By Shane the Mindbender, Luxa Strada, and Joy the Sporceress

Connect with the Green Mushroom Project in this guided meditation! First you’ll be guided through an imaginal technique to connect with our astral space, then you go off script in this Choose Your Own Adventure style activity! You can listen on the Lux Occult podcast here, watch the Youtube video below, or read it and record your own version. The script is below the Youtube video.

Light a candle with the Green Mushroom hyphosigil and settle into your normal position for meditation and work in the Imagination Zone. Let’s start with box breaths. For this meditation, a box breath is simply a long, slow inhalation with an exhalation that takes the same amount of time. Between each inhale and exhale, we’ll also pause for a few seconds. Start by inhaling for ten seconds, holding for five seconds, exhaling for ten seconds, then holding again for five seconds. After that, let your inhalation and exhalations last for however long they take for you to get a deep full breath. Just be sure to keep the pauses the same time and the breathing in and out at the same time. Deep, slow box breaths. 

Say aloud, “This work is to connect to the Green Mushroom and to enhance my own presence within and connection to the realm.”

Now we’ll awaken our own senses of connection and turn them within before we travel. We will dedicate our slowest and largest box breaths to each part listed. During each inhalation imagine pulling in energy to flood the area, and on the exhalation, imagine the energy pushing out any stagnation and dirt to be carried away on the breath. Let’s charge and cleanse our:

• Eyes (do a slow box breath)
• Ears (do a slow box breath)
• Nose (do a slow box breath)
• Lips (do a slow box breath)
• Tongue (do a slow box breath)
• Neck (do a slow box breath)
• Lungs (do a slow box breath)
• Stomach (do a slow box breath)
• Skin (do a slow box breath)
• Hands (do a slow box breath)
• Feet (do a slow box breath)

Now on this inhalation imagine pushing all that energy from your physical body into your imaginal body. As you exhale, rise and step out of your physical body. Take only a cursory glance at your space as you make your way outside. You’ve chosen this journey to grow the Green Mushroom’s mycorrhizal connections and it’s time to begin. Do you feel it pulling from within? Could it be the spirit of the place that calls?

The moment you walk out the door, a little green person with a mushroom cap for a head waves from hip height and smiles up at you. You reach out to touch its cap, but it climbs you in a couple of deft hops. The little servitor scoops under both your arms and you suddenly feel lighter. 

You look up and its cap is expanding into something between a parachute and a hot air balloon. A glance back down confirms that you are climbing into the sky and your home is shrinking with the land under you. Your whole neighborhood and community shrink to nothing more that miniatures and squares of color. Can you feel the wind on your face? How does the breeze smell?

Soon you are floating over a deep forest. A couple landmarks poke out of the trees. You recall those spots from the trail that leads from the physical into the realm of the Green Mushroom. Then you see the dome, gently glowing in the astral twilight in its clearing. You descend gently until you land on the ground in a soft jog. The servitor has shrunken back to its original size and joined several of the other servitors at play on the lawn in front of the great doors, marked with the hyphosigil. You pat its cap in thanks for the ride and approach the entry. The scent of the flower garden fills your awareness as you cross the lawn.

The guard gives a nod of recognition and pushes open a door. You enter and behold a warm hearth and songs. Members of the Council are laughing together. Someone gestures to show you there is room for one more at their table. You share warm greetings as you sit. There are many faces in the walls, the place lives and breathes like flowers that open at night, like a stream of clear water running through a moss-covered bank. The air is laced with the scent of spices, cloves and cinnamon, vanilla and cream, loamy earth, and the smell of rain. Returning is like being welcomed home after a long journey narrowly survived. There’s joy in seeing what was thought lost, the relief of safety, the promise of wholeness and power wielded well. The feeling lets you know that there is no limit to the stars we will find in this sky.

For a while you enjoy the atmosphere. How is it making you feel? (pause 30 seconds)

You rise and approach the bar, ready to order your usual. The bartender looks up and his face warms into a well-worn smile. Then his expression falls slack and his eyes glow green. He casts a pointing finger at the direction of the shared altar. An image of aviator googles flashes in your mind. Round lenses rimmed in metal within thick leather straps. 

Who’s thought was that? It certainly wasn’t your own. You glance back at the bartender. Still pointing. A quick look at the door shows the guard, frozen stock still, and pointing to the altar. Another flash of goggles. 

You navigate the room, no one else seems to have noticed the bartender and guard’s strange behavior. Your friend from the table grins and waves you farewell before returning their attention to the group.

The goggles that flashed in your head are in front of you on the altar. Somehow, you know that they are meant for you. As you put them on, your suspicion is confirmed. You don’t even need to adjust the straps. Don’t they feel like a perfect fit?

The voice of the bartender catches your attention. He’s back to normal. So is the guard. A new image flashes in your mind. It looks like a map of the green mushroom. In addition, nestled between the base of the stalk and the mycorrhizal root system underneath, is an icon in the shape of a human brain. Your body feels drawn to the space. That thought within that feels foreign is the Green Mushroom itself and it wants you to enter the very center of its consciousness. You know the icon represents something more abstract than the physical organ. You suddenly are sure of it.

Your eyes roam across the tavern in the direction of the brain on the thought map. There’s a faint green trail of energy starting at your navel and leading to a tunnel on the far wall. You cross the space and climb into the tunnel. It’s walls gently press against you. Any tension, dread, stress, fear, or anxiety lingering in your body from your waking life is gently brushed off by contact with the tunnel walls. Take a moment to feel it within you and guide it out (pause 30 seconds).

You emerge into a small dark womblike space. Roots make up the entire floor of the space and give a gentle green glow. You are looking at the brain of the Green Mushroom. The tightest bundle of its consciousness. This consciousness is knitted together from diffuse and different sources, visitors, creators, and thoughtforms mingle and come together.

You feel a presence in the space with you and know that it is the Green Mushroom itself. For a moment, there is a warmth, like a friendly hug. You spin about, as if being redirected and in front of you on an altar is a grapefruit sized spore. It gives off a pale glow, a brighter and lighter shade of green than most of the emerald hues. 

The image of a flexing arm holding a telephone flashes in your mind. You wonder if the mushroom wants you to pick up the spore. Is this how you are going to connect? You wait for the feel of a warm squeeze in affirmation.

You pick up the spore and something within you knows to hold it up to your chest. The feel of the spore is springy and light, kind of like a rubber ball. As you press it against yourself, it slides right into you. It feels warm, like a tea that has cooled just enough for a drink, rather than a sip. Your body glows. You feel yourself connecting deeper and more clearly with this realm. To the Green Mushroom network. You feel it’s healing power wash through you. Can you feel it? Your imaginal body is glowing now, illuminating the entire room, making you squint for a moment. The glowing light around you collects into a small cloud and then forms into a decal of your goggles.

The front of the altar the spore was on looks bare, so you place the decal on it. With your palm flat, smoothing it into place, you imagine what the council can accomplish when we all lean into our collective power within this astral temple. As you inhale, you feel the energy from the Green Mushroom wash through you. As you exhale your breath carries decay, disease, and fatigue out to be absorbed through the mycorrhizal root system. You can feel the others on the council also making their connections. Each one adds to the whole, each a part of this symbiotic cycle of growth and decay. Of mingling life.  (pause 30 seconds)

The thought map reappears. This time, there is a little symbol of the goggles overlaid on the brain. A new light appears on the upper level of the mushroom. The icon on the map seems distorted, or fuzzy. A satchel appears on the altar. It is full of spores. An image of a dozen flexing arms holding telephones flashes in your mind.

You shut the satchel’s flap and put on the straps. A beam of energy bursts from your navel to a tunnel next to the one that brought you here. This one acts more like an air current or an invisible elevator. 

You stumble out backward and realize you are on the upper level, in the corridor leading to all the council members’ private chambers. The light beam directs you clockwise and you begin to follow. (pause for 10 seconds).

Someone is up ahead of you in the hall. You know it’s a human’s imaginal form, but you can’t make out more than a silhouette filled with light. Do you smell them? Can you hear them? They wave. You gesture to the satchel and smile. Then transmit the thought of them connecting through the spore and pull one out.

They nod in approval and reach for the spore. Hold on with them until an image appears to you. Like the goggles decal, this will be a symbol of their and your connection. Another node in the network. (pause for 30 seconds)

They take the spore now and press it into their chest. The decal appears and they hand it to you. Their green glow begins to fade, and you begin to glow. (pause for 10 seconds) <This is where the production group will imagine them pulling our little green umbrellas>

Look around and find the perfect spot for the decal and place it. You and they both place a hand on the decal take a couple breaths while plugged into this new node. Feel the energy circulate and grow. You see the sun and then you see the moon. You are sharing a moment with the other council members in a time when they have also gazed into the sun or moon. You are all connected through time. Connected first as people and second through this place and this moment. (pause 15 seconds)

Your guidance is over, and now your work begins in earnest. Use your goggles and bag of spores to make more connections. When you are finished share the symbols and anything noteworthy in the Green Mushroom astral temple thread on the FBC Discord Server, on Instagram, or at [email protected]. Imagine how awesome it will be if you read another person’s experience and KNOW that they connected you! There’s also an Easter Egg built into this meditation, and we are stoked to see how it manifests for you. It tends to present differently for each traveler! 

Finally, ground your experience of connection into waking life by carving out time to give something back to the green mushroom council or your local physical community.

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Resist!