Dr. David R Hawkins in his work on consciousness says that recreational drugs allow us to detach from lower states of consciousness so that we can experience the higher states of consciousness correlated with love, joy and bliss. The lower states are correlated with struggle and emotions like shame, fear and anger that most people deal with daily. The majority implement strategies to overcome, ignore or suppress those emotions. Hawkins says, through ascension into higher levels of consciousness we move beyond the emotions connected to struggle and begin to experience freeness toward the spiritual experience of enlightenment reached by Buddha, Jesus and other highly ascended masters.
The curious thing here for me is that I’ve always found drugs and drug users to be very low vibe. And so I’ve thought of the drug experience as a trip into higher vibe realms. Realms I’ve experienced as I’ve gotten older without drugs through intense meditation and breathwork experiences. What Hawkins suggests though is not about a trip at all. It’s about detaching from the lower states. Which means the higher states are always available to us, they’re just overlayed by the low vibe experience of shame, guilt and fear we each may experience at some point in life if not continuously throughout. These lower states of consciousness keep us locked in paradigms that don’t have such a high vibe world view. And so understandably drugs are enticing. They provide a reprieve from the lower states of consciousness. A putting down of the burdens of those consciousness paradigms.
I’ve also experienced that at a higher state of consciousness alcohol becomes unattractive because it actually brings the high vibe down to a lower state. I had already limited my alcohol consumption to small amounts of wine or champagne socially before I stopped drinking in 2020 all together because I found myself needing to stay very lucid in order to navigate the pandemic out of the rising tide of pervasive fear and anger that were over taking society in those historic weeks and months. And later as I stepped into soul fragment reintegration work with others who had struggled with substance use, I formalized my decision and took a vow of abstinence. One that I do not regret. In fact it has pushed me into new experiences of alignment and confidence to go further in my self realization and work to more fully know myself.
When I was 19 I dropped acid with someone without knowing what I was agreeing to exactly. That one psychedelic experience I later learned had a silver lining. We know that psychedelics can open a gateway in the pituitary gland to a level of consciousness that once opened can later be entered into more easily without drugs. I remember the days that followed my psychedelic “trip”. I remeber having a realization that much of the artwork in a very cool coffee shop I frequented in West Hollywood was created by someone who was “tripping.” And as an artist myself I found the paintings to be diminished by this awareness. I thereafter referred to them drug induced art. I felt the artist had taken a short cut to accessing their own well of creative vision by opting to paint while artificially removing the veil of reality using psychedelic drugs like putting on X-ray glasses into another realm. And it was true, art influenced by psychedelics is different. There is a whole museum dedicated to psychedelic art in New York I understand. Perhaps I’ll visit. Maybe when my kids are older they can take a trip into that experience via museum without taking a drug trip or at least not the extreme trip I took at 19.
What has come through for me is a synthesis of my belief that drugs and drinking alcohol are a fairly low vibe activity on the Hawkins scale of consciousness, becoming less attractive as we ascend into further levels of consciousness toward what Buddhists call enlightenment, full awareness of the spiritual realms and an ability to be in states of bliss for extended periods of time while sober. I synthesized my belief with Hawkins statement about drugs merely allowing us to let go of lower emotions which suggests to me that the higher states are always within us just drown out by the lower. They aren’t ever elusive states in a far away land that require an extreme trip go out and find. They are within us all along. This aligns with the parables and language of sages like The Sufi, Rumi and other wise counselors throughout known history who would tell us that God and unconditional love, all things we seek outside ourselves are actually within. Enlightenment is already within us. We just have to detach from all things that are not bias, joy and love. Easier said than done.
This week I had the opportunity to visit Nashville. A town known for its live music venues. Those venues serve up alcohol as their main revenue source rather than charge a door cover to finance the overhead and band performance like we see more commonly in places like Los Angeles The great thing about this format is that music is everywhere and there is no commitment to stay in one venue for the entire evening. It frees the listener up to move from venue to venue. This is the Honky Tonk, rowdy bar culture of Nashville, “Music City.” It also means that there is less emphasis by venue hosts to ensure that the crowd inside is of a certain attractive and youthful vibe – since patrons will be financially committed to one location. Unable to self sort and find their people in other local venues. I loved it, I loved the age diversity everywhere but also in this format, I found myself moving from place to place as one of the few or maybe only sober persons in a sea of, well drunk people. And on our second night I also saw cannabis gummies get mixed into the scene. One person, herself drunk, began complaining about other drunk people and identified herself as someone who would never get “that drunk”. Then she confided with me that she hates drunk people. She was concerned that as a sober person I might be having a miserable time surrounded by all the drunk people. But actually I found I was having a great time. Originally I thought I might go check out the scene and then leave early back to my hotel but in the first night I stayed out the whole evening until the early morning hours like something out of my youthful clubbing days in Hollywood in the 90s. Several people in our group asked if it felt late to me or early, worried maybe that I was not keeping up with their level of joy to be out. It didn’t feel particularly late to me even as midnight approached. The functioning drunk person who hated drunk people asked if I also hated drunk people or if it was annoyed by all the drunk people and I said, no. But then I wondered why I wasn’t bothered. I could remember times in my life when I would have been. Like when I was still a drinker but had to abstain because I was pregnant. I remember feeling very annoyed by others around me drinking.
What is different now is that I’m in a different consciousness paradigm. I don’t need to drink alcohol or get high on cannabis, to let go of lower states of consciousness. I can just be in a higher state. Usually I feel alone in my perspective or at least restricted in my ability to express myself as I fully am. But this week I got to have the experience of being more carefree and allowing myself to enter that state of bliss where the lights in the room and the sights, sounds and feeling and awareness of all the other souls start to blend together into one overwhelming sensory experience of ecstasy. Like I was drunk. I got to dance. Without caring what others might think. They were all dancing after all and wearing their beer goggle lenses. It’s like they entered my world and I got to stop trying to hold myself back and making myself be held together to be relevant in other paradigms where life is more serious. A few times I helped make them and me more comfortable with my sobriety in the presence of their drunkenness by ordering from the bar and drinking a non-alcoholic beverage. When in Rome… is a little like, when in Nashville do as the Nashvillians do. I was only missing the cowgirl hat. I was the one that made sure everyone had water at the end of the night as we navigated Ubers back to our hotel. One pro Nashville reveler in our group who I very much enjoyed being in the presence of had the skill to keep track of the heard of cats we had become, even as he himself engaged in many inebriating activities. He shared that he enjoyed the people watching part of the honky tonk experience. I wondered at first why? It felt judgmental. I wondered if it was a way for him to feel better about himself maybe as others lost control of their inhibitions or I think more likely it’s something like how I walk through life daily in the role of observer. Observing without reacting. Living lucidly I call it, like being awake in a dream state. Noticing how people speak and carry themselves. Noting their irritation at everyday life twists and turns and also their reactions. None of the drinkers I was with were naturally inclined to see themselves as the same as all the others in the venues. One person in our group, the drunk hater thought I must be a really good person for being able to hang with drunk people without any irritation. As much as I’d like to claim that title (of really good person), I see it more as the result of my perspective having shifted since the last time I surrounded myself with drunk people many years ago. I realized in contemplating her statement that I no longer need the benefits of drugs and alcohol and so I no longer have FOMO when others are drinking. They all seemed exactly the same to me in their sobriety or drunkenness but after I got acclimated to their new state I felt more and more free myself to be high on life and less inhibited and self restrained than I usually am. I loved every one of them. Like a drunk person might who has finally crossed through the threshold of judgement into oneness with humanity, speaking from their intoxicated heart space “I love you, man” or like every person does at the end of an enlightenment intensive retreat.
We’re all simultaneously experiencing different consciousness paradigms here in the earth school. Even in the same family or work environment
In Nashville I found a piece of myself, the dancing girl fragment who likes to roam the music venues with a group of friends all dressed for the party, flirting with and looking out for each other. I reintegrated that dancing girl back into my soul.
My dad who passed when I was only six years old used to tell me when I was little that I was named after a blue grass song with lyrics he would sing to me, “my little girl, Jenny Lee from Tennessee….” Growing up in Los Angeles I always found my namesake curious. Last night I found that girl on Broadway Street. Thank you Nashville!