Thanks guys. This has been bothering me for years now. Even though the thought, the mud is not completely settled, at least you guys have put me in my place. I probably needed that having been an amateur shaman in the past....

Exactly. In fact the speech I heard he was more brusk than you describe. He said that people would try to turn to him for relationship advice, and when he refused to help them in that department, they would usually spin it into a spiritual dilemma. "She was raised Catholic but I am exploring Buddhism; I'm a Hindu and she's an atheist; etc. — should I stay with my lover or break up?"

They usually didn't like his curt answer: "In terms of spiritual progress, it doesn't matter at all."

To quote the Bhagavad Gita:

I think this subject is a microcosm of a larger reality. Our whole planet suffers from this struggle of having difficult relations because of spiritual and religious differences. The bottom line is that no matter what your belief or lack thereof, we all have the same existential crisis. We deal with them in very different ways, but the crux of the matter is the same. If all the religions of the world would heed the advice in this thread, I believe that not only would we live in a safer more tolerant world, but there would be a global spiritual renaissance that dwarfs any sort of cultural event of the past.

I have throughout my life aligned myself with many different spiritual perspectives. The one view that I keep coming back to is agnosticism because the bottom line is that I don't know. I am very accepting of MOST religions, but it's the individuals that "know" what God is, what he/she/it wants, and the "story" of creation that get on my nerves. This sort of steadfast faith that keeps people from questioning their beliefs ultimately holds them back from having a deeper understanding of their own and others beliefs. It keeps us from considering new ideas. I mean seriously, there are so many possibilities. Every single human that ever existed could have it wrong.

And back to the Nexus, I think that many of us (myself included) put too much faith in the spirituality induced by psychedelic drugs. Yes, it is possible that there is some reality to the deep spiritual insights and awakenings that we have while under the influence of such "entheogens". But it is also entirely possible that these are simply states of consciousness that make us more suceptable to delusions and unchecked profundity. I used to solidly believe much of these things about DMT that are ultimately unproveable. My current relationship has provided me with a lot of insight that makes me question all of it.

But, the thing is that even without all the spiritual baggage, DMT and other psychedelic substances still have immense value as psychiatric tools. This is something I knew before, but I now realize that so many of the things I thought were knowns about altered states of consciousness via substances were assumptions and feelings that hold us back from having any real understanding of how they work and what true healing potential they might have.

I hear people talk about how science/medicine has failed them, so they turn to spirituality/religion and the opposite is also true. I myself have gone back and forth a few times, but am now in the middle somewhere as I realize that the piece of human nature that steers us into extremes is something that holds us all back from any real personal or societal growth.

As a person who is married to a "Christian" I can understand your original post OP. At one stage in my life I felt the same way about my wife too.

In my opinion, what really matters in life and relationships is value systems. How we arrive to have those values is our individual journey, but there is a strong commonality in all paths of spirituality as to what those values actually are. My wife and I have extremely similar values, we've been together more than a decade now, yet we arrived at the same conclusions in a completely different manner.

Some time down the track your partner may surprise you. A couple of nights ago I was discussing the existence of God with wifey and she told me that God is everywhere, all about us, inside us, that we are God. I didn't say anything, but this is certainly a diversion from where she was at 5 years ago and much closer to how I understand life. Though I am looking again to improve my path as well...