no time? jump down to “what does it all mean?”. i have noticed, my writing often starts slow with the real meat, the conclusion, coming at the very end.
in the last two months, i had the two most profound and life-changing experiences of my life. yes, a lot of superlatives here. before those, that had been last year’s ayahuasca experience which i described here. however, these recent experiences took it to a whole new level: i got to meet the real „me“, twice.
on april 15, i experienced the heart protocol, a combination of two psychoactive substances that, over a multiple hours long journey, catapulted me into nothingness where i experienced being pure consciousness and saw how this consciousness, which we are all made of, created step by step the universe, our planet, humans and then, pufff, consciousness became i or rather consciousness started experiencing itself through me. and then i disintegrated and looped back into being pure consciousness/nothingness/just thought.
words, of course, cannot capture nor do it justice. this is a realm beyond words. you gotta experience it to grasp it. it was a very visceral, visual and real experience that i am not who i think i am. i saw how the conscious me is a construct of the unconscious me which is pure consciousness which is the stuff we are all made up of. it’s the inverse of what we commonly believe: consciousness is not a product of the brain but rather our whole personality, physical being and the brain are creations of consciousness. through the body, we simply experience ourselves as this very limited flesh and bones expression of ourselves.
it’s one thing to abstractly believe or contemplate this, it‘s an entirely different thing to experience it so real that it becomes truth. to see how every thought of mine creates the reality i am experiencing in real-time rather than - what we widely believe - our thoughts simply responding to the reality outside of us. there is no outside of us, there is just consciousness. oneness got a whole new meaning for me: everything is consciousness. it was a challenging and intense but equally beautiful and empowering experience. it‘s intense to cease to exist as myself.
if that wasn’t enough, exactly a month later to the day, i found myself experiencing 5-meo-dmt: the strongest psychedelic known to man. some call it the god molecule. it‘s a specific form of dmt that can either be extracted from a particular bufo toad, that‘s why it is often referred to as bufo (although most bufo toads do not carry this molecule), or it can be created synthetically.
both of these experiences found me without looking for it - through friends that felt this might be something for me. this is how it usually happens: these experiences find me although undoubtedly i am calling them in unconsciously because the real me, my soul, needs them to show me something that the human me still has to understand.
the heart protocol was something i never had heard of before but bufo had been on my „to do at some point“ list. both came at exactly the right time and order. i feel these experiences build on top of each other. last year‘s ayahuasca experience opened the door to a new realm for me. these two recent ones expanded on it.
the most incredible experience of my life
5-meo-dmt: the most incredible experience of my life bar none. how can i do this experience justice? i can‘t. this was even beyond my wildest imagination. ten days later as i am writing these lines i am pulled back into the experience:
i am standing in the middle of a living room. in front of me stands one of my guides holding a pipe. behind me stands another guide and to the right is a friend watching us all. i am pulling in the smoke from the pipe where the crystalized dmt is being burnt to vapor. i am filling my lungs with as much smoke as i can and holding it in for as long as i can. a few seconds pass and i start losing consciousness. i fall back and my guide catches me and lays me on the bedding on the floor. i don‘t remember any of this but i have a video of it happening.
as i am leaving my body, i find myself in nothingness. there is no more vincent nor any physical world, it is just me and pitch-black nothingness. similar to the heart protocol, as i start thinking, i start creating and i find myself in mental loops that become increasingly intense. i feel trapped in my own world, the world of my thoughts that is creating my experience in real-time. it is very fast and instant. negative thoughts are creating negative experiences and i find myself in pretty unnerving places.
i feel i am going crazy. i feel i am not coming back to this world. i am looping ever faster in the world of my thoughts. it‘s very intense and unnerving and there is no escape from my thoughts. it feel like i am trapped here forever. i feel i want to throw up, throw myself up, get out of this experience. i want to get out of my body, out of this experience. it is too much to bear. it‘s so intense and with every thought i am digging myself deeper into it. it‘s like i am biting my own tail and eating ever more of myself only then to wanting to throw myself up.
i am being presented with my own bullshit. i feel how my thoughts are choking me. it becomes so overwhelming, i can‘t take it anymore. i rather die. in that moment, i say: yes, i am not ready to let go (of this material illusion and the stories i tell myself about life and myself). with these words spoken, i surrender, i let go of holding on because i just can‘t anymore, i‘m exhausted. i can’t fight anymore. my body relaxes and i surrender to the universe and whatever it wants to do with me.
and then, my whole body is flooded with love with a love that i have never experienced before. it‘s overwhelmingly beautiful. this must be divine love. i feel i am in paradise. it‘s like a symphony. and with that, my heart is filled with love and it grows and it gets bigger and bigger and it becomes a huge sun and that sun is swallowing up everything, the whole world. it‘s the most beautiful end. a happy end. the end.
here’s a voicemail to a friend capturing my experience (listen to it at 1.5x):
i slowly open my eyes. i am still tripping and my vision hasn‘t returned to normal. everything is buzzing and vibrating. i look at the people around me and reach out to them. i want to feel them, i want to touch them, i want to connect with them. i feel so much gratitude and love. i feel so blessed. how lucky am i that i get to experience this love and clarity about who i truly am.
who knew that from the investment banking floor my seeking journey would ultimately lead me to this living room floor experiencing the truth about life and divine love. you might think i am crazy but i can tell you if you experience what i just had, everything changes.
the universe is pure consciousness, we all are, and we are here on earth to remember this and the path to it is love. not to think, worry or strategise but to live from the heart, from a deeper knowing of who i am and what i am here to do. to follow our calling and dreams because that‘s why we are here. and to live with joy and deep gratitude because there’s nothing to fear. we are pure consciousness. it’s all just an experience until we return home.
what does it all mean?
the thinking mind is here to keep me surviving. but i am not here to just survive, i am here to thrive and the answer to how to do that was very clear: to live from the heart, from this deeper intuitive knowing of who i am and what i am here to do. to not hold back but to be unapologetically fully and authentically expressed. not to think about what i need to do or say but to feel and connect with what i yearn to be and do (which is what i actually am) and then trust that it will all work out beautifully.
my particular journey is one of exploring the edge of consciousness and then share what i encounter with others and support them on their journey if they so wish. that is me. i’m not a banker. i’m an explorer and servant of consciousness. and the way to do this is from a place of joy and love. to feel love, i need to be love.
the mind cannot grasp what is really going on. it‘s trapped in its limitation of what it can perceive through its senses and what it has experienced so far. living from the mind is living from the past and thereby standing in my own way. when i live from a trusting, open, curious and loving place, life and the universe will take care of me and create a life wildly beyond what my mind could ever imagine. that was the loud and clear message from my experience and a blessing to experience.
since my 5-meo experience, i have been going through different phases of integration. it‘s such a surreal and reality-trashing experience that i feel like a new human being and that nothing will ever be the same again. but then of course old habits and patterns have a hard time dying and as time passes i catch myself doing the old vincent. **
that is the real challenge of all psychedelic/spiritual/3d-reality-busting experiences: they show us the real Truth, smacked into our faces, loud and clear but knowing the truth and living it are two entirely different things. and that’s the challenge: changing the way i am and do, trusting myself and remembering that my thinking mind really has no clue what‘s going on.
as steve jobs famously said: „you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. you have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. this approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.“
you are God = pure consciousness
two days after my experience i was lying in the park listening to the song below and suddenly it hit me. i started crying and realised:
it took me 44 years to find what i didn't know i was looking for. God exists. it's in you, and me and all of us and everything you see. you’re God. we all are. when you experience this everything changes. and not a single church is needed. it's you. you're love. we're coming home. i love you.
(replace God with “consciousness”, “source”, “tao”, “what is” or whatever word speaks to you. it’s all the same. and you are it.)
i see you. i know the darkness you are going through at times. i do myself. life is challenging and that’s why we are here: to learn and grow and ultimately find back home. but it’s also not what it seems to be. we are pure consciousness. we are one. we are here to support each other on this journey of remembering. we are all doing our best. i have been working hard on waking myself up from this dream called life. i am here for you if you need me. i am sending you all the love and strength that you need. you can do it. you are powerful beyond measure. you are God.
with profound love, vincent
we are bringing the heart protocol to europe this summer. if meeting the real you is calling you, let me know and i will share more details. just want to chat about life? i’m always happy to hear from you.
want to get a teeny tiny glimpse of how it felt meeting divine love? listen to the end of this song and feel it. i’m not religious* but this song captures it beautifully. life is meant to be a celebration just like this song. all we have to do is to get out of our own way.
last but not least
* religion tells us that God is separate from us that, that he is outside of us and he is judging us. that’s the fallacy and trap. there’s no separation. we are God. we entered the human form and thereby forgot that we are God so we can experience the absence of God/love because we need duality to understand what we are. God is love and we are God and love but how can we understand that except through the absence of it. we need darkness, the absence of light, to understand light. we need ugliness, the absence of beauty, to understand beauty. we need fear, the absence of love, to understand love. but really all is just God/love/light/consciousness.
** sharing my experience with others helps me just as much in keeping it alive for myself. and that’s the most important part. what do i do with this outer-worldly experience? if it doesn’t lead to changes in how i live life there’s no point except for the experience factor. integration, i.e. how i bridge these “two worlds” and bring the learnings back into this life is the most important and it is the part that is widely lacking. most often, after the experience you are left to your own devices.
i am excited to start creating community around experiencing and integrating consciousness expanding experiences. whether it is breath work, meditation, sound healing, psychedelics, spiritual, self inquiry or other experiences, they all lack community and support to help us bring the learnings into everyday life and enable us to make the profound changes bringing more easy, love, joy, gratitude, bliss and all the other good stuff into our lives.
this summer, we are embedding the powerful heart protocol (a more gentle experience than 5-meo-dmt) into a multi-day retreat experience and thereby seeding a community that allows us to all experiment, expand and embody together supporting each other in a safe and trusted space. personal and spiritual growth will thereby get a whole lot easier, more powerful and hopefully a lot more fun too. everything is better together. we are meant to grow together.
57/ 5-meo-dmt: experiencing full Reality