Peak experiences—whether from plant medicine, meditation retreat, spiritual emergency, or spontaneous awakening—have a way of feeling conclusive. Like you’ve finally broken through, seen the truth, become the person you were always meant to be. The clarity is so profound, the shift so undeniable, that it’s easy to believe the transformation is complete.

For me, rather, it’s been that peak experiences transformed me by showing me what transformation could look like. The actual transformation happens in all the ordinary days that follow, in the unglamorous work of integration and learing to walk the path of alignment. I learned this across two very different journeys to Peru for ayahuasca ceremonies, even though written on the wall of the retreat both times were the very clear words: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water” telling us that the work continues, that living is a verb.

We talk about being “awakened,” “healed,” “integrated”—past tense, complete, done. But spiritual transformation is an ongoing practice, a continuous verb. In the process of. A gerund for life. You’re awakening, integrating, healing. Understanding transformation as this continuous practice rather than achieving a completed state changes everything about how you approach the work.

In late September 2021, Danielle and I were lucky to be able to travel Peru for our first ayahuasca ceremonies with Shipibo healers. The experiences for me were profound—encounters with integrity, compassion, and open-heartedness I had buried for decades. The medicine cracked me open and showed me truths about interconnection, about what it means to be human, about the sacred nature of existence itself. I came home utterly transformed in my soul.

I wrote passionately about sacred earth and interconnected systems. I knew things I hadn’t known before. My PhD research changed dramatically. The insights were real, the experiences genuine. But I made a crucial mistake: I thought having the experience was the same as doing the integration work and I fell back into unsupportive routines and mindsets. The impact of our time in the jungle began to fade under my neglect.

I didn’t allow those experiences to fully impact me. I didn’t remember them as true and real—I let them fade into something like dreams or visions, beautiful but not quite solid. I mistook revelation for integration. I tried to convince others of what I’d seen rather than sitting with the slow work of letting my visions reorganize my life from the inside out.

Instead, I was a bottle rocket of positive energy—igniting, soaring, exploding in a shower of the most beautiful sparks, and expecting the whole world to notice. It was completely egoic, this sense that I’d seen something everyone else needed to see, that I’d arrived somewhere and could now operate from this higher understanding.

But emergence without integration wasn’t ever going to stabilize. It scattered. By spring of 2022, what had begun as spiritual opening had turned into a spiritual emergency, and I entered the deepest breakdown of my life.

I thought integration meant intellectualizing what happened—being able to explain the insights, articulate the revelations, maybe even teach others. I thought if I could capture the experience in words, I’d integrated it. I changed jobs rather than do the required inner work. And maybe I thought that if I didn’t remember the experiences, then I wouldn’t really have to grow. I ran from the changes inside of me.

But part of integration is allowing yourself to be impacted. Fundamentally changed by what you’ve experienced. It means remembering your peak experiences as true and real, holding on to them as more than just altered states or beautiful visions that don’t count in “regular” reality.

The peak experience offers itself as a force that can reorganize your life. Integration is saying yes to that reorganization, even when it’s confusing, even when you don’t know where it’s leading.

Psychiatrist Stanislav Grof spent decades documenting how profound spiritual openings, when not properly supported and integrated, can present as what looks like psychosis or mania. The expansion is real, the insights genuine, but without a container to hold and metabolize the experience, it becomes ungrounded, scattered, sometimes dangerous to the person experiencing it.

That’s what happened to me. The medicine cracked me open, but I didn’t have the practices or support to metabolize what I’d seen. The opening itself became a wound.

Three years later, in October 2024, I am grateful that Danielle sent me back to Peru for more work. This time for three weeks—two weeks of ceremony, one week specifically dedicated to integration work.

Everything was different. Not because the ceremonies were more profound, but because I had learned my lesson and understood what needed to happen afterward.

This time, I went prepared to do integration work. I recognized that the peak experiences were just the beginning. I knew I would need support, practices, and the willingness to be impacted rather than trying to manage or explain away what happened.

I allowed myself to remember my experiences as true and real. Not metaphors, not psychological projections, not interesting altered states—but encounters that mattered. Our culture teaches us to dismiss non-ordinary experiences as “just” hallucinations or “just” our imagination. Integration begins with refusing that dismissal.

I allowed myself to live in confusion. After the first trip, I tried to force clarity. This time, I trusted that understanding would come slowly. I sat with not knowing, with things being partially visible, with truth revealing itself in its own time.

I recognized I needed guides and accepted their wisdom. Danielle—who sent me down this time alone because she could see I needed it—had learned to recognize the signs of dissociation and is a strong and loving mirror. My therapist, who understands both trauma and spiritual experience. The lessons from the Shipibo teachers, who taught that the real medicine often continues long after ceremony ends. I allowed these people to help me. I let them impact me.

I was less naive about the shadow work. Peak experiences often come with a honeymoon period where everything feels illuminated. But sustainable transformation requires meeting what’s in the dark too. This time I knew that work was coming and didn’t try to bypass it.

The result? I almost lost my way again—the territory is genuinely difficult—but this time I had practices and people to help me stay oriented. Integration didn’t make the journey easy. It made it possible.

Integration isn’t dramatic. It looks like showing up for therapy appointments. Remembering to eat. Noticing when you haven’t slept. Checking in with your partner about whether you’re making sense. Having Radical Compassion for oneself and others.

It’s the work of translation—taking what you encountered in non-ordinary states and finding ways to live it in ordinary time.

The work isn’t finished. I’m integrating. Still learning, still adjusting, still discovering what those 2021 and 2024 experiences are teaching me. The difference is I now understand that’s how it’s supposed to be.

The real journey is learning to live with what you’ve seen. To let it impact you slowly, gradually reorganizing how you move through the world. To build the support and practices that make transformation sustainable rather than just spectacular.

Integration isn’t optional. It’s where the actual work happens. It’s how awakening becomes a way of life instead of just a memory of something that happened once.

I’m still learning this. Still integrating experiences from years ago, still discovering what they’re teaching me, still making mistakes and finding my way. But what I’ve found consistently is that the real work is not in the vision, but in living with what the vision asks of you.

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This is part of an ongoing series on spiritual integration and personal healing. You can find my writing on organizational healing here.