I am a little off balance now as I walk. And so it begins.

Large ants crawl on the Mexican blanket. I am interested in their movements.

The shadows have caught my attention as they dissipate with the movements of the clouds between the sun and the ground.

It is starting to open up. Ideas in my head seem to be connected.

My friends are talking on the deck above. I am on the patio below. Their words are disruptive. They are talking about college.

I have a desire to put on my shoes and go into the woods.

I am going into the woods, to discover species anew and to give them new names.

It is hard to write
With the light so bright
On white paper

As I put my pen to paper, I almost forget the words, but still they come to me somehow, flowing from objective reality itself, then through my senses, and seamlessly into Word.

I feel the sun hot on my shoulders through my shirt.

An ant crawls up the leg of my shorts.

I have found a convenient stump to sit on and write.

There is an ant on my left pointer finger, probing me with his antennae.

I need to get out of the sun. My neck is already burnt.

I am tripping, assuredly. I have wandered a bit farther into the woods, where there is some shade. I stepped across a crumbling trunk, like a balance beam, to get here.

I can hear my friends laughing behind me.

I begin to feel fear for the future; fear because this good feeling will come to an end.

I remember the Bene Gesserit mantra: “Fear is the mind killer.”

The fear comes from my ego. When I remember that I am part of all this, the fear goes away.

There are certain words that reassure me. They are often phrases or quotations. Some degree of spirituality, it seems, is just to memorize words, and then, when the right time comes:

(1) Recognize the appropriate situation.

(2) Recite the words in your mind.

(3) Let action flow forth from your body with the realized meaning of those words.

Again, I start to think of the future, and ill feelings immediately follow. Stay present! Stay mindful! This is the heart of my practice.

I fear so much for the future. I fear so much for my ego.

I am concerned for the physical health of my body.

I am concerned from the performance of my financial investments.

Even as a bug lands on my hand, I check to make sure it is not a bee that can sting me. So what if it is?

I am a part of all this. If the bee stings me, it is a part of all this.

It is like the book that I cannot recall the name of. Ishmael, there it is.

He talks of how man was in sync with nature before. This is how it should be. This is the answer.

All of man’s developments have placed him in a position above nature. Many of man’s modern problems would be solved if he would return to his place in nature.

Now, that seems unlikely. It would mean the death of many humans on our overpopulated planet. We have trodden too far down this track.

I hear my friends laughing in the distance. I wonder if they appreciate the deeper power of the trip. Or do they take it all to be just funny visuals?

As they speak with each other, they are kept from going deeper into their own minds.

I think of the time. I do not have a watch. I am fully tripping now.

I wonder how long I have been standing in this place. My legs have held me just fine, but when I look at them, I am unsure of how they operate.

I do feel taller. This is something Sean mentioned he often feels while tripping.

When I misspell a word or scribble, I think, “Don’t worry, they’ll get it.”

But I must realize, they won’t get it. All of THIS, is captured only in my humble words.

I should stop writing and enjoy it.

It occurs to me to draw.

I laugh at myself for thinking I could draw such beauty.

I start to feel ill feelings. I feel them run a familiar track inside of me. I see them, like rushing rivers, encountering the dam of my heavily-fortified ego.

I observe, dangerously at this time, what my ego is built of.

The wind blows. I let it pass. I pick it back up.

My ego is built from who I think I am. My history, my present physical body, what others say about me …

It is hard to keep track of this thought.

I am fully tripping. I have stood in one place for so long, I had almost forgotten what it’s like to move.

I am fully tripping—these exact words occur to me again.

I constantly have these thoughts:

– What should I be doing?

– Is this, what I’m doing right now, productive?

And then I start to think into the future about what will be most productive …

I have to remind myself, that is not the game we are playing.

Stay here. Stay present.

It strikes me how easily I forget. I have an ill feeling, and then I am distracted, and then I forget.

Even control over my body seems to be something I could part ways with, other than for the convenience of my fingers which hold this pen to write.

Things occur to me as being beautiful, and in that moment of occurrence, nothing else matters. My senses are fully immersed in the beauty, like the sight of a crumbling tree trunk, split open and filled with forest debris. So dead, but so perfectly at home.

I think, how will these words sound to the others who read them?

I remind myself, it does not matter. Stay here. Stay present.

Of all the bugs, mosquitoes are the only ones I swat. I do not so much mind the prick and the drawing of blood. I am more worried about disease.

This idea of disease, planted in me by society, affects my behavior towards other living creatures. Again, I think of reading Ishmael.

I cough to spit. It surprises me that I have a throat and a mouth.

I am so at home in the woods right now. The wind blows through my hair, just like it does through the leaves in the trees.

I hear something behind me, a rustle in the leaves. I feel the desire to make myself unseen, to crouch low, to hide.

I feel that I understand my ancient ancestors in this moment. At the same time, I feel the call back to civilization.

I think of my friends and the house, and I smile.

I am surprised to feel my facial muscles smiling.

As the sun shines and the birds chirp, I am filled with so much love for nature.

A moment ago, it was dark. The clouds covered the sun. I was scared of what I could not see among the trees. I was alone.

I am resistant to going back, to have to talk.

I know it will be hard to stay out here for too long. I do not know the ways of the woods. I would lose. I do not want to lose, and so starts the civilization of man.

I was born civilized. At this point, it would take much undoing.

I see a runner on the street through the woods. It invokes a feeling of familiarity.

From where I stand writing in the woods, I feel perfectly balanced between far away from, and still close by, to civilization.

If I were farther into the woods alone, I might feel a more primal fear for my survival.

As I see things on the forest floor, I lean down with my paper and pen, like a photographer with a camera.

I hear trucks on the road. I remember what people have told me in the past.

I just feel so happy, particularly to be inside of my body.

To be contained in a physical being, capable of realizing thought.

The body is a beautiful thing. More than just the beauty of its form, but also of its function—to realize thoughts and feelings.

The importance of yoga, to cultivate this connection between body and mind, occurs to me now.

It is a practice I could spend my whole lifetime learning.

In contrast, I am less interested in certain aspects of my job. There are aspects that seem far removed from man’s natural state. Like keeping the body seated in the same desk chair all day.

—

Woah! A mother moose and a child moose just passed, not more than forty feet from where I am standing here in the woods.

At first, I felt immense fear. I could not tell what was near me in the woods, other than that it was big—bigger than a bird or a chipmunk.

Your eyes play tricks on you between the branches in the trees.

I am being bitten by mosquitoes. I choose to return to civilization, knowing the risks.

I am sad to leave. I must remember the connectedness to nature that I experienced here.

—

I hear my friends and their words. I cannot speak to them. They must come out here into the woods and experience it for themselves.

All around me, the forest floor is alive, mostly with ants. There are also mosquitoes, flying and landing.

There are many aspects. You do not need to fear that it will be over. It will continue. Whether your ego is involved, does not matter. You are a part of it all.

But these mosquitoes are insufferable!

I feel a drop of rain—another element forcing me to return.

My friends talk too much.

They do not wait in silence long enough to experience it themselves.

—

I look back at Marie, I think to talk to her as Marie—she, of the flesh and blood, with whom I share memories.

But she is not the same, as she appears to me now. She is participating in the One. She is a soul, and that’s all that matters.

I think of my own flesh. Am I housed in the bones I would choose? What does it matter, if we’re all the same.

These words are so meager. What art form then? What form could capture this most fully?

There is the question, first, of what art form could capture a lived experience most fully. Then, there is the question of what art form could capture THIS (tripping) most fully.

It occurs to me now that the “come up” has passed. We have arrived at the plateau.

—

I am not sure if any of the others would be willing to participate in this experience in the way that I participate in it.

The woods are a very clear analogy. Deeper in the woods, there is only the sound of wind in the leaves. The only movements are the ants on the ground.

Back at the house, there is music from man-made speakers, man-made words, and even man-made men.

These man-made men are the ones who do not understand.

I think of Ishmael again.

We come from nature, that is where we will find ourselves in order.

Man does not understand himself. Not even the accumulated knowledge of generations of man thinkers can understand one single man.

How then, can we expect man to build himself?

He cannot do the job of nature.

It occurs to me now, how brilliant the book Ishmael really is.

Even as I write these words, I realize that going back to read them will not be the same.

Impossible to achieve the same understanding.

—

I am aware of the ground being alive with ants. I cannot look anywhere on the ground where I do not see an ant.

These ants are like men—successful, relative to other species, and still working to further themselves.

The operations of nature make sense to me in terms of business. An enterprising species will take market share from others and win.

I almost caught a look of myself reflecting in the window, blue bandana. I looked away, not wanting to see my face.

Talking aloud to Marta, my voice sounds inadequate. I wish it were more musical.

—

You have to have your art form ready, before the experience.

When you are awash in the storm of your emotions, there must already be an artistic channel, into which that emotion might pour.

Without a specified channel, the emotion will search for one.

I am an emotional person, I realize now. I always have been. This emotion is my power. It fuels my actions.

—

If I allow it, the economy will engulf me here where I stand in this moment with the skills I have to offer, and my hopes and dreams to be used as motivators to put my skills to work.

The economy does not care where I land. It does not care what profession I choose. It will get use out of me, one way or another. This is management, the business of getting use out of people. And the managers report to investors, and so on.

This is the nature of the economy—investors pushing people to do things (who then push other people to do things) to make more money. It is the investor’s passion for more that sets the whole economy in motion.