Nina chose Vassar — and that news kicks off a wide-ranging Monday Zen live that covers a lot of ground. We start with the "spiritual journey" in full: from burning out as a doctor, to a spontaneous awakening in Las Vegas, to years of meditation, retreats, shadow work, and psychedelics, all of it eventually collapsing into the simple recognition that it was always just this.

Along the way: why lying becomes nearly impossible when there's nothing left to protect, what every psychedelic from 5-MeO-DMT to Salvia Divinorum pointed at (spoiler: this), the honest question of whether awakening is liberation or just a very specific kind of dissociation, monogamy and marriage as story, why spiritual authority dissolves completely at some point, and how the whole journey lands you right back where you started ...except the circle never quite closes.

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