7 Ways Psychedelic Mushrooms Can Help Us Reach Our Highest Potential
Have you, or someone you know, ever felt lost and confused about your place in life? What are you doing here? How can you create a life aimed towards fulfillment and happiness, for yourself and your loved ones?
Not feeling fulfilled is in many ways linked to poor mental health and a low sense of well-being. A beautiful medicine known as psychedelic mushrooms also referred to as psilocybin (the psychoactive compound found within), may have the power to help us become closer to deeper fulfillment, thus relieving many of us of our mental health struggles.
The mechanism responsible for psilocybin helping people heal from depression, anxiety, etc. can be looked at as the result of one coming closer to self-actualization. Self-actualization is the process of moving into one’s self. It is the removal of what we are not to make room for what we truly are and what it feels good to be. This is the path toward understanding why we are here in this life. It is the path toward fulfillment.
If self-actualization is the goal, a commitment must be made to walking that path. We do this with our whole life. It must become the deeper reason behind the choices we make. This doesn’t mean we need to necessarily quit our day jobs and move to Bali. The circumstances we find ourselves in often are linked to our purpose in some way. Self-actualization is a marathon, not a sprint, as we have our whole lives to move towards it. It often happens slowly and with lots of patience.
To commit to this path is not always the most tangible thing. We may find it hard to map out how to achieve the goal of self-actualization, as it doesn’t always translate well to a goal worksheet. It is this way for a reason. If we are to truly walk towards becoming our fully actualized selves, we must keep an open mind and remember that we are never going to have the whole path mapped out. We must embrace the mystery of life, as uncomfortable as that may be at times, and surrender to the unfolding of it. There will be many moments of clarity along this path, moments in which we will know what actions to take, but they will come only if we walk with patience and trust in our unique journeys.
During this path, certain experiences will start to call out to us. Exploring psychedelic medicine is a common calling many people are experiencing in their paths at this time in our Western culture. At first, it may present itself as a curiosity; a longing to know more. As some of us walk this path deeper and experience what psychedelic medicine has to offer, we sometimes realize that there may be, in fact, something deeper going on to bring us toward the medicine.
How can Psychedelic Mushrooms help in this process?
Psychedelic Mushrooms are a beautiful medicine that can help us connect to deeper meanings and truths about ourselves and the lives we are living. They do this in sometimes quite straightforward ways, but also sometimes in not so easy-to-understand ways. Here are some commonly experienced effects of safe exploration with psilocybin:
Expansion of consciousness
One of the most common positive effects of psilocybin exploration is its potential to increase the bandwidth of our minds. Although the nature of this process is quite abstract, making it hard to understand let alone talk about, it seems to increase our ability to see and understand perspectives outside of our normal realm of thought. This is a critical aspect of our growth toward self-actualizing.
Healing
A psychedelic mushroom experience can many times contain moments of clarity surrounding our subconscious patterns and habits. Many, including myself, have successfully used this tool to dive deep into the root cause of depression, anxiety, addiction, PTSD, etc. You may have heard of people experiencing “decades of therapy” during a single psychedelic experience. As the Swiss Psychoanalyst Carl Jung once said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity is defined as the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. Clinical studies from many accredited sources suggest that psilocybin has the power to induce or accelerate neuroplasticity. To summarize, psychedelic mushrooms can help facilitate a fertile ground for our brains to heal, adapt, and change. Coupled with our desire to attain levels of higher potential, they can be an extremely useful benefit.
Deeper connections with nature and art
The consciousness-expanding qualities of psychedelic mushrooms can bring about many changes in us internally. One profound change many have noticed is a deeper connection; specifically, between themselves and things like nature and art. I won’t go too deep into the teaching power of nature and art, because this post would never end, but let’s just say they are endless teachers on their own. Psychedelic mushrooms seem to hold the power to deepen our relationship with these things, making them available as some of the most powerful teachers in human life.
Deeper connections with others
In our efforts to understand ourselves and how we can show up as better humans, we tend to realize this is in direct correlation with how we understand and show up for the ones closest to us. A very crucial effect many receive from their exploration with psilocybin is the ability to connect in deeper with other people. On the journey towards self-actualization, these connections are everything.
Heightened creativity
Self-expression is a key component in our journey toward self-actualization. This makes perfect sense, as actualizing a higher level of potential cannot be done without the offering of our gifts to the world. The connections psychedelic mushrooms help us foster can, in many ways, open up our outlets of creativity. The more we are motivated to explore modes of creation, the closer we get to understanding how we can contribute our unique energy in the best ways.
Alignment with a higher purpose
Underlying it all is the spiritual connection psychedelic mushrooms can help us deepen. By spiritual connection, I am referring to opening up ourselves to the concept that the material world we currently inhabit is not the only part of our overall existence. This can and will look different for everyone of course because our connection with the higher is a very individual experience. Transcending the nature of our physical lives and exploring our own inner world is an immeasurable asset in our pursuits to utilize this lifetime as much as we possibly can.
So far, the mechanisms underlying psychedelic mushroom’s power to help us heal and become closer to our potential are not completely understood; especially by the Western world. It is quite possible these mechanisms will never be fully understood because of the limitations of the human rational mind. Modern Western science has taken an interest in the research of psilocybin and other psychedelics and is making some progress. With all of the exploration I have been able to do on my 4-year journey with medicines, I have come to the conclusion that our planet is in desperate need of healing. I have yet to encounter a more powerful catalyst for growth and healing than psychedelic medicine, specifically psychedelic mushrooms.
With Love,
Daniel Elrose
Resonance Integration/Preparation Guide and Space Holder
