What's the fabric of the universe?
Smoking Bufo Alvarius, Part 2
Hi, friend. This is a two-part series describing my experience with the sacred Bufo toad, which contains 5-MeO-DMT, a short-acting but intense, ego-dissolving psychedelic agent. You can read the first part here which details the events leading up to the journey.
The medicine’s alien taste trickles down my throat. It’s the last thing my consciousness captures before my body collapses back onto the floor.
This is round two, I just smoked another pipe of pulverized venom from the Bufo Alvarius toad which contains 5-MeO-DMT, a strong psychedelic compound.
My first impression was harrowing.
There’s no reason I should have agreed to a second date.
But I trust my matchmaker, my guide, and she tells me I’m so close to a breakthrough.
And so I smoke again. The medicine shoots me straight back into the void of terror I just escaped from. But this time it’s different. There’s something else there.
An opposing force.
Something wants to come through.
I let it.
There, in the blazing heat, on the deck of a stranger’s home in the Valley, sprawled out in my white crochet dress, I become everything everywhere all at once.
Every last ounce of bodily consciousness dissolves. In an instant, I’m one with everything in existence. I’m at the center of the universe. I’m in the center of that which the universe is comprised of. I can’t think or feel or understand, but I know.
I know that this is the essence of consciousness.
The shift is overwhelming. I’m floating on a thoughtless bubble of ecstatic bliss. It takes time to grasp it, yet time has become a foreign construct and there is no one left to do the grasping.
The entire past and future of the universe are condensed into a single moment, a moment that contains everything in existence, and the nothingness in which everything exists. A moment that is eternal, never-ending, endlessly looping. A moment at the center of which time stands still. A moment that is the present.
A thought after who knows how much time in thoughtlessness pulls me back into my ego consciousness.
It is beauty.
It is beauty!
It’s always been beauty!
During my first Ayahuasca retreat years prior, I arrived at the conclusion that the fabric of universe is love. After morphing into my seven year old self and sobbing all night to process her sense of deficiency, the universe’s love pulled me out of my hole and filled the void my sense of lack had left: Through one long inhale, infinite, unconditional love streamed down from the stars and into my heart.
But today, today the toad gifts me a more nuanced understanding of the nature of this universal love.
The fabric of the universe is not love, it is beauty.
And the experience of beauty is love.
It is there on the wooden deck that a knowing lands in my consciousness that the great poets have arrived at long before: Rumi spoke of love as a pathway to experiencing the beauty of the divine, Dante viewed beauty as a reflection of divine love, Emerson talked about nature’s beauty awakening feelings of love.
For the remainder of my journey, I bathe in that universal beauty.
This is the the essence of consciousness, of being, the matter from which all that exists emerges. I don’t think, I know. I don’t know, I remember. I’ve once been here. I was once was a part of this beauty, unobstructed by my ego consciousness. It is the liminal space we come from and leave to when human life begins and ends.
But something keeps trying to pull me out of it.
There’s a part that’s overwhelmed by the beauty. Holding on to all that’s in the way of experiencing this ultimate truth. All the reasons, experiences, doubts, and fears, clinging to the thought that it can’t possibly be real.
Help me let go of all of it, I ask the medicine. Take everything that’s in the way of me and beauty, I pray to the god molecule, just take all of it.
And it does.
The toad pulls out the threads woven into my consciousness, one by one, then all at once. I can feel darkness and fear leave my body. Acres open up within, which the medicine fills with more beauty, beauty that blasts through my being with a force so intense I almost want to stop it.
Thread after thread, the medicine frees me from fundamental fears, from the illusion of separation, and from the belief that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Beauty is not a subjective judgment, the medicine teaches me, it is an essential quality of existence. It is the essential quality of existence.
In baby steps, I begin to regain my consciousness.
Now show me how beautiful I am, I ask the medicine, riding my high, reaching for more of what I know won’t last forever.
Tears stream down my face.
Of course, how could I forget.
I once knew this. I melt into the bliss and marinate in the great remembering.
Beauty is the essence of the universe, and because I am a direct manifestation of the universe, beauty is my essence, too.
As my body and mind come back online, I sense a fly on my leg.
My vision warps. Suddenly I’m small, walking up and down on a wide, soft surface. Large leafless tree trunks obstruct my vision. This is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, I think. The softness and vastness of the surface, the golden shimmer of the trunks, the contrast between matter and space.
Only then I realize that I’ve morphed into the fly, and I’m walking up and down my own leg, navigating through the maze of not trees but fine, blond hairs.
Moments later, I open my eyes. Barb’s warm smile greets me. Her red curls are glowing in the sun. Insight hits me with the shock of recognition. She knows.
This is the magic potion in her hugs, her gaze, her energy.
She sees the beauty in everything and everyone.
She is a walking expression of love.
Read part 1:
Note: There is a discourse around the ethics of consuming naturally occurring 5-MeO-DMT, harvested from Bufo Alvarius toads, versus consuming the synthetic compound. Not all harvesting is done sustainably. While I won’t go into the details of the two different options, it’s important to do your research and choose the option that aligns with your values.
“The shift is overwhelming. I’m floating on a thoughtless bubble of ecstatic bliss. It takes time to grasp it, yet time has become a foreign construct and there is no one left to do the grasping.
…Tears stream down my face.
Of course, how could I forget.
I once knew this. I melt into the bliss and marinate in the great remembering.”
Thank you for sharing your remembering!!
I have experienced the BLISS too!
It is the key 🔑 to the joy 😊 I now walk through life with.
You unfolded your tale in an alluring way.✨✨
Magnificent!
Yeah! Part 2, finally.
I love to read how people get there. I found it through shrooms, writing and suffering. Not in that order. Once you get it, it's hard for it to leave, but at times we go astray, but not for long.
Beautiful.