If you get my SpiritBiology newsletter then you may have seen this message on Monday. The response has been profound and I want to share it with you, in case you don't get that newsletter.

There have been moments in deep meditation and channeling when I merge with a higher aspect of self. The power, the intensity, the overwhelming love and compassion and bliss, all of it arriving at once in an eternal moment of expansion and oneness.

As I'm coming out of the experience I feel expanded, aware of far more than I am in my "normal" state. The world is more vibrant, I'm on cloud 9, and I feel connected to everyone and everything.

But the heightened "bliss" doesn't last forever. Sometimes a peak experience like that can be followed by numbness, disconnection, melancholy, and even deep sadness. The dullness in contrast to the expansion can feel like a loss… as if you finally found the connection and then lost it.

Have you ever experienced this? The roller coaster spirituality of seeking, finding, expanding, and then…integrating.

The same pattern follows a plant medicine journey, a bufo or DMT experience, a kundalini awakening, or any genuine peak spiritual experience. The higher the peak, the deeper the valley of integration can feel.

For many spiritual seekers, that valley feels uncomfortable, as if something is wrong, the connection feels lost. Instead of sitting with the discomfort, they go looking for the next heightened experience. Another ceremony, another activation, another teacher, another course, always trying to get back to the expanded feeling, the bliss.

That low feeling is often part of integration which is one of the most essential and least celebrated parts of the journey.

You can think of spiritual growth as a spiral staircase. We rise into peak states that expand our awareness, opening us to qualities of consciousness and aspects of ourselves we couldn't access from our ordinary baseline. Then we move through the darker side of the spiral to integrate what we received. We are still ascending, still climbing, the spiral requires us to move through both the light and the dark to reach the next level.

Expansion gathered in peak states without integration does not become mind-body wisdom. Wisdom is the anchor that enhances your life, your relationships, your body, and your capacity to create.

The numbness, the melancholy, the dullness that follows a peak experience are signs that integration is in process. What was received in expansion must now be anchored into the cells, the nervous system, the biofield. That process requires stillness, presence, reflection and honesty. Which leads to self-awareness and liberation.

This spiritual journey is not a magic button.

It’s more like a wild roller coaster that asks everything of you, and it is not for the faint of heart. In fact, your heart will be torn and replaced repeatedly throughout the journey. With every turn of the spiral your heart energy becomes expanded, clearer, stronger, more vast, and capable of more love than you could have imagined before.

That is the spiral staircase of ascension. This is what true ascension requires.

All of it… the peaks, the valleys, the bliss, the integration, the darkness, and the return, are the journey. 

This is the path we came here to experience.

How’s it going for you?