The following reflection was written by Joshua Pulis following his 5-MeO-DMT experience with Inner Realms Center in Mexico.
It is shared in his own words and reflects his personal experience. Individual responses to 5-MeO-DMT can vary significantly, and this account should not be interpreted as a prediction of what another participant may experience.
Often referred to as The God Molecule or the Jaguar, this crown jewel of psychedelics is described as deeply disorganizing of habitual mental structures—a flash of consciousness that completely erases time, space, and the personal ego. An apt description and nothing but the truth, so help me, God. Thus, trying to describe it with words is like attempting to construct the Eiffel Tower using matchsticks—or trying to measure the fathoms of the deep by collecting raindrops. But I am going to give it a whirl anyway.
At first, it felt like skydiving blindfolded. But in the end, it became one of the most soul-embracing experiences of my life. I cried forty-nine years’ worth of tears in a single hour. It felt like being in the womb while, at the same time, being violently expelled through the birth canal. I was head over heels, caught in a death roll. The experience became so unbearably loud inside my brain that I began tumbling off the mattress onto the floor, kicking and shaking—waves of terror and delight blending together into a healing brew. At times, it was utterly terrifying—like lying on a bed of hot coals. Though it did not hurt.
Soon, I was no more—and had never been. Nor had anything else. It was a Big Bang brainstorm: my universe exploding into being and vanishing in the same instant. To be born again is to welcome death—over and over.
Weightless, I drifted through the emptiness of the cosmos. The nonduality of the experience ushered me into the ebb and flow of eternity, where I became one with all things. There was no seam between my being and the darkness, no boundary where one thing ended and another began. I felt myself carried on a vast tide, rising and falling through a sea without any shore.
It was a complete liberation from attachment. Craving and aversion vanished. The cords of wanting and resisting slipped loose from my hands. Rung by rung, I reached for more, climbing higher and higher. And then, without warning, the ladder itself would evaporate, plunging me once again into the void.
On either side of the mattress were a medicine man and his wife—two exquisite human beings. He was the shaman; she managed the logistics, but also carried the heart of a mother. At times, they had to restore me. At others, they placed their hands gently over my heart. And sometimes, they simply had to carry me back to the mattress, because somehow I had rolled, writhed, and twitched my way across the terra-cotta tile floor, ending up halfway across the room.
At one point, my eye mask slipped upward, and the sunlight hurled darts into my brain. I grabbed hold of the medicine man and begged him to help me, screaming and crying until he pulled the mask back into place.
From the start, it was like being shot from a cannon into an eternal night, folding me into a beautiful blackness—a lamination into dark dough. The long-suffering of my mind began to disintegrate into a thousand particles, swirling around me and sealing me inside a cocoon of self-forgiveness and compassion. The trauma and shame that had long been stored in my body were flung outward in every direction. The scars and scabs of long-festering wounds began to melt into the abyss.
Like a gazelle escaping the clutches of a lion, I entered a thousand-acre wood and began to shake violently. They say this is what some animals instinctively do after surviving a traumatic experience. It is as though the body must tremble its way back to equilibrium—the nervous system crying out for calm.
With every step further into oblivion, the saga of my story seemed to disassemble. The ego structures and boundaries that had become a lifelong cage began to crack, then break apart, then disappear entirely into the ether. I was gobsmacked in the face of such freedom.
Splintered by a life’s worth of internalized factions, I have never known oneness—until now. The embodied resistance eased as more and more I was letting go—then taking hold. The trillions of dancing molecules that had constituted my waking reality seemed to collapse into one: a single atom, the first and the last.
As the intensity subsided, I began to picture those that I love. A tenderness welled up and a fount of devotion flowed with fresh water. My lover, my children, my mother and father, brother and sister, friends and foes alike—all seemed forever transformed in my mind. Separateness seemed lost to me forever.
I wept over the beauty of my life, while the specter of unworthiness trailed behind me, fading into the distance and disappearing around the bend. Still, I kept moving—enraptured and engulfed by the inexhaustible nature of a singular consciousness. I carried on, surrendering to the mystery. Lo, the journey was calling me forth.
In one of the twentieth century’s most delightful novellas, The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho writes, “The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.” Perhaps the path of the Jaguar was making the way plain—the soft pads of her paws silent, but steady.
Amid the tabula rasa of my daydream, God was too vast to be seen. Still, vanity was blown to bits by a divine hurricane—inaugurating a coming period of reconstruction. This surgery of the spirit brought the scalpel and the stitches, cutting me in two—then sewing me back together.
I have always believed I was meant to follow my heart. Yet I have come to realize that it is full of contradictions and whimsy, forever driving me toward shifting passions and pursuits. But it is the soul that yearns for the Source—the soul that grips the wheel and steadies the hand. The soul remains constant and faithful. A good soul allows the heart to tag along, but never allows it to lead the way. Battered and broken, still my soul has always been good.
The lost boy is now a refugee, exiled from the king’s court. He will not be rescued, for he has been replaced by a new man—given a seat of honor at the banquet table. Turns out I am not damaged goods. I am not a lost cause. The long road to redemption waves me forward—a trail suddenly worth traversing.
Happiness can only be found right now. Drift even a moment forward, or lean slightly backward, and it slips from your grasp. The holiness of the present is a rich harvest—a bounty from peaceful pastures. I want more of this abundant life. For memories can never suffice, and the future is a pipe dream. The ego squirms when stuck in the present, forever longing to escape—backward behind the curtain or forward into the mist. I must let it go.
As my journey drew to its conclusion, the veil materialized once more. I returned to the glories of the jungle mountaintops—Cuernavaca and Tepoztlán are magical places. After tangling with the cat, I spent some time in the back garden, skinny-dipping in the heated pool. Birds of paradise and flora of every earthly color surrounded me. The sounds of nature, like a thousand songs, echoed across the valley and over the hill tops. Sights and sounds set every sense ablaze.
At this altitude, the air is cool and sweet. This is said to be the birthplace of the creator god Quetzalcoatl, whom Mesoamerican cultures such as the Aztecs revered as the Feathered Serpent. Thinking of ancient gods, there was a strange energy pulsing beneath the warm water. Perhaps the snake was nearby. But which god was where mattered little. The divine is nowhere and everywhere, nothing and everything, within me and beyond me. And yet, in the embrace of the Eternal, I am home. Today is my forty-ninth birthday.
Written by Joshua Pulis
August 24, 2026
Tepoztlán, Mexico
Published with the author’s permission.