Beyond the Narrow Life

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.

Unreasonable expectations lead us into unproductive guilt or demoralization. Demoralization is not so much about meaninglessness as it is feeling disempowered to create meaningful changes in our lives or the world.

We risk despair if we’ve overcommitted our life, sense of self, and meaning to be contained within a narrow realm of possibility, a self-imposed prison. This is being lost in the finite. On the other hand, becoming lost in the infinite is falling into an abyss of aimlessness or fantasy by avoiding commitment to any path.

And, it’s hard to contemplate death and change without contemplating loss. Everything is lost over time. We even constantly lose ourselves. In both a microcellular and psychological sense, we aren’t exactly as we were just a few days ago, much less after a year or decade.

At first glance, expanding consciousness appears to be a luxury reserved only for the most stable, successful, powerful, and well-functioning.

on the frontier within us where science and vast experiential realms we often consider sacred now increasingly are meeting and interacting.

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

Goals, like intentions, should be held lightly. If overly attached to goals and desired outcomes, we might forget the underlying values they’re meant to serve,