Espíritu Santo
- lori bell-rojas
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Many people seek a relationship with the divine through religion, whether that is Catholicism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and etc.
For many, the relationship with the divine allows them to find meaning and purpose in life, have honor and moral guidance. This relationship can also increase community, livelihood and overall well being.
Growing up in a Latin household, my relationship with the divine, also known as God, was mandatory. I grew up Catholic, which was mostly influenced by my grandmother’s and the elder women in my community. I would be in church frequently on Sundays, praying, singing, and following the word of God. The 10 Commandments were hung in my house so that every day one could notice them. My grandmother, before church & school, would bless us. ‘En el nombre del Padre, del Hijo del Espíritu Santo, Amén.’
I found my relationship with God getting stronger, and would find myself praying to him in private to change my life. Praying to God outside of church was magical to me. The fact that I could have a relationship with something, so powerful and trust in its confidentiality, allowed me to form an intimate and personal bond with the divine.
As I grew up, and was seperated from my family, I found myself further from anything I had ever known. The new household I lived in, wasn’t centered around religion. I lost my connection to the divine because I was so focused on my social life, dance and school. I craved a sacred link, yet struggled going back to church and Catholicism because it reminded me of the family I had lost and my life before. The farther I got from God, the more I yearned for a transcendent connection.
When I was 14 years old, I decided to seek a new relationship. I set up an alter, grabbed a meditation pillow, and turned on a two-hour guided meditation on YouTube in a basement.
This was my first time meditating.
For the first 45 minutes of the meditation, you are asked to allow your thoughts to pass and pay them no attention. The deeper I went, the more tranquil my body became. I transcended. I remember feeling hypnotized, as I began my earliest out of body experience. I could feel my spirit separate from my physical body. The deeper into the meditation, the quieter my mind and the more clearly I could feel divine presence. As I sat there, I remember asking my spirit guide and my higher self to reveal themselves, expecting a great divine intervention.
The intervention was not as great as I’d expected. I sat in serenity, and remember a faint, luminous blue orb suddenly making its way into my mind. That’s gotta be it, I thought to myself. The orb didn’t stick around too long. It was brief, and it was fleeting. But I knew that it was not something I had created. I slowly began gaining sense of my body again and felt satisfied with the brief encounter.
From then, my curiosity with the divine and connecting to it directly through meditation grew. I dove deep and read many articles. I thought if I could have an intimate relationship with the spirit world, I could find peace with my childhood, my past, and find purpose in life.
For years, I was enamored with divine connection and wanted to communicate with the realm beyond the physical one. I read articles of prophets, mediums, yogis, psychedelic researchers and even psychics. Many of the articles I read described their first encounters similar to my own. Some, even enhancing their communication with psychedelics.
I, an adult at this point in time, wanted to further explore the spiritual realm. After years of curiosity & research, I learned about psychedelics and psychedelic therapy. Psychedelic therapy can be used to rewire neurological pathways and allows rapid neuroplasticity to repair damaged neural circuits. This type of therapy can be used to, not only, treat health conditions such as PTSD (or in my case, CPTSD), but also foster emotional and spiritual breakthroughs.
Luckily, for me, I didn’t have to seek too far to find the remedy, it had come to me. Divine intervention.
My roommate at the time had brought over tabs of LSD, and invited me to trip with him and his friends. My trip was life-changing, lasting 12 hours. Some parts of my trip were light and playful, other parts of my trip were dark, meaningful and spiritual. I had experienced myself and awakened my consciousness to the highest degree.
During my trip, I took a journey into deep corners of my mind, my past, experienced ego death and existential free fall. I had my great awakening/nirvana. I learned that the human experience is brief, and consciousness is eternal, connected to the flow of universe. We are the vessel for the universe to experience itself. Energy is neither created, nor destroyed. Therefore, everything that ever was and will be, is. I realized that death is transformation, and not a final destination. And God, as I knew him, wasn’t above me or out of touch, but lived in me and lived in everyone and everything natural.
Ecstatic from my discoveries, I resurrected my faith. Before psychedelics, I had transcended into a realm beyond the natural one. Now with an enhanced experience, I came to the conclusion that the spirit realm, where the divine resides, wasn’t a place away, above and beyond, but all around and within. I found that the human soul sits between the natural world and the spirit world; reality and spirituality.
Reality & spirituality are both subjective, therefore our experience of the world is shaped by individual perceptions, beliefs, emotions, and personal histories rather than a single, universal truth.
My whole life I had felt lost and like a burden. By retraining my brain, allowing new neural pathways to form, reviving my faith and reconnecting with a greater power, I have been able to heal, and contribute to something beyond myself. Thus, allowing me to move forward in life consciously, valiantly & serenely.
Information Extracted from Harvard School of Arts and Sciences
Paul Massari, 'A Long, Strange Trip" 7/28/2021
Information Extracted from National Library of Medicine
The Spirituality of Human Conciousness- A Catholic evaluation of current Nuero-Scientific interpretations
Information Extracted from Cameron LP, Olson DE (2022) The evolution of the psychedelic revolution.
Information Extracted from NPR- Psychedelics Expanding Conciousness
Information Extracte from U.S Department of Veteran Affairs; Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy for PTSD
Information Extracted from Center for the Neuroscience of Psychedelics
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