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Psychedelic monasteries are definitely the least insane idea and likely the best idea. My biggest hope for the future of the US is that all religions establish more retreat centers for deep learning and worship. The monastery model needs more of a presence in the states for our long term spiritual health.

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Joe,

This was very beautiful to read and highlighted a lot of the concerns I have about the psychedelic research movement. Anything with that strong of a compound and even the smallest blindspot for the poor or justice combined with a profit (or pride or ego) motive can start to look scary.

I was wondering what you meant in the following passages, as they were very interesting to me, but I didn't know what you meant by "experience," for example and could have used some concrete examples. Would love to hear more on this.

"The goal is not to live for experience, but to make all of one’s experience fully lived. 'Eternal life.' The willingness to sacrifice experience is, itself, what births the fulfillment of all experience."

Here I wasn't sure what you meant by the false authenticity and could have used an example as well, as well as a more fleshed picture of true authenticity. If you have any more writings on these please let me know.

"...and it’s now made me create an idol out of Authenticity’s relative, Candor. I’ll never fully escape its gravitational pull.

I once thought psychedelics were the key to finding my authentic self. But what I have discovered is that false authenticity is an authenticity that makes no sacrifices. Idolatrized authenticity is a selfish endeavor that centers its misunderstanding of trueness upon superficiality, aesthetics, and otherwise illusory phenomenon. True authenticity is what remains when you are willing to burn all of that shit up for the sake of someone else.

The purification of that discovery of true authenticity is the process that Christ spent his whole life trying to teach humanity. The way of the Cross is to discover yourself, because it is to discover that you can only really find the realest you by disregarding all the other distractions and abstractions that keep you trapped in the false consciousness known as 'sin.'"

Thanks for sharing,

Henry

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I'm so glad that someone is thinking about this topic as deeply as you are. You're imagining both the possibilities and the pitfalls, from the vantage point of personal experience. Winnowing out the delusions, whether the paranoid and restrictive superstitions of drug prohibitionists, or the self-editing denialism of starry-eyed bliss ninny psychedelic utopians. Psychedelic substances are not good or evil; they're POWERFUL. Whatever human minds manage to extract from their use is always informed by the values and teachings of the society in which they're instructed. The evidence of use of psychedelic substances by Mesoamerican civilizations indicates that their use did not automatically equate to benevolent enlightenment. To understate the case.

The most positive impression I've gotten as a result of my experience and observation of psychedelic users is that all other things being equal, the experience tends to make people more tolerant and less mean-spirited than they otherwise would be. But not even that is completely assured. I think much of the benevolence experienced in connection with today's psychedelic culture is conditioned on social codes of behavior that have served to provide a foundation for American society. Judaeo-Christian ethics, for want of a better term. I know that there are some Jews and some Christians who are insistent on separating those traditions, but to me that's a different debate. I think the commonality of the ethic is real, and vitally important- especially now that its religious basis is so widely disdained and disrespected. As if the feel-good nihilism with a smiley face that seeks to replace it is an improvement.

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