When I first started along this path, I was entirely unaware that a more spiritual side to it even existed. I was going to school in Iowa, and I had no guides, no elders, no community to call upon for any kind of support. At the time I was introduced to the whole mess, I thought "acid" and "LSD" were two different drugs! I went along with the whole idea of "you should take acid, man, it's fun!" and sure enough, it was anything but "fun".
I spent two, two and a half years banging my head against walls trying to figure out why my ego was getting larger and larger and why my soul was getting more and more worn from doing all these chemicals. I began to do some research, delving into Leary and R.A.Wilson, building a net.community with other like-minded searchers, alienating many people because of my sheer recklessness and then putting all the pieces back together into something stronger, more resilient. You can learn lessons in the strangest places!
A 'spiritual imprint', if you will, was caught at a sweat lodge ceremony involving a day of fasting and drumming and meditation, then the sweat, the heat, the chant, the power (the rhythm is around me, the rhythm has control, the rhythm has my soul), then a silent circle round the campfire, in the medicine lodge, communion with 10g dried mushroooms. The first time I had this experience, my entire personality fought it like absolute crazy; it was so so damnably foreign to my arrogant, childish mind. LSD had given me the fuel to believe I was something so incredible, this excellent "person", and the mushrooms introduced themselves and taught me the meaning of *purification*.
I behaved poorly that night, eventually fleeing the circle, but the imprint caught, no doubt about it. I have been working out the lessons ever since, and will do so, most likely, for the rest of my life.
The second time I had the sweat experience, I was not resistant, I was as open as possible at that time in my life, and the mushrooms nailed me to the wall of the void. I experienced transmogrification into a wolf; I experienced sitting with the apostles around a fire, back in the ancient times; I experienced the spirits of the native americans who had traveled the land generations ago returning to me and dancing with me; I experienced coming out of the womb into an entirely alien and hostile environment, frightened to the Core; I experienced, ultimately, something that makes me shake to this day as I sit and think about it.
I do wish I had a way, could find a way, to recreate the spirit and the magick and the wonder of those sweat lodge experiences. Those, to me, practically *define* everything I think of when I consider the terms "imprint," "spirit," "entheogen," "ritual," "the work."
Scotto, American male.
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