One of the things I wanted to work on was finding the inner feminine in me, and as an adjunct to that, the releasing of a lover into the new place of friend only. I began thinking of that intention as I began to feel completely involved in the drug and had an experience of traveling through many of the eight planes of experiencing, to what I felt was in the fifth plane. I felt as if I were taken into a red pyramid where I met the feminine half of myself, and I felt as if the meal were a ritual symbolic of me accepting her and of her accepting me -- a marriage on some level of me with her.

After this ceremony I felt as if I were taken back to my body, where remembered about what had happened and tried out my new person by remembering several of the women I know and by visualizing myself being with them from this new place. I noticed that I felt less anxiety and fewer demands on myself and on them.

After several hours we ingested the second substance. I remember feeling a bit of anxiety about where it might take me.

I wanted to work on healing a situation that often turns unpleasant for me; it happens in the evening after I have come home alone and have no plans for the evening. I start to feel closed off and unhappy, often giving into depression and going to bed to sleep and avoid my feelings. Again I felt the presence of a dark spot in me, yet even as I tried to send it light I felt as if I was unable to reach it at this time. I remember wondering if this meant that I would need to go through some more depression and unhappiness, and I remember not wanting to do that. I felt surprised that I was unable to heal that place.

Another issue I worked on somewhat was work. I have been hitting obstacles in work and last week I was unable to go through them. The only answer I could get for myself was that I needed to bring more of myself to work. While at the ruby pyramid I thought of the situation, and the answer seemed to be that I must bring my inner-wife along to work.

At one point we went out and looked at the stars; that was a wonderful experience. Before I had always felt sort of alone and apart when looking up at the stars, but this time I felt an aliveness and a belonging to those vast distances. That was a wonderful feeling.

I had some interesting perceptions of reality. At one point one of the women was sitting at the fire place and I wanted to reach out to her. I noticed that as my thoughts about it changed, so did my perceptions of the situation: when I thought she wouldn't like it, I felt closed in and dark and unable to move, and when that passed and I realized that I didn't know what she wanted unless I did it, I felt an opening. It seemed as if each thought I had and each action I took changed the reality of the situation.

One of the most important parts for me was going to the sea the following morning after everyone was awake. I noticed that there were so many living things in the grasses on the way to the sea. Everything seemed alive.

I wanted to find something on the ocean to take back to remind me of the journey. I realized I could not will that to happen, that something would have to choose me, and that it had already been decided -- regardless of how I thought or how I acted. I realized that I might find nothing, and that that would have to be OK with me. On the way back up the hill I leaned over and picked up a piece of driftwood, the leaning coming by itself without any thought.

At one point I wandered out to the sea and stood on the edge. I recalled the place I had been during the past week of wondering whether I really wanted to live and of realizing that I could simply swim into the sea and vanish into the ocean. It felt as if that would be similar to my death, when it comes to that, that death is a being swallowed up into something greater. I felt as if it was not right for me to do that (there is a very important distinction: there was no wrongness about it, it's just that that act would not have been right). As I stood I realized that if I chose to return that I would have to take responsibility for my life, that I would have to live differently, that I would have to stand for myself. Again, after a time, I made the decision and walked up the hill.

After my choice at the ocean and walking along the beach to go back, I picked up a rock. I held it in my hands and poured into it all of my feelings of being alone and being depressed and all of my lack of aliveness, and I hurled it far out into the ocean.

Before leaving for the ocean I didn't feel a sense of fullness or particularly good. I wondered if I would go away from the session feeling scattered and alone. After coming back and sharing the meal and passing the staff, I felt a sense of well-being, and I felt this as I started to connect with people and talk with them in a new way.

Driving back into the city I had a vision of our society as like the freeway, so many people hurtling forward in cars down this tiny lane, except that it seemed in the vision that we ended up in a heap of wrecked automobiles.

I wonder about the time we live in, about the healing work that we did on the planet. There seems to be such a need for light here. Lately I have had a different sense of what reincarnation means: it means that I will be here on the earth again in the future. Sometimes I feel as if my task here is to find that healing power that was found everywhere on earth at one time in myself, and let that power be in my heart, and let it go forth from me to everyone.

Today, the day after the session, I have stayed home. I felt I needed to assimilate what has happened. I feel differently. I feel I can stand on my own two feet. I feel I can stand tall. I feel I can speak with my own voice. I notice that in the past I would consider staying home a sign of weakness, and that today I see it as a sign of being true to my process, to my self.

What else is important? I realized in the middle of the session that I had been wrong about how I saw my relationships to people. I used to feel that I must be able to be completely alone to be whole/happy. Maybe that was the cause of much of my depression. Because I experienced that I am connected with people, even when I go within to myself, somehow they are a part of me, and I am involved in giving and receiving with them. I experienced that it is OK to be connected with people, that we flow in and out of each other's lives for a reason, and that it is all right to do this, that it is in the scheme of things. I experienced that the person who no longer wants to be lovers with me is strongly connected with me for now, and that this next phase is as important and as loving as the first phases.

When I go within now I experience myself in a new sort of wholeness and completeness, yet even as I do that I feel my connections with others more strongly. It is almost as though the more I fill up the more I connect, the more I accept the connections.