I prayed, "I want to be loved," and now God is liquifying me

Personal notes from a caterpillar

Me next to Ganesh, the placer and remover of obstacles…looking at God with a smile while God is kicking my ass

It is uncomfortable to write this. Lots of things are uncomfortable right now.

I didn’t know I was liquifying. I took some mushrooms and thought I was wise. I thought I had the key to life that I needed, and got the message God wanted me to get. Sure, I was marching around the retreat center here with some fiery energy in my system.

Sure, painting a mandala in Nala’s mandala painting class was really hard, which surprised me.

But I was good (I thought). I could feel my power coming in.

I had hired my coach, Clem, to sit with me during my mushroom journey. I asked her for an hour of integration work at some point in the future. I knew that was something people did. I didn’t think I would actually need it. But, since I had studied psychedelics and integration coaching, I figured I would ask her to include it.

My plan was to go back to El Salvador and have her do a private breath work session with me over zoom, which is kind of like another mushroom journey without psilocybin. I figured the breath work would allow me to get any further God-questions answered.

Who was I to need integration?

And after my mushroom journey? Well, I could see my path. I was a love warrior. I was going to teach about love. I was going to violently announce to the world that violence was not the answer.

I had a notebook scrawled with things like this…written from a mushroom-induced state, that I was able to write, but not very legibly, as the mushrooms and state were taking their time with me. They were taking lots of time with me. Here is an example of what was coming to me as my lesson:

Plane and simple Terra. Remember this: It’s either love or it isn’t. You know this. You are ready. Call Them On Their Shit! It is love or it isn’t. There is no battle. No war…. That is all Demon Shit. It is love or it isn’t. Call Them on it. Then let them choose until they are ready. Because they get to choose. It is love or it is Demon Shit. It is simple as this. Step up as the beacon of light you are—this is The Sword of Truth….

I have pages written like this. Those mushrooms would have made great preachers because they had a lot of that fiery energy and it lasted. It lasted for days and days.

I marched around with this phrase in my head: It is love or it isn’t. If it isn’t love, it is delusion and that, Terra, is demon shit.

I was, after my little journey, unafraid of demons or anything else. Nothing could hurt me now because God had shown me, over the course of five hours, that I knew what love is. Since I now knew (so I thought) what love was, I was free. My soul was made of it and nothing, no life experience, no government, no death, could touch who I was.

I felt like a warrior for the Archangel Michael and I strutted around this retreat center holding my invisible wand and sword erect. It was not about using it against anything. Love doesn’t do that. It was simply about owning the truth of those words and then calling out what I saw. It is either love or it isn’t. God had shown me that I had pretty good discernment when it came to demon shit. I could sniff out when something didn’t feel right.

The problem was, I have been terribly uncomfortable. I have felt this power coursing through me and using the Hector-breath. I have tried to hold what I feel. I struggled to paint my beautiful mandala that wanted to be painted in soft shades of pink and white. I felt like light and power were coursing through my body. Nala, my art teacher, told me it could be tiring when you first learn to paint mandalas because it requires a lot of focus.

I knew it wasn’t that.

I had given up coffee when I arrived.

Instead I switched to cacao. A good strong dose of cacao. Cacao is said to open the heart if you drink enough with intention. So every morning since I arrived, and sometimes twice a day when there was a cacao ceremony here, I drank a good strong dose of heart-opening chocolate medicine. I was drinking cacao for breakfast, literally.

A few more things happened.

One was before I took the mushrooms.

There was devotional singing here. Of course, I have never truly trained my voice other than one junior college class. I don’t think it is terrible and still…I have no idea what I am doing. But I love singing to God and I love doing it in groups where your voice just doesn’t matter. It is all about the love in it.

Well, I was pouring out my heart to God in that venue. I had poured my heart out like this twenty five years ago and it was the one and only time I felt kundalini energy rise up my spine and send me to an altered state that scared the shit out of me and sent me right back out of it.

That time, all those years ago, for a few moments, I could feel my connection to everything and my capacity to access it, like a neuron that is now hooked up to a brain. It was just like that. I understood how spiritual teachers who had never heard or learned someone’s native language could speak it (and I have fantasized about this as I have struggled, pitifully I tell myself, to learn Spanish).

So, anyway, there I was allowing myself to sing from my cacao infused dripping heart, to God. I have been told I am a Bhakti yogi and devotion is my natural channel and path to the divine. Well, I was full of it.

The person next to me got up and moved away.

I figured he just couldn’t take it.

Not my problem.

Then I was in a group class on Conscious Manifestation with my newly hired coach, Alex. This was after the mushrooms. I spoke of all the inspiration and power I was feeling and how hard it was to hold it. (But I was holding the energy in my body…I hadn’t started preaching those words to anyone. Well, not really. I may have written a few fiery articles to you here, but they stayed in my “drafts” folder. I was hanging onto myself and all I was feeling like fingernails embedded into a cliff and it was not easy, but I was doing it).

My friend Jen, sitting next to me, moved away on the break after it was my turn to share and shook her body a bit. It was because of me. Except I wasn’t going to accept that. People had moved away from me in the past and I now realized, it was often about them, more than me. At least, that is what I told myself in that moment as my blond-haired friend full of soft feminine energy jiggled and shook and danced the energy off and out of her body on the carpet in front of me.

Finally, all this brought me back to Clem…you know, my mushroom guide. We were going to talk about meeting again before I left and the possibility of her guiding me with another dose of plant medicine.

Now, as I have said in the past, this was only my third time of taking a medicinal dose of psychedelic mushrooms and it is something I have only done once a year. But I am a bit of a junkie when it comes to personal transformation and I often give God a thumbs up when it comes to experiences.

So, I sat across from Clem in The Bus, which is an adorable tiny home with shiny wood floors, that used to be an actual bus. This is where Clem now lives. And I looked at her from the same spot I had spent five hours sitting before, on my previous mushroom trip. I told her I thought I could still feel my “butt” dent in the couch cushion and I liked that. I liked leaving a butt dent on the cushion there because I loved Clem and her partner, Drew. They were my friends.

Then I told her how I had been feeling. How hard it was to paint my mandala. How much energy I felt coming in and how I felt ready to really put my work out into the world. I told her I was just interviewed for my first podcast with Jacqueline, another writer here, and how exciting it had been. Jacqueline had sent me a video she had made of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. She was a musician. It felt so resonant, so beautiful…like something I would have paid her to make for me if had known to ask…

I told Clem I was a warrior of the light holding my sword of Truth….I didn’t use those words, but Clem had seen me when I finished those mushrooms and she understood where I was coming from.

Now, Clem is a petite Frenchwoman. I often forget how petite she is. Someone pointed it out to me as he pointed at her across the dance floor. A friend was giving her a hug and her feet were over a foot off the ground. The man laughed as he said to me, “they are always picking up Clem.”

Well, petite Clem with her dark brown chocolate eyes gazed at me from a few feet away, on her own section of the L-shaped couch and said, “Terra, I think you have been drinking too much Cacao.”

Now, this was quite unexpected.

Too much cacao? The love medicine? The love potion that worked so well with mushrooms? Too much cacao? Me, Clem?

She looked at me like you would look at anyone who has taken too much medicine or too many drugs. She looked at me and called me out. I had a problem and the problem was cacao.

Now, happily for me, this is not an addiction. It is simply a mistake and a learning opportunity. I was reminded that cacao is known as “medicine” and I had been drinking it like Kool Aid.

Clem and I agreed I would take a break from Cacao and her cacao-Kali energy. Clem also let me know that she wasn’t so sure more mushrooms and opening up my crown chakra to God right now any more was a good idea. We would wait and see she said. Give it a few days after I quit the cacao.

So that is where I am at. Ok, not totally. There is more. It is so hard to say more. I don’t know why exactly except vulnerability can be tough sometimes. It can be a soft opening for judgement to come in and sometimes, when I am most vulnerable, judgement doesn’t feel like the easiest medicine to also be with.

But honestly, I don’t feel there is a lot of judgement in you who read this and if there is, you can unsubscribe and that’s ok. I respect that… I am going to take a breath…walk around a minute…sit on my porch and look at the lushness of nature and a bee on a plant. Ok. Ready.

Here’s the rest of it for now.

After Clem, I went to the river. Well, actually, first I went clothes shopping. I wanted to buy a white dress and I figured I needed a break from all this transformation.

So I walked to a store I usually avoid because I think it is too expensive. But my new friend, Jen, (the one who got off the couch after I shared and shook a bit), had told me she got her beautiful, flowy white dress there and it wasn’t as expensive as I thought.

Clothes shopping, or dressing up, really can feed my soul and my six year old self. My chocolate addiction had been called out. I moved on to the more covert one. Shopping. (This is what addicts do isn’t it…? I found another way to get my fix. I am not wanting to be hard on myself here either. I mean, honestly, I feel like there was kindness for myself in that choice and I would do it again. It wasn’t just about buying stuff. It was about having fun.

I had an excellent time trying on clothes there and they asked me if they could take a photo and a video of me in the layers of white billowing fabric I had on and add it to their Instagram page.

This felt like a compliment and good for me embracing beauty despite my age. It felt like a win and I had fun holding out the white wings of the little feathery blouse cover-up and fluttering around their store in a long, white, equally-flowy gauze gown with bad-ass beaded gold and white earrings that nearly touched my shoulders.

I was careful not to buy it all. I actually went back three times to get what I really wanted and leave the rest. That is another process and story that seems unnecessary to tell. But I have just what I need and wanted with no financial or over-shopping regrets.

Then I went to the river. The only person there was Jen. I had texted her earlier to shop with me and not heard back. I hurried to catch up to her and tell her about my adventure. I figured a river dip would be good for me too.

But I could tell Jen wanted to be alone. She did not say hello. She was the only one there and she swam away from me.

I could respect that.

The day had been a lot, so I sunned myself on my favorite rock, even though that meant to get to it, I had to swim for a tiny bit behind Jen.

She swam far away again and I closed my eyes. I felt the sun on my skin. I felt the warmth of the rock and how it fit my body so well. My feet touched the water. Leaves drifted, relaxed, casually down…once in a while through the air, when they felt like it.

Things were getting better.

By 7pm it was time for dinner and I strolled over to be fed. There was a photographer named Brad I had decided to hire for my up and coming offerings and I wanted to talk to him. Well, actually, I had decided not to hire him and to go with another woman whose work I loved. But I would have to travel to Guatemala, possibly change my flight plans, lug my four bags of luggage around a country I had never been to before and, and….all that just started to sound so hard.

Plus, I love it here at Awake. Photographs here feel more authentic to me. Brad was here and could take the pictures of me that feel real and resonate with my experience.

My new coach, Alex, is the one who suggested the photos to me (he also mentioned things need to feel fun and I was so full of cacao energy at the time that, I had to let that go. Fun was not the vibe I was in. It was all about intensity). Alex told me I should be putting pictures of me on these posts and not random photos from Unsplash. I told him no one else on Substack was doing that and it sounded like Facebook and egotistical. Alex told me I am an elder and need to own it and inspire people. I needed authentic pictures of me to go with my message.

So, I decided to listen. Then I decided not to hire Jessica (the photographer in Guatemala) now. Maybe I would meet her or work with her in the future sometime. But for now, I would hire Brad, who agreed to take pictures in a similar style and had even encouraged me to work with Jessica if it felt like she would suit my needs better. He wasn’t pushy. He was kind. I really liked him.

Also, he was here for an Authentic Relating workshop. I wasn’t in it, because I have taken so many, many classes on communication skills, I just didn’t feel I needed another one…and I also didn’t feel my cup could hold anymore of anything.

But, that class did allow me to meet Brad in person as he was here to chat before it started. We talked one early morning about the photographs and he mentioned he had some crystal bowls he used sometimes with people. It seems Brad is interested in Buddhism and on Sundays, offers some kind of surf church on the beach. I was disappointed I wouldn’t see him here at ecstatic dance. Brad felt really lovely.

My mandala was finished by then and I had just taken her, the night before, (because yes, it does feel like a “her” somehow), out into the middle of a grassy field under the almost-full moon to infuse her with moonlight and moon-blessings, whatever they might be.

When Brad mentioned crystal bowls, I asked if he would tone them over my new painting. I was dosing it up too…just not with cacao.

He agreed and suggested we meet to do that the next night when his class was over. He would bring the bowls with him.

So, at the end of the podcast, Clem-cacao-shopping-swimming-in-the-river-day, I headed to dinner to tell Brad that I wanted to for-sure, hire him to take photos of me on Monday, here, before I left. At 10:30 am when he was free.

The crystal bowls had flown straight out of my head.

But not out of Brad’s.

I mentioned the photo thing and he agreed. We confirmed the time. Then he asked if I was ready for him to get the bowls?

The line for dinner had formed and I didn’t care. The ask I had made before was right back in my head. My mandala was waiting inside the Cora for the final pieces of wood to be installed in the back of the frame. I was ashamed I hadn’t remembered about the crystal bowls, but I didn’t tell Brad. Besides, I figured it wouldn’t take too long to chime a couple bowls over my pink creation and then I would be back inside.

Nothing ever goes the way I think.

Brad had a large bag. We needed to go somewhere solid for this he told me. Not on the grass. Grass would muffle the sound.

So we sat near the beautiful structure that holds the bands and dances and classes here. We sat outside on cream colored, natural stone tile with a huge canopy overhead, like the sail of a ship. It was dark now.

Brad gave me a cushion to sit on. Another was for him. He also took out three bowls from his bag.

It was like the Harry Potter movie where Hermione pulls things, huge things, out of her tiny bag.

Then Brad had me set my mandala between us. He told me the bowls he had brought were for the sacral, heart and third eye chakra. He had mentioned this before when he talked to me about what my mandala might need. (I know, he had taken my request very seriously and I was hating my lack of memory even more in that moment. But the truth is, I think my subconscious knew what was coming and I was afraid.)

He asked me to come up with a prayer or an intention for what I wanted to infuse into the mandala that had birthed itself through me somehow.

My brain went blank. So I just felt for something... I did my best to ask. And Brad, when I confirmed I was finished, began…

He was not just playing a bowl over my mandala for a quick hit of crystal vibration. Brad was offering her and me a session. He was doing his God work with us. That first vibration hit me hard, like a ton of bricks. It was so powerful.

The tones changed, the music moved through me, it danced through my system and I found myself starting to cry. Grief was arising. Deep grief.

Brad slowly finished and suggested we take three easy breaths together. He told me to notice how easy it was to take three, gentle breaths.

And the traumatic experience of my past, the one I was finished with, the one I had integrated so well, the one I could only see from the distance now….the one I thought of in my head last week when I wrote about some good tools for integrating trauma…well a little something came back. A little place in me that had learned that the world was not safe. That I couldn’t trust anymore. That the breath, my breath, was not guaranteed.

And that article? It was fresh. I said to myself, Terra, can you feel that right now, right now in this moment, you survived? You, Terra, survived. You are not in a pool drowning. You are here, under the stars, at night, with Brad and his crystal bowls and he is asking you to take three easy breaths…and Terra, you can.

My mandala is next to me on my desk right now. I am slightly afraid to look at it. I know it is infused with a lot of gifts. I know it is magic and beautiful and I painted it, or it painted itself through me and I listened.

What will I do next?

I don’t know.

Today I have a call with my friend, Sandra, in England. My once a week meeting to explore life and energy together and unpack things. My one and only practice partner. It is perfect. One call with Sandra takes a week to integrate. This week will not include caffeine or coffee or green tea or cacao. Or shopping. I am complete with all of that.

Clem and I will meet on Monday afternoon, after Brad comes to spend an hour with me and take pictures of me here. I have tears in my eyes around this. It is touching and that makes it edgy and hard. But I will lean into the edge and have fun with Brad. I know he is a gift.

Then Clem will meet with me.

I need help with integration.

I know that now.

I see more what it is.

I will see what she says. She told me we would check. There was one mushroom that helps with ancestral healing. I have had resistance and questions around whether those ancestors are as supportive as people say they are. I imagine at times, I have felt the same way regarding some members of my family. I do need, I would love, help with all of that.

But not until the time is right.

I can wait a year, or not.

Clem listens to me and then she offers her powerful wisdom. I will take it in. I will wait and see.

Days are full here.

It is very much a womb-energy kind of place.

The digital nomads are busy on their computers in the Cora, the main open air room for dining and lounging. Some of them are starting companies in there.

It seems a good place for that.

Me, I am not sure what is brewing, just that I am in it, embracing it as best I can…and sometimes crying, or screaming, as I liquify.

And now it’s time for bed…