You don’t need to be extraordinary. If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear.

“Mad Thoughts on Mushrooms: Discourse and Power in the Study of Psychedelic Consciousness.”

There are many roads to Rome, or in this case, various realms of human experience, and if you’re willing to search, you can find so much more than what’s offered in a life narrowly contained within the boundaries of modern societies, ideologies, and our default modes of consciousness.

Idealizing some ‘optimized’ personality and chasing flow states gives us something to judge ourselves (and others) against. Becoming either too self-conscious or too self-centered are, in fact, big barriers to entering flow; an overconcern with oneself redirects energy away from present experiences and tasks.

Flexibility means adapting to changing circumstances, needs, and information. It requires embracing our agency and freedom—radical freedom even—to make choices more aligned with our authentic needs and values, undeterred by false constraints.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

As the poet Rilke exclaimed, “I want to know my own will and to move with it. And I want, in the hushed moments when the nameless draws near, to be among the wise ones—or else alone.”73

What does a multicultural, pan-spiritual yet atheist-inclusive myth-inspired guide look like?

There are many roads to Rome, or in this case, various realms of human experience, and if you’re willing to search, you can find so much more than what’s offered in a life narrowly contained within the boundaries of modern societies, ideologies, and our default modes of consciousness.