The Burden of Meaning: What Cancer and Psychedelics Reveal About Just Being

During my recent podcast conversation with Ryan Meeks, I asked what I thought was an insightful question. I'd been listening to him describe his journey through Christianity, cancer, and psychedelics, and I noticed a pattern.

"These are all meaning-making processes, aren't they?" I said. "Religion as a technology for creating meaning. Cancer as a catalyst for existential reckoning. Psychedelics as tools for making sense of consciousness and reality."

I was proud of this observation. I thought that I'd identified the common thread. I assumed we were on our way into a deep conversation about the meaning of life. 

Ryan's response has been echoing in my mind ever since. He gently pushed back. He suggested that seeking meaning might actually be less helpful than simply existing. That instead of excavating meaning from our experiences, we might recognize that life is already enough before we add any meaning at all.

This challenged something fundamental in me. My compulsive need for everything to mean something. My cancer must mean something. My psychedelic experiences must mean something. This pain, this fear, this proximity to death has to teach me something profound. Otherwise, what if it's just... what happened?

I’ve always believed in the importance of meaning-making. But Ryan’s response held up a mirror to help me see more clearly: I fear the void of meaninglessness. And multi-layered, meaning-making narratives can pull me away from experience itself. 

Standing at the Intersection

Ryan Meeks spent decades as a Christian pastor. His entire vocation was creating and communicating meaning. He was the person in the room who had answers to the big questions. Why are we here? What happens when we die? How should we live? What does suffering teach us?

Then Ryan systematically dismantled that inherited meaning structure and walked away from his life as a pastor. He “fell out of the Christian tree”, as he puts it, “hitting every branch on the way down.” He got cancer. He explored psychedelics. And through this journey of losing and seeking and ultimately releasing the need for certainty, he learned something about the burden of meaning-making.

Inherited Meaning and Its Comfort

Ryan grew up in church. His father was a minister. Church was home. And whatever complexity came later, he's clear about what that tradition provided.

"The church was a place of meaning and belonging and community and care," Ryan told me. "Ontologically or metaphysically, we had answers for all the big things. There was a sense of continuity to the human experience, to time, to purpose."

Christianity offered a complete framework. This is why you exist. This is what happens after death. This is how to interpret suffering. This is where you fit in the cosmic narrative. Pre-packaged meaning, ready for installation, no assembly required.

The appeal of this is obvious. No scrambling. No uncertainty. No lying awake at three in the morning wondering if anything matters. The scaffolding was already built. You just had to climb it.

Losing Frameworks

Ryan couldn't maintain belief in the inherited Christian framework. Cross-cultural experiences broke him open. Meeting beautiful, loving, compassionate people with other religious beliefs showed him that people didn’t need Christianity to live a good life.

"The love and compassion and connection I had with others who were so different than me," Ryan said. "It was confronting a narrative that I've inherited that people needed to convert to our framework. And it just felt so untrue to me." He eventually came to the insight that: "We don't need the religious scaffolding to arrive at compassion." This revelation freed him from needing everything to fit into predetermined religious frameworks.

Then cancer came in 2017. Strangely, it brought clarity to his spiritual questions and his career as a pastor. His first thought was: "Thank God. Good. Now I can quit this job and people will understand."

Cancer stripped away what didn't matter, including inherited religious dogma. "This doesn't matter, right?" Ryan said. "I can't. I don't care about this anymore. I'm not even mad about it. It's just like, I don't care." The floor cleared. What remained: being present with his kids, holding them. Saying thank you. Expressing love. Simple things that didn't need cosmic justification or theological framework. Being alive was enough. The moment itself was enough without needing to mean something beyond itself.

Psychedelics Show the Infinite

Ryan's first intentional psychedelic experience came after cancer treatment. Twenty minutes in, he noticed: "These mushrooms have given me everything religion promised me but never delivered immediately." Intense connection. Unconditional love. Insights about relationships and forgiveness.

His early intention was clear: "I'm gonna meet God. Like, I'm gonna go to the back wall of the Truman Show and open the door and walk out." He thought if he went deep enough, he'd find the answer. The final truth. The ultimate meaning.

But he read Christopher Bache’s LSD and the Mind of the Universe, which documented 70+ high-dose LSD journeys over 30 years, meticulously recording everything, trying to map the back wall of consciousness. Ryan came to the conclusion that there is no ‘back door’ leading to God or the ultimate reality. "If he's not exiting the back door," Ryan told me, "like I am never going to get there." Alas, it’s turtles all the day down.

The back wall doesn't exist. It's infinite complexity, not discoverable ultimate meaning. Religion couldn't provide it. Psychedelics couldn't provide it. So why keep seeking it?

The Pivot: From Seeking to Responding

Ryan's realization shifted everything: "I think I've come to a point today where I would say instead of getting a better answer for meaning, the freedom of not looking for it has been the most helpful."

Not seeking meaning, but responding to life. Not excavating meaning from experiences, but simply being present to what is.

"Life is already enough the way it is, before we can even speak words into it." Ryan said. "That's meaning. Silent reality without a word. It gets obliterated by meaning."

His current philosophy is simple: Life is a gift. Love is the point. These aren't answers requiring theological justification. They're responses to existence itself.

He's comfortable with uncertainty now. The former pastor who left his church is so comfortable with uncertainty that he remains open to the existence of a traditional Christian God. "This is what I think right now. This is my sense of what's probably true. But God could show up in my life in some miraculous way tomorrow and I'd be like, fuck yeah, this is cool."

Released from the burden of knowing. From constructing meaning frameworks. From defending beliefs. From needing everything to fit together into coherent narrative.

Just being. Just responding. Just here.

Unresolved Tension

I understand Ryan's perspective intellectually. I want to believe it. I want to feel it. Being is enough. Existence doesn't need justification. The search for meaning is absurd. I get it. 

But I don't. Not really. Not yet. I still feel this overwhelming urge to assign meaning to everything. I still feel this fear that if nothing means anything, then everything is meaningless. I still catch myself constructing narratives, building frameworks, searching for the lesson in every experience. What did my cancer teach me? What are psychedelics revealing? What is all this suffering for? I keep asking these questions even though I know the questions themselves might be the problem. I keep searching even though I know the quest itself might be the problem. 

Maybe meaning-making is a tool that helps me continue existing after extreme experiences that shatter normal frameworks for reality. Cancer happened. It was brutal. It changed everything. And I need it to mean something because otherwise I just endured all that suffering for no reason. Psychedelics showed me things I can't explain, and I need those experiences to reveal something profound. Otherwise they were just strange neurochemical events. This need is understandable. But Ryan's perspective suggests the need for meaning itself takes me away from just being present to what is.

Ryan found freedom in not knowing. In just being. In responding to life rather than interpreting it. He got there through Christianity, through cancer, through psychedelics. He systematically walked away from meaning-making frameworks until only presence remained. I'm not there yet. I hear the wisdom. I recognize my compulsive need to make everything mean something. I see how that need takes me away from direct experience. But I still need my cancer to have meant something. I still need life to teach me rather than just letting life be. Maybe I'm not ready to release the scaffolding. Maybe I need to work with the tools I have. Cancer happened. Psychedelics happened. Life is happening. Right now. Here. Maybe that's enough. Maybe.

Let's journey together.