The Gospel of Direct Experience

We welcome Dr. Lucille Tures, psychologist, spiritual director, teacher, and founder of Theama Institute , for a conversation about Christian mysticism, spiritual abuse, and the life-long work of integration. Lucille shares her experience growing up in a Christian mystical environment, her later involvement in a coercive spiritual community with a narcissistic mentor, and the painful but generativ...

Molly Baskette has spent decades helping progressive churches come alive. A longtime UCC minister, preacher, author of Real Good Church , and self-described transformation junkie, Molly has recently made a major vocational turn: leaving parish ministry and stepping into work as a psychedelically assisted spiritual care provider. That's plenty to talk about right there! But we also discuss calling,...

Documentary filmmaker Haydn Reiss joins us to talk about Robert Bly, poetry, translation, longing, grief, and the mysterious art of finding the right words for what the soul knows. We explore Bly's cultural impact, his gift for speaking to the hunger of men, the strange alchemy poetry can work in a life, and what it means to preserve voices that still have the power to change us. Along the way, we...

What does it mean to live in relationship with our dead? In our episode "Speaking with the Dead," we discussed Michael's recent contact with his deceased best childhood friend. We knew we needed someone with real experience and insight to help us think through the meaning of that encounter, so we called on Perdita Finn . You may remember Perdita from our episode "Portal to the Great Mother," where...

In part two of our conversation with feminist theologian and bestselling author Meggan Watterson, we explore the radical story of Thecla from the Acts of Paul and Thecla . Refusing the roles assigned to her by society, Thecla claims her own spiritual authority by baptizing herself in the arena designed for her death. Tied to our exploration of Thecla is a conversation about love as the deepest spi...

Feminist theologian and best-selling author Meggan Watterson joins us for a crackling conversation about the Gospel of Mary , the "apocryphal" Christian text that gives voice to Mary Magdalene's spiritual authority and visionary insight. In this episode, Meggan shares the moment she first encountered Mary's words, "I will teach you about what is hidden from you," and the profound experience of dir...

On the anniversary of a friend's death, a simple ritual—a candle, a glass of tequila, a cigarette, and Pink Floyd's One of My Turns —becomes something neither of us can easily explain. In this episode, we're sharing direct experiences of communicating with loved ones who have died. We can't prove anything, but we will discuss what it means when the contact feels real—when grief opens up into prese...

In this episode of The Gospel of Direct Experience , we're joined by Matt Cardin , acclaimed writer of cosmic horror and author of the new book Writing at the Wellspring: Tapping the Source of Your Inner Genius . What unfolds isn't just a discussion of creativity; it's also an initiation into darkness—darkness as terror and generative source and spiritual/cultural necessity. Matt reframes the "dem...

What if the rosary is not a relic of patriarchal religion, but an ancient spiritual technology—older than Christianity itself—designed to open a living relationship with the Sacred Mother? In this episode we're joined by Clark Strand and Perdita Finn , founders of The Way of the Rose  and co-authors of the book by the same name, for a deeply embodied conversation about the rosary as a portal: tact...

We finally discuss the new documentary  The Age of Disclosure  and what it suggests about UFOs, government secrecy, and the possibility of non-human intelligence. Already convinced of the reality of UFOs, your hosts explore the deeper challenges of disclosure itself: psychological operations, selective truth-telling, and the difficulty of knowing what to trust when intelligence agencies are shapin...

What if Christianity began not as a set of doctrines to believe, but as a mystery school—an initiatory path meant to awaken direct experience of the divine? In this episode, wel trace the ancient roots of the Christian story through the lost mystery traditions of the ancient world. From the Eleusinian rites to the "dying before you die" experience, we explore how Jesus may have carried forward an...

Jeff and Michael sit down with Victoria Loorz , author of Church of the Wild , founder of the Center for Wild Spirituality , and co-founder of the Wild Church Network , for a conversation about finding the sacred beyond church walls. They talk about the experience of hearing God beneath an oak tree, encounters with owls and vultures, and why wilderness has always been the place where spiritual tra...

Psychedelics are often framed today as medicines for trauma and therapy—but what if they are something more? In this episode, we sit down with Justin Levy , founder of Spirit House in Portland , Oregon, to explore psychedelics as a path of devotion, surrender, and cultural rebirth. Justin shares his journey from early rave experiences to work with kundalini, capoeira, and ayahuasca, and how these...

In this episode, Michael finally shares the wild story he's been holding back for decades: the day in 2006 when he slipped from a meditation session in his Queens apartment back through time—waking up in his 15-year-old body in 1990. Was it something like a dream, an out-of-body journey, or actual time travel? Jeff and Michael follow the thread from memory and synchronicity into questions of how w...

In this episode, we speak with Nicholas Collura—a board-certified chaplain, spiritual director, and Enneagram teacher—about the unfolding intersection between psychedelics and contemporary spirituality. We explore what the so-called "psychedelic renaissance" means for spiritual direction, Christian practice, and the broader search for meaning in a disenchanted world. Topics include integration, cu...

In this episode, we explore The City & the City  by China Miéville as a powerful metaphor for cognitive blind spots, social conditioning, and spiritual perception. Drawing on Miéville's layered, dual-city setting—where citizens are trained to "unsee" an overlapping world—we reflect on what it means to overlook not just people and places, but also inner experiences, spiritual insights, and hidden p...

What is spiritual direction, really? In this episode, Jeff and Michael explore the practice not as a professional technique or spiritual luxury, but as a vital response to living in a fragmented, disenchanted world. Drawing on their own experiences as directors and directees, they talk about the invisible agreements that shape the space, the role of intuition, the balance between presence and expe...

Welcome to our very first live AMA episode—unscripted and full of spirit. Listeners showed up with real questions about prayer, mystical experience, cryptids, and the strange space where the psychological meets the spiritual. We talked about what it means to pray when God no longer fits, how to trust the knowledge of the heart, why some people encounter the sacred and others don't, and whether Big...

In this powerful and personal episode, we sit down with Emma Mcilroy—queer feminist, immigrant, entrepreneur, and CEO of Wildfang —for a conversation that dives deep into faith, identity, capitalism, and surviving life's darkest valleys. Emma shares her journey of reconciling her sexuality with her faith, the near-death experience surrounding the birth of her son, and how a private, hard-won relat...

What if the path to salvation isn't belief—but integration?  Building off our last episode, Jeff and Michael unpack a mysterious saying from the Gospel of Thomas about making "the two one," and explore how ancient Gnostic wisdom speaks to our divided modern selves. Jeff shares a concluding dream that becomes a portal into the deeper meaning of inner and outer reconciliation, while Michael reflects...

What if the spiritual texts we grew up with only told part of the story? In this episode, Jeff and Michael explore the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library —a collection of ancient, long-buried texts that include radically different teachings attributed to Jesus, including the enigmatic Gospel of Thomas . These writings challenge many assumptions of mainstream Christianity and open a doorway into...

What if a long-dead painter could reach across time to guide your spiritual awakening? In this episode, Jeff shares the astonishing true story of how George Inness—a 19th-century landscape artist and mystic—emerged as a living spirit guide in his life. From a chance encounter at a museum to a series of visionary dreams filled with barns, handprints, and transfigured light-beings, Jeff and Michael...

What if waking up isn't a single breakthrough moment—but a layered, looping journey through insight, fear, wonder, and mystery? In this episode, we explore the complex terrain of spiritual awakening through dreams, false awakenings, mystical encounters, and moments of terrifying clarity. From Michael's lucid Spirit Train dream to Jeff's powerful visitation from a fierce divine feminine presence, w...

What happens when the walls of traditional religion crumble, and all that's left is raw, unfiltered awe? In this episode we sit down with John Hamilton—UCC minister, musician, and author of the excellent theological memoir  Honest to God . Guided by the book, the three of us dive into the chaos and beauty of spiritual awakening in an era of collapsing institutions. John Hamilton was born into a sp...

What happens when you call on Jesus in an ancient Vedic fire ritual? Will he show up? How? In this episode, Michael shares his experience with Homa , a Vedic fire ceremony, and what happened when he decided to dedicate it to Jesus. The result was an unfolding series of synchronicities—stretching across years, continents, and eventually even into the Spirit Train dream—culminating in a moment of un...