Have you ever had such a profound experience with psychedelics that it permanently changed your life? I’m not speaking of gaining valuable insights or witnessing stunning visuals that elicit feelings of awe, but rather undergoing an experience so profound that your entire worldview is turned on its head.
Journeying into the deepest voids of a psychedelic trip leads to much more than the loss of self, but rather the obliteration of reality and everything associated with it. In these profoundly raw states of consciousness, you are one with the infinite spiritual rift without memory, thought, emotion, or any ties to this Earthly plane.
During a breakthrough trip, you don’t exist anymore. Nor does reality, nor does anything you have ever known. The space you’re experiencing is the only thing that has ever existed and ever will. If you have experienced this, then you have reached the bottom floor of a plant medicine journey – the breakthrough.
The breakthrough is a phenomenon that occurs when you pierce through the fabric of reality to be consumed in foreign dimensions absent of time, space, matter, or form. These profound psychedelic journeys where we lose all ties with ourselves and reality are called breakthrough trips.
Of course, your physical body can’t come with you on a breakthrough trip, but your consciousness can cross the threshold into the spiritual realms, and experience these higher dimensions.
In this article, I’m going to share my knowledge and understanding of this breakthrough phenomenon where the spiritual and the mystical meet at a crossroads. I’ll tell you a little bit about what I’ve learned living with Ayahuasca shamans for 6 months and explain what happened when I underwent a life-changing psychedelic breakthrough trip in my early 20s.
What Is a Breakthrough Psychedelic Trip?
Plant medicines such as Ayahuasca, mushrooms, Peyote, and even LSD are not drugs despite their misleading, common labels. Plant medicines are so much more than mind-altering substances, they’re spirits that can bridge our consciousness to higher dimensions and foreign realms of information.
Psychedelics can have profound effects on consciousness and transport us to extraordinary places if used with respect and responsibility. These spirits open gateways to mystical experiences because they are, quite literally portals. Perhaps not the portals we see in science fiction movies, but portals of consciousness.
It’s not that psychedelics necessarily ‘take’ us to other dimensions because the spiritual dimensions are always here, within everything. These higher dimensions too are a property of consciousness, but while we’re holding onto all this heavy stuff like a mind and body, we’re bound, for lack of a better word, to the material.
The deepest levels of a plant medicine experience remove the obstructions of mind, thought, memory, and body from the experience of consciousness, which allows us to sink deeper into these foreign dimensions. Consciousness seeps through the veneer of materiality like sand seeping through a net.
Now, you might be thinking ‘Daniel, I just want to hear some trippy stories, let’s not get weird here’, but this is important to understand because the nature of plant medicines is spiritual, and this is how they’ve been used for millennia all over the world – as spiritual tools.
A breakthrough trip is not simply an illusion of the brain, it’s the real deal.
Anyone who argues that a breakthrough trip is just the result of chemicals firing wildly in the brain has either never experienced it, or knows very little about the nature of plant medicines.
Now, I’m not saying that plant medicines are a trump card to spirituality, not at all. However, working with these medicines in a mature, ceremonial setting with guides and teachers is a pathway. Most notably, the path of the shaman.
My curiosity for exploring my reality via psychedelics is a big reason why I have spent much time working with healers and shamanic traditions. Since working in a professional setting with these medicines in Latin America, my understanding of psychedelics has evolved tremendously.
At this point, I’ve had many major encounters with truth via plant medicines that have illuminated new worlds of information. From contacting all sorts of spirits, exploring other dimensions, and channeling otherworldly information, some of these experiences have been profound. However, no experience can compare to the breakthrough trip I’m going to share here.
It was in a league of its own.
My only true breakthrough trip occurred with LSD about 10 years ago. This experience offset a kundalini awakening, which I talk about extensively in my work, changed my life permanently, and set me on a drastically different life course.
My Psychedelic Breakthrough Trip
During my early twenties, my curiosity had peaked in psychedelic exploration. I was struggling with depression at the time and trying to find meaning in a life of bitterness. I understood the healing potential of the deep psychedelic state and was venturing further into the unknown with every sitting.
After all, I’ve always been a curious person. I would often pounce at the opportunity to go as deep into a psychedelic trip as I could handle, not necessarily because I wanted to escape reality, but because I knew these states of consciousness were abundant in answers – the answers I was looking for.
Conceptually, I knew how far into one’s consciousness a person could go, and I had ‘an idea’ of what the experience would be like. Stories seemed to vary wildly, ranging from experiences of enlightenment, experiencing other dimensions, encountering profound spirits and deities, bliss and divine healing, to psychosis and even death on rare occasions.
At this stage, I was quite experienced with psychedelics. Ultimately, to my knowledge, I knew that everything was going to be okay. I was determined to jump off the figurative cliff to see what was on the other side. If there had been any doubt in my mind, I never would have taken the plunge, but that didn’t ease the nerves.
It took me about a year to build up the courage to consume such a large dose in one sitting. One day, the stars aligned.
During the still one morning before rationale kicked in and gave me the chance to hesitate, I consumed 690ug of LSD by putting six tabs on my tongue. This was enough to instigate a breakthrough trip.
Over the next 10 minutes, the small paper squares dissolved into my saliva. I’ve always been a jump-into-the-deep-end kind of guy, but the anticipation was scary.
Nervousness mixed with a touch of excitement were just some of the feelings I had. What I didn’t realize is that this single action was going to permanently change my life in ways I could never prepare for.
The Come Up
Some details are vague at this point, but I remember the main events like it was yesterday. I remember being completely eloped in music as the effects became apparent. During this time I was writing down thoughts, feelings, and ideas that came to me in a notebook.
I danced like a maniac and sang like a rock star. I felt the energy of movement like it had a whole new meaning. Sensations of boundless joy radiated from me, bursting from my flesh like fireworks. There was a heat emanating from my groin and drifting upwards through my body.
The sensation of ecstasy intensified. Before long, abruptly, kaleidoscopic closed-eye visuals engulfed me. They were circular and crystal clear as if I was watching in high-definition.
I opened my eyes in awe, and my vision returned to the same ordinary living room. Every time I shut my eyes and allowed myself to be absorbed in the moment of ecstasy, the visuals abruptly reappeared like being hit by a truck.
It was time to be completely present with the experience and allow myself to be immersed in this new world, so I shut off all stimuli and lay on my bed in silence.
My Psychedelic-Induced Kundalini Awakening
I remember peering at the static blanketing the ceiling as the colors brightened to vivid hues. The sensations of immense joy continued elevating as I became increasingly absorbed in the sheer magnitude of the experience.
Visions of fractals intensified as the tunnel within them became more apparent. My concept of time and space was rapidly disintegrating as I melted further into my bed, but there was no fear, no pain. Just love as I’ve never felt it before.
This was still early stages of the journey, perhaps twenty minutes after dosing. I wasn’t close to the peak, but the experience continued getting more and more intense. As if there was a cracking sensation at the base of my spine, the energy emanating from this region up opened up to a whole new level.
The heat channeling upwards from my groin area grew from a trickle into a torrent. I could now see a reddish-pinkish etheric light drifting through my body like a river, exiting through the crown of my head and the center of my chest – like water gushing from a tap.
I was in disbelief. I had read about these concepts in stories, but this isn’t real, how could it be? The sensations continued to evolve into pure ecstasy. Unconditional love like nothing I had ever felt, something light-years beyond it.
It was love, peace, acceptance, and connection to everything in existence. The healing power of love began to make more sense as my reality was rapidly collapsing into this feeling of absolute beauty. All these spiritual concepts I was learning about at the time were becoming very real, very quickly.
My psyche was dismantling as I could no longer hold a thought, only make groans and mutter single syllables. I was entering a blissful state in the most literal sense I can fathom. This state was astoundingly powerful, well beyond my comprehension. There was no thought, no desire, or hunger. There was nothing I could want in this state because I was completely fulfilled in every sense of the word.
This sensation was solely unconditional love for everything and everyone. It was the uncontrollable urge to serve this love. The energy channeling through my body was intense. It was hot but not uncomfortable. It was sexual and unmistakable.
This was an experience I did not know human beings were capable of having. A cheat code, a wormhole, a paradox. I shouldn’t be here. Nothing made sense anymore.
There was only a thread of self, dangling out of this oneness of love, light, and heat. No grounding in reality, no concept of suffering. Only a state of absolute joy that was facilitated through love and the desire to serve it.
But it didn’t end there because the last remnants of my ego revolted. It became overwhelming in the best possible way. This was enough, I’m drawing the line because this is too good to be true. I’ve had my fun, and now time to go back to reality and integrate the experience.
At that moment, baby steps were suddenly the ideal option. Rookie move, because that desire to ground myself was a big mistake.
The Descent Into Hell
I just couldn’t let myself completely go into the unknown, despite how blissful it was. Already, this experience was so much more than I could dream about, but I just couldn’t go through that doorway into the psychedelic abyss.
Perhaps it’s death, perhaps my ego found ammunition, I can’t tell you. As soon as I permitted my ego’s existence, fear instantly consumed me. Negative thoughts flooded into circulation as the feeling of bliss rapidly deteriorated into emptiness, almost like the flick of a switch.
The hot energy tap switched off, and I could hear my mind screaming for the first time. Panic filled me as I paced around the house, wondering if I was losing my mind. Within seconds, I was experiencing insanity. I found myself in a limbo between worlds, where I feared going into one and couldn’t get back to the other.
It’s okay! I could wait this out.
I looked at the time which read 9 am on the dot. So I started meditating, but couldn’t get back into a positive space. I paced around the house, chilled out on the couch for a while, and looked at artwork.
After killing an hour or two, I looked at the time.
9:01 am.
My stomach dropped. How? How is this even possible? Seconds lapped like hours on the clock. There was no hope of waiting this out. There was no structure or form anymore.
Through the depression I had endured throughout life, I had never known fear quite like this. I condemned my decisions as at that moment, I thought my life was over. I thought I had entered hell, trapped in this space forever, going mad. A bad trip is an understatement. Why was I the stupid fool? Did I think it was going to be a walk in the park?
My heart was beating in my chest like a hummingbird’s wings. I thought I was waiting out the clock to cardiac arrest. Could I call for help? God knows I wanted to, but how? At that point, the phone seemed like alien technology. How on Earth could I operate that as a simpleton ape?
I was completely alone, stuck in my meat jacket, and anticipating the end of my journey on this planet. All I felt was misery in every form fathomable. Like a lizard brain, survival was the only thing on my mind.
Surrendering to the Experience
I didn’t want to accept death even though at that time, I did not doubt that it was impending. Then the point came where I couldn’t resist it anymore, it was too powerful for me.
I broke down on the living room floor and wept like a baby. The burden exploded and I was overcome with everything I didn’t want to face. I knew this was death, at least, that’s how I perceived it.
I was sorry to my family, for my decisions, for being a shitty person at times. At that moment, all I felt was sorrow. I didn’t willingly surrender, I was forced into it, kicking and screaming.
Then it happened.
As soon as I surrendered to this nightmare, I instantly blasted through the fractal abyss I kept seeing. I saw what resembled a purple eye while rapidly vibrating, and then I was instantly consumed in the infinite.
All attachment to reality was obliterated into dust. The last thing I felt was my consciousness dissipating into a huge inter-dimensional network of energy in the cosmos.
Imagine that everything that makes up you is a handful of sand. This sand is an assemblage of your memories, thoughts, personality, identity, and everything that creates an ‘I’.
If you were to throw this handful of sand into a hurricane, where each grain is dispersed in the wind, that’s what it felt like. There was nothing left that remotely resembled me anymore. No thought, no memory, nothing. I ceased to exist.
The Beginning of the Breakthrough Trip
I will use the term ‘I’ for the sake of simplicity, but I wasn’t present. It was purely experience, observation, and knowledge. I don’t know how I witnessed what I witnessed, I can’t tell you whether this was from a first-person perspective, third-person perspective, or something entirely different.
I saw nature’s design for the first time. I experienced consciousness through what seemed to be a worm. Squirming, moving without purpose. No vision, reason, thought, and comprehension. There was only hunger. Nothing else but the need to survive.
Time was absent, so I can’t impose a timeframe. But it felt like an eternity as the most basic mode of life. It was remarkably unspectacular.
As the experience transitioned and took the role of an observer in a savannah-like setting, I saw the food chain, survival, and animals suffering and dying to provide sustenance for others.
I experienced vultures ripping the flesh off rodents, ants swarming beetles, and what appeared to be a huge beastly dog roaming the lands. But there was no fear, no sense of danger, there was no urge to escape, just witness.
The vision transitioned again, then I saw the divine masculine and feminine energies. There were vivid displays of symbolism not dissimilar to those of the male and female, not unlike that of Om represented in Hinduism.
I witnessed the unity of these complementary energies, merging where new consciousness bifurcated like cells dividing. Then came the reproductive cycle as I was bombarded with imagery of birth.
Animals and humans giving birth, babies crying, growing old and dying, then repeating the process. Sex – reproduction – death, as if it all made sense in the endless circle of life.
Floating to the Heavens
Then came a point where there seemed to be trillions upon trillions of grains of energy floating from this reddish-purple realm into a bluish-whitish one.
The feelings of light started to reappear as all of these energy grains were floating upwards or towards this bluish-whitish hue. It felt like going home, like going to rest for the first time.
But what struck me odd in hindsight were the flashing signs and religious symbolism I saw at that moment, such as imagery of Christ-like figures, crosses, and that which is loosely represented through the construct of religion. I understood everything for I was knowledge itself, or so it seemed.
Between every transition, I seemed to go back to this interdimensional spiral of energy. I would rise with the trillions (easier to say an infinite amount) of atoms, souls, energies, or whatever they were like a current of raging water. The further I elevated this spiral structure, the more light and positivity seemed to reappear. Love started to come back.
There was an innate feeling of higher beings, something far beyond humans at the top of this spiral. Enlightened entities exist as the dust of energy that we were all a part of.
At the very end of the experience, I vaguely remember all of these specs of energy forming what almost looked like a section of a human-like jaw. Then there was blackness, emptiness, nothingness.
The Psychedelic Rebirth
I noticed the chirps of birds and the hum of my fridge. I opened my eyes and I was back, but there was calmness. It was like waking up from a beautiful dream, refreshed and filled with life.
My body was collapsed in a pile on the living room carpet. I wasn’t just back, I was sober. I didn’t even try to process what had happened, but lay on the ground for the moment, absorbing the reality around me.
From that moment, the old me had died, and he never came back. Good riddance, but what was I?
I remembered my past, but I was new, reborn with all this fresh inspiration and knowledge, with a purpose so strong that it burnt like a flame, rather than the smoldering ashes that I had grown familiar with. For the first time in my life, I was complete.
Not long afterward, I went for a walk in a nature reserve behind my house, absorbing life fully, and appreciating every little thing in it. I saw bugs crawling in the grass and flies buzzing around me, and I loved it.
For days afterward, I felt the energy in every living thing. I saw life from a different perspective.
But what did I experience? I still can’t answer this question. Was this simply a trip? Was everything I experienced sourced from my subconscious, or was this something else entirely? I can’t say, nobody can. Whether it was or not, from that moment I was a different person, and that’s what mattered.
This experience changed the trajectory of my life. Within a year or two, I packed up my bags and began my nomadic soul-searching journey, which has now lasted for more than 8 years. Since this experience, I have birthed a whole new level of respect for psychedelics and have become increasingly involved in ancestral healing practices using entheogenic substances.
This breakthrough trip has allowed me to understand the connection between psychedelics and spirituality. It has shown me firsthand why psychedelics have had such a strong affiliation with spirituality and the world’s indigenous, and why they have been perceived as portals to other dimensions.
Psychedelics or plant medicines are not toys. They are gateways to higher realms, and they must be treated with the utmost respect. I would not recommend gunning for this experience to anyone. Even though this breakthrough trip had the best possible result, I felt I was extremely lucky.