For almost a year, I was caught in a cycle of constantly wanting to eat. I love food, and while I had no trouble maintaining my desired body composition, part of my mind was always on food. Most nights, I would overeat. I’d then compensate by fasting until the following afternoon.
I see tremendous benefits from fasting, but not as many benefits when the fasts consistently follow a period of overeating.
Since September, I haven’t overeaten once. I’ve released the behaviour. As my new eating tendencies become more ingrained, any desire to overeat dwindles away.
I feel lighter—physically and mentally, more agile, and while my weight remains the same, my body composition has improved. I’ve noticed some other profound developments as well:
1) I’m becoming increasingly synesthetic, especially with my perception of sound.
2) I’m experiencing the future in fragments prior to its arrival.
Let me dive into each a little further.
1) I’m becoming increasingly synesthetic, especially with my perception of sound.
In case you’re unfamiliar, synesthesia is when you perceive stimuli with a sense you wouldn’t traditionally perceive that stimuli with. E.g. you see sound. Or, taste the colour red.
For me, the synesthesia is most pronounced with sound. I’m seeing it. Especially when I listen to music.
I see sacred geometry, colourful shapes that flower and morph into one another, like a kaleidoscope of visionary art. And, conscious entities.
Wait, what?
Yes, conscious entities. Since an experience during a sunrise at Burning Man 2015, I’ve been regularly seeing and having two-way telepathic conversations with music.
“Michael, you know this feeling? This feeling of bliss and perfection?” the music asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“Well, that’s the teaching we’re sharing with you,” the music spoke as colourful shapes reminiscent of melting lily pads filled my mind’s eye. “This feeling, this joy, it’s always here. We’re always here. That’s why you’re drawn to the music you love—because you value the truths we share.”
“And you? You are conscious entities that travel through sound? Through music?” I asked.
“Yes. We travel through sound. You might think we are the music, but we’re not quite. We travel through other mediums as well. We’re here to show you that you can always tap into this feeling, and into this love. It’s always accessible. Consider past instances when you’ve been stressed out and thinking about something in particular, but then you play some of your favourite music, and you’re stripped of any anxiety. Then, only love remains.”
“Can I exist in this space indefinitely?”
“Of course. You are, right now, existing in this space indefinitely.”
I smiled.
“You might think that the feeling needs to end, but really, the feeling only needs to end because you think it does.”
“Yes, that makes sense. I have a human perspective. It’s often limited.”
“Indeed, you do. And, indeed your perspective is often limited. But, you keep expanding the perspective. And, you can continue to do so. Some advice: keep being love. Share love. Enjoy yourself. Dance. Play. Have fun. This is all you need to do,” they said as I bathed in warm colours of love and light.
A periwinkle-approaching-sunrise sky coloured the desert horizon as I stood with eyes closed while listening to the sounds, the music, and the beings pouring from the speakers of the Mayan Warrior Bus while Eduardo Castillo DJ’d. And then, I was shown a bird’s eye view of the Burning Man desert: thousands of people scattered about the miles of dusty expanse, hundreds at a time congregating around the various stages and sound systems playing music.
“They’re learning to love. They’re learning to love just being,” they told me about the dancing humans. “At any moment, peace is available to you.”
Jump back to today, December 11, 2016: these conversations with music happen every time I allow them. I see the sound and the wondrous psychedelic geometry every time I allow myself to—both with eyes open, and even more pronounced with eyes closed. And, since eliminating the overeating from my life, the synesthesia has become more apparent and more wonderful.
To be clear, the conversations don’t actually unfold in the English language. I’m merely transcribing the essence of the telepathic impartation between the music and me in English for the purpose of this blog post.
2) I’m experiencing the future in fragments prior to its arrival.
The future hints itself—sometimes, even reveals itself—to me before it arrives. For example, I might perceive something, visually or as a thought, a day before it comes true.
The fragment experience is akin to synchronicity and related to déjà vu, but has its own unique properties.
I’ll share a sequence of examples that happened recently:
Two days ago, I looked to see if the film The Fifth Element was on Netflix. Luc Besson is the creator of The Fifth Element.
Later on in the day, while not thinking at all about my earlier search for The Fifth Element, I was telling my friend Jake about the movie Lucy, and how Lucy feels like I made it. When I watched Lucy for the first time, it felt as though the film and its creator Luc Besson were having sex with my brain.
Since The Fifth Element wasn’t on Netflix, I ended up watching Kill Your Darlings*, which a guy named Dane DeHaan stars in, whom I hadn’t heard of before.
And then yesterday, my friend Dom sends me the trailer for a film called Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The preview starts by saying, “from the creator of The Fifth Element and Lucy, Luc Besson delivers a sci-fi masterpiece starring Dane DeHaan.”
*Interesting side note: Kill Your Darlings is about some of my literary heroes, including Jack Kerouac. It was Kerouac’s On The Road that first inspired me with the desire to write a book. Right after I returned from Big Sur, California this past September, I picked up another of Kerouac’s books called Big Sur. On the first page of the second chapter, he mentions his life as an author and Ayahuasca, which I learned he drank back in the sixties. (For context, in case you don’t know, I’m the author of Ayahuasca: An Executive’s Enlightenment).
So, that’s one anecdote of different fragments coming to me before a solidified whole appeared days later. And here’s another (I actually wrote the following a week ago):
On Friday, I was jumping up flights of stairs. I was dressed in all black, tight workout gear. I looked like a ninja. I then saw this woman running in my direction. She was dressed in all black workout gear and resembled a ninja too. From afar, she looked like my friend Diana. She ran up the stairs and we exchanged the quickest hello.
Was that Diana? I asked myself after she ran away. Surely, it couldn’t have been. Diana would’ve stopped to chat.
So, this morning, I was doing sprints and then found myself jumping stairs again. After a couple flights of jumps, the woman popped into my head again. I asked myself, hmm, was that Diana? No, it couldn’t have been. And, in that exact moment, I saw the same woman running towards me from the opposite direction this time.
We exchanged quick hellos again, and I knew for sure this time that it wasn’t Diana.
Then, while doing my taxes today, I went into the filing cabinet to pull out a folder with my Audi receipts. The moment I opened the folder, my phone rang. It was the Audi dealership calling to invite me to an event on the weekend.
Later on, I had a friend reach out to me about a sexually abusive experience she’d been the victim of. An hour later, my girlfriend Megan messaged me about sexually abusive experiences her friend had just shared with her.
So, that’s another series of anecdotes. And, here’s one more from last night:
While dancing at Coda to the magical music of Blond:ish, this guy named Kevin approached me multiple times over the course of a couple hours. Each time, we had a funny interaction.
Later on, I saw Kevin chatting with my roommate Tim towards the back of the dance floor. I thought about joining the two of them in conversation, but then an experience flashed into my mind. The experience was of Kevin approaching me from my right, and saying, “hey man, come vibe with us.” The flashing experience was like a memory, but not of a memory I had previously experienced.
I continued to dance for a couple of minutes before Kevin’s hand touched me on my right shoulder. “Hey man, come vibe with us,” he said. Word for word.
I agreed, and when I arrived to the back of the dance floor, Kevin tried introducing Tim and me, not realizing that we lived together.
There are countless other fragment anecdotes as well, and they’re occurring more profoundly recently, which I intuit has something to do with me ridding of my tendency to overeat.
Now, before I finish the post, I want to comment on causation versus correlation. I’ve learned a great number of lessons and have made significant changes to my life since September. I’m feeling more aligned and more true to myself. So, I’m not suggesting that getting rid of overeating will cause any of the aforementioned results. But, I intuit that my ridding of overeating has greatly influenced and enhanced these experiences. And, I believe that by evolving beyond the behaviours we know are holding us back, we can tap into abilities we were previously unaware of.
A simple analogy would be: consider being out of shape. If you get yourself in shape, you’ll likely be able to run faster. Now, consider being out of alignment with your truest self (i.e. being unaligned with the version of yourself you really want to be). If you get yourself into alignment, who knows what you’ll be able to do? :)