I am very grateful that this old hippie has read many posts relating to salvia in the different sections of this site. I had never experienced it before and after my various experiences with other mind altering substances over the years, I clearly knew that respect was of the essence. I investigated, learned the do's and don't's, invested in various forms of salvia, and waited until I sensed the time was right. This turned out to be Monday just after sunset, outside on a bench in a sheltered part of our yard. Behind our home is a whole living mountain (in the Blue Ridge mountains). Funky hippie house and wonderful trees, nature, sky without streetlights, privacy.

 

I decided that smoking two deep tokes of unenhanced sifted Mexican leaf would be a good first experiment, because I didn't want to be blown away until I had ""met"" the plant more gently. I had a small glass carbourator pipe and a SideLight butane lighter for pipes. I didn't use a screen but rather placed the salvia on top of a very small amount of cannabis to keep it from falling into the pipe hole.

 

After two tokes I stopped, to gage the effects. At first, because everything felt so very ""right"" and comfortable, I didn't notice anything. The wind was blowing gently and the sound of a distant plane was moving through the wind and through me as I was blowing through the wind. "Oh yes," some part of me thought. "This is it." I was also in my body at the same time that I pervaded nonlocal space/time.

 

My body was relaxed and I felt the gentle uplifting and beneficient presence of loving ""plant-ness"" within me. Or I was welcomed within it. Although on one level I was aware of my body, on other levels I was co-extensive with the plant consciousness which was stretching vast nonlocal nondistances around and within me, so gently and lovingly and acceptingly!

 

The bushes around me were conscious, caring presences. The world was sweetly breathing and I was home within myself, in a deeply familiar place where I was known by the life within and around me. I also was beneficent life. I still had language, I still was not at all disoriented, yet the concept ""I"" was not relevant. I was still me, yet this was not the dayside person-me, this was a primal self who knew the world as her own true self, and yet no thought took place.  My physical sensations are difficult to describe, strangely ""stretchy"" and co-extensive with strands of nonphysical existence. Yet natural, not scary.

I was surrounded by living energy entities which I knew and recognized although I didn't ""see"" them in the usual visual sense. I thought nothing of this, for it was so natural and familiar. When I stood up, two of these entities were with me on either side, helping me, wishing me well. Then I remembered that this was not what usually happened when I stood, and I recognized the entities as salvia space entities. At the same time, they were so friendly and familiar that I felt I had always known them, that they were always with me.

In fact, everything, plants, trees, air, space, was ""peopled"", filled with entities. We were all continuous together, while appearing separate. The illusion of separation just wasn't operative then. In fact, I myself was also pervaded by this benevolent plant intelligence. I was an organ of perception, experience, for the plant intelligence. So loving and wholeness-facilitating!

 

I realized that the plant realm uncritically and unconditionally loves humanity, loves, in fact, naturally and flowingly. And that the plant realm is our teacher, healer, and parent. That the green world is, in a sense, our local divinity, our elder teacher, and wants us to feel and know oneness also. That the plant realm contains ""code-busters"", ways of helping us to transcend our societal and cultural conditioning, ways of assisting us to expand our awareness beyond the parameters of the physical alone.

 

The seeds of a green revolution....

 

I still feel an anchoring within me of the benevolent salvia consciousness, and I now have joined the appreciators and lovers of this teaching plant, salvia divinorum, whom I have known seemingly forever.