When you start exploring states of consciousness that go beyond everyday awareness, you’ll find yourself navigating a landscape of language – altered, non-ordinary, expanded, expansive – and at first, they all seem to be talking about the same thing.
As I began studying consciousness more deeply, I realized how nuanced this language can ne. These words are often used interchangeably, but each one carries its own energy, its own history – and that matters. The language we use doesn’t just describe our experiences; it shapes how we interpret them and how open we are to their potential. And in a field as personal as consciousness, that distinction becomes more than just semantics – it becomes sacred. The language we use can either limit or liberate our understanding.
The term altered states of consciousness was first introduced in the 1960s by psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig. He defined it as any mental state that significantly deviates from what we’d consider normal, alert, waking consciousness—whether that’s through psychological shifts, physical conditions, substances, or spontaneous experiences. It’s a broad definition, and intentionally so. It includes everything from deeply transcendent mystical experiences to states caused by physiological illness or psychological distress.
But this term – altered – often carries a subtle negative undertone. It implies that something has changed in a way that feels unnatural or distorted, rather than simply different. And that implication matters, especially when talking about states that, for many people, can be deeply healing, expansive, and transformative.
Stanislav Grof, one of the most influential figures in transpersonal psychology, later introduced the term non-ordinary states of consciousness as an alternative. It was a step in a better direction – softening some of the negative connotation that altered often implies. Grof noted that altered can sound like a deviation from health or wholeness, whereas non-ordinary feels more neutral. But even this term is still somewhat vague. It tells us that something is different, but not whether that difference is helpful, healing, disorienting, or divine. Accordingly, it still does not fully express the positive, expansive potential that many of these states hold.
That’s why I often gravitate toward terms like expanded or expansive consciousness—language that reflects the potential these states hold. Grof referred to these specific experiences as holotropic states, meaning “oriented toward wholeness.” These are the states that help us remember who we are beneath the surface. They connect us to something greater and allow us to experience life with a renewed sense of depth, clarity, and meaning.
These states don’t just alter our awareness—they open it. They create space to explore, to reconnect, and to transform. And in that way, the words we use to describe them aren’t just labels, but instead shape how we relate to these experiences whether we see them as disorienting or as doorways to deeper truth.
In my own experience, I’ve come to know these states of consciousness not as altered or non-ordinary, but as deeply expansive. They don’t feel like a distortion of reality or a departure from self, but rather a returning – an unfolding into something more whole. These states do not always require external substances or extreme circumstances to access. Often, they arise by turning inward, through meditation, mindfulness, stillness, or simply being present,
In these moments of quiet awareness, I feel a profound sense of connection. I become acutely aware of my humanness, yet at the same time feel myself stretching beyond it. I feel connected to my own self, to this vessel that my soul resides in, to the emotions moving through me, to those I love, and also beyond to something vast and universal. It’s not a stepping away from reality, but a widening of it. A soft dissolving of boundaries. A gentle transcendence of the personal to the transpersonal.
This connection of not something non-ordinary, but rather an innate characteristic of existence itself. In these states, I’m not escaping who I am in an alternate reality, but rather I am expanding into the fullness of what I already am.
These moments of expansion may look different for everyone—sometimes quiet and subtle, other times overwhelming in their magnitude—but they often carry a shared quality: a sense of remembering something we’ve always known.
So I invite you to turn inward and reflect: When have I felt my awareness expand beyond the ordinary? What did it feel like in my body, my mind, my heart? And what, if anything, did I connect to in that space beyond myself?
Allow this to be a space of gentle remembering—not to analyze, but to feel into the edges of what’s already within you.
References
Grof, S. (2019). The way of the psychonaut: Encyclopedia for inner journeys (Volume One). MAPS.
Threads of Consciousness 