Two useful maps to navigate the often bewildering psychedelic landscape are the Mystic Map and the Mycelium Map.
Christian Mysticism typically defines five stages: Awakening, Purgation, Illumination, Dark Night of the Soul and Union.
The networked nature of mycelium under the ground makes for a very different kind of map. It is not linear and has no clear goal or aim other than connectivity itself. This is the fundamental and priceless gift of psychedelics.
Aim is essential in any meaningful spiritual endeavor. In psychedelic circles we stress the importance of setting an intention before journeying. But what is the larger aim?
A mystical experience with or without the help of psychedelics is a kind of awakening. It is a glimpse of another way of being. It provides bodhichitta, the thought of enlightenment.
Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it. Now you want to awaken. But it’s not easy. A lifetime of wrong living has filled the soul with rubbish that needs to be cleared out.
You need to clean your didgeridoo and keep it clean. You need purgatio, a long and arduous process of discipline and penance. Not everyone can be bothered.
For beginners, psychedelic experience is an exciting process of awakening. For more seasoned travellers, it is about deep inner healing and purgation. For advanced practitioners, it is pure illumination: being filled with the Holy Spirit in light and love.
The Mystic Map a useful map to identify where you are and define your aim. (If you haven’t been humbled and humiliated like Job in dust and ashes, you have yet to enter the Dark Night).
But the Mycelium Map is also important. We need connection. Connection with God, yes, but also with the elements, the land, ancestors, traditions, culture, family, people, body, soul, emotions, dissociated inner actors, etc. etc.
Ordinary mundane reality is characterised by spiritual sleep and disconnection. We need to awaken and connect. That’s the aim anyway.
The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once but is the eternity that awaits you.
R.S. Thomas
bread of life 