Point of View December 18, 2024 – Hour 2 : The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever

[00:00:04] Across America, Live, This is Point of View, Kirby Anderson.

[00:00:20] One of the things we talk about on this program is the search for meaning and significance, even sometimes the search for transcendence.

[00:00:27] Now some people have said maybe the way to find transcendence is through various kinds of drugs or other kind of chemical experiences that might happen.

[00:00:37] Some have searched through various cults and world religions, through money, sex, religion, all sorts of things are part of that.

[00:00:46] And I thought that this might be an interesting conversation today.

[00:00:50] It's based on the book, The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever, Transcendence, Psychedelics, and Jesus Christ.

[00:00:59] And it is interesting because the author, Ashley Landy, talks about the fact that really there was maybe a promise that indeed psychedelics would be a way to find transcendence.

[00:01:13] They were, as she says, my sacrament shot me into cathedral vaults and all the rest.

[00:01:18] But there was an emptiness there as well.

[00:01:21] And Justin Briarley has been on the program with us before, said, in a generation that is thirsting for an experience of something transcendent, this book will show you why that hunger can only be truly satisfied by Jesus Christ.

[00:01:35] So Ashley, as I might mention, is an artist, a writer.

[00:01:39] We have a link to her website, lives in rural Kansas with her husband and four children.

[00:01:43] Her writings have appeared in Fathom Magazine, Mops Magazine, and others.

[00:01:47] This book came out in October.

[00:01:49] And Ashley, welcome to Point of View.

[00:01:52] Hi, thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:54] If you can, I would love to have you maybe just tell your story because in some respects, the book is mostly about your story and the desire to find meaning through various kinds of psychedelics, mushrooms, and things of that nature.

[00:02:09] And as a result, I think it might relate to others that are convinced that they only can find meaning through other kinds of chemicals and drugs as well.

[00:02:20] So how did this begin?

[00:02:21] Because we'd love to know your whole story as well.

[00:02:25] Sure.

[00:02:26] Thank you.

[00:02:27] Well, I was raised in a somewhat Christian home.

[00:02:31] I'm glad I had something of a foundation, but I wouldn't say that faith was necessarily a huge part of my childhood or really integrated into my home life.

[00:02:40] My parents both became stronger in their faith as they got older after I was an adult.

[00:02:44] But we did go to church a lot of the time when I was very little and not as much when I was a teenager.

[00:02:51] So I did have some foundation of the Christian faith, but I never really understood the gospel.

[00:02:56] I never really understood what Jesus Christ had done for me.

[00:02:59] And so when I was around 14 or 15 and started really, I've always been a voracious reader.

[00:03:05] I started coming in contact with other ideas about religion, specifically atheistic ideas, ideas about other religions.

[00:03:14] And I just found anything countercultural very appealing.

[00:03:18] I was, you know, I was rebellious.

[00:03:20] And so it was pretty easy for me because, as I said, I had never really understood the gospel despite having something of a foundation of the Christian faith.

[00:03:29] And so when I was 14 and 15 and these ideas I was consuming through mostly through books seemed so appealing and exotic, it was pretty easy for me to completely disavow the faith that I was raised with.

[00:03:44] As I said, I was an atheist. It was really kind of this life rebellious thing, like I said.

[00:03:50] And my parents were upset, but I think, you know, they hoped it was just a phase I was going through so there wasn't a major intervention or anything.

[00:03:58] And I continued on that path for several years through high school and started encountering mind altering substances.

[00:04:08] I think maybe when I was 16, I smoked marijuana for the first time.

[00:04:11] It wasn't really, I didn't really get high.

[00:04:13] I wasn't really effective, but I was very attracted to the idea of taking something that could alter my consciousness and could give me a different perspective.

[00:04:21] And was introduced to alcohol toward the end of high school and continued consuming alcohol in really destructive ways throughout a lot of my college experience.

[00:04:34] But eventually became pretty disenchanted with that because it was so destructive and there was always such a high cost for getting drunk.

[00:04:42] You know, the next morning there was a pounding hangover.

[00:04:44] And I also came to feel a sense of shame, even though I had embraced all of the ideas of like libertinism and sexual freedom and the sexual revolution.

[00:04:55] There was always, you know, I couldn't escape my own conscience.

[00:05:00] And so there was always this lingering sense of shame.

[00:05:04] And so I became disenchanted with party life.

[00:05:08] And toward the end of my last year in college, I had a friend who said that he could get some psilocybin mushrooms, also known as magic mushrooms.

[00:05:18] And I thought, why not?

[00:05:20] I was up for anything.

[00:05:21] You know, I didn't have any morality around consuming mind altering substances or any reason that I would have any pause about it whatsoever.

[00:05:29] And so I said, sure, why not?

[00:05:32] And that first experience, there wasn't necessarily a spiritual dimension to it for me.

[00:05:37] I was still pretty firmly an atheist after that experience, but I just thought it was wonderful.

[00:05:42] I thought it was fun.

[00:05:43] I thought it was interesting and fascinating.

[00:05:45] And I knew I had found something that I wanted to pursue further.

[00:05:51] I would say at the time, it supplied what seemed to be a sense of transcendence, just something outside of, you know, the consciousness I experienced to that point.

[00:06:03] And I was seduced.

[00:06:05] I was very, very interested in it.

[00:06:07] So over the course of the next year or so, I was able to find and purchase magic mushrooms a few more times, I think.

[00:06:15] And then I, maybe a year after that initial experience, I encountered someone who had LSD.

[00:06:24] And I figured that was just the same as mushrooms, no big deal.

[00:06:27] And I took that and had a pretty shattering experience.

[00:06:32] It was very traumatic in some ways.

[00:06:38] But there again, I was also fascinated by it.

[00:06:42] I thought it was really interesting.

[00:06:44] I wasn't sure that I was an atheist anymore.

[00:06:47] I still would never have wanted to hear anything about Jesus Christ.

[00:06:51] I just closed my ears as soon as someone started talking about that.

[00:06:54] But it did make me more spiritually open to all manner of other things.

[00:06:57] And it was from then on, gosh, probably the next six to seven years, I spent taking psychedelics with varying degrees of frequency and really pursued that path all the way to the end of the line.

[00:07:14] And I'm summarizing greatly here.

[00:07:17] Obviously, I wrote a whole book about it.

[00:07:19] But toward the end of that period, I had met my husband.

[00:07:24] We actually met at our drug dealer's house, the person that we bought LSD from.

[00:07:30] Yeah, it seemed like a match made in heaven in that sense.

[00:07:32] We both liked LSD a lot.

[00:07:34] And that we both slowly over those years became disillusioned with psychedelics as a path to transcendence, as a path to meaning, as a path to anything at all, really.

[00:07:48] And like I said, I'm drastically summarizing here.

[00:07:51] It was a long, slow arc.

[00:07:53] And thank the Lord he is very patient.

[00:07:56] But yeah.

[00:07:57] And what we're going to do is take a break because I want to come back and maybe dip into each one of those areas.

[00:08:02] Because, for example, one of the things that was instrumental in your atheism was reading books by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

[00:08:10] We talk about that on the program.

[00:08:12] Also, about just how, in some respects, we maybe can, as a warning, talk to parents and other young people listening to this program today about how, in some respects, one particular experience leads to another.

[00:08:26] So I do want to kind of break that down.

[00:08:29] But I think you gave us a brief overview.

[00:08:30] We haven't gotten you saved yet, but that's in the later chapters anyway.

[00:08:33] So we'll come back and talk a little bit more about this new book, The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever, Transcendence, Psychedelics, and Jesus Christ.

[00:08:43] And we'll continue our conversation right after this.

[00:08:58] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson.

[00:09:02] You know the carol, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, is an English translation of a Latin hymn that was sung during Advent and Christmas.

[00:09:10] The text goes back to at least the 18th century and perhaps much earlier, while the music goes back to the 15th century.

[00:09:17] O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.

[00:09:27] Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.

[00:09:31] Emmanuel means God with us.

[00:09:33] Even before the coming of Christ, we see passages in the Old Testament that remind us that God was with Israel.

[00:09:39] In 1 Kings 8, we read,

[00:09:41] Praise the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, just as he promised.

[00:09:46] Not one word has failed of all the wonderful promises he gave through his servant Moses.

[00:09:51] May the Lord our God be with us as he was with our ancestors.

[00:09:56] May he never leave us or abandon us.

[00:09:58] In Psalm 46, we read that the Lord of hosts is with us.

[00:10:01] The God of Jacob is our stronghold.

[00:10:04] One of the most visible reminders of God's presence was during the Exodus.

[00:10:08] God was with the Israelites as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of smoke by day.

[00:10:12] His presence was with them in the tabernacle and later in the temple in the Holy of Holies.

[00:10:17] But the most important aspect of Emmanuel is found in the New Testament.

[00:10:21] John tells us in his Gospel,

[00:10:22] The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

[00:10:25] This is the miracle of the Incarnation.

[00:10:27] God put on human flesh and came to Israel so that he might give his life for all of us.

[00:10:33] Paul writes to Timothy,

[00:10:34] Here is the great mystery of our religion.

[00:10:37] Christ came as a human.

[00:10:42] And that's my point of view.

[00:10:47] Go deeper on topics like you hear on Viewpoints by visiting pointofview.net.

[00:10:54] Pointofview.net.

[00:10:57] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.

[00:11:03] Back once again, we're going to spend some time, if we can,

[00:11:05] kind of breaking down some of the story that we've already heard from Ashley Landy.

[00:11:10] The book is entitled The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever,

[00:11:13] in which you really have kind of a trajectory from an individual who is an atheist

[00:11:18] and then sort of decides to get involved in some of the psychedelics and things of that nature.

[00:11:25] Maybe a trajectory from acid enthusiast to soul-weary druggie to psychedelic refugee.

[00:11:32] And then eventually finding an answer in the last place you thought to look.

[00:11:36] Ashley, one of the things I'm going to do, hold up for right now,

[00:11:38] people watching online, my booklet on The New Atheist.

[00:11:42] We have produced this in the past.

[00:11:44] It came out a couple of years ago, and I may need to update it.

[00:11:47] But at the time when you were younger, you actually stumbled upon a number of very important books.

[00:11:55] And that's in Chapter 2, The Godless Light.

[00:11:58] You had sampled Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion,

[00:12:02] as well as, of course, Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris.

[00:12:06] Of course, you might even think about the one which you kind of read and then kind of dismissed by Christopher Hitchens'

[00:12:13] God is Not Great.

[00:12:14] And I think that's important because part of your search could have changed differently

[00:12:19] if you had maybe paid more attention.

[00:12:22] For example, one of the books you were given is the Left Behind series.

[00:12:26] But it does seem to me that these particular atheistic books captured your attention

[00:12:32] and really set you on a path to try to find your own meaning and significance really apart from God.

[00:12:40] Is that fair?

[00:12:42] Yes, that's very fair.

[00:12:43] Yeah.

[00:12:43] And I think I was just really – I wish that – and, you know, I'm not blaming anyone,

[00:12:49] but I wish that I had been introduced more to intellectually robust Christianity.

[00:12:55] Like, I think things could have perhaps been different if I had been introduced to C.S. Lewis.

[00:13:00] But part of the reason I was so seduced by Christopher Hitchens at first anyway is that he was very intellectual.

[00:13:06] He was very clever.

[00:13:08] Sure.

[00:13:08] He seemed very sophisticated.

[00:13:09] You know, now when I was writing my book, I went back and I read some of his writings

[00:13:13] and they didn't seem nearly as clever as they did when I was 17, 18, you know.

[00:13:20] But, yeah, I just – I was not at all familiar with the tradition of, like I said, intellectually robust Christianity.

[00:13:29] And so I just kind of dismissed Christianity out of hand as something for dumb people or weak people, you know,

[00:13:36] which is what Hitchens et al. would present it as.

[00:13:40] And I wanted to be part of the intelligentsia.

[00:13:44] You know, I wanted to be intellectual.

[00:13:45] I wanted to be – and I thought – and I also can't discount – there was a boy I had a crush on when I was 14, 15,

[00:13:53] and he was a rabid atheist.

[00:13:55] And I remember him saying something like, like, no intelligent person can be a person of religious faith.

[00:14:02] And, of course, this was someone – you know, I was a teenage girl.

[00:14:06] This was someone I looked up to and had a crush on.

[00:14:08] I thought, oh, he's probably right.

[00:14:09] So, like I said, I can't discount that whole – the role of that and everything.

[00:14:14] But, yeah, I really – I just really thought – and Christopher Hitchens in particular just seemed very, very smart to me, very clever.

[00:14:24] And when I would see film of him, like he seemed to have a comeback for everything, you know,

[00:14:30] and he was never – he was never left speechless.

[00:14:34] Certainly that was one thing about him.

[00:14:36] He always had a clip for everything.

[00:14:41] And I think that was really appealing to me.

[00:14:45] Sure.

[00:14:45] But, again, I think there's a lesson to be learned.

[00:14:47] That is, when your kids ask intellectual questions, you should be able to give them intellectual answers.

[00:14:51] And that's why we make these booklets available, more than 70 of them.

[00:14:55] This one on The New Atheist.

[00:14:57] I've got one on drug abuse, which we'll talk about later.

[00:14:59] But what I thought was intriguing is, of course, that's in Chapter 2.

[00:15:02] By the time I get to Chapter 3 and following, there is a sense in which you're still looking for significance,

[00:15:10] looking for transcendence, maybe not overtly, but there's oftentimes – people have said we have a God-shaped vacuum,

[00:15:17] or Ecclesiastes says eternity is in the heart of every individual.

[00:15:22] You were seeking for something, and maybe it wasn't fulfilling to be an atheist,

[00:15:26] so maybe something that looked more like the New Age.

[00:15:29] Or, of course, you were interacting with people that, for example, had Be Here Now or the Tibetan Book of the Dead

[00:15:37] or many different things that you mentioned there that also, in some respects,

[00:15:42] were causing you to look for some kind of spirituality, some kind of transcendence, don't you think?

[00:15:49] Oh, absolutely.

[00:15:50] Absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:15:52] And I thought – and there was, even before I had had that first experience with LSD,

[00:15:58] like I said, that was in some ways really not a good experience and a traumatic experience,

[00:16:02] I was becoming slowly disillusioned with atheism.

[00:16:07] Like, it just was starting to reveal its emptiness to me.

[00:16:11] It was starting to reveal its hollowness.

[00:16:13] And I remember being so excited for Christopher Hitchens' new book to come out,

[00:16:17] which was titled God is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything,

[00:16:21] which, you know, a characteristically extremely arrogant title.

[00:16:24] And I remember sitting down to read it and getting maybe, gosh, a third of the way or halfway through it

[00:16:33] and just feeling like if this is the truth, if this is the definitive truth, there is no God.

[00:16:38] And it's ironic, too, when I went back and read it just not a few years ago in preparation to write my book,

[00:16:46] Hitchens would often appeal to art and music and literature as sources of transcendence.

[00:16:54] And I just found that really insufficient because it's like, okay, well, what's the source of artistic inspiration?

[00:17:00] In particular, he really admired Dostoevsky, which is super interesting because Dostoevsky was a Christian.

[00:17:06] And, I mean, all his works were Christian and they were wrestling, you know, with Christian ideas

[00:17:11] and very Christian solutions, I guess you could say.

[00:17:16] And so I just found that really fascinating.

[00:17:19] But like I said, it was just slowly revealing to me its vacuity.

[00:17:23] But I didn't know, like I said, I had already dismissed Christianity out of hand,

[00:17:27] so I didn't know what could take its place.

[00:17:29] And so then once, you know, I was in that position and then I had what seemed to be this really profound,

[00:17:35] transcendent experience on LSD, which, like I said, it seemed to be very transcendent and profound,

[00:17:40] yet I could not have articulated what that profundity was or what it was about.

[00:17:49] It just seemed profound.

[00:17:51] And that seemed to, at least for the moment, it seemed to fill that hole or it seemed to promise to fill that God-shaped hole,

[00:18:01] even if it didn't necessarily fully satisfy it immediately.

[00:18:05] It seemed to offer the path to satisfying that, the path to meaning, the path to fulfillment.

[00:18:11] And so I was all in pretty quickly from that first time that I took LSD.

[00:18:18] And as I wrote about in the book, of course, it led down.

[00:18:22] Eventually, the trajectory was very bad.

[00:18:25] But at first, it seemed, you know, fascinating.

[00:18:31] It seemed exotic.

[00:18:32] It seemed in some ways wonderful.

[00:18:36] And so, yeah, it's very seductive.

[00:18:38] I thought I just might even mention that you actually had your first art show,

[00:18:43] which really were acid-fueled and speed-fueled pen drawings called Glutting the Sensorium.

[00:18:49] And so people seeing that might go, wow, that's really creative and everything else.

[00:18:54] But then the next line you say is that I felt a bone-deep pang of loneliness shudder through my soul.

[00:19:01] I had everything, and I had it all at once, I believe, but I was desperately lonely.

[00:19:07] Tears began to roll down my cheeks.

[00:19:09] So anybody looking at it on the outside might say, you're an artist, you're creative,

[00:19:14] you've pulled together all sorts of things that I would never have developed.

[00:19:18] And so because of maybe dipping into those drugs, and yet from the outside, you looked very successful.

[00:19:26] On the inside, you were deeply pained and lonely, weren't you?

[00:19:30] Yes, I was a mess.

[00:19:32] I was really a mess.

[00:19:34] And the interesting thing, too, about my artwork at that time was, you know,

[00:19:40] I would say that I was kind of, in a lot of ways, a peace and love hippie.

[00:19:44] You know, love and light was always the phrase that people would throw around in the New Age community.

[00:19:48] And I was very into yoga.

[00:19:50] But all my artwork was very, very dark.

[00:19:54] Like, it just had a lot of really dark elements to it.

[00:19:57] And, of course, I couldn't see that at the time.

[00:19:59] But now if I look back at the work that I created during that time, it was actually really dark.

[00:20:05] And I think people are startled by it.

[00:20:07] I know my poor parents, you know.

[00:20:09] I coerced them or convinced them to come to my art opening, and I'm sure they were really disturbed.

[00:20:15] But, yeah, I was, I mean, I had, my life was a complete mess.

[00:20:18] I couldn't hold down a job.

[00:20:20] I had worked temp jobs for a while.

[00:20:22] I had worked at a restaurant for a while.

[00:20:25] But I just didn't, it was kind of an, it was a pretty upscale restaurant.

[00:20:28] And I just didn't care enough about reality to actually memorize the menu like I was supposed to, you know,

[00:20:35] and do these basic fundamental tasks that I was supposed to complete to keep this job.

[00:20:40] And I just didn't care to do it.

[00:20:42] So after that, I got fired from the restaurant.

[00:20:44] I think I was just working temp jobs.

[00:20:46] And like I said, my life was just, yeah, it was a mess.

[00:20:50] And I was desperately lonely.

[00:20:51] I couldn't keep a relationship together.

[00:20:55] I couldn't even really maintain my friendships at that point.

[00:21:00] And I became, in that time, too, I was taking psychedelics pretty often just by myself.

[00:21:07] Sometimes I would take them with other people, but sometimes I would take them by myself.

[00:21:10] And I was very ceremonial about it.

[00:21:13] You know, I felt I was very almost like liturgical about it.

[00:21:16] I had these rules around it.

[00:21:17] But I was so lonely and I became increasingly disconnected from reality.

[00:21:22] We'll take a break and continue our story right after these important messages.

[00:21:29] If you have ever wondered what kind of impact you have when you give to Point of View,

[00:21:36] let me introduce you to Bill.

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[00:21:46] And I appreciate the fact that truth and love are discussed equally and that God's word never changes.

[00:21:52] We have four generations in my family who have been taught these things,

[00:21:57] these truths, and the fifth generation we've just been blessed with,

[00:22:01] who I'm sure will be blessed by this ministry also.

[00:22:04] So I just appreciate the fact that it's solid, it's truthful, it's honest,

[00:22:08] and there's no changing God's word.

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[00:22:47] Point of View will continue after this.

[00:22:50] You are listening to Point of View.

[00:23:00] The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station.

[00:23:09] And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson.

[00:23:12] Continue our conversation today with Ashley Landy as we talk about the book,

[00:23:15] The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever, Transcendence, Psychedelics, and Jesus Christ.

[00:23:21] We have a link to her website if you would like to follow her there.

[00:23:25] Of course, you can also find out how you can follow her both on Facebook and X.

[00:23:30] And we, of course, have a book, which you might be able to find in a local bookstore,

[00:23:33] but we've made it very easy for you to get it either in Kindle or paperback,

[00:23:37] all available at our website at pointofview.net.

[00:23:41] Let's, if we can, then talk about that, because in the midst of this,

[00:23:45] all the questions and difficulties,

[00:23:48] you find a relationship, if all places, with a fellow person using drugs.

[00:23:54] Can you share the rest of that?

[00:23:57] Oh, yes.

[00:23:58] Well, yeah, I met my husband at our mutual friend's house.

[00:24:04] It was a person that we bought LSE from.

[00:24:09] And we moved very quickly.

[00:24:12] We got engaged maybe three weeks after we started dating,

[00:24:15] and we got married, I think, a month and a half after that.

[00:24:19] And by the grace of God, we celebrated 16 years of marriage this past summer.

[00:24:24] Yes.

[00:24:24] And that is solely by the grace of God.

[00:24:27] But, yeah, like I said, at first it seemed I was so infatuated,

[00:24:33] and it seemed to make so much sense.

[00:24:35] Like, we both loved LSE.

[00:24:36] We both believed psychedelics were a path to transcendence,

[00:24:39] and we both enjoyed taking them.

[00:24:41] And it was a slow, like I said, a slow disenchantment with psychedelics for both of us.

[00:24:48] I think, you know, I don't want to speak for my husband.

[00:24:51] He had his own experience, but he was the one who actually started becoming interested in Christianity before I did.

[00:24:59] And at first, for him, it was more of a – he was always interested in exploring different world religions,

[00:25:06] which I was to an extent as well, but he had a more, I guess you could say, like scholarly approach to it.

[00:25:13] You know, he wanted to go back and read the original text.

[00:25:16] And so, ironically, it was – there was someone we both really loved named Ram Dass,

[00:25:23] who was a huge figure in the – yeah, which I'm sure you've heard of him.

[00:25:26] He was – his original name was Richard Alpert, and he was a professor at Harvard with Timothy Leary.

[00:25:31] And he was very influential for both of us, and particularly his book, Be Here Now.

[00:25:37] But my husband read, in one of his other books, he said something about – something like,

[00:25:43] you should immerse yourself in whatever religious tradition you find yourself surrounded with,

[00:25:50] locally, geographically, like the people you're around.

[00:25:53] You should immerse yourself in that religious tradition.

[00:25:56] And Stephen, my husband, got to a point where, like I said, he was, like me, increasingly disillusioned with psychedelics.

[00:26:03] And he thought, well, you know, we live in the Midwest, in the United States of America.

[00:26:07] The obvious choice to investigate would be Christianity.

[00:26:11] Like, why not?

[00:26:12] Why not see what it's all about?

[00:26:14] And like I said, it's ironic, because Ram Dass, you know, would never have endorsed the exclusivity of Jesus Christ.

[00:26:20] But his take was just, oh, you know, there are many paths to God, and you might as well try this one.

[00:26:26] And when you try it, like throw yourself into it completely.

[00:26:29] And so initially for my husband, it began just as this investigation of, like, this is one of many paths to God,

[00:26:35] but it's the one that I'm surrounded by.

[00:26:37] So I might as well try it, you know.

[00:26:40] I might as well see what it's all about.

[00:26:42] And I was, even though, like I said, I had gotten to a place of desperation with realizing, like, the drugs were not working anymore,

[00:26:52] and in fact they were producing really, really bad experiences for me, and I felt lost, I felt confused.

[00:26:58] But I was very resistant at first to his forays into Christianity.

[00:27:03] And he actually started seeing a therapist.

[00:27:07] This was around when our oldest son was probably one and a half, and I actually had become pregnant with our daughter.

[00:27:17] And obviously we weren't using psychedelics with the frequency that we had before we had children,

[00:27:22] but every once in a while, you know, if we had an afternoon to ourselves,

[00:27:26] if we had one of our parents babysitting or had a babysitter, we would take them, usually a smaller dose.

[00:27:31] Like, we usually didn't do the big doses anymore.

[00:27:33] So we were still very much invested in psychedelics at that point.

[00:27:38] And he actually, he was a daily marijuana smoker as well.

[00:27:42] I would partake some of the time, but not daily like he did.

[00:27:46] And he started seeing a therapist because he found himself really struggling with some anger issues.

[00:27:51] And the therapist challenged him to do two things,

[00:27:55] to quit smoking marijuana every day and to go to church.

[00:28:00] And Stephen, I think, was glad to be challenged by someone.

[00:28:05] And so he took up the challenge.

[00:28:07] He didn't completely give up marijuana, but he stopped smoking it every single day before work.

[00:28:11] And he decided he was going to try a church.

[00:28:14] And there was a church maybe six blocks away from where we lived in Kansas City.

[00:28:18] And so he said he wanted to try it.

[00:28:20] And at first I said, like I said, it was this tension because I was lost and I was so confused and I was so desperate.

[00:28:26] But I still had what I'm sure was in part a supernatural aversion to Christianity.

[00:28:33] Because like I said, I was open to almost anything else.

[00:28:36] But as soon as someone started talking about Christ, at least in an exclusive way, as the way, the truth, and the life,

[00:28:42] I really didn't want to hear about it.

[00:28:44] So at first I really resisted that.

[00:28:46] And then it was maybe in my eighth month of pregnancy with my daughter that I finally consented reluctantly still to go to church with him.

[00:28:55] And I remember just feeling I really didn't want to be there.

[00:29:01] I wanted to sit near the back.

[00:29:02] But as the worship music washed over me, I felt this sense of relief.

[00:29:09] And I remember weeping and sobbing uncontrollably.

[00:29:12] I was embarrassed.

[00:29:13] I didn't want to be weeping and sobbing in front of other people.

[00:29:16] But I just felt this sense of relief.

[00:29:19] I was just so tired of DIY salvation.

[00:29:23] I was tired of trying to save myself.

[00:29:25] I was tired of trying to save myself through drugs, through yoga, through meditation.

[00:29:30] I was just so tired.

[00:29:33] And so I think that was the moment.

[00:29:35] That wasn't the moment I was saved, but I still had a lot of arrogance and resistance in my heart.

[00:29:40] But I would say that was kind of the beginning of God lovingly breaking down that resistance.

[00:29:47] And that was the beginning of me thinking, maybe there is more to this than I thought.

[00:29:52] Maybe there is something to Jesus Christ.

[00:29:56] And yeah, that was really the beginning of that for me.

[00:30:00] Well, again, you talk about through the valley.

[00:30:02] It's well with my soul tasting the real thing.

[00:30:04] Some of those chapters get into some more of that journey.

[00:30:08] But a lot of it has to do with the if I can again harken back to when you already begun to reject Christianity and you even for a while accepted atheism.

[00:30:19] Even if later you were sort of more of a psychedelic new age type of person.

[00:30:24] It's hard to go back.

[00:30:27] But it seems that that was a good example of how maybe the impact came more from an emotional set of circumstances.

[00:30:37] The worship music made you cry.

[00:30:40] You still maybe had the intellectual thoughts.

[00:30:43] So your heart was maybe opening even if your head was still resisting.

[00:30:48] Is that a fair assessment of what was going on?

[00:30:51] Yes, it is.

[00:30:53] And it's interesting that that was the way it went for me.

[00:30:55] I feel like my heart was softened, you know, and God took my heart of stone and gave me a heart of flesh.

[00:31:02] That happened for me before, I guess what you could call an intellectual version or a theological understanding.

[00:31:11] That came later for me.

[00:31:12] It kind of filled in because then I wanted to know, you know, once my heart was open, I think I wanted to know, like, what is this all about?

[00:31:18] Like, I know that I've I've I know that it's true, but I want to understand it more.

[00:31:25] And it's interesting.

[00:31:26] My husband, actually, for him, it was the opposite.

[00:31:28] Right.

[00:31:28] It was vice versa.

[00:31:29] He felt like the intellectual, the theological understanding came first.

[00:31:32] And he was still struggling with surrendering himself to it.

[00:31:37] You know, even though he came to a point where theologically he said, OK, I understand this.

[00:31:41] It makes sense.

[00:31:42] I believe it's true.

[00:31:42] And he was actually raised Mormon, but rejected that as a teenager.

[00:31:47] And although he said he never became an atheist, he'll say he I wasn't that much of an idiot.

[00:31:53] But he never, like I said, he certainly wasn't a Christian either.

[00:31:57] And so it's interesting for him.

[00:31:59] He kind of went the other direction.

[00:32:00] But, yeah, for me, it was very much my my heart was the Lord softened my heart first.

[00:32:07] And I think for me, that's what the Lord knew.

[00:32:09] That's what needed to happen for me.

[00:32:12] Again, let's take a break.

[00:32:13] We'll come back.

[00:32:13] Maybe talk a little bit more.

[00:32:14] I love at one point where you're talking about as a pastor began preaching, the dissonance inside me grew.

[00:32:20] And with it, a wave of emotion threatened to set me weeping.

[00:32:23] And, of course, talking about some of those experiences as well.

[00:32:26] Because when we come back, I wanted maybe to have just share a little bit about where you go from here.

[00:32:31] And maybe some warnings or some suggestions you might make to parents who are raising children kind of like you that are creative, maybe a little bit more right hemisphere creative, and maybe quite willing to read some of these books and engage in some of the experiences that kept you really from accepting Christ until later in your life.

[00:32:54] And so I wanted to get maybe some thoughts about that.

[00:32:57] And if you would like to know more about Ashley, we do have a link to the website there.

[00:33:01] It is full of all sorts of bright colors.

[00:33:04] And it'll hold us up, as is her book.

[00:33:06] So I think you'll get a real sense of the kind of artistic material that she likes to engage in.

[00:33:12] And as I've mentioned already, one of the individuals we've had on this program is Justin Brierley, author of The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God.

[00:33:21] But there are some other endorsements of the book, and it is a fascinating read and one that might just, again, encourage you to do what you can to reach out to your young children and maybe warn them of the dangers that they might engage in so that they don't have to travel down the same path that Ashley Landy had to.

[00:33:41] We'll take a break.

[00:33:42] Come back with more right after this.

[00:33:44] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth.

[00:34:00] Back for a few more minutes.

[00:34:01] Again, the book is entitled The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever.

[00:34:05] And Ashley, you do spend some time, of course, talking about what the future might hold and how to really think through this, focusing on tasting the real thing.

[00:34:14] For example, your last chapter in the book or even the one before that where you spend a little bit of time talking about some of the other aspects.

[00:34:22] It is well with my soul.

[00:34:23] So maybe share with us where you are today and maybe as you do that, even some things that we might pass on to our listeners that maybe can learn some lessons vicariously from your own spiritual journey and experience.

[00:34:39] Sure, yeah.

[00:34:40] Well, I think one of the reasons that I was able to write so freely and so vulnerably, although the vulnerability is a little scary, about my experiences is that I was writing about 10 to 15 years ago.

[00:34:54] So I'm 41 now, and I was 22, 23, the first time that I took psychedelics.

[00:35:02] And we became Christians when we were – it's been more than a decade.

[00:35:10] So, yeah, that's been the – like I said, everything in this book happened 10 to 15 years ago.

[00:35:15] So it's interesting.

[00:35:17] After we came to Christ and after we were saved, there was a period of about three to five years where I did not want to think about psychedelics.

[00:35:26] I didn't want to talk about psychedelics.

[00:35:28] I just wanted to know more about Jesus, you know, which is not to say I was obviously a perfect Christian.

[00:35:35] You know, there were still so many things and still are so many things that I feel like God needed to root out of my heart and reshape me and transform me through the renewing of my mind.

[00:35:45] But I just didn't want anything to do with that whole world anymore.

[00:35:50] I even quit doing yoga, which I had been super devoted to yoga for years and years.

[00:35:56] And I just couldn't bear like the associations, you know, because for me it was a religion.

[00:36:01] And so there was so much baggage with it.

[00:36:03] I couldn't bear the associations with it.

[00:36:04] Once I started viewing it as a religion, which it does, you know, whether or not someone practicing it views it as a religion, it has religious, very religious origins.

[00:36:13] But that's a whole other issue.

[00:36:16] But, yeah, for the longest time I did not want to talk.

[00:36:20] I felt really, I guess, like traumatized in a way by all my experiences.

[00:36:26] I just didn't want anything to do with them anymore.

[00:36:28] And it's only been in the past maybe five years I started thinking about it more and thinking, you know, maybe I should write about this because I saw that psychedelics were having a resurgence in popularity and culture.

[00:36:41] You know, these major figures like Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, who's the Green Bay Packers, or he was the Green Bay Packers, Aaron Rodgers.

[00:36:50] These celebrities and very influential people were coming out and talking about endorsing psychedelics.

[00:36:55] So I thought, you know, maybe it would be helpful to someone for a Christian who says, you know, who can say, like, I did a ton of psychedelics.

[00:37:05] You know, like, I believed in psychedelics.

[00:37:07] I believed in the power of them.

[00:37:09] And ultimately they led me to a very bad place.

[00:37:12] And then Jesus alone can save.

[00:37:14] And so I started thinking, yeah, maybe it was a good idea to write about it.

[00:37:19] I never intended to write a book about it.

[00:37:21] It's interesting how that came about.

[00:37:22] It was definitely God orchestrating that.

[00:37:25] But, yeah, I wanted to say now that my own children, so I have my two oldest children are 15 and 13, and then we have a two-year-old.

[00:37:34] And I said four children.

[00:37:35] I'm actually pregnant.

[00:37:36] The fourth one is still on the inside.

[00:37:39] I'm about 24 weeks pregnant.

[00:37:41] But like you said, and now that we're kind of navigating that with our own children, those really formative ages,

[00:37:48] which for me, like I said, the point I made that switch from disavowing Christianity, which I'd always been a pretty good, compliant kid,

[00:37:58] and I would have said I was a Christian, like I said, even though I didn't necessarily think I had an understanding of the gospel,

[00:38:04] I would have said I was a Christian.

[00:38:06] And that switch for me came around 14, 15 years old.

[00:38:09] And I think I look back on it, and like I said, I don't want to put any culpability on my parents.

[00:38:15] I have so much grace for them.

[00:38:16] They were doing the best that they could, and they both grew in their faith after I was an adult.

[00:38:22] But I think that, yeah, those ages were really formative.

[00:38:27] And so I look at my own children, and I think, and like you said, especially if someone has a child who is more creative

[00:38:34] and is more attracted to art and literature, I think you have to think about,

[00:38:39] how you have to make sure that they're being introduced to people like C.S. Lewis,

[00:38:45] to people like Tolkien,

[00:38:47] and this like intellectually robust and Christianity that's really grappling with and wrestling with these questions,

[00:38:58] you know, these deep questions.

[00:39:01] And I think you have to think about like what is going to capture my child's imagination,

[00:39:06] and also like who are they going to view as authoritative.

[00:39:10] I think that was a big turning point for me is I just really started viewing people other than my parents as authoritative.

[00:39:16] And I went to public school, large public school, suburban public school up through eighth grade,

[00:39:22] and then my parents sent me to a private Catholic school, which, yes, it was a Catholic school,

[00:39:27] but it was not at all religiously conservative.

[00:39:30] And so I just encountered these other people who were secular, and they seemed interesting,

[00:39:36] and they seemed fascinating.

[00:39:37] And so I think, I think, and I just started exploring for myself, like trying to find interesting literature.

[00:39:44] I got really into the beat poets, Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, people like that,

[00:39:49] and they seemed really, really wild and interesting and artistic and creative.

[00:39:54] And so I just think it's so important, like I said, now that I'm navigating this with my own children,

[00:40:00] and my 15-year-old boy in particular is more intellectually curious, not that my daughter isn't,

[00:40:06] but he's just, and he's older too, you know, is more intellectually curious,

[00:40:10] like discussing, not being afraid to discuss these questions with them,

[00:40:15] and not being outraged, I think, by questions.

[00:40:18] And, yeah, yeah, and just being willing to take the time.

[00:40:23] Like I said, I don't want to keep blaming on my parents,

[00:40:25] because we had a lot going on when I was a teenager, but I just think,

[00:40:30] I think that's really, that's really important.

[00:40:33] Yeah, and like I said, I wonder if things maybe could have gone differently for me.

[00:40:37] If I, I keep mentioning C.S. Lewis just because he's such a huge figure

[00:40:40] and has such a large body of work, but I've come to love C.S. Lewis and his work,

[00:40:45] so I just wonder if, yeah, maybe things could have taken a different path

[00:40:50] if I had been introduced to that.

[00:40:52] Well, again, I think this book is a cautionary tale, and it's a good example of that.

[00:40:58] And just before we let everybody go and let you go,

[00:41:01] I thought I might mention that if you go to your website, ashleylandy.com,

[00:41:06] Deep Mystery, Deep Majesty, there is your artwork there, which is just incredible,

[00:41:11] and I think people will enjoy clicking on that.

[00:41:14] There's a place where they can subscribe and learn a little bit more about what you are doing.

[00:41:18] There's articles and podcasts, including, you know, a video on Finding God After Psychedelics

[00:41:24] and a number of other interviews that you've done.

[00:41:26] So all of that is available at our website as well as this book.

[00:41:31] And I just appreciate you once again taking the time to share the story.

[00:41:36] I appreciate your vulnerability, and I appreciate you joining us today here on Point of View.

[00:41:41] Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it.

[00:41:43] We are going to take a break, but just before we do so, let me just mention again

[00:41:47] that the book is available on the website at pointofview.net.

[00:41:51] You might be able to find it in your local bookstore,

[00:41:53] but I think probably easier to get it in paperback or Kindle, and we have that link there as well.

[00:41:58] Just before we wind down today, of course, I gave you at the start of the program an opportunity to take action.

[00:42:04] I would encourage you to do so.

[00:42:06] But most importantly, even as you were listening to this story, you might have thought,

[00:42:11] you know, I know somebody probably needs to know about this.

[00:42:13] I mean, I see some of these kids experimenting with drugs,

[00:42:16] and there seems to be, as Ashley points out, a resurgence in the interest of psychedelics.

[00:42:22] And somebody grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where people were passing around LSD.

[00:42:26] I've seen that before, and we don't want to repeat.

[00:42:30] So this is just one more reason why we cover these issues.

[00:42:33] And if you can click on that button that says Give the Gift of Truth,

[00:42:37] we now have a matching challenge up to $125,000,

[00:42:41] which means your gift is matched dollar for dollar.

[00:42:45] You could give even right now by clicking on that button.

[00:42:48] Of course, you can give us a call offline, 800-347-5151.

[00:42:53] I want to thank Megan once again for her help engineering the program.

[00:42:57] Karen, thank you for stepping in for Steve producing the program,

[00:43:00] and we look forward to seeing you tomorrow with a Millennial Roundtable right here on Point of View.

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