Pot-Stirrer, Trouble-Maker, & Hole-Poker: My Real Intentions for Demystifying the Mystical

⏱️ 10 min read | 🎧 Audio version coming soon

The Instagram post made me chuckle. “No, the DMT aliens are not real,” read the title over a colorful drawing of bulbous-headed figures. “Hate to break it to you, but the deities you encounter in the DMT dimension are figments created by your brain.”

You see, I have also met the DMT aliens. Furthermore, I’ve communicated with The Swirls. If you know, you know. While some people, as this article from Double Blind magazine points out, interpret the consistencies of psychedelic DMT trips as affirmation that users are “tapping into” a real realm, writer and neuroscientist Zeus Tipado offers us another way of looking at it.

[Do these consistencies] …mean we all visit the same extra-dimensional world and its inhabitants? Or does it imply that despite our vast cultural, geographical, behavioral, and ethnic differences, we’re all relatively using the same neurological machinery in our brains to process the same drug, resulting in a similar psychedelic experience? Kind of like how the taste of chocolate cake is sweet to everyone, regardless of whether a person is from India, Ireland, Iowa, or Iceland.

Zeus Tipado makes me feel seen.

To many, using scientific language to describe what they attribute to the spiritual is hurtful at best and evidence of white supremacy¹ at worst. One commenter on Double Blind’s Instagram post wrote, “Way to gaslight everyone’s experience who have actually had unseen realm experiences via both DMT and through meditation [and] journeying.” Her feelings echo the same feedback I’ve received when presenting neuroscientific research on what happens in the brains of revival-goers, Kundalini yoga practitioners, and others who undergo mystical experiences both soberly induced and psychedelically ingested.

We are all allowed to have our own interpretations of these experiences.

My loved ones sometimes ask why I can’t “leave well enough alone.” They say this with affection, asking why I like to “cause trouble” and “ruckus.” My critics are less kind. Because my writing has and will continue dissecting many of the beliefs I once held, beliefs others still hold, I thought I’d clarify my intentions for doing so: My motives for demystifying mysticism are not to offend the spiritual but to help the secular.

Spiritual people, my writing is not for you. You are so very welcome to be here — in fact, I dearly hope you stay. But I reiterate: I do not share my writing for your benefit. I share it for people like me. If you’d like to read my words anyway, perhaps in an endeavor to better understand the non-spiritual loved ones in your life, I will be so deeply honored.

I seem to have unsettled many who have gotten used to me critiquing religion but are unused to me critiquing spirituality. My critiques of both are nothing new. I’ve been blogging publicly about these topics since 2009 — see my decade-old criticisms of manifestation theories, astrology, and victim-blaming, soul-based ideologies.

One of my greatest joys, and one of my deepest senses of purpose, is to demystify the mystical. I understand why it can feel like unkind or embittered hole-poking to others. That’s an unfortunate ramification I am still learning to try and fine-tune, yet…it also isn’t my responsibility how others interpret my words — or my omissions.

I recently told a friend that I often spend around 1,000 words of any blog post attempting to cushion what I really mean to say with disclaimers and other digestives to try and appease those who can’t (or won’t) as readily understand my perspective. I’m trying to do less of that. It’s starting to feel like apologizing for my truth. Others, especially spiritual people, so rarely apologize for theirs. Seldom to they cushion their broad statements about souls and the like to nonbelievers like me. Why am I trying so hard not to offend those who may never understand, nor have compassion for, my soulless worldview?

Especially because I know my view is needed.

You’ll see me use quotations a lot throughout this piece. Sorry. I do this not to be sarcastic but to distinguish others’ words from my own. I know my quotations may still land as sarcasm. I’m not quick-witted enough to be as snarky as people think.

Far too many people, including my younger self, feel defective for not having the ability to access “God,” “the Universe,” or “the Divine.” We cannot “communicate with our ancestors,” “receive downloads from spirit guides,” or “tap into the Oneness.” We are left feeling — dare I say made to feel — like there is something wrong with us. We are accused of being “in the Matrix,” a pop culture reference dismissing us as refusing to see a truth that would be self-evident if only we ________. Meditated more. Fasted. Full moon-ritualed. Prayed. Prayed harder and more sincerely. “Surrendered.”

One of the most hurtful things well-meaning loved ones tell me is that I’ll “get there.” They can see I’m in an “atheist phase.” They understand why and they have compassion for my past. They get it, they insist, and they know that one day my “searching” will lead to their truth; one day, I will admit that I am a soul in a human body, that I chose this life, and that Human Design, astrology, and soul contracts do indeed apply to me because these apply to them and their co-believers. I swallow the sting of their unintended condescension. I know they don’t mean to hurt me.

I attempt to demystify the mystical because I want the benefits of mysticism to be accessible to all. I attempt to despiritualize the spiritual because so many people feel excluded from this common human experience — and I do observe it to be human experience, not a spiritual one. It is an animal experience, a consciousness experience, and other animals play with their consciousness, too. Grounding these “soul” states in the language of empirical materialism is what invites those of us with differently wired brains than most to partake in “realms” — which I translate to states of consciousness. Translating the spiritual, mystical, and soulful into biological, neurological, and scientific terms shouldn’t threaten nor negate the real benefits of such journeys. Rather, in my view, it should validate how powerful our brains and bodies are, and how transformative it can be to play with our consciousness.

I understand why many people think I’m debunking mysticism from an unkind place. They’re right that I’ve been hurt by spiritual practices before, which they eagerly try to classify as religion — which, to them, is totally different from spirituality.

This is why I prefer using the term faith. Faith encompasses both religion and spirituality. Faith is the common denominator allowing religious and spiritual abuses to flourish. Faith is also what can allow positive benefits to flourish — benefits like a longer life, a clearer mind, and a deeper connection to oneself and others. Benefits like wonder and awe, self-understanding and a sense of purpose, and an attunement to the interconnectedness of all in existence.

These benefits needn’t be spiritualized in order to be accessed. Sometimes despiritualizing these benefits is the only way some may ever access them.

Grounding the benefits of faith in secular, scientific reasoning makes these benefits accessible to those of us who might be called “spiritually disabled.” I don’t like this term because it reinforces the pain many of us feel from being told for years that we are “broken.” We are not, in fact, disabled. We are not in need of more prayer, meditation, or trying. We are so sick of trying. There is nothing wrong, sinful, or defective about us. We are simply unable to feel, sense, or “tap into” what spiritualists oft-describe as “God,” “the Universe,” and whatever else you’d like to call that nebulous “something more.” Yet I’ve found that framing this inability as a disability elicits more compassion from the faithful.

Pathologizing myself yields the attempts at understanding and acceptance I yearn for, but I wish terribly that my absence of ability could be enough. Why does this absence of ability have to be perceived as a dysfunction for spiritualists to calm their offended bristles and show a shred of sympathy?

“I want to be accepted,” I said to a spiritual friend. “Why can’t I be enough? Why do I have to be viewed as a soul?”

Maybe one day, there will be a better term for what can feel like a psychological disability, this incapacity to “tap into” “realms.” To those of us who cannot, demystifying the inaccessible and alienating language of faith makes its benefits more inclusive, safe, and welcoming. Translating the language of spirituality into science allows it to become real to us. I’m sorry it hurts the faithful but not sorry enough to stop helping the faithless.

I would have thought my intentions would be obvious to my critics by now. I’ve stated repeatedly that my goal isn’t to bash religion or belittle spirituality but to help the secular. Helping the secular often makes spiritual people feel bashed, because — at least in the ways I do it, ways I’m still growing in — helping the secular necessitates critiquing faith-based beliefs.² This is a necessity because it affirms the doubts and inexperiences many of us have been shamed and rejected for. It points out the holes and cruelties we see that faith perpetuates. It also offers explanations for what we didn’t understand about ourselves and our spiritual loved ones.

Deconstructing faith-based beliefs provides validation and hope to those of us who have felt like outcasts all our lives. Faith-based beliefs are ubiquitous across cultures and are the source of our feelings of alienation, misunderstanding, and vilification. Yet there is no faith required to experience the benefits of psychedelics. If translating these experiences into a neuroscientific understanding makes such transformative awakenings accessible to us, why wouldn’t spiritual people want that?

I think I know why: science threatens the interpretations of such experiences that believers come to hold as truth, interpretations that provide a sense of identity, purpose, and community. I’m offering the same to people like me. I hope spiritualists can have compassion for that.

So yes, I am a hole-poker. Yes, I am a human hurt often and deeply by well-intended beliefs. But no, I don’t speak up to ridicule or offend. I speak up to explain and make accessible.

If you are offended, I am sorry. I welcome you to unsubscribe and unfollow me. I kindly remind you that your choice to be in my space and read my words is optional. I vulnerably hope you’ll stay because I, and so many others like me, yearn so deeply to be understood — and accepted.

I’m publishing this post because a declaration of these intentions felt necessary. Now, I can refer to this piece when a person of faith feels hurt by my attempt to translate the spiritual into the scientific. I know they don’t realize how alienating the language of faith can be, especially when it’s brought them such peace and love. Yet I also know, intimately, that what feels like love to some is utter cruelty to others. What feels like peace and wonder to one person feels like distress and suffering to someone else.

I am here for myself, first and foremost. Then I am here for my fellow secularists who have never been able to find comfort in the language of faith. I want you to know peace, love, and wonder. Lastly, I am here for the spiritual who would like to better understand — and therefore, better love — their non-spiritual friends and family.

As I recently said to my mom while overlooking a desert sunrise:

“I’ve been thinking a lot about my triage of priorities. First is to help religious trauma survivors who find themselves atheists. There’s lots of help for those who are still progressive Christians or spiritual, but not a lot for those who are secular and need openly secular resources. Also, most of the biggest names in atheism were never religious themselves, which is what I think contributes to an arrogance many find in the atheist community — they didn’t have to eat the humble pie of admitting they were wrong about something and have it upend their lives.

“My second priority,” I continued, “is to invite the spiritual to better understand the non-spiritual loved ones in their lives. I want them to understand that faithlessness is not a choice. I want them to stop being inadvertently condescending to us by saying things like, ‘You’ll get there,’ implying their spirituality makes them more ‘evolved’ than us. I don’t walk around telling them they’ll ‘get there’ and arrive at atheism.

“My third priority,” I finished, “is to invite the secular to also understand that spirituality is not a choice. The condescension goes both ways. I think we have a choice over what we expose ourselves to and learn about, but I don’t think we can just choose what we believe or don’t. At least I can’t. I know when I’m lying to myself and I have no idea how some people can, apparently, just decide they believe something. And I really think there are strong arguments for the evolutionary value of faith, with genetic evidence to back it up. But some of us just don’t have those genes.”

So I’ll keep hole-poking, debunking, criticizing, and demystifying. There is much that I am surely wrong about but I am not wrong about my motives. They always find for whom they’re intended.

I’m learning to not let other people’s hurt slow me down from healing those I most intend to help.

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I’m Alice Greczyn, an author and speaker. This newsletter is free because I think helpful information should be free as much as possible. Please subscribe, and if you’d like to donate to my costs (news subscriptions, image licensing, audio recording, etc.), I’d surely appreciate it. Thank you.

1. Some think that interpreting Indigenous practices, particularly the use of plant medicines, through a neurological lens is colonial “white-washing.” They feel it asserts white Western values onto the spiritual practices of brown and Black people. (Never mind that plant medicines were also used by white Indigenous Europeans as far back as history can tell.) I think the lenses of biology and spirituality are valuable to all. It is my observation that all humans are on the same journeys of understanding, acceptance, and love. We just use different words and tools to reach these, and I am very much okay with that.

2. I very rarely critique people. I frequently critique ideologies and beliefs. When one’s identity is tied to their belief system (or lack thereof), it is understandable to me why some individuals feel personally attacked. This defensive reflex is an unfortunate byproduct of being human that we are all vulnerable to. Couples therapy wouldn’t exist if not. *Tips hat.*