Experiencing Expanded States of Consciousness - part 2

Part 2: The shifting between realities continued on for three days. I was entirely content and felt no need to do anything about the body in the tent. I wasn’t able to feel concerned that my body might not continue. But, my boyfriend, who was sitting next to me throughout the entire three days, was not okay with it. He had been trying to get me to drink water over the three days. I may have had a few sips total. I felt very far removed from his fear for my life. My life was better than ever, in my experience. But, after three days, my friends helped me up and supported me the entire walk up the narrow, dirt path up to my car, where it was parked in the dead end road. It took a long time to practically carry me up the road. I could barely move my feet on my own. But somehow they managed together.

They drove me to a free Doctor, who would park his van in a different location every day, somewhere on the island, and give free medical care. He called his van the “Caravan”. He came to my car, and opened the back door to have a look at me, lying in the back. He told someone that he thought I’d be okay, and that it was probably rheumatic fever (from strep throat that wasn’t taken care of). He gave me antibiotics and we were on our way. I thought, what a sweet man he was, just waiting to take care of people, for free. After I took the antibiotic, I started to feel physically better pretty quickly.

My friends were really tired of hanging out under the tree all those days, and they really wanted to drive around the island, to the other side, where there is a beach, Polihale, which is very long and desolate. There was nothing built around it - maybe there is now, I don’t know - but it was a good place to swim and collect Sunrise shells. I believe it was the only place you can find Sunrise shells in Kauai. They are very beautiful and rare. If you find one, it feels meant to be. You can’t just find one because you want to. So, this is where we headed. It was a couple hour drive.

About an hour into the drive, I started to feel sick again. I didn’t feel up to the journey, but I also didn’t want to disappoint my friends, so I just went along for the ride. By the time we arrived at Polihale beach, I was really physically in pain and unable to do anything. My friends helped me to the beach. They put a blanket out for me, and I laid there while they ran off to play at the beach.

As I lay on there, I began to have a lot of energy start to move up my spine toward my head. It grew and grew and grew in strength and intensity. This energy surge continued for at least an hour, maybe two. Of course, I didn’t have a watch nearby, I wasn’t timing it, but it felt like a very long time. As this energy moved up into the top of my head, I had the sensation, the thought, that my skull would shatter into millions of pieces. This thought repeated for a long time, most the time that the energy was building. After a couple of hours of this, something opened up in me. Even though the first three days of being sick were incredible, it was this last day that I always thought of as being the climax. I was no longer shifting into other realities. I was staying here in this reality, in this body. But now I was experiencing a much higher state of consciousness that I normally did. I was able to clearly and easily pick up what the people around me were thinking and feeling. When my boyfriend came to check on me, I picked up that he had some fear inside. I asked him about it and it freaked him out. He felt even more fearful, being seen like that.

This higher state of consciousness stayed with me to some degree, for some months after. It faded over time, which became painful. It is easy not to have what you don’t realize you could have. But it’s much harder to let go when you experience a Perfection, Wisdom and total Acceptance of everything, when you’re aware of what is possible. I felt a glow around me, and I noticed that some other people noticed it too. I even had a cousin who asked if she could follow me, like a disciple. I think I laughed it off, but just noted that I must have been emitting something. But I definitely didn’t want to be a Guru.

It was starting to get hot in Hawaii, so, after a week trip to Maui, I left Hawaii, thinking it was just going to be for the summer, and then I’d be back. I truly did feel that Kauai was to most HOME feeling I’d ever felt in a place on Earth. I had decided that I was going to hike part of the Pacific Crest Trail during the summer, I would start at the Southern part of Oregon and walk up to Canada. That was the plan. I bought everything I needed for this hike, carefully made packages that I sent ahead of myself along the trail (to post offices and restaurants that hold packages for people doing this walk). I had so much energy, felt so confident that I had no concerns about being able to complete this “walk”, alone.

My boyfriend drove me to the border of Oregon and California, and we walked one day into the PCT and camped there for the night. It was a spot that was up high, above a deep valley full of evergreen trees. The next morning, we packed up the tent, I put it in my 70+ lb. Pack full of everything I needed for the next several days, until I would arrive at my first refill package. I confidently said goodbye and walked deep into the woods, alone. A twenty year old girl, entering the Silence of the natural world…and very few other humans.

I had not prepared my body for this hike. I was going on a superhuman type of confidence that were the remnants of the expansion I’d experienced when I’d had my brush with death in Kauai. It really was the the dregs though. The confidence and strength I felt before the hike left me rather quickly. I didn’t know it when I started, but I was walking right into the fear that was still hiding inside. The quiet power of being all alone, with no distractions, in the wild, was just the right trigger for me to face some pretty intense feelings of desolate aloneness. I think when I came into this life, I was very ambitious about how much I was going to clear from my psyche.

Although I was fairly fit, my feet were soft and wimpy. They were not ready for being in thick, hard hiking boots, for around twenty miles of hiking a day , with a pack that weighed way too much. I quickly developed open sores on my heels and what felt like every side of my feet. To eat, I had to stop, pull out my little camping stove and pot and cook. Right there along the trail. Sometimes there was not good place to cook but right out in the intense Sun, on the trail. Because my pack was so heavy, and the waist strap dug into my stomach, I didn’t have much of an appetite. I knew I needed to eat, but I barely could. Also, the loneliness was overwhelming at times. And at other times, the fear got to me, especially at night, when I would hear the sounds of large animals walking around, near my tent. My thin little tent that would not prevent any bear, cougar, mountain lion from swiping their claws across my little home and exposing me completely to their hunger or aggression.

By the second or third day, the feeling of loneliness and inner desolation had set in. What the fuck was I thinking, wanting to do an approximately 1500 mile hike alone? Reality kicked in very quickly. Now that I think of it, I’m surprised no one tried to dissuade me from this idea. My boyfriend, who had a lot of hiking experience, helped me get ready. Why didn’t I want him to come with me? I didn’t even think of it. I’m sure he would have liked to come, but he wasn’t one to pressure me or try to insert himself in my plans or things I wanted to do on my own.

There was one day, day three or four, I reached a place that was a perfect lunch stop. It was a camp ground what wooden tables with the attached benches. I sat on the table and just bawled my eyes out. The complete Aloneness overwhelmed me and flowed out, a raging torrent of snot and tears. My natural high was officially over. In a matter of months I went from the highest Bliss I had yet experienced, to some of the deepest pain that I had been storing inside.

When I look back at this now, I think these things are naturally meant to be experienced this way. The duality of the 3D world requires that if we reach extreme highs, we will have to clear out any shadows hiding inside - and those shadows are avoided because facing them is painful. That is exactly why we avoid them. But what I have learned in more recent years is that the pain is less painful when it’s allowed out, than when it’s being repeatedly pushed down, for years or decades. It might not seem so, but we do actively keep pushing our painful memories and feelings down to where we can’t feel them. They keep trying to come up and out, and then we just push them back down. It’s a very exhausting activity that most humans partake in, without even being aware that they’re doing it. It’s a bad habit.

I kept walking, and each night set up my tent. I was too exhausted by the night that I never stored my food properly (at the end of a rope, up a tree rather than in my tent with me). I heard loud movements outside the tent every night. I had many ideas and images of what those sounds came from, but thank the heavens, nothing ever attacked my tent or me. But those nights were long and basically sleepless. This whole experience really pulled me back down to “reality”. The reality that I was still human and had a lot of junk inside that hadn’t just magically disappeared because I had tasted the Truth and what heights are possible. The heights, I’m sure, are far beyond anything I have experienced, I can never assume that I know or understand everything. The Mystery will probably never reveal Itself in full to any one human. And if All were revealed, then there would be nothing more to experience. Due to the Infinite quality of God, I doubt there will ever be an ending to the revealing of Existence.