Triggers

OF THE ALTERED STATE
By Patricia Lefave, Labelled, D.D.(P)
Originally posted here September 4th, 2005

I believe that fear is a large part of triggering the altered state. When I accepted ego death, (which I had thought at the time was going to be carried out physically as well), I became calm, and the next day came out of psychosis without meds of any kind. I think that some would call the altered state, an out of body experience.
I experienced time distortion as well while in it, and for a period of time (you should pardon the paradoxical statement) after my boundaries had "popped" back.
In psychosis, a male voice had said to me, "Let it go and I will give it back to you." I heard that as a promise of returned identity. I personally believe that when we are sleeping, or meditating, we are actually temporarily letting go of our ego identities, and are in the dimension of the previously collective unconscious, (of which we become consciously aware in psychosis, since we are also normally conscious at the same time.) I think many of the flashbacks are unfinished emotional business, usually involving fear, rage, or grief, that we did not have the time to feel, or deal with, when the event which caused it originally occurred.

Someone reminded me of something I saw on T.V. about two years after my breakdown. It was a documentary on the Learning Channel in Canada. The topic was near-death experiences. In it, a woman who had had a near death experience during childbirth entered into the state which would have been called psychosis under other circumstances. Anyway, while it was happening, she was hearing voices, especially one male voice which she said really scared her, because he asked her who she was and what she was doing "here", and when she told him who she was, and that she was in the process of having a baby, he told her she didn't really exist. She told him that she DID exist, and so did her baby.
He told her back, that her baby didn't exist either.
She asked him, "Well, if I don't exist, then who are you talking to?"
He said, "I invented you. I made you up. I only let you think you exist."
This event really terrified her and years later she was still trying to make sense of it all.
I remembered my experience of time/space distortion. I began to hear this story in a different way. You know what the male voice sounded like to me? A guy in a mental hospital trying to talk himself into his psychiatrist's definition of the origin of the voices as part of his illness.

Something to think about. I am just ''crazy'' enough to think that on a certain level of our being, we are all the "voices of God" going through transition. After all, we are told that the Kingdom of Heaven, IS "within us."
For those who don't believe in such things, no proof will ever be enough, and for those who do, "disease process" is not an acceptable answer as an explanation for such an amazing thing.

In any case, however you understand it, I believe that letting go of the fear of it helps a lot. We need to be open enough to allow for the fact that we are still partly a mystery to ourselves. I believe each person is drawn to their own pain and to their own healing and growth process, and that no one else can really choose the path for someone else.
I also believe in integration of the "Shadow."
The most important question which I had to ask myself all of my life was "Why is that?" I learned to do that every time I noticed I had a belief which I had just accepted because someone else told me that I should. To me, God IS HOW the universe works and is the spirit based miracle which is another way to say "magic" and another way to say "metaphysics," and another way to say Pi, etc.

I think these things are largely intuitive learning experiences, and often very symbolic. Are what some call "walk-ins" trying to protect them from something?
I think it is important that we speak our own understanding of this, so that we can hear what we all have to say, and so that at least one other person can mirror that back to us. Even if we haven't really "merged" with anything, and just ''thought'' we did, it is still meaningful, and I think it is about understanding something that we don't yet quite understand.

In psychosis, the line between concrete reality and spiritual reality blurs almost completely. I think we find it so difficult because we can't separate them, nor can we integrate them at the time. However, I have managed to do that over a period of a few years, by examining my own psychosis as if I were reading dream/nightmare symbolism. It has worked for me.I am stronger than ever before and very accepting of a number of real, and very difficult life events, which other people around me always had to deny.

I believe that not getting any validation or support to get through such things is what drives many of us into altered states in the first place. I agree with those who say we have the right to know our own reality, without it being defined as "wrong", as long as we live with the principle of mutual respect for personal boundaries.
I believe human beings are becoming a collective consciousness, on a psycho-spiritual level which transcends space/time. We all know and understand the same things in slightly different forms, no matter WHEN we are alive in our temporal/biological bodies. I think of The Kingdom of Heaven as the fifth dimension of Being, the alternate reality of Peace. The finished creation.

I also believe that people are pushed deeper into their pain and psychosis by the invalidation of it and the emotion experienced within it. No matter what the details of anyone's trauma, the experience of it and the feelings that go with it are all very much alike. I think we need to focus on the concepts behind our collective experience, since that is our connection.

In fact I think the "miscues" used by society as a "norm" CAUSE breakdown. We often experience absolutely legitimate fear base on reality; a reality which is often denied by others. It is the denial of reality that leaves us isolated and alone with our experience. Without real human connection, that is when we often lose hope.

Let's connect together and get hope back for everyone.