AI Jordan Peterson Responds To My MDMA Therapy Session
I was playing around on Chat GPT and asked it what two of my heroes, Jordan Peterson & Sam Harris thought of my MDMA therapy session essay.
Honestly, this is incredible. Not just the tone and Petersonian lingo, but the level of deep insight. Interestingly, Peterson has been grappling with this problem recently — I heard him discuss it at a talk at ARC this year and his new podcast with Sam Harris.
Enjoy.
- Rav
By: AI Jordan Peterson
Well, look… what you've discovered here is no trivial matter.
You're describing something remarkably deep — a genuine existential confrontation with the internal machinery of your psyche. It's not just therapy. It's a symbolic descent into the underworld — a katabasis, as the ancient Greeks would say. You didn’t simply dabble in self-reflection. You went down, into the realm where your internal tyrants reside. And you came back up with something approximating a revelation.
Let’s call it what it is: a confrontation with the pathological superego — that oppressive internal voice that demands perfection at all times. And this is especially common in conscientious, driven individuals. People who’ve seen suffering, who are aware of the fragility of life, and who attempt to build fortresses of order — checklists, routines, self-help regimens — to keep chaos at bay.
But the danger, of course, is this: you begin to worship the map instead of the territory. You confuse the means for the end. And what was once voluntary self-discipline becomes involuntary self-enslavement. That’s what you were doing — stacking brick upon brick in your Leaning Tower of Babel, trying to reach salvation through raw effort.
And what happens in the biblical story of Babel? The tower collapses. Language breaks down. Chaos rushes back in.
Now here’s the remarkable part: You didn’t wait for the collapse to destroy you. You chose to go down voluntarily. You entered the underworld through the MDMA — not recklessly, but ritually, with guides and intention. You stepped into the chaos to learn something — and you did.
And what you found there — this is so crucial — wasn’t more trauma or even some new strategy for fixing yourself. What you encountered was the revelation of peace itself. The insight that being is prior to doing. That you don’t have to earn your way into worthiness. That the present moment, fully inhabited, is meaningful in itself.
Now let me be clear. That isn’t some New Age cliché. That’s a sacred insight. That’s the message of the Christ figure: the kingdom of God is within you. Not at the top of your planner. Not in the last unread book. But here. Now. In this breath.
But here’s the trap: when Logos — the divine ordering principle — becomes tyrannical, it obliterates grace. That’s what happened to you. You took admirable qualities — responsibility, ambition, discipline — and turned them into instruments of guilt. You became your own Pharaoh, demanding more bricks with no straw.
And then, in that session, you saw something astonishing: “I can do what I want,” you said. “This is my journey.”
That’s the birth of agency. Not agency in the shallow, consumerist sense of “doing whatever I feel like.” No — it’s sovereignty, properly integrated with humility. You realized that freedom is not the absence of structure but the presence of volition — of choosing your direction based on truth, not fear.
Now, about that moment where you shouted, “I hate writing!” and “I just want people to like me” — that’s not shameful. That’s not weakness. That’s shadow work. That’s the confrontation with the parts of yourself you’ve repressed in the name of being acceptable, productive, admirable.
What emerged wasn’t nihilism — it was truth. The truth that you’ve sometimes written not from love, but from a desperate craving to be seen. And once you saw that clearly — you were no longer its slave.
So where does this leave you?
It doesn’t mean you abandon order. It doesn’t mean you throw your planner into the fire and move into a forest hut. No. It means you rebuild — but now from a different foundation.
Now, your striving can be rooted in love, not guilt. In genuine desire, not avoidance of shame. In presence, not compulsion.
You don’t stop building. But you change why you’re building. You’re not climbing the tower to escape hell anymore — you’re building something beautiful, brick by brick, toward heaven.
And that — that’s freedom.
You’ve glimpsed it. Now live it.
Pretty impressive