Remembering We Belong: Mushrooms and Our Relationship with Nature

“Bodies do not precede what they belong to; it is from within the lively web of becoming and belonging that we gain definition.”
— Bayo Akomolafe

The Illusion of Separation

One of the greatest gifts mushrooms have given me isn’t simply a new perspective on myself or my life. It has been a new relationship with the living world around me. Before I began working with mushrooms, way before ever since I was a child really, I appreciated nature. I loved sunsets, forests, oceans, and mountains in the way many people do.

But there was still a subtle feeling that I was separate from it all as an observer passing through. Through many journeys, reflection, and the slow process of maturing, I am beginning to understand reality, relationship, and life in a completely different way.

Perhaps one of the greatest illusions of modern life is that we exist apart from nature. We spend our days beneath artificial lights, behind screens, surrounded by concrete and schedules. Mostly thinking me me me, I I I. We begin to think of nature as somewhere we visit on weekends rather than the very system we belong to.

Yet every breath we take is given to us by plants. Every meal is made possible by soil, fungi, insects, water, and sunlight. Every cell in our bodies emerged from the same stardust and evolutionary story as the forests, rivers, birds, and mushrooms themselves.

We have never been separate.

Remembering an Older Way of Belonging

For much of human history, many cultures understood personhood less as an isolated individual and more as something deeply relational. A person’s identity emerged through kinship with family, community, land, ancestors, animals, plants, and the sacred. Modern society has largely inverted this. We imagine ourselves as autonomous individuals who occasionally interact with nature. Yet, as Bayo Akomolafe suggests, belonging is not something we discover after becoming ourselves; it is what makes us who we are in the first place.

Psilocybin mushrooms, sacred gifts from and of the Earth, just so happen to have a remarkable way of helping us remember this.

Many people describe an overwhelming sense of connection during meaningful mushroom experiences. Trees cease to feel like scenery and begin to feel totally alive. The wind feels as though it is speaking. Birds, insects, rivers, and even the earth beneath our feet become participants in a much larger conversation that has been unfolding long before humans arrived. While these experiences are deeply personal, they are also reflected in scientific research. Studies consistently find that people who have profound psychedelic experiences often report lasting increases in nature connectedness, environmental concern, and feelings of interconnectedness.

When the Self Softens

Neuroscience offers deeper insight into this phenomenon. Psilocybin temporarily quiets the Default Mode Network, the collection of brain regions involved in maintaining our sense of self and our constant internal narrative. As those rigid boundaries soften, our perception often expands beyond “me” and “mine.” Rather than experiencing ourselves as isolated individuals moving through the world, we begin to experience ourselves as expressions of the world itself.

Mushrooms are helping us remember something ancient.

The Wisdom Beneath Our Feet

Outside of ceremony, I’ve noticed this shift lingering in everyday life. I find myself walking more slowly through forests, noticing the intricate geometry of leaves, listening more carefully to birdsong, or pausing to admire the mushrooms quietly emerging after rainfall. Moments that once felt ordinary now feel sacred. Science continues to reveal just how extraordinary fungi truly are. You may have heard of vast underground mycelial networks transporting nutrients, supporting struggling trees, and connecting entire ecosystems in ways we are only beginning to understand. The forest isn’t simply a collection of individual trees; it is a living community constantly communicating beneath our feet. Sometimes I wonder about all of what we perceive as empty space around us. How the greater web of energy that holds us all might be mirroring mycelium.

The Medicine of Remembrance

There is something profoundly humbling about realizing that nature has been practicing cooperation for millions of years, and that we are already participants in something unimaginably ancient, intelligent, and alive. Healing may not always come from searching for something new. Sometimes the deepest medicine is remembrance.

When we remember we belong, the world begins to feel less like a collection of resources to consume and more like a community to care for. Gratitude replaces entitlement. Reverence replaces indifference. Maybe that is why so many people leave meaningful mushroom experiences wanting to spend more time beneath open skies, beside rivers, or among old trees. It no longer feels like time spent in nature, but time spent with cherished relatives.

TLDR: We have always belonged.