In this introductory episode, Mira Funk, LCSW, shares the story of her background and how she came to be a queer, nonbinary psychedelic therapist and guide. In her childhood, she experienced medical trauma with a febrile seizure, Lyme disease, and babesiosis. During a bout of depression while at Harvard, she took a leave of absence and lived on a farm in New Hampshire, where she first encountered Zen Buddhism in the Kwan Um tradition. She eventually traveled to Korea to live at a Kwan Um monastery called Musangsa, where she experienced relief from her existential angst.

After a short-lived career in the arts, she went to social work school and became a mindfulness-based therapist. However, something was still missing. Everything changed when she did her first mushroom trip and had a direct taste of nonduality, especially as described in the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions. She felt inspired to go deeper with psychedelics, exploring 5-MeO-DMT, ayahuasca, and salvia divinorum. The healing and insight she received were so transformative that she resolved to devote her life to helping others through their psychedelic experiences.

Her own journey took some unexpected twists and turns when she experienced neuroinflammatory flare-ups on lion's mane mushrooms. Her difficulties led to her gender and sexual identity shift, and also prompted her to work with psychedelics in a new way she called "unjourneying," inspired by Ram Dass's guru Neem Karoli Baba, who supposedly experienced no psychoactive effects on LSD. Mira started actively meditating while taking psychedelics and discovered diminished effects and more profound mindfulness integration.

Another surprise happened when all serotonergic psychedelics started causing flare-ups. After extensive medical testing, she discovered that she has Lyme, babesiosis, and mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS). She decided to personally work only with salvia divinorum until her condition improves with medication. She found that unjourneying with salvia induces insights that feel orthogonal to nonduality, presenting a radical happeningness that deconstructs the illusion of free will and the very possibility of spiritual practice.

If you want to connect with Mira, visit https://www.unjourneying.com and https://linktr.ee/unjourneying.