Where the Moss Grows

I was raised Christian Orthodox, which meant a set of foundational beliefs in God, the afterlife, morality, and the accompanying rituals and traditions to retain the faith. At some point in my teens I no longer had any faith in Christianity as the golden source of meaning, and perhaps I never really did. It was more of an obligation I had to endure until I developed the wherewithal to question religious beliefs and practices. As a teen, I recall saying I was spiritual but not religious, which basically meant I wanted to continue having a sense of existential meaning without any formal ritualized tradition (but more on that later). By the time I was an undergrad, a philosophy professor completely wiped away any remnants of faith I had and replaced it with cold skeptical rationalism. As a result, I put my time and commitment into academia because it sharpened my critical thinking skills, and to be honest, knowledge was seductive. 

For over a decade I invested in existentialism, critical theory, and psychology as sources of meaning until I finally received my doctorate. Then, I entered a new phase of my life. I was no longer a student. A learner. On the path of knowledge. But some lonely Dr. Nobody with a degree and a very critical understanding of the politics of academia. They say ignorance is bliss. So, the opposite must also be true. Knowledge is pain. Walking into life as an untethered adult with the knowledge that most institutions are rife with systemic problems results in feeling hopeless. That the world is suffering from a crisis of meaning and mental health affirms that hopelessness. It becomes the new normal when our political landscape relies on emotional manipulation to provoke fear by endlessly fabricating threats to “freedom and democracy.” This coercive tactic became more easily deployed with the advent of the internet and social media. And ironically, despite the global reach of the internet we are more disconnected from each other than ever before. All this reinforces the viral “truth” of depression. That existence is, that you are, that the future is, all worthless. When you are in it, you see nothing but this truth and all your happiness fades away like a dream. You believe wholeheartedly that the real truth lies in this deep feeling of nihilism and that all joy was a delusion you only bought into because you stopped seeing things as they really are. 

A friend of mine, who also divorced religion and became a cold rational atheist described his nihilistic feelings as having a God-sized hole left to fill. That idea stuck with me and it only recently made more sense as it connected to something I read in the Myth of Sisyphus. Camus was citing Chesov, who said something like, for the impossible, we look to God, and for the possible, we look to each other. This got me thinking that God represents, for many people, the impossible. This God-sized hole my friend was experiencing was indeed impossible to fill. The notion of impossibility also connects to meaning in existentialism, where the meaning of existence is unknowable, nonexistent, or in other words, impossible. In a meaningless universe, we are then tasked with creating our own meaning, which means we may be tasked with the impossible. 

Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God at the end of the 19th century, by which he meant that the Age of Enlightenment had brought a sweeping atheism over Europe and presented science as the only rational way forward. In the absence of God, Nietzsche argued that we become nihilistic–we begin to see existence as meaningless. For him, the solution was to overcome our Christian religious programming and choose our own moral values to live by. Make intentional choices every single day. Feel the weight of those choices by accepting the freedom and responsibility that come with them. How? By asking ourselves if we would make those choices again, should we live an infinite number of lives. Making a choice for infinity means accepting the responsibility of living with that choice for eternity. Wanting to make that choice again. Wishing to relive that choice and its consequences in the exact same way each time. Because only then, are we truly exercising our freedom and accepting our responsibility to live. Only then, do we live a life of purpose and joy because all our choices have meaning. And perhaps too, Nietzsche was also asking for the impossible. 

Religion had lost its grip on me and philosophy took hold, but in the cold scientific rationalism, I found myself returning to nihilism. To meaninglessness. This isn't all a developmental problem that began in my teens and stirred into adulthood. Early negative experiences form negative schemas that predispose you to become a pessimist. To see the world through a negative lens. I was born and raised in a nihilistic cultural milieu. My very first memory at three years old was my parents sheltering me as they ran into our building, protecting me from the Romanian revolution going on outside in the dead of winter. Struggle and poverty are part and parcel of the Eastern European. Just recently, a woman I met said I have sad eyes. “Yeah, I’m Romanian,” I told her. She laughed and said, “I get it, I’m Belarussian.” We dubbed our affliction “Soviet Sadness.” So, in some ways, nature and nurture fortified my pessimistic brooding, faithlessness, and ultimately, my depression.

The cold grip of depression (an awful handjob)

When I was a teen I used to fantasize about depression because my favourite philosophers were pessimists and I too wanted to feel what they felt so I could write like they did. You play stupid games, you win stupid prizes. The first time I felt depression was after a heavy breakup in my late 20s. I remember it was Christmas Eve and I went to bed crying, wishing I wouldn't wake up. This went on for about three months until one day it just stopped, and I began to feel good about myself and my future again. The second time was when I got my Ph.D. My dissertation defense was over a Zoom call in the midst of the Covid lockdowns. Yay! Nobody to celebrate with and I had just been broken up with (again, I know). No job prospects and nothing to look forward to. Plus, much of my friend group splintered during that time because of political differences (2020 was a bitch!). I was alone and alienated from all possible sources of meaning. Since then, depression has crept in again every once in a while. It’ll start with things feeling lackluster and utterly boring and I’ll start losing interest in people and my hope for the future. When I start feeling it, I rush to the computer and begin writing. Book my therapist. Find ways to purge the darkness. And try to fight the urge to believe that I am once again experiencing the deep “truth.” That viral truth of depression, which says, “This is actually reality. Life is just like this and in my moments of joy, I have forgotten what the world is really like.” You can’t let the depression truth win but it’s hard to break those negative cognitive schemas you developed as a child. Especially when you’ve abandoned the surefire source of meaning promised by religion and are deeply cynical of anything that calls itself spiritual.

Even now as I write this I cringe at the word spiritual. It brings up anger. Mostly at the certainty of people who speak in spiritual about the universe and manifesting. I have dedicated my life to knowledge and I don’t know fucking anything. But you, who rubs crystals and burns store-bought sage while daydreaming about your self-importance, you know with certainty? Deeply and disrespectfully, fuck you! It’s insulting to everything I have dedicated myself to (OK, exhale). There’s a bit to unpack here. My resentment for one. It’s partially to do with them, the spiritualists, but it’s also to do with me and the envy and fury I feel at their experience of joy while the world is on fucking fire (insert “this is fine” meme). The other thing is that spirituality is subjective, which means it can be any number of unrelated practices and beliefs. So, it’s hard for me to shit on all of it in one dump. Nor do I necessarily want to. The part of me that is resentful and envious is also tempered by my deep need for other people and a desire to connect with them meaningfully. So, I do want connection and community, and I am open to understanding what brings people meaning, especially in an otherwise meaningless world. In a nutshell, some forms of spirituality are better than others. What do I mean by better? I suppose I mean coherent and critical. 

Spirituality that is coherent and critical can see that any practice that is highly subjective and reliant on the collection of sacred objects and cultural practices is a byproduct of a Western individualistic and capitalistic set of cultural values. The spiritual person who does their own thing and creates a unique story to distinguish themselves as a spiritual entrepreneur is fashioning a subjective belief system that fails to connect meaningfully to other people. Similarly, the person who invests in crystals, and sound bowls, yoga teacher training in exotic lands, mindfulness seminars, tarot decks, bongos, and an assortment of loose colourful clothing from their recent trip to Thailand, is engaged in commodity fetishism, which is the internalization of capitalism (you’re just investing in Spirituality Inc.). No better are the people who do create “community” with others in which they “hold space” and provide safe “containers” to be vulnerable and then participate in the “conscious community” (I guess others are just unconscious sheep), fuck at tantra festivals, and elevate psychedelics as scared medicines they use to ascend while navigating the mystical sands of burning man. Someone reading this is itching to scream, “That’s White spirituality!”…Yes-ish.

The spirituality I am describing is certainly dominated by White folks and amounts to cultural appropriation and spiritual bypassing. And sometimes it’s just plain New Age spirituality. This last one is fucked! If you haven’t seen the overlapping Venn diagram of New Age spirituality and fascism, please look it up. Briefly, the overlap is centered on a dismissal/distortion of scientific method (belief in non-physical “energies” or misusing quantum theory to explain spirituality or Trump’s views on Covid/Environmentalism), distrust of media in favour of anecdotes (antivaxxers), narcissism and subhumanism (“We are in the conscious community and everyone else is just sheep,” or Trump’s views on refugees/illegal immigrants), framing Others as contributing to shadow forces (anyone who disagrees with spirituality or Trump’s views of Democrats), the belief that individual action counters systemic forces (“We can ascend beyond racism” or Trump will save America), a belief in shadow government with anti-semitic overtones (need I go on?), and a paganism centered on tradition and prophecy (spiritual festivals or MAGA). So, you might be thinking, yeah New Age spirituality is dangerous but what about indigenous and non-Western forms of spirituality? That’s where there’s room for me to set aside my skepticism and listen, waiting to be inspired. Waiting for something coherent and critical. 

During my grad school years, I read Frantz Fanon and Michel Foucault. Two of my favourite philosophers. They were supremely critical and produced new ways of engaging with history, present political problems, and envisioning future liberation from oppression via forms of resistance. Fanon is regarded as an existentialist, and he challenged the universal notion of being proposed by Sartre (the daddy of existentialism) by asserting that the Black man does not experience such universal being in a White world. He explains that the Black man only learns he is Black when he encounters the White man, who points to his Blackness as a deviation from the normal, the universal, and that deviation is regarded as inferior (This was written in the 50s, hence the use of man, but Fanon was also partially talking about his experiences as a Balck man). Fanon says fuck that noise (not literally, he’s more eloquent and poetic, but in a nutshell, he rejects anti-Black racism) and proposes the notion of Black power, which inspired the Civil Rights Movement. In a White world where Black people are expected to act White, but can never be White, they face a catch-22 and risk losing themselves altogether. So, instead of trying to appease the White man, Fanon says that Black folks must assert their BLACKNESS (he writes it in all caps and you can feel it when you read it). Sartre read Fanon’s Black Skins, White Masks, and then wrote the preface to Fanon’s next book, The Wretched of the Earth, where he says all White Europeans ought to read Fanon’s work and experience a sense of shame. This shame, he says, is a revolutionary feeling. People cannot see what is not visible to them (what they don’t or can’t experience), and Fanon poignantly reflected on the Black experience to make it visible to all. 

After having read his works twice, one thing kept bothering me. There is a brief section in Black Skins, White Masks, where he speaks of Black spirituality. But he doesn’t fully explain it or return to it. Fanon says that the White man treats the Black man as subhuman, a savage of the jungle. Fanon affirms it. He says that he is a savage of the jungle. He is of the earth. He is connected to the earth in a way that the White man can no longer comprehend since he separated himself into mind (spirit) and body (matter). This Cartesian dualism stripped his connection to the earth such that the White man can only imagine conquering and mastering it. An oppositional relationship. Man versus Nature. He thinks himself part divine and part vulgar. His mind, which is his soul, is granted by the grace of God and his vulgar body is of this earth. Hence the body’s vulgar needs to eat and fuck and shit and die (probably in that order). But his place is reserved for him in the kingdom of heaven. For this, Fanon says that spirituality will forever be lost to him and his. The White man will never attain this connection with the earth so long as he sees himself as superior to it and all its life forms. Fanon never finished this thought and it has stayed with me for a decade. An unscratchable itch.

Foucault also wrote of resistance. Specifically to the power relations we have with institutional bodies of knowledge (e.g. medicine, psychiatry, academia). These institutions dictate “truths” about who we are based in an often unexamined history containing errors. He worked to excavate those errors, challenge those institutional truths, and find resistance within power relations that produce oppression. Specifically, he looked at the history of sexuality, mental health, prisons, and punishment to show the historical errors that still exist in those institutional bodies of knowledge that dictate what is normal within the realm of sex and sexuality, behaviour, and justice. Foucault also added, and again only briefly and without explanation, that true liberation must come from resistance combined with spirituality. Once more, I was left wanting for an explanation. What do you mean by spirituality Foucault? Fanon?!

That’s where I’ve left room in my skeptical, pessimistic, ADHD, anxiety-riddled, depressed, negative schema’d brain, for some modicum of spirituality. Something begging for a coherent and critical account of what spirituality can be, other than the opiate of the masses, a placebo for existential dread, or an illusion to fill an impossible God-sized hole. What possibility can fulfill the impossible for a skeptic? 

Could it be here?

As the depression began to hit again recently, following yet another break-up (I’m starting to see a pattern here), moving out, and resettling into loneliness, I resumed therapy to try and nip it in the bud. Loneliness has been a theme of mine since I was a lil’ latchkey kid. No siblings. Undiagnosed ADHD. Difficulties making friends and not pissing people off. All this meant I spent a lot of time alone and trying to entertain myself. Whenever I broached this subject in therapy I could feel myself becoming overwhelmed with emotion. Particularly sadness steeped in self-pity and shame. I would tear up and feel like the floodgates would open if I said another word. Then fear would overcome me and those gates would lock, unable to release all those fucking tears I never cried for that lonely little child who needed a bit more love (I couldn’t even write this part without crying, but again, only a little ‘cause those gates are still holding strong and only a few drops can seep between the cracks). 

I don’t know what’s been inhibiting me all this time from accessing that pain to the fullest but I suspect it has to do with insecurity. I told my therapist that I have a few friends who talk to me about self-hate and I would usually tell them that I don’t experience self-hate because I generally like myself. In fact, I often think pretty highly of myself and even judge myself to be better than other people. Simultaneously, I recognize this bit of narcissism produces a facade of confidence meant to protect me from my insecurity. When my therapist asked what I was insecure about, I felt those tears coming back. I whimpered and choked through the word “worthlessness.” I realized that what my friends described as self-hatred was the same thing I described as insecurity–a deep feeling of worthlessness. How is it possible to feel worthless and still like yourself? 

Even as someone who doesn’t believe in a true self, I could still somehow believe that at my core I was worthless. What do I mean by no true self? Well, there is nothing deep inside you that makes up who you are. You are just the things you do in the world. As Judith Butler said, there is no doer behind the deed, but the deeds alone make up who you are. So, how could I believe I was worthless? Maybe it’s the deeds? I haven’t yet done anything significant in this world to prove to everyone that I am worth something. Maybe I like myself for my potential, but I feel worthless for not having actualized it (This is like everyone under capitalism imagining that they are just millionaires down on their luck). It’s the illusion of being special fighting the reality that you aren’t. Also, part of my insecurity is an anxious attachment style that has me constantly seeking reassurance from the people around me. My friends regard me as someone who is always trying to do things for others and much of this is driven by that anxious attachment and reassurance seeking. It boils down to what some call self-hatred, but I don’t like that term. I don’t think I hate myself, but I do feel worthless from time to time. To put it another way, it’s the inability to love myself. And when I say it like that it brings up pain and tears because I could feel that lonely little kid who didn’t get that love and had to do shit alone to self-soothe in dysfunctional ways. How can you learn to love yourself in a healthy way while living in a hyperindividualistic society that breeds narcissism (cue affirmations in front of the mirror)?

This was the baggage I carried into the weekend as I prepared to camp out at my friend’s farm recently. I got there in a very low mood and only forced myself to go out of obligation. I didn’t want to disappoint them, even though I felt like shit and would have preferred to stay home and wallow in my depressive self-pity. 

Very demure, very mindful

The plan was that on Saturday we would all do drugs (Woo-to-the-motherfucking-hoo). Out of the six of us camping out at the farm, three decided on shrooms, one was going to be the sober responsible one (but high AF on weed all day), and Poppy and I would do M. I had some new stuff derived from sassafras, which promised to be good. At about noon we sat together in one of the tents and divvied up the portions of our chosen substances. Point seven of albino penis envy for one, point five for another, and a gram of blue meanies for a third. I did one-fifty of the sassy M and Poppy took a hundred. We then set up a bunch of blankets, pillows, and snacks out in the semi-sun-semi-shade near the barn and relaxed. Everyone had shades on and a matching cool vibe. The frequency was a spontaneous lo-fi chill. We’d implicitly agreed on this mood and kept talking to a minimum. Fresh fruit and chips made the rounds as we waited for the come-up. 

Fuck me. When it hit, I felt all that shit-sucking depression fuck right off into whatever void it crawled out of and my body was riddled with bliss. Waves of pure unfucked euphoria crashed into my chest (iykyk). Heaving pleasure and tranquility. Unlike the last time I’d done M, which was from a different batch, but equally pure (get your shit tested), this sassafras M gave me a much-needed euphoria. The last batch was very cerebral and I just spent the day (also camping) talking with my friends by the lake. I didn’t get much of that feeling of pleasure or the desire to touch and be touched. It was still good, but I had wanted that deep euphoria. By the way, if you’re doing M and you have harsh comedowns and feel depressed or low the next day (or some days after), it’s very likely laced with something (likely meth, other amphetamines, or fentanyl). Pure MDMA should not have harsh comedowns or leave you feeling low in the days after and this is according to scientific analyses on lab-certified M. In fact, with pure M you should experience a gradual comedown and afterglow the next day, maybe even for a few days and sometimes up to months after taking it. I’ve never needed pre or post-rolling supplements, like vitamin C, electrolytes, magnesium, 5-HTP, or the newly advocated Na-R-ALA. Just water. But to each their own, and I’m not a long-time or heavy user. TLDR: Get your shit tested. 

So where was I? Euphoric and high and good. Right. Must be nice. It was. Once we left the peak, everyone got in the mood for a walk so we decided on passing over the creek and to the forest (this farm is like 60 acres or something, which means big, but I don’t know these metrics so I can just say it was experientially vast). Once we got into the woods everyone kinda split off, not too far from one another, but each independently exploring a little something. I noticed a fallen log with some moss that had grown on it. In the afternoon light that peered through the canopy, the moss was exceptionally green and magical. Mind you, I wasn’t super high anymore and the perception of the moss wasn’t accentuated by any enhanced visuals or waves of euphoria. It was just beautiful. I knelt and put both my hands gently into the moss. At that moment I had a spontaneous thought, “This moss and I are made of the same things. If this moss is beautiful, then so am I. If this moss is perfect, then so am I. If it is imperfect, then so am I. We are perfectly imperfect.” 

I stood up and looked around. Everyone was still engaged in their woodland frolicking. Eventually, we gathered and made our way back to the campsite to start a fire and make dinner. After we ate, four of our six headed out and it was just down to Poppy and I. We tucked into our tent and cuddled like soft kittens. When we woke up in the morning, after some generous and solid sleep, we began preparing our things to head out. I remember feeling good. There was a lingering suspicion that my depression was only temporarily dormant and would awaken again in a few hours, days, or perhaps weeks. Time would only tell. But in the meantime, I was in the warmth of some delightful afterglow. On the drive back into the city, Poppy and I processed our experiences out loud. They hadn’t been filled in on my initial state of misery coming into the weekend, so I took some time unpacking my recent fling with depression, the question of spirituality, and the impossibility of meaning.  

It was on the car ride back that I’d made the connections. In that moment with the moss, there were no expectations, profound realizations, or resolutions. The processing of that moment together with Poppy in that sassy M afterglow brought the pieces together. I had made a connection to nature, to self-love, and to the impossible. It was grounded and material. Nothing to do with God, the universe (in the spiritual sense), or divinity. Some people say psychedelics don’t give you what you want, they give you what you need. I think this too is a bit hoaky. But, the M did give me a state of salience and connection with nature that reminded me we are not separate, though we are distinct. I am also part of nature and made of matter and it is everywhere around me manifest in every living thing. And each of these living things is quite miraculous to behold when you are afforded the time and space to pay attention. I realized I don’t need God to fulfill the impossible. The impossible is all around me.  

You know, existentialism is often wrongfully associated with dread and death. In fact, when it emerged in the heart of Parisian cafes, it was expressly phenomenological. It was about seeing philosophy not as some smug intellectual exercise, but as an attunement and experience of the phenomena around us. It was the first time philosophers described the–what it’s like to experience–something. Much of the work in existentialism was trying to say that Big M Meaning (the meaning of life) is impossible to discover because it would require you to have complete experience and knowledge of yourself at the same time, which is only actualized in death, and ironically when you are no longer conscious to experience it. Nonetheless, little m meaning (meaningful moments) is all around us to discover or create. If we were to attune to the things around us we would be in a perpetual state of awe. Sadly, we mostly get into this state of awareness when we face death, because that’s when we let go of all the unnecessary bullshit and can finally pay attention to the things that matter (like the beauty of clouds floating in the sky, the way light can dance on a leaf in the breeze, or other poetic scenes from a Terrence Malick film). 

But facing mortality isn’t the only time we can let go and attune. It takes a lot to break away from the drudgery of capitalism and notice the small miracles. There is magic happening all around you (Yes, science can explain the events but not the quality of the feeling you have in experiencing them and how those phenomena shape your conscious experience of the world). You’re breathing in invisible molecules. Blood flows through you. Thoughts come and go and you can even change them. Trees and fungi share in a mycelial network and bugs organize their microscopic lives. Animals play and fuck and kill. And you are one of them. But you’re the only animal worrying about being enough. 

We have the freedom in consciousness to change our perceptions of the world (no we can’t change reality but we can change how we think about it and our experiences). Is this a newfound spirituality for me? No. But it is a reminder that meaning is available everywhere around me. The impossible is all around me. I am of the earth. I, too, am impossible. I have the freedom in consciousness to choose. And I can choose to create rituals and traditions that keep my awareness of my connection with nature alive. It won’t always be easy or possible, and I will likely still get depressed at some point again, and continue to struggle with anxiety and ADHD. But all this has given me a shift in consciousness, away from pessimism and toward the good. I’ll be exploring this in therapy too so I can have strategies and accountability. I share these musings with friends and bring them in so the change becomes collective (I’m not manifesting!). And maybe we can strive toward the good together. We can find our collective moss. I’m tired of suffering alone. I want to create together instead. And these are the choices I can live with for eternity because being with-nature, being with-people, and being with-community, is joy. Being with is also the existential experience that reminds us we are not being superior, to nature or others. And perhaps this is the closest I can get to what Fanon and Foucault meant by spirituality. Either way, I’m very grateful to that little moss.