The Greatest Expansion of Human Consciousness: Healing Trauma, Division, and Finding Love in the Chaos

We are living in the greatest expansion of human consciousness history has ever seen. And yes, it’s messy. It’s loud. It’s scary. But it’s also the doorway to something better - if we walk through together. As a psychiatrist, therapist, and consciousness healer I’ve watched thousands turn their attention to their own inner worlds - something no prior generation even knew to do.

If we go back just a few generations there was an absence of attention on people’s feelings and inner worlds. Children were “to be seen and not heard.” People’s primary attention was on “what would the neighbors think?” Children were hit to correct behavior as the standard approach in child rearing. Beatings passed down like heirlooms going back every generation through all of human history.

No one ever said, Hey, what’s really hurting? Because no one had ever said it to them. So we built a culture of denial. Repression. Projection. Hurt people hurting the ones they love the most.

Until the sixties cracked the lid—psychedelics showed us the mind isn’t granite, it’s vapor. Then came the clampdown. Then, finally, the science: ketamine heals. Psilocybin heals. MDMA heals. Compassion heals. Mindfulness heals. Two things actually re-wire the brain—consciousness-expanding medicines and the science of self compassion. There is profound healing currently occurring for so many on a scale never before seen.

At the same time we are all living in the post-traumatic state from COVID. The pandemic threw us all into survival mode—fight, flight, freeze.

We each have three minds: on one side rational, on the other side emotional, and wise mind in the center having access to both. Then there is Trauma mind which lies out beyond emotional mind with no access to clear, critical thinking in rational mind.

The reality of our default mind is that 90% of our thoughts are distortions. The core distortion in thinking is all or nothing thinking. Right vs wrong, good vs bad, fair vs unfair. Each of us and reality are far too complex for this type of thinking to ever be effective in navigating our intrapersonal and external lives in the world.

And now this thinking has transformed into us vs them. That’s why everything feels broken. Not because it is - just because we’re seeing through cracked lenses. And certain forces love that. A divided house doesn’t stand.

The cure isn’t out there. It’s in us. Pause. Notice the critic - judging, labeling, comparing. Don’t react to these thoughts and the associated feelings, especially anger. Let them pass.

The mind judges on the level of “what”. Drop below the words someone says. Get curious about the “why”. What’s the wound behind the anger? What’s the fear behind the uncertainty? How did they come to have this perspective? It’s there where people can connect, as most people in my experience want the same thing: security for themselves and their loved ones so they can experience as much love and joy amidst all of life’s challenges.

Mindfulness is having an open curious stance towards the events unfolding within and without. Self-compassion is being in the space of compassion and love for oneself and others. Start with yourself to catch a breath and a moment of calm.

None of this is Pollyanna. It is fierce love. Compassion with clear boundaries. There are unwell people in the world lost in their unwell minds, as we all just learned with the release of The Epstein Files. Move through the world with compassion - but only to those who respect others’ autonomy and freedom. Those who would not violate anyone physically. Freedom includes letting people believe what you hate, as long as it doesn’t hurt.

So in this time of the tectonic shift of the mass awakening of consciousness the chaos that we are seeing and hearing about every day is turbulence? It’s labor pains. The old world’s dying. The new one’s gasping for air. Be the oxygen. Choose love anyway. Hold people accountable, yes—violence gets no pass. But still choose love. That choice? It’s equanimity. It’s self-actualization. The deepest freedom there is. No matter what they tweet, what they storm, what they burn—you stay steady. Not numb. Steady. Alive. Loving. Powerful. The revolution of love starts in your next breath.