Episode 99: Ashley Lande: From Christopher Hitchens and New Atheism to Psychedelics, to Jesus Christ

[Music] Praise Him praise him in the morning [Music] praising crazy hey Welcome to our Christine Marcus today I'm joined with Ashley Lundy Ashley is an artist and writer from the USA she's a website and a Blog which you can check out at www.astilandi.com alongside her wonderful writings then some of which we'll discuss today you can also check out her stunning art which is filled with favorite college so we'll go leaves and captivating joins of major figures including Christ himself which I was most enamored with so um Ashley is then post-psychedelic and as a forthcoming Memoir on leaving psychedelics for Jesus which is to be published with Lex and press in USA so um I suppose just to begin then actually can you tell us a little bit about your background and some of the key events and movements in your life maybe even before we get into what seems to be a traumatic conversion increased sure yeah um so I was born and raised in the suburb outside of Kansas City Missouri and my dad was a commercial interior designer and my mom worked for his business and stayed home with us and so um from a young age I'd say I always had [Music] um like an artistic environment I guess um my dad was he designed our house and he was always very into kind of weird contemporary furniture and uh artwork and so um I guess that's kind of my background as far as being an artist that was always part of my life and as far as spiritually I was raised Methodist and it was I would say a little bit of a nominal influence in my childhood my dad was not fond of the Methodist Church because he felt it was too liberal and my mom it was just what she had been raised in and but we did go to church fairly frequently and um but as far as it being a major influence in our home that wasn't really wasn't really there and so spiritually I kind of grew up I I would have said I believed but then when I was I think 14 years old I decided that I was an atheist and of course that shocked my parents we had a huge blow up they were very upset and but I I just none of it seemed um plausible or real to me and um so it wasn't like a painful you know as a 14 year old I didn't have a painful deconversion experience I didn't have this painful deconstruction experience it was easy to just kind of flick it aside and um so yeah that was that was kind of my spiritual lineage I think my parents became much cheaper in their faith after I was already grown and out of the house um so yeah thanks for that Ashley were there any questions then who were especially inspirational or influential and in your early life would you say yeah I mean I had I had a good relationship with my parents and I love my parents my dad passed away in 2018 and um looking back just going through his things after he died he would tear out little at the Kansas City Star used to feature a Bible verse um kind of buried in one of the sections every every day and he would tear out the little bible verses and he would put them in his Bible so looking back it was It was kind of precious to go through all his things and realize like oh there I do have like more of a there was more of a spiritual influence than maybe I perceived at the time and like I said my parents grew in their faces they got older and I also found um my grandmother who she died when I was 11 or 12 and she my dad was from Southern California which is very far away from Missouri and so we didn't see her very often so she didn't have um as much of a direct impacts on my life but I found um going through my dad's old things I found one of her prayer journals and it was just really precious to like read through that and like I said I didn't necessarily have an influence at the time but just going through and reading that um it's just really beautiful and hardening so um yeah and we had I mean we had so I had a sister that I grew up with she was two and a half years older than me she was adopted from Southern Korea we were very close in our children and she passed away actually eight months before my dad did in 2017. and um we had a good network of I had a good network of aunts and uncles and some cousins and so yeah we had a good solid family life I would say no that's brilliant thanks for sharing Ashley and then I suppose next I would love to look at just some of your specific writings really to help us home in on a small part of your story so if we may and there's one article acid head God took me hiring which is fascinating entitled so hey can you just tell us a little bit about this article and really your time growing mushrooms which you start off with which is pretty wild in itself if you find the one and the beginning of this spiral that ultimately led to what was your last trip then yeah sure so um it's interesting I hadn't I quit taking psychedelics I would say maybe eight years prior seven or eight years prior to writing the article and it was something that I really hadn't my you know psychedelic career I don't know what to call it I mean at psychedelics were a huge part of my life they were constituted pretty much my entire religion they were my primary form of recreation um my primary form of practicing my spirituality uh but after that last experience with mushrooms which was um fairly traumatic and I had had traumatic experiences before so it wasn't as though I had all good experiences up to that point and then all of a sudden I had a bad trip and I was done um it was just a cumulative thing but um completely lost my train of thought I'm sorry I have baby brain I also like to say it's because of all the drugs I took that fried my brain right the art of the article so um so yeah that that mushroom trip I just spewed as kind of um my crowning disillusionment I guess with psychedelics um and there was a lot that led up to that point but like I said I haven't necessarily up until I read the article which I think was two years ago I hadn't really thought about psychedelics in a long time I kind of would hear just you know rumors here and there are just you know see an article here and there that there was this Renaissance going on and that there was this accelerating interest in the therapeutic potential and spiritual potential of psychedelics but I was busy raising children you know I just didn't really think about it and then I I came across an article actually there was an article in extasis which is a Christian magazine now it's um owned actually um owned by Christianity today which is a major Christian magazine in America and um this particular article I believe it was by Rachel SEO it referenced another article that had appeared in I think um mcsweeney's that was written by a young woman and I'm sorry Her Name Escapes me at the moment but she was writing about her deconversion from Christianity she was raised um Evangelical Christian as a child like pretty intensively and she was writing about her deconversion from Christianity which was precipitated by psychedelic colleagues and in particular MDMA and acid at least you go to that and just reading that and right you know I've thought oh like I went the opposite direction and I thought I could I could write about that like I feel um I and I felt like at that point God had brought me a long way as far as healing me from all those experiences I think that was another thing where I didn't I just didn't even want to think about it for years afterward because I felt really um honestly I felt really damaged and hollowed out by my Pursuit Of God through psychedelics and like I said just the cumulative effects of all those experiences not all of which were bad obviously obviously you know there was a reason that I kept going back there were very pleasurable experiences they were very experiences that felt very transcendent But ultimately it was just this constant chasing after and clutching at those past experiences and it just slowly started going downhill yeah thanks for that Ashley and what you said about the kind of Evangelical post-evangelical Trend towards deconstruction is interesting because I like you and I think like Paul kingsworth who's actually interviewing recently it seems that we've come the other way we sought our salvation and things like politics and then he referred to it as sending up the Divine letter which I thought was a great image so I it's it's funny to me because I I see these people who you know deconstructive but simultaneously following the most fashionable political views of our time and portraying themselves I think maybe I'm being a bit harsh betraying themselves as being kind of radical it seems ridiculous to me and so I feel I do feel sorry for them I should say but um it's interesting because I could not for the life of me return to that kind of simplistic faith in the political order to solve all the world's problems and so forth which is obviously the way they probably feel about their theological views and things like that yeah yeah so you actually have an interest in another interesting Dimension to your story which I think we might explore is um you did move from this kind of edgy new atheist a belief system as it were influenced by figures like Christopher Hitchens who write about and then you write about moving to fall in love with LSD and use this powerful language I wonder if you may tell us about some of the major Contours in that journey and what form it took then sure yeah yeah so um yeah I guess that was my first you know back then I would have looked at the first time I took acid as a major conversion experience because I converted from um very passionate um materialists atheism to believing that um this isn't all there is like I remember saying after that that first LSC trip and I think I wrote about that in the article like I said um there's so much more than I ever thought there was and I was um so like I said I declare myself an atheist when I was 14 you know the big blowout my parents were horrified um but I I persisted in that for years um of really up until I was in my early 20s 22 or 23 and there was some point at which I realized um that I needed to be able to intellectually justify my atheism and I needed to be able to counter people primarily my dad at the time you know who would approach me with Arguments for the existence of God or for Christianity and so um but the way that I stood a direction in which I took that I just to me it was just a foregone conclusion that God did not exist like I had already decided that I wasn't interested in looking at Arguments for God in good faith like that wasn't an interest of mine I just decided like okay I'm gonna read I'm going to read atheists and I'm going to equip myself to argue um cogently you know against theism and so I remember I read uh I had a friend who was also a very devoted atheist and he gave me he loaned me some Sam Sam Harris book and a Richard Dawkins book and neither of them honestly the Dawkins like I don't have a scientist so that was kind of beyond my grasp you know and then um Sam Harris I just didn't I don't know he was fine I didn't really like him that much at the time even and but then I discovered Christopher Hitchens and I [Music] I read I can't remember I read some of these books that were available and then I remember it was right around the time when his book God Is Not Great was coming out and um I rushed to the bookstore to buy it and I remember just like going home and being so eager to read it like you know I think I just had this idea in my head like this is going to be and I look back now and see like I was I was searching you know and I was the desperation of my desire to prove atheism you know or to like be able to definitively say like yes this is the truth I think the very like Flavor of that desperation had um as seeking after God in it I guess and um I just remember like I got like halfway through through this book and I just remember like feeling so depressed all of a sudden like it was something I agreed you know I intellectually ascended to everything that he was saying but the way in which it was presented or just maybe like seeing it in print like that was just so disheartening it just had a it had like a emptiness to it that was that was so depressing and I just remember thinking if if I agree with this and I agree that you know this is all there is there's nothing Transcendent um or you know the only Transcendence that we can find is in art and music which was kind of one of Christopher hitchens's things like I think he did believe in Transcendence in some sense but it came through through ART and music and literature and I just remember feeling like why does this if this is if this is true then why does it feel so bad like why you know why does it feel so and I remember just kind of like putting the book down on the floor beside my bed and eventually it got kind of scooted under the bed and I just forgot about it and um by that point I had taken mushrooms maybe like half a year prior and it was just um is it toward the end of my senior in college a friend had them and I was like sure why not I didn't really know anything about the Psychedelic experience I hadn't really read much um and that night I just had a really good time I just thought it was really fun it was colorful and interesting and fascinating and Goofy and funny and I was with some of my friends and it was just fun I just had a good time and but I but I loved it and but like it there wasn't a spiritual dimension in it for me at that point but I just loved it and um I think there was one more time like a few months after then that I got mushrooms from someone else and there again it was just a really fun time I think I took them with my my best friend Kathleen is my roommate in college and it was just a party you know and so then after the Hitchens incident I guess and after feeling disillusioned with that um there was a man that I met who I asked him if he had kind of in the orbit of um I think I was smoking marijuana at that point too so kind of in that whole orbit and I asked him if they had any emotion and she said no but I have some LSC and I was like okay sure great same thing whatever and um and so he came over one afternoon and we took acid and we went for a walk and then we went back to my apartment and I remember I was just staring up at the corner and there must have been something in the room that was like you know creating a prism and creating this rainbow on the wall a piece of glass or something and I just remember watching and it started moving and pouring and I said I uh and of course he had come like without he kind of considered himself like an acid Guru he had come to my apartment with all this equipment like he had a singing bowl a Tibetan singing bowl and he had the Timothy Leary adaptation of the um Tibetan Book of the Dead and he had all this other stuff and I was just kind of like this is just gonna be fun you know I don't and I'm not spiritual you know I don't care and but at that moment I remember um just looking at those colors and I I said to him like how does anyone ever have a bad trip and he just looked horrified and he said well don't think about it and I was like oh okay whatever and um and of course you know looking back the The Experience kind of turned on that that was when the experience kind of turned and uh it turned really bad and um I started freaking out and panicking and I remember going to the the bathroom and looking at myself in the mirror and I was there were just like gobs of Flesh like falling off of my face and it was bloody and it was like it my face would reconstitute itself and then it would just Decay and fall off again and there was a skull visible underneath and it was just really disturbing and um then I remember at one point you know I was kind of at the peak of my freaking out the peak of this bad trip and it was like the whole room exploded in white lights and um I experienced what I'm sure you know through your research on psychedelics and listening to people talk about them a lot of people were will refer to Ego death that can occur um and that's what it that's what it felt like and I remember afterwards thinking that was that seems like the best thing I've ever done and also the worst thing I've ever done and I don't think I'll ever do that again and um then like two weeks later I did it again so that was kind of the beginning of um like you said like I wrote in that article my love affair with LLC and I did think when I sat down went to write about it using that language was appropriate because I it really was um Like A Love Affair and somebody or like a a deification I guess you could say of the drug for me I was obsessed with it I would talk to everyone I could about it I was Evangelistic for LMC and um I just thought it was the answer to everything I like I said it was my um I would have said at that point that I did believe in God um especially after the second time I took it let's see I would have said that I believed in God but really I believed it LSC so um that was yeah that was the beginning and that was kind of the story of my going from being this pretty hard-line atheist to um being open to the existence of a god I still wouldn't hear about Christianity but I was open to the existence of something Beyond material world so yeah excellent thanks Ashley and um there's so many so many interactions I would take that in but uh what it sort of strikes me at some of my level so one level is one thing I always picked up listen to Hitchens and I think part of his appeal was that there's this almost biblical quality of lament to him is this purely kind of parasitical anti-christian Vision but there's no positive way of you that kind of uh aesthetic love fraternal seem shallow in that context to your point I think and the fact that he was such a great reparation seems to have swung a lot of my friends but like that they would then like we were saying with the deconstruction people earlier on then they would seek their salvation and politics and you see them get really into these um political parties and things that they would never have been interested in as we were growing up and things like that so it sort of fits with a um cultural Trend that I see which is interesting and I'm also interested in so there was that social element um even with the kind of pseudo Guru element that you see in some cases but you also say and something I'm interested in that you seem to hit that in your work is a lot you and a lot of people seem to be doing drugs like this alone so I'm wondering um what do you think is some of the background for that uh kind of why it's done that way and maybe where does that fit in with the wider meaning crisis and indeed this kind of Mental Health crisis are these drugs maybe an escapism for people or does it depend on the drug and so on and so forth does that make sense yeah I think um I think for sure I think ultimately I think ultimately all drugs are some kind of form of escapism you know and I was I guess it was interesting in the beginning I I actually got to the point where I preferred to do them by myself because I didn't want anyone interfering with my carefully curated experience you know I had these aspects of I like to make my own playlists I like to there were just certain aesthetic things that I liked to have available and I didn't want anyone interfering with my experience which it's fascinating a lot of people um who are pro psychedelics will argue that um we'll we'll argue that ego death occurs that somehow your ego is you know dissipated through the experience and that you learn how to um give up control in a sense and I look back and I think like I was very tightly controlled though about how like I said about how the experience was going to go even though to an extent it's true that you don't um things can go a way that you didn't anticipate things can go away that you didn't want things you know a trip can turn bad in ways that you didn't expect but um I look back and think like I kept like narrowing and narrowing the experience to this until it became like I said I prefer to do it alone it became this very insular experience it's very isolated um experience and I think um it's I don't know it's fascinating to think I was talking to my husband about um one of the uh discussion points that you sent over about oh in the 80s cocaine was a very popular drug you know and now we see um drugs well opioids you know in particular extremely popular now kind of the drug of Crisis um and psychedelics to becoming increasingly popular but um life and life is so much um I've I've heard it argued in many spheres that we're much more socially isolated even before covet happened you know we were already like much more so socially isolated than previous generations um at least in like Maine life Protestant denominations there's falling attendance and calling membership um and I mean I can see that around me even in our our little town here um in Leon and Kansas like um my so my nephews last week they were visiting and they live in a large suburb of Kansas City and we went for a walk on the first day we were here and my older nephew said where are all the people and I was like oh people don't like you know people don't really people are out a lot here people are and so I do think it's fascinating to see how like the um trends of like the substances people prefer kind of dovetail with the cultural Trends and like the so-called meaning crisis too which I think you know is absolutely real um I think absolutely like psychedelics are the the renewed interest in psychedelics the accelerating interest psychedelics is absolutely a symptom of that like um actually last night we saw the Jesus Revolution movie um which I really enjoyed and I had I had watched a documentary about Lonnie frisbee before so it was interesting to see how um how he's portrayed in that and of course I I really enjoyed the book um God's forever family by Larry Eskridge which is kind of about the whole movement but um at one point the Lonnie frisbee said um you know people are who is trying to explain the hippie movement to the soul to um Chuck Smith this older pastor and he said um these people are hungry for God like these people are searching for God and I think that's I think that's absolutely true with psychedelics and unfortunately I don't think that psychedelics um reliably or even frequently or maybe ever I don't know leave people into the truth uh which of course I believe Jesus is the way the truth and the life um but yeah I do think it's fascinating that it's happening now I I also think it's fascinating the connections that psychedelics have with um trans transhumanism it seems like these major figures like um Elon Musk I read something the other day about the founder of Whole Foods his he's always been a little nutty but um these major like tech people and of course like um I've heard that Burning Man is a huge attraction for like um major tech people um but yeah it's interesting oh and um who's the guy the other um Peter Thiel yeah um who's a major investor in psychedelics I'm sure into psychedelics himself also very interested in transhumanism like that's fascinating to see and like there's like a strain of evil and I think the Demonic and transhumanism and AI that is very disturbing but it's interesting to see um kind of the the overlap between interest in that and interest in psychedelics that yeah it's it's a very interesting um cultural moment I guess no that makes sense that's interesting it's funny that you say that I think um it sort of makes sense to me that that they would be interested in both those things because um it's if you're Imagining the universe and this kind of imminent free image that Charles Taylor talks about there is no Chancellor transgender realm outside of time matter and space then you're going to seek your salvation in the purely material way and then it seems like these drugs I think to your point or transhumanism these Technologies or how we become Gods it's like our Sacrament almost um yeah yeah for sure does that make sense yeah it absolutely does yeah and I it's interesting to look back and I there's times on um you know and I've heard people claim that like claims that um I can't remember this and I know Steve Jobs was into acid too and um there was sometimes like this weird digital quality to acid in particular um like the patterns and the um yeah it was just weird and I look back on that and it feels a little spooky to me you know that it's so embedded in the tech World um and that and it absolutely like you said it absolutely um and I would have called it my Sacrament too at one point and but like you said if this all there if this is all there is then of course like why shouldn't we pursue as many transient experiences as possible or whatever means and why shouldn't we try to prolong life by whatever and avoid death and suffering by whatever means possible yeah and um actually one question that I hadn't have thought of but just as you were speaking there I sort of kicked in my mind have you come across say what Mary harington's been writing recent issues in the recent book feminism against progress and she actually made I was listening to an interview she did for um trigonometry and she immediately claimed that the pill was actually the first transhumanist technology that's like I hadn't thought of before I thought that was really interesting as you might enjoy very hard I haven't I'm definitely going to look around now but that [Music] that sure see that that is really interesting yeah and I suppose you've you've maybe hinted at what your answer might be but as it pertains to the the use of these drugs even within the more communal context so some people might say well that's kind of our expressive individual I suppressed the way it is like we're bringing a lot of our problems to these substances where they then argue that there's a case for the use of drugs within a more in a social context you have these uh supposedly ancient costumes in places like Brazil they would have gone allegedly Ayahuasca do you think um there's even a place for that kind of thing or do you think that's still a problem in some ways uh yes in some ways and I think the so the idea that these indigenous cultures have been using um substances for Millennia uh in this way it's just it's it's accepted like uncritically like I'll see it in news articles there's no nothing cited it's just stated as though it's a universally accepted statement but it's really not true so like the indigenous use just from the reading I've done and the research I've done which admittedly I'm not you know an anthropologist but um the the use was not nearly as widespread as psychedelic components like to claim and also the use was not of the same nature as our modern you know therapeutic obsessed culture you know is how we're wanting to use psychedelics um and when I Was preparing for um unbelievable was that a year and a half ago ago um I remember watching this documentary on YouTube and it's actually been taken down I don't know why but it was called magical death and it was the University of Pennsylvania anthropology department it was recorded in like 1970. and they were um it was a documentary a short documentary like half an hour long about this um Brazilian like native Brazilian tribe who used Ayahuasca and it wasn't even the entire tribe that used I lost it was just the shamans within the tribe and um it was really disturbing because the way that the shamans would use Ayahuasca like they they very much um believed in the spirit world you know that was very much like just um an intrinsic belief like just a given you know that they believed in the spirit world in these shamans would use Ayahuasca to summon and they had certain spirits that they were well acquainted with that they you know would routinely associated with in the spiritual realm and they would use the Ayahuasca to um summon these spirits and to summon these Spirits in order to and ask them to attack an enemy tribe and to um I forget what the trans is just really disturbing the translator was talking well you know this practice was being performed in the tribe and and they said um this Shaman was um summoning the spirit and asking the spirit to kill the babies of the enemy tribe and so I remember watching that and just thinking like wow like I just and in addition that wasn't the only thing but in addition to reading articles and reading and research papers that the the use wasn't nearly as widespread where it was used it was not used in the same way that westerners are now um trying to use it or choosing to use it it wasn't used in this like um personal personal therapy way you know personal like purgative therapeutic way it was used as a means of access to the spiritual realm um for the purpose and I'd say in many cases for the purpose of sorcery and witchcraft so um yeah I thought that was really interesting and so you know I've struggled with um it's hard to argue with personal testimonies of people who have undergone psilocybin therapy and they say that it helps them they say that it helped them overcome an addiction um of course that you know and that kind of usage isn't new either like that was done in the 50s and 60s with LLC for alcoholism and wasn't the efficacy wasn't really there but um you know like I said it's hard to argue with someone's personal subjective testimony um and actually I I read I was doing a testimony of a woman who said um that psilocybin she had a horrible experience in one of the Johns Hopkins trials on psilocybin but it she did quit smoking and so I look at something like that I'm like well what is that worth you know to have a psychologically damaging experience yes you've been smoking which is a good you know that's that's obviously like an unqualified good to quit smoking um my dad died of you know from smoking related illness so um I've definitely seen the ravages that that it causes and um I look back when I was I think 24 my husband and I had an LLC trip where I smoked the last cigarette that I've ever smoked in my life I never touched a cigarette again because it was like I tried to smoke one while on LLC and it was so repulsive that that memory was embed in my mind and I don't even like smelling cigarettes I don't even they just are disgusting to me so I'm like well you know I guess I quit smoking through LSU too but um I do Wonder um particularly after reading um I think you mentioned have you are you familiar with Louis I'm good and his book Return of the Dragon okay so um he wrote a book Return of the Dragon and he um he makes a pretty compelling argument he talks about the references to pharmacia in the Bible um and that that would have been understood the word from Ikea that would have been understood as practices of Witchcraft and sorcery using which often use psychedelic drugs um and he talks about the relationship between um psychedelic drug use in history and um cultures that had some kind of serpent God and practice to move human sacrifice and how like we see instances of these things being connected throughout history and so um reading that book was also like I said also really um eye-opening to the point where I I don't know I generally feel like they're is no there's no good like I generally feel like it's just I I can't at this point I can't think of any context or I have not you know witnessed any contacts I haven't for my own personal research and reading obviously through my own personal experiences I can't imagine a context where taking even a therapeutic context where psychedelics would be more effective or safer or better than um another kind of treatment so yeah sorry that was my extremely long answer no that's great I appreciate that thank you Ashley I think that that is sort of what I thought even um would make sense logically that a lot of these things that people try to insert a drugs into the competition it's not as if you can't have an alternative that is better or a a net sense it doesn't have a lot of the downsides it doesn't have the same predictive qualities whatever the case might be um so that's I'm actually I'm glad you said that was interesting and um I suppose if we might then refer back to your journey once more I'm Keen to let people hear a bit of the um what moved you ultimately then from CN LSD and things like that as your friend and then to discovering Christ our true friend and and there's really touching heartbreaking bits to the story if you're happy to tell um and your friends and how that impacted you then sure yeah so I I met my husband um we had two beautiful children that's kind of you know to summarize and um we still would you know whenever we had the chance when my children were with my parents or his parents we would still it became more of a special occasion obviously because we had children and so the opportunity to take psychedelics were few and far between but um we always viewed it with um a great reverence you know and like this was our um like I said earlier it was our religious experience it was our spirituality and that continued on for um a number of years I'd say five or six years and during that time I had a friend named Carrie who I had known from childhood and I knew that she had become a Christian in college I remember connecting with her through email when we were in college and and she wrote what I thought of at the time was like a very wacky email about how God was moving in her life and God was doing all these things in her life and every other sentence she said or almost every sentence had something about Jesus or God in it and I just thought it was Goofy and I felt sorry for her and because I felt like she had fallen into this kind of silly naive religion you know meanwhile I was into the deep stuff you know and um after we both had children uh I reconnected with her and we would get together for play dates for our children and I remember she um I would kind of spout off whatever New Age Theory I was into at the time and she would always just respond very very gently she just she's a very gentle person just has a very sweet gentle nature about her and she would always respond she would listen to me and then she would always respond um by quoting something from the Bible she would say well the Bible says this you know and I was just kind of like whatever you know and um she and we oh and kind of concurrent with this my husband um he was always more studious about actually studying other religions than I was um and he would you know go and try to read like um original text from religions he would read through the entire Quran you know and I would just read more bits and pieces I read some of the Quran and then whatever he was reading at the time I would kind of read some of it but he was always more um scholarly I guess and methodical about the way he would study things and at one point um we had had some negative psychedelic experiences but like I said that alone wasn't enough to make us quit you know or make us think that they were bad but um at one point he um he kind of became disenchanted he was really into Alan walks he was into young like he became kind of disenchanted with them around us and um he decided he would try reading some early Christian writings and um remember he was reading athanasius and um I think it's Augustine I learned recently that I was I've pronounced Augustine incorrectly my entire life and so now I'm like trying to remove I think like Augustine is the correct way and forgive me if I I don't know I might never get it right but um so he was he was reading these things and I was kind of like you know this is weird but whatever because like I said I was open to virtually anything except for Christianity and so um at the time he also began to see um a therapist he was just struggling with controlling his anger um and this therapist challenged him to quit smoking marijuana every day and to go to start going to church and so he took up the challenge he quit he didn't completely give up marijuana but he quit smoking it daily and he started going to this church that was down the street from us and I was I was completely opposed I said no I'm not stepping foot in the church no way you can go by yourself and um so he did and um so like I said that was kind of concurrent with um me um kind of reinvigorating my friendship with Carrie and then my husband was going to church and but I was still very resistant to um both these things and um Carrie had a two-year-old daughter named Joella and she um they started noticing just one day she she was very letharged she started acting very lethargic which you know as you know if your um your niece like it's not normal for a toddler to be super lethargic you know I mean they have a lot of energy and then the crash and nap that she was just constantly lethargic and um then they noticed she had some bleeding on her thumb and I thought it was so strange and they so they took her into the door oh and she was having low grade fevers all the time so um they took her into a doctor she was diagnosed with leukemia and I remember at the time I um someone one of another of her friends set up a meal train for her which is this website where you can go and sign up to take people meals and I had signed up for a meal like three weeks out and I remember I was um uh I looked at the calendar again like in preparation the next day I was going to take a meal and um and I got an email from the organizer of that of that meal trading that meal um fan and she said joella's service is going to be such and such a date and I just remember I was so confused like service like what what are they talking about what's like what does that mean and then I realized she's talking about a funeral and I realized like and so um what had happened is like the leukemia had just like gone so fast it the cancer had spread super quickly and she she died within like I think it was like three weeks from diagnosis to death um it was just like devastating and um oh and meanwhile also this time I discovered that um and I'm sorry I guess I I get the timeline a little confused in my head um I just had we just had our son at the time because at the time that Joella died I had found out that I was pregnant with our daughter and um and I was actually really upset to be pregnant and I of course I look back now I have my beautiful 11 year old daughter and I regret that but I just um I don't know I didn't I loved my son but I didn't necessarily have the world view at the time that children are always a blessing and um yeah and so I think I was six weeks pregnant six or seven weeks pregnant eight weeks maybe when we went to Joel's funeral and um I mean it was just it was heartbreaking like this little perfect and she was the most beautiful child she was such a beautiful child and she's just laying there in the coffin and she looked like a doll I mean she didn't look dead but it was just so it was so shattering it was so dissonant you know to see a child like that and I remember at the time I feel like I was reaching kind of a crisis point with um the old beliefs I held like weren't working anymore you know I completely I had bought into this like vague New Age notion um and you know Western New Age philosophy is just kind of this mishmash of like whatever you want basically and um but I just bought into this idea that there was really like there needed to be any such thing as true suffering like it was all in your mind um and I was also super into yoga super into practicing yoga and meditation so I was very into this idea that like everything could be love and lightness and like suffering need not really um occur like it need not really be an experience a facet of The Human Experience and so like we just extreme dissonance of like that philosophy meeting up um colliding with this devastating tragic death of this beautiful little girl like it was just it was shattering and I remember at the funeral um Carrie and her husband they were I think it just struck me how they were they were not destroyed like they were they were struck down you know but they were not destroyed they were mourning but they were not they were not like annihilated which is you know I felt like I would be like if my if my child died you know the time I just felt like I don't know how why would I go on living like what hope would I have what and um so that just really the whole experience just really got me thinking um and just their their witness in that way that they were obviously they were filled with sorrow they were overwhelmed with sorrow but they weren't completely destroyed and I just remember thinking like how are they like that like how how are they like that um and I finally agreed to go uh to church with my husband and I remember I was still just I was so arrogant and I remember going in just thinking I don't want to be here this is dumb and um we said I'm you know I insisted we sit near the back and um during the warship at the beginning of the service I don't even remember what songs they were you know I don't remember but I just remember being overcome with emotion and just sitting there sobbing and I was I was humiliated because I was like I don't feel let's see if you saw me this is embarrassing but just being like overwhelmed with emotion and I think that couples particularly joella's death just really got me thinking like you know maybe there's something to this whole Jesus person you know maybe there's something here like it was what really like cracks me open and like I said that that dissonance of like my world view can't do anything with this situation like my world view like this doesn't fit in my worldview there's no there's no accounting for this the death of this beautiful child that doesn't make any sense like there's no um yeah there's no like hope Beyond this and I remember um a couple of years ago I would well and there's also the idea that like um within the new age sphere that you like the Law of Attraction thing you know like you manifest whatever you focus on whatever and it's this very like is this very weird delusional you know take into a psychological conclusion it's like you have ultimate power I mean it's basically like you are God like you control your environment I mean it can people couch it and subtler terms than that but that's essentially the gist of it um and and that World Views like this doesn't make sense because like Carrie is the sweetest nicest person that she didn't deserve this she didn't bring this on herself this isn't some kind of you know I couldn't believe this is some kind of result of some kind of karma or you know so kind of um and so like I said yeah that just the the the dissonance of that just really cracked me open and and also Carrie and her husband's witness as Physicians and how they yeah what they how they acted what how they behaved um it was just it was just otherworldly like it was yeah it was beautiful I mean there was even amidst the extremity of the sorrow there was like a beauty to their faith and their Witness uh thanks that's that's powerful thank you so much for sharing Ashley and um I think alongside finding that Grace and that amidst that awful suffering and um finding the Redemptive nature and suffering and that kind of personal way I think that's most important but again societal level as you mentioned the word worldview there I think that was one of the things I became ultimately dissatisfied with figures like Alan Watson this um Buddhist Notions of Hindu emotions of my everything's an illusion even the attachment that the parents would feel to the child would be considered and a a cause of suffering in itself and that's something that we escape from people who think they they hear these nice little tidbits about Buddhism and think oh that sounds lovely but it's it's such if you really probe into it it's so horrible depressing world of you yeah exactly like if if you like I said the Law of Attraction thing you know they couch it in several terms yeah like you said there are those little Snippets that say like oh that sounds like a nice principle but then when you think about the actuality of it and like how that would be applied and how that would I remember one time I walked into the yoga studio that um that's probably I don't know maybe a year before Joel had died I walked into the yoga studio and my yoga teacher was having a conversation with another woman and she was talking about going to this Buddhist Retreat and part of it was a like a silent Retreat and she said one of the teachers was talking about um non-attachment you know and how she she said she kind of questioned at the time she was like I don't know just you know I don't understand like I'm just not supposed to care if my brother dies like and she said the teacher's response to that was like well you don't you don't start with that you start with breaking your smaller attachments first and then you build up to that you know and they're having this conversation at the other ladies like oh yeah you know and I even at the time I just remember thinking like what I don't I don't want I don't want to be to the point where I don't care like that just it just seemed so wrong you know like it just seems so like patently apparently wrong and so yeah that's that's interesting like you said like you hear you know those little Snippets like oh that sounds interesting or like you know I know they've tried to implement like mindfulness techniques in schools and stuff and like oh this seems like a you know this seems like a good practice this seems like a and I do think this is a different subject but I do think it's it's really interesting that Buddhism is kind of viewed as like this spiritually neutral religion you know and and it's it's kind of the last acceptable um religion religion in secular society is those mutual and I find it interesting too that um in some of the I've read some of the Psychedelic therapy rooms like Johns Hopkins or places like that um these research hospitals who have these psychedelic programs like they you know they say they try to make things spiritually spiritually neutral but then they'll be imagery like mandalas or Buddha statues in the room and I'm like why why is that considered why is Buddhism considered neutral like you know among the it's just interesting I'm like that's not neutral you know but for whatever reason it's considered neutral no that's right yeah no that's really interesting I think in part it just um it's because secularism and its constructs are historically anti-christian and I think in some cases although theoret I think a Buddhism is the main one but some cases strangely enough Islam is treated favorably in the public storage I know in Ireland the same day that the old blasphemy laws Christian blastovino's were overturned you had the EU passing through new blastery laws that you can't say this that and the other about Muhammad as this that was disturbing fascinating disturbing yeah that is very interesting yeah yeah and I I I do find it fascinating too in my um my husband works in a very uh Blue Collar industry and there's a lot of um taking the name of the Lord and in vain you know and there's um a lot of and just when you watch anything you know there's always there's oh my God and worse and I I you never hear like Oh My Buddha or you certainly don't ever hear oh my Muhammad because that would be big trouble um but I just think it's fascinating that like why is it so acceptable to take the name of the Lord in vain yet yet it's almost it's interesting I don't know Paradox but like Oh My Buddha like wouldn't have as much potency to people either you know or saying you know Buddha damn or whatever but yeah it's just it's really it's really interesting I could go on about that forever and it reminds me of my my uh oh that reminds me of something Christopher hitchen said it was actually in the I went back and reread um God Is Not Great recently because I I wrote this essay actually for um this collection that I think is going to come out in August or September about um it's called coming to Faith through Dawkins and this collection of essays by people it's not specifically Dawkins but like people who um became Christians um and had and the the one of the new atheists um had some kind of influence in that experience and anyway I was going back and reading God Is Not Great and in the afterwards one of the later Editions um he talks about perseverance talks about being at a book signing in Arkansas and he said he comments to the the audience the people who are there for the book signing he says like um you know how they're kind of in the heart of the Bible Belt in the United States and he said on the way there to this book signing he saw a billboard that said Jesus saves and he said it says both just that one phrase like it says both too much and too little and I just thought that was an interesting thing for him to say you know and he didn't really elaborate on on it in his afterwards and I was like it says those too much and too little like I just I find that interesting and like you said he and he was such a I mean he was such a clever person you know in a talented partition like he said and um but it was like I mean his whole Foundation was being anti-theist like it was it was a negatively framed like like you said there wasn't anything better for him to offer and like he would kind of he would kind of like wraps his eyes about oh we have this wonderful literature and art and but it like it was just like insufficient you know like that's science efficient like what's the source of that like you know what's the meaning behind that wonderful art and literature like why does it touch us why does it and so yeah yeah it's just it's it's interesting secular secularization is just it makes me think too of I have a friend actually my friend from college who I did much as with a few times she works at a very fancy hotel in New Orleans and she um she's not a Believer you know I've talked to her about it she's open to talking about it but I asked her once several years ago if she would read the first few chapters of John just as a favor to me and um she said she would and I said would you have a Bible I can send to you I can send you the Bible I'll be happy to and she said oh no I have a whole box of them in the corner of my office she's a manager in this fancy hotel in New Orleans and I said why why do you have a box of Bibles in the corner of it she said oh because we took them out and I don't know if it's so in in America I don't know if this is worldwide or like the Gideon Bibles in hotels yeah and so she said they had they decided I don't know if they decided like the order came from you know higher management or they just decided as Hotel like we're taking you know this is silly we're gonna take these Bibles out of the room nobody wants who wants this anymore you know but they took the Bibles out of the rooms but she said nobody can bring themselves to take the box to the dumpster it was like they all agreed that it was you know this is ridiculous claptrap that nobody could bring themselves to actually because I just thought that was really fascinating absolutely and um yeah your comments about Hitchens really intrigued me too because again I always thought it was this lament he was always using part of the Christian story against itself and um it's a great quote by JK Chesterton when he talks about the virtues run a mock basically that they're they're no longer virtues because they've been separated from one another and they just run with one I mean it like the others like Hutchins had lament but he had no time for prayers and so on I think that's a good way of reading him I think especially in light of a Tom Holland's Dominion I think is it to sort of fill in the gaps of that book I've been thinking about recently yeah interesting that's so interesting to think yeah him is lamenting I mean I can definitely see that and I I find it fascinating too I there was a book um that one of his friends who's a Believer wrote about him it's called like the faith of Christopher Hitchens it wasn't that great of a book I thought but um I read it he says um that he said that Christopher hitchen's favorite song was Higher Love by Steve Winwood I don't know have you ever heard that song you know like there must be a Higher Love without it we're just wasting time like I was like that is interesting you know why would that be your favorite song and obviously it's not an explicitly Christian song but it's a very much you know like this like yearning for something to be honest for a higher love I just yeah it's fascinating she was a very interesting person absolutely and um actually one thing I wanted to get back to that we were discussing was um quite recently a few months ago I had a Bernardo cast trip on my channel and he's great in many ways he's an ally against a much kind of secularist materialism is some good points but some of the stuff just makes me at my age to be honest and there is an element of he's still at that popular kind of quasi-secular um stage whereby you see religion as just one thing and you don't make these differences between say the Christian faith and Buddhism and so on to try to blend them together but some of the language on the surface may sound like it lends itself to that but I think obviously if you go into the scriptures deeply that that's that the notion will disappear so I wanted to look at it in terms of um what it means today to Christ specifically and how does that then contrast with these Notions of equal death and RAM Das and some of those new age groups as you're talking about then yeah yeah for sure and it's yeah and I I um I think it's common in the Psychedelic world to have that kind of um what would you call it like is that like syncretism or um you know this idea that like oh when we talk about ego death like in Christianity they say this in Buddhism they call it this you know like as though it's it's the exact same thing which is couched in these in different language and like no it's not the same thing at all like um I think it's telling to look back and like I said to see how how tightly I control this experience that was supposedly you know causing me to um causing my ego to dissolve and causing me to um lose control you know causing me and there's also ultimately it's like yeah there is you know when people say ego death I know what they're talking about that experience of um I don't know it's kind of like being obliterate there is a mimicry of death and rebirth I would say in psychedelic use there can be that experience that um and so therefore you know I was like oh well when Christians say talk about you know dying in Christ or being born again like oh I know I know what they're talking about like yeah I've done that you know um there is like that mimically but it's not it's not the same thing like it's um there is I say with there's like a dying I mean it's a dying to emptiness like what are you dying to what are you being reborn into um I think a lot about um is it in Luke 11 Luke 10 Luke 11. um where Jesus talks about when unclean spirits go out of a person they wander around in arid areas looking for rest they find none they go back and find the home um clean and slabs and then they bring seven more Spirits with them and the last condition is even worse than the first like I really think about that in terms of psychedelics and what they do because they do have this like obliterating quality you know they have and that that same quality it's a very it can be a very destabilizing quality destabilizing experience for a lot of people um and that's why you see I mean acid casualties are a real thing like it can be a very psychologically destabilizing experience and I think that quality too is what I guess people are hoping can like Snap people out of the um you know years-long depressions or like years-long patterns of behavior of addiction or but um yeah maybe you can you can clean the house but if the house is empty then I mean I feel like and looking back I feel like they're absolutely demonic uh influences at play and in my life and my experience um and I absolutely think that's real and so I mean it's just a completely it's yeah it's not the same thing it's not the same thing at all like dying surprised Being Born Again In Christ I was reading um one of my well one of my career passages in the New Testament I think one of my favorite verses in and Colossians where Paul talks about being united in love um so that you may know um you may know the mystery of God I may be paraphrasing a little I should just memorize it you know the mystery so that you will know the mystery of God who is Christ like Christ is the mystery of God in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge I remember the first time I read that the first time I read the New Testament after you know coming out of my psychedelic use just reading that and being like wow like really like that's that's a big claim you know that all the the the mystery of God is Christ and in Christ are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge and like that's why I think you know you can look at like you said like occasionally those Snippets from Buddhism or like they've seen like good principles they seem like lowercase T truth but anything that is true in those other religions if it's not mediated through Christ like it's it's not truth I don't know if that makes if that makes sense that's right I think that's again like for a chesterton's point it you're just taking part in using it against the whole Wars it has to be properly integrated into all yeah that makes sense to me for sure I think that makes it logical sense and um I know you have to go in a few moments just before we do I want to ask you about one figure that I I Adore and I was kind of keen to hear your thoughts in that being Bob Dylan and I'm wondering what he has meant to you what he means to in part because he is his fascinating figure who became Christian after all of these experiences he was kind of one of the main figures in the 60s who was you know at the Forefront of some of those things and then became very kind of a small Orthodox Christian I wonder what you make it that night yeah yeah and I've read like some people and I mean he's Bob Dylan so he's very um kind of cantankerous you know and secretive and so some people will say he's not a Christian anymore but I think he is there's no hard evidence that he's he's not and so I'd like to believe he's retained his Christian faith and um I love Bob Dylan he was so it's it's just fascinating to me like he was so in his music and his lyrics were so meaningful to me like like I said I would always make playlists for my trips and a lot of times it would be mostly Bob Dylan um and I remember just everything he said was just like wow like that you know and it was like my experience would take on you know it was like Bob Dylan was narrating my life you know in my experience and um and just the way that he can turn a phrase is just I mean it's like no one else and the the fact that he could he could articulate experiences and articulate and it's interesting too to look back and see like even in his early records when I was um super into psychedelics um probably bringing it all back home again in Highway 61 one on blonde were my favorites um like the big 60s records um and it's just fascinating to see like how there were I'm trying to think of a specific example but like I could see how there were like elements there were Christian elements like there was um a Christ hauntedness you know even about those records um and yeah I still I still love him and I still like I it's interesting there are some records that I would listen to a lot when I was tripping that I just I can't go back and listen to those because they just Too Many Memories too many associations but Bob Dylan isn't like that for me like he's just he's Eternal he's Timeless and so um yeah I still listen to those records all the time yeah thank God and are there any particular a favorites that you'd like to recommend and why you did they movie stick with you so much then yeah so um A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall was always one of my favorites um and I just think it's like incredibly profound and um Bob Dylan's 150th stream was always one of my favorite I just think it's a hilarious like slapstick song um and also really profound idiot wind from Blood on the tracks is one of my favorite the whole record is just beautiful and touching and and wonderful and um actually um the gates of Eden is probably one of my very favorites and actually the working title of my book is outside the gates of vegan because I love Bob Dylan so much and I felt like it was an apt you know hopefully I'm not violating any trademarks but um but yeah I just chose that title because it just seemed really fitting and also I wanted to you know okay like a little homage to to him so yeah those are those are those are some of my favorites and probably from his his Christian records I think um when he returns is one of my favorites um I think that's on the John Wesley Harding her or um the train one yeah so yeah I love that one oh that's amazing and I just I supposed to close then this evening about that book and when will it come out and is there anything else you can tell us about it then yeah so I um just sent my first round so my um we're still in the editing process basically and I I was slow down I took a little break uh after my baby was born and and things slowed way down I actually wrote the book I wrote my first draft while I was pregnant um I was still writing up until I was like 36 weeks pregnant and then I like had to you know finish because I literally couldn't sit up over my belly was so big um but um and so we're in the editing stages my editor said hopefully early next year um but it's just kind of contingent on on how fast we can move and um how things go and and we had talked about maybe incorporating some of my artwork and um so that could be a possibility and so yes I'm hoping early next year so like if that thing doesn't slow way down by me having a baby but um I'm really excited I I think um the time is right I just hope that that God puts it in the right hands and and you know like I um I feel like there are other people doing really important work as far as um like the more scholarly and research side of things my friend Joe Welker um he writes a Blog um that's more about um kind of breaking down um well the abuses in the Psychedelic world and also like how we as Christians relate to these things um and then there are some critical voices out there like I think we had talked about or you had mentioned Jules Evans he's not a Christian but um he you know has some interesting things to say about he's more skeptical I guess about the economics that um so I'm just you know I am just um a memoirist I guess and like it's just my story this book is just my story it's not scholarly it's not you know but um I yeah I'm just I'm excited um it feels very vulnerable but I'm I'm excited um for it to be published and I just hope that God does with it what what he will and what he wants so yeah beautiful I mean and um I hope it's a blessing for many and I'm looking forward to reading it now thank you thank you actually God bless you thank you [Music] oh my God [Applause] [Music]

Channel: More Christ

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Id: MpHYW5ze17o

Length: 75min 10sec (4510 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 29 2023