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Here’s a summary with bullet points and representative quotes based on The Spiritual Significance of Overload Boredom by Sharday C. Mosurinjohn:
📘 Summary Bullet Points:
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Overload Boredom Defined: Explores a modern form of boredom caused by excessive digital stimuli and choice paralysis.
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Spiritual Dimension: Frames boredom not as apathy but as a longing for depth, meaning, and connection.
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Kēdia – A Care Ethic: Proposes an ethic of care to navigate digital overload and recover attentiveness.
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Cultural Reflections: Uses art, media, and literature to show how overload boredom manifests in daily life.
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Affective Aesthetics: Emphasizes the emotional and existential weight of boredom in modern society.
🧠 Sample Quotes:
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“Overload boredom is not the absence of interest—it’s the paralysis of meaning.”
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“In a world where everything competes for your attention, choosing what to care about is a sacred act.”
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“Kēdia offers a pathway—not out of boredom, but through it—toward spiritual renewal.”
You can find the book and more details here:
🔗 McGill-Queen’s University Press – Book Page
Would you like a deeper analysis of any specific chapter or concept from the book?
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Here's a summary with bullet points and select quotes from Sharday Mosurinjohn’s reflections on psychedelics and religious experience:
🌌 Origins of Her Interest in Psychedelics and Religion
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Personal struggle with meaninglessness: She describes a long experience with "the void"—a dissociative, nihilistic space that drew her to explore how others found meaning.
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Initial skepticism of religion: Started in religious studies to critique religion out of envy and fear.
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Shift to experiential focus: Moved from a purely discursive, intellectual framework to one that embraces cultural, neurological, and metaphysical perspectives.
"I got into religious studies almost to 'dunk on' religious people because I was jealous they had something I wanted but couldn't admit I wanted."
"Psychedelics seemed utterly foreign to me... but I found welcoming communities where I could experience ways of seeing the world that weren’t just nihilistic voids."
🧘♀️ Critique of “Mystical Experience” in Psychedelic Research
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Concerns with the MEQ (Mystical Experience Questionnaire): It's built on a narrow and abstract understanding of mysticism, stripped of cultural and historical context.
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Over-simplification of complex traditions: She argues it's misleading to treat mystical experiences as quantifiable or universally defined across time and traditions.
“What does it mean to have ‘60% of a mystical experience’?”
“The qualities Stace identified are also totally removed from their traditions.”
🏛️ Debunking Psychedelic Claims in the Eleusinian Mysteries
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Criticizes popular books like The Immortality Key for promoting unsubstantiated theories.
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Argues for non-psychedelic explanations of ancient transformative rituals (like fasting, sensory manipulation, ritual preparation).
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Challenges the ergot theory due to its toxicity and lack of historical evidence for safe, widespread use.
“The desire to keep this hypothesis alive seems like motivated reasoning rather than an objective assessment of the evidence.”
🌀 Toward a “Psychedelic Theodicy”
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Meaning in bad trips: Proposes ways to understand painful or dark psychedelic experiences without reducing them to failure or pathology.
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Two interpretive frames:
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Musical ontology – experiences as dissonance and learning to attune.
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Predator-prey metaphor – not all encounters are malicious; they may be part of a larger, meaningful dynamic.
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“Good music has tension and dissonance that resolves. Friction is part of the harmonic structure that moves things through time.”
“Certain beings or environments aren’t mutually adapted... they might appear threatening, but from a wider perspective, are part of an interrelated picture.”
✨ Psychedelics and Spiritual Practice
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Role as potentiators: Psychedelics can amplify established spiritual frameworks and practices—not replace them.
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Shortcut with structure: While psychedelics can accelerate spiritual states, lasting transformation relies on long-term spiritual disciplines.
“Psychedelics can be a shortcut… But this approach works best when it’s part of a constant way of life.”
“Without those established practices and frameworks, it’s hard to know what to take forward.”
Let me know if you'd like a visual mind map or breakdown by themes like mysticism, ethics, and psychedelics.
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