The reclamation of god

Five years ago, I didn’t understand what god could be.

My belief, or lack thereof, in the concept was firm, absolute. How small-minded I was in my conviction. I didn’t understand that a belief in god could give someone purpose, could instil in them a fervour for life that had dimmed for me. I didn’t know that god was just a placeholder. That it is easier to say god, then: the universe, the stillness found within, or something unknown but undoubtedly present. An experience or revelation that brings an astounding awareness, where the meaning of it all clicks into place, dumbfounded that you did not understand until now. A profound moment, a perception so fleeting, that we work to re-remember, over and over again.

I didn’t grow up with spiritual people in my life, no one who loved Jesus or knew the sacredness of the wind and trees. My best friend in high school introduced me to crystals. Holding the tumbled stones in my palm, I hoped they could remind me of what I’d lost, caught up in the drama of the human condition. They couldn’t, of course, but I wanted it to be that easy. Rather than going inward, I wanted a cheat sheet in becoming grounded.

You could say I wanted the same from psychedelics. Indeed, they have been a short-cut to the divine, a brief glimpse of it, as well a vehicle for change. Perhaps not always, when I was 21 and taking mushrooms, depressed and trying to silence things. But when I began to view them as sacrament, when I used them to connect with myself and my loved ones and the Earth, I got there. I couldn’t capture this ecstatic feeling that flooded me at the most mundane moments, but now I can: not while taking LSD, but through the healing I found after sessions and how it allowed me to reclaim my life. I don't know how to define my spirituality, and I don’t think I should: to me nature is god, which is to say the universe and also my dog and me and you.

Where, once, I addressed the word god with an eye roll or backhanded comment, I now see its weight. People talk about god, and they no longer demand, or assume, that it means the same thing to everyone. God is no longer just a ruler above, but within us and permeated in everything. When we feel powerless over both our homes, body and Earth, be reminded of their divinity.