Using Non-Ordinary States of Consciousness for Healing and Personal Growth

How do I help you cultivate ‘direct knowing’?

I say in the welcome on my website: There are two aspects that define our experience.

The first is Essence – aptitudes, talents, temperament, the intrinsic qualities that make up my uniqueness. This is the area of matters of the Soul, of the Who-I-Am, the ever-unfolding Self. Access to this information is direct, intuitive, felt. The second is Ego: those thoughts and skills that we learn in order to survive. Where matters of essence are part of the eternal, the skills of ego respect the time-space continuum. Where matters of Essence are intrinsic, the skills of ego must be practiced and developed.

We can process ego matters through usual conversation, usual thinking.

Matters of Essence? How do we tap into, cultivate our awareness of, and relationship to, the ‘intrinsic’? This is the realm of non-ordinary states of consciousness. The more common understanding of meditation is the sitting practice of stilling the mind, and this alone can open that access. However in psycho-spiritual work, and in the vast field of meditative and wisdom traditions, there are infinite ways to tap into that state of consciousness, e.g. guided meditations, somatic experiencing, psychosynthesis, family constellation work, hypnosis, breathwork journeying, shamanic experiences, (to name a few), all offer ways to induce altered states of consciousness that open our direct knowing.

We are in a moment in time that calls for an evolutionary leap. Although by definition we can’t know the details of what is yet to evolve, we do know that this next leap is a leap in consciousness becoming aware of itself as the creator of human reality. Although intellectually we understand that everything made by man, both physical and attitudinal, starts as an idea, and manifests into reality by the effort and behaviors we put behind that idea, we continue to live as if we are victims of our reality and in denial that we co-create the reality we live in.

The awareness of non-ordinary states of consciousness as the key to direct knowing, and to opening us to our next evolutionary leap is spreading as evidenced in the renaissance we are in of the use of psychedelics e.g. psilocybin, LSD, mdma, and shamanic plant medicines, e.g. ayahuasca, ibogaine, for healing, and personal growth. These medicines that for decades have been banned from research in the U.S. are now being found to have tremendous potential in healing the rampant PTSD and epidemic in suicides (e.g. those who served in the Iraq and Afghani wars died by their own hand 25:1 compared to those killed by enemy fire) and mental illness that we find ourselves in.

Given the sheer numbers of individuals suffering from mental illness and addiction, and the families devastated by it, I absolutely believe in the value of opening up the use of these medicines by healing professionals, and applaud the work of the Multi-disciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), in driving that research effort in the U.S.

However, I am committed to spreading the awareness that we have an inborn facility to access non-ordinary states of consciousness, a facility that has been studied and practiced for millennia by wisdom schools, indigenous and shamanic practices, energy/chakra modalities, and the mystical teachings within all religions. It is a facility that is finding a contemporary face in practices coming out of psycho-spiritual schools on the cutting edge of generating an evolutionary culture.

My hope is to help you cultivate a repertoire of ways, or a way that works for you, to tap in to the information and robust energy held in the ever-creating, ever-unfolding, Miracle of Aliveness you are an embodiment of. The Who-You-Are-Here-To-Become is the river ever flowing “while (the Allen Saunders quote immortalized by John Lennon’s song) you’re busy making other plans”.