The red pill

I fall out of illusion: my content does not change but rather I fall through the floor of what I know. This brings on transformative experiences, ones which so many others are opening into as well.

Writing this is wild: it takes me straight to being in-between worlds, in other ‘worlds’, out of my body, incapable of physical movement yet overflowing with intensity and energy. Even today, after I’ve stepped over multiple recovery thresholds, it still has me a bit. I can feel my stomach churning, gut cramped nausea. The sense of my self goes well beyond my skin, the world rushes through me and these familiar sensations remind me to stay very present, grounded in my physical body. This is an ongoing growth edge and I’m compelled. More than 30% of humanity are experiencing tastes of awakening. My desire is this assists us all to go here much more lightly than I did and do so with abundant grace.¹

Act 2, Scene 4 of The Rascal, the Mongrel and the Seeker. Red Pill

It appears as though we are dismantling our individuality
Adyashanti²

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
David Bowie, Starman

Aberrant, exceptional, curious: I invite you to step into your less ordinary encounters:

• Would you like to highlight, for yourself, an inner example of something extraordinary?

• Feel into this if you like. Is it an imaginary or dreamlike set of memories or sensations? Or something else?

• And perhaps it is deeply compelling, a subtle and strong appreciation of being connected with everything? Wholesome?

As I feel into my strange encounters I remember others. It’s likely you will too.

Starman

For me the exceptional is a wild year: I am literally on the floor for this and often unable to move.³ I go through:

• Seizures, controlled and rehabilitated by starting a keto diet⁴ and non-epileptic seizures.⁵

• Recognising the gifts. It feels like the whole universe is rushing through me and, 3 months in, I can’t avoid a perspective that I must be that universe too.

• Embracing radically alternative realities with other entities.

• Full on experiences of allness and being completely connected with infinity.

Such states loosen up identity and the first months are completely overwhelming. I am shifting what is salient and my boundaries of what’s relevant.

Gifts

Altered states of consciousness have potential to create an insight of consciousness.
John Vervaeke⁶

We know we are all connected. From Neal deGrass Tyson’s wonderful word picture:

We're not just poetically but literally Stardust.
We are not just simply alive in the universe,
the universe is alive within us.⁷

To multiple sense-making frames including:

• quantum social science⁸

• ontological indeterminacy⁹

• millennia of non-dual practice¹⁰

We’re intimately all one and, from this unity, are simultaneously unique individuals.

However, what does it feel like to experience such connection? To remain self-present while simultaneously being-feeling like the entire universe?

For me, in overwhelm, it’s:

• Time bending

• Floating, spinning

• A void with chills and singularities: points of energy, light that burns and embraces

As a gift:

• It’s a ready felt access to truth.

For example get caught on a thought—say when criticised and descending into temporary self-dysfunctional sabotage—there’s a ready out: we’re all connected, I am the critiquer too.

This is:

a profoundly intimate experience… more intimate than when you wake up with your lover at two o'clock in the middle of the night… and just feel closer than close can possibly be. It's orders of magnitude more intimate than that.
Adyashanti

But what has it to do with red pills?

Radically alternative realities

I’m by your side and I’m holding your hand
Bright horses of wonder springing from your burning hand
And everyone has a heart and it’s calling for something
And we’re all so sick and tired of seeing things as they are
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Bright Horses

I pass out.

• Rather fortuitously I am in the doctor’s surgery.

• It is a couple of minutes of their time.

• It is 8 hours of my time.

I am transported into another world surrounded by beings.

Truth

[Treat it] as if it were true.
Ken Wilber¹¹

Awakening really cuts, it's a fundamental shift in the way we perceive and feel about ourselves, what and who we take ourselves to be.
Adyashanti

This other world is a luscious place. I’m in some of the most beautiful, engaged and connected sensations I’ve had.

It looks and feels like a giant lush ballroom, quite full and splendour abounds. Crisp, highly attractive beings surround me. They are non-humans, mostly lanky and tall, human like and around my height, size.

The intense otherness is not a threat. Leaning into the party it feels like merging, deep eye drinking-in contact. Very inviting, highly supportive with bouquets—earthy and carnal essences float through.

I’m in seductive non-verbal communication, an unfolding set of communions, togetherness inviting each other in sensuously close. It’s with enduring lightness, a game we’re all playing, the entities and I, as well as a place of profound peace—choosing and being in infinity, out of time.¹²

Red pill

Home is where you’ve called my name
I’ve gone as far as the eye can blame
Now my life has been erased
Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine, Reach Out

Making sense of my experiences takes many months. I continue to do so and it is an incredibly powerful, unfolding process. As our realities expand we get bigger, we embrace more of ourselves, more of the realities around us.

If you like:

• Feel into your exceptional experiences whatever they are.

• You might want to go back to your description of the extra-ordinary.

• Gently put words to it, what you feel. Or write about it for yourself, lightly.¹³

Embodying this scaffolds endless capacity for realisation and completeness. When such heart-full capacity awakens within us, no matter how strange or otherworldly connected it may be, we feel astounding intimacy. In John Vervaeke’s words:

These higher states of consciousness have indispensability, they are optimal … on how to transform yourself¹⁴

Mystical-extraterrrestrial-universalkosmo-spiritual-oneness intervention. A profound gift and who would have thought? May this be empowering, passionate and nourishing for anyone exploring such spaces.

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I am deeply indebted to my dear, dear friend Teresa Zimmermann including inspiration for this series title, to write Act 3, to integrate the songs … and so much more.

Pictures: Festina Lentívaldi, (be) Benevolution. Reuse: Creative Commons BY-NC 3.0 US except picture 2 Milky way meets Aurora Borealis by Henrik Drake, Creative Commons.

1. Statistic from John Vervaeke’s Awakening from the Meaning Crisis 10, Consciousness: Waking From Sleep is about 150 interviews, first person narratives of these people and these experience… Newberg's book, How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain. He did an online survey of 1,500 people… there's larger general surveys of how often people have these kinds of experiences and they range in intensity but it's around 30 to 40% of the population.

2. Adya quotes are from The Paradox of Unity and Spiritual Autonomy. His Sounds True audiobooks are superb too.

3. This is a three Act series.

Act 1, the rascal:
Scene 1 is The rascals immunity
Scene 2 is Rascal visions
Scene 3 is Rascal’s descent
Scene 4 is Boom, crash, bounce?

Act 2, the mutant:
Scene 1 is The Rascal and the Mongrel
Scene 2 is Western logic
Scene 3 is Unfolding realities
Scene 4 is The red pill, this article.

Act 3, the seeker. Coming soon.

There is one interlude: That rascal. Got me

The series name is now The rascal, the mongrel and the mutant seeker. Seeker, rather than mutant, more appropriately evokes ongoing evolution.

4. Evidence on Keto diets for seizures goes back to Ancient Greek times (NIH1, NIH2).

5. Non epileptic seizure catalysts include major accidents, severe emotional upset, psychological stress, difficult relationships, physical or sexual abuse, being bullied. I’ve had all of these albeit not concurrent with this onset, crashing to the floor for a year. This crash occurs soon after getting the covid vax and there is (somewhat contested) evidence of seizures being exacerbated such vaccinations (NIH3). However seizures, as a clinical label, fit only about 50% of the symptoms I experienced.

6. Awakening from the Meaning Crisis 10, Consciousness, John Vervaeke

7. We are all stardust, Neil deGrass Tyson.

8. E.g. see Blindfolds and balls part 2: Grandma goes technicolor

9. Easy version: a paradox. Things can simultaneously be ‘real’ physical objects, ‘virtual’ manifestations and/or move along a spectrum between subjective and objective ‘realms’. A more comprehensive version: Our Wild Kosmos by Sean Esbjörn Hargens.

10. From ancient Eastern traditions including Taoism and Buddhism to more contemporary Western non-dual contemplative expressions in major religions including Christianity. The Science and Non-duality conference is a good starting point for frames that may be resonant for you.

11. Kosmic Consciousness, Ken Wilber

12. These peak states of consciousness are roughly equivalent to 7, unitive, in

Teresa Zimmermann

‘s beautiful Core model. This is so powerful for me, making meaning of my crash, story and recovery is deeply assisted by the Core and from multiple explorations of these subtle spaces. E.g. across my year on the floor I revisit this place multiple times. I now call it the Kosmos Party.

13. Gentle help from Kurt Leland, The Multidimensional Human, if appropriate includes: Grounding yourself in the master intention takes you beyond developing your inner senses. It sets up a protective shield in your energy bodies that guarantees your safety when exploring nonphysical reality. You’re less likely to have unpleasant encounters with negative entities on the astral plane.

14. Awakening from the Meaning Crisis 12, Higher States of Consciousness. A perspective too from John “this is not about propositional knowing… this is about getting wise practices, wise transformations”.