Dear Steemians,

I wanted to write this post for so long, but somehow didn't know how to start. When I am thinking about my journey as a psychonaut exploring my psyche and consciousness, which has shaped me forever, there are so many things coming to my mind and feelings awakening in my heart.

So I decided to just write and look where it leads me. I just got the very strong impulse to do so and share my experiences with you during the last time and today this calling became so loud that I decided to follow it and finally do so.

I don't know if it is of any value to you. I don't know if you guys will even read it. But there is this feeling deep down inside me, that I have to write it down for myself. And I am sure it will reach exactly those ones of you, who will need it, be inspired, feel understood, or simply like to join my journey.

Honestly – my ego still tells me to do a „normal“, well structured and organized post. But my heart and soul wish to just do some free writing and free everything that wants to be shared with the world.

And as I am a psychonaut, I thought: „Hey, this is exactly what psychonauts do! They follow the call of their soul, dive deep into their own mind and release everything that wants to come up! And if there is this urge within me, telling me to release all my experiences and all the words that want to be read, heard and wrote down, I should do so. And just watch what happens!“

I don't do this for attention. I don't do this to earn a lot of money. Honestly, I don't really know why I do this at all, yet. But I feel it's right!

So thank you to everyone of you who joins me, thank you to universe for connecting the right people to my blog and this post and thank you for giving me the chance to share what changed me forever...

A photo of me processed with the Deep Dream Generator

Why I decided to become a psychonaut

I used to be very depressed and also suicidal for many, many years. PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) accompanied me day and night. Nothing in life seemed to make me happy. I felt lost within life, lost within myself. Life was just a cage to my mind. And it hurt as hell to have this spirituality within me since I am a child, knowing how precious life is and what a gift our body and this whole journey is.

But I just couldn't feel anything of that anymore. I simply couldn't relate to it for a long time. I felt disconnected from this miracle.

With every year I became more and more blocked, isolated and life made no sense to me at all at some points. But there was this wisdom inside me, how great, mysterious and amazing this all is. How connected we all are and what we are able to feel and experience in this life. And I wanted to belong to the ones taking their chance and making the best out of it – but I just couldn't! And this was the worst feeling ever to me!

I felt like a bird, knowing it can fly and discover the world and all its beauty but is caught in a cage not able to spread the wings and be free.

I went from one psychotherapist to the next one. And I learned a lot of things that helped me to handle my depression and PTSD. With every session I learned more about the reasons I am depressed. But I still felt lost within myself. I understood the reasons, but I didn't really understand ME.

When I was a teenager, I remembered how connected to nature, the universe and my true self I felt as a child, before I felt like caught in a mental prison. All the spiritual experiences and epiphany moments came up to my mind. I suddenly felt this mysterious feeling inside me again that seemed to be so much greater than I am and it just left me in an awe!

That moment I decided: This is where I want to return to! I want to feel this connection again I felt when I was a child! I want to really understand myself and find my place! I want to know who I truly am!

It became more and more obvious to me, that I would not find that in a doctor's office or any other place at the outside. Deep within me I knew that the questions I had could only be answered by a mysterious knowledge that lies within me. So deep, that I really had to go on a journey towards a secret and pure place inside me, no one else could ever travel to, except myself.

I knew and felt it could become frightening. I knew it wouldn't be easy. But remembering my spiritual and epiphany moments I bore within me my whole life and burried under the veil of depression and PTSD, my decision was made and sealed – I wanted to return to this place inside me.

I wanted to make the journey of my life. I wanted to explore every hidden corner of myself. I wanted to become a psychonaut!

So I started to meditate regularly, eat healthy, read a lot of spiritual books and made a lot of different psychedelic experiences that changed my life forever...

I decided to free myself from this cage I had been into for so long, burn down what I had become and rise happily from my old ashes and fly for the very first time – I decided to become Endorphoenix!

My husband and me processed with the Deep Dream Generator

Some of my most shaping psychedelic insights and how they helped me to set myself free

Before I tell you more about my insights I want you to know a few things.

Doing psychonaut excursions into your own mind, may they be initiated by meditation, trance, dancing, psychedelic plants and substances or other things, can be very deep and painful.

Please know that these are only my experiences and that these kind of journeys are never the same. Everyone experiences psychedelic journeys in their own, unique way.

Every psyche is different and as psychedelic (= revealing the psyche) experiences reveal your own consciousness and mind to you on the deepest possible level, it will always be different from person to person.

If you are interested in exploring yourself on this profound level, please inform yourself and don't be reckless as what you have experienced and seen can not be undone.

As I know how powerful it is to be a psychonaut it was just important to me to tell you, so thank you for your understanding! :)

But let's continue...

After any psychedelic experience and epiphany I had, I wrote down my insights in some small notebooks. I want to share some of the most important ones with you and explain you in cursive writing below, how it shaped me and how it changed my life.

The insights

1. You have to get lost to find yourself
This insight means a lot to me as I always used to be very scared when I felt far away from myself or lost. Now I remember this sentence when I do so and it helps me to keep in mind that getting lost is not about losing yourself, but to take a step back to look at yourself from another perspective so you will even know yourself better in the end. Even if it feels scary at the beginning.

2. As I am the creator of my reality and world, I need to change myself if there is anything on the outside that I don't like and it will change with me
Accepting this as my truth helped me a lot to stop seeking the guilt and responsibility in others. I started to create my world the way I like by creating myself instead of trying others to change my life to the better. This gave me so much freedom and I feel so much more empowered. I am no longer a victim, but a creator!

3. Everything is connected.Everything is a part of the whole
By experiencing and understanding this I gained so much love and emotional security. Since I felt this connection for the very first time, I feel so much more connected to the universe, life and myself. Whenever I feel lonely, I get aware of that and I feel instantly way better.

4. God is an all-embracing consciousness that created everything to experience himself. We are the feelings, experiences etc. of God. Through us and the creation God gains his meaning. Every creation is a part of the source and therefore divine. This is why there are positive and negative things in life. God wants to know every possible aspect of being. That's why creation is so versatile in the way it looks like, feels, its skills and the consciousness. Through his creation, God explores and expresses himself and learns
Knowing we are all divine, serving God, the source, in a beautiful way to express himself in any way just left me in an awe. Feeling the connection to the source and actually being aware of being a part of the divine just made me so thankful for life and feel so protected and blessed.

5. I am not my body, it is only my vehicle in this world. I am not my feelings, they are just my reactions on what I experience. I am not my psyche, it is only my warning system telling me if everything is fine and whether I am on my path or not. I am not my ego, it is my compass in this human experience and seperates me from the source in a way that makes this whole journey called life possible. I am something that is above all that, something so much bigger. If I dive deeper and deeper within myself I can find God within me. Everyone of us can. Deep down inside us we are the source, we are one!
This left me speechless and to be honest – it still does...

6. Everything flows. Nothing stands still. Dancing is the romance with life, as if we dance, we flow, we are truly alive
This is one of the main reasons I started to dance. And the best thing: When I dance I can reach a trance state and connect to the source again. The feeling is more than overwhelmingly beautiful! I always had a bad connection to my body as I used to be overweight since I am a kid and I was always ashamed of moving my body. I got bullied and due to my depression I isolated myself later, almost doing nothing at all anymore. I stood still. My body felt like frozen. Dancing? It was unimaginable to me back then. Today, since I got this insight and felt the importance of a vivid flow and discovered the magical connection to the source it creates, dancing became my passion and I even dance amongst hundreds of people! And when I do so I feel how true this insight is – life is a flow and we are not meant to stand still.

7. If you're scared and the situation seems or is uncontrollable, just remember you're like a tree in the storm. If we remember our own roots and trust them, nothing can happen to us. We are rooted deep within, just dancing in the storm. As we form our reality we should show confidence in ourselves
Whatever happens to me and how bad I may feel- if I remember this, I feel so anchored within myself and prepared for every storm life will bring to me and only grow stronger instead of being afraid.

8. What we can see is an almost ridiculously small part of all that is. We see what we humans need to see to have the expereince of life. But there is so much more we are not aware of. Whole dimensions, unseen truths and other things we are not aware of or are able to perceive with our mind
This insight kept me so motivated in doing meditation on a regular basis, discover my own truth and the things we are not able to see with our physical eyes. Discovering the mysteries of life and the universe became my passion and this magical mission gave back so much vitality and sense to me when I was depressed. I suddenly felt like I had taken a glimpse to a greater reality, lifted the veil and woke up the adventurer and exlporer within me again. This gave me so much energy, the will to learn and the strenght to face myself and so my own truth. I can't describe with words how much this helped me to fight depression as this started to look so much smaller to me after this insight. I felt there was so much more, I was so much more.

9. Our truth is only our truth. There isn't something like an absolute truth for anybody. Truth is an individual illusion that helps us to navigate through life and make our unique experiences
Getting aware of that helps me a lot to relax if someone has a completely different point of view. I used to feel attacked by that sometimes, but now I know everyone has his/her own truth. This makes interactions with people so much more peaceful to me as I can tell my ego: „It's his/her right to have an own truth! You also have yours and won't change it just because someone dosen't share the way you see things!“

10. Life is a game and we should learn the rules so we can make it OUR game!
By learning about things like the law of attraction, dissolving blockades, discovering self-love and self-responsibility and more, I learned more and more about the rules of life and feel like an active creator and player of the game of life instead of feeling like being played and so having a life as a victim of circumstances

11. Who truly loves him-/herself is no longer afraid of rejection
And to me (and maybe to many, many others) the fear of rejection is the reason why I never really enfolded me, why I hold myself back and why I did things I did not want to do (jobs, meetings, friendships...). So finding the way to self-love and so losing the fear of rejection set me free on a whole new and unknown level and is my key to live an authentic life

12. God did not create us to limit ourselves. If I limit myself and don't live my unique life and purpose, I do not fulfill my divine mission. I can not serve a higher purpose and I am not useful to my fellow humans this way. I should live free and wild and so inspire the others to do so, too! If we all live authentically, we live a divine life. Being ourselves, live in love and harmony and so inspiring ohers to do the same and set themselves free is the true purpose of life (and a LOT of fun!)
I almost eagerly searched for a purpose in life when I was depressed. When I grasped that the meaning of life is to just be and act by the voice of your heart I felt so released from this endless search for something that would never be found. I just had to learn how to trust and love myself again and the path and purpose of life became so clear to me.

13. I am not my past and not my future. I am NOW. And I can therefore create myself new everyday I wake up. I am able to create a new Linda everyday and leave behind anything that dosen't serve me anymore today
As a person that tended to stuck in the past, this helped me a lot to let go and go on. I have the right and possibility to be a whole new person everyday. I only have to be aware of that fact and take the chance and do so!

14. The key to holistic healing lies within us. And by healing us, we are healing the whole universe
I used to feel like there should be a savior, pulling me out of my missery and I wondered and felt angry why it never happened. When I realized I had the key to healing myself within me and all this frustration, desolation and hopelessness had blocked me in seeing it and being able to use this key and open the door to true and deep healing, I was completely overwhelmed. Since I started to do anything to heal myself, I feel and see how also people around me find healing with me. And it feels so much more rewarding than I ever expected!

15. Everything is energy and frequency and I can change my reality by changing them. For example by having positive thoughts and vibes or by singing healing songs
Therefore I started to sing everyday and listen to some healing sounds when I feel bad. And it really works for me so super well!

"Overflowing consciousness"- A drawing I made after I had a psychedelic experience

These are only a few of my countless insights I had. All of them shaped me, set me free and helped me to live authentically. I learned that I am not my feelings, which was one of the most important lessons ever to me. To some people this might sound obvious, but to someone identifying herself for many years with a mental illness like depression and PTSD, this was so much more than liberating. I finally understood that my feelings only communicate me what's inside me and that I am not on my soul-path. I am not my depression. It is a warning system, and I am not a warning system, I am a fractal of the divine source making a human experience that may feel heavy and bad from time to time. But it can be our chance to get back on track if we learn to truly see ourselves!

Thank you so much for reading! It means a lot to share that with you and it feels so good to finally write it down!

Did you have any life changing psychedelic insights? I would LOVE to read your psychonaut wisdoms! :)

Much love and light to you 🕉

Yours Linda