Mara/The Magic Mushroom
Mara
The mushroom is a symbol of the false promise that drugs and alcohol offered in the first days of my use. The lie was that they were the path to freedom, to liberation. In psychedelic experience, there seemed the possibility of spiritual transformation, union with a higher power, but the effect was fleeting and the negative side effects enduring.
The self is a filter (complex
cognitive structure) surrounding an imagined inner core. This primordial inner
core is delicate and in need of protection from the world. This is the prime
directive of the filter. This filter repels that which it deems to be a danger
to this inner self and absorbs that which it deems to reinforce the protective
filter. It ignores anything it deems to be neutral. The filter constricts around
this imagined inner self, using energy to accomplish it ends. It has to be in a
constant state of vigilant, tension to do its job.
As it repels and attracts it
creates a complex self-adapting system based on rules or beliefs that it devises
to make decisions about what can be let in and what must be kept out. This
system may not operate so much as a central intelligence as it does a set of
individual rules or beliefs that act like gatekeepers, evaluating incoming
material according to each individual rule’s design. The impression is that
all the rules or beliefs are operating in consort guided by a master
intelligence when in fact each rule is doing it's own job without regard to
other rules or beliefs in the system. All rules are sub rules of the master rule
that the imagined inner self is fragile and needs protection.
Use of a mood altering substances,
relaxes this barrier system, disinhibiting it and consequently reducing the
tension and energy consumption that the system requires to keep itself
operational. The reduction of tension is sensed as euphoria. There is openness
as constriction is reduced that is very pleasurable. This creates an artificial
sense of transcendence because the experience simulates the dropping of the
barrier and the making of unbound contact with the world of the real. Some types
of meditation result in relaxation of the barrier as well. It is possible with
insight meditation to dismantle the barrier, rule upon rule, until contact with
the reality occurs. This contact has no inner and outer, no duality. There is no
fragile, primordial inner self to protect like a bubble filed with air. The self
is a construct of the barrier. When the barrier delusion is over come, there is
clarity, unity, harmony, and integration.