DOSE:

1 hit

vaporized

Toad Venom

(dried)

BODY WEIGHT:

230 lb

Surrender: A 5-MeO-DMT Trip Report

5-MeO-DMT Incilius alvarius

Names have been changed for the sake of privacy

Saturday, [six days ago] my son and I smoked 5-MeO-DMT in the form of toad venom

I am a 60 year old man living in Los Angeles, in good health without significant disease. I am taking only thyroid hormone replacement and am not using any other herbs or supplements.

I have a history of what would probably be called recreational psychedelic use stretching back to 17 years of age when I began experimenting with various substances including psilocybin, LSD, and mescaline. Usually these were taken in a party setting in conjunction with alcohol and later, often along with cocaine and methamphetamine, and although managing to shine through with some profound existential glow, they were not employed with the intent of formal spiritual quest other than that of absolute freedom. I am an alcoholic and have been sober since 1992. This includes all other drug and psychedelic compounds.

Until recently.

My son, Mason, with whom I share a deep connection, had also been sitting with various psychedelics since he was 16. While I was busy with work and raising his younger brothers and sisters, he was finding his way along the esoteric pathways of stoicism, hermeticism and the myriad ancient and resurgent wisdom traditions loosely aligned with nonduality.

By this point I had been a rational material atheist for the majority of my life having grown disaffected and suspicious of the edicts, expectations, and explanations offered during my Catholic upbringing.

This would change in a ten minute span.

3 years ago, Mason informed me he was thinking about extracting and working with N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT). He asked me what I thought of it and, of course, I supported him. He perfected the extraction on his own, engaged with the substance, and would frequently report back the wild details of his travels. I asked him if he thought that I might benefit and he felt that I would.

Despite some initial late life trepidation, my experience was transformative. In ten minutes I was shown there is a transcendent other; layers of etheric energy beings both within and without us, up through to the source of all creation, which is not separate from us. I was shown how life was a gift we were giving ourselves. That it is a game written in light. That there is nothing to worry about. Life and death are just part of the dream. And because everything unfolds in the service of love.

We shared plant medicine both together and separately until, 3 months ago, the opportunity came to sit with a team offering 5meo DMT of the Incilius alvarius variety. Our experience together was deeply profound and reaffirmed the root truth of all mystical teachings. That we are all manifestation of the One loving intelligence. And that despite our seeming struggles, we are always safe. Always peaceful. Eternal.

Details of this encounter can be found in my son’s eloquent and moving trip report entitled “The Toad, 5-MeO-DMT Trip Report”.

After a 3 month period of integration we were called to sit with the medicine once again. I set an intention for the service. Surrender. My first encounter had been quite gentle, having no memory of the rapid come up until I was revealed as pure loving presence. This time I hoped to be able to face the unnamable such that I might lose myself more consciously into it.

----

In a short period of time we found ourselves back in the arms of our loving team. Jeremy, which also happens to be my name, Alicia, and Luna. The ceremony was, again, to be held at Luna’s warm and inviting home which sits in natural organic resonance on the cliffs over the ocean.

“What do you think about doing a meditation dose to begin with”, Jeremy asked both Luna, Mason and I together?. I am always nervous prior to both plant and toad medicine ceremonies and this seemed like a good way to relax into the experience. “Just a little handshake to focus on the breathing and center the heart”, Jeremy said. “You’ll be aware throughout”. “Some people don’t feel the need to go further in afterwards so we will check in with you after a few minutes“.

The sun had just set. The two great west facing windows stare like eyes, out over the steely ocean. Orange, red and yellow stained glass shards of light dancing on the surface, out into the infinite.

My son and I were cleansed with sage and Florida water. Seated cross-legged in meditation position side by side on soft floor mats adorned with the visage of Ganesha. As I had been served first previously, Mason would begin tonight. He was offered and received the small dose via the eclipse vaporizer in one inhalation without disturbance in his peace or posture

I was offered the medicine and received it in kind. Immediately my inner and outer world became a cathedral of shadowed silver latticework. My heart quickened and I focused on my breathing. There was the knowing of a great power just beyond my senses. Ancient. Aware. I fought the urge to fall backward into it, wanting to save my surrender for the breakthrough dose. Rather than being a gentle handshake, my ego was on high alert, sensing its perilous position.

I considered not continuing further but soon was aware of my son, standing, folded hands holding the medicine close to his heart and reading the prayer from the card before him. We were both to take the medicine standing and to fall back into the arms of our guides as the substance took hold. Music came up. Soft and supportive. First two deep practice breaths and then. One. Long. Gentle. Inhale. Deep into the diaphragm. Arms being assisted out and up over his head. Then, falling back into the cradle of life.

There was some initial hushed busying around him. Pillows to support. Arms into surrender pose.

The silence was broken by a scream.

“Jesus!” Mason yelled in utter astonishment.

The sound was of a man facing the unthinkable.

He sat up, bending at the waist and met by the tender, silent care of our attendants.

Then,

“Jeremy! ” Mason shouted.

I froze, stunned by the invocation of the name; both mine and that of our shaman.

Two more times, “Jeremy!”. “Jeremy!”.

By this point I am sobbing to myself. Initially because my son is calling me and I will claw through heaven and earth to find him. Mostly, though, I am crying because I know.

He is staring at the face of God.

I look at Luna worriedly but she places a hand on her heart and shakes her head, no. “Just keep meditating”, offers Alicia in a whisper. In a moment he is at peace, remembering who he is.

----

Now it is my turn. I stand up, a little shaken. “I’m anxious,” I whisper to Alicia. “It’s normal” she smiles. They are moving me forward with steady reassurance. “Hold the medicine between your palms and read this aloud”. “Will this be like before? “, I ask Jeremy.

“Oh yeah!” he reassures. It will be beautiful.

Alicia will serve. Jeremy will catch. “Hold the medicine close to your heart”. I read the prayer out loud.

“I accept that the joy that I have longed for is already in my life”

“I accepted the love for which I have prayed is already within me…”

The first two practice breaths, then one long slow deep inhalation. “More”. “More”. “A little more”. “Good, now hold!”. The features of the room become defined by the same, silver lattice energy. Then, POP! Arms now outstretched like bird wings I fall back into oblivion. I am aware of being safely caught, lowered and positioned on the ground.

Then it comes.

Not in images so much, but as an energetic presence bearing down fast. I begin to feel my body, my sense of self, unraveling. Suddenly it is upon me. Unimaginable beauty, unfathomable complexity, unbearable power and infinite expanse. Roiling like the sun. Shape-shifting into impossible dimensionality. It is light beyond seeing. Presence beyond boundary. It is taking me apart one atom at a time and it is demanding my surrender.

There is an emotion different from fear. An existential dread. There is no previous similar experience with which to measure and compare. I have been deposited directly into the heart of the unmanifest, preconditional, thermonuclear everything generator, and unrelenting grist mill of reality.

And I am resisting.

It is like holding back an exploding star, though, and soon there is not enough left of me to distinguish.

In a heartbeat, there is complete obliteration of self, and annihilation of all subject object relationships. I scream at the top of my lungs. A scream of resignation. An offering of energy. The final exhalation/exaltation. The acceptance of death.

I am gone.

In my place is a unification with, and as, all of the unbridled, roaring, infinite power of unmanifest being. With the collapse of space/time comes omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience. Immediate understanding of everything that has ever been.

And of why.

Which is, of course, the expression of unconditional love.

But not love as a desire. Not love as a stroll with a lover through a Parisian garden. Not even as love between mother and child.

But love as a locomotive tearing up the tracks of conceptualization and judgement. Love as recognition and celebration of the glory of its own unfathomable, miraculous being. A power that calls itself into manifestation, expressed as infinite distinctions, dancing through relationships. Impossible to experience as a “me” or a “you”, yet present in contracted form, as all things. Each particle of perfection plotting its path home.

Sometimes this looks like suffering. Sometimes this looks like bliss. Each distinction giving birth to and informing its opposite until they meet, surrendering their separateness, collapsing, liberated in the heart.

Just as we must inevitably surrender our distinctions. Our opposing qualities. Life and death.

This is a gift from you to you. A game of losing and finding. Sleeping and waking. Forgetting and remembering. What is asked is the surrender of everything. What you get in return is yourself.

----

At last, fully surrendered

I became it

Completely free

“I’m so happy” it said through me.

Not as a statement of experience, but as an expression of its essence.

That happiness is simply what we are once all fear is gone.

“I’m so happy” we continued,

“I’m so happy”

“I’m so happy”

I became aware that I was sobbing

Fighting the urge to get up now I allowed myself the gift of fingerpainting with my mind, the details of reality. I looked into, and became my wife. I saw her goodness, beauty and strength. I saw how we had created each other and felt her love for me as real and pure. And began to weep again. I started moving in and out of all of the people I have known, friends, family, and even public figures: Jesus, Hitler and such… to know myself as them. To demystify and de-monster-fy them in shared humanness and divinity.

As the medicine lay me back gently

Into my body

Into my life

I held onto the deep knowing, that there is nothing, and has never been anything, but the one self, which manifests as this dream of doing and being. A living that can never be threatened. Always both lover and beloved, dancing together alone.

“There is no power but you” came the silent wisdom

“There is no power but you!” I yelled. Then two more times

“There is no power but you!”

“There is no power but you!”

The simple truth of it was undeniable

“This time I’m going to bring it back”, I said,

“But they’re never going to believe me”

“they’re never going to believe me”

“they’re never going to believe me”

Now back in my body, I considered my predicament. All of manifest reality, from God to God particle telescoping up and down, nested and interpenetrating through me, as me. I thought about the everyday worries that I had dragged with me into this space.

“I surrender,” I whispered out loud.

And was released.

Exp Year: 2022	ExpID: 116131
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 60
Published: Feb 22, 2022	Views: 883
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