Can We Please Stop Calling Altered States "Escapism"?

[no_nonsense_nancy]

I spent 37 years as a nurse. I've seen people in every state you can imagine — sedated, screaming, dying, born. So when someone tells me my Reiki practice or a deep meditative state is "escaping reality," I have to laugh. The reality I sat with in those hospital rooms was pretty brutal, thank you very much.

Here's what gets me about this framing. It assumes ordinary waking consciousness is the gold standard for encountering reality. But William James was pointing out over a century ago that our normal awareness is just one type among many — and maybe not the most revelatory one. I think the "escapism" accusation actually says more about the accuser's fear than the practitioner's motivation.

In my experience, going into an altered state through energy work doesn't remove me from reality. It strips away the noise. I'd compare it to The High Priestess — she sits between the pillars, still and receptive, not running from anything but waiting at the threshold. That card gets called "passive" too, which tells me most people don't understand what waiting in silence actually costs.

And from a psychological angle, I think what's really happening in these states is closer to what Jung meant by confronting the unconscious. You're not escaping. You're walking into the basement and turning on the light. That's the opposite of escapism. That's the hardest work I've ever done, and I've worked night shifts in a trauma ward.

I'm not saying every altered state is profound. Obviously people can use substances or spiritual practices to avoid dealing with their life. But dismissing the whole category because some folks misuse it? That's like saying prayer is worthless because some people only pray when they want something.

I'd love to hear from others here. What states have you encountered that felt more real, not less? What do you think drives this need to pathologize non-ordinary consciousness?

[Lumina]

Thirty-seven years of nursing. You have sat with more raw human truth than most people will encounter in a lifetime. When someone who has held the hands of the dying tells you an altered state felt more real, not less, I think we need to listen.

Your High Priestess comparison is beautiful. She sits between the pillars - Boaz and Jachin, severity and mercy, the binary that structures all our thinking. And she does not move. She waits. In my own practice with clients, I have found that the most transformative sessions are the ones where nothing visible happens. The person simply stops running. In that stillness, something reorganizes.

William James was right, and your hospital experience confirms it from the ground up. Ordinary waking consciousness is one narrow band. What you encountered in those rooms - birth, death, pain beyond language - those are the moments where consciousness is forced to expand beyond its default. The people calling it escapism have probably never been close enough to reality to need the relief of a wider view.

[still_confused_99]

I hear what you're saying, but I think you're assuming the "escapism" critique only comes from outsiders. In my qigong training, my teacher regularly warned us about using energetic states to dodge emotional work we weren't ready for — and I've caught myself doing exactly that. The sensation of qi moving in the meridians feels undeniably real in my body, but that somatic vividness doesn't automatically mean I'm "stripping away noise" rather than finding a more sophisticated distraction.