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Psychedelics: Psychotic Episode or Spiritual Awakening?
What’s the difference between a psychotic episode and a spiritual awakening? The answers aren’t as clear as you might think.
The last step in spiritual awakening might be losing your mind. At least, that was a realization I had when I was high on mushrooms. I know this sounds crazy but I could feel myself teetering on the edge of a spiritual awakening. It scared the shit out of me. So, I asked no one in particular (maybe the mushrooms) if I was losing my mind.
To my chagrin, they told me that’s exactly what was happening. That I was losing my mind but that was normal, to be expected, and it’s just something that happens before you wake up. Well, that’s not precisely right. I was losing the attachment to my mind. My identification with it. But that feels like losing it altogether.
It’s pretty easy to understand that you are not your big toe. Or your right leg. After all, if you lost either of those things, you’d still be you. You are not even this body you currently inhabit.
But your mind is different.
You can shed these other layers of identification pretty easily through introspection and logic. But that introspection and logic exist in your mind. It’s a product of…
