I made a brew last Friday evening using mimosa and rue. This is the second time I used this combo--the first time I used 5 grams mimosa and 3 grams rue, and it was a profound experience. Going into this situation, I upped the mimosa to 13 grams, and kept the rue at 3. Here's what happened:
Preparation:
13 grams mimosa hostilis powdered rootbark was placed in a stainless steel pot. Just enough bottled water was poured in to cover the material, and a dash of white vinegar was added. I set it just below a boil for thirty minutes, strained it, and then repeated this process two more times. This resulted was approximately 150 ml of dark purple, bordering on brown, liquid, with minimal sediment.
I basically repeated this exact procedure (minus the vinegar) with 3 grams Syrian Rue, resulting in roughly the same amount of liquid.
Prior to this I’d fasted for 24 hours, drinking only water and yerba mate. I prepared my living room as such: cleared a space on the carpet and laid down several blankets. Also made a pile of t-shirts, hoodies, socks, to help with fluctuating body temperature. Upon a small side table I placed a large bottle of water, a glass piece packed with cannabis along with a lighter, and both the rue and the mimosa doses. At the other end of the room I lit some sandlewood incense. I set up my iTunes to continuously run a playlist of sounds from the Amazon jungle. All lights were turned off.
00:00 I sat upon a small cushion cross-legged, and with a silent nod to the infinite took the rue dose in one gulp. The next thirty minutes were spent doing three different pranayama breathing techniques, each for 10 minutes at a clip. During this time I did not note any stomach discomfort.
00:15: I am aware of a flushed feeling in my face. I open my eyes briefly and see the small digital clock across the room appears blurry.
00:30: I finish the last breathing exercise, and reach for the mimosa tea. I take the dose down into two separate gulps. Not the most pleasant taste in the world, but I feel people make a bigger deal about this than is necessary. Within 20 seconds, and after a quick swig of water I can’t taste anything anymore.
00:35: I can feel the liquids in my stomach sloshing through the digestive process, and already I want to vomit. I tell myself I need to keep it down for at least another 15 minutes, so I switch to a gentle, shallow breathing exercise and remind myself to sit up straight.
00:45: My mind is getting slippery and I’m feeling more flushed. I keep directing my focus to the third eye point. There are no “visions” here, however I find that my thoughts have adopted some undulating, tangible form and are writhing and squirming from behind my brain to behind my brow.
00:50: I check the clock again and am relieved to see it’s been 20 minutes since drinking the tea. While I know I could purge at this point, the need to do so is not yet overwhelming so I just continue breathing.
00:51: Now the need to purge is overwhelming! I grab my bucket and gag up a small amount of liquid. I don’t think it all came up, but for now that’s all there is.
00:52: I reach behind me and grab the bowl of cannabis. I take a sizable hit, and then settle down on my back, into the blankets, to await the teacher. However before I’m even flat I hear the distant buzzing frequency that I associate with the handful of times I’ve broken through on DMT. A thought occurs to me: this is going to be intense. Immediately I am being swarmed and surrounded by an infinity of tiny, pin-pointed lights that construct, merge, filter through, triangulate, erect, conglomerate, disseminate, solidify and melt and everything else seemingly simultaneously, all around as well as within me. The buzzing intensifies, and I now have no awareness of my physical form or of time (so at this point I must do away with the clock format).
It’s as though the “I” has been pulled out from under “what is.” I can see all the thoughts and expectations I had for this trip flittering before me like the flimsiest of film reels—it is no more than a mere ribbon, and it is quickly tossed aside and it occurs to me that THIS IS REAL.
My vision is 360 degrees. I am pure perception in all directions. The pinpoints are now more substantial forms, and I can identify entities coursing through the digitalized architecture all around me. They are speaking with their minds but what they tell me is not words, or even ideas, but straight up visual truths. These truths flash in front of me in the form of “scenes” that appear plastered to the undulating surfaces of this new reality. I see myself involved in countless attempts to complete something. And then others, people I know and love and people I’ve never known, and I understand how everyone is suffering and struggling to complete something, anything, to bring something to a resolution. But there is no resolution. Nothing ever ends. It just always is. We approach reality in a straight line and expect it to behave as such. And so we struggle, and suffer, and keep trying.
The carrier wave increases its frequency, and I am distantly aware that back on earth I am humming along with it, and thus causing the scene in front of me to collapse and reconfigure into an endless hall of mirrors, revealing to me the endless lives that I have lived and continue to live on all levels. I truly understand that there is no such thing as death. Death is a linguistic trap that we’ve created because we are caught up in dualistic perception. Life never ends. We/I never dies. Our bodies perish and are reborn, but I/you/us can never remember the experience of our birth, or our death. One conscious life blends seamlessly into the next, and from our perspective WE ARE ALWAYS RIGHT HERE.
The carrier wave goes higher. I am acutely aware of our suffering, and understand that all I need to do is love. So I love from the very center of being—I send love to myself, and to everyone else who every day must struggle with a sense of being “less than”, of not being enough, of falling short, of suffering under the illusion that they don’t already understand everything there is. The love that vibrates at my center begins to engulf my very consciousness. This is the source, and I’m supposed to merge with it. I flash upon my 3 year old daughter’s face, and the pure light love that explodes from my center erases me completely….
….and the carrier wave is gone, and the visions are gone, and I am outside of all perception. Everything simply is, and I am too. Floating, I am infinity. I am the entirety of existence, of matter, of energy, of time. I am every concept brought back to its fundamental beginning, which is its final end point, and nowhere does such a division exist. This is a quiet that is beyond comprehension or explanation.
….and the wave returns and I am falling down, and slowly become aware again of my body. The sounds of the rainforest echo from the speakers. Though the carrier wave is receding, enormous rushes of energy are coursing through me. It’s as though the peak has passed but I am writhing now within the chaos and violence of its wake. I pop up to my knees and start to panic: “Okay, enough, okay, enough, I’m so tired, I’m so tired, okay, enough, enough, okay…”
Instinctively my body begins to contort, stretch, and before I know it I am fully swimming through the energy using yoga techniques and deep breathing. I strip off my clothing and this helps me to regain a sense of connection to the earth and to myself. I can literally feel the gradual re-layering of linguistic concepts and reality. I am coming back, and relief is not a strong enough word to describe this feeling.
Exhausted and sweating I collapse my body to the carpet and simply breath. The carrier wave is growing more and more distant, and the digitalized landscapes behind my eyelids are growing thin and retreated with each exhalation. I believe at this point I pass out.
03:30: I come to and sit up. The clock says 11:30 pm. Over the course of the next hour I gather myself, do some minimal cleaning and then sink into a hot bubble bath with a large glass of ice water. Hardly slept at all until the following evening. The afterglow the next day was indescribable. I’m still glowing 3 days later. Nothing will ever be the same.
"We're all in this together, by ourselves." --Lily Tomlin