Chapter 40: How to Embark on a Journey of Insight, Mindfulness, and Cosmic Connection
As we stand upon the sacred terrain of neuroplasticity, we must recognize that the biological rewiring of our minds represents only the threshold of a much vaster odyssey. The conscious repetition and tender dismantling of our inherited neural pathways prepare the physical vessel, but what exactly are we preparing it to receive? The brain, in its exquisite malleability, is not merely a biological engine of survival; it serves as the organic receiver—and, potentially, a transmitter—for a boundless cosmic broadcast. By actively shaping our neural architecture, we clear the static from our perception, enabling us to finally attune to and resonate with the frequencies of existence that previously eluded our conditioned grasp.
Stepping through this doorway of conscious adaptation, we transition from the mechanics of the mind into the profound mysticism of the soul. Here, the structural healing of our nervous system intersects with the eternal pulse of the universe. When we consciously participate in our own remaking, we do not simply achieve superior psychological functioning; we open ourselves to the infinite bandwidth of creation. This is where the biological gives way to the cosmic, inviting us to navigate the intricate, shimmering web of life with awakened eyes and an unburdened spirit.
The pursuit of meaning, clarity, and inner peace is an eternal endeavor, woven intricately into the very fabric of human existence. At times, life may seem overwhelming, fragmented by chaos, and distant from our deepest aspirations. Yet, hidden within the quiet moments of stillness, in the diligent practice of mindfulness, and through the profound revelations of direct insight, lies an unprecedented potential for transformation. These practices act as a compass, guiding us toward profound self-awareness and a renewed connection to the complex ecology of consciousness.
Consider that the universe operates on an unlimited bandwidth of information, energy, and awareness. It is a hum of infinite voltage, a ceaseless transmission of life, love, and death. Yet, our human minds, by default, are tuned to a remarkably narrow frequency—the restricted channel necessary for physical survival, navigating daily routines, and perceiving a linear progression of time. We operate like antiquated radios, picking up only the strongest, most local stations, entirely unaware of the symphonies broadcasting on the frequencies just beyond our reach. This is the station of ordinary reality. However, deep within the human spirit resides an inexhaustible curiosity to adjust the dial, to explore the static and the harmonies that lie just beyond our standard perception. We inherently yearn to understand the cosmic grid we are plugged into.
True transformation has never been an abstract concept for me—it has wound its way through my own history, dancing between my wounds and my wisdom like shadow and sunlight across the years. As Eric Hoffer once noted, “Many of the insights of the saint stem from their experience as sinners.”
To facilitate authentic awakening and healing, we must reject the precedent established by our wounded pasts, aspiring instead to become our own saviors, armed with awakened powers of understanding and compassion. Cultivating new thoughts not based upon wounded memories is essential. Otherwise, we merely continue layering over our unexamined, embedded belief structures with another coat of paint, while our decaying house of consciousness trembles upon its ever-eroding foundation.
There are no quick-fix solutions. Our culture has been sustained on spiritual and religious fast food for much too long. What is next in the queue for us?
- Drive-through healing?
- Five-minute meditations for transformation and prosperity?
- New diets that guarantee weight loss and immortality?
- Books that claim all your prayers will be answered if you simply follow the one special method promoted by the latest popular author?
- A magic pill that wipes away all difficult memories and brings pleasure where there was once only pain?
To transcend the illusion of these hollow panaceas, we must first anchor ourselves in the disciplined pursuit of insight. True evolution requires the courage to observe our internal landscape without flinching. Mindfulness acts as the foundation of this work, allowing us to witness our inherited scripts, deeply ingrained traumas, and reactive loops without immediately identifying with them. Through this rigorous, daily stillness, we cultivate genuine insight—the kind that pierces through the superficial layers of our conditioned reality to reveal the authentic, unvarnished self beneath.
Yet, even with dedicated mindfulness, certain neural pathways—forged by profound trauma and decades of cultural programming—remain stubbornly rigid. It is here that the intentional, sacred use of plant medicine, specifically psilocybin mushrooms, can serve not as an escapist quick fix, but as a profound catalyst for cognitive and spiritual liberation. By temporarily quieting the brain’s default mode network, psilocybin strips away the ego’s relentless chatter and survival-based filtering. This dissolution allows us to step outside our habitual frameworks and perceive the raw “is-ness” of existence, experiencing firsthand the cosmic bandwidth we usually tune out.
When approached with deep reverence, the proper setting, and rigorous psychological integration, these entheogenic journeys deeply amplify our capacity for mindfulness. They act as a cosmic tuning fork, recalibrating our internal frequencies to harmonize with the boundless energy of the universe. This sacred synthesis of daily contemplative practice and deliberate plant medicine exploration invites a monumental leap in human consciousness, empowering us to finally dismantle our inner prisons and step fully into our infinite spiritual potential.
I have seen firsthand that growth is often born from the crucible of struggle; my most valuable realizations have emerged precisely when I navigated moments of profound darkness, both within and without. Much of my journey began with the simple act of observing myself—really observing, not just my thoughts swirling like autumn leaves, but the deeper behaviors, ingrained patterns, and ancient beliefs looping through my life. I remember the discomfort and anxiety that would bubble up when I first sat quietly, contemplating the roots of my own pain. In those early days, mindfulness was not a buzzword; it was a lifeline and a lantern.
Reflecting on my childhood and the culture I was raised in, I trace how so many of the stories that guided (and misled) me were inherited. For years, I lived out scripts passed down by family, community, and ancestors—scripts of limitation, shame, or expectation that, unchecked, ran my life. My healing began when I dared to examine those stories: to see which belonged to me and which I’d only borrowed out of a desire to fit in.
This lesson became painfully clear during a fourth-grade science experiment. Mr. Hill, our Principal and co-teacher, wanted to teach the students about the power of observation. He heated a portable electric stove, grabbed a thin sheet of metal with insulated tongs, and set it onto the burner. The metal immediately began to distort in size, becoming disfigured. I watched, yet I had no words to describe what I had just witnessed. Struck dumb by the mystery of the event, I peered at the notes of classmates on either side of me and copied their words to avoid standing out. From that early age, I understood how easily the mystery of life—our direct, raw experience—can be substituted with secondhand descriptions and beliefs. The description is never the actual event, yet those who lack the experience often copy and worship the description, overlooking the miracle happening right under their noses.
This pattern continued. In my junior year in high school, I was required to keep a daily journal of my innermost thoughts. Empty of complete statements about myself, I bought Hugh Prather’s Notes to Myself, copied his statements, and tried to personalize them so I wouldn’t look like a fraud. I got my passing grade and continued on my awkward, highly dysfunctional path. When I entered my freshman year at the University of Portland in 1973, I was lost again, having no internal maps to guide me. The use of pot, alcohol, and relationships with emotionally diseased people continued in earnest, obscuring any clear vision of my goals. The absence of personal honesty and insight doomed me to a deteriorating life experience, trapping me in a prison with interior windows sometimes only opening to Hell.
The Windshield Wipers of the Mind
We do not see the world as it is; we see it as we are. To truly heal and evolve, we must confront how our internal chaos is projected onto the canvas of reality. Consider the parable of a man who got into his car, blasted Jimmy Cliff’s “I Can See Clearly Now” on the stereo, and drove straight into a blinding rainstorm. He never turned on his windshield wipers. After crashing head-on into another vehicle, he told the investigating officer, “I did everything right. I was playing the right music… I just did not think that I needed my windshield wipers.”
For far too many of us, the “music” playing in the background is our religious, spiritual, or philosophical conditioning. Many seekers believe that their inner work is complete once they have memorized the right dogma, aligned with the beliefs of their community, or experienced a fleeting moment of transcendence. This phenomenon is known as spiritual bypass. If we possess only intellectual knowledge but lack deep, contemplative insight, our journey has barely begun.
What, then, are the windshield wipers of the mind? They are our profound capacity for taking an ongoing personal inventory. They represent the active, relentless practice of mindfulness, the development of piercing insight, and the willingness to make necessary course corrections in our lives. Just as a torrential rainstorm obscures the view through a glass window, our unexamined thoughts, unconscious biases, and turbulent emotional weather continuously distort our perception of reality. If we do not activate our mental wipers to clear away these distortions, our unconscious actions will inevitably cause harm—both to our own souls and in our relationships with the world.
We cannot simply rely on external saviors, shifting our personal responsibility to deities or dogmas. To expect an external force to clear our vision while we refuse to engage in self-examination is to abdicate our spiritual sovereignty. True power lies within our own willingness to turn on the wipers, to sweep away our illusions, and to adjust our path so that we might continuously evolve and vibrate in deeper resonance with the cosmos and with one another.
Attempting to heal without this ongoing inventory is akin to slapping a fresh coat of spiritual paint over a rotting house. In recovery circles, this is known as the “look good”—curating a pristine exterior while the interior remains untouched and decaying.
I confronted my own resistance to this rigorous self-honesty in April 1984, when I checked into the Care Unit at Portland’s Lovejoy Hospital. A core component of our treatment was keeping a daily journal to track our “internal weather.” Little had changed since high school, and I found myself still plagued by poor self-awareness. I found myself paralyzed, entirely uncomfortable exploring my inner landscape. Instead of activating my own wipers, I tailored my words to please others, claiming their mistakes as my own just to avoid facing my authentic self. While that early attempt at intensive recovery did not immediately succeed—ushering in an even darker three-year storm—it planted the vital seed of desire for inner peace. I eventually learned that living an examined life requires us to honestly chart our internal weather, engage our mental windshield wipers, and continuously clear the glass so we might finally see the world, and ourselves, with cosmic clarity.
Encounters with the Infinite: Psychedelics and the Cosmic Circuitry
While disciplined mindfulness and spiritual inventory provide the necessary grounding, my early life also included glimpses into the wider frequencies of the cosmic bandwidth through alternative means. In the early 1970s, during high school, I used LSD nearly twenty times. The first instance was serendipitous; I ingested a quarter of a pill before heading to the downtown Portland library. About an hour later, pure euphoria washed over me—a profound sense of peace and an unconditional love for everything. It was a chemical preview of the unity I would later seek. I also tried DMT, feeling an incredible, telepathic kinship with every stranger I met. The barriers of fear dissolved.
Yet, psychedelics in my youth were a delightful vacation from my troubled life, not a tool for integration. I lacked the spiritual and emotional maturity to process them. By 1979, after a difficult trip left me fearing I’d be stuck in an anxious in-between state, I ceased using LSD.
We must also address the substances that act as resistors. Alcohol is seductive in its ability to numb. I drank to drunkenness from ages 15 through 30, and only much later learned to embrace alcohol fully consciously so historical habits wouldn’t take over. Cannabis, too, obscured my path. Smoking it nearly every day in the 1970s stunted my emotional and spiritual growth, replacing active creative expression with passive observation. It wasn’t until total sobriety began in 1987 that my mind matured to the level it should have reached years earlier.
For four subsequent decades, my spiritual connection had been cultivated through a series of profound insights, meditation, mindfulness, Twelve-Step work, and healthy living. Yet, the human experience often reveals obscured terrains where neural circuits have grown too entrenched. In October 2022, I attended a 14-hour spiritual retreat where a psilocybin elixir was administered—my first foray into the psychedelic realm since the 1970s. Guided by an experienced facilitator, I slipped into an altered state, shedding the rigid architecture of verbal cognition to witness the world, and my own being, with an acute, non-verbal awareness.
The profound gift of the psychedelic communion, when approached with the reverence of proper “set and setting,” is this sudden dawn of direct, unmediated insight. Trauma often acts as an insidious architect, locking the brain into rigid paradigms and high-alert feedback loops. Even spiritual education, accumulated over decades, can inadvertently carve deep ruts for our neural pathways rather than expanding our capacity to perceive the infinite. Psychedelics possess the unique capability to dissolve these hardened networks—specifically the Default Mode Network—allowing us to witness the pure “is-ness” of reality, stripped of the interference of personal and cultural conditioning.
During that immersive retreat, my facilitator posed a piercing question: why did I not recognize myself as a beautiful being? I answered from the echoing chambers of my conditioned mind, cataloging my aging physical vessel, the flare of psoriasis, the marks of skin cancer, surgical scars, and the maps of wrinkles. I had profoundly forgotten to consciously cultivate reverence for my physical form or express gratitude for its enduring existence. My facilitator gently observed that if my perception of beauty was strictly an interior phenomenon, I was living entirely exiled within my “head space.” True beauty emanates from the totality of being—body, mind, and spirit—entirely independent of the uninformed projections of the external world and the shadows of my own diminished self-esteem.
In that exalted, lucid state, a revelation struck with the force of a thunderclap: I had an autoimmune disease because
I was attacking myself.
This physical manifestation of illness was inextricably rooted in a deep-seated self-negation, born from the embers of early trauma and sustained through years of unexamined, unconscious self-perceptions. By engaging in the neuroplastic reengineering of these neural pathways, we unlock a profound portal to healing. We begin to dismantle the ingrained cognitive patterns that have either encouraged the persistence of existing maladies or, in many cases, served as the genesis for new diseases.
The mind and body are not solitary islands; they are a unified ecosystem. When our internal dialogue is dominated by chronic stress, self-rejection, or fear, our neural circuitry crystallizes around these toxic frequencies. This biological lockdown sends distress signals throughout the physical form, eventually translating into systemic illness.
However, the miraculous elasticity of the human brain offers a pathway to redemption. By consciously changing our neuronal paths, we possess the power to alter the very course of disease, diverting its destructive momentum into new, life-affirming healing channels. We rewrite the somatic code from the inside out, signaling to our cells that the war has ended.
A crucial step in this alchemical process is recognizing how we inadvertently worship our afflictions. Too often, disease becomes a core pillar of our identity, a dark idol erected within the sanctuary of the mind. We feed it with our attention, our anxiety, and our daily anticipation of its permanence.
When disease is no longer idolized in the mind—when we withdraw the energetic currency of our constant fixation and identification—its grip on the physical form begins to loosen. We cease projecting the reality of illness into our future, allowing the rigid cellular memories to soften, dislodge, and dissolve into the ether.
In this spaciousness, liberated from the mind’s obsessive reinforcement of sickness, the disease in the body can simply float away. As the neural grooves of self-attack are smoothed over by the gentle currents of self-compassion and expansive awareness, natural healing ensues. The body, always striving for divine homeostasis, finally receives the neurological permission to repair itself.
The psychedelic experience acted as a profound supercharger for this mindfulness, illuminating the dark, neglected neural pathways of self-rejection so they could be consciously dismantled. Armed with this transcendent insight and a newly wired terrain of self-love, my physical reality transformed. The psoriasis cleared up completely within six weeks, quietly eliminating the need for expensive biologic treatments totaling nearly $60,000 annually and proving the miraculous healing power of a mind reborn.
I realized this self-rejection extended to my writings as well. I had been heavily judging my own work, trying to give my writings a “Botox treatment” to make them more presentable to the public. My body and my writings are temporary containers for infinite spiritual potential. This realization freed me from the need to enlist ultra-expensive editors, and gimmicky approaches to writing and living, allowing me to present my authentic, unvarnished truth.
Marilyn ‘Masha’ Feldman (2/29/1945–9/30/2019)
To find the divine, we must first find ourselves. I am reminded of Marsha Feldman, a pulchritudinous friend from the 1980s. Marsha had the most perfect body and face I had ever seen, yet she was deeply unhappy, suffering from an autoimmune disease. She visited her Rabbi, demanding to know how she could find God and be healed.
Her Rabbi told her that he had wasted much of his life searching for God through scripture. It was not until he began an intense exploration of himself that he arrived at the doorstep of Truth. He advised Marsha to explore the darkest corners of her life: her judgments, her body, her enemies, her loves, and her connection with Nature. She had to first see what “God” isn’t to find the path to what “God” is.
Marsha’s Rabbi recommended she try a twelve-step support group to begin this exploration. That is how I met her, at a conference where Jack Boland, a master of twelve-step work, spoke. Marsha and I became the best of friends, but she just could not consider becoming my lover because I lacked the athletic build and handsome appearance of the millionaire playboys she was accustomed to hanging out with. Of course, her response to me got catalogued in my mind, informing me of my less than desirable appearance to a certain class of elite human beings.
In 1992, at a local talk I attended, Jack Boland later had the temerity to tell me personally that I needed more pain in my life, to act as a powerful motivator to dive deeper into my true self. At the time it felt harsh, but pain experienced consciously becomes an electrical surge meant to blow outdated neurological circuitry, enabling neural circuits to be rerouted by the brain’s innate neuroplastic capacity.
How do we bring healing to our mistakes of perception? Sometimes, the greatest healing techniques have already been developed. A great foundation for the practice of mindfulness is gained through practicing the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. My beginning on the spiritual path in 1987 began with the study and application of the 12 Steps of AA. The 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, spiritually reinterpreted, provided a framework that honored my spiritual journey rather than blindly following the dogma provided by religion:
12 Steps Revised to Reflect My Present Spiritual Experience
1. Admitting Unmanageability: After going through long periods of suffering, we eventually found the will to end it. We recognized that when we get caught in self-destructive habits—whether tied to a substance, situation, perception, judgment, or an inability to forgive in our relationships—we lose our freedom to choose, create needless trauma for ourselves and others, and miss out on any lasting sense of peace and joy. We came to see that we had been living unconsciously, and that neglect had left our lives unmanageable.
2. Awakening to Possibility: With our newfound hope and openness to change came the desire to awaken to greater possibilities for our lives. We realized that, at our core, we possess an inner, though often overlooked, power that can heal us and restore our balance if we truly seek it. We now see that we haven’t been living up to our full potential as human beings.
3. Turning Over Will: We’ve chosen to turn our will and our lives over to the care of our higher inner power. We’re opening ourselves to the possibility of embracing a new truth in our lives. We want to tap into the power to keep growing and to nurture our hearts so we can be more loving toward ourselves and others. We’re letting go of anything that stands in the way of our journey toward happiness, healing, and wholeness. We understand that without a genuine desire and clear intention to change our behavior, real transformation won’t happen.
4. Fearless Inventory: We took an honest and fearless look at ourselves. Living with low self-esteem led us to make poor choices, driven by a mindset of scarcity. We’ve come to see that by identifying the blocks to our growth and choosing to let them go, we can follow our new awareness toward the truth of who we are. This marks the beginning of our journey into mindfulness and higher consciousness.
5. Radical Honesty: We acknowledged that we hadn’t been honest with ourselves or others, and by opening up to someone we trust—without feeling obligated to them—about our mistakes in judgment and our actions toward ourselves and others, we can better handle the shame and self-criticism that often come from the heavy secrets we once thought we had to keep. Simply speaking honestly with another person can lighten our load. Our secrets no longer have to trap us or harm our mental health. When people come together in truth and honesty, compassion and empathy naturally join the space.
6. Willingness to Release: We became entirely willing to let go of our attachments to unhealthy attitudes, behavior, and people. We wish to see clearly, without the limitations of our past, of our family history, and of our cultural conditioning, with all of their embedded trauma.
7. Humility and Transformation: Through humility and a willingness to change, we open our hearts to new possibilities in life. This fresh connection with our higher inner power fills us with gratitude for the gifts we have and inspires us to prepare spiritually to give back to the world in a meaningful, positive way. We’re ready to release the emotionally charged memories that keep us stuck in the past. Rejoice—old demons are transforming into new angels!
8. Recognizing Harm: When we were unaware of our greater potential as human beings, we may have caused emotional, spiritual, and even physical harm to others. Now, we want to bring healing and peace to those who have suffered because of our ignorance. We’ve come to understand that every relationship, healthy or not, reflects how we truly see ourselves. We want to view life through the eyes of Truth, rather than through the pain and suffering that unfulfilled relationships have left behind.
9. Making Amends: We’ve made direct amends whenever possible to those we may have harmed, except when doing so could cause further hurt to them or others. We won’t ease our guilt at someone else’s expense. We’re committed to living by our newfound wisdom and our renewed intention to avoid harming any living being. We want both our world and our sense of self to feel safe from any future harm from us, and our honest acknowledgment of mistakes to those affected by our poor judgment will help keep that goal alive.
10. Continuous Mindfulness: We keep taking personal inventory and, when we’re wrong, we own up to it quickly. We’ve learned to be honest with ourselves, practicing mindfulness and growing our ability to understand who we are. We know ourselves better now, along with many of the things that can get in the way of living and expressing our true selves. We’ve moved past old ways of thinking and are more focused on appreciating the beauty of the present moment.
11. Meditation and Connection: Through prayer and meditation, we’ve worked to strengthen our connection with the Truth of our being, seeking only to know it and to embrace the willingness to live fully within its boundless realm. We’ve come to see recovery as a meditation on life itself, with our evolving, healing journey becoming a living prayer. Each time we draw from the deep inner waters revealed through meditation, more of our painful illusions fade away. We now understand that the ability to change, grow, and expand within our infinite spirit is the very essence of human life, and we now find ourselves traveling upon new paths of consciousness.
12. Sharing the Awakening: After experiencing a spiritual awakening through these steps, we’ve worked to share our message of recovery with the world while living by these principles in all we do. We’ve become whole—aware, compassionate people who take full responsibility for our lives, healing the past and keeping the present balanced and harmonious, without blaming others for who we are today. We’re enjoying prosperity in many ways and have seen ourselves heal. We’ve saved the world—from ourselves. Life has become our greatest teacher. We know we can’t bring salvation to others, but we feel it’s our duty to show the path of healing to those still suffering and open to overcoming their limitations.
Mindfulness is transformative. When you begin transforming yourself, the impact ripples outward. Self-awareness fosters empathy, and healed individuals naturally inspire healing in others. The unexamined life, fraught with toxic masculinity and humanity’s unconscious response to it, historical dogmas, and religious ignorance, threatens to destroy everything. It is our personal responsibility to direct our internal construction project—bringing order out of the chaos of our minds, much like the mythological process of creation in Genesis, where the Spirit hovers over the void to bring forth Light.
Socrates once said,
“the unexamined life is not worth living.”
True self-examination calls for an open heart and a willingness to face what we’ve buried. Sometimes, that journey can be supported by plant medicine. In the 1950s, Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, tried psychedelic therapy to treat depression that the 12 Steps alone couldn’t heal. He became intrigued by the potential of psychedelics to help those seeking deep spiritual experiences or relief from mental distress. Used responsibly, with the right mindset and environment, they can be powerful tools to move past the ego and glimpse the infinite. Still, they’re just keys; it’s the hand that turns them, and the daily mindfulness that follows, that truly opens the door to lasting peace.
How to Embark on Our Cosmic Journey: 5 Steps to Awakening
- Confront the Stories You’ve Lived By: Write down your core beliefs and question their origins. Are they yours, or were they handed down to you?
- Observe the Mind Without Judgment: Sit quietly for five minutes daily. Watch your thoughts drift like clouds without suppressing or analyzing them.
- Pursue Self-Honesty: Take accountability for how you contribute to your own suffering. Where are you avoiding the truth?
- Rekindle Connection with Intuition: Keep a journal, practice meditation, and act on small intuitive nudges. Trust the quiet voice within.
- Commit to Lifelong Awakening: Healing is not a one-time event. Commit to daily reflections and surround yourself with conscious individuals.
To live an examined life is to reject the passive acceptance of suffering. Seek stillness. Question inherited beliefs. Trust in our innate capacity to transform. Be open to the use of plant medicine in controlled settings if the spirit is guiding in that direction.
The truth lies just beyond the noise, waiting for our attention.
Let us turn on our windshield wipers, clear the static from our cosmic receiver, and boldly tune into the infinite symphony of our existence.
