Your Spirit is Bigger than That!

If you’ve ever taken ayahuasca, dropped some acid, smoked peyote or ingested a few magic mushrooms, then you know the feeling of the ego shrinking away as the mind dissolves into a mystical union of oneness. These transcendent experiences send us to a dimension of love and gratitude where we don’t want or desire anything. Sometimes we can see just how petty we really are and at other times we become lost in a phantasmagoria of mystery and illusions. Specifically, ayahuasca and peyote ceremonies, ritualistic in nature, have seen a rapid increase over the past ten years as more and more people attempt to break out of the ties that bind us. At the end of the trip, however, we’re left with the knowledge that our spirit is bigger than the life we lead. We vow to live a more conscious and loving life but the vow is often transitory even though the experience remains firmly intact within us.

Many people have likened this state of mind to a near death experience; of floating above it all getting closer and closer to the mythical white light. Carl Jung, in his book Memories, Dreams and Reflections, retells his near death experience highlighting the despair he felt upon re-entering the body and being thrown back into sensory restriction. He knew his spirit was bigger than that. He says that while he was floating above the earth plane “there was no longer any regret that something had dropped away or been taken away. On the contrary: I had everything that I was, and that was everything.” He was depressed for quite a while upon being revived because he knew his spirit was bigger than the body it inhabited. His release was short-lived as he then had to cope with all the mundane aspects of being trapped in a body.

Recently, the resurgence of psychedelics has been popularized by the work of the global gardener turned psychedelic researcher, Micheal Pollan. He chronicles the recent research on LSD in his book, How to Change Your Mind. Pollan went on a quest to find, through his own experiences with various drugs and what he calls White-Coat Shaminism, what these drugs actually do to someone’s world view. His conclusions were not uncommon; we can achieve mystical states of consciousness through certain drugs that produce altered states where our mundane existence and all we pour into it is called into question. The problem, again, is that when dealing in the mundane world of traffic, shopping, working and parenting, these states are transitory. We can get above the fray with conscious discipline and determination but we cannot live above the fray because of the demands of life. We know that our spirit is bigger than our life experience we just don’t know how to live in that awareness.

So how do you maintain this sense of higher awareness without being under the influence? It’s easy, you just have to remember that there’s always more to it no matter what the “it” is. We have always been blinded by our own egoism. There was a time when we thought the solar system revolved around the earth and were willing to kill those who thought otherwise. We also thought the world was flat, rejected the notion that germs caused disease and currently many think that global warming is a hoax. Change is always an uphill battle. It’s not that we are supposed to become egoless and live a transcendent life. More to the point is that we are full of ego and that causes us to live a smaller life. When our body is breaking down we have to remind ourselves that there is a greater context in which life and death are markers and not just start and end points. Our spirit is greater than that and the more we can embrace the notion that we are bigger than whatever situation we find ourselves in, the less we will suffer from the shortsightedness and provincial thinking of our ancestors.

Five Minute Articles For Your ConsiderationDec 29th, 20196 comments