Storm Journey - making the medicine

Although I have been a mushroom guide for many years, it might be surprising that I don't frequently partake in the medicine. Instead, I often hear it communicating with me without needing to consume it. However, during a recent cyclone, I felt compelled to embark on a journey with the elements, and I am very thankful that I heeded that call.

After spending some time in the elements—the swirling wind and water—I returned to my room and settled into my body for what would become the most enlightening journey I've experienced since my initiation in Palenque, Mexico, with my guide Gabriel.

Initially experiencing my own body felt like a sacred ritual, forming a divine union within by merging my inner feminine and masculine in a holy marriage. I was in awe of the sacred temple of my inner world, which resembled a crystalline sanctuary.

I was visited by an Aztec guide who spoke to me in Spanish, thankfully, as I don't understand Nahuatl. He handed me a poisonous nut, which I went to discard, but he stopped me and offered to teach me how to 'cure' the nut. The word 'cure' has two meanings: to heal, and to preserve food. I assumed he meant he would show me how to preserve the nut. He explained that if I took my time with the process and remained patient, the nut would eventually transform into a powerful medicine... and that's where the second meaning of 'cure' becomes relevant.

This lesson has remained with me, revealing numerous facets since the journey. After the Aztec Ancient visit, the cat I'm caring for jumped onto my bed and nestled in the crook of my arm. As I stroked her during my journey, she guided me to Ancient Egypt. There, I encountered a Fierce and Beautiful Goddess who purposefully approached me in a grand chariot, and together we entered her snake temple.

She didn't teach her lesson through words; she embodied and transmitted it. Just being in the temple with her allowed me to absorb her teachings. I can't put it into words here; it was beyond description. It was a deeply personal experience that moved me in a tremendously.

The experience seemed more genuine than much of what we refer to as 'ordinary life'. It was far more expansive, vivid, and real than anything I have encountered in the mundane. It wasn't a dreamlike state or meditation but rather intensely embodied and tangible.

Here's something you might find intriguing: I didn't take much of the medicine. It was a very small amount, which brings me to some realizations—the significance of intention, the importance of 'who' you share your journey with, and trusting in divine timing.

As the journey softened and I returned more fully into my body, I began to understand what had been shown to me.

The medicine was never in the quantity I took, but in the way I met it. The poisonous nut was not something outside of me—it was a reflection of all that appears difficult, overwhelming, or even harmful at first encounter. What the guide showed me was not just how to transform it, but how to be in relationship with it. To slow down. To stay present. To allow time itself to become part of the alchemy.

In that sense, “curing” is not something we do to a thing, but something we participate in with it.

The Goddess did not give me language because none was needed. Her teaching lived in the body—in trust, in surrender, in the willingness to receive without needing to understand. Where the guide offered instruction, she offered embodiment.

Since that journey, I’ve come to see that intention is not just about what we seek, but how we listen. That who we share space with—human, animal, or otherwise—shapes the doorway we walk through. And that timing is not something we control, but something we align with.