Mine’s the choice and it is my responsibility. This is truly what freedom of choice represents. Maddening, liberating, tempting and devastating all at once. I feel there is wisdom in what I have been told. Some of that wisdom simply rubs off on the internal me. I simply don’t care. I’d revel the possibility of taking the huge dose.

  The abundance of things that can happen, internally and externally. To truly light up this interior darkness of mine. I am far too curious about the second dose to try the first one. Isn’t the first one simply absent of experience? I’ll take the second dose.

  I put them against my heart and try to listen to their voice. What might I hear if I don’t know their voice. Just by touching these wet mushrooms, my skin absorbs some of their juices. They start coursing through me, even whilst being unaware of that. The first contact is laid out.

  I feel as if I should add 3 more to my dose, so that’s what I do. I prefer putting them before me to simply look at them for a while.

  Henry lies down and stems his head on his two palms. He just lies there for a while and before he realises it he has fallen asleep from the exertions of the day.

  The next day as he wakes up from very vivid dreams, he goes out to check on Bhosun.

  “Hey mate, how’s your journey been?”

  “Beyond falling asleep, not much has happened.”

  “Your body has chosen for you, for the moment. Good. Well you know where they are. You can always let your body decide otherwise.

  For today’s lesson we will look closer at the other two mushrooms, that also light up, as compared to the fourth one, arising from my dung. As you can see they have an other shape but all three are gilled mushrooms, as in they have a stem and a cap on top with gills on the underside of them. All three are bioluminescent, are thus lighting the space but have a different colour and shape.

  One is green with yellow dots but the shape is the same as the blue one, with a greenish light around it. The stem is growing wider the higher up on the stem you are, finishing on a flat surface with the indent. It resembles a cone upside down. It is around a finger wide so slightly smaller than the blue one and the stem is a hand high just like the blue one. The cap may turn wavy in it’s growth cycle, which the blue one doesn’t do.

  The other is purple without dots and a flat rounded hat. The stem is slightly longer than the other two and the cap is really the tiniest of those three, only being one half of a finger wide. They are all unique in their looks and taste. Of the health benefit I don’t really know much, as I can’t reliably test that, even though I only eat these as my diet, being a healthy bugger should mean they work for me and my particular digestion. The taste we have already observed. Most importantly, I can still learn from these three and hope to create new varieties that open up further possibilities.”

  “Let’s eat some more, I’ll let you choose those you think are harvestable. Serve yourself but don’t take too much, they are very nourishing. You take the mushroom at its stem and twist it in either direction, it should let loose from the mycelial web. Since the mushrooms have been there before me, they are perfectly able to survive on their own.

  All I do is enlarge the space where they are able to grow. By placing them on different kinds of rocks, the mushrooms find other minerals to feed on and thus slowly diversify. Even if my sense of time might be off down here, it seems to take a while for diversification to happen. How they feed on those rocks, that’s where it gets remarkable.

  The spores are quite big and visible by the eye, they resemble a sponge, the size of a sand grain. I place them on the crushed minerals under water, by shaking the cap above them. When the concentration of the necessary nutrients is high enough inside of the spore and thus the water, very fine tendrils form around it.

  The tendrils join each other forming a web of mycelium joining the spores together, helping the whole to get stuck so the spores stop moving around all the time. The mycelial web will over time grow around the minerals, which is another requisite for mushroom growth, otherwise the mycelial web will continue vegetating and grow no harvestable fruit.

  Once enough interconnecting mycelia have grown, the fruiting body can grow out of the solidified mineral mass. The fruiting body needs to rise out of the water. Once a mushroom is mature it begins dropping spores, which disperse through the water. Inadvertently that also means that when the water level is too high, the mushroom head can’t stick out of the water and it withers away.”

  ‘‘So you’re telling me that the mushroom feeds itself on crushed up minerals? There is no nourishment for them in a stone, or is there?”

  “These mushrooms are the proof that they can live like that, I don’t need to question it beyond that.”

  “You maybe don’t need to question what works, but it doesn’t hurt to be curious and seek to understand. Observation could teach us new lessons.”

  “Well in that case your next mission will be to stay looking at one grow bed with unwavering attention and tell me what happens. I’ll bring you some food and drink once in a while, which will be a good time to hear you out on your observations.”

  “Well I fear I am not yet advanced enough in my meditation skills to be able to pull that off.”

  “What about tomorrow or the day after?”

  “Perhaps in a year or ten?”

  “Hehe indeed, it’s not something you just do and can claim to be able to control. We have far too many facets as humanoids.’’, Bhosun breaks out laughing: “So what will it be?”

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  “I guess, I’ll give it a try.”

  “Well then good luck, see you around in a few days.”

  Bhosun walks up on Henry and sees him with a lost look on his face.

  “Well my friend, seems being with yourself wasn’t that easy after all.”

  “Myself?”, Henry asks bewildered, “What did I come here for?”

  Bhosun smiles knowingly, “You came here to observe one growth cycle of mushrooms and see whether you notice things that I haven’t. It seems though you haven’t been able to stay focused on the mushroom.”

  “I, I did not see a mushroom grow at all. It was dark, then it wasn’t, then it got dark again. It’s my thoughts… Clarity and everything. I felt many things. My thoughts crushing me, derailing my sense of self. I am not even sure I have any sanity left. I am lost. I haven’t got a single clue as to who or what the fuck I am. There is nothing to hold on to inside or outside of me. No beauty, rapture or lasting peace right now. I am nothing really and only now I realise that I have felt like that since getting out of the cave. How I was able to function and hide from this feeling and not notice it fully… Life’s a mystery.”

  Bhosun places an arm on the shoulder of Henry, “If you want to truly change from the bottom up who you are, you have to completely lose any cognition of whatever you think to be. Completely forget how you function. Doubt yourself to the deepest reaches of your psyche. Deep down in yourself, there lies a part that has no face, no name, no meaning, no calling, no agenda. Make it wholly you and you’ll never be lost again. You can’t describe it, nor know whatever makes it work. It just does what it has to do.

  There doesn’t exist a road that leads you there. No choice that can actively bring you closer. It lies completely beyond. Frighteningly close. You can’t buy it, most humans would leave this part of themselves by the wayside and run over it, with contempt. Kick into it out of fear and kick it as far away from themselves as possible. It’s not likeable or cuddly. Unwavering and without remorse.

  It is no price trophy to hang on your wall and clap yourself on your back with. To anyone else, completely meaningless, as it can’t for the strongest wish ever relate to anyone but you. Immutable and yet easily forgotten about. Without a doubt the most important aspect about life. Wielding yourself fully is wild indeed.”

  “That is really not how I feel right now. I feel as if my inner landscape has been completely blown apart and I don’t know how to get back again, what to hold on to.”

  “That is because there is no road leading you there, nothing to hold on to. You can make hundreds of choices and none of them get you any closer. It’s only when you completely realise that there is nothing you can do, that is humanely in your power. Your powerlessness.”

  “My powerlessness? How can I be powerless? This did happen. I somehow got there, even if I can’t even describe what made it happen specifically. Perhaps I’ve lost believe in myself.”

  “What self? Where does this self of you begin? What thought, idea or sensation can you limit it to?”

  Henry looks down and ponders over these words.

  After a while he speaks up, “I don’t know, I feel as if there’s none left. No me to ever begin with and yet I am still alive.”

  “If you can’t find it, can it have really been you? You’ll have to learn to walk again, differently. The old way doesn’t suit you anymore. You might like to try and get back again but some roads will close themselves for you. New horizons and new mountains await to be climbed again. What new heights will you aspire to in yourself?

  You can get through this rite of passage. This has been your calling all along. It is up to you to make your life worth it again, that you are worthy of living with yourself. You are the only one that can make the loss of your old self have meaning. The only value you can find is in experiencing yourself without haste, without masks, without any reason beyond the experience itself. Singular attention on whatever it is you are Doing. This can truly make your life exciting again.”

  “Who’d have thought that growing mushrooms can be so exciting.”

  “It’s not the mushrooms by themselves, it is your attitude towards this moment, everything else is for free. But anyway, Welcome on this mushroom journey, I mean your journey. Let’s see where it takes us. These mushrooms are so much more than merely exciting and also incomprehensible as are we. I feel that they have an intelligence of their own.

  While working with them and ingesting them, they share their being with me. They teach me how to deal with particular situations. In a way, they have become the language in which life itself talks to me personally, based on my understanding. I feel as if they nourish more than my body alone. While travelling through this cave, I drop spores wherever I can, so all life forms that depend upon them, may eat.

  Luckily they grow quickly and easily and in itself they are astonishingly a complete food. Through the other mushrooms I try to have a variety of tastes and textures. Monotony isn’t really my thing. Through the miracle of cracks in the rocks, fissures and porous rocks, the water here is always fresh and filtered. With these few things, the cave is so abundant.”

  ‘‘Are those mushrooms the only light source in here?”

  “The only light we have here are the mushrooms and the fissure where I put you to dry. As this cave is so vast, I likely haven’t been everywhere yet, so it is possible that other light sources exist.”

  I am still bruised all over because I couldn’t see protruding pieces of rock. I don’t mind as I was aware this would happen, before I got in, but still. How do you or other creatures go around without being bruised the whole time?”

  ‘‘A little bruise won’t hurt for long nor should it be feared, as it is a necessary part of living, learning and growing up as beings. We embrace what the cave does to us, accept it and integrate it in our being.”

  ‘‘How is it that you are able to move inside the darkness without any other lights, when you travel?”

  ‘‘By using all my senses at the same time. My hooves make quite the noise, by which I instinctively know the size of the space I walk through. Since I have a size of my own I can’t go everywhere either, since that is beyond my control, I can live with that. I do still knock my head against the ceiling or scratch my body against protruding edges but that’s part of living in here.

  A scratch doesn’t kill me, I am made of stronger stuff than that. After a while you just get used to this complete darkness. I’ve made my home in utter darkness and I quite like it. All of my needs are completely met in here. Are you done eating by the way?”

  ‘‘Yes, thanks for the explanations and nourishing meal. So the unknown has become a part of your everyday experience?”

  “It has always been my true experience, I have simply dropped some vanity and foolish ideas.”

  “This place gives some freedom but it takes away freedom in the same time. It sounds like what you have given up isn’t missed anymore.”

  “No that is not a correct way of putting it, I do yearn and miss but I simply won’t let these feelings rule me. They are always welcome to visit me and leave again. It seems to me we are done for the day, feel free to do whatever pleases you.”

  “Time to exert my freedom again. I know what I’d like to do, go travel a bit.”

  Bhosun grins, “Enjoy the ride.”

  “Oh I hope so too.”