I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but in New York, people talk about psychedelic drugs a lot. Everyone is talking about microdosing (probably not as much as in California), going to shamans in Peru for ayahuasca, and so on.

People describe the value of the experiences as life changing. I’m prompted by a recent New Yorker piece This Is Your Priest on Drugs: Dozens of religious leaders experienced magic mushrooms in a university study. Many are now evangelists for psychedelics, by Michael Pollan. He cites that “Ninety-six per cent rated their first encounters with psilocybin as being among the top five most spiritually significant experiences of their lives.”

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!”

The paper The Subjective Effects of Psychedelics Are Necessary for Their Enduring Therapeutic Effects in the peer-reviewed journal American Chemical Society Pharmacology & Translational Science wrote:

Psilocybin administration studies have repeatedly shown that participants frequently rate their psychedelic experiences as among the most meaningful of their entire lives and they are sometimes compared to the birth of a first-born child or death of a parent. Due to their salience, such experiences may serve as narrative “inflection points” in one’s life that could provide an impetus for changing one’s identification with certain patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Or experience nature

I’ve probably written before that people responding to Spodek Method questions recount and re-experience meaningful experiences too. Only they don’t have to take anything. I’ve concluded that fully experiencing nature offers comparable experiences to psychedelics. I haven’t researched it so I can’t cite my results or sources, but you have nothing to lose recalling formative, quintessential moments and finding ways to relive them.

What we’re missing

I contend that our ancestors for most of 250,000 years of human existence experienced nature in what we call meaningful or transcendental, but they did every day, for free, without hurting anyone. I see taking psychedelics like a remedial making up for what we used to experience by birthright.

What we can do more to lose the ego and understand life, the universe and everything: Pick up litter!

It may sound like the opposite of transcendental, but having picked up litter daily for almost a decade, often fifty or more pieces per day, I can tell you that you will learn a lot about yourself, humanity, and nature. Sadly a lot of what you learn will be dark, since you’ll learn about the part of us that doesn’t care about hurting others for convenience or even feels good about it.

You’ll learn about yourself since you’re doing what seems to despicable in others when you buy things that fund polluting, depleting, lobbying, and the industries causing Cancer Alley etc.

You’ll also learn about nature. We’re a part of nature. Litter being the opposite of pristine nature means it reflects nature.

Pick up litter every now and then or even daily just for a few months or years and you may not cross over to understanding parts of yourself and humanity you’d rather not know about. Pick it up enough and you understand our place in nature. We didn’t appear out of nowhere. We evolved based on natural processes. You’d be amazed at what you’ll learn.

As a side effect, you’ll also help clean your world and learn to find doof increasingly repugnant until you don’t require willpower to resist it. You’ll save money and time. You’ll grow more healthy and fit effortlessly. You’ll help the less fortunate.

Believe it or not, taking responsibility for stuff like in this picture is your route to transcendence. Plus if you were one of those people talking about psychedelics all the time, you’ll become less trendy and more authentic.

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