The Annual Breakthrough Society & Temporary Bubble of Self-Discovery | Perception Paradigms - Part 1

Psychedelic festivals are curious.

On the first day we all come from what people commonly refer to as "reality" - we lead somewhat "normal" lives, we have families, societal responsibilities, problems, challenges, hangups, hopes and dreams.

We all have our unique story and history, and somehow or other we found psychedelic culture to be where we feel at home - so much so that we move mountains at least once a year to be free for a week or two to meet up with all the other people of the tribe out in nature next to our temporary dancing temples.

Andwhen we meet we go through a tremendous journey of the mind together, somehow knowing that all of us share a secret insight that we normally don't talk about much with people "outside" - largely because people who have never left the common mode of perception cannot or don't want to relate to what we found here at these gatherings.

And so, we cheer, we braze ourselves and we marvel at what is possible when we meet with likeminded people of all backgrounds sharing this love for exploring the psyche and ourselves. Even and especially when it gets... tough.

The start is always slow but within the first day the common mask of being a regular uniform human being is slowly taken down. We go deeper, and deeper.

The first night comes. Some choose to go far out of their minds, while others choose to take it slow - but it's in the air, the sense of people perceiving more of their surroundings and each other is more palpable than the smell of a good bakery in the dark morning hours.

And over the next days we actually start to work with it - consciously. We meet more people of our tribe we have never met, we share marvellous and mysterious experiences with newfound friends and old familiars, we are there for one another despite not knowing each other's name or story, and we face our own inner darkness on the floor when energies are running wild.

And as the days and nights go on, there is this peculiar sense of... getting used to a new normal.

After all, all people you'll meet at a psy festival have these common interests and the ego finally can and finally does start trusting everyone like we usually only would a brother or a sister. A good festival is that trust-fostering.

We choose to be vulnerable as the societal momentum of this microcosm-society starts to pick up and ultimately crescendoes. Until we find ourselves in an energetic space where new questions arise and we look at each other in astonishment and utter intensity, wanting to hear the best answers for the unuttered but unmistakable questions that finally arose while doing our best to tame our conditioning and ego-mode of living that has been hammered into all of us since our birth judging everything relentlessly out of sheer habit we all want to overcome because it leads us nowhere. I think it is the reason why trips among human beings can get so tough - the confusing of thought with "my" thought . The confusing of resonance with "the idea of judging this, that, him or her" and feeling guilty for it in a completely transparent field of sensory perception that everyone shares simultaneously as we work through our conditioned pile of mind-baggage together.

Taking off my clothes among strangers is one thing, but on a psychedelic state of mind I really get a sense of what it is to feel truly naked.

And because of the intensity and the behavioral momentum of trust gained during those few days of being amongst psychedelic people in utter transparency there is a monumentally marvellous experience to be had once we all say goodbye to one another and find ourselves back in our "regular lives" outside our little temporary society bubble we had become so accustomed to over the past week...