The Night My Life Changed. Part 3: My Beautiful Boys & Aftermath
WARNING:
This post does not promote or encourage the use of any illegal psychoactive substances, and this text is for information purposes only, describing my journey and my journey alone.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND the unsupervised use of magic mushrooms for healing. I consider myself quite experienced in navigating and confronting deep-lying sub-conscious trauma and beliefs within me, hence why I have used them as I have.
If you are interested in taking mushrooms for healing then I recommend reading this book and/or investigating for yourself the full expectations of what a mushroom trip could hold for you:
The Magic Mushroom User’s Guide
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Introduction
Before I begin, I would like to say that I am OK. Better than I have ever been, so as you read, whilst what I write may be alarming, I’m fine.
This is a long post, you may want to get a biscuit (or shortbread) or two, make yourself a coffee, tea, or, like me recently, an Ovaltine, and get comfy. Hopefully there’s not too much waffle in the coming paragraphs.
As I’ve said before…..
Facing my deepest fear was what I needed to do in order to understand the story of my life so far, and ultimately set myself free.
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Thucydides (circa 400 BC) :
“The Secret to Happiness is Freedom,
The Secret to Freedom is Courage”.
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Angels Reading, 19th October 2022
“I am here so you can have a mental change. This mental change will change everything in your life.”
“I am here to tell you that you have everything you need to be loved, but you need to understand that and you need to believe it.”
“Don’t look for love outside of you, I know you want a beautiful love, a love that you can confide and trust in, like we all want, but you can’t be looking for love and approval outside of you, because when you do, you end up disapproving of yourself, with low self-esteem, thinking that you have something wrong with you, feeling that you’re not enough, should someone take their love away from you or not show you love.”
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Tarot Reading, 13th December, 2022
“Make your home more secure, more friendly, fill it with your heart”
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Continued from the previous post.
Building Back
I stared at the knife that was pressed against my wrist. I waited for a moment to see if there was an ulterior force that would take me over. Like a final test. There wasn’t. There was no movement in the hand that held the knife, and, as I stood there, almost in an out-of-body state, watching the scene unfold before me in sheer disbelief, I felt that what the belief was urging me to do was just absurd.
It made me feel sick, the bare thought of death.
Images of my children and my family flashed across my eyes. How could I ever do this to them? Who would look after my children? My beautiful boys. The aloneness was suffocating. A swirling pit-of-stomach fear and almost weightlessness pinned my body motionless as I stood in the kitchen. Even through all of the feelings, even with this 40-year weight of pain, there was no desire in me to end my life.
The belief that I didn’t deserve life was there, still, all powerful, all around me, blocking me in.
This is going to be a long night, I thought, silently.
I put the knife back in the drawer and walked slowly back to the sofa, catching a glimpse of my Wax Poetics magazine front cover with Marvin Gaye. I love Marvin Gaye, such an amazing voice and soul in him, and I knew all about how his life had tragically ended.
‘No tragedy for me, no fucking way, that is not going to be my story’, I said to myself, still despairing at how far I was being pushed, and that I had a battle for my life going on in my head.
The waves continued through my mind, crashing over me. It was impossible to get away from them. I sat on the floor trying to catch my breath, trying to calm myself amidst everything that was going on inside.
The night of my tobacco experience came to mind, and I thought about how excruciatingly uncomfortable that night was, and how I eventually got through it.
I remembered why I was here. I closed my eyes and hunched over.
Mustering all the trust and belief I had in myself and the divine path that had led me to this point, I exhaled and whispered;
‘I let go, Lord, I let go’, and I slowly released all the tension in my body and surrendered myself.
This is why I’m here. This is what I have to confront.
This is why I’m here. This is what I have to confront.
I let go, I let go. What will be will be.
I surrender.
I surrender.
I surrender, Lord.
I love you Lord.
Let it be.
I stopped fighting. I hadn’t realised until that point that I had been fighting against these thoughts from the moment they had begun.
I knew I had to let go, I knew I had to trust, I knew I had to believe in the Higher Power and what had brought me to this point.
Do what you have to do.
I sat there on the floor with my eyes closed, hunched over with my head on my knees.
The music continued, a mixture of irresistible beats and choruses of the most beautiful voices hovered around my awareness.
I was alone, but wasn’t.
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The stillness of surrender passed through me as I sat there. After a few moments I noticed that all I could feel and hear was my heart beating.
A thought flashed into me.
‘Don’t I deserve life???’, I cried out to the Infinite, as I placed a hand on my heart.
‘I have a heartbeat! I deserve life!’ I cried, half questioning, half affirming, lifting myself from the floor as the tears started to flow once more.
This was me, me against the belief. Me against my life so far. I had found some courage, I had found a voice.
‘I’m a dad! I have two amazing kids!’, I cried again, this time with more conviction in my statement.
Is this not enough?
The crashing waves of thoughts of ending my life, of ending the pain, continued.
My boys….I can’t leave them, I can’t put them through what I went through. I could never do that to them, it just isn’t possible. That simply isn’t in me.
I began to talk to the Universe, I began to talk back to Life.
‘I’ve brought so much love into this world, don’t I deserve life? I’ve got two incredible children!!’, I choked through the sobs as I stroked the image of the three of us that I had placed on the dining table. ‘They adore me and I them!!’
‘And I’m an amazing fucking dad!’, I cried, with yet more volume, more conviction and yet more belief. The sobbing and tears flowed, of sadness and of pure love for my children intertwined, as I stated my case with the Infinite (and with myself).
‘I’m an amazing fucking person, I’m an amazing fucking dad, I deserve life, I have always deserved it!’.
I cried and cried as I repeated my truth to life, to the infinite, to myself, and the words resonated, with each sentence strengthening my resolve, strengthening my belief. I looked at my beautiful boys, tears streamed down my face with pain and joy in equal measure. I looked at myself in the photo and they flowed even more. I was starting to see, for the very first time, this beautiful soul that had looked back at me in the mirror for the past 40 years. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed, as a sudden clarity took me over.
I have a heartbeat. I have life in me. I am a father. I am love. I deserve life. I have always deserved it.
I was starting from absolute zero, forging the basic building blocks of self-worth.
‘My family, my friends, they love me, my wonderful children, they love me, they need me, I’m an amazing dad, I’ve given everything for them, I’m an amazing person, yes I’ve made mistakes as a dad, as a husband and as a person, but my children are an absolute fucking success, and are a reflection of how special I am.’
I cried and cried, as the sheer love for my boys came pouring out of me, and with it, unconditional compassion and love for me, their dad, as I looked at the three of us together, smiling in the photo.
I sat down. I looked around as the mushrooms worked through me, rippling through my sensory perception like a kaleidoscope. I said to myself:
‘No matter what happens, I’m taking care of you tonight. You’re an amazing person, you’re an amazing dad, I’m not bowing out like this, this isn’t gonna be my story. My life is a statement to who I’ve been, and I deserve life’.
At that point, a shift occurred in me.
Another person took over. I was split in two.
I was The Vulnerable Child, who had, for his whole life, been seeking the love, care and affection he never got when he needed it most.
But I was also the Divine Inner Parent, who was going to look after me.
It began.
‘What do you need my boy?’, I asked, suddenly perceiving myself in a completely different way.
The music was shifting from a very sensory-focused collection of rhythmic tribal sounds, into a softer, more gentle, expansive atmosphere of beats, songs and chords.
Perfectly in the moment, the moment aligning perfectly.
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The Divine Inner Parent
I was suddenly energised, sniffling and wiping tears from my face, gaining composure by the second. The primordial instinct of a parent looking after the best interests and survival of his child, making sure that every little last thing was taken care of, began to surge through me.
No matter how long this trip lasted, I thought, I was going to take care of me. No matter what.
I began to dissect my current situation, how I was, where I was, what I was wearing, my environment, my basic needs - every little last detail I began to question.
‘Are you too hot?’
‘Are these clothes ok?’
‘Are you comfortable?’
‘Are you tired?’
‘Do you want to lie down?’
‘What do you need my boy? What do you need?’
‘I’ll take care of you now, my boy. I’ve got you. I’ve got you’, always’, the Divine Inner Parent repeated, over and over.
There was no detail too small that I didn’t watch out for and that wasn’t taken care of. Nothing was too big an effort for my boy. He was worth everything. Life itself.
I suddenly felt very comforted, lying down, tired, with everything I needed. The questioning and checking-in continued, there was nothing the Inner Parent wouldn’t do for me.
I took care of me now.
This went on for how long I can’t tell. Time morphs considerably when on the shrooms.
All I know was that once I was completely comfortable, I managed to rest a short while, and, mid-trip, quickly realised that sleep was out of the question. I eventually sat up. I looked around. It was as if someone had lifted a veil from my eyes.
It was as if I was observing my apartment for the very first time.
It was so cold! So not me! So devoid of warmth, colour, and heart, and love. It was so not me. I had invested money in renting this lovely apartment to focus on my work, and my mindset had simply been to come here and shut myself away, and work myself into the ground.
I had notebooks everywhere, my laptop and cell phone ready to record, like I was some sort of fucking experiment! They stung my eyes.
I’m not!! I never have been! I’m a human being with needs!!!
It became so clear to me that I had been driving and driving myself through this work, like I was a fucking machine for years. I deserved so much more. I had carried myself through it all with nowhere near the self-compassion, or care, or love or understanding I deserved.
I walked to my bedroom. It was stark and cold. Loveless. No joy.
I immediately worked my way through the apartment removing anything that gave me bad memories or I felt triggered me. Magazines and books and other items were quickly put away. It was as if I could suddenly see, with the eyes of a parent who was preparing their home for their precious child.
It broke my heart that I hadn’t seen this before, that I had treated myself like a slave to my work, throughout my whole life, without caring for myself the way I should have.
I knew I couldn’t do everything that night, obviously, as being under the influence of the mushrooms would hinder me (and probably be quite dangerous if I suddenly decided on a makeover of my living space, whilst everything shifted and moved and changed colour before my eyes).
I started to hatch a plan.
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The Plan
I sat there, tripping ‘off my tits’ (as we say here in London town), as the lines on the notepad danced like small rainbows. I held the pencil and tried my best to focus, it was as if my eyes were on two spindles. Like a snail, almost.
But I wrote.
I was going to transform my home. I was going to begin with my bedroom, turn it into a celebration of everything Juan; my fucking bedroom, my fucking way. With love, lots and lots of love. Bedspreads, books, trophies, achievements, LF fucking C, photos, bits and bobs and more photos.
That’s what I deserve! That’s what I’ve always deserved!!
The realisations were so powerful, so strong. They carried me into the night as I gained momentum.
I decided that I was going to scour through the hundreds of photos I had of my boys and me. I was going to pick the very best and print them all. I wanted to emblazon my home with me and my boys, my treasures. I wanted to celebrate these little beings, these beautiful little bits of Juan anywhichway I could.
And I was going to celebrate the dad I was and always had been.
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‘Big photo of dad and his boys, his beautiful boys’
‘Because I’m an amazing fucking dad’, I wrote.
‘In my bedroom, our centrepiece, in my bedroom’
‘No more hiding from the amazing Dad I AM’
No more hiding from the amazing person I AM’
No more hiding from the amazing Human Being I AM’
‘That I am’
‘I AM’
‘No More Hiding’
‘No More Hiding’
(Friday, 30th December, 2022) The Night My Life Changed.
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Thankfully, I wrote legibly enough to make sense.
After around three and a half hours the effects of the mushrooms started to wear off. The inevitable yawns sent shudders through me as they signalled the beginning of the end of my experience. I could hardly speak, my face was swollen and I had burst blood vessels around my eyes from the crying. I was physically battered, and, as you can imagine, very tired.
I suppose it’s not every night you face death, your biggest fear, and come back from it. I knew this had been a big night.
My Inner Parent asked me, ‘what would you like to do?’
All I could think about was getting some food, even though I was still feeling a tad trippy and very fragile. I wanted a curry, and I knew the exact place where I wanted to eat it. I picked some nice clothes, had a soothing shower, taking care of every single detail like a doting father getting his little boy ready. I wandered out into the cold streets.
As I walked to the restaurant I knew that my life was never going to be the same again. I knew that I had answered a great question that had hung over me since birth.
It now had a face. It now had a beginning. Things had already started to make sense to me. This, after all, had influenced every living moment for me up until that evening. Whilst I’ve already processed much, I think I’ll be processing that night for many years to come. There’s just so much to connect it to. So much to make sense of.
Clarities began to flow into my mind as I slowly hobbled under the streetlights towards dinner.
Don’t get me wrong, I was worried, also, by just how far I had been pushed. By how close I had come, and how much pressure that belief had exerted over me.
I put those thoughts to the back of my mind. I’d deal with them eventually.
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A looked up at the night sky, stars sparkled overhead.
‘Fuck’s sake, Lord’, I said, half chuckling, half muttering, shaking my head.
A small smile emerged across my lips. Suddenly the world wasn’t so scary. It felt different. I felt different.
It was done.
But it was and is, only the beginning.
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The Aftermath
I had my curry that night, taking care to eat it slowly and thoughtfully, taking my time to savour the spices, the heat and flavours. I love curry. The restaurant was nearly empty. Better for me, I thought. I left the curry house and strolled back down West Hampstead high street, thinking that I both needed and deserved a drink after the evening’s shenanigans.
‘Fucking right, I do’, I thought to myself.
Then, barely speaking, I took my customary stool at my local cocktail bar, ‘Heads + Tails’. I had a brief chat with the bartender, who had come over to say hello. I could hardly understand or hear what he was saying. After that, I just sat and stared into space. I was in a daze as I supped their most delicious rum, a Cuban dry called ‘Eminente’, and followed it with another equally delicious ‘Primavera’ cocktail.
‘Primavera’. Hmm. Spring. I wonder where I’ll be in my healing process by Spring time.
Spring I feel has a special significance for me this year. We’ll wait and see.
It’s taken me days and days to write this series of posts as I knew it was going to involve me sitting down and confronting everything again. To be frank, I haven’t wanted to.
I suppose you can imagine why. It was a very difficult night.
But I knew I had to, not only because of a drive I felt to share my experience (more on that later), but because it was going to be massively helpful for me. Just writing each post has crystallised those hours and made it so much clearer. All the associated learnings have also become clearer for me.
Writing the second part involved me sitting down for hours whilst I listened to the entire playlist again, literally moving through the memories and subsequent emotions, thoughts, and feelings whilst taking notes, grieving as I went.
I suppose that’s the first thing that I’ve had to work through. The grieving.
When you understand the immense, and completely unfair, and unnecessary weight I had carried my entire life, because of a situation that had happened not long after I had entered this world, there comes an immense outpouring of grief. Of the pain suffered, of the suffering the belief had inflicted on me, unknowingly, for years beyond count, as I made my way through life. I’ve caught glimpses of myself in the mirror which have ended in tender moments, where my Inner Parent just wells up and says, ‘my poor boy’. But that’s part of process of healing. Confronting, understanding, grieving the occurred, and letting go of the pain.
Writing these posts has been very, very important for me. My other work has simply been put on pause until I finish.
This, is enough.
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The Understandings
Living with a belief so big, so complete, there from day one, has been like living in a fabricated world, like the ‘Truman Show’, where the subterfuge is almost perfect, but you can feel it in your bones that there’s something off, that something’s not quite right. That’s maybe the best way I can describe it, that belief, unknown to me until that evening, always there in the background but never visible or understood.
I had been looking through this lens my entire life, a lens distorted by the belief that I was unworthy of life. Life, undoubtedly, reflected this energy back to me, reacting in reflection of this belief. You see our world is a reflection of what we have going on inside of us. Gaining clarity on this alone is a complete game changer for me.
I understand why I was the way I was with my parents, why I questioned if I was even part of my family, why I poked and prodded for a different reaction which never came, believing all this while that I was not only unworthy of their love, but of life itself.
All I ever wanted was love and care and affection from them, requesting over and over from my mother something she couldn’t give, at least not like I needed or wanted, her own behaviours a reflection of her past traumas and upbringing. The soil had been laid in my mind, and the seeds of other beliefs were sown as I grew, given to me by my mum and my dad, planted and tended to by me, watering those beliefs with what happened to me on a daily basis, allowing them to grow; that I was ‘bad’, that I wasn’t good enough, or worthy of any time or interest, that much of what I did was wrong, etc etc etc.
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The Fear of Abandonment = The Fear of Death
The fear of abandonment that I had confronted, this ‘fear of abandonment’ that is much described in modern psychology, I now understand to be actually the fear of death. To be abandoned as a baby, as a child, as a human being, means death. It has always been this way as we’ve evolved as a specie. For me, that fear almost instantly became part of me, and, believing that I had been abandoned, I, by connection, believed that I wasn’t worthy of life.
Needs as a baby are at their most basic level, primordial, even, and from there, come the most basic of understandings, black and white, to a new born who knew nothing about anything.
I ask myself now; Is there a bigger, more damaging limiting belief than the unworthiness of life?
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The Cliff Edge & Why
You may read this and think that I was massively irresponsible, and that I should never have taken a large dose alone, that possibly magic mushrooms are a volatile medium for healing, and that I am lucky to be alive right now.
I can say, in response, with absolute certainty, that I had to be alone, and I had to push myself this far in order to unearth the belief that had tormented me for so long.
Being alone allowed me to completely let go, to go inward and reach the very core of my ‘Self’, almost to the very beginning of my conscious existence, to get to where this belief lay. Like digging up an enormous oaken tree trunk, with roots so deep they almost reached the centre of my mind. The large dose allowed me to do that. Being alone allowed me to completely lose myself in getting there, to the core.
In my particular case, we’re talking about my very earliest memories. Not everyone, I think, will have such compounding beliefs emerging so early in their lives.
OK, but what about when you got there? You were almost overpowered?, you may argue.
Yes, for a period I almost was, but that’s where you have to be brave, have faith in the process, have faith in God and/or the Universe, and the ‘why’ you’re there. It wasn’t until I completely surrendered, in the middle of this fear, overwhelmed by this belief, that my Divine Inner Parent came forth and the whole experience shifted.
You see, a critical understanding of all of this, and a key idea behind why I know all of this had to happen the way it did, is this:
The period of being parented, i.e. given the love, care and affection I needed from my mother, has been and gone for me. That ship has sailed. That love, care, affection, and understanding, which I have been chasing in other women my entire life, leading me to play out various negative relationship patterns over and over and over again, had to come from me.
I had to find this Inner Parent in myself, I had to find the unconditional, infinite love within me, and only by reaching my ‘Ground 0’ did it emerge.
I don’t expect everyone’s magic mushroom experience to be the same, no, not at all. We’re all an infinite Universe of experience and consciousness. In my particular case, the trauma that created this belief – I am abandoned, therefore I am not worthy of life – was buried very deep within me, and the belief itself was about as detrimental to my life as you can get.
My deepest fear was a result of my experience of life.
I don’t believe there is such thing as a bad trip. ‘Challenging’ I think is a better word. It’s only confronting that which you have already confronted before or that which you fear. The only question is, do you want to release? Or do you prefer to let that which is buried, which may well be influencing your life silently every day, live there, hidden?
I chose to meet it head on. I’ve allowed the Universe, God and my Spirit Guides to guide me, surrendering and letting go of control along the way. Opening my heart to new experiences as they have appeared, at the exact moments I have needed them.
It’s been a journey of nearly 5 years to get here, to gain enough understanding to kind of know what I’m doing, to get the most out of what I do.
I’d had enough.
It’s as simple as that.
Heartbreak for me has been my biggest driver on this journey. That’s my story, unique to me. I am not healed, not by a long way. I got a pretty big emotional, mental and physical battering as I grew up. That comes next. But this, this belief ‘crowns all’, and I was on an impossible mission to continue with my work if I had not found unconditional self-love for me in the brinks of darkness.
Was it worth it?
What do you think?
Abso-fucking-lutely.
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My New Home, My New Lens
One of the most positive changes I’ve felt since the evening of the 30th December, 2022, has been the immense admiration I feel for myself when I look at the photos I printed, and have since framed and placed around my home. I look at me, smiling with my boys and I think, ‘what a fucking warrior you are, Juan, to have been the person you’ve been with that weight hanging over you’. I literally well-up with pride. I can now look at myself in the eye, without shame or guilt and say, ‘Do you know how fucking proud I am of you as a dad, Juan?’, something I’d (unknowingly) never been able to do until now.
I’ve been making much healthier decisions for myself in my life (excessive chocolate consumption aside, need to knock that on the head, sharpish), putting myself first in everything, something I am not used to doing but something that I am doing more and more each day.
The Inner Parent I have unleashed is fierce and protective of me and I love it. I’ve given so much to so many people in my life, and, whilst I will continue to give with love, because love is a key element of what makes me who I am (and everyone, I believe), I will now make sure I’m not knowingly or unknowingly taken advantage of. I deserve more.
Always.
As I’ve already mentioned, there have been waves of grief, of compassion, of sorrow, when I think of the 40 years I’ve been carrying this. That’s expected though, and when that grief comes I let it flow. It’s validation, it’s healing, it’s letting go and owning this shit and moving on.
I don’t look at myself in the same way anymore. I’m a fucking warrior. Flawed, imperfect, but strong and heart-led. Just getting up each day to fall over and accept how vulnerable I am right now, that is strength.
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Sharing
One of the last ‘epiphany’ moments that struck me before I finished that evening was the overwhelming desire to share what I had understood. I felt that I must explore the psychology of premature babies and see where that led. I hope, that if you’ve read this far, you may also understand a little more about just how impressionable we are as babies, as children, as young people, as we literally construct our belief and survival system with everything both good and bad that life throws at us, in each moment of each day, during each phase of our lives.
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The Readings
The Angels said that I would have a mental change that would change everything in my life. Maybe this was it. I don’t know. It’s probably just the start. They also said that I had to find love within myself, and not look for it, as I had always done, outside of me. That I had believed things about me that simply weren’t true.
Here I am, saying bingo, bingo, bingo. I love the magical Divinity of Life and I am blessed to have such guides available to me just when I need them most.
I have since made some small yet powerful changes to the look and feel of my apartment and I am very happy with them. Whilst I’m not finished, it now feels more like ‘Juan’s home’.
The tarot was bang on the money there, too. As always.
Knowing my path is laid out before me is comforting. It helps me to let go.
My learning self-love stage is over. My Divine Inner Parent, which is a term I use from the INCREDIBLE Lonerwolf journals/workbooks I have been working through these past months, is now with me.
Together we can start to heal my Inner Child. I’m ready.
I’m ready.
‘Remember why you came here
Remember your life is sacred…’
…..the female voice had sung softly all around me.
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Thank you for being here with me, love to you all.
Juan
