Peak Experiences

As I see it, the point of a so-called “Peak Experience” is not the experience itself, but its effect on the whole of your being, which is expressed daily in how you love, work, and feel.  The point is not to “capture” or seize or otherwise rape and possess something beautiful.  The point is to remember, in ways overt and subtle, conscious and unconscious, something that enabled your qualitative gestalt to improve, just a bit.

People get addicted to experiences.  Let us say it is traveling.  If you go out and hitchhike across Asia, and if you left an asshole and came back an asshole, you did less of what matters than someone who patiently learned to work without distraction, or become just a bit less upset about pedestrian things.

People think you can collect experiences.  You can’t.  You either let them transform you, and then carry them with you as a part of your being; or you objectify them and use them to amplify your ego, never an attractive sight.

I want to add as well that as I think about it, there are many, many ways of creating altered states.  Extreme athletics, really good sex, working to exhaustion, being drunk or stoned, being in an artistic zone–even driving long distances.  The ones that are valuable are the ones you choose to allow to alter you in positive ways, such that you are less scared during the day, more willing to listen openly, more affectionate, more positive, more focused, and happier.