Can Mysticism Heal the God-Shaped Hole In Our Hearts?
FIELD NOTES
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Key Takeaways
Stillness is a shared doorway across mystical traditions.
Healing emerges through reconnection and patience, not achievement or control.
Love may be the most accessible language for the infinite we’ve lost touch with.
Observation
Religion has become polarizing–some people believe, others don’t. As Rumi wrote, “out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Away from the debate, something quieter and more human is unfolding. People are turning back toward mysticism, spirituality, and faith not out of nostalgia, but out of a yearning, a spiritual hunger. Logic, data, and explanation have taken us far, but for many, they no longer satisfy the deeper questions of meaning, belonging, and purpose.
We live in a culture optimized for productivity, distraction, and hyperindividualism. Implicit in this culture are the ideas that worth is measured, attention should be fragmented, and reputation is a project to manage and improve. Somewhere along the way, many have lost touch with something infinite. Call it what you want: nature, the cosmos, the divine, Source, Spirit, God. If the mere reading or utterance of those words makes you recoil, you are not alone. For the sake of this exploration, you can call it Love. What’s missing is not a belief system, but a lived connection to the unconditional infinite. A “God-shaped” hole, unsatiated by material achievement or consumption.
Revelation
Two recent encounters converged for me, sparking a revelation. Science spoke to me through a peer-reviewed study showing that people who reported stronger mystical-type experiences during psilocybin-assisted therapy showed more profound and lasting improvements in treatment-resistant depression. The elements of these experiences were consistent: a sense of unity, awe, deep knowing, and sacredness. Healing tracked not just with chemistry, but with a feeling of transcendence.
Biblical scripture was the other catalyst. Psalm 46:10 reads, “Be still, and know that I am God.” It’s a frustratingly simple command. Stop. Listen. Let go of control. Stillness is not inactivity, but an essential condition to prepare the body, mind, and soul, sharpening our capacity to hear those extrasensory messages: intuition, inner intelligence, clarity…God? When the mind softens, perception widens and clarity unfolds.
What struck me is how universal this instruction is. Hinduism speaks of stilling the fluctuations of the mind. Taoism teaches non-striving. Buddhism practices calm abiding. Jewish mysticism emphasizes self-nullification. Sufism returns again and again to remembrance. Mindfulness teaches conscious awareness. Different worlds, same doorway. Stillness is the invitation, the opportunity, and the path.
Meaning
Mystical experience is not about escapism. It is a return to wholeness–a reconnection of our fragmented selves–that modern life rarely affords. Psychedelic experiences don’t create this truth, but they can reveal what has been culturally suppressed: that healing is not about fixing what’s broken, but remembering what, or where, we belong to.
My own path reflects this. I was born into religion, turned away from it, and placed my faith entirely in science. For a long time that felt sufficient, until it didn’t. Over years of travel, clinical work, relationship, loss, suffering, love, and growth, an internal reconciling grew. Stillness became a space I revisited over and over again to find clarity, alignment, and peace. It occupies one of the five conditions of my humanistic model of care. Not as an empty ideal, but as a lived practice. Stillness is sacred and precious, allowing the ego to loosen, intuition to return, and love to materialize out of abstraction.
Love, for me, has become the most honest translation. If God feels distant or charged, love is always accessible. Infinite, unconditional, connecting. The thing we keep reaching for through productivity, validation, consumption, and distraction, yet perhaps always feels just out of reach.
What to Carry Forward
Stillness is an active practice of connection, not withdrawal.
What we yearn for cannot be earned, optimized, or consumed.
Reflection Question
What becomes possible when you invite stillness instead of holding on to control?
With love & light,
John Moos, MD
Soul Surgeon