It seems at least weekly that I hear people extolling the value of psychedelics. Maybe it’s just from living in New York City or from participating in groups that practice meditation, but I’m inclined to think people and our culture are increasingly attracted to them.
I don’t take a stand on their value. I’m not trained in medicine or health care.
I do believe that nearly all humans alive today are missing something that nearly all of our ancestors experienced in abundance for 300,000 years of human existence: solitude in nature. I last posted about this comparison over a year ago in Ayahuasca and psychedelics: I propose an alternative if you want to learn about ego, life, the universe, and everything and wanted to update and simplify that message.
In that post I quoted a study that “Ninety-six per cent rated their first encounters with psilocybin as being among the top five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives” and responded that I think we’re supposed to think, “Wow, if I take some mushrooms I can have one of the most spiritually significant experiences of my life!”
Meanwhile, that type of experience is available through solitude in nature. I hear it all the time when I do the Spodek Method with others. I’m not saying my results are peer-reviewed nor commenting on what psychedelics can or can’t do. If you think I am, you’re misreading what I’m writing or at least my intent.
For nearly all of human existence, including well into the Industrial Revolution, humans could walk safely into nature, reflect, and commune, unmolested by noises of cars, helicopters, leaf blowers, and such. People knew how to keep themselves safe from predators, despite our modern preconceptions. They could see the stars most nights. Yes, you can meditate, reflect, and so on in the presence of those pollutions, but we all know the difference.
We could access transcendence daily, at no cost nor risk to health or longevity and without side effects. Whether or not psychedelics offer such access, I propose we work more to stop the degradation of nature and to restore that access to all.
In the meantime, we can access direct connection with nature if not solitude. Below is a tree in Central Park. How about growing more parks before promoting drugs so much?
