Extraordinary Human Experience. The Right to Explore It, Communicate it, and Understand it.

“I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.”
— C. G. Jung

I am an advocate for the human right to communicate, explore, and seek to understand our extraordinary experiences—synchronistic, intuitive, psi, spiritual, mediumistic, mystical, noetic, transpersonal.

These experiences are often met with resistance rather than curiosity and wonder. When we are met with silence, disbelief, ridicule, or an immediate explanation of what our experience “really” was, we may learn to keep extraordinary experiences to ourselves. We may even begin to wonder if something is wrong with us because we have them.

When an experience falls outside what our family, culture, religion, or scientific worldview considers possible, we may learn not only to remain silent about it, but to distance ourselves from our own experience.

Research into unexplained experiences following bereavement has found that whether people feel able to share or must conceal their experiences—and how others respond when they do share them—can affect their well-being and relationships. Researchers have also raised concern about the unnecessary pathologizing of experiences people may need a safe place to explore and integrate.

My own extraordinary experiences—after-death communication, sudden spiritual awakening, and psychic and mediumistic opening—as well as what I experience in my everyday life and Soul Support work have transformed me. They have expanded my understanding of consciousness and my capacity to love. And it has shown me the interconnection between humans and other life forms.

A growing body of research suggests that experiences such as near-death experiences, perceived after-death communication, mystical experiences, and spontaneous spiritual awakenings can be associated with positive changes in well-being, meaning, worldview, spirituality, compassion, and appreciation for life. These experiences are not always easy. Some can initially be frightening or destabilizing. How we make meaning of and integrate them appears to matter.

Even a simple synchronicity can stop us in our tracks and invite us to wonder.

My ex-husband and I visited Kevin's grave a few weeks after his physical death. We went home and couldn't stand being there, so we walked on the walking paths in our neighborhood. They wound through a forest like area adjacent to the Boise River. I had a sense to look over and next to John, and there walked a fox, four feet from his side. He walked beside us for about an eighth a mile, and then disappeared into a hole in the ground (his den) without a thought to our presence.

Kevin's power animal is fox. 

What happened?

I don’t know.

But I know what we experienced. And I can remain curious about it without having to turn the mystery into certainty.

If we look at a grove of aspens, we see what appear to be separate trees standing together. Beneath the earth, however, individual trunks may arise from and remain connected through one vast living root system.

In my experience, consciousness connects us in ways we do not yet fully understand.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”
— John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra

If someone wants to tell you about a dream that came true, a synchronicity they are still wondering about, the unmistakable sense of presence of someone they love who has died, or the colors or energy they perceive around living beings—what if you listen?

What if, instead of deciding what happened for them, you become curious?

And if you have an extraordinary experience of your own, what if you allow yourself to explore it?

What did I experience?

What did it feel like?

What meaning does it have for me?

What might I learn about myself through it?

And what remains unknown?

Perhaps we do not need to choose between believing everything and dismissing everything.

Perhaps we can investigate our own consciousness without being shamed for what we experience—and without being pressured to turn mystery into certainty.

For me, that is where wonder begins.

Research referenced

Consequences of Unexplained Experiences in the Context of Bereavement — Qualitative Analysis

Spontaneous Spiritual Awakenings: Phenomenology, Altered States, Individual Differences, and Well-Being