Relationship of Peak States to Transformation
Self-Actualizing to Become What One Has the Potential to Be
Natalie Ola
5 min read · 18.7.2025
A surge of energy powerfully sweeps through.
My head pops above the clouds.
Everything is clear; there’s no sabotage, no longer any prickles and thorns afflicting the body.
I can finally be my truest self—
the most authentic version of me—
I can stand not stooped, and I can create seamlessly.
Maslow believed that when having a peak experience, we are closest to our authentic selves—our true identities. The concept of flow and peak experiences is a kind of bridge between psychology and mysticism.
Poetic Expression
Maslow notes that when we are having a peak experience, our communication and expressions are often poetic and mythical. It’s as if we are expressing what’s deeply embedded within our psyches.
Completeness
A sense of inner completeness defines the peak experience. Maslow writes: “Probably the authentic person is himself complete or final in some sense; he certainly experiences subjective finality, completion or perfection at times; and he certainly perceives it in the world.”
Human Condition
Yet, perhaps, the best final versions of ourselves are created only after all was tested, and all was chosen to be done. Only after we fought extensively to find the meaning in it all. Meanwhile, the slingshots of life have been happening sporadically and unexpectedly.
Finding Meaning
Jamie Wheal suggests that seeing the resurgence in psychedelic research is giving new ways to manage anxiety, depression, new ways to address–what is being called “the diseases of dispair”–which is just people trying to reckon with the overwhelming complexity of the world as we face it.
“And if it was just rocket shipping along, and was just super fast and super complicated–that would be one thing, that would be stressful enough. But the fact that we are also now collectively becoming increasingly aware of existential threats to our way of life, potentially to our civil society, potentially to even civilization or humanity itself–well that’s a whole lot more to reckon with.”
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
— James Baldwin
Active Coping Pathway
The Synthesis Institute suggests that when a new approach is required, we engage our active coping pathway. This is our means to address a persistent source of stress through deep and rapid associative learning and psychological transformation.
“We might uncover new resources or make a spontaneous, profound connection between abstract concepts. Whole new frequencies of information and interpretations might thus become available to us, some of which could challenge our previously held beliefs about what is, what was, and what can be. The rock we’re holding is suddenly a tool.”
New Possibilities to Cope
Hannah Burns of the Synthesis Institute writes, “Possibility shares a root with potent: potis, which relates to power, manifestation, and capability.
“It also relates to the word host or one who receives guests.” Sometimes, peak experiences can feel like an influx of intense emotions and heightened awareness. How we receive the information that shows up—how open, welcoming, and willing to learn we are—matters.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— The Guest House, a poem by Rumi
“This invocation of possibility is a beautiful reminder to greet the unexpected willingly. We evolve in part via leaps into the unknown, relying on both the strength and flexibility of our coping abilities. We train that muscle by welcoming, with a non-judgmental attitude, the visitations of revelation.”
Psychedelics as Powerful Allies
The research into the effects of peak states on our active coping suggests that psychedelics—and the peak experience that they bring—can be powerful allies on this pathway.
It’s a universe of possibility.
It’s gray infused by color.
It’s the invisible revealed.
It’s the mundane blown away
by awe.
— Jason Silva
References:
Abraham H. Maslow. A Theory of Human Motivation. 1943. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. doi: 10.1037/h0054346
Jamie Wheal of Flow Genome Project. Why Do People Experience a Lack of Meaning? With Jamie Wheal. The Synthesis Institute. 16.1.2020
Hannah Burns. Revealing New Possibilities: Serotonin, Evolution, and Psychedelics. The Synthesis Institute. 2.12.2022
The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi. From Rumi: Selected Poems, trans Coleman Barks with John Moynce, A. J. Arberry, Reynold Nicholson (Penguin Books, 2004). As referenced in Scottish Poetry Library.
Imagination by Jason Silva. Carlobattisti. 20.4.2013
