How Mushrooms Help Us Connect To Intuition
By C. G.
Out of all of the teachings, and understandings I have received from plant medicine, one of my most treasured is the gift of finding my intuition. This gift has been so profound, so life-changing, it’s helped me to realize that this is available to everyone. So here’s hoping my personal tale of intuitive discovery has value for you, too.
My First Date with Mushies
I waited until I was in my late thirties to have my first psychedelic experience. I had been fascinated and curious about psychedelics since my mid-teens, but fear and paranoia far outweighed any real urges to give them a try. The circumstances never felt safe enough, and like many people, I was convinced that I would do something crazy and dangerous while in an altered state. My fears lessened as I grew into an adult, and by the Spring of 2017 I had built up the courage to try Magic Mushrooms with some good friends at their house.
The first part of my experience flowed much like I had heard from my past friends’ experiences. We were all listening to beautiful music while sitting on a swing on their dock overlooking a peaceful pond at sunset. The colors of the sky and lake were electric and ethereal; like nothing I had ever witnessed. The music was transcendent. I was feeling very peaceful, tender, and connected.
All of a sudden, a lightbulb went off inside my head.
I had a thought that abruptly told me in no uncertain terms that the life coach I was seeing at the time was not the person I thought she was. In fact, the voice in my head told me that she was a fraud. “A fraud??” I pushed back silently. It seemed a little harsh.
The whisper-quiet voice came right back: “She is a fraud”.
I sat there trying to make sense out of this very direct information. I couldn’t consciously explain how I knew that this was true, but everything in my body felt the validity in this statement.
I continued to quietly process this understanding for the rest of the evening. It wouldn’t go away.
When I woke up the next morning, I checked in with myself, and there it was, right where I’d left it. “She is a fraud”. I couldn’t un-see it. I couldn’t argue with it. It was the truth.
Was this my intuition? I’d never experienced this kind of knowing before.
I grabbed my computer and googled “Magic Mushrooms and Intuition”. Got back over a million search results.
“Oh… so, this is, like … a thing,” I thought to myself as I started clicking the links.
I began to understand that Magic Mushrooms have, for millennia, been used as a gateway for humans to know themselves and for them to know God.
My mind was blown.
These little guys -- which I had been so afraid of for so many years -- are actually revered and powerful beings?
I never went back to the life coach after that. I just couldn’t ignore the awareness that she was not my teacher anymore. My inner voice had spoken loudly, and I had to listen. And I know now it wasn’t so much that this amazing woman was universally fake, only that she wasn’t right for me. Plant medicines messages are wildly personalized, and although egos are tempted to assume our truth is everyone’s truth, maturity on the path has shown me otherwise. She is a fantastic life coach, but she wasn’t right for me, and this is how the Mushrooms and my intuition delivered the message loud and clear.
The Magic Duo of Embodiment and Intuition
It took me almost a year to get a hold of my own supply of Los Niños (as they are affectionately called in plant medicine circles), and start sitting with them by myself in the privacy of my own home. During the time in between my first and second journeys, I voraciously collected information about mushrooms, reading about peoples’ experiences, listening to podcasts, and watching videos on the subject. I was absolutely fascinated. How could something that I had been repeatedly told to be distrustful and fearful of, be so healing and benevolent?
Once I had my own supply, I started sitting with the Niños every few weeks. The first couple of journeys I had by myself were very physical. I’d usually end up on the floor of my living room while listening to music, doing yoga-like poses and stretching more deeply than I ever had before.
The mushrooms were putting me back into my body -- reminding me that I am not my body. I’m in my body.
Finding this body awareness was a huge first step for me to connect with my intuition. For most of my life, I had been moving through the world wanting to be as separate from my body as possible. I had been struggling with a food addiction since the age of 9 years old. I had felt ashamed of my body and betrayed by my body for almost as long as I could remember. But here with the mushrooms, I was being gently reminded of the miraculous vehicle that my body is. I was continually being made aware of all of the information that this body holds, and has been holding since I was a kid. During my stretching sessions, I would release all sorts of long-stored energetic information. During one hip rolling exercise, I dropped right into a memory of myself at a junior-high dance. The emotions of anxiousness and insecurity were right where I had left them over twenty-five years ago! It felt so expansive to be able to let these emotions and sensations go with compassion and gratitude.
I began to feel the fun of being in my physical container. It was like coming home. As I lay on my rug stretching my legs, I would find myself back in my body as a toddler stretching and rolling around on the floor, joyfully playing in my body. I remembered that I used to do this for hours as a small kid.
The mushrooms helped me explore with loving awareness the information that my body was holding: past hurts and traumas, expansive awareness of self, and the childlike awe and joy at the bliss of physicality. In my stretching sessions with the Niños, I would often cry like a baby, releasing deep-seated emotions that I had carried for too long to remember. It felt so good to cry like that -- to cry like a child and just let it all out. And I would laugh too. Bubbly, hysterical laughter that would connect me to my inner child and remind me of who I really am. Who I always have been. Who I forgot I was. The mushrooms were helping me get to know ME. And the me that I was experiencing was profoundly joyful. Deeply feeling and empathic. Beautifully wise.
I was learning how to listen to my body signals -- they were loud and clear during my journeys, and they were speaking with increasing clarity in my daily life as I practiced tuning in to myself.
Going Deeper with Mother Ayahuasca
I began to feel called to sit with Ayahuasca. I had heard someone on a podcast say that if anyone is feeling the urge to sit with a particular plant medicine, that they should recognize that as a calling and trust in that. Soon I found my way to plant medicine maven Kat Courtney’s blog. And then I had a coaching session with her over the phone. We instantly clicked, and I could feel her integrity and goodness. We talked about the possibility of me coming out for a ceremony weekend. I felt no fear, only that this was so right. After my first ceremony weekend, I began creating more prayerful space in my home for my mushroom journeys. I had felt the power that comes from sitting in a sacred space -- where the energy is clean and protected -- and saw that I could bring ceremonial elements into my home experiences with the mushrooms. I bought some sage, lit candles, brought some crystals in, and played sacred music. These elements all amplified the power and clarity of the journeys. I was understanding how the cleaner the energy of the container, the more easily information can come in smoothly. More Spirit, less ego.
Soon after I upped my home-journeying ritual, I had a breakthrough journey which changed the course of my life.
I was shown who I am, who I’ve always been, and what I’m here to do, in very clear and joyful terms.
I was shown that there was no reason for me to stay in my job -- I could feel and see how it was not serving me, and my body was vibrating with the expansiveness of setting myself free from it. Every sensation in my body felt like one big “yes” as I was shown where I was going to put my energies moving forward. I was coming home to myself.
This magical night remains one of the most joyful and miraculous experiences of my life.
Due to the fact that I had some savings built up, and I was living alone at the time, without children or a partner, I was in a very fortunate place to be able to honor this awakening.
I ended up resigning from my job a few months later.
The Unexpected Whirlwinds of Change
In the weeks before my final days of work, I had some moments of doubt and feelings that I was making a terrible mistake. One morning, in the very last days before I left the job, I woke up in a panic. My fears of the future hit me all at once. My mind was racing. “What am I thinking?! I’m not ready to do this!” I took a moment as I lay in my bed and checked in with myself. I told myself I could simply tell my boss that I was not going to resign after all. I told myself that I could give myself more time to decide where to go from here.
Instantly my body came back with a very clear and strong “Nope. You are doing this. You are done with this job.” The inner knowing was right there inside of me, despite my raging ego-chatter trying to tell me otherwise.
I have now been on my new path for almost two years. It looks nothing like I thought it would.
The mushrooms had shown me my future timeline in a way that felt effortless -- as if my optimal life path was already unfolding in some parallel reality and all I needed to do was catch up to it.
They didn’t show me all of the lessons and challenges I would have to slog through to get there. But then, that’s all part of the adventure, and essential to the perfection of the infinitely wise teachings that plant medicine experiences bring. The mushrooms dangled the carrot of this expansive future timeline in front of me and remain in full support, as I move through the outdated patterns of my dense physical experience to try to catch up to the future I was shown.
The door that was opened during that mushroom journey and the deep joy of seeing and knowing myself has stayed very present with me, even when my mind is dulled by the neurotic noise that inevitably comes in from day-to-day living in the matrix. I can always find this expansive place within myself that is telling me “yes!” when I start to wonder if I can really shift into what I know myself to be. The mushrooms, from our very first visit together, gave me the gift of discovering what my intuition feels like, and what it is telling me. They gave me a gentle nudge, right from the very beginning, towards choosing integrity for myself and my path. They laid the breadcrumbs for me to follow in a divinely ingenious way.
It all started with an understanding that the life coach I was seeing was not the teacher for me. I listened, moved on, and found support with Kat, and then with Ayahuasca. And a few months after that, as I was building a solid foundation of support in the plant medicine community, the mushrooms showed me that it was time to change my career path and choose integrity for myself again. They showed me exactly what I was ready to see right when I needed to see it, and not a second sooner. I would not have been able to receive the information about changing career paths until I was ready. And when I was ready, they showed me.
As I tune in to the expansiveness within me, the path becomes clearer, and infinitely more joyful, and I try to make choices that honor the source of light and strength within me. Choices that don’t align with my life purpose have been falling away, because they don’t amplify the ping that I feel inside when I listen to my heart. The plants have helped me recognize the innate GPS system that we all have to guide us through our lives. The plants can help us learn how to understand and trust the guidance. What a beautiful gift.
