{"id":11179,"date":"2025-07-18T11:14:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/psychedelics-dreams-energy-intentions-and-the-limits-of-human-comprehension-steve-pavlina\/"},"modified":"2025-07-18T11:14:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-18T15:14:15","slug":"psychedelics-dreams-energy-intentions-and-the-limits-of-human-comprehension-steve-pavlina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/psychedelics-dreams-energy-intentions-and-the-limits-of-human-comprehension-steve-pavlina\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychedelics, Dreams, Energy Intentions, and the Limits of Human Comprehension \u2013 Steve Pavlina"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
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This post may be a little strange since I\u2019m sharing about something I\u2019m experiencing that I don\u2019t really understand. So don\u2019t expect this to make perfect sense. This is what\u2019s unfolding at the edges of my reality, especially while my body is asleep and my mind is dreaming. If that topic doesn\u2019t interest you, or if the word \u201castral\u201d makes you flinch, you can surely skip this.<\/p>\n

One particular surprise from exploring with psychedelics was just how much it shifted my nighttime dreams. I\u2019d say it\u2019s been months since I can recall having what I used to think of as a \u201cnormal\u201d dream, whereby the dream takes the form of a fictional narrative, either alone or with imagined dream characters. I used to have these narrative-based dreams often, and I\u2019ve been good at remembering my dreams for decades. Now those kinds of dreams seem like they\u2019re totally gone. Either that or I no longer remember having them when they occur. I can still vividly recall having other types of dreams now.<\/p>\n

For months now, every dream that I can recall feels very astral in nature, like I\u2019m visiting real places on other planes of existence somewhere in spirit space, not in some mentally imagined dreamscape running inside my brain. I often visit the same astral locations repeatedly across different dreams on different nights.<\/p>\n

Every character that I encounter in these spaces feels like an independent conscious entity, not a figment of my imagination. Often they seem like the spirit-level aspects of other incarnated humans or former humans, like a bunch of us are having experiences together while our human bodies are asleep. I feel like I\u2019m visited and exploring areas that are abuzz with lots of conscious social activity.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a long time since saw anything or anyone in my dreams that I could describe afterwards as a fictional dream character. I feel like those types of dreams were a placeholder or a block that\u2019s been removed, and now I\u2019ve somehow been granted more access to explore and remember what\u2019s beyond that old mode of dreaming.<\/p>\n

Attending Astral School<\/h2>\n

These new kinds of dreams really stretch my human mind to make sense of them. They don\u2019t usually translate well into typical narratives, stories, or progressions. They feel like very real, spirit-level explorations and experiences, and they often don\u2019t fit the flow of linear time very well. If I were to cast them into a narrative format, I might describe them as feeling like part of me is going through some form of schooling, training, or testing. When I wake up, I frequently feel that I was just in an astral school or training facility, and I clearly wasn\u2019t the only student there. I\u2019ve often been in spaces where I felt the presence of dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other conscious being roaming about.<\/p>\n

In many of these dreams, there are constructs with many buildings. Some areas feel like enormous university campuses. Other areas feel like parts of larger cities. I know they aren\u2019t made of real buildings in the human physical sense though. I sense that my human mind is interpreting and translating these signals and making them look and feel like buildings. However, part of me also understands that they\u2019re actually constructs made of light or energy of some kind.<\/p>\n

When I wake up most mornings now, my human body feels refreshed as usual. Most of my human mind feels refreshed too. I usually feel good emotionally. However, some part of me also senses that I\u2019ve been working hard on something all night long, and that part feels a bit fatigued from whatever I was doing while my body was sleeping. That fatigued feeling usually goes away after an hour or two though. I\u2019m not even sure it\u2019s any real kind of fatigue. I think my human mind is just trying to make sense of the experience, and it\u2019s casting its perceptions into an expectation that I probably ought to feel tired since I appeared to be doing extensive mental work (perhaps learning or studying) while ostensibly sleeping. Another part of me tries to see through the illusion of this expectation. My human mind is caught in the middle, wondering if it really does have some accumulated fatigue from these nighttime experiences and if so, where it\u2019s coming from.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m usually unable to remember what kinds of subjects, lessons, or schooling is actually occurring during these dreams. Sometimes I have a sense that it\u2019s loosely tied to a familiar subject like geometry, chemistry, or history. The feeling that I was engaging in something mathematical is especially common.<\/p>\n

Simulation Dreams<\/h2>\n

Another common type of dream I have is like a recurring simulation. It feels like my brain is acting like a computer, and it\u2019s being fed a stream of data with slight variations for internal testing or training purposes. My experience of these dreams is like living through a simple scenario over and over again, like dozens of times, with slight variations each time. Sometimes the events are different, and sometimes my responses are different. It\u2019s a bit light experiencing the movie Groundhog Day where the same situation is repeated and different options are explored on each cycle. Usually the time slices are much shorter though, so instead of reliving the same day, it\u2019s like reliving the same couple of minutes.<\/p>\n

Part of me wonders if these dreams are interpretations of mental processes that my human brain is doing in the background while I sleep. Perhaps I\u2019m just becoming more away of these mental simulation processes. I\u2019m not sure.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t recall having these kinds of dreams before exploring psychedelics. Now they are quite common.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t call these dreams bad per se. They can be interesting. They can also feel repetitive and tedious, like I\u2019m caught in a time loop and must repeat the same type of event for hours. There is no sense of having to achieve any particular standard to escape the loop. It feels like I\u2019m exploring an array of options, so that perhaps I have access to more of these options while I\u2019m awake.<\/p>\n

Often the scenarios running through my mind in these dreams seem related to current events. Other times they seem more fanciful in nature.<\/p>\n

Lately these kinds of dreams have been occurring less often while the astral ones have been increasing in frequency.<\/p>\n

No Going Back<\/h2>\n

I have the sense that I\u2019ve turned a page here and that this shift in my dreams is probably going to be permanent. I don\u2019t think the old dream format is ever coming back now. I feel like I\u2019ve left it behind and that I\u2019m continuing to move further away from it. My new normal seems to be having very astral-feeling dreams, and the energy work feels more front-and-center and more real.<\/p>\n

Now when I go to bed each night, I feel like another part of me will be waking up in astral space to go to school or attend some kind of training. Some dreams take the form of attending spirity conferences at spirit-level convention centers. They feel like big ballrooms sometimes, even though I know they\u2019re non-physical.<\/p>\n

This has become a consistent and pervasive part of my nighttime reality. I don\u2019t feel like I can just switch off that awareness now, like I can\u2019t really unsee or un-realize what\u2019s coming through now. I don\u2019t really want to go back now anyway. I\u2019d rather keep stretching forward into this space and see if I can make more sense of it. It definitely makes me curious about what I\u2019m actually experiencing while my human body is asleep.<\/p>\n

Sometimes these other types of dreams are so long and involved that it makes a night feel like a few days in duration. Other times I\u2019ve had the experience of waking up at midnight or 1am and being stunned that only 2-3 hours have passed since I went to bed.<\/p>\n

I feel that my human mind tries to cast these experiences into a linear flow of some sort. However, it often struggles to assemble the overall experience into a sequence that makes sense, so I often awaken with memories that include repetitive loops or nonsensical time sequencing. I figure that what I\u2019m actually experiencing doesn\u2019t adhere to linear human time, yet my mind is trying to project it into a linear flow of event-based memories.<\/p>\n

Bypassing Human Mental Limits<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve been holding some intentions to be able to see more of what\u2019s really happening while dreaming and for my human mind to develop more astral-aligned or flexible ways of interpreting the information that\u2019s flowing through from this direction. I feel like my mind keeps trying to cast these experiences into forms that are still too human though. The human projections of these experiences don\u2019t make much sense. It\u2019s like I\u2019m trying to understand experiences that simply don\u2019t have reasonable translations into human-level thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and memories. If feels like I\u2019m trying to understand an image that\u2019s been compressed down to just 12 pixels. It looks like a blur, yet I know it\u2019s trying to represent something more complex.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been trying to open and stretch my mind to think more astrally and to allow the data to remain more astral in nature. See if my mind can learn to sense and think better on that level without trying to translate everything into human. I\u2019m discovering that this is a very interesting kind of intention to explore, like I\u2019m onto something here. I feel that it\u2019s gradually expanding the range of what I can experience and remember, and it\u2019s also increasing just how mysterious it it is try to make sense of these dreams afterwards.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve made a lot of progress in thinking more like an energy being, which has been good for my human life too. Now I\u2019m trying to see how I might be able to stretch this way of thinking even further, especially in terms of being able to open up more astral-level senses. Focusing on sensing (rather than interpreting) seems to be helping. I feel like I\u2019m starting to observe a wider range of frequencies that don\u2019t readily translate so directly to my physical human senses. It\u2019s like some part of me on the astral level is slowly blinking its astral eyes open.<\/p>\n

These other senses are kicking in more while I\u2019m awake now too. Like I\u2019ll be making lunch, and I can feel something going on astrally at the same time. It\u2019s usually a faint sensation, and it\u2019s gradually getting stronger. I have a pretty clear sense that this will be even more pronounced a year or two from now. Basically it\u2019s this sense that my awareness of and connection to astral space is gradually becoming louder and clearer, both while I\u2019m awake and while I\u2019m asleep.<\/p>\n

Increasing Sensitivity<\/h2>\n

Psychedelic energies visit me pretty much every day now. It doesn\u2019t matter if I take any physical substances. I will feel a surge in some kind of psychedelic energy being present every few hours typically. It\u2019s as if there are psychedelic energy clouds floating all throughout my house, and now and then I walk through one of them and then notice I\u2019m inside its energy field for a while, maybe for 30-60 minutes, sometimes for a few hours. One morning I might feel like I\u2019m attuned to the shroomie network. Another time I\u2019ll recognize MDMA\u2019s energy popping in. On a different day it might be cannabis\u2019 energy. LSD sometimes visits too. Sometimes I feel combos of multiple energies popping in. None of these are bad or threatening experiences. It\u2019s like they\u2019re all just spirity friends popping in to say hi and hanging out for a while. They aren\u2019t human, but they each have a distinct consciousness to them. Sometimes it feels like my reality is filled with psychedelic energy pets. I rather like it. On some level its very comforting to feel so much conscious activity buzzing around me and reaching out to connect.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like I have this always-active inner antenna that\u2019s very sensitive to these frequency ranges now. I don\u2019t know why I pick up these energies when I do. I feel like they\u2019ve probably always been there, and I\u2019m just becoming increasingly sensitive to them, so now I can easily perceive them. It feels like human space is just awash in these signals crisscrossing all through our territory, much like WiFi or radio signals.<\/p>\n

I swear I\u2019m even picking up on these energies when other people are carrying them. While walking around the Psychedelic Science 2025 conference in Denver last month, I often felt like I picked up some energetic eddies while gliding past certain people. That guy feels shroomie. That woman is emitting cannabis vibes.<\/em> Or while talking to a friend who\u2019s done a lot of psychedelics, I feel like I\u2019m sitting in a mild LSD energy cloud when I\u2019m near him. I even feel that way on Zoom calls with him, so it doesn\u2019t seem to require physical proximity.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m trying to figure out other ways to practice engaging at the astral level, including while I\u2019m just going about my day-to-day activities. One way is to simply acknowledge what I\u2019m sensing. Share it aloud with myself. Journal about it. Talk with Rachelle about it. Turn towards whatever I\u2019m sensing and say hi to it. I do this a lot, and it helps. Rachelle and I very often pick up similar signals at similar times.<\/p>\n

Conscious Energy Communication<\/h2>\n

Another exploration I\u2019ve been trying has been to engage with different psychedelic energies by deliberately connecting and communicating with them without taking any substances. Call them in when I want to chat with them about something. I\u2019ve done lots of that in the past. It works very well. I know others who can do this too. It\u2019s actually quite common as people gain experience.<\/p>\n

This week I started trying something I\u2019ve never tried before, which was to deliberately reach out to a new psychedelic energy where I haven\u2019t ever taken the associated substance.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never taken the psychedelic 2C-B, yet I spent some time engaging with and channeling its energy this week, which was amazing. It felt different than anything else I\u2019ve experienced. Oddly its energy signature reminded my of the Stitch character from the movie Lilo & Stitch<\/em>, like this wild, untamed, rambunctious alien force, yet one that also has a huge heart and is immensely loving. It felt like a very powerful energy with an unpredictable side. At some point when I have a chance to actually try it, I can see if it links me to the same energy.<\/p>\n

Rachelle and I both had that experience with San Pedro, where we were able to link up with its energy throughout the week before taking it for the first time. Neither of us had taken any mescaline-containing plants before. After taking it, the energy signature was already familiar to us. It was indeed the same energy that had been reaching out to us for days in advance.<\/p>\n

Exploring with psychedelics has really stretched my relationship with time because now I usually feel the effects flowing in both temporal directions from the moment of taking a physical substance. If it\u2019s a bigger experience, I will usually start intermittently feeling it about a week in advance. This mode of exploration has been full of many surprises.<\/p>\n

I did a bit of probing with mushroom energy to do further Q&A about my dreams since I wanted to get their take on it. They confirmed that my dreams will likely never go back to how they were. Once that veil is lifted, it\u2019s hard to see it coming back down again, especially since I\u2019m too curious about what else is out there now. They also shared that this is a safe zone for me to get more access to explore since it\u2019s outside of the human zone, so I can\u2019t accidentally show people anything they aren\u2019t supposed to see or know yet. The people who aren\u2019t ready for such info will be encoded to dismiss it with relative ease. For them it can just be a dream, a fanciful tale, or the ramblings of some blogger they used to like. I\u2019m sharing this here, however, with the knowledge that some will resonate with it and find it relevant to integrating their own expansive journeys.<\/p>\n

The Practical Side of Being a Psychonaut<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m curious what more will open up here and how I can use what I\u2019m learning about energy flows to apply to my human life as well. These psychonaut explorations keep generating useful and practical insights that I can apply to my human life to good effect. I keep discovering new tools, practices, and ways of thinking that make my human life pretty easy. Yet I\u2019m curious enough that I\u2019m happy to explore pathways that may have no useful human-level application. These types of explorations fascinate me, and I don\u2019t want to be tethered to human-level results, which are all temporary anyway.<\/p>\n

Some lovely benefits that I\u2019ve experienced as a result of these energy-level explorations including gliding through life with positivity, ease, and flow. I\u2019m happy every day. Life takes very good care of me. I\u2019m not stressed, overworked, depressed, or anxious. I don\u2019t need or take any pharmaceutical prescriptions. I feel abundantly motivated and sufficiently resourced to live the kind of life I want. I haven\u2019t needed a job or a boss in 33 years now. I learned to create an energy-based relationship with money that took me down a path that I\u2019ve really enjoyed (shared in detail in the 30-day Deep Abundance Integration<\/a> course that may people have appreciated\u2026 and the Amplify<\/a> course for the creative side).<\/p>\n

My favorite human-level result isn\u2019t creative or financial though. It\u2019s being in love. To me this is the best part of living as a human. I get to spend every day with a woman I deeply love and who deeply loves me. We just love the heck out of each other. I\u2019m also very consciously practicing linking and working with love energy. It\u2019s very much like a psychedelic energy to me too. Really to me, all of these psychedelic energies are different subsets of love energy. Money is a form of love energy too<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I find it easier to live as a human by realizing that the real me is actually something quite different \u2013 some sort of energy being \u2013 and I\u2019m just wearing my human suit while I\u2019m being present to this space. When I make decisions and take actions like an energy being instead of like a human, life works better overall, and it\u2019s easier to experience a pleasing range of frequencies in this human existence \u2013 love, abundance, creative flow, friendship, cuddles, and so on.<\/p>\n

Interestingly I\u2019ve found that the best way to mess up my human life is to think too much like a human and not enough as an energy being. I sense that\u2019s why many of us are actually here though. This is a place where we go to disconnect and take a break from spirit space, so we can immerse ourselves in silly human stuff. Then when we\u2019re ready, we can open up and find our way back to other modes of existence. We all know these human lives are temporary. Be as human as you want to be. I love playing human too. This really is a wonderful place to visit when approached with curiosity, openness, and a towel. Remember not to panic. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Setting Energy-Level Intentions<\/h2>\n

Setting energy-level intentions (as opposed to human-level intentions) can be especially helpful when we\u2019re attuned to our energy-level beingness. For instance, instead of intending a certain amount of money to come into your life, you could intend to create a loving, flowing, abundant, and supportive relationship with the Spirit of Money<\/a>. Treat this energy with love and respect, not with fear or demonization. Invite it to dance with you. You can do the same with other energies like health energy, sex energy, or friendship energy. Then you may see new people flowing into your life as carriers of these energies.<\/p>\n

I think it could have been the intention to work with love energy in the form of psychedelics that also cracked open more awareness of the astral world while dreaming. By setting an energy-level intention, I think I\u2019ve somehow invited some energy-level training to flow through. Or perhaps my human mind is projecting this flow into a training sequence. I feel like my mind may still have the embedded assumption that it needs to be trained with information or skills before it can use those skills. Human minds can be so linear with cause-and-effect relationships sometimes. I\u2019ll keep inviting my mind to loosen up in that regard, so I can enjoy more positive effects without needing to put causes into motion first.<\/p>\n

Stretching Beyond Mental Limits<\/h2>\n

Even these hard-to-comprehend nighttime astral experiences are trickling down into some human-level insights and benefits too. They\u2019re encouraging me to engage with more of what I don\u2019t understand instead of trying to first put together reasoned models based on what I think I know. I\u2019m stretching myself to take small actions in some direction where I don\u2019t really have good models and perhaps never will. I realize that models are another form of limits.<\/p>\n

Do I always need to tether myself to mental models that make sense? No, I can explore past their edges, especially by allowing myself some wiggle room to sense and experience without trying to interpret or assign meaning so much. This is helping me access more expansive data flows that don\u2019t really fit my existing models. I feel this is coming through more abundantly now because I\u2019m consciously opening myself to seeing what I don\u2019t understand and what doesn\u2019t fit cleanly into my human mind.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a struggle for me not to label these experiences as weird or strange. I\u2019m trying to get past that because these labels feel limiting too, like they\u2019re also blocks. It reminds of me of labeling an amount of money as \u201ca lot\u201d \u2013 I learned to only do that if I want to push that amount away since it\u2019s easier to attract and experience what feels normal. So I\u2019m doing my best to catch myself and to allow more room for surprises without mentally pushing them to the outskirts of my reality.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve successfully made that transition with psychedelics. Such explorations used to seem way out there. Now they just seem normal. I enjoy and appreciate them very much, and my life is awash in people who feel similarly.<\/p>\n

Even doing something new that I\u2019ve never done before just seems pretty normal. It\u2019s still a big deal to me to do something new and stretchy, yet it\u2019s also normal to do things that I feel are big deals. Being in love every day is normal for me yet also a big deal. I like having positive big deals in my life that also feel normal.<\/p>\n

The daily sex challenge that I shared about in the integration post<\/a> is another exploration that involves letting go of old limits. It\u2019s been a long journey so far, now 3.5 months. We\u2019ve kept going past the original intention of 100 days \u2013 we\u2019re up to 106 now, and today will be 107 (it feels like a when, not an if, so I\u2019ll let that be my reality for now). This exploration still has some very mysterious aspects to it. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019ll ever be able to come up with great mental models that can explain the full range of these experiences. So part of me just wants to switch off or pause the need to do that and keep advancing further anyway. This is another aspect of life that feels like a big deal and is also normal.<\/p>\n

I want to see if I can allow my human mind to keep advancing even when it\u2019s confused. Can I integrate this much wiggle room into my models of self and reality? I believe so. I imagine that many people working on advanced AI have to make that kind of concession in order to keep showing up to work. They keep advancing what their human minds are incapable of understanding.<\/p>\n

This is a very interesting type of limit to stretch beyond \u2013 the limits of human comprehension.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post may be a little strange since I\u2019m sharing about something I\u2019m experiencing that I don\u2019t really understand. So don\u2019t expect this to make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}