When we have experiences, real experiences outside of the realm of normal understanding, we feel no different. Not saying that the experience goes unnoticed, or that it in any way feels the same as our usual frame of reference.
It feels no different because we step into a level of ourselves that we have always been.
We could use the analogy here of course that is so popular in spiritual culture (at least during the new age renaissance of the 90’s). But possibly more accurate, with a slight alteration, would be that of virtual reality.
Imagine yourself in VR. Real VR, I mean: the theoretical possibility of complete immersion of all the senses - smell, taste, touch, the whole shebang. You walk the country-side, you explore the depths of the ocean, you walk on Mars, you fight goblins and climb castles. But imagine after a time that the experiences are so immersive, so real, that you forget that you are in a virtual reality. That the experiences you are having are the true state of affairs. That this is life.
Bear with me, the cliche will continue for a while longer.
You start to experience a smell wafting your way. What is that? Garlic? Tomatoes? The clink of metal on wood and the thud of a heavy dish barely reaching the table before hearing a “dinner is ready!”.
Ah yes! Time to eat. You remove the hardware, place it neat back in it’s bag (or if you’re like me, leave it out to trip over later on), greet your loving partner and admire the beautiful dish that they lovingly created for you.
While eating, you converse with your loved one. Talk about your day, share anecdotes about work perhaps. After dinner, you wash up (since it was your partners turn to cook, it’s your turn to clean. That’s the time honoured deal!), sit down on the couch and watch a movie together, or read, or play checkers or whatever tricks you’ve designed in your life to wind down before retiring to bed. To dream.
And it all felt…normal.
Why? Because it is normal. Nothing new or untoward is occurring in this experience because you are a resident in this world outside of Virtual Reality. You don’t feel enlightened, or different, or like you’ve achieved something great. You feel, normal.
When we step into higher levels of ourselves, the experience we have can be like this. And this is why I prefer this stretch of an analogy better than the dream analogy. In the story of the dream, we dream, we wake up, and realise it was all a dream. But there is still something left of the dream in us. Perhaps we linger on it, remember some facet of the dream, as we go about our daily routine.
Now of course, you are saying “but if stepping into higher parts of us is so mundane as taking off some VR goggles and returning to life, why would I want to do something as boring as that”? And here is where the analogy is stretched, because games and VR experiences are of course geared towards providing us with a level of engagement we may not be able to find in our life.
Waking up to ourselves, is in a way the opposite of this. The frame of reference we step out from, is the mundane. But the point I am making here, is that it doesn’t feel different, because it is a world we already know, and know much better than the normal frame of reference.
The other caveat to the VR analogy, is the definition of normal. What is normal to us in the higher frame of reference is vastly different to what we consider normal in our everyday, earthly experience. I won’t go into qualities and experiences here, but what I will mention, is that when I am not in that frame reference, when I am not anchored into that experience of reality, looking back at the experience can be fantastical and incredible. Sometimes, my mind will tell me that I exaggerated it, or imagined it, or perhaps it was a dream. But when I am in the experience, when my frame of reference is that wholly connected level of ourselves, it feels….normal. Like I have always been here, and that I temporarily forgot and will perhaps forget again, but that’s okay because this is who I truly am and the transient experience of the ordinary state of consciousness is just that. It’s transient. And the vast, incredibly rich realms of the cosmos is what I am most familiar with. And what I know.
People can have spiritual experiences that freak them out. But the part that is freaking out is the part that cannot have a true experience of non-ordinary states of consciousness. Our identity is still anchored in the utterly convincing fairy-tale of ordinary existence, and it is the foundation of that identity that becomes unhinged.
But this unhinging is an important part of the process. Before new foundations can be lain, the old ones need to be removed to allow a permanent bridge to be built between these two levels of ourselves.
That which is permanent cannot be destroyed. So let that part of you go, because it is not you.