What does it mean to be strong?

At one point in my psilocybin (magic mushrooms) journey I was brought to an area that looked like a jungle. It was dark. There were thick trees and a river. I could see and feel the presence of indigenous women. They were dark-skinned, powerful, insistent, and nurturing. They were for me, not against me. But they also wanted me to experience loss, overwhelm, helplessness, surrender. And through it all, they were showing me that it all belonged. And in those moments, and in the days, even weeks that followed (and to some degree even now, two months later), I believed it.

The question of how all of this—the suffering and the joy, the beautiful and the tragic—belonged was not posed. Why is reality this way and not another? In my journey, that question was no where to be found.

I was lying down in this dark jungle now. There was music. It was rhythmic, ceremonial, full of drums and chanting. The women took a basin and filled it with water from the river. They brought the bowl over to me and began to pour it in my mouth. It was too much, way too much. It overwhelmed me. It just kept coming. I was drowning in it. I felt myself fill up, starting at my toes and reaching up to my neck. And then I was released into a new scene.

I had posed this question for my journey: How can I hold anger and compassion together? Is there a source of strength and support within me or outside of me, like ancestors, that I can call upon?

In another scene, later in the journey, I felt compelled to take off my sleep mask. I was lying on a mattress next to a dark brown leather couch in my basement. I stared at the leather couch, and as I did the faces of suffering indigenous women appeared in the lines and creases of that couch. Maybe you can imagine it.

This was the most profound experience of my journey. It was deeply painful. Tears streamed as I looked at the faces of these women. At one point, men with weapons began to appear. It scared me, and I said so, out loud. My guide, Chris, put his hand on my back. It helped. The men disappeared. But the faces of women continued. I watched, and as I did, it was as though the suffering of the ages was being imprinted on my soul. It felt like trying to look at the whole universe.

I’ve spent me life trying to understand reality, even ultimate reality (God, Source, the Universe). I pursued advanced degrees, culminating in a PhD in Old Testament. What was I seeking? Sure, I wanted a career. I wanted financial security and maybe even some societal respect. But deep down, what I wanted most was to know, to understand, to have certainty.

But all of my education did not bring me closer to certainty. What I didn’t realize in 2012, as I finished my dissertation, was that I wasn’t interested in “biblical truth,” not ultimately. Because if “biblical truth” and reality were in contradiction, I was going to choose reality. And I knew, as I finished my PhD, that the Bible, Christian doctrine, Christian tradition, were in contradiction with reality. I knew it, but I was afraid.

My journey made me wonder about a divine presence whose greatest ability is to allow for reality to unfold, to hold all the tension, the pain, the suffering, the joy, the love, all of it.

Power, control, dominance, these things do not impress me. They scare me, but they do not impress me.

It takes no strength, no wisdom, no decency or integrity to exert power, to dominate. It only requires the inability to sit with hard emotions, hard truths.

Surely the source of everything is not so pathetic.