A World-Altering Paradigm Shift

I thoroughly enjoyed this. I can't remember any one particular "titanic aha moment" -- I was fortunate enough to grow up with parents who believed in spirit guides and energy work, so this was part of my makeup from the start. (There's an essay on my blog about an initiation experience I had, which might qualify as a type of "aha" moment.)

 

Sometimes I think my truly titanic "aha" moment is yet to come. The one lucid dream I've had, and the one instance of sleep paralysis, were both in my childhood. I've had one split-second hypnopompic experience (interestingly, it was auditory and kinesthetic, not visual at all). Aside from these, despite my keen interest, I've had no lucid dreams, out-of-body experiences, hypnogogic imagery, or anything of the sort. I've never had the opportunity to explore psychedelics, either (then again, I had little interest until Pinchbeck's work made the connection to spirituality and consciousness so thrillingly clear).

 

I suspect there are all kinds of "aha" moments, titanic and otherwise, awaiting me behind doors I'm in the process of opening.

Cheers to the Electric Jesus in all of us! Thanks for the podcast. I am excited to have found a dialogue that will inspire spiritual evolution and mystical adventure.....

My home is Southwest Colorado, so I have been lucky to have had Mother Nature as my creative inspiration since childhood. My birth mother introduced me to the Catholic mystics like Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen, whose teachings I mixed with the wisdom of the Navajos and Hopi traditions. I believe in the power of prayer because I've experienced its transformative potential....

The clearest "ah ha" moment that illuminated the cosmos's synchronicities and prophetic messages happened a year and a half ago. I have always had a close relationship with my father (a great writer and mentor to me), but late one night in October 2005, a voice surged from within and told me to write him a letter. I acted intuitively and wrote to him, professing my admiration and gratefulness for our relationship. Five days after he read the letter, I got a phone call from my family in CO. Before my mom could utter a word, I knew my father was dead. He had crashed his car driving home from Santa Fe that evening.

I look forward to networking and conversing with other gnostic mystics and spiritual warriors. I have lived in New York for almost four years pursuing a professional dance and writing career. Peace be with you! Katie

Aha moment.....

In deep ceremony for the first time with a plant medicine that will remain unnamed in a spiritual oasis that will remain unnamed.....end of the ceremony, meditating around a crystal filled table with a few last standing warriors...coming "down" and yet smack! My whole identity, time, space, self was "gone" and everything was one......there was no denying any more masters/teachers/gurus.....the truth was present to a degree not articulated here and blessed be, "I" was free. This experience-the first of its kind in intensity and degree -has kept me more awake in the last few years than "I" probably care to be:)

There is no denying, "we" are not "who" we think we are...the mind can never comprehend our vast here and now infiniteness...but "I" keep the game going nevertheless...

Let our words be the conduits of the one rhythm heartbeat.....

Kinley Lyra Doucette

Your podcast is much appreciated. It's nice to hear an actual voice amidst all the text. I don't think I've had a single, breakthrough moment that propelled me into the way I think and perceive today. Rather, my own progress has been marked by more subtle, incremental shifts, both intellectual and spiritual. Certainly, psilocybin illuminated the intense and undeniable energy of plants. But no less significant were the numerous books I read that encouraged what were then unarticulated instincts - not the least of which was "Breaking Open the Head." Also, innumerable conversations with like-minded folks helped to validate my own inclinations and open the door to new ideas. Throw into the pot the lucid dreams, possible encounters with spirits in Nepal and some peak moments as an actor and it all adds up to being convinced that materiality is just one way of apprehending the world around us and that we ignore other states of being at our own peril - to our well-being, to our soul and to the rigor and relevance of our intellectual life. Who knows, maybe I still await an experience that will thrash all my pre-programming into an enduring impotence. My experience suggests, however, that it takes continual work and a watchful diligence.

Here's some experiences I've recounted over the past months on the Breaking Open the Head forum. Pardon the redundancies herein, but I'm being lazy by not reworking these into a single, fresh post...

 

SYNCHS

I'm continually experiencing intersubjectivities/synchronicities like those you've described, in a full range of intensities... I first began to notice them in high school (around the time I began to experiment with drugs) and they've always resonated with me as something ineffable and special.

One very early experience was shared by my sister and I always look back on it with fondness... we were on a road trip with my parents, somewhere in the southeast US, and we'd pulled off the interstate onto some lonely small town main street. My sis was reading a poem for school in the back seat, and as we rolled to a stop at a redlight, we both looked out the window at the same moment to notice a shopfront with the title "The Children's Hour" -- she gasped and pointed at her book, with the poem title "The Children's Hour" jumping off the page in bold black text. I then noted how a knowing moment came over both of us, a shared understanding that didn't need to be spoken, along with a charged feeling similar to deja-vu.

This "syndrome" characterizes every such synchronicity that I've shared with others, although I often recognize them on my own -- usually intersubjective jiving of television/reading material/radio, etc... Sometimes these are rather prosaic alignments of words or themes, and other times they seem to have a more meaningful relation to my life or current mood.

Most recently I've fallen in with a group of amazing people who all seem curiously in tune with this synchronic reality, and our company or interaction tends to increase the occurrences of these events. The last year has been a very amazing time for myself and this group, and I am very excited about the dynamic we are in the process of advancing. A curious trend that I've noticed is that the more profound and striking of these events will occur when we are together for special occasions, on excursions or holidays, or simply random gatherings that suddenly take on intense psychic significance.

I'll share two recent instances that highlight this phenomenon. Previously, drugs played a large role in the intensity of these events, and we discussed how perhaps our altered states might play a role in making these things "seem" more profound. No sooner did we have this talk, than we took a trip to a cabin to celebrate a friend's birthday. We brought a cache of mushrooms with us, but decided to spend the first evening in pleasant sobriety.

The cabin itself was undeniably quirky and had a very resonant vibe for us -- it was called "Skydancer" and we are notorious dancing fools, for one. The birthday girl tore into her gifts and unwrapped a goofy plastic chicken with psychotic swirls in his eyes. Next came a fashion and design coffee-table book. Suddenly, a commotion directed my attention to her and one of our friends staring in giddy disbelief at the book and the plastic chicken -- in an instant, I made the connection: a model sat on a luxuriant chair, wearing a ridiculous chicken head costume, complete with delirious psycho-eyes.

This was certainly uncanny enough, with the two crazy birds juxtaposed in random harmony, but immediately after, a THIRD element popped up. A dance music track playing on the stereo suddenly featured the crystal clear samples of chickens clucking against the hypnotic beat. We all shared that knowing chill, and I was taken aback. These coincidences, while remaining important and soothing to me, had almost become commonplace -- here was an irrefutable progression in the phenomenon, a third tier, and we all basked in its bewildering power. It didn't take us long to realize that we'd asked for a sign that such events could occur in sober states, and we were handed a burning bush of affirmation. This has become known as the "cosmic chicken convergence"

Lastly, I'd like to share a trip we took in March to Miami for the annual Winter Music Conference, a global industry gathering for dance music. In past years I've had both amazing and debilitating experiences at this event, and I hoped that this new group of friends would inspire more of the former. I can't really express how psychically charged this entire trip was for us -- each person had very profound and personally transformative experiences, often involving one or more of the group.

These events quickly ramped up as we began to dabble in some very spiritual MDMA and sleep became erratic. One day in particular, an indescribably potent and emotional series of events riccocheted me from ecstasy to soul-sickened devastation, and then back again, with many "perfect" moments where a friend materialized at the perfect moment to rescue another, as if following some intuitive script. The nightclub directly across from our condo was emblazoned in glowing red neon with the word TANTRA.

 

SURGES

I've just returned from the Winter Music Conference in Miami, a dance music industry gathering that brings thousands of true enthusiasts together for a week of amazing parties and events. In years past I've had profound experiences during the Conference parties, but this time around was intensely spiritual with several highly charged psychic events and transformative moments. Despite having danced on MDMA countless times over the last decade, I broke through into new awareness of the spiritual connection that dancing engenders for me personally. The specific pills that I ended up with had a lot to do with this, as well as the group that I attended with (we have been undergoing momentous psychic events over the past year).

I will just say this -- through small quantities of what I consider some of the gentlest and most spiritual MDMA I've had, taken during some of the most amazing "parties" I've attended, I was able to completely let go on the dancefloor and connect in the most profound way I've yet managed. At one point I felt myself leaving my body and became alarmed, worrying that the feeling was symptomatic of an overdose or overheating -- but as soon as I snapped out of my eyes-closed focused dancing, the vibrations and lightness dissipated. I understood intuitively that dancing in the manner that I do, with a happiness of spirit and purest intent, is my most sacred ritual practice and an act of worship that does not go unnoticed by the universe.

I found that, over the course of the next few days, without any major sleep to clear me out and periodically ingesting another small amount, I could bring myself to a clear and powerful meditative state within seconds. I could also conjure vibrations in my chest and head quite easily. The strange and powerful chain of events that transpired among my group of friends during this trip was so psychically dense that it even became apparent even to others who (soberly) witnessed some of these things taking place.

 

;)

st 

"The future is frightening, but I feel fine." - The Dandy Warhols

Firstly, I love the podcast. I love hearing people talk openly and boldly about things that most of society poo-poohs. Things that are so much more real than what passes for "reality". So thanks. A lot.   

Boy-o, as to A-HA moments, there've been a bunch. But the first was the most exciting and jarring, and it took place when I was 19, out with my partner at an equestrian event. She was in shamanic training and had been for years, and I was just learning about the non-physical world through her. It was all very difficult for me to digest, but I was game. She and others told me that they knew me once upon a time, and that she and I had had a very special relationship - and I was VERY protective of her, even though she really didn't need it and was probably way more dangerous than I ever thought I would become.  BUT ANYWAY, as happens at ritzy country club events, some idiot frat boys were messing around, drunk, and they were tossing a tennis ball rather hard over people's heads in an effort to dominate and intimidate. When they saw her irritation, they started whipping it closer and closer to her. When it reached a path near enough, she reached out and deftly caught it, and when one of them shambled over to get the ball back, he grabbed her shoulder and was all "aw, honey, it's no big deal". I felt a fire in me like I'd never felt, and I shifted energetically into a being that must have been about 13 feet tall, and my "shoulders" were wider than wide and my eyes were fire and I grabbed that boy's hand and I said in a deep and resonant voice "YOU HAVE NO CALL TO TOUCH HER". I lifted his hand and tossed it aside, and his eyes widened and he backed up, stumbling, looking high upward with a sputtering apology, and we went on our way.  I scared the shit out of that drunk.

I was shaken and profoundly changed by finding that power in me, by that direct experience of the energy that we contain and how easily we can shift ourselves from one reality to another - and how powerful the spiritual connection is when it's deep and old, as mine was and is with her.  I spent the next decade alternately trying to understand and learn more about what happened, and then trying to ground myself in "reality" and ignore it. Now I am in training myself, and it's come around full circle. 

Beyond the gate of experience flows the Way, Which is ever greater and more subtle than the world.

i too have had several of the more subtle and incremental shifts as described before. sometimes through heightened awareness with substances (cannabis, psilocybin, lsd, etc.), but also through heightened conversation and observation. i suppose one of the earliest AHA moments, and likely one of the most important, was when i had my first mind-blowing high from smoking bud. the specifics of the experience are blurred with time, but i seem to remember a significant shift in visual perception. i view this occasion as important because it so immediately opened my eyes to the fact that there is so much more to life than we are often told. so much so that it makes my head spin. it also felt like i was initiating myself into counter-culture. or at least consciously recognizing that i was "different" than mainstream society (especially what the media was telling i should be like) and that this was definitely a good thing. that was in high school and since then i've been increasingly drawn to the concepts and architypes surrounding transcendance, shamanism, mystical states of being and how all of which might relate to the conception and execution of emotional and nearly un-classifiable music.

 

thanks for being alive, peace