Exercise: Past Peak Experiences
by John W. Cullen

Have paper and pencil handy. Close your eyes and go inside. One stage of going inside is breathing awareness. Become aware of your breathing, of the quiet, rhythmic process of breathing. Become aware of your chest and abdomen expanding and contracting. Extend your awareness to your body through breathing.

Just settle in. Allow your muscles to relax. Relax your legs, the calves and thighs. Put aside any tensions of the day. Allow the abdomen and chest, shoulders and arms to relax. Consciously let go of the tension in your body. Let your whole body relax. Let your jaw hang just a little bit. Let it go. Let it all go. Direct your attention now to your tongue and let it relax. Relax the muscles in your face, between your eyes, in the forehead. Relax the area around your eyes. Carry this relaxation to the top of your head. Relax the muscles in your head. Imagine a wave of relaxation flowing through the top of your head, relaxing every muscle and inner organs as well, relaxed and yet alert. The mind is alert.

Now relax your emotions. Sometimes during the day you get caught up in the emotional lives of others. Even though you attempt to remain centered, you may have a residue of feelings. Allow these feelings to come to a state of quiet. Imagine taking these feelings and putting them aside, and imagine your emotional nature as a calm mountain lake--smooth and serene. You may have all kinds of thoughts from the day, work or other people. The mind may still be active. Bring your mind right here, open. Let thoughts come in and out. Slowly bring your mind to a state of relaxed, quiet alertness--the mind that belongs to you, the mind whose thoughts you can direct. Very quietly, gently, still the mind.

Take another trip into the past. Go back and identify a time when you felt extremely good. Take a survey of your past. It may be anything from one minute ago to 15 or 20 years ago. Think of a time when you were really functioning well. In fact it was a peak experience, a time in your life when you felt fully human and all together. Zero in on that time--that peak experience in your life--a time when you were functioning fully. (pause)

And now, not only recall that experience, but go back to it. In your imagination go back to that time when you were having that peak experience, when you were functioning fully, when you were really fully human. Be there now. We can do that in our imagination. Relive that experience. Be aware of what your body was doing. If there were other people present, how were you relating to them? Experience all of your senses, things that you saw, heard, tasted, touched. Allow all of your senses to experience that peak. You are living that peak experience right now. Go fully into the experience physically, emotionally and mentally. Experience the thoughts that you may have had during that experience. Allow your entire personality to be pervaded by this experience that you are reliving at this time.

That experience is gone. You may never be able to live it exactly in the same way, but there is a quality associated with this experience. As you experience this peak, try to get some sense of the quality of the experience. Was there a quality of joy? love? oneness? accomplishment? service? What is the word that defines the quality of this experience? Try to get the essence of that experience in a word that defines the quality.

Once you have the word that represents the essence of this peak experience, allow an image or symbol to emerge that represents that quality, some symbol or image that represents the word that is the essence of that peak experience that you had. Do not rush it. Take your time. When you are ready, and in your own time, open your eyes and take some time to make a few notes about the experience itself and the quality. If you had an image of it, briefly sketch it on the same paper.

We are exploring ways of contacting the Transpersonal. The exercise on peak experience and the quality of that experience can now be part of your present consciousness. For example, if you had an image of that quality, such as bliss, joy, oneness, etc., you can identify with that quality. It is a way of evoking the Transpersonal. You can dialogue with that symbol. Ask it for advice. Take this quality of your peak experience which is a connection to the Transpersonal and see what it can teach you. See what you can learn from it.

Ideally every moment in life has the potential to be a peak experience. Maslow was the most significant researcher on peak experiences. When he started his research in the late 40s and early 50s, he interviewed people who were essentially self-actualizing. One of the things he found was that people who were self-actualizing tended to have peak experiences more frequently and more intensely than the average person. Also many of the peak experiences that people had resulted in a reorientation in their life.

Using the egg model, it is as if at that moment in time, energy from the higher unconscious flows into us and pervades our entire being. Where does this come from? It is not an everyday experience. When it does occur, there can be integration, a reorientation, a redirection of one's life at that time.

URL= http://two.not2.org/psychosynthesis/exer/ppe.htm
Last revised: November 18, 2004.