I’ve had my fair share of what you might call spiritual, non-ordinary, or psychedelic experiences. It’s been a big part of my path over the last decade.
One thing that has become abundantly clear to me is that everyone has totally different experiences; everyone has very different ways of comprehending the universe and reality.
Many of my friends have extraordinary visions during these experiences: ancient spirit beings hovering over and healing them, machine elves working away at the center of the Earth, black snakes oozing out of their stomachs. Anything and everything you could imagine.
But I rarely have any of those experiences. What I usually experience is simply a deep sense of access to my emotions and “inner children”, and a profound connection to and reverence for all the things in the universe that are readily apparent and indisputable: the Earth, the Sun, the stars, the blackest of voids in between it all.
The message to me is clear: there is more than enough beauty, goodness, and wonder just in what we can see. No “woo-woo” beliefs or visions required. No need to see this world as an illusion and something else as the real reality.
That doesn’t mean I’m right and they’re all wrong. That just feels like the truth that is mine to live out. Others have their ways. They all have some kernel of Truth in them.
At the same time, there is a core tension to my way of seeing reality: according to today’s best science, the vast majority of this known, observable universe is dark matter and dark energy, stuff that we cannot see and barely understand.
For me, this tension invites a practice of being with what is. And much of what is is unseen, deeply mysterious, waiting there ready to surprise me and disrupt my sense of reality.
