The cycles of kenosis, gnosis, pistis ultimately point to one thing. Zen.

But what about God? What does God want from us? Zen.

But what is God?

I AM THAT I AM.

And what is Zen?

Uninterrupted sustained first-person awareness,

The flow state of total presence here and now,

The alignment of Parashiva, Shiva, Shakti,

Right hemisphere mastery,

The presence of God,

Self-remembering,

Buddha Nature,

Wholeness,

Holiness.

Channel the holy mushroom spirit into the bodymind via the right hemisphere in open focus and it will work its medicinal magic on you.

Channel it into the discursive mind via the left hemisphere through discriminative thought and it will take you on a psychotomimetic trip into madness.

That’s why we meditate.

A young man at the last Psychedelics and Faith Discussion Group recommended the film Everything Everywhere All At Once, citing it as a psychedelic masterpiece, so I duly took my partner and one of my children to the local cinema to watch it. It was very entertaining and I thoroughly enjoyed it. However, it stands as another cinematic monument to Hollywood Love Confusion.

The basic story arc is classic Hollywood: an exciting but confusing struggle against a misguided nihilistic teenage villain, including a healthy dose of hot pursuit and cool fighting. In the end, however, the only way to defeat the villain is not by fighting, but by loving. Love, somewhat predictably, wins the day.

The love that defeats cynicism is the protagonist’s rediscovered love for her daughter (the teenage nihilist, ironically called Joy) and her husband, and compassion for everyone else. In terms of The Four Loves (C.S. Lewis), this is basically the loves storge and agape.

Storge is usually translated as affection – the “pipe and slippers” type of familial love, domestic, homely, comforting. Toward the end of the film, the husband produces a kind of paean to storge, presenting his kindness and apparent weakness as a kind of strength, his way of “fighting” the dark forces of nihilism.

Agape can by translated as unconditional love or compassion, but as C.S. Lewis makes clear in his book, this is not a human love, but the love that flows down from God, the unconditional divine love that rains on the just and the unjust. In his words, it is “the love of God”.

However, for a secular people, there is no such thing as God. Ergo, there is no such thing as the love of God. In a godless multiverse where “nothing matters” because “everything is possible”, the only way of not falling into the black hole of cynicism and despair (a black bagel in this case) is human love – the kindness-affection of storge and a kind of human version of agape.

This is where the Hollywood Love Confusion kicks in. The Hollywood version of agape is a kind of unconditional love, yes, but one understood on a human level as unbridled licentiousness. In other words, everyone should be given licence to satisfy their desires and do what they want. This inevitably ends up being all about the third of the four loves, namely, eros, or sexual love. And it inevitably ends up being about letting everyone satisfy their erotic drives however they like.

Hence the BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism) and the LGBTQ+ (lesbian, bisexual, gay, transsexual, queer, etc.). Unconditional love ends up meaning little more than “let the kids have their fun”. Through the secular prism, agape becomes something like hyper liberalism – summed up as “anything goes” – which is the optimistic complement of the pessimistic secular belief that “nothing matters”.

At the end of the film, the previously hostile and violent characters hell-bent on destroying the protagonist are, through the magical fulfillment of their personal, idiosyncratic erotic proclivities, as she showers them with her new-found agape, completely neutralized as they lie around sucking, licking and being spanked, each in his, her or their own private reverie.

Is this what Saint Augustine meant when he said “love and do what you will”? Was he a hyper liberal? Obviously not. The key difference is this: Augustine is talking about spiritual agape, the love of God, not the human idea of it. The human idea is purely logical – unconditional love should logically imply total permissive acceptance – “anything goes”. However, spiritual agape is a living force, energy, power, not just a mental idea or attitude.

If you are filled with love of God, you are filled with the Holy Spirit, which is to say, you are filled with holy love-energy. What Augustine is saying is that if you are filled with holy love-energy, whatever you do will be good, so there’s no need to worry about working out what you should or shouldn’t do or why you should or shouldn’t do it. Agape, the love of God, will flow through you so that you do the right thing.

Which doesn’t mean that you will do anything or that anything goes. You will do those things which the holy love-energy moves you to do. In other words, the “do what you will” part doesn’t mean “do what you want”, it means “act freely in accordance with the dictates of your will when your will is perfectly aligned with the will of God in the fullness of His love”.

The redeeming love that the film (and secular humanism) offers to the problem of teenage nihilism is the unconditional love of a mother for her daughter. However, the natural love of a parent for a child (storge) is not really unconditional unless it is underwritten by the supernatural love of God (agape). There are always strings attached.

Equally, the rational answer that the film (and secular humanism) gives to the problem of teenage nihilism, “we must cherish those rare moments that actually make sense”, just like the humanist sop, “you must make your own meaning”, has no foundation without the possibility of non-contingent truth. Accidental sense in a nonsensical multiverse and arbitrary meaning in a meaningless one is too close to nihilism to stop at least half the teenage Joys from diving straight into the black bagel.

Either you believe in love or you believe in evolutionary adaptations, the survival advantages of which are to nurture helpless infants (storge), to bond in tribal groups in order to gain a competitive edge over other groups (philia) and to reproduce (eros). Either you believe in “natural” unconditional love or you believe in “supernatural” unconditional love (agape). If you believe in the latter, not only do you have a proper romantic sensibility, you also have a religious one.

Belief in love is the gateway drug to belief in truth, belief in goodness, belief in beauty and ultimately belief in God. God is love. This is what will set you free, not the half-arsed stoicism and sentimentalism of secular humanism or the confused love of Hollywood.

For more on The Four Loves, see my blog post Love in Babylon.

“Oh Humanus, love is my bait; you must be caught by it; it will put its hook into your heart, and force you to know, that of all strong things, nothing is so strong, so irresistible, as divine love.

It brought forth all the creation; it kindles all the life of heaven; it is the song of all the angels of God. It has redeemed all the world; it seeks for every sinner upon earth; it embraces all the enemies of God; and from the beginning to the end of time, the one work of providence is the one work of love.

Moses and the prophets, Christ and his apostles, were all of them messengers of divine love. They came to kindle a fire on earth, and that fire was the love which burns in heaven. Ask what God is? His name is love; he is the good, the perfection, the peace, the joy, the glory, and blessing, of every life. Ask what Christ is? He is the universal remedy of all evil broken forth in nature and creature. He is the destruction of misery, sin, darkness, death and hell. He is the resurrection and life of all fallen nature. He is the unwearied compassion, the long-suffering pity, the never-ceasing mercifulness of God to every want and infirmity of human nature.

He is the breathing forth of the heart, life, and Spirit of God, into all the dead race of Adam. He is the seeker, the finder, the restorer, of all that was lost and dead to the life of God. He is the love, that, from Cain to the end of time, prays for all its murderers; the love that willingly suffers and dies among thieves, that thieves may have a life with him in paradise; the love that visits publicans, harlots, and sinners, and wants and seeks to forgive, where most is to be forgiven.

Oh, my friends, let us surround and encompass Humanus with these flames of love, till he cannot make his escape from them, but must become a willing victim to their power. For the universal God is universal love; all is love, but that which is hellish and earthly. All religion is the spirit of love; all its gifts and graces are the gifts and graces of love; it has no breath, no life, but the life of love. Nothing exalts, nothing purifies, but the fire of love; nothing changes death into life, earth into heaven, men into angels, but love alone. Love breathes the Spirit of God; its words and works are the inspiration of God. It speaketh not of itself, but the Word, the eternal Word of God, speaketh in it; for all that love speaketh, that God speaketh, because love is God. Love is heaven revealed in the soul; it is light, and truth; it is infallible; it has no errors, for all errors are the want of love. Love has no more of pride, than light has of darkness; it stands and bears all its fruits from a depth, and root of humility. Love is of no sect or party; it neither makes, nor admits of any bounds; you may as easily inclose the light, or shut up the air of the world into one place, as confine love to a sect or party. It lives in the liberty, the universality, the impartiality of heaven. It believes in one, holy, catholic God, the God of all spirits; it unites and joins with the catholic spirit of the one God, who unites with all that is good, and is meek, patient, well-wishing, and long-suffering over all the evil that is in nature and creature. Love, like the spirit of God, rideth upon the wings of the wind; and is in union and communion with all the saints that are in heaven and on earth. Love is quite pure; it has no by-ends; it seeks not its own; it has but one will, and that is, to give itself into everything, and overcome all evil with good. Lastly, love is the Christ of God; it comes down from heaven; it regenerates the soul from above, it blots out all transgressions; it takes from death its sting, from the devil his power, and from the serpent his poison. It heals all the infirmities of our earthly birth; it gives eyes to the blind, ears to the deaf, and makes the dumb to speak; it cleanses the lepers, and casts out devils, and puts man in paradise before he dies. It lives wholly to the will of him, of whom it is born; its meat and drink is to do the will of God. It is the resurrection and life of every divine virtue, a faithful mother of true humility, boundless benevolence, unwearied patience, and bowels of compassion. This, Rusticus, is the Christ, the salvation, the religion of divine love, the true Church of God, where the life of God is found, and lived, and to which your friend Humanus is called by us. We direct him to nothing but the inward life of Christ, to the working of the Holy Spirit of God, which alone can deliver him from the evil that is in his own nature, and give him a power to become a son of God.”

From The Third Dialogue of The Spirit of Prayer, Part 2 by William Law

“I found myself back exactly where I had started when I came to town. I was still a good mechanic and could always get a job as an hourly rated machine operator. This seemed to be the only thing which offered and once more I discarded the white collar for the overalls and canvas gloves. I had spent more than half a dozen good years and had got exactly nowhere, so I did my first really serious drinking. I was good for at least ten days or two weeks off every two months I worked, getting drunk and then half-heartedly sobering up. This went on for almost three years. My wife did the best she could to help me at first, but eventually lost patience and gave up trying to do anything with me at all. I was thrown into one hospital after another, got sobered up, discharged, and ready for another bout. What money I had saved dwindled and I turned everything I had into cash to keep on drinking.

In one hospital, a Catholic Institution, one of the sisters talked religion to me and had a priest brought in to see me. Both were sorry for me and assured me that I would find relief in Mother Church. I wanted none of it. “If I couldn’t stop drinking of my own free will, I was certainly not going to drag God into it,” I thought.

During another hospital stay a minister whom I liked and respected came to see me. To me, has was just another non-alcoholic who was unable, even by the added benefit and authority of the cloth, to do anything for an alcoholic.

I sat down one day to figure things out. I was no good to myself, my wife, or my growing boy. My drinking had even affected him; he was a nervous, irritable child, getting along badly at school, making poor grades because the father he knew was a sot and an unpredictable one. My insurance was sufficient to take care of my wife and child for a fresh start by themselves and I decided that I’d simply move out of the world for good. I took a killing dose of bichloride of mercury.

They rushed me to the hospital. The emergency physicians applied the immediate remedies but shook their heads. There wasn’t a chance, they said. And for days it was touch and go. One day the chief resident physician came in on his daily rounds. He had often seen me there before for alcoholism.

Standing at my bedside he showed more than professional interest, tried to buoy me up with the desire to live. He asked me if I would really like to quit drinking and have another try at living. One clings to life no matter how miserable. I told him I would and that I would try again. He said he was going to send another doctor to see me, to help me.

This doctor came and sat beside my bed. He tried to cheer me up about my future, pointed out that I was still a young man with the world to lick and insisted that I could do it if I really wanted to stop drinking. Without telling me what it was, he said he had an answer to my problem and condition that really worked. Then he told me very simply the story of his own life, a life of generous tippling after professional hours for more than three decades until he had lost almost everything a man can lose, and how he had found and applied the remedy with complete success. Day after day he called on me in the hospital and spent hours talking to me.

He simply asked me to make a practical application of beliefs I already held theoretically but had forgotten all my life. I believed in a God who ruled the universe. The doctor submitted to me the idea of God as a father who would not willingly let any of his children perish and suggested that most, if not all our troubles, come from being completely out of touch with the idea of God, with God Himself. All my life, he said, I had been doing things of my own human will as opposed to God’s will and that the only certain way for me to stop drinking was to submit my will to God and let Him handle my difficulties.

I had never looked on my situation in that way, had always felt myself very remote indeed from a Supreme Being. “Doc,” as I shall call him hereinafter, was pretty positive that God’s law was the Law of Love and that all my resentful feelings which I had fed and cultivated with liquor were the result of either conscious or unconscious, it didn’t matter which, disobedience to that law. Was I willing to submit my will? I said I would try to do so. While I was still at the hospital his visits were supplemented by visits from a young fellow who had been a heavy drinker for years but had run into “Doc” and had tried his remedy.

At that time, the ex-alcoholics in this town, who have now grown to considerable proportions, numbered only Doc and two other fellows. To help themselves and compare notes they met once a week in a private house and talked things over. As soon as I came from the hospital I went with them. The meeting was without formality. Taking love as the basic command I discovered that my faithful attempt to practice a law of love led me to clear myself of certain dishonesties.

I went back to my job. New men came and we were glad to visit them. I found that new friends helped me to keep straight and the sight of every new alcoholic in the hospital was a real object lesson to me. I could see in them myself as I had been, something I had never been able to picture before.

Now I come to the hard part of my story. It would be great to say I progressed to a point of splendid fulfillment, but it wouldn’t be true. My later experience points a moral derived from a hard and bitter lesson. I went along peacefully for two years after God had helped me quit drinking. And then something happened. I was enjoying the friendship of my ex-alcoholic fellows and getting along quite well in my work and in my small social circle. I had largely won back the respect of my former friends and the confidence of my employer. I was feeling fine – too fine. Gradually I began to take the plan I was trying to follow apart. After all, I asked myself, did I really have to follow any plan at all to stay sober? Here I was, dry for two years and getting along all right. It wouldn’t hurt if I just carried on and missed a meeting or two. If not present in the flesh I’d be there in spirit, I said in excuse, for I felt a little bit guilty about staying away.

And I began to neglect my daily communication with God. Nothing happened – not immediately at any rate. Then came the thought that I could stand on my own feet now. When that thought came to mind – that God might have been all very well for the early days or months of my sobriety but I didn’t need Him now – I was a gone coon. I got clear away from the life I had been attempting to lead. I was in real danger. It was just a step from that kind of thinking to the idea that my two years training in total abstinence was just what I needed to be able to handle a glass of beer. I began to taste. I became fatalistic about things and soon was drinking deliberately knowing I’d get drunk, stay drunk, and what would inevitably happen.

My friends came to my aid. They tried to help me, but I didn’t want help. I was ashamed and preferred not to see them come around. And they knew that as long as I didn’t want to quit, as long as I preferred my own will instead of God’s will, the remedy simply could not be applied. It is a striking thought that God never forces anyone to do His will, that His help is ever available but has to be sought in all earnestness and humility.

This condition lasted for months, during which time I had voluntarily entered a private institution to get straightened out. On the last occasion when I came out of the fog, I asked God to help me again. Shamefaced as I was, I went back to the fellowship. They made me welcome, offered me collectively and individually all the help I might need. They treated me as though nothing had happened. And I feel that it is the most telling tribute to the efficacy of this remedy that during my period of relapse I still knew this remedy would work with me if I would let it, but I was too stubborn to admit it.

That was a year ago. Depend upon it I stay mighty close to what has proven to be good for me. I don’t dare risk getting very far away. And I have found that in simple faith I get results by placing my life in God’s hands, every day, by asking Him to keep me a sober man for 24 hours, and trying to do His will. He has never let me down yet.”

From The Back-Slider, a personal story in the original 1939 edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, “The Big Book”

The thing that make people shed tears in therapy or on psychedelics is the realization that they weren’t loved or that they didn’t love enough. The unloved child neglected by messed up parents is flooded by waves of self-compassion. The unloved parent neglected by a messed up child is sent waves of love, grief and sorrow. “I love you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you.”

It may be a present or past romantic partner, an ex or a spouse, or a friend, or an enemy. “I love you, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank you.”

The only love that truly heals the human heart is the love that forgives, that is, unconditional love. Parental love is unconditional. It is more than storge, affection, philia, friendship, or eros, erotic love. It is agape, unconditional love, love that rains on the just and the unjust. It is an expression of the universal love that binds the universe, in religious language, the love of God.

An earthly father should channel the unconditional love of our heavenly Father. As should an earthly mother of course. (Please don’t get hung up on gender issues – I won’t go into that here). But the love of a good father (and mother) is paradoxically both conditional and unconditional. Otherwise there would be no guidance and no correction. Sometimes tough love is what is called for.

In any case, when our connection to the source of all love, conditional and unconditional, at the apex of the soul, where the human meets the divine, is broken, things fall apart. This is the Fall, when we are banished from the Garden of Delight, when Babylon system rushes in to enlist the lost, loveless souls into its army of producers and consumers of sugar water.

Babylon system is and always has been run and maintained by an army of addicts, hungry ghosts who can never satisfy their craving for love, because they are looking in all the wrong places.

But a broken and contrite heart God will not despise. That’s how the light gets in.

“I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever.”

John 6:51

What is a Psychedelic Christian?

A fallen soul who eats the bread of life alone before God in absolute faith.

The conversational styles of the “worldly types”, ceaselessly turning on the Wheel of Babylon, are: preaching/holding court/waxing lyrical (Diva); cursing (Demon); moaning (Victim); babbling (Addict); ranting (Muppet); chatting (Muggle).

In contrast, the conversational style of the “holy one” who has stepped off the Wheel of Babble-on is calm and collected, kind and considerate, cheerful, witty and wise.

We will continue to be slaves in Babylon as long as we continue to be addicted to physical, emotional, mental and spiritual masturbation and fornication.

Everyone’s trying their best. There is no Us and Them.