Synchronicity

I want to share this story because it reveals a pattern I’ve noticed about how the mushrooms transmit their messages.  Sometimes, a new psychological or spiritual insight will come at the height of a journey.  Sometimes, the heart of the experience will be found in an emotional release, or in a body sensation.  Sometimes there will be a profound vision.  And sometimes, it is what happens in the “real world,” before or after the journey itself, that will have the greatest impact.  This pattern deserves a bit of attention, not only because is it ontologically interesting, but also because folks contemplating a journey may find it useful.

It is my experience that a psychedelic journey begins at the time I commit to embarking upon it, and the journey does not fully close for some days to weeks afterward.  During this period, synchronicities become amplified; the world and I enter a more sensitive dance where time and space and the usual rules of causality seem to bend by just a hair (or are shattered altogether, though mushrooms tend toward bending rather than shattering).  A job that I had given up searching for months ago suddenly lands in my lap.  A precognitive dream arrives in the night.  The example I’m going to share here is a subtle one.  I’m not trying to convince any skeptics out there.  But I found it impactful, and humorous, and perhaps you will, too.

This is the story of my very first mushroom journey.  I am alone in my apartment in Rochester, Minnesota.  Which is not the ideal setting, but these were not ideal times. 

In March of 2020, I had planned a trip to Amsterdam to experience mushrooms in a supported, legal setting.  Alas, the week before I was to board the flight, all flights everywhere were cancelled.  Almost overnight my medical work changed dramatically, and I found myself in the “COVID Command Center” answering a phone line to help folks navigate the ever-changing isolation, testing, and experimental treatment guidelines.  Much of this work I could do from home, and I knew that no inspectors or maintenance workers were going to enter my apartment uninvited in times of plague.  To add to the chaos, I was in the midst of a personal crisis and beginning divorce proceedings. 

The mushrooms were calling, loudly.  For the first time in my life, mushrooms gave me a reason to break the rules.  I decided to grow them in my apartment.  I ordered the spores, ordered the grow kit, assembled the supplies, and started the journey of tending these dear beings in their home right beside my bed.  I monitored their temperature and humidity assiduously, fanned them between COVID calls, spoke to them and cared for them with tenderness in their little jars.  And they grew, just beautifully! 

Now, in late May 2020, it was finally time to meet them.  I would start with a low dose, 1.5 grams of Golden Teacher.  I set my heartfelt intentions and took them in.  The next couple hours were a bit disconcerting, fragmented, some colorful visuals, some fear of losing control.  I wasn’t exactly having insights.  Eventually, I felt that I had landed, that the journey was over, and got up to ground myself by doing a few simple tasks around the apartment. 

First, I went to water my pothos plant, named Ono (short for Onodrim, the Elvish name for the Ents in Lord of the Rings.  Yes, I am a nerd. No, I do not actually speak Elvish).  Ono had joined me after the separation from my spouse and was my only companion, before the mushrooms, in the apartment.  I had not cared for many plants before, and can’t say I have a green thumb.  But I really cared about Ono, so I watered her frequently and copiously.  They told me at the greenhouse that as long as the pot was draining, too much water wouldn’t be a problem.  So I put Ono in the tub weekly and basically flooded her pot.  I looked at her daily.

When I went to give her yet another drink at the end of the journey, I peered into the pot and saw something unexpected.  I blinked and looked again to make sure – and there it was, a spritely little brown mushroom staring back at me. 

The teaching, in that moment, was obvious.  I was overwatering Ono, as I was overwatering so much in my life at that time.  I had a caretaking problem.  Though my therapist had broached this topic with me, it didn’t really sink in until now.  I had drowned my relationship in overbearing attempts to save it.  The overwatering tendency extended to patients, too, to calling yet another family after hours to make sure the fever had come down.  The message was uncomfortable but unavoidable; it was, quite literally, staring me in the face.  To this day, I think about that little brown mushroom when I ask whether I am “overwatering” some issue in my life. 

Ono continues to live with me and has grown prolifically.  Never before or since the day of my first journey have I seen a mushroom poking out of her soil.