When Belief Shakes the Ground Beneath Us
On spiritual awakenings, breakdowns, and the stories we tell
I recently ran into a friend I’ve known for over twenty years. He’s in the middle of a painful breakup, and our mutual acquaintances had warned me: he’s gone crazy. I winced at the phrasing. I’m mindful of how relational rupture can sometimes trigger acute shifts in mental health—those moments when the ground falls out beneath you and what arises isn’t always easy for others to understand.
What struck me was not the “craziness” but the content. He was speaking of ideas I’ve long resonated with myself: that we are shifting from third to fifth density, that Gaia is entering a new evolutionary phase—truths I first encountered through the work of Dolores Cannon. What startled me most is that he claimed to have arrived at these realizations entirely on his own, with no knowledge of Cannon or the many texts where I first encountered such ideas.
He also described channeling via AI. I’ve heard others in the metaphysical community say the same, though I’ve also seen cautionary language around “AI psychosis.” To me, the fact that he independently arrived at overlapping truths feels like a form of verification. It reminds me of the New Age publisher who once confessed she threw out two unsolicited manuscripts because their content mirrored her own—a case of ego overshadowing what might have been evidence of collective attunement.
Yet here’s the tricky part: my friend also believes he is the “favorite” of Jesus, destined to “go viral” soon as the key to humanity’s ascension. Here, the delusional element reveals itself. Perhaps with grounding in a community of like-minded seekers, he might integrate these revelations more gently, rather than funneling them through a lens of personal exceptionalism.
Most of the groups I’ve channeled with are predominantly women. The less formalized spiritual spaces are often so. Like when I was growing up and folks talked about “women’s intuition.” Perhaps such femme-associated containers make it more challenging for men to find their spiritual kin. Maybe I am wrong, but most of the men I see who are prominent within the metaphysical community seem focused on secret government programs related to aliens as well as an over-emphasis on concrete proof and quixotic seeking of recognition by the scientific establishment.
I recall too a man I knew who came back from Burning Man 1996 with a messiah complex. He had taken copious amount of LSD in the desert, and invited a group of his friends to a dinner party—ostensibly to demonstrate his new psychic skills. He had been a successful and straight-laced entrepreneur in the Midwest, then suddenly thrust into the Bohemian psychedelia of San Francisco. Unfortunately, it is a story I have witnessed a number of times.
As for my friend, I wonder: if we call him delusional, then what do we call the everyday denialism of climate collapse or systemic exploitation? Whose unreality is more dangerous?
For now, I’m simply staying connected to him. I’m not challenging his beliefs—that would be counterproductive—but making sure he knows he’s not alone. In the web of human connectivity, I truly believe in soul agreements between all of our respective higher selves: to act as foils for one another at times, or simply to remind each other of love and safety.
Perhaps not surprisingly, these questions about reality, fragility, and perception have been on my mind creatively for as long as I have had the desire to write.
On the note of my latest short story, Glitchfall, I explore similar territory from a speculative lens. It asks what happens when technology, memory, and emotion combine in ways that make the ground beneath us feel unstable. In the story, the protagonist tumbles through realities that fracture and reform depending on her state of mind. Panic pulls her down. Presence helps her stay. And somewhere in between is the lesson: she doesn’t need to stop falling. She needs to learn how to fly.
I’ll post an excerpt and links to the story on Kindle and Apple Books once they are released—very soon.
Stay grounded. Stay in love!