Welcome to fall, everyone!

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere you are experiencing one of the most powerful natural events on the earth. The world around us is dying and the power of this experience has thinned the veil between life and death; therefore, during this time we are more intuned with the dead.

Mother Nature is preparing for her winter slumber and we most not forget that we are also a part of mother nature. Deep down inside each one of us, we can sense this powerful transformation.

This is a time where, consciously or unconsciously, we can experience death while alive. Death is the ultimate human experience, one so profound that if we survive death our life is forever changed. This idea has me reminiscing about my own experience with death.

I have experienced death twice in my lifetime. I mean to say that I have died twice, my ego died.

But how can one experience death twice and still be alive to tell about it?

The experience of death while alive is the death of your ego. This death can only occur when you yourself are 1000% percent convinced that you are physically going to die. You have accepted your own death and therefore every shred of fear in the living world has vanished from your consciousness. You become one with everything around you-you are in essence enlightened.

Once you go through the process of dying and then returning to the world of the living, you become the most powerful force on earth, you become pure love. Unfortunately, like all human experiences, this moment of extreme bliss is only a fleeting one and this can have devastating effects on one’s psyche.

The First Time That I Died

At sixteen years old I was a walking scum bag. Stealing, dealing, doing, running from the police, being caught by the police, fighting everyone, I was filled with hate and discontent.

One day my drug dealer offered me a new product to sell, it was something I had never thought about doing and had no interest in doing prior to that, but once he showed me what was in the brown paper bag I immediately said yes. It was magic mushrooms.

That first night I tried them myself, and I was given a magical gift of clarity that I had long forgotten from my childhood. A slice of pureness of life that rekindles the spark of creation that you are born with. I was overjoyed. No longer was I a drug dealer trying to make money, I felt personally that I was selling enlightenment (even though I had no idea what that was) and not drugs.

My friends were my first client's and together we explored a whole new world of secrets untold for countless generations, secrets of the unseen world around us. We didn't know it then, but we were walking on a path to become more connected to living in the moment, no longer detached from life.

One warm day that summer I was 16, my friends and I gathered together to do a heroic dose and have a huge trip. I'm not going to do an entire trip report here, but I was about to experience my first (and last) bad trip.

The animalistic instinct of fear began to kick in shortly after consuming far too many mushrooms and I begged my girlfriend to drive me home to where I thought it was safe. She agreed only that she would be dropping me off because she didn’t want to see my parents while she was tripping on mushrooms. I can’t believe she was operating a vehicle, but I will say she only had a few and was handling it a lot better than I was.

When I got home, I went inside and my mother was sitting down to coffe with a group of her friends. I was petrified. I had to pass through the kitchen, by her friends, in order to reach my room.

I ran up to my room as fast as I could without making any eye contact and curled up into a tiny ball on my bed, more scared than I have ever been in my entire life. My bedroom was filled with all of my worst nightmares and at the peak of terror, I realized that I was soon to be dead. In my mind the only possible outcome of this event was my death. I was quite literally scared to death.

Then the moment came that I succumbed to my premature fate and that is exactly when I was hit with a beam of clarity. My drug dealer told me that if I was ever having a bad trip to never be alone (too late) and to right away go and make yourself puke.

I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom. The toilet was alive and growing out of the floor with teeth on the inside of the toilet seat and the waters were swirling and mixing together with greyscale colors. Facing my fear I stuck my fingers down my throat and began to vomit.

I immediately began to feel a sense of calm rushing over me. I started to laugh historically at the thought of myself dying and I felt as if I had been reborn. I crossed over to the underworld and emerged more alive than ever. I felt something new, I felt joy. I was happy to be alive.

By the time this all had ended my mother’s guests had left and she was down stairs alone. I ran to her with tears of joy running down my face and told her that I love her and I’m sorry for who I was and not to worry that it is all over now.

She was confused but didn’t ask any questions and only embraced me.

From that day on, I was a new young man. I got cleaned up and stayed out of trouble, my grades improved, my bedroom stayed clean, and two days after my 17th birthday I joined the Army. Little did I know l, this is where I would die a second time. Only this time, without the aid of psychedelic mushrooms.

To be continued...

All photos and writings are mine.

-@balticbadger