CAPTURED BY JOEL BELLEVUE

CHAKRAS

How was your Trip?

"So, my intention going into my mushroom ceremony was to keep it mainly internal, to not get caught up in the visual trip that so many people encounter with mushrooms. My intention was to be open and receptive to whatever the mushrooms wanted to teach me, while asking them to help me understand anything that was blocking me from connecting with my most authentic self." 

RESET ME.
It would be our first time taking shrooms together. I looked forward to the visuals I would see but had learned they would not be the most significant part of my trip. This time, the visuals didn't seem as important compared to the incomprehensible change in perception that would be entering into my brain. 11 pm. I consumed somewhere between 2 to 3 grams with some m&m's and turned on the movie "The Matrix" as I patiently waited for my trip to begin-- my boyfriend by my side. Midnight: calm and the feeling of euphoria took over. The concept of time began to slip away and visual stimulation started to set in. My trip was beginning to tell me what I needed to learn. We took our mushroom party to the rooftop.

Again, I was in awe at the beauty of what I normally took for granted. Oh wow! It’s so beautiful! Oh my God, it’s all so amazing.” I had never before felt so intimately connected with the city as I did while watching the color of the buildings and high rises and sky scrapers change. I could see traffic lights change on the entire opposite side of the city. There were millions of stars connected by faint white lines and I could see each and every one. Those lines then connected to the buildings which connected to me. I could see what appeared as a  "fingerprint" on every single thing. I walked around the wooded patio on the rooftop barefoot and that felt like 10,000 pedicures. My first chakra so stimulated. After what felt like forever of getting lost in the beauty all around me, I was snapped back into my consciousness. I suddenly remembered why I had eaten the mushrooms in the first place and felt guilty for spending so much time focusing on the external world. My boyfriend asked me to come sit next to him. I sat with him for a moment, feeling the guilt start to consume me, when I had this sense of ease come over me. All of a sudden, I knew that it was ok for me to stay “outside” for awhile, that work was being done here. I could feel the interconnectedness of it all and my place within the web of life. I had believed for a while that everything happens for a reason and that it is all connected in a way that is challenging for the human mind to even conceive. In that moment, all that I had intuitively believed to be true about the reasoning behind seemingly good and bad events became clear; I now knew that nothing is inherently good or bad. The universe has no judgement, everything just is, and it’s all perfect. 

We walked back downstairs towards the loft. The hallway looked different then before -- narrower but then wider, grayer then brighter... baby said he saw a bunny rabbit but I think he was joking. I laid back on the couch, enjoying the feelings of compassion I had towards myself, which was a rare emotion for me. I could feel my energy being thrown around, from one extreme to the other (mainly between my energy and my boyfriends) but something would not allow me to dwell in his energy. At the sight and feeling of his presence, my heart exploded with most love and gratitude I'd ever felt. We were calm. It was as though I was seeing beyond his physical, into his spirit. We kissed. I had intense knowing that our spirits had chosen each other on some realm beyond physical. He was part of my life so I could learn experientially about the healing power of unconditional love, I wasn't quite sure why I was part of his --- but that didn't matter. The trip told me his feelings toward me didn't matter. His love (whether present or not) didn't matter. Maybe he doesn't love me the way he loves other people -- but that didn't matter.  I talked to myself (in my head) about all the fears I had about him and life and the same response kept coming through-- "Don't worry, everything is going to be okay. You have no problems. Don't worry, everything is going to be okay" I learned from our calmness that life passes by at such a rate that it becomes necessary to stop and appreciate the world we live in and those we surround ourselves with, appreciate the things that separate us from nature and the things that unite us with nature and one another. We spent the next, I'm not sure how long (because time didn't exist) in a very intimate way. 

Time passed again (not sure how long) Baby was lying on his back on the couch and I was sitting on top of him. Myriads of light started appearing all over his face and chest and arms. A kaleidoscope, a rainbow in the shape of medium sized triangles. I chased them, trying to catch them with my hands (which now appeared to be dwarf hands). I laughed. Rainbow colors then washed the walls.  At one point I felt like I SAW a SOUND. Baby was quiet. He said he felt his trip more when his eyes were closed and it was quiet. So I quieted myself and closed my eyes too. I again try to attempt to think about the "problems" I had earlier and my concerns and fears of tomorrow but during this time I spent much thinking about life and all I could do was take in the beauty the trip was opening up to me.

"I was watching how my life was full of contradictions and what that was doing to my spirit. I wanted to be in a relationship, yet I felt alone. I encouraged people to live lives of freedom, passion, and love, yet I often experienced feelings of depression, insecurity, and loneliness. I advocated love and peace yet was all to quick to judge another. All these contradictions were fragmenting my energy, leaving me feeling disconnected and out of place. I was being shown that to achieve true inner peace, I needed to learn to live in alignment. I had heard of this idea of living in alignment before and understood it intellectually, but was now learning it experientially. I was being brought through different parts of my life that weren’t congruent with my truth. I was feeling what it was energetically to be out of alignment. I was being taught how to energetically feel what is true for me and what isn’t, and to learn to make my decisions from that place." My ego was not crushed or shattered; rather, it was reduced to tiny proportions and pushed aside as a triviality. My entire physical life, 29 years of experience, became the smallest blip in my brain. I still knew myself, but I knew then how much more there is to existence than what we are able to sense. 

"When the trip finally ended, I felt emotionally like I’d been hit by a bus." The concept of time was back in full effect. It was about 5 in the morning and I was so exhausted. Minute by minute I became more conscious of "normal" reality & I didn't like it. Did I have to go back to "normal" reality? I couldn't run and hide there (in my trip)... I must learn, grow, and expand there (in my trip). I got up to drink some water and the boyfriend and I went back to his house to sleep. Later that morning when I awoke, I was so confused. I had no idea how to make sense of what had just happened, let alone what to do with it. When I went to talk to my boyfriend about it he had a completely different trip or non trip for that matter. He was actually upset about an update on his iphone. This hurt a bit, for I wanted him to be who he truly was, who his spirit was, the man I laid with last night and felt his soul. I would say; however, overall it strengthened our bond because I learned so much about myself, about my nature, and my relationship with him... but at the very same time caused a rift by him not utilizing the messages I learned, which to me is equally important. I understand that what we experience during a trip comes from inside. Despite external stimuli and greater sensitivity to the energy, colors, sounds of things, people, we color the experience ourselves, with our own subconscious beliefs, symbols, images and projections. I learned that heaven and hell, up and down, inside and outside can be very close to each other. "Thou art That" Whatever you experience around you is what you are yourself.What you remember mainly afterwards are not the images, but the sensation of clarity; your thoughts were direct, clear, undisturbed. The ego disappeared, the veil of projecting could be lifted. 

Emerging Adulthood

My post-college years were marked with habitual resident changes and failed romances. Since I was small I developed beliefs and values (some good and some not so good) all as a result of my environment and pressures from society/peers to conform. College hadn't prepared me for this. Hell, life hadn't prepare me for this. My eye yet to have opened enough to recognize omens and signs. I had felt lonely and confused before, but not like this. College didn't teach me about the universal laws, the power of thought, how to balance a check book, School didn't teach me how that 9 digit number they give you at birth would follow me around for my entire life hindering or helping along the way. They didn't teach me about de-citizenship. They didn't teach me about different religions, different schools of thought. I thought the fact that I didn't have it figured out by the time I left college and my friends "did"... made me "a loser". All my college friends were settling into their careers, their new adult lives. Maryam was free. Free of any constraints from a "job" or a relationship or children. I was free. Free from college, free from parental control, free from that small town I grew up in, free from that small town I went to college in. I had arrived. Atlanta, Georgia... 2010

25. Confused as to why I am, sitting alone in an apartment I can't afford, on a leaky air mattress--starving. College didn't teach me about my credit score or stocks and bonds --neither did my parents. But how could they teach me what they themselves did not know? Heterogeneity. 25... I thought I was ready for this... to go gamble on myself, my dreams. I thought I knew it all. I thought I was supposed to have it all figured out. My self-identity ... I was suppose to be comfortable in that. I was suppose to know what I wanted out of life and love. I was supposed to know what I wanted to "do for a living. Back then it was a lot about proving myself. Back then it was a lot about "making it" and proving people wrong. I wasn't doing anything for me. I wasn't doing anything for my soul. I'm not sure I even knew what a soul was. Where was it? How do you search for it?  If happiness was the difference between what you expected out of life and what you actually got, I was fucked. What was this? I thought everything was supposed to fall into place. It always had for me.

I started thinking something was wrong with me, maybe I shouldn't have moved to Atlanta. Maybe I shouldn't be chasing "dreams". Maybe I'm not talented enough to be successful in the arts. Maybe I shouldn't have quit my 9-5. Maybe I should just go get another 9-5.  Maybe I should go back to school (at least my Grandmother would support me, again). I just didn't accept myself and it seemed like no one else was accepting this facade of me either. I screamed to the world that I did accept myself--that "I knew myself", by giving myself alter-egos and fake alias names. I was a kid, posing as an adult. I had spent so much of my life working toward what/who I "thought" I should be instead of just BEING. Setting life goals that turned out to mean nothing to me. At 25, I had experienced huge bouts of self-doubt and hatred, and had suffered. This couldn't be life. Feeling like an outsider. Feeling like a fraud inside your own body. And at my worst, feeling as though I did not truly exist. Without a group to neatly " fit" into, I lost all sense of identity.

29. 6 weeks until "30". What is age, really? Nothing. Who am I? More important. For the first time in my life, I am now aware enough to take charge of my own revolution, consciously choosing to evolve to a higher state of being. I feel fearless. I feel strong. I feel vocal. I feel IN charge of my life. I feel grateful. I feel favored. I feel blessed. A spiritual being having a human experience. "Weary of the ways of unconsciousness, the personal and collective egoic insanity that's evident in humankind's myriad forms of suffering. I feel hopeful and I feel LOVE.

Thinking About my 30th

PLEASE, HOLD.

My life feels on hold. I want to hang up but the person I am waiting to speak to is very important to me.  I might have invested much more than I can afford to lose and I need to tell him I want my investment back. But, if it all works out (by some fated miracle)... I just might be set for life. I want to trust. I want to trust myself and the decisions I make. Trust isn't always about how much you trust another person to do right or wrong. Sometimes trust is about how much you trust yourself to be strong enough to deal with another persons "imperfections". It is about having enough FAITH in yourself to be able to put yourself on the line with someone, without any guarantee of what will happen next.  What is it about me that I believe about myself that I am willing to settle? Are my standards to low? Do I need to learn to trust again? There is no perfect person without flaws. A relationship is an imperfect union between two willing spirits who say, ''I'd rather be in a relationship and share my life, share my joys, share my fun, share my activities, share my life than do it alone. Still on hold.