A few times on psychedelics I did. On mushrooms I had a strong sense that I was in harmony with nature, on lsd felt more in harmony with myself, and on mdma in harmony with the people around me. Haven’t touched the stuff in years but I do feel like my experiences shaped my outlook on life in some ways I never would have thought of before.

I was raised in a religious house. I went to church every Sunday until I was about 20. I played guitar for the church. Everyone else always talked about “feeling” the holy spirit, especially when I specifically played the music for the church.

I tried so, so hard, but never once in my life did I feel a damn thing. I prayed and prayed and prayed, but nothing. I was good friends with the pastor, and he would give me tips on listening for what God was telling me, but I never heard anything.

And eventually I gave up.

I was very sick, and praying for relief, and I felt the hand of God heavy upon me, and my body flooded with warmth and peace. The next morning I was fully recovered.

I have felt a sense of awe, I have felt a sense of smallness in the universe, I have felt a sense of connection. Staring at a starscape, or across a vast landscape, being in a still and quiet serene moment of zen.

Nothing I have experienced have I classified as a spiritual experience, and I certainly won’t allow organised religion to prostitute my sense of wonder for their own ends.

Closest I can think of is sitting in an onsen (hot spring) in Arima, Japan, and suddenly feeling like I am one with the world - totally relaxed, without a single worry in my mind and feeling that everything will be ok. Can’t say how long it lasted, 5-15 minutes? Haven’t experienced that sort of peace ever since.

Yes - I feel it sometimes when I’m in church. A feeling of being connected to the others. And I felt it when my wife and I lost an unborn daughter - that was actually the time I became religious again :)

I have schizoaffective disorder, so I’ve had a lot of “spiritual” experiences, some I still can’t totally shake off how real they felt despite being well medicated for years.

I once met a god in my dreams. He never spoke to me, but I could sense what he wanted to say. He told me I was actually two people, one was destined to destroy the world, the other was me, who was actually the creator of the world. Apparently I was asleep and all of reality was just my dream, and this other person inside of me was destined to wake me up, ending existence as we know it.

I also had a shadow woman with glowing green eyes who would show up constantly (while I was awake this time.) I thought she was also a god, who was in love with me. That’s been one of the harder ones to shake off. I met somebody who claimed to be psychic a few years ago who described the shadow woman exactly as I remembered her. He claimed she was protecting me. That was unsettling, because I’d not mentioned her to him even once.

Besides that I used to see ghosts a lot before I was on my meds. Most of those aren’t very interesting though. Just a person or animal who wasn’t supposed to be there and nobody else could see.

Tripping acid at a dead show during drums > space. I felt one with the universe.

TL;DR at the bottom.

I’ve had several. I think the most recent and one of the most profound was during and after the deepest meditation I’ve ever done.

I used to meditate quite a bit during covid and after, but fell out of practice a couple years ago. Fast forward, I have a new job, moved across the country, bought a house, and I am about to get married (this was a couple months ago). I didn’t realize that I had been depressed for a few months. So I decided to take some shrooms up in the mountains in the snow.

That gave me the headspace to really think about my life and what marriage means and to connect with nature away from distractions. I was finally able to find a level of peace and clarity.

That was on a Saturday. On the following Monday is when I had the meditation.

I did a quick home workout and it just kind of struck me that I should meditate and set some time aside to just be and feel and process after the experience I had over the weekend.

So I laid down on my back in the dark and put on some ambient relaxing music. I’ll try and summarize how I got to this spiritual place as best I can (highly recommend reading the untethered soul, it was the inspiration for this).

Basically, I think that the voice in our head, even the one that logically thinks about how we are feeling and logically reasons and thinks through things isn’t really who we are. That voice is just a product of all of our experiences. Who we are, at our core, is truly the being and presence that created that voice. So I told the voice that kept popping up to shhh.

That’s it, just shhhh. And eventually it stopped.

What happened next was a feeling of connection and being and grounding. There were any thoughts there was just this core being a part of this amazing, huge universe, and I felt a part of it. I felt what I can only describe as pure love. I will say I do believe in a higher power and that is the form the sense of universe took for me, but it was equally feeling connected and a part of everything in this world.

I sat with that and just felt until the timer I set went off.

I slowly opened my eyes, took a few breaths, and just came back to awareness. This was what was wild, I could feel every fiber of the carpet I was laying on, the individual strands of my hair, the fabric of my shirt, the way the light shone through the crack in the door. I took a shower and water the light reflect on the water and felt every rain drop on my head. It was the most intense feeling of connection I’ve ever had and that includes during any trip.

For me, it solidified that at the end of the day we are beings of love. Deep down beneath it all. And it’s a choice to lean into that and to not close off. To feel. The positives and the negatives. To love everyone and everything around us even when we don’t agree. To give and spread love.

TL;DR Depression sucks, our voice in our head is not who we are, we are a part of something larger, we are at a core, love.

I’m an atheist

Find yourself some mescaline (peyote or San Pedro extract)

Trust

I had a weird revelatory experience when I was 14 or so about the nature of God, and how in order to define something you must include certain characteristics and exclude certain characteristics. From that I drew the conclusion that any definition of God must be woefully incomplete, as how can one exclude characteristics from the definition of a thing that is all things and entirely beyond comprehension. From there I decided that any way of acknowledging something greater than ourselves is as valid as any other way, and that’s guided my spirituality since then.

Yes, several. I’ve never done drugs, I don’t drink, I have no diagnosed mental disorders.

Can’t really talk about it super openly here, but I would be happy to DM you. Both dark and good ones, mostly good.

The good ones were wonderful, made me feel more alive and aware than any other time in my life. Saw people healed seemingly miraculously, some other stuff that is really personal but very lovely.

The bad ones, especially the worst one was almost indescribably horrific. I’ll just say I decided it would be interesting to try and contact beings that shouldn’t be contacted, I was skeptical and didn’t think it would actually work, and I was horribly wrong. They accepted my invitation, I wish they hadn’t, terror followed.

DM me if you wanna know the details.

I’m the opposite of spiritual so the closest I’ve experienced is that euphoric feeling you get when you see unparalleled beauty in nature. Places like the Grand Canyon, Grand Tetons, Yukon, Alaska, volcano in Guatemala, and some waterfalls in Mexico are a few that spring to mind.

Kind of? I was in college walking on campus in broad daylight. I pass under this skywalk, with nobody in my general vicinity. As I do, I feel what feels like someone was walking past me coming from the opposite, locking their arm into mine. I got pulled back enough to stumble.

Sure enough, nobody nearby, no objects right near me or anything I could have accidentally gotten caught up on. Still have no idea what happened there. And for the record, this was before I ever had tried alcohol and I don’t really do drugs, so I can’t blame those.

Not really sure that “spirituality” really exists for me, as I’ve come to define the term in my adulthood. I used to think that this is what psychedelics gave me, but I don’t think that’s accurate.

Psychedelics, particularly mescaline, can fill me with a since of awe and joy. Everything is beautiful, everything seems connected and at once independent. The perpetual hum of life and nature and mechanics that is the universe, it’s amazing and horrifying. Those feelings can be overwhelming (and sometimes delusional) but I’d hesitate to call it spiritual.