time. After a few minutes, a member of the staff behind the counter said, "I think you're getting on the other patients nerves." I immediately had a wise-crack remark, "Actually, I think that you're getting on the patients nerves." The whole of the staff behind the counter just looked at me like, "This guy's gonna' be trouble..." The patients within earshot were clearly enjoying my antics, and when I said that, a feller who'd just received his meds turned with a big grin on his face and the young lady in the corner stopped rocking back and forth long enough to crack a quick smile towards me. After that, I got up and decided to go check out the sittin' room. On the brief walk there, one of the attendants stopped and handed me a patients robe and a towel, pointing me to a large bathroom where I could take a shower. I was left in there, and I'd taken my shirt of when I realized, "Wait, why should I take a shower just because these folks don't like the way I smell? I happen to like my smell and I don't believe that I should be wasting perfectly good water to cater to the inhibitions of others." So, I got my shirt back on, found the guy who'd given me the gown and the towel, and told him that I wouldn't be taking a shower because it was against my beliefs. He rolled his eyes as I walked off to the sitting room. The first thing I noticed was a basket full of bananas to the left next to a basket full of tiny apple and orange juice cartons, super sweet! I ate like, four bananas and drank at least two of each juice, put another one of each juice in my pockets and made my way to the bookcase in the corner, where I found the most spectacular book full of political cartoons from the Clinton era. I sat down in one of the numerous leather chairs, these ones even swankier than the ones from earlier, and watched as the artist totally fried the Clinton administration on the NATO intervention in the Kosovo/Serbia conflict, totally fried the corporate media for keeping the public distracted, totally fried the whole military/political/pharma/oil/corporate industrial complex, it was awesome. I sat there reading that, and felt a big fart coming along. I shifted from the lotus pose in that big leather chair, and let it rip. I thought it was going to be silent, nope. It was by wide and far the loudest squeaker I've ever experienced. All the patients in the room and I broke out in raucous laughter, then laughed even more at the frightened expressions of the staff behind the desk in the sitting room, one of whom got up as the laughter began to subside, went to the dimmer switch behind the desk and dimming the lights by a good 30%, said, "They have a little too much input." Far out. I sat there, reading and sipping juice until a member of the staff came in, looked at me, and said, "The psychiatrist will see you now." I walked into what I can only describe as an interrogation room without a table, and sat across from a lady. She asked me all sorts of questions about whether I ever felt like hurting anybody or myself, if I ever used such and such substances, if I ever felt paranoid on such and such a substance, I gave all straight and honest answers, that when one fights for peace, the battle is already won, yesses and nos to which and what substances, and that the only thing I was paranoid of were the cops pullin' stunts like this and writin' me tickets for squattin' in the park. My unabashed honesty was greeted with hostile and suspicious glances from the lady, who left and came back with two older, bearded men. One man had the demeanor of one who enjoys and makes the most out of life, the other man had the demeanor of a tired bull, about to be slaughtered by a matador. The four of us talked for a long while about all sorts of things, Einstein, relativity, physics, Nikola Tesla, wireless electricity, all sorts of good stuff. After a while, the healthy looking fellow asked, "Do you ever hear voices in your head?" Knowing full well that if I said yes, they could diagnose me with schizophrenia and immediately end the interview, and knowing that I'd come up with a way to rationalize it later, I replied, "No." The three of them looked at one another, they looked at me with strange looks on their face like they were thinking, "Wait a minute, what?" The lady wrote something down and as her and the rather worn out looking fellow were about to leave, I said, "One day, an earthquake is going to strike the west coast, and in an existence of infinite possibilities, there's the potential that every building on the coast will fall. Guess what? I'll still be in the park, smiling." The two of them left, and the happy looking fellow just nodded his head. He asked if I wanted a sandwich, which sounded pretty cool. He asked how I got by livin' on the streets, and was totally surprised when I told him that the generosity of kind-hearted strangers was a big factor of it. He asked if I was scared of the potential dangers of living on the streets and other people, and was totally surprised when I told him that there's actually a strong sense of community amongst the folks who don't have anything to do other than sit around on the street smokin' pot all day. He asked if I ever got lonely and was very surprised when I told him how I'd learned the concept of Polyamory, which, when broken into its Latin roots translates to "Love of Many" or "Of Many Loves." and had gone out asking every woman who'd caught my eye to marry me, to which I got what I'd estimate to be a 70/30 split of yesses to nos, it was epic. I actually lost my virginity in a bush in Golden Gate Park. Fun times! Far out stuff. He asked, "So, what are you doing in here?" "I dunno', man, ask the cops." He led me to the front room where I'd first sat down, handed me the black bag with my backpack in it and a pink sheet of paper with the word "UNSEARCHED" stamped on it and gave me a bus token, wishing me luck upon my way. When I stopped at a trashcan outside and opened up my backpack, I noticed that the cops had lost one of my sandals in transit! That wasn't very considerate, I need those to get in places, like the library! C'est la vie. I was back on Haight Street by sundown after taking a lovely ride on the bus. I got off the bus about an hours walk away from the head of the park, and I thought long and hard about the "no" that I'd uttered to the question of voices in my head. I came to the conclusion that I hear a voice in my head. Now, whether that voice sounds like Richard Nixon loudly proclaiming "I am not a crook!" accompanied by a vivid picture of the man himself making two numeral V signs with his hands, whether it be Bob Marley singing Three Little Birds, whether it be my own voice, scatting out a tune, "Skidille-be-a-doo-bop-bop-bwow, ma ma wa wow, deep a doop doop boopadee dop dop now." or Krishna Das chanting Hare Krsna, no matter what the voice sounds like, it's one voice. One consciousness. Learned a lot about love and life over the course of the time I was there. Meditated with a lot of shiny rocks 'round there, good times. Learned a lot about the nature of consciousness, having a chance to observe it raw in many of its multiplicitous forms.

Left 'Frisco after about a month or so with some good folks in a truck, we went to Santa Cruz, had a good time, raged town for a fat minute, there were eight of us in the vehicle. The dude who owned the truck was out on Pacific Ave. one day, busking with his guitar, the rest of us were in the truck at the Safeway parking lot, and I watched as one of my fellow travelers walked up to, one by one, the rest of the folks I was traveling with, and handed them all big, long, beautiful white flowers. He then came up and handed one to me and was like, "Dude, eat this, it'll make you trip!" Me, always being down for a journey into the infinite dimensions of the mental realm and wishing to make the most of it, scarfed it down, and was like, "What is it?" "Datura." He replied. Something I'd never heard of or seen before. Neat!

So, I don't know who did and who didn't eat it, I thought we all did. Anyway, we all fell asleep, slept for about fifteen minutes, we all woke up at the same time and decided to take a walk to the boardwalk. Every step I took, it felt like the Earth was falling out from under me. Far out. The entire walk, we were having deep conversations about the existential esoteric nature of Conscious Existence, and every once in a while, somebody would say something that didn't make any sense at all. Like, complete gibberish not remotely resembling the syllables needed to make any words. I figured that it was a great contrast to the conversations being had and didn't mention it, until I realized that these conversations that we all acknowledged that we were having were completely non-verbal. If there's no other word for it, freakin' telepathy! Waaaaay cool! As soon as I came to this realization, I immediately attempted to articulate it in verbal words, but nothing was coming out but garbled nonsense, "Glub... Buh... Nluh!" I tried a few times until one of the folks I was with turned around with a silent grin from ear to ear, instantly I knew, "Oh, this is a part of it, okay!" We continued on in a state of semi-delirium, I picked an orange off of a tree, ate it, it tasted like and had the rubbery consistency of the Datura flower, but I continued eating it.

We arrived at the south end of the Boardwalk, where the wharf begins. One of the folks I was with and I couldn't walk another step, so we leaned up on one of the wooden posts holding up the railing, we put our hands behind the railing behind our backs so we could keep our balance. The five others walked on down the boardwalk. We sat there for a good, long while, looking back and forth, silent observers of the Existence around us. At one point, I looked to my left, my fellow traveler was next to me, close enough to where I could have put my arm 'round his shoulder, I looked to my right, and then back to my left, and all of a sudden, he was no longer there. I didn't really think anything of it, figuring that he'd gone off to go be delirious somewhere else, making a note in the back of my head that I hadn't seen him walk past, and he wasn't walking down the wharf, either.

After a moment of that thought biting at me from the back of my head, I decided that I'd look through the railing of the wharf, to see if he had fell through. I checked, and as I observed that he hadn't, I breathed a sigh of relief. As I was turning back around, I noticed the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. She had long, flowing red hair down past her hips, she was sprawled out on the beach, her right leg bent at the knee making an arch over the sand, her left leg loosely off to the left, her right cheekbone delicately balanced on her right hand, and the seemingly flawless Fibonacci spiraled curls of her hair being gently tousled by her left hand a good thirty yards away about equidistant from the ocean and the road. Her and I had direct eye contact for a good half minute, and I figured I'd go over and talk to her. I weebled up on my wobbly legs, turned around and looked to where she had been, only to find that she was no longer there. I scanned the beach up and down, knowing that had she ran six times quicker than the quickest Olympic sprinter, she wouldn't have been able to get out of sight and would still have stuck out like a sore thumb. I looked and looked, walked to the other side of the wharf and looked, and she was nowhere to be found. I rounded the corner of the railing and stood, leaning on the railing, watching the early afternoon sunshine reflect off of the waves past the shining, tan sand. I sat there, contemplating what exactly had, in fact, just happened. I stood there and after a short while, I heard from behind me the most beautiful saxophone music I'd ever heard. It was like that one really good Pink Floyd song with the epic saxophone part, Us and Them, except it went on for a long while. I watched as the sun went down in the sky at least six finger-widths, listening and gettin' down with the groove for a while. I eventually turned around to find a tall man, approximately six feet tall, long, highly curly black hair down to his shoulders and a long, similarly curly black beard down to about his sternum standing in front of the nearby bench. He had big, thick, black sunglasses, a black shirt, a black belt, black jeans, black socks, and a set of black Air Force style boots. Over his shirt he had on a Burgundy trenchcoat that went to about his knees. There were three and a half shining, golden, five-lobed flowers with centers of burgundy. In front of where the man was standing there was a silver electric keyboard on a black four-legged stand. Down near his left foot was a trombone case.

I sat on the bench next to this man and listened to him lay down the funk for at least two more finger-lengths of sun movement, he came to a spectacular close, and I told him how much I enjoyed his playing. We got to talking and we came upon the topic of conversation about how we both had come to be synchronized in the here and now, and I ended up telling this fellow my entire life story. He listened very carefully and closely to every word I said, being kind and polite, adding the most appropriate commentary imaginable only when I seemed to be at a loss for words. It was by wide and far the most reassuring conversation of my life, I've felt to this day the deep inner-knowledge that whatever path I was on at the time, and whatever path I am on now, is precisely where I need to be. We were talking for a good three or four finger-widths of sun movement, and as I was getting to the part of the story where I'd arrived in Santa Cruz, I saw from my right periphery that the five folks who'd left when our fellow traveler and I had sat down on the wharf were walking my way, and I turned my head to them as I extended my hand to this man, and bid him my heartiest goodbyes and most profound of blessings, I turned my head back to where he was, and he was gone. No saxophone. No keyboard. No saxophone. No guy.

Gone.

Woah. I stood there, shocked, hand still extended. I walked over to the fellow travelers, we walked on back to the truck for a long while in dead silence, until somebody posed a question to all in earshot, "Hey, where's Thomas?" (The dude who'd sat down next to me at the wharf.) Nobody knew. A long while later, he came back, telling stories of how he'd been walking with us all one minute, then we all disappeared the next, he saw the owner of the vehicle, asked for directions to the truck which led him waaay the wrong way, saw people on his walk that he wasn't sure if they really existed or not and who wouldn't even know what truck he was looking for, much less how to get there, who whimsically happened to give him accurate directions back to the truck.

Far out.

The Datura took a toll on my eyesight, inducing severe mydrasis for around a week, I remember this one night three of us were walking back to the truck after getting kicked out of the under-construction gas station at around 5:00A.M. by a construction worker, I picked up a penny on the ground to read the year, and couldn't focus my eyes enough to tell whether it was heads or tails, much less what year it was. I couldn't focus my eyes to make out the individual lines of my hand. When I sat in the cab of the truck the next day with a lovely lady in the vehicle with us, the driver and his dog as we were going through town, I couldn't make out the words on street signs. That was the only negative thing I'd report about it, I was seriously concerned that I was going to have impaired vision forever.

For a long while, I'd been trying to get scared, like, scared out of my wits kind of scared. Having had guns in my face and almost falling from a precipitous cliff-face under my belt at the time, there wasn't much that could phase me, or so I believed. I totally lost face for a minute. For at least a week, I was convinced that the only people I could believe actually existed were the people traveling in the vehicle with me. I was convinced that anybody I talked to was liable to disappear at a moments notice, one glance away and they could be gone. Freaked me out for a minute. I mean, I'd already known that "it"'s all in ones head, but that level of it was a new experience. I came to terms with it shortly thereafter, though, rationalizing that if everything's at the mercy of my imagination, then, well, so be it, sounds like a good time. Existence is one big imagination, imagining itself.

A few days after the experience, I went to the library, researched Datura, and was delighted to find it of the Solanaceae family and equally delighted at the wide variety of trip-reports I found. Some people manifest some wild stuff!

There was the national Rainbow Gathering up in Glacier National Forest on July 4th, '13. After the morning of silence, a good 3000 of the 8000 people in attendance gathered in the main meadow, joining hands for an Ohm circle. It lasted a good long eternity, as I was meditating and manifesting pure intentions of Love, Light, Gratitude, Healing, Compassion, Respect and Empathy into existence, I saw from behind my eyelids an indescribable, pure light, and felt the most powerful feeling of mental, physical and spiritual ecstasy that I'd ever encountered. The Golden Eternity, manifested in form.

This one time in 'Frisco, I drank some really potent mushroom tea and stood there, as I came up I was whistling a tune, and then I began to change the pitch of it as people walked by, which was really fun because I was right next to a bus stop. After a while, I just closed my eyes and let my whistling be changed by while simultaneously changing the wonderful geometric fractals happening behind closed eyes.

Fun times!

My most recent trip was a few weeks ago, I executed a trip to Florida that was had an inverse relationship of planning and research, I knew what I was lookin' for, knew the right conditions, knew the procedures'n'whatnot, but didn't think to actually check the conditions before I embarked on the journey. It only rained for a day and hardly reached the required humidity levels. I found a good chunk of pasture off of the Interstate where I managed to find a couple grams of wet P. Cubensis. I'd made a mental map of the field, dividing it into rows and columns, first walking along the western treeline, then the northern fenceline, then doing rows starting at the western treeline going into the field. It was my first time ever hunting them. After a couple hours, I found two beautiful ones growin' off of a patty, scarfed'em after checking to see that they bruised blue and wiping any potential contaminants off of them. I went and ohm'd with the cows near a small pond in the pasture, searched for another good thirty minutes, decided not to be lost amongst precepts of order and started wandering randomly around the field in hopes of finding more. I made it to the southwest corner where the eastern treeline met the southern fence, walked back down the fence to where I'd climbed through a hole...

(I guess the post was too long, it didn't post the whole thing. Dang, all these words to describe something indescribable. Such is the nature of Existence, haha.)

... as I was walking I noticed the shadows of the grass were casting shadows that were the most beautiful shades of indigo and blue. I got on my bicycle and went back to the hotel room, where I layed down on the bed without turning the light on and watched as a single shaft of late afternoon light penetrated through the darkness, a vortex formed where the ambient light from the window met the wall of darkness on the other end of the room and I watched as various manifestations of seemingly important, meaningless form danced in front of my eyes, I began to practice Kundalini meditation, and saw myself floating on a river of light, going through me in all directions simultaneously. After a while of doing that, I decided I'd take my boots off, and as I was, I looked at the bed across from me and marveled as the grid of lines separating the tan, brown, blue and red triangle pattern arose from the blanket and began to sway back and forth, glowing and shifting through various neon-metallic hues. After a long while and a wonderful time watching that show, I finally managed to get my boots off and I propped the pillows against the headboard as more absurd visions of infinitely meaningful meaninglessness shifted through the flowing currents of consciousness.

Then the phone in the hotel room rang. I switched the lamp next to my head on, picked up the phone, "Hello?" I then heard a click.

Strange, I thought. I then reached into the end table next to me and pulled out the Bible, read Ecclesiastes for the first time. Wow. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Eat drink'n'be merry, there's no thing new under the sun." Neat!

The cell phone on the table then rang, I picked it up and it was my brother, making sure I didn't accidentally eat an Amanita ocreata or something. I brewed some coffee, brought the chair from the room outside, smoked a cigarette, drank the coffee, sat on the phone with my brother for an hour or so about lots of things'n'stuff, life'n'stuff'n'stuff'n'stuff.

I ended up back inside, and turned on the TV, and The Hobbit was on, which I'd seen before, but I didn't remember the part about the stone giants, and I was like, "Whaaat? Is this the 3rd movie or something? Far out!" I figured out it was the first one at the end of the movie.

I ended up laying there, unable to sleep for hours, and I heard the cell phone on the table ring. It was one of the lovely ladies I'd been traveling with a couple years ago, when I was in Santa Cruz, I'd not talked to her since we'd parted ways. I'd just run into a fellow I'd traveled with last year in town, the crew he was with and he'd come into town to jug up some gas for their car before they went on to the Wanee music festival, they told it was just a short ride away, and recommended I go, which sounded like a good idea when they told me the ease of sneaking into it.

So, there I was, it was like, 1:45A.M., this chick and I said "Hello?" to eachother like, six or seven times in increasing magnitudes of silliness before I was like, "Who is this?" It was a wonderful conversation, she told me she was going to be at the festival, and after I got off the phone with her, I hopped in the shower, brushed my teeth, drank some water, smoked another cigarette, grabbed all my gear, made the bed, hopped on the bicycle and out the door I went, rode about 50 miles over the course of the next 12 hours. That ride in and of itself was a very humbling experience. Made me realize just how alive I really am. "...To swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human..." Far out.

Good times. Good times!

That's the experiences that stick out right now when I search the archives of this memory'n'whatnot. Never have tried DMT, heard a whole lot of things about it. I've no expectations about it and I reckon that when the the frequencies of this dimension and that one align, it'll happen exactly when it needs to, just like everything.

Back in '12, one of those lovely ladies I'd been traveling with had come back to the campsite with a book she'd received, entitled The Perfection of Yoga by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. She asked if anybody wanted it, because she wanted to throw it in the campfire. I jumped at the opportunity and was totally stoked about it, not knowing the treasure that had come to me. I finally got around to reading it in a little truck stop cafe and restaurant on December 20th, 2012 in the town of Lebanon, TN where I'd stopped to wait out a snow storm while I was hitchhiking back to NC. It was epic. Woah. To think that all that I've been sayin', the black hole stuff, has been articulated for a very long time, just in a different way. There was something I'd come up with in my days of marrying every woman I met, "I love everything, and I love you too." (It started as "I love everything, but I love you too." I like the "and" better, it's more of a connecting statement as opposed to a dividing statement. The gentle, magic subtleties of words, woah.) Lovely.

Prior to starting the hitchhike East from CA, I'd been in Slab City, CA, where on a 32ft RV I'd been traveling in I'd read the sutra that Jack Kerouac had scribed after his journies in India, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity. Far out stuff! On that RV was also located a large book, entitled The Only Astrology Book You'll Ever Need. Also far out stuff!

I read most of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in my stay at a house in Lakeport, CA where I'd been helping blow some hash, never got payed for the work that I did there, but the opportunity to read that book was an acquired wealth beyond imagination. Also in Lakeport, CA, I was introduced to a series of internet videos that go by the name of Spirit Science. Through them, I was introduced to the research of Dr. Masaru Emoto, and his experiments on the structure of frozen water viewed under a microscope and put into containers with different phrases on them. Love and Gratitude, always! Through Spirit Science, I was also introduced to more about Chakras, Sacred Geometry, Pyramids, all sorts of lovely stuff!

I read the Principia Discordia last Spring. Shoooooooowheee. Gobble gobble gobble, gobble! Gobble!

That's all that comes to mind right now. In my opinion, the most potent entheogen of all is the living of life to its fullest potential, the infinite possibilities of every piece of everything. Absolutely lovely.

Quite the story you have!

How was slab city?

Slab City was great! I knew I'd have a good time there when I saw the graffiti on the way in that said, "The last free place on Earth." Met all sorts of good heads there, stayed for about a week, helpin' out at a Rainbow Kitchen the RV parked next to, the Stray Cafe. On the way in, as we were passing Salvation Mountain, I read the big red letters that said, "GOD IS LOVE" and was like, "Woah. That's a wonderfully simple way to articulate something so profound! Neat!" I found a bunch of really rainbow-ey quartz on the ground around there, which I put on a sort of altar thing inside Salvation Mountain. I went and relaxed in the hot springs a short walk away from the mountain with a few folks I met there. It was a very relaxing time, very slow-paced and down to Earth. Happy, simple livin'. I went to the slab where The Range music stage thing is on the Saturday I was there, and listened to some very crunchy tunes! Learned about Palo Verde there while hunting for firewood, was told that it's mildly neurotoxic and blinding if the fumes are inhaled while it's being burned.

I'd heard tales from some of the folks I'd worked with on the farm back in '11 that from the slabs one can see laser-based weapons being tested nearby at the Chocolate Mountain Gunnery Range, I didn't see any of that, though. Still sounds way cool! Way cool in like a, "Oh, wow, that's real!" kind of way. Wonderful time all around, I'd highly recommend it to any hardy adventurer.

Oooooh! Woah! I just remembered something awesome that I honestly can't believe I forgot, upon further reflection though, I could totally see myself being forgetful.

Through the wondrous adventures of idle curiosity, I was readin' your experience reports, read them all, I'm speechless! Amazing and lovely! What I remembered, though, was when there was talk about plants! To paraphrase, they were fractalyzing into hyperspace!

So, August 7th, '13, long story short, I ended up with a beer bottle to the cranium, big, bloody, gaping wound. Wonderful time. The whole story is actually pretty amazing.

So, after a trip to the hospital for 8 stitches (one for every color of the rainbow, and then one!) I walked through the small town that I live near, got some super heady potato stew in a bread bowl and one of the best cups of really dark coffee I've ever had.

I walked past the gun store and was walkin' the back road back to this house, and a feller in a red truck rolled up next to me and asked if I'd like a ride. I hopped in, and on the five or ten minute ride there, we were talking about Spirituality, synchronicity, Existence, all sorts of wonderful things! As we were approaching the bottom of the driveway, he asked me a question: "Does God ever talk to you?" "Not in words." I replied. I then bid him my heartiest of blessings and goodbyes, hopped out of the truck, and walked up the gravel driveway.

Found the keys to my motorcycle in one of the first places I should've looked, which is actually what the beer bottle to the cranium incident started over. Got geared up, and hopped on the motorcycle to head to my brothers place about 60 miles away. The front brake handle had been lost in transit from Tulsa, OK in the back of a Uhaul. Almost got hit three or four times on the journey. When I came to the one red light that I encountered in the journey, I attempted to downshift to slow down, not knowing I was already in the lowest gear. I went flying through into the middle of the intersection, slammed on the back breaks, the back wheel locked up, turning me 90 degrees, I was facing the direction I needed to go, but I was in the left lane. I weaved through the two four-door sedans barreling my direction, beeping twice and exclaiming, "Sorry!" and arrived at the destination a few minutes later. I smoked an indica/sativa mix with the neighbors and a few cigarettes, talked with my brother when he arrived for a short while, and fell asleep on the couch. I slept for around 19 hours, from like, 11:00P.M. to 6:00P.M. the next day.

I awoke to the smell of some really good food, wafting through the apartment from the kitchen, I got up and went to the dividing wall with a hole in it which separates the living room from the kitchen, and was talking with my brother, most likely about the food, when I began to feel light headed and dizzy. He noticed this, and recommended that I go lie down.

It sounded like good reasoning, so, I carefully plodded my way back to the couch, and when I was about a distance to where I could safely fall onto it, I noticed something beautiful.

The right door leading to the small balcony was open, the balcony was visible, but beyond, where moments prior had been the bright yellows, greens and innumerable other colors of late afternoon in the Blue Ridge Mountains, there was now an all-consuming blackness. I stared deep into the blackness, and began to see blue orbs. As I focused on the orbs, I began to see lines, not touching any of the orbs, but connecting them in hexagons. The longer I stared, the shapes began to get more complex, Merkabas everywhere! It took the breath right out of me, to see the fabric of Existence materialize before my very eyes!

I stared for an indeterminable eternity, and after a while, the blackness began to creep over the railing of the porch, consuming it completely, it then began biting at the edges of the doors, slowly rolling into the room like a mist, when it reached the far right bottom corner, I laid back down, feeling incredibly woozy.

Fun times!

Western NC? you dont say. Gotta admit I pretty much glazed over at the wall o text thing, and don't know if you elaborated somewhere in it, but are you familiar with Cashiers/Walhalla? My grandfather owned a mountain b/n those two little towns ans I spent the most idyllic days of my youth there. He landscaped a huge area in Japanese style walking gardens and koi ponds, and the rainbow trout from the stream are still my fondest food memories. You are blessed to be in such a beautiful area. I'm guessing your in Highlands or Asheville, please no need to specify. Ahh fond memories of golden days..

Oyh yeah welcome friend. The only advice I have? Lay off the coffee/speed before you post. Whew!

Woah, that sounds spectacularly beautiful! I've never heard of either of those places, after a quick Google search, though, I have heard of Jackson county. I've not really done enough exploration of NC, it truly is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to. There's the Linville Gorge Wilderness area, a 14.5(ish) mile long stretch of never-been-logged wilderness which is like, the closest thing I've found to heaven on Earth. Way cool, I'd highly recommend it if you're ever in the Pisgah National Forest. I don't know the rules on sharing links to outside sites here, but http://www.Linvillegorge.net is an epic place for finding all the heady stuff down there, including a detailed topo map of all the official and unofficial trails'n'whatnot.

Thanks friend, duly noted! I do have a tendency to go off on long, convoluted stretches of nonsense, even totally sober. So many infinite articulations don't do justice to the echoing roar of mindful silence, I'd likely have scrolled past, as well.

D'oh! Double post!

Oh yeah, jeez, pisgah. You're flooding my brain with nostalgia. There's a lake somewhere around Cashiers that is ringed by a beach that is absolutely covered with garnets from the size of a bb to maybe a quarter inch diameter. Or at least there was. I'll have to ask someone in the family if they remember where this spot is, truly magical.

Sorry to turn this into the western north Carolina official appreciation thread, but hell, why not someone needs to.

Appreciate Westerns North Carolina that is.

Ok, I got to get in on the Western NC love... a couple pics I took at Linville Gorge...

edit: and of course, Welcome to the Nexus!

Slab City sounds awesome. I would love to check it out some day.

I knew you had been to rainbow even before your second post. I too had a vision during the morning silent prayer some years ago. I could see a vortex of something forming in the sky above everyone. A vortex of love. I will never forget it.

What a sanctuary, Continuum!

Nice story, Bejamin! Welcome!Strong enthusiasm.... tis a good thing!


Beautiful pics! I camp at the western NC, North GA, Eastern Tennessee border.

Here are a few of my favorite pics.

Wow, so much love! Thank you, everybody, for such a warm welcome!

That picture's from down in Linville, Daffodil Flats. A family that went by Dellinger lived down there back in the 1800s, the story goes that Mrs. Dellinger planted daffodils every Fall. Today, all that remains is a chimney of one building they had a mile or so down the trail, and the foundations of a building they had near the daffodils. The family is gone, but the plants remain.

You have an excellent memory. All of my experiences are gone from me with the passing of minutes, so the relation and telling of them all inevitably vague, even in my own mind.

I spent only a few days in SF, but had terrific luck finding what I needed when I needed it as I crisscrossed all over. On the days I had nothing, I experienced utmost convenience running across something.
Generosity is out there, and in force. Paracletes, seeds of light strewn en mass and overwhelming gravitas. The world turns on it.

Welcome!

Thank you! What I remember seems like a lot, it's really just a small fraction of what actually happens, the spinning, illusory nature of words'n'whatnot.

So much love and gratitude here, I'm excited to be part of such a community of present individuals, lovin' you, family.

God, man, speakin' of 'Frisco, haha, wonderful times. I remember this one time, there was a DSO show at the Fillmore, I sat out on the sidewalk, ragin' what I guess could be termed the Lot, sat there, starin' at the stars, ended up gettin' dosed by a good head, continued sittin' there, starin' at the stars, watchin' the crowd fractalyze and I noticed this little dude runnin' around with a balloon on a string, bouncing it back and forth, I continued looking at the stars, watchin' the crowd'n'whatnot, saw the little man run by twice, and on the third go around, he stopped.

I slowly looked down from the stars, and he slowly turned his head toward me, our eyes locked for like, a second. He then bounced the balloon right in my face, to where it barely touched my nose, then ran off, giggling. Far out.

I ended up playin' drums there on the sidewalk for like, hours with a handful of people, the security folks from the Fillmore were like, "Hey! We're gonna' call the cops if you don't leave!" I had a tambourine that somebody had given me to hold on to, the dude to my left and I locked eyes for a second and smiled, real big, and shrugged, being totally spun, we had a hard time communicating in words just what we were feeling, that it wasn't us playing the rhythms, it was the rhythm playing us. I told the security dude, "Dude! I'm here until the person who gave me this tambourine takes it back!" He shrugged and rolled his eyes, walked back inside.

Eventually the one dude came and took the tambourine back, brought it to his van, got out a big drum, and there we sat, the three of us, when I didn't have a drum I was dancin' around, makin' mad rhythm with my bare feet on the pavement, snappin' my fingers and clappin' my hands. Security came and told us to move again, and our rhythms gained a fervent momentum, a feeling of, "AAAAAAAH!!! We've got to get as much rhythm out as we can!!!!!" Eventually, big drum dude left, then it was just a dude with a little drum and I, sittin' there, passin' the drum back and forth, hours had passed and more hours passed, all the Lot Kids had left a long while ago.

We sat there, gettin' funky for a fat minute, and a feller who always carried a big drum on his back that I'd seen up and down the Haight came up from our left, the three of us jammed out, I had the little drum, big drum dude had the big drum, we were sort of at odds with our rhythms for like, .5 seconds, then he looked at me all sideways, and handed me the big drum. It was quite magical, we were gettin' down on some really intense rhythms, end of Existence-type stuff, never has a drum spoken so much to me.

After a while, big drum dude went off to his squat, and it was just little drum dude and I, jammin', ragin' the sidewalk. After a while, this biiig feller in a suit, looked like he was on his way to work came up, he had a very deep baritone voice, he stopped in front of us, started bobbin' his head and tappin' his feet, his only words were, "Oh yeah." He said them in rhythm to the music, as well, he did that a number of times before either the kid with the drum or I realized how much of a magic moment it was, the infinite power of thoughts, words, actions, habits, character and destiny, woah.

Big dude with them words went on his way, and another feller I knew from the Haight walked up. Now, this feller was a real far out feller, even totally sober, him and I never spoke an actual word to one another. I spoke to him in Skidille-bop. "Skidille-bop-a-bop dop dop boo wow?" (Whatever his skidille-bop equal was, in equally emotive tones) "Oh, skid a bee bop a boo boo dop dop zow!" We'd go on like that, for hours. Sharing the inarticulable.

Naturally, him and I got off on one of our tangents, which caused the little drum dude to look at him all funny. First time I'd ever heard this dude speak English. Far out, man.

Little drum dude ended up going along on his way, the other dude and I walked around for a while, made it back to the Haight where we ran into some word-speakers, my transition from skidille-bop to words was easy, I know not how the other feller took it, he just looked at me with big eyes and walked off.

Fun times in 'Frisco, man.

Thanks for listenin' to me ramble on, y'all, I mean, if I don't stop myself, I'll literally go on, non-stop, for days. I wrote an autobiography, which I realized as soon as I began writing was naught but a bastardization of things, I mean, in reality, words can hardly do justice to existence. One can imagine a plant, or a rock, or a ball of gas or a rock in the sky, but can words really describe it? One can describe a piece of subjective existence, but it's not until we actually experience it that we can viscerally understand it. "Well, the veins coming from the mid-rib of this leaf are .5mm apart from eachother..." So many words can only say so much.