Spiritual Micro-Dosing: Part 1
What's Your Minimum Effective Dose?
You got up early, snuck away, and settled into the quiet corner of the house. Eyes closed, palms open, you begin to sense God’s Spirit settling on your soul like the dew that kisses the earth outside your window. You did it. The Presence of God is here. You showed up for it. And now your spirit is lifting up inside you with the contentment of a golden retriever. Job well done. May the glory of this moment last forev-
Kids are up. Phone pings. Clock strikes. Work calls.
The day “really” begins and The Presence seems to dissipate the moment you move the first muscle out of your “quiet time”.
Oh the morning quiet time.
This is a concept so familiar to those in Christian Evangelicalism that it might as well be a decree from the evangelical pope. And it’s true, the effects can be amazing and your soul may truly be transformed in these quiet morning minutes with Jesus. The problem is not the quiet time, the problem is the fence it can build around the growth of our spirit during the rest of the day.
The theological name for this fence is called the “secular and sacred divide” - and divide it does. It sets up a framework that draws clear lines between the holy moments of our day and all the other stuff that just needs to get done.
By calling it our morning quiet “time” we are naming the event as one with a clear beginning and end. Just a little rectangular block on our Google calendar among many others.
But the Presence of God is not a thing to be contained in books, temples, or calendar blocks. It is the Reality in which we live and move and have our being (Acts 17). Spiritual micro-dosing is one of the ways that we can stay awake to this Reality outside of our morning hermit minutes.
The Minimum Effective Dose of… God?
Micro-dosing is defined as, “the action or practice of taking very small amounts of a drug in order to benefit from its physiological action while minimizing undesirable side effects.” You want to curb your anxiety for the afternoon without seeing a bunch of psychedelic gnomes hopping out of your fridge in the evening? That’s basically the idea behind micro-dosing hallucinogenics in a nutshell. Enough for the mind to settle down, without tripping out.
A dedicated morning quiet time is one way to try and get a more potent dose of quality time with God. It gives us enough space to still our thoughts, slow our breath, and linger our attention on the reality of God’s Spirit. We can sit with a bible passage or a pray long enough to notice the effect it is having on us.
This concept of needing enough time to get into the moment, is utilized in many evangelical church services. We can see it in the way we like to hang our worship songs on a single chorus. Repeating the same line 2, 3, or 10 times, until “the moment really happens.”
This swirling repetition drives people like my wife crazy, “I was already paying attention to what we were singing, I meant what I sang the first time.” For others, like myself, I appreciate the repetition, as it allows my easily-distracted mind to sharpen its focus.
Both the morning quiet time and the repetition of worship songs are examples of our hunt for the same thing. They are seeking the “minimal effective dose” to become aware of God’s Reality.
Unlike micro-dosing hallucinogenics, that attempts to avoid the stronger effects of their substances, Christians rejoice in the powerful moments when we can “taste and see” the experience of God. As followers of Jesus we give thanks for the times we can feel the effects of connecting with God. But that same excitement can quickly turn into frustration or grief when the quiet time comes to a close and the singing stops.
The wall we are actually hitting when this feeling strikes, is our belief in that same theological fence called the “secular and sacred divide”. We have come to associate these specific times, places, and activities as the minimum effective dose required for experiencing God’s Presence.
But if the apostle Paul meant what he said in his letter to the Romans, “…neither the present nor the future… neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord”, then we need to look closer at the dividing lines we have set up and see where our experience of God really begins and ends.
It’s About Potency, Not Lack
A person taking a micro-dose and a person taking a MACRO-dose of a hallucinogenic, both have the same substance in their system. Obviously. The difference is not between existence and non-existence, the difference is about potency. The noticeability is what varies. It’s easier to notice when the sky appears to be melting like a bowl of blue ice-cream compared to the slight reduction in your depressive mood. The same substance may be causing both, but the effects from the more potent dose are easier to witness. This contrast of potency happens in our experience of God too.
The weekend silent retreat, alone on the mountain top, with your contemplative music playlist loaded up, and your prayer journal in hand, is probably going to increase your chances of having a more potent experience of God’s Spirit. It is is literally a concentrated dose, because you are concentrating on God in a more intentional way for a more prolonged amount of time.
This sustained focus also means that your feelings and emotions connected to God will have more space to come to the surface of your consciousness. You are taking a healthy macro-dose of concentrated time with God and the effects are going to be easier to spot.
By contrast, the wispy “Our Father” prayer that you get halfway through before your infant yells toothlessly in your face, is usually not going to give you the same noticeable effects, but there are massive benefits…
In his book Domestic Monastery, Ronald Rolheiser describes the blessing of prayers that don’t rock us. Instead of seeing our short, sometimes mechanical devotions as “sub-par”, he teaches us to view them as simple food for our travel.1
They are the micronutrients for the soul. The spiritual trail-mix that sustains us during the long journey of our day. They are the grace of God that allow us to attend to the world within us and the world in front of us in the same breath.
There is a time for everything, and spiritual trail-mix is not meant to sustain you, it is meant to supplement you. There are times for more potent and less potent doses. So go on that weekend retreat! But know that you might not be able to have a spiritual banquet all the time and that’s a good thing.
Your soul needs healthy meals daily, it needs to feast occasionally and it needs to snack constantly. Jesus was the first to endorse this type of spiritual diet. He said that He was always communing with The Father (John 5), and yet He also found the need to withdraw from the world and have extended times of banquet for His Soul (Luke 5).
“Everyone needs to eat everyday, but nobody has energy for a banquet everyday. The same holds true for prayer.” - Ronald Rolheiser
Christ modeled a varied spiritual diet to show us that Abiding in God is a Reality that permeates all of our lives and micro-dosing is simply one way to help us realize it. Even if it doesn’t have the same effects as a longer worship session or a weekend away.
And in the spirit of spiritual micro-dosing, I think that’s enough for today. We will go further in part 2 next week, looking at specific ways to start micro-dosing your own spiritual formation and seeing the oversized effects it can have on your life.
Rolheiser, Ronald. Domestic Monastery. United States, Paraclete Press, 2019. Pg. 43
Love this! Everything you wrote about "quiet time" is so relatable. I love those morning moments of clear awareness of God's presence. They do impact the rest of my day. But lately, that idea of the "sacred, secular divide" keeps popping up and it's making me more eager to experience God in the busier moments and unexpected interruptions. Excited for part 2!