The Mushroom Teacher

I came to this tent to learn;

to know something more of myself

and why my past still haunted my present.

I sit in a circle of human feet

facing a central fire yet to be lit.

Avoiding eye contact with strangers,

I drink the tea handed to me,

lying back to await the experience

of being taught by a teacher of truth,

of the deep places of life.

With eyes closed, my inner world

is revealed in tapestries of light and shade,

sound and silence, color and void.

Someone giggles and it ripples through my body,

felt by cells of skin and bone alike,

by places I hadn't felt since I was a boy,

before awareness had been beaten out of my body

by the whips and canes of lesser teachers,

in that strange system of reward and punishment

which left me terrified of doing wrong,

and vigilant for approval from those

who my mind said were authorities.

Songs are sung by our human guide,

notes and tones which can be seen in the fractals of color

that paint the backs of my eyelids,

and shimmer, as though water had been

patterned with geometric precision

and overlaid with a veil of iridescence.

The waves of mushroom chemistry intensify,

taking me to that edge of psychosis, of the fear

that I no longer have solid ground to stand on;

that the world that I thought was so solid and stable,

is now as wobbly as gelatin and far more transparent.

The guide sings again, accompanied by crystalline sounds

which can be tasted on my tongue

and leave the scent of flower essences in my nose.

But it is the flesh that has my attention.

The tools of four senses are held in the head

and schooling pressured the childish delights of my body

up into the cranium, away from the wildness of the ground below,

so that I could study and remember and think.

Oh thinking! So much thinking!

The head is not designed to contain the soul.

Smells are meant to connect to draw us closer to soil,

to the aroma of flowers and the earthy scent of dark humus

from which rooted ones can grow.

Sounds were birthed to be felt in the depths,

to move us, to breathe us, so our feet tap,

our legs step, our arms cut shapes in the air

and our spine waves.

Dancing, it is called. Even our organs dance to the right song.

Sights of color and form were designed to be breathed,

past the eyes and brain, to delight the spleen and gut,

to remind the bones that their ingredients

sprang from the trees and grasses that stand majestically

before me, from the soil and sand, the blue sky that I breathe

and the white clouds that I drink.

And tastes! May whatever I taste be offered to my soles,

so that each time I kiss Earth with a footstep,

I offer the tastes that my tongue has been gifted with today.

I have no words for what this teacher taught.

I only know that this class opened a door,

for my inner child to return from the realm of thought,

to the home that was always his,

where he can play once more in this bodily garden of delight,

and at the end of the day,

his creative energy thoroughly spent,

sit by the hearth of my heart,

and drink in the simple joys of being a body.