🍄 Ceremony Day

My day began as usual—being sweetly woken by my Yuki Grace Beans model alarm clock, singing the sounds of rustling, prancing, and miscellaneous cat business…

And that is where our story takes a turn for the weird.

Rather than sharing a cohesive start-to-finish story as I’ve done in the past, I’ve crafted 5 little nuggets of whimsy to share the tale with you (sort of).

Please enjoy, and I’d love to hear what you think of this storytelling approach.

The Aligned Path / The Golden Way

I’ve wandered the forest of possibility,
Lost among the opportuni-trees,
Boughs thick with doubt and branches heavy with question.
The path, elusive. The horizon, unseen.

Through many seasons, I’ve traced my steps,
In circles, spirals, twists, and turns,
The ground beneath me foreign yet well-worn,
The paths leading nowhere.

But now, the sun moves differently—
I stand among new trees,
Where the air smells clearer,
Where the light dances on the leaves
With newfound certainty.

The trailhead, once a shadow,
Now a promise on the horizon.
I need not rush,
I need not change course,
I need only continue the walk I’m already on,
With patience by my side,
And consistency as my guide.

No need to force,
No need to find—
For The Aligned Path is near,
The Golden Way waiting,
Lined with habits slow and true,
Like the steady rhythm of breath
And the pull of a heart that knows its own direction.

And so I realize,
I’ve not lost my way,
I’m becoming one who knows
Exactly where to go.

So I’ll keep walking,
One step at a time,
Until the path, once hidden,
Becomes the way I’ve always known.

Splendid Katsu / Jesting Yuki

Regal as a queen
Lush fur shimmering in light
Haloed in splendor.

Lithe, absurd, and sweet
Mercurial and playful
Chaos wrapped in fur.

Peeling Away Reality / Cozy Cosmic Soup

The world around him unraveled, not with a violent ripping or dramatic tear, but like the slow unraveling of a sweater, thread by thread, each strand unwinding into soft, cozy, warm, welcoming nothingness. The room, the furniture, the very air seemed to dissolve, until there was nothing left but a vast, boundless expanse.

He was floating—weightless, untethered and unbothered, completely at peace.

In this space, there were no walls, no edges, no material world. Just the sensation of being near something vast and living. The pulse of the universe, quiet and rhythmic, thrummed through and around him like a heartbeat in the deep. 

In this space, he found a nourishing warmth—warmth in a way that felt like comfort embodied. The kind of warmth that comes when you curl up in a blanket on a rainy day; the kind of warmth you feel when sitting around a fire.

Wrapped in warmth, fractals bloomed before his eyes, swirling and shifting in intricate patterns, their colors shimmering, radiant, and endless. They weren’t just random shapes—but the very code of existence, the building blocks of our universe, swirling, twirling, dancing.

And he wasn’t alone. 

He sensed their presence before he saw them—figures moving through the ether. Souls. Spirits. Whatever you want to call them. Beings without bodies, drifting through the very same vastness as he. Both ingredients in a cozy cosmic soup.

They moved with elegance, like currents in the ocean, undisturbed and at ease.

There was no need to speak, an absence of desire. No words needed but “bliss.” 

Floating in that cozy cosmic soup he realized he was at the source of everything—the place we all came from and the space we’ll all go.

And he realized he yearned to stay. For he was home. He was safe. He was free. Free to be, free to exist without weight or worry—in the universe’s grand float tank. He was nothing, and everything. The spirits around him shifted and swirled in harmony, as if every being was a note in the same song, the same leaf from the same tree.

‘Twas truly a moment out of time. Heart-wrenchingly beautiful. Blissful. Perfect. Tears flowed from his eyes, yet he held no sadness in his heart. 

But somewhere deep within, an earthly tether pulled at him. Not a call, but a nudge. A gentle reminder of the life he’d left behind. When the time came to return to the physical realm, he would go—but not yet. Not yet.

For now, in this warm, gentle, infinite soup of existence, he would stay. He would float and bask in the joy of being one with everything, and nothing. 

Solve By Not Solving / Work Without Doing

Gazing through the skylight, watching the treetops dance, I thought:

"We create problems out of nothing by labelling select experiences as problems. 

If we don’t label them as problems, then problems they are not.”

The Tao Te Ching, the principle text of Daoism—an ancient Chinese philosophy and religion that emphasizes living in harmony with nature, the world, and yourself.

The Tao Te Ching is the kind of book that’ll need many reads to extract all the juice, but some ideas were overt enough to grasp on the first pass. In particular, the Daoist perspective towards work and productivity—like these

“When nothing is done,
Nothing is left undone.”

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

“By letting go it all gets done.”

These phrases aren’t saying to do nothing—but that (more) effort isn’t always the answer. Practise consistency and look for actions you can take that will have a disproportionately large result.

The Source / Welcome Home

For over a decade, my psychedelic sojourns have taken me deep—deep into the self, deep into feeling, deep into shadow, deep into memory. Each journey has unraveled knots, cracked open doors, and turned over stones I hadn’t realized I was carrying.

But for all the peeling away, for all the revelations and reckonings, for all the grand moments of epiphany and breakthrough, one experience had always eluded me.

In many people’s psychedelic stories, one particular experience comes up often—discovering the great cosmic oneness, the source from which we all come. 

That moment of undeniable connection with humanity: where your ego melts into the wind and your spirit stretches beyond the edges of your skin, into everything, and everyone, and all that ever was and will be.

But never had I reached the source.

Ten years of exploring, and never once had I found the heart of everything.

Until back in August, when the door drifted open and I stumbled through.

This time was even more… “Universey”.

As reality peeled away, I was simply there. Suspended in blue. Surrounded by something… Someone… Many someones—souls, spirits, currents of life itself, wispy and white, moving like threads, weaving together into a grand, gorgeous tapestry.

The overwhelming sensation this time around wasn't awe as before—but comfort, safety, and belonging. Like slipping into warm water after a lifetime in the cold. Like returning to a home I’d never been, but somehow always known.

With love from the forest,

~ Alexander

 P.S. Inspired by this same experience, I also wrote When Stars Appear.