Old-timey mystics used to call that the “Dark Night of the Soul”—the hair ball period after you’ve seen the light, and then had it unceremoniously whisked away. It’s always darkest (and coldest) just before the dawn. Sometimes, that next sunrise takes a lot longer to arrive than we hoped. Which begs the broader question: How transformative can entheogens, or “sacred substances,” really be? And are we using them right? This is a real issue. Arguably, it is the issue when it comes to appropriate use of psychedelic substances. Can we ever, as scholar Huston Smith once mused, “transform our
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