Why we should say yes…
Psychedelics [temporarily] disarm what’s called the Default Mode Network in your brain, the part of it that keeps you alert to danger, performing tasks, scanning the future, remembering the lessons of the past, doing, doing, doing. [Over-activity of which may contribute to depression, anxiety, PTSD, eating disorders, sexual addictions, etc.]
Some argue that this is the part of the brain we developed later in our evolution, the ego, the engine of natural selection, harnessing our intelligence to order and survival. It edits your experience, stripping out the unnecessary, ordering the whole. I realized then that the insights I had gained from psychedelics were indeed available without the drugs. [Certain long-term] meditation [practice] disarms the ego as well [though can also be contra-indicated in certain populations] , unpicking the Default Mode Network, bringing you back to your more basic self (“waking up,” as Sam Harris would put it) and to the joy of reality. That’s why the Buddhists talk of the nonexistence of the self…. But for me, the psychedelic experience is also deeply Christian. This, it seems to me, is how and who Jesus is and was: the incarnation of the love that these experiences reveal to you — and always suffused with it; not romantic love or friendship, but that universal agape that seems abstract to me at times, but that some small mushrooms have sometimes uncovered.
Original Article (NYMag):
Why We Should Say Yes…
Artwork Fair Use: Chris 73
