You Don’t Need Drugs; Just Meditate
Over the past few days, I was sick. I was infected with a virus that most of the people from the hotel where I work got infected with too. My body temperature was high and my body was completely exhausted. I couldn’t do much: no meditation, no long walks, just lying in bed, drinking tea, and taking medication.
However, during that time, my consciousness changed.
One day, I went with my father to visit a doctor in a neighboring town. As I was watching the road and the surrounding nature, they no longer appeared as separate things. There was no difference in perception between the road, the grass, and the forest. Everything was one undivided, seamless reality.
Things looked somehow closer to my eyes. Normally, the nature near the road would be blurred because I was focusing solely on the asphalt ahead. But now, it was clearly visible. My field of view (FOV) had completely expanded.
The Temporary Preview
I experienced this exact same phenomenon years ago while smoking cannabis. While under the influence, the world seemed to shift closer to my eyes. The houses in my hometown looked sharper, clearer, and closer too.
But that chemical shift was only a temporary preview. It is a fleeting glimpse that drugs provide when they forcefully and temporarily dissolve the conceptual mind. The moment the substance wears off, the old, rigid, and distant view of the world inevitably returns.
The Permanent Realignment
Meditation, on the other hand, changes things permanently.
Through three years of dedicated mettā meditation, my baseline consciousness has fundamentally rewired. What was once only available to me for a short, borrowed period while being high on cannabis has now become a permanent fixture in my life. This is the simply amazing, organic transformation that mettā practice creates.
In deep meditation, our nervous system undergoes a gradual restructuring—old, defensive pathways dissolve and entirely new ones are established. The conceptual mind slowly loses its suffocating grip. The rigid mental concepts with which we learn to slice reality into artificial categories begin to melt away.
When those filters drop, we are allowed to partake in experiencing reality exactly as it is: undivided, unbroken, and whole.
This is not just an interesting visual shift; it has a profound, actual effect on mitigating our daily suffering and completely reducing the heavy feeling of alienation from the world around us. The house is clean, the boundaries are gone, and we are finally home.