There is a silent, beautiful world that holds everything. It was just for a moment, but at least, I saw it.
In Chinese, there’s a saying: “follow the mainstream” — to simply do what most people around you do. I used to be like that: small town in China, top university, 12 years in Big Tech, house in Silicon Valley, married with two daughters.
Then I left the mainstream for what I’d call a “smaller stream.” I quit tech to do inner-growth work and become a coach. I joined a spiritual sect, became a Tibetan Buddhist for a while, then rebelled and left. It’s been a journey from “I should” to “I love” and “I choose.”
Recently, I had an even “smaller stream” kind of experience: a deep spiritual journey with magic mushrooms. It was like a very special dream, and I’d like to share it with you.
Before the journey, I went in with questions about the meaning of life: What is the soul? What am I destined for? How do I find happiness? Those were the kinds of things I was seeking answers for.
After the dream, and after integrating it into my daily life, I got answers to all of that — and even more reflections and changes I hadn’t expected. This article is about those, in four chapters plus a PS:
- A Silent, Colorful World
- Meaning and Depression
- Facing the Fear of Death and Trauma
- I Am Bigger Than Who I Thought I Was
PS: Who is this kind of experience for?
A Silent, Colorful World
A Colorful World
In the beginning, I felt a little dizzy. Then, slowly, I started to see: the air was layer upon layer, slice upon slice, half-translucent, with a faint rainbow of colors. There were shapes of birds, shapes of flowers, in clusters, in layers. It was a bit like a fairyland, with mountains and clouds. Very ornate.
It reminded me of Dunhuang in China, and also had the vibe of an ancient Egyptian tribe — yellow and deep blue gemstones, curved, multicolored light.
Later, I realized: the substance didn’t give me those experiences. They came out of my own consciousness. Which means:
I already had all of this beauty inside me.
After the dream, when I slow down and look at the sky or the trees, I can still touch a bit of that feeling. It also helps me understand why children seem to see a brighter version of the world. Maybe the underlying layer of the world really is this beautiful.
We’ve just forgotten, distracted by the surface.
Silence
I had gone in hoping to experience happiness — less worry, less despair, less sadness. What I got instead was:
A state with no despair, no sadness, not even happiness.
But it wasn’t empty or cold. It was silent, and beautiful. A single note from a wind chime felt like it passed through my entire being — and oh, it was exquisite. It was a state that could hold every emotion. A kind of stillness, a kind of silence.
In daily life, I usually feel that emotions matter, happiness matters, mindset matters, dreams matter. But when I dropped into a place where none of these existed and none of these were the point, I was stunned. No concepts, no emotions, no cognition — beyond all of it, bigger than all of it.
“Wanting to be happy” is our instinct, the drive that keeps us alive. But when we treat it too much as a goal, the bar keeps rising. We don’t notice that:
There’s a state that transcends happiness itself.
I think this is what different religions point to — God, true nature, true self, “the other shore,” emptiness. It was like a rocket took me there, and then I returned to ordinary life on Earth.
I’ll never forget it. I’ll spend the rest of my life integrating it.
In the dream, our normal daily life felt more like the illusion. When our minds are full of self-criticism, worry, and inner friction — isn’t that the illusion?
Reality versus illusion is just a perception, a concept. What matters is being present, right here.
At first, this state and my daily life felt split — the contrast was too sharp. Later, I realized it wasn’t about turning daily life into the dream. It was about bringing more of that state into ordinary moments.
It’s like knitting a sweater. I was given a ball of golden yarn, and I’m weaving it into the everyday sweater of my life. For example, I now meditate with natural sounds like om or wind chimes. When I look at another person, I genuinely see that they are so much bigger than their emotions and thoughts.
Slowing Down
Time felt strange. Very slow, and also very fast.
Slow, in that I could see the air flow, see a hand move, like rows of patterns rippling one by one. Fast, in that hours passed in what felt like a moment.
In the first few days after the dream, walking to the park in the morning, I could feel that slowness. It was as if everything was connected — and when everything is connected, movement naturally becomes slow. Humans and animals are lucky species: we move fast, and in doing so we’ve pulled the world along with us at our speed.
In the days right after, when I meditated with music, my arms would start to flow on their own, as if my whole body had melted into its surroundings. Meditation became much easier to sink into, and finally, after all these years, I actually know what I’m doing. Seriously.
Our normal lives are so fast that we can’t even feel it.
The sense of being connected to everything has always been there.
We just walk too fast and miss it. I’ve heard people online say “slow down, slow down” so many times it had become a cliché. This time, I felt it from the inside. And now I’m practicing it in real life.
A Shift in How I See My Family
Recently, I’ve been thinking about my parents coming to visit. If they knew about some of the things I’ve been doing, would they be angry or disappointed? I’ve felt that before, when I left tech.
I imagined my dad about to scold me. Before, I would have instinctively resisted. Now, I think I’d look him in the eye and just want to say first:
“Dad, thank you. I’ve never told you this, but I love you so much.”
And then my tears started flowing.
After experiencing that very, very slow world, all that rebellion, sadness, and anger felt so small. Not just small — even we humans felt small.
As an individual, I am so lucky to be able to feel such deep love in a world this vast.
Meaning and Depression
The Meaning of Life and the Soul’s Mission
In that state, I asked, “What is the meaning of life?” I didn’t get an answer. What I felt instead was: the world is already so colorful — far more interesting than “the meaning of life.”
I looked back at the stages I’d been through with this question:
Stage one: I desperately wanted to know the purpose of life, firmly believing there was an external mission waiting for me.
Stage two: It seemed I didn’t need to find it. Life has no inherent meaning; everything is what I define it to be.
Stage three: Coaching brought me here — the meaning of life is to live out the self deep in your heart.
This dream gave me a new stage. I realized the world is already so beautiful; I just usually can’t see it. Standing in front of a world this colorful, the question “what am I living for?” suddenly didn’t matter. And it seemed like the question had been backwards all along.
It’s not “what is living for?” but “living is the purpose.” Life itself is the meaning.
If we overthink “meaning,” it can hide a kind of fear — a need to establish meaning in order to feel safe. When I felt how beautiful the world is, that fear dissolved. The search for meaning that had haunted me for years finally untied itself — life itself is the meaning.
I also wanted to see my soul, but what I saw was more of myself. I’d realized before that the soul is the self, and this dream confirmed it. So what about “mission”? The answer: every moment is already so colorful — what do you need a mission for?
There didn’t seem to be one specific, grand mission. Just to see the world as it really is — it is colorful.
I could see how all these years of chasing concepts like soul, mission, and past lives had been a huge energy drain.
I’m still interested in these topics. I’m just not as attached to them anymore.
The Purpose of Suffering
So what is the purpose of suffering? I didn’t get an answer, and I no longer needed one. What I felt was: this silent state can hold all sadness and despair, and can hold all happiness too. It’s bigger than any emotion.
The world is so much bigger than the negative emotions and suffering I’d thought defined it, and so much more colorful. I just hadn’t known. Many people don’t.
Not making enough money? Enough to live on is enough. Not as good as others? Eh, it’s really not such a big deal.
Reading these sentences now, after the dream, they sound a bit hollow — but in that moment, they were true.
What I can weave into reality is this: look beyond the suffering, and stop insisting on asking for its purpose. Maybe the suffering itself is the purpose. When I ask “what is this for?”, underneath is my resistance, my frustration with its existence.
When I allow suffering to exist, it stops blocking me from finding ways to see the bigger world.
Depression Melting, and a Hope That Won’t Fade
In the days after the dream, my depression and sadness dropped sharply — as if they’d evaporated.
I could clearly see that my depression had been tied to questions like “what am I living for?” and “why is there so much suffering?” — the search for meaning and purpose behind it all.
This silent state showed me the underlying fabric of the world, like I’d been given a god’s-eye view of the truth.
It gave me a hope that will never fade.
Once I had that certainty, depression didn’t need to exist anymore. I suspect many friends struggling with depression are also looking for a hope and a truth at the edge of the world. This time, I got to feel it immersively.
Facing the Fear of Death and Trauma
Looking at Myself in the Mirror
In the dream, I looked at myself in the mirror — just looking.
I could see my skin become smooth, then very old, then smooth again, as if time were moving forward and backward. That single moment contained both past and future.
When I closed my eyes, I saw something like an elder grandmother from a tribe, but I couldn’t see her face. It felt like an illusion, and also like reality.
I cried.
Tenderness for everything I’d been through. Gratitude for where I am now.
In real life, I don’t think I’d ever stared into my own eyes in the mirror for that long. After the dream, I can. I can see the freckles on my face and the wise white strands in my hair, without sadness.
Seeing My Younger Self and My Grandpa Again
In the dream, I also thought of my grandpa. Lately I’d been feeling more and more grief about his passing — the regret of not getting to say goodbye, of not getting to say I loved him. I remembered being that kid lying on the floor at his house, watching the light filter through the roof tiles.
When I closed my eyes in the dream, he seemed to become a kind of tribal elder. I cried again, because I felt:
Protection. Love. And reunion.
Now, when I think of my grandpa, the grief is much lighter. It’s as if this deep spiritual experience melted a lot of it away.
Healing the Fear of Death
With that silence that could hold everything, I saw the younger me who didn’t know what life was for — the kid who didn’t even want to live past 40. I’d never been able to understand how a small child could have such a “pessimistic” view.
That state had stayed with me, and it had contributed to my 38-year-old fear of death. I gently told her:
“It took me more than 30 years to see what the world is really like. It’s so beautiful. It’s okay that you didn’t see it back then. I see it now.”
After I said it, my tears poured down onto my shirt.
It turns out that healing the fear of “why am I here?” also healed the fear of dying.
Face to Face With Fear
In that state, I found I could face my fears directly: fear of sadness, fear of despair, fear of not being as good as others, fear of not making money…
They didn’t feel as big anymore. Because I had seen the world as it really is.
The colors, the gems, the flowers in that experience felt like the visualized form of the loving people in my real life.
The gems and flowers were like my Chinese medicine doctor, my grandpa, my coach, and the love I carry in my heart for the world.
Every time I realize this, I’m moved. I’d already felt all of that love — I just couldn’t put it into words. The dream gave it a clear form.
Back in reality, it’s not that the fears and worries have all vanished. It’s that I see them more clearly. And I also see, more clearly, the self I want to live out: an excellent coach, an honest and vulnerable creator. When I take genuine action in those directions, the volume of the fears really does turn down.
I Am Bigger Than Who I Thought I Was
I Am the World, and I Am the Awareness
Through much of the dream, I forgot who I was. And at the same time, I could observe everything that was happening — see the colorful world, feel the silence.
At one point I “saw” an Egyptian pyramid scene without needing eyes, as if my existence itself could see, and leap into it.
I am the seeing, the awareness itself.
I am myself, and I am the world.
After the dream, when I watch TV shows, I notice the instruments in the background music more, and I get less caught up in the plot.
Sometimes I like being alone. There’s no loneliness in it — it’s like having an inner companion. It doesn’t stop me from meeting friends for dinner either; those meetups are for myself, and also to live out my love for them.
How to Live Out Myself
I also asked: the world is already this colorful, so what should I do?
What I felt was: just be there, peacefully. That worn-out cliché — “every moment is wonderful” — this time, I actually felt it.
How should I live out myself? I didn’t get an answer. I got a vibe:
Play. And always remember what the world is really like.
Now I deliberately make more time to just be. Stare at the sky. Sit with my eyes closed. Listen to soft music while holding my daughter. I scroll on my phone a lot less.
Coaching and “Negative” Emotions and Thoughts
As a coach, this experience showed me that coaching isn’t only about working on ourselves — facing emotions, untangling mindsets, building action. At its core:
Coaching is about letting ourselves walk into a bigger world.
It doesn’t shove truth and wisdom in your face; it invites us to experience and to see. As a coach, my job is to hold the space with compassion — to trust that the person in front of me already has her own answers, and can walk into a larger world where she experiences the beauty and love that belong to her.
When we try to analyze “why” a negative emotion or thought is there, or trace its origins — even when we strongly think “I want to break through it” — the focus is still on it. We’re falling in.
When I can see a bigger world and a bigger self, those negative emotions and discomforts become much smaller.
Because the main character has changed — from what we want to destroy, to the bigger world and the bigger self.
As we say in coaching: focus on what is already there, not on what is missing.
PS: Who Is This Kind of Experience For?
Experience and Integration
The biggest changes I felt from this dream: depression, loneliness, fear of death, and the habit of doomscrolling on my phone all dropped sharply. If you’d told me before that a single magical experience could shift all of that, I would have said you were kidding. Now I’ve felt it firsthand.
Beyond depression and anxiety, this kind of experience is also well suited to people who have been doing inner-growth work for years and want to explore themselves and the world more deeply.
There’s a growing body of clinical research using it to treat conditions like PTSD and OCD, and to help cancer patients ease their fear. For more on this, I highly recommend the documentary How to Change Your Mind, available on Netflix.
For this kind of dream, a few elements really matter: a safe space, an experienced sitter, and someone to help integrate the insights into real changes in your life.
As a friend of mine put it: “Just collecting spiritual experiences without integrating them into life leaves a big gap, and can even become spiritual bypassing. On the other hand, coaching without deep spiritual experience can stay on the surface. Someone who has both deep practice and coaching skills is much better equipped to help others integrate.”
I’m lucky to have a coach like that, who supported me in weaving this experience into my life. I want to pass that forward — supporting people who have had deep spiritual experiences to integrate them into reality. I’ve added Spiritual Experience Integration to my coaching service. If it feels like a fit, there’s a free intro session to try it out — feel free to message me.
Finally, I want to say to myself and to you on the other side of the screen: it’s okay to have things you’re afraid of. It could be depression, work anxiety, feeling less than others, not making money, your body not feeling well, or something else entirely.
But the dream told me: the world, and we ourselves, are so much more interesting and so much more colorful than those fears.
It was just for a moment – but at least, I saw it.
🙏 Thank you: to the friends and teachers who led me to where I am, to the sitter who held space for my dream, and to the coach who supported me in integrating it. Because of all of you, I’m writing this article, so one more person can get to see these experiences.
– Meng, 2026