Psychedelic Journeying and Mysticism

A trip beyond the veil.

Photo by Michael Krahn on Unsplash

Having looked into psychedelics for microdosing and therapeutic value I’m ready to take larger doses to begin to understand the deeper realms of consciousness.

As a psychotherapist I am deeply interested in psychedelic assisted therapy and want to understand more how these plant medicines can facilitate healing. I have undergone a few journeys and always taken into consideration the ‘set’ and ‘setting’. I always journey in nature and have experienced the oneness that you can feel in such a setting. It’s a beautiful feeling when in the middle of vibrant alive woods I feel a merging of self and environment.

So, with setting in mind, myself and my partner took psilocybin and headed out into the wilds of the Lake District in the UK. The path that we took wasn’t far from the shepherd’s hut where we had set up for two days. We wanted to be alone, away from people, and be able to walk or sit. We took the psilocybin a little later than planned and as we set out on our walk it was early evening. The sky was heavy with dark rain clouds and it was almost dusk.

We walked through the tiny hamlet past an old church, graveyard and beautiful historic buildings. Turning up the footpath onto open land we passed under a train tunnel and continued following the path. My partner stopped to look at a marshy pond area where the long grasses were seemingly flowing like a river bed. I sat on a rock and directly in front of me was a telegraph pole that seemed out of place in this natural wild landscape. We continued past a small wood copse with a narrow stream running through it and said how beautiful it all looked. The river parted around rocks and ran by daffodils. The sound of birds were all around. I was tempted to stay in the copse but carried on. The atmosphere at this point was fine, a little windy and gloomy perhaps with looming dark clouds ahead but nothing dramatic. We were beginning to feel the effects of the psilocybin by this point.

I began to feel a little headachy and unwell. We sat down for a few minutes and I experienced a deep sense of unease. The wind at my back felt as though it was pushing me forward and prodding at me wanting me to get up and shift.