“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
— MLK jr.
MLK jr was one a kind.
There are only a very few examples of humans acting like Jesus Christ, and MLK jr was one of them.
Throughout his life & his time as a leader he was often threatened, assaulted, his house was partly bombed, and some of these assaults came from police officers….
MLK jr never threatened anyone back. He basically turned the other cheek, similar to Jesus, & his impact will live on forever.
How can someone love at all after being attacked so many times?
“When one loses the deep intimate relationship with nature, then temples, mosques, and churches become important.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
Nature surrounds us everywhere we go.
Nature is always the background, somewhere, but it’s also more than that.
The sky, sun, moon, are a part of nature. And we have the water – oceans, rivers, seas, we have trees, bumblebees, snowy hills we ski.
Nature is a living poem. It is living art. Nature is alive – and sometimes more alive than humans.
I believe that the more connected with nature we are – the more connected we become with our individual selves and the community on a global scale.
Here is a “psychedelic” journal you can bring into nature with you – and answer the writing prompts within, and follow the meditation session within this journal.
The word psychedelic comes from Greek roots: “psyche” meaning soul or mind, and “delein” meaning to manifest or reveal.
“Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging.”
— Maya Angelou
Let’s face it – humans are mostly shallow.
We mostly live by appearances – the way people & things “appear” to be.
And the older people get – the more they seem to lose their inner self in order to fit in with the way things appear to be.
But the way things appear, are rarely how they actually are.
Emerson said “It is not length of life, but depth.”
If we are living in shallow, reactive, consumerist societies, where is the time for any depth?
Cultivating depth in your life is where maturing happens, and if you don’t do that, you only age – like most people.
Steve Jobs said “Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
First, understand that the majority of people on earth never find their inner voice, the inner self, and they live life reacting to life circumstances.
That is perfectly okay, but if you want to break free from the reactive ways of society, you must find your inner voice.
You have an inner voice – everybody does – but like I said, they usually lose it as they age.
If it was easy, everyone would do it. What is easy is losing your voice to conform to what’s going on outside of you. What is easy is following.
What is difficult, is leading. Especially leading from within.
People will call you crazy for having a life & mind of your own, since they’ve conformed to the shallow ways of society. But those are the people you do not want to listen to, or fit in with, if you want to have depth in your life.
Be in the world but not of it!!!
Spend time alone with yourself, away from the tv and technology – to connect with yourself. To detach from the outside world and seek the power within yourself.
Nikola Tesla said “The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude.”
If you’re never alone, it’s almost impossible to know who you really are – and I think the majority of people don’t care or are afraid of being with themselves.
Blaise Pascal said “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
If you can enjoy spending time with yourself, alone with yourself – you will begin finding depth in your life – although you may be called strange. That’s ok. I’m very strange, and I love myself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti said “It is of no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
So you can spend your life trying to fit in with shallow people, or you can take the journey of self discovery.
“People say walking on water is a miracle, but to me walking peacefully on earth is the real miracle.”
— Thich Nhat Hahn
I think most people would rather observe a miracle than have peace of mind, and I can’t blame them.
To see Jesus walk on water would be quite the sight.
But what if there was a deep cosmic miraculous peace within each of us?
Supposedly the Kingdom of Heaven is within each of us, and I believe that.
That seems like a miracle – to seek the kingdom of heaven and find it within yourself…
How can we begin to obtain inner peace?
Meditation is a good place to start.
Here is a meditation guide I wrote that can help — just ignore the psychedelic part of it (although psychedelics are helping many humans now and into the future.)
“If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.”
— Epictetus
Some miserable people live their life looking for the next opportunity to provoke or bother someone.
Don’t let it be you.
Even if they go out of their way to insult you – you can’t get angry if you have a strong mind.
The easy route is to be annoyed, to be miserable, to be distracted, to be hopeless, to be disempowered.
And the hard route is to live as an empowered individual. To remain calm, centered, and uneffected by the hate & misery of others.
Provocation is just another distraction sent by the ignorant to destroy your inner peace.
The ignorant have no life of their own so they become lifeless parasites, literally like diseased bugs, trying to spread their disease – their hate, misery, violence, ignorance, pain, etc. and they’ll get you if you don’t put your bug spray on.
And what is your bug spray in this situation? It’s focus.
You must remain focused on your mind and your life.
What are you doing with your life?
Where are you going?
What do you want your life to be like 2 years from now? 5 years. 10 years.
Maintain a long term vision, add goals, and act toward your best life, and when other people call you “difficult” it’s because you can’t be provoked or manipulated.
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
— Buddha
Have you ever felt anxious or scared and immediately sought a person or an item to calm your nerves?
I have.
I’ve sought out spiritual teachers from multiple religions. I’ve read books. I’ve used items.
These teachers and books and items have helped calm my mind and heart, but I never became dependent on them.
They pointed the way towards true peace – and that way was within myself.
You’ll likely never find peace in politics – as it’s always changing and politicians lie and attack each other… there’s no peace in that, but a large number of people look to politicians for some reason.
So how do you discover peace within yourself?
Begin by meditating.
It won’t happen overnight, but if you seek peace for long enough – you will have it.
Psilocybin mushrooms, often referred to as “magic mushrooms,” have been used for centuries in spiritual and healing rituals by indigenous cultures around the world. Today, modern science is catching up with ancient wisdom, exploring the therapeutic and psychological benefits of psilocybin, the primary psychoactive compound found in these fungi. With research accelerating and legal frameworks beginning to shift, psilocybin mushrooms are becoming a focal point in conversations around mental health, addiction treatment, and personal development.
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1. Mental Health Breakthroughs
One of the most promising areas of psilocybin research lies in its ability to treat mental health conditions that are often resistant to traditional therapies.
• Depression: Clinical trials conducted by institutions like Johns Hopkins University and Imperial College London have shown that psilocybin-assisted therapy can produce rapid and sustained reductions in depressive symptoms, often after just one or two sessions.
• Anxiety: Particularly in individuals facing life-threatening diagnoses such as cancer, psilocybin has helped reduce existential anxiety and increase acceptance and emotional resilience.
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): While more research is needed, early findings suggest that psilocybin can help patients process traumatic experiences more constructively by temporarily disrupting ingrained thought patterns and allowing new perspectives to emerge.
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2. Addiction Treatment
Psilocybin has shown significant potential in treating various forms of addiction, including alcohol dependence and smoking.
• In clinical settings, patients report a newfound sense of clarity and motivation following psilocybin experiences, often citing a sense of being “reset” or realigned with their core values.
• A study from Johns Hopkins University found that 80% of participants in a smoking cessation trial were still abstinent six months after treatment with psilocybin-assisted therapy—a far higher success rate than traditional methods.
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3. Cognitive and Emotional Flexibility
Psilocybin alters activity in the brain’s default mode network (DMN), which is linked to self-referential thinking and rumination. Reducing activity in this area can help users break out of repetitive, negative thought patterns.
• Users often describe experiences of ego dissolution, where the boundaries between self and world temporarily dissolve, leading to increased feelings of connection and empathy.
• These insights can result in improved emotional regulation, greater creativity, and a shift in life priorities—benefits that extend well beyond the duration of the psychedelic experience itself.
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4. Spiritual and Existential Insights
Many people who take psilocybin report deeply meaningful spiritual experiences, even when the context is clinical rather than religious.
• These experiences often lead to lasting changes in values, attitudes, and behaviors, including greater appreciation for life, improved relationships, and increased openness.
• A landmark study published in Psychopharmacology found that over 60% of participants rated their psilocybin session as one of the five most meaningful experiences of their lives.
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5. Low Risk of Harm and Dependency
Unlike many pharmaceutical drugs or substances of abuse, psilocybin has a very low potential for addiction and physical harm.
• It is not considered physically addictive, and the body quickly builds tolerance, making frequent recreational use unlikely.
• When used responsibly in a supportive setting, the risks of adverse psychological effects can be significantly mitigated.
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Looking Ahead: Cautious Optimism
Despite their benefits, psilocybin mushrooms are not a panacea. They are powerful psychoactive substances that can cause distressing experiences, particularly in unsupervised or unprepared contexts. However, with growing support for medicalization, decriminalization, and regulated therapeutic use, the future of psilocybin as a tool for healing and transformation is bright.
As more clinical trials are conducted and public perceptions shift, psilocybin may well become a central part of how we address some of the most persistent challenges in mental health and human well-being.
Disclaimer: This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Psilocybin remains illegal in many jurisdictions and should only be used where legal and under appropriate guidance.
1 “We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.”
2 “We are told No, you’re unimportant, you’re peripheral – get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you’re a player. You don’t even want to play that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.”
3 “The major adventure is to claim your authentic, true being, which is not culturally given to you. The culture will not explain to you how to be a real human being. It will tell you how to be banker, politician, Indian chief, masseuses, actress, whatever, but it will not give you true being.”
4 “Claim your place in the sun and go forward into the light. The tools are there; the path is known; you simply have to turn your back on a culture that has gone sterile and dead, and get with the programme of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination.”
5 “Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience upon which primordial shamanism is based is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.”
6 “There is no liberation to compare with freeing oneself from the illusions and delusions of the age in which one lives.”
7 “You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.”
8 “The world which we perceive is a tiny fraction of the world which we can perceive, which is a tiny fraction of the perceivable world.”
9 “One thing that these Buddhists have certainly gotten right is that attention to attention is the key to taking control of your mental life.”
10 “Not to know one’s true identity is to be a mad, disensouled thing — a golem. And, indeed, this image, sick-eningly Orwellian, applies to the mass of human beings now living in the high-tech industrial democracies. Their authenticity lies in their ability to obey and follow mass style changes that are conveyed through the media. Immersed in junk food, trash media, and cryp-tofascist politics, they are condemned to toxic lives of low awareness. Sedated by the prescripted daily television fix, they are a living dead, lost to all but the act of consuming.”
11 “The surface of things is not where attention should rest.”
12 “I see the psychedelic experience as a birthright, and we can’t have a free society until people are free to explore their own mind.”
13 “Nobody is smarter than you are. And what if they are? What good is their understanding doing you?”
14 “If the words ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.”
15 “How do we fight back? By creating art.
16 “Science is the exploration of the experience of nature without psychedelics. And I propose, therefore, to expand that enterprise and say that we need a science beyond science. We need a science which plays with a full deck.”
17 “Capitalism is not a human being. Capitalism is a Moloch, a god, a god of bloody sacrifice that sees human beings as ants.”
18 “Think about our dilemma on this planet. If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future, what kind of future is it going to be?”
19 “For me, what all these years of psychedelic taking came to was a new model of how reality works, a new model of what the world is.”
“None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”
— Thoreau
We live in strange societies…societies ruled by mostly miserable & angry & hateful & jealous “adults” … those people also usually don’t like enthusiasm & often beat the life out of as many people as they can…
the walking dead … & they can be contagious, so how do we counter the lifeless miserable rulers on this planet?
For one – to stop listening to them. They often violently try killing people’s spirit & scaring people to control them… ignore the lifeless losers in the government & in all the places these dead beings reside…
ignore them completely & go your own way …
What do you enjoy? What makes you happy? What makes you feel alive?
Do more of that, & ignore any hate & attacks from the mindless lifeless losers on this planet who’s only laughter comes at the pain of another person…
“In Zen they say: ‘Don’t seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.’ What does that mean? Let go of identification with your mind. Who you are beyond the mind then emerges by itself.”
— Eckhart Tolle
This idea is one that I am still practicing, and it is of a zen-type origin.
The reality that we all are much more & less than the opinions we create & speak about ourselves & others.
The idea that our real self is an experience beyond words.
This is an idea & a reality that is difficult to comprehend & even more difficult to experience, yet it is liberating to practice.
It’a at least a meditation, and at most a way of life.
What opinions are you holding within yourself that weigh you down? Opinions that anger you? Opinions that limit your experience?
With Ken Thompson 