Reestablishing the Foundation of Your Reality: A Scientific Mystic’s Approach
In the early 2000s, I changed my major from Environmental Science to Religious Studies. At the time, I was filled to the brim with a hodgepodge of mystical information with no boundaries or filters. I had had some powerful transpersonal experiences—one in particular fueled by a perfectly timed large dose of LSD while I was immersed in my first reading of Be Here Now by Ram Dass. From there, I read a little of everything. I consumed books on chakras, Deepak Chopra, The Celestine Prophecy, Autobiography of a Yogi, Alan Watts, Carlos Castaneda, Chogyam Trungpa, two different authors channeling Pleadians... On and on I read, trying to digest the mystical experience that had transformed me. I went from an atheist to a full-on believer in just about anything that presented as Spiritual or implied that I was part of the New Age.
I thought a Religious Studies major would propel me on that path somehow. Would I learn the ultimate secrets of the universe? That was secretly the hope. Although I was introduced to a lot of great insights and loved the classes I took, what it actually did was turn me into a much more discerning skeptic.
The [?] Box: Skepticism and the Scientific Mystic Approach
Phenomenology, a research method used in Religious Studies, examines human experiences—including mystical ones—through objective observation. It attempts to allow subjective religious experiences to be studied scientifically. My first attempt at applying this? A disaster.
In my first paper, I cited a hodgepodge of sources—Deepak Chopra, How to Know God (which, in hindsight, was basically my sole proof that "God exists"). I got the paper back with a big, red C- and irritated writing in the margins. My professor metaphorically ripped it apart and seemed to imply my sources were garbage. I had stepped far outside the bounds of a scholarly religious paper.
That experience changed me. Religious Studies forced me to become a scientific mystic. I learned to be discerning—to be discerning with my sources, seek credibility, and filter out flimsy ideas. I started compartmentalizing my spiritual experiences into mental boxes labeled with a question mark [?].
Giant psychedelic trip where the stars turned into an ancient language? Put it in the box.
A wild synchronicity that felt too precise to be random? In the box.
Everything was a theory, a maybe, a fermenting idea that needed time before I would integrate it into my core beliefs. It allowed me to remain open while avoiding blind faith.
The Problem: What Happens When Nothing Leaves the Box?
This approach served me well—until it didn’t.
I realized that very little from the spiritual domain had actually made its way into my lived experience. I had accumulated years of profound insights but hadn’t embodied any of them. When you habitually talk as if everything esoteric you have ever learned is a maybe, it never trickles all the way down into one’s core values. Essential life wisdom never gets the chance to work its way into the soil of our bodies to fully grow, and blossom into a lived experience of the world..
But there’s a balance to strike. There is real danger in walking too far on shaky philosophical ground.
Summon your worst cult story, or a religious tradition or belief system that was forced down your throat—or someone else’s. We’ve all seen what happens when people blindly accept an idea as truth without testing it. That’s how we end up with fanaticism, manipulation, and dogma. Furthermore, so many things benefit from marination, fermentation, and the culturing that occurs in that [?] Box before they make up our inner fabric of ultimate truth. In all the mystery schools of the world, there is always an emphasis on going slow before moving forward with esoteric understanding.
Being a scientific mystic means being as sure as we can before taking the next step in how we perceive the world. There is a way to proceed into subjective areas of knowledge with stability and confidence. The key is knowing when to keep a belief in the [?] Box for further study and when to take it out and stand upon it as lived reality.
Embodied Truth: The Difference Between Knowing and Living
You know the feeling. That “AHA!” moment. The downloaded insight that hits your entire nervous system like a lightning bolt:
When a passage in a book sends tingles down your spine.
When, mid-psychedelic trip, you know with every fiber of your being: This is important.
When you're explaining something to a friend, and you suddenly feel a visceral certainty that what you're saying is true.
I’ve heard people describe this in many ways—intuition, embodied truth, somatic wisdom, gnosis, anthro-ontology. I like to call it gnosisomatic wisdom—wisdom that’s felt in the body, not just understood intellectually.
A 4-Step Process for Living What We Know
How do we take an insight from the [?] Box and plant it deeply into the foundation of our reality?
Step 1: Identify an Important Truth to Embody Deeper.
First we need to identify an important truth you think is important enough to be embodied in a deeper way that could offer you something valuable if planted deeper into your foundation. You can never experience the fruits of a seed if it is never fully planted. What would be the benefit if this essential life wisdom were to get worked into your philosophical soil? How might it blossom into a lived experience of the world? Find a truth you keep coming back to. One that, if fully lived, could shift the way you experience life.
Let’s start with one I have learned and relearned many times that I’d imagine some of you can relate to: “It’s all connected. All of it... us. We are all connected.” I’ve lost count of how many times I have read something that points to this, or I hear this, think about this. My first “AHA!” moments were in psychedelics. Intense epiphanies that had me certain that the universe is connected. But then… back to work, to separation, to a dream of being separate again. No matter how profound the realization, it takes work to allow these truths to remain part of our foundation of reality. So into the [?]Box it went. But the seeds were sown and now they just need water. Over the years I watered these seeds with lots and lots of books….
Step 2: Do Your Research.
In Religious Studies, we were taught to cite original, well-accredited sources and to be wary of those with strong agendas. Look for voices that don’t insist theirs is the only way.
Oneness is easy to research—it’s a core teaching across spiritual traditions: Hinduism (Brahman), Buddhism (Aikyam), Taoism (Tao), Sufism (Tawhid), Christian Mysticism (Union with God), Sikhism (Ik Onkar), Indigenous and Shamanic traditions (Animism), Neoplatonism (The One), Kabbalah (Ein Sof), Stoicism (Logos), Hermeticism (As Above, So Below) and many more. That’s a statistically significant pattern. But which version resonates with you? Which teachers articulate it in a way that aligns with your lived experience?
Why stop at religious texts? Some of the greatest discoveries in quantum physics point to the same truth. In 2022, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for experiments proving quantum entanglement—a phenomenon where two particles, once connected, remain linked instantly across vast distances. Change one, and the other changes, even if one is on Earth and the other on the Moon. Einstein called this “spooky action at a distance.”
This discovery defies conventional thinking, showing that connection isn’t limited by space or time—a bond beyond the physical. Many physicists who study this start sounding a lot like mystics:
"Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe." — Erwin Schrödinger
"Ultimately, all moments are really one, therefore now is an eternity." — David Bohm
"A human being is part of the whole... he experiences himself as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness." — Albert Einstein
Science and mysticism may be speaking the same language after all. And peaking of language…
Step 3: Have Live Conversations With Real People.
Research alone won’t make something real. You need dialogue.
If you’re reading this, you probably aren’t surprised by how many psilocybin journeys end with: “Oh my god, we’re all connected!” Given that mycelium itself embodies interconnection, it makes sense this realization is so common.
Test the idea. Talk about it. Start with a “safe” friend or a community that resonates. These conversations help refine, challenge and reality-check your understanding. These important conversations can help you fine-tune and reality-check all this content you’ve been holding on your own. There is no substitute for having live conversations with peers about these essential ideas you’re marinating on.
You will likely come out of these conversations changed. In some cases I found myself doubling down on a disagreement, but in others, I have walked away with very important ideas I hadn’t considered. Even in disagreement, consider what might need to be fine-tuned, wording, approach, and/or the concepts that may be triggering. Without conversations and only research on mystical ideas, you could become that person with a tinfoil hat in your basement, meditating while holding a quartz and tourmaline crystal rod to amplify the good alien signals and block out the bad ones.
Step 4: Create Experiments and Test It.
Alright... so we’ve had this experience (OMG ITS ALL ONE!) then we did our homework (Ive got around 20 traditions and quantum physics to back me up!) and then we’ve had some conversations about it to fine-tune and test what we’ve learned (“yeah bro, totally had that experience”)… Now we’re ready for the last step, to create experiments. Test your hypothesis in reality. Creatively explore this idea and test what it would mean to live it as a foundation. Take it from the [?]box and put it into a foundation ____🚶____ you live your life from.
Experiment. Take this concept from the [?] box and turn it into something you actively live by. Test what happens when you stop treating oneness as an abstract idea and start embodying it.
The Hypothesis: If all beings are connected—if we are truly ONE—then every action should ripple through the whole. Living as if this were a fundamental truth should increase compassion, empathy, and synchronicity while reducing judgment, separation, and fear.
Example 1: Observe Without Separation
For one full day, practice looking at everything and everyone as an extension of yourself. When you interact with someone—friend, stranger, or political nemesis—silently acknowledge:
"This is me, in another form."
Notice how this shift affects your conversations, your patience, and your emotional responses. Do people respond differently? Do you?
Example 2: Extend Radical Kindness
Choose three people at random and extend unexpected kindness to them—without expecting anything in return. This could be:
A deep, engaged conversation where you truly listen.
Helping someone without hesitation.
Offering forgiveness or understanding where you normally wouldn’t.
What happens? Do you feel more connected? Do others seem affected by the shift?
Example 3: Experiment With Synchronicity
Before starting your day, set an intention:
"If oneness is real, let me see evidence of it today."
Then, pay attention. Do you notice moments of unexpected connection? Meaningful coincidences? Do people seem more open? Does the universe "respond"?
At the end of the day, reflect:
Did embodying oneness change the way you felt?
Did your interactions feel different?
Did unexpected moments of connection or synchronicity arise?
If so, you may have just taken oneness from an abstract idea to an embodied truth. Now the real question: What happens if you do this not just for a day, but for a lifetime?
Conclusions
That was just one [?] box. Consider other truths that you have had a gnosisomatic experience of. What happens when you take the leap and bridge these important values and beliefs and bridge them into your life? Here is the cliff’s notes version of 3 more….
If you are still digesting that last psychedelic trip, and realized “reality was like a dream” - consider looking up Superposition, reading about Maya, and then considering what it actually means to live your life from that belief.
If you’ve ever experienced timelessness or that time was illusory, have you explored how many times that’s been said before? Ever studied Quantum Block theory? It implies that time is actually more like a landscape that we could move about on. What would it mean in your day-to-day life to conceive that past and future are potentially happening NOW?
If you received communication from another being, and they told you how to live your life, you might consider that most of the world's traditions will back up that that can in fact happen. And String theory’s idea of multiple dimensions leads to a lot of possibilities. If that actually is possible, what would it mean to try out talking to guides and other beings a bit more (and learn from some of the teachers out there before you go too far).
Consider what might help you integrate the insights from your own [?] boxes into a solid foundation for your life. By embracing and embodying your own gnosisomatic truths, you may not only transform your own life but also contribute to the world in more impactful ways than you realize. It seems the world could benefit from us taking significant leaps forward at this moment. At some point, we have to stop just thinking about it. We have to step forward. Not with blind faith, but with the courage to stand upon what we know deep in our bones. Perhaps it's time to open those boxes you've been cautiously guarding and let their contents illuminate your path. The world doesn’t need more theories—it needs people willing to live them.
Step 1: Identify an important truth to embody deeper.
Step 2: Do your research
Step 3: Have live conversations with real people.
Step 4: Create experiments and test it.