Reading a book at the moment called "Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism", which are the words of Tibetan Buddhist monk of renown Chögyam Trungpa. He also likens the development of spiritual presence to a blade. The trick with Sam's stated perspective, from this Buddhist perspective, is that it implies attainment of a desire: I meditate to be calm. Meditation can make people calm, and so can breath work. But if you say "I meditate to be calm and ride to wisdom", there are those who would say you are not meditating at all. They would say it is just "I meditate", and then "meditate", in these sort of Buddhist philosophies like Zen and similar.

I do not say this to gatekeep - but experiences have taught me that, absolutely, meditation and the path of spirit is very hard, dangerous and arduous work. Helping others through derealization and psychosis has taught me this lesson time and time again.

In my metaphor, meditation in the psychdelic context is a machete because it is the blade to cut through all the psychedelia, all the woo, all the false notions of personal loftiness from spiritual insight, all the ideas of being healed, all of the mind mess. It simply is the mechanism that you use to cut through, and then "become here and now", to allow yourself to heal beyond stories: depressive stories, happy stories, and into a state of mind that is resilient to the suffering of the times.