Waking Up From Our Consensus Trance 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫⏰📢😮😮😮

It´s time to switch from trance to transformation. Psilocybin could help.

[A warm welcome to my new subscribers!

This post is about the awakening that is coming harder and faster now. I am thinking of it like contractions during labor. (You´ll see why at the end, in the 5 Smiles section.)

But I truly feel an accelerated shift happening these last few days. You, too?

Thanks for reading!

xo Maya]

Warning: brief mention of death and suicidal ideation.

Despairalysis refers to the combined impact of our nervous system´s freeze state (designed to preserve energy) and our emotional response to climate change, authoritarianism, global unrest, and uncertainty.

You may be carrying:

🔷grief for all that is and will be lost

🔷anger toward those who are causing so much harm

🔷fear about the future

🔷guilt about your own past and current choices

But instead of processing these emotions, you might feel numb and disconnected (the freeze), or choose to distract yourself to avoid becoming overwhelmed.

That´s understandable.

After all, we humans are not designed to deal with this continuous flood of both daily triggers and distant threats.

So, we developed this cozy form of collective denial and a shared belief about what is real.

It´s actually referred to as consensus trance.

And it is what is keeping us from seeing, accepting, and acting in response to our colliding crises.

Consensus trance is a term first used by Charley Tart, an American professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, back in the 1960s. He is perhaps best known for his book, Waking Up: Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential.

From a young age, Dr. Tart was fascinated by his vivid dreams. When he woke up and shared these magical dreams with his parents, he was told they were not real, and that he should ignore them. He could not fathom how something so detailed and rich in his sleeping mind could not be seen as important and worthy of remembering and sharing. This inspired him to study psychology, and to experiment with altered states of consciousness.

Of course, he may have been nudged along by beginning his career during a time when altered states of consciousness were a cultural phenomenon.

Dr. Tart came to the conclusion that we all share what he originally called a ¨normal waking consciousness” or a story of our reality. Later, he began to refer to this as ¨consensus trance,¨ and explored using hypnosis to create or dissolve strongly-held beliefs.

His research suggested that the process of de-hypnotization, or the awakening from a trance state, could be enhanced by altered states of consciousness.

Of course, Indigenous cultures around the world developed their own ways of opening to new levels of consciousness through the use of rituals and plants.

The current research into psilocybin as a treatment for a range of mental health issues, including depression and PTSD, only underscores the knowledge long held by humans over thousands of years. Psilocybin is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound found in "magic mushrooms" that produces hallucinations as it is converted to psilocin by the body. Supervised use or careful micro-dosing can lead to what many describe as an enhanced awareness of our reality.

I started experimenting with mushrooms when I was in high school in the 70s.

But it wasn´t the typical teenage experimentation. I was looking for healing.

At 15, I had lost the will to live.

I had been in a tragic car accident. The driver and other three passengers had died on impact.

But moments before, I had been feeling sick…and scared. The driver was taking the curves way too fast on a rainy night. The others laughed at the squealing tires. My stomach was clenching.

I was sitting next to a window, so I rolled it down to get some fresh air. The others laughed and protested as the rain spattered us in the backseat.

A minute later, I was ejected when the car hit a tree. I had a sensation of being caressed, held. Then, nothing.

I woke up with flashlights shining in my face. I was uninjured except for a bruise on my shoulder.

Later, once my parents arrived at the police station, everyone told me how lucky I was. Both the police and my parents convinced me that I did not need to tell anyone back in my town (25 miles away) about the accident. They believed it would only make things harder for me.

They made me promise not to tell anyone.

I didn´t say a word about it—not even to my siblings—for years.

So, when I heard that taking mushrooms could make people feel a sense of oneness with the universe, I was captivated. I thought mushrooms might ease my silent suffering, my utter loneliness and despair.

And that is exactly what happened. I had one trip that opened everything.

I wanted to duplicate that feeling, but I had no money. I tried meditation, but it just made my suicidal ideation get clearer.

So, instead, I made up a mindfulness game that I couldn´t wait to play. (Many years later, I taught my playful, eyes-wide-open approach to everyday awareness to thousands of people around the world.)

I have done mushrooms maybe seven times in my life. It is a lot more regulated and understood now, but doing shrooms still gets you suspended from high school if you show up in an altered state at the homecoming dance…especially when you are the homecoming queen. 😐 (That happened.)

And while everyone responds differently to psychedelics, and I would never issue a blanket recommendation, for me, each time has felt like opening a new door, with insights that compound over time.

Whether it is mushrooms or yet another momentous tipping point in our terrible news that may be opening our eyes to things as they are, we are experiencing a collective awakening.

We are getting closer to the shift from trance to transformation.

But it will require changes in our beliefs and behavior.

Because simply waking up does not result in change until and unless we choose to embrace a deeper awareness and engage in intentional action.

PROMPT:

Anything that takes us out of our day-to-day life—stretching our ways of seeing and relating or pushing our physical boundaries—can shift our awareness and potentially alter our consciousness. And a combination of several consciousness-enhancing activities can be especially useful.

So, here´s my question for you:

What has led to your most recent or most memorable experience of consciousness shifting?

Was it meditation or mushrooms, breathwork or Burning Man, sweat lodge or cold plunge, hiking or hypnosis, running a marathon, or say, giving birth*?

How might you enhance the development of your consciousness as well as your capacity for inspired action in new ways?

And also: what elements of our consensus trance may be limiting your ability to see clearly, despite your collapse awareness?

How can we determine what remains as residue, and how might we dissolve it?

[Hat tip to Adrian Lambert for prompting my rediscovery of consensus trance.]

5 Smiles

I know it´s getting harder to focus on joy and gratitude these days.

That is precisely why we must make it a daily habit.

On many days, it might be the only ¨action¨ we are able to take, but it is what keeps us connected to what matters most.

1. *Speaking of joy and what matters most, we just welcomed a new granddaughter! She is our sixth grandchild, and our first Dutch-American one. We are all celebrating this new and lovely addition to our family.

For the sake of privacy and caution, I won´t share her beautiful(!) name or other details here, but she is healthy, and her (tired) parents are thrilled.

2. My husband snapped this photo of me last weekend with this huge pink hibiscus flower blooming in front of an apartment in our neighborhood. It felt like a sign. (The baby arrived the next day, over a week early.)

   

   3. I have been sprouting all kinds of things, from lentils and mung beans to basil and sweet potatoes. The sweet potato on the left of the three on my windowsill here was one I almost gave up on. Its two siblings were sprouting long roots and lush green leaves, while it remained decidedly potato-looking, with no sprouts at all.

   I almost tossed it after soaking the bottom in water for weeks with no results.

   And then, suddenly, it started sprouting. And it kept going. My grandson and I have been delighted to see the crazy growth to this Lone Ranger now stretching across the table.

   This sweet potato has been reminding me to avoid giving up when things do not look promising in the beginning, or when growth looks different (weirder!) than what I expected.

   

   4. and 5. All other photos this week were family-focused, so instead, I want to share some thoughts about what it means to bring a baby into the world at this time.

   Having six grandchildren under the age of six feels like both an embarrassment of riches and a sacred (and colossal) responsibility.

   I fully recognize the challenges ahead, and that these little ones will live in a world that will become very different from the one we are experiencing today.

   Thirty-some years ago, I felt moved to have four children (in my mind, it was partly to balance the loss of those in the car that night.) Still, I felt guilt due to the dire warnings of a population explosion.

   Now, I worry about the decline in births. And I know that we will need to prepare these little ones for a new way of life, one that is focused on connection and collaboration rather than competition and capitalism.

   I expect our colliding crises to wreak havoc, but I truly believe that we can and must create communities of caring even as things crumble.

   None of us can do this on a global level. But we must do what we can wherever we are, within our own groups of loved ones and our local communities.

   The good news is that this is natural for us. We humans are built for caring and collaboration, and lived communally and in balance with Nature for thousands of years.

   This time of unchecked extraction and disconnection? It is an anomaly.

   It is not who we are.

   So, our focus now is on re-membering. Re-villaging. Re-wilding our imagination and re-igniting our creativity (the first thing to fade when we are in despair) so that we can return to a way of life where sharing is paramount.

   My hope for my young grandchildren (and all children) is that they may grow up in a place among people who are seizing and celebrating their role as community members who care deeply about each other and all living things.

   I will work toward this every single day.

   You, too?

   Thank you for being here, and for being open to waking up and working out how to live in alignment with what we know is true.

   I so appreciate you!

   See you in two weeks.

   xo,

   

   Still here? Perhaps you are searching for something. ❤️

   The next opening for my 30-day 1:1 (fully remote) Doom to Bloom™ series begins on September 16th.

   I invite you to consider reserving it for yourself, in the name of all you love and long to protect.

   Learn more at MayaFrost.com