Peak Spiritual Experiences are meant to open our minds, our hearts and our bodies to a new way of being. They can be found through shamanic journey, ceremony, fire-walks, relationship with entheogens, meditation, fasting, exertion.. and sometimes we knocked over by them spontaneously. They are a flash in the pan of what life can be. They turn us inside out. They change us on a molecular level and give us the seeds we need to bring forth more positive realities into our everyday lives.
Once we incorporate these experiences into our personal lives, we become rooted in a new reality filled with more comfort, or compassion, or creativity, or light and love, or simple honest communication – and then we are able to reach again and go further. We are reaching, not always up, but sometimes down into the blessed divine of mother earth, or across, as we are able to extend our awareness to include more and more of the world that we live in.
For many of us, finding simple happiness as a baseline is the big trip. For others, finding our way out of our heads and into our hearts is the big trip. Or possibly, expanding our embodied experience of compassion could be the lesson. There are many lessons. It may take many spiritual experiences over many years to incorporate these things, depending upon the amount of shadow in our lives that needs to be dissolved in order for us to interact with the world with clarity.
Unfortunately, many people use these experiences not to grow, but to avoid. When we are in a high level of life pain, our systems are consumed with survival. All we are literally able to focus on is ourselves. This blocks us from being truly aware of those around us. This is an expression of a Law of Energy: only alone can we find our way to the root of the pain, to understand it and learn to walk through it to the other side. Only alone do we find connection with the Compassionate Spirits and open ourselves to receive their love. Only alone can we come to know ourselves, deep, to the bone. This journey, we must go on to fulfill our spiritual destiny, if there is such a thing as destiny. It is called the Walk through the Valley of Death. It is the prerequisite to initiation on any serious spiritual path.
But for many, it is too hard, too scary, too shameful to walk the hard road. There is too much fear of what we might see in ourselves or what we might need to change in order to return to integrity. There is too much pain and shame in our systems, so we run, looking for a way out. We run toward another spiritual peak experience, hoping it will take us away from our pain. We seek peak experience after peak experience, even creating sub-cultural memes around the benefits of such repeated experiences to encourage others to run with us. Underneath it all, we know the real benefits will never come until we commit ourselves to the hard work of digesting and manifesting what has already been shown to us.
This phenomena is not any different than an addict clinging to the next high. It is not any more fulfilling. Approaching peak spiritual experiences with a consumer attitude degrades the experience to being merely mind-altering with the chance of something phenomenal happening, rather than being truly transcendent. Mind-altering does not necessarily mean good or even healing, just as “spiritual” does not necessarily mean safe. It just means mind-altering.
Stepping out to avoid everything painful creates a form of soul loss and only makes the journey longer and more difficult. It removes us from the pain of the past, but it also prevents us from being present with ourselves and those we love. It actually creates more destruction on top of what we have already suffered. It removes our traction on the road to finding life.
These peak spiritual events will be healing when we honor the elements and spirits that are have come to help us. We must trust in something greater, give over to guidance and invest in intention, preparation and giving thanks and offerings.
When the peak experience is over, we have homework to do. We go home, we process, we write, we do further meditations. We are honest with ourselves. We make changes in our lives. If we do not do this work, we don’t get anywhere. We are dishonoring the gifts that have been given to us. It is our job to take the spiritual insights we have received and manifest them here. Otherwise, what is the point? If we repeatedly do not do our work, we may stop having peak experiences because the spirits have nothing new to show us. We are not listening.
The big spiritual experiences are not the path. They are indicators on the path. Rather than using them to step out of ourselves, they come to us so we can grow into ourselves. This path is thorough and complete. It takes time. Most good things do. The prize we earn through the hard work is finding a true way out of our old pain. A permanent release and a building of character.
When we do this work, we become greater channels for love and healing. Peak spiritual experiences disorient us by rearranging our energy on many levels at once. Once we become acclimated, being in the presence of the same energies is not disorienting anymore, hence..our experiences are no longer what one might call peak. We find a new role as a human channel for loving energy to reach the mundane world around us through our bodies, life’s choices, ways of being, listening skills and kindness.
The spiritual path is not an event. It is a life-long walk. It is every step. It is not finding a life without obstacles. It is about learning how to dance with the obstacles. We incorporate what we have experienced into our personal realm, and the infinite small changes in our actions and awareness, like petals on a lotus, entrance us. We become in love with our carnal existence, our human form, with all the struggles and the times in-between.
The spiritual path is nothing if not about love. We receive and we offer. These two become a beautiful flow that nourishes self and others. We are here to grow, high and low, deep and wide, in a single point and all encompassing. There are no words. There are no words. There are no words but devotion.
by Tasara