You Build a Fine Shrine in Me

A Collective Trip Report of The Era of P.E. Strains & Shadow Work Journeys

At this point to properly convey my trip reports & insights I must give a little background into past ones. I’ve tripped countless times, and didn’t always document completely, but I wanted to share some insights and experiences from these, which set the stage and are an integral part of the journey to my subsequent trips.

There was a period of time in 2023 when I tripped on shrooms nearly every weekend. During this time I was ingesting solely P.E. & A.P.E. Strains so while these reports will not be as comprehensive I can say that over these months I took those strains and my doses ranged between 2.5 - 4 grams. At that time I chose doses intuitively, but began to actually measure them.

This was a time in my life where I was dealing with great emotional strife as well as a cancer diagnosis and these trips were centered around confronting shadow work head-on. I explored the darkness lurking beneath all of my “positive” attributes… my enabling behaviors, my self-righteousness, my toxic positivity, the selfishness of my “selflessness,” … the way I focused on the needs of others to deny yet fill my own.

These trips were set to lots of dark synth with ethereal female vocals lying on a sofa in my cave-like “office” where the bass rattled the windows and I’d get lost, engulfed in the spaces between the notes. My closed-eye visuals were a Birds Eye View of myself wandering around mazes which I conceived of as being located inside my mind which seemingly had no end. The mazes were dark and beneath the music I could hear faint whispers echoing down hallways, door creaks, and rolling thunder.

Suffice it to say, the imagery and thoughts were creepy, yes, but not scary. I explored each dark crevice with wonder. Cried tears of pain and joy at the tragedy and ecstasy that is life. I had the thought that we are all doing whatever we can, the best we can, to survive the tragedy and feel the ecstasy.

You build a fine shrine in me.

I came to understand that life is comprised of sensations. That each plane of consciousness contains a different level of them. I don’t mean to describe this as a hierarchy, exactly. A full life is one where we experience each level without judgment… But there is a gradient of complexity. On the more basic levels, where we mostly stay day-to day, exist more primal and elementary human sensation. Here lie pain & what we know of pleasure (orgasms as we have experienced them thus far) … joy and sadness.

All emotions as well as what we conceive of in the physical are sensations, and those on this plane vibrate at a lower & slower frequency. In the higher planes of existence the best way I can describe the sensation is to call it love. But it’s the purest form of it. All encompassing. Without borders. There is no suitable word to describe it. I sent a voice note to my friend one night while visiting this one “remember when we had bodies and we cared about things like orgasms?” At this point in the journey I was a bit judgmental… rating this sensation in the moment as somehow more valuable, but as I began to descend again I could see from a vantage point in between that visiting all planes is desirable and necessary for a fully enriched life.

This was also when I began to create lots of digital art either during or directly post trips. My creations will litter my reports, as often it is difficult to retrieve words from one’s journeys. We often watch nature documentaries on mute and listen to music and this one above is depicting a moment of fascination I had watching a school of sharks tear at the flesh of a whale and my longing to find a way to artificially recreate that complex and unusual texture.

Most of these trips reinforced these same themes and insights, deepening with each one, about life as sensation and planes of existence as well as more personal lessons about myself and those I love and the way we interact together. In my next post I will describe taking a 5 gram dose of an unknown, but very powerful, strain and how that drastically changed the setting and focus of my trips going forward. I call that tipping point Pac-Man Picasso Land and it will feature a throwback vision to my very first mushroom trip.