“Beyond the Mind: How Expanded Consciousness Fuels Healing, Creativity, and Awakening”
Expanded consciousness can cultivate spiritual awakening, trauma healing, and creative breakthroughs—but it is not a step-by-step, one-size-fits-all process. Rather, it is an individualized journey of mystery and exploration that meanders through one’s shadow terrain, cleansing, removing, reclaiming, and reconnecting. This journey unfolds on its own schedule. While the process can be facilitated, its timing cannot be dictated. It moves as fast or slow as needed, regardless of personal preference.
Culturally in the U.S., we are conditioned to expect rapid returns, instant gratification, and measurable results within days, weeks, and rarely months. Consider, for example, the average hospital length of stay (LOS) for patients with uncomplicated myocardial infarctions (MIs). In the 1970s, the average LOS after an MI was approximately two to three weeks. By the 1990s in the United States, it had dropped to four to six days. Today, guidelines recommend hospital discharge within 48 to 72 hours for low-risk patients.¹ Insurance companies push for statistics that align with these guidelines, hospital staff are pressured to make it happen, and patients and their families are often left bewildered by this breakneck pace.
The pharmaceutical industry similarly emphasizes speed. Patients want to feel better as soon as possible. Their responsibilities—jobs, families, and daily obligations—fuel this need for rapid recovery. Medications and surgical interventions are designed to reduce symptoms quickly, and as a culture, we have come to expect this.
Yet, if you’ve ever tried to devise a creative solution to a problem, you may have noticed that no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t dictate how fast that solution arrived. In fact, the more effort you exerted, the further from a solution you might find yourself. This is because cognitive power is rarely the muscle needed for true innovation. While logic can solve some problems, truly creative breakthroughs require inspiration—a process not governed by analytical thought.
Like creative breakthroughs, spiritual awakening, and healing from trauma are not the result of cognitive prowess. These profound experiences emerge through shifts in consciousness. When consciousness expands into a nonordinary state, transformation occurs. The rules of thought are relinquished, and flow states emerge. It is within this flow that Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious may contribute new insights. The speed of these revelations can be lightning-fast or glacially slow.
My own experience with expanded consciousness came through Holotropic Breathwork (HB), a unique process that involves no entheogens—no hallucinogenic agents. HB fosters a shift in consciousness, as natural as falling asleep. Humans possess an innate ability to shift consciousness, and mystical practices have existed across cultures for millennia. The ancient Greeks performed the Eleusinian Mysteries in sacred temples; other cultures held healing or spiritual ceremonies, sometimes involving substances like ayahuasca or peyote. These sacred endeavors share a commonality with HB: they carry participants beyond ordinary three-dimensional reality, offering a vantage point that includes spiritual experience.
During such shifts in consciousness, I was introduced to shamanic experiences without even knowing initially that is what it was. I was greeted by a deceased friend who morphed into a shaman entity. He then proceeded to engage me in lessons followed by other spirit guides and Grandmother of the Good Dark. And that was only the beginning. Over the ensuing years not only did I heal from significant childhood trauma, but I was also embraced as a wise woman by a lineage of healers.
I have chronicled my journey down this unconventional path in hopes that it may serve as both inspiration and a map for others seeking new avenues of healing, creativity, or spiritual connection. My personal experiences of awakening, healing, and creative breakthroughs are detailed in my book, Soul Can You: How Expanded Consciousness Cultivates Spiritual Awakening, Trauma healing, and Creative Breakthroughs, along with artistic expressions—namely process paintings—available for viewing at www.soulcanyou.com.
Endnote:
- Michał Węgiel et al., “Hospitalization Length after Myocardial Infarction: Risk-Assessment-Based Time of Hospital Discharge vs. Real Life Practice,” Journal of Clinical Medicine 7, no. 12 (December 18, 2018): 564, https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm7120564.
