Why Trump Needs More than Ayahuasca: Waking Up & Growing Up for Unique Self Emergence

This is an interesting topic, that keeps coming up in conversations I’m having and in the world around me.

It’s about waking up and growing up*—and why both are essential to your fullest life and Unique Self emergence.

A lot of people, especially in psychedelic circles, like to joke, “If only Donald Trump had an ayahuasca journey, he’d wake up and be a totally different person.” And maybe, maybe, that could happen. But my hunch? If he had a peak experience—some big spiritual or psychedelic awakening—and then went right back into the White House with his same worldview… nothing would really change. In fact, it would more likely embolden some of the more egocentric or narcissistic parts of him.

Why? Because waking up—what we might call an ecstatic or meditative state experience—is temporary. It’s powerful. It can be mind-blowing. But without growing up, it doesn’t integrate into a person's lived experience of Unique Self.

What Is a Wake-Up Experience?

Let’s define our terms.

When I say "wake up," I’m talking about those moments when your ordinary state of consciousness gets interrupted. Maybe it's through meditation, falling in love, being in nature, or a substance like ayahuasca. For a moment, the default mode network—the part of the brain that maintains your sense of self—gets quiet. And you experience life differently, closer to something deeper and more real than ordinary life.

Have you ever walked through a forest and suddenly everything looked dazzling? Or stared into the eyes of your newborn child and felt your heart melt away? I remember falling in love once and just gazing into her eyes—everything else dissolved. I was floating in a field of beauty and tenderness. Life was self-evidently good and beautiful, and time seemed to stand still.

Or maybe it’s a deep meditation where your body dissolves and suddenly the birds outside your window are not just background noise—they are divine music.

These are altered states. Wake-up experiences. You feel yourself as part of something bigger. You touch the oneness. You realize: I am not separate. Everything is connected. Reality is alive. Love is the ground of everything.

And then… it fades.

What Happens When You Come Back?

The experience passes, as all states do. Your ego returns. Your identity reforms, and you come back to yourself. And the question is:

What self do you come back to?

Do you come back to the same story you had before?

A few years ago, I had a peak experience during a self-guided retreat in northern California—this beautiful sense of freedom and connection. I felt deep inner peace and a sense that the trees were somehow inside of me, and I was not small, but more than my physical body. I saw the world as energy and intelligence unfolding perfectly. But days later, I was in a new friend group, feeling insecure, irritated, and judging people and myself in my head. I’d come back to the same mental habits, the same self-image of an earlier time in my life.

Or take a successful entrepreneur who did a 10-day silent meditation retreat. He came back glowing, talking about presence and emptiness. But a week later, he was right back in hustle mode, micromanaging his team and obsessing over his KPIs as the only metric that mattered. He had woken up… but he hadn’t grown up.

This is what I mean: unless you have a practice, a path, a way to mature and evolve your perspective, you’ll go right back to the same stage of development, the same way that you perceive and live in the world. Maybe with a little more energy or confidence—but not necessarily with more wisdom.

Ready to stabilize your waking up into a growing up? We're launching a 10-week course to help you, starting May 17th! Register now!

The Trump Hypothesis

So back to Trump for a minute.

Let’s say he has this big ayahuasca journey. He meets the ancestors, talks to the jaguar spirit, sees his childhood trauma, weeps, feels unity with all beings. Incredible!

But then he returns… to the same worldview, the same beliefs, the same sense-making structure. He still sees the world through the lens of power, deals, enemies and winners. So now? Now he believes even more strongly that he’s been chosen. That he’s the only one to save America. That God anointed him and no one else to "drill baby drill", no matter the impact on fragile ecosystems or the survival of humanity on earth.

Without growing up, a wake-up experience can actually make the ego stronger. More "spiritual". More convinced.

Different Ways of Coming Back

So what happens when you come back?

Let’s say you’ve had a profound moment of awakening. How do you interpret it? What identity do you step back into?

There are patterns of self that have been researched for over 50 years and considered the stages of growing up. Below they are organized from earliest stage to latest stage.**

• The Spiritual Expert – You come back and decide: This is who I am now. I’m the meditation teacher, the yoga guide, the intuitive, the psychic. This becomes your identity—and it may be real and authentic. But it can also be a subtle trap. You become the person who knows.

• The Spiritual Achiever – You’ve learned how to manifest. You’ve seen that your mind shapes reality, so now your spiritual practice becomes about getting what you want. You’re creating a life of impact and success, but spirituality becomes a tool for performance.

• The Spiritual Seeker – You don’t care as much about status or success. You’re hungry for truth. You keep looking. You try every practice, every tradition, always asking, Who am I now? You value humility, fluidity, and depth.

• The Spiritual Catalyst – You realize your growth isn’t just for you. You want to serve. You want to help others evolve. Maybe you’re a coach, a therapist, a facilitator. You’re walking the path with others, co-evolving.

• The Spiritual Prophet – You start seeing the stories that shape reality. You challenge them. You offer new narratives. Not just personal development, but collective transformation. You’re holding a much larger arc of history in your awareness.

• The Unitive Stage – This is rare. Here, you realize that reality is perceiving itself through you. There’s no separation. Every act is both effort and surrender. Every moment is both ordinary and divine. You become a living instrument of evolution, a vessel for presence itself.

  
  

Most of us move through several of these, few reach the later stages. They’re not rigid boxes that define us, but lenses that we wear with which we see the world. And each one reflects a different stage of growing up.

Waking Up Without Growing Up Can Be Dangerous

This is why spiritual practices, on their own, aren’t enough. You can have a kundalini awakening and still be stuck in a toxic relationship. You can be a gifted healer and still manipulate people. You can have visions of oneness and still vote for policies that dehumanize others.

And that’s why at the Unique Self Institute, we believe that the work of growing up is just as sacred as waking up.

Growing up means developing your capacity for complexity. Taking more perspectives. Being honest about your shadow. Letting go of your need to be special. Learning to hold paradox. It’s not as sexy. But it’s essential.

A Simple Invitation

So the question I’m sitting with—and inviting you to sit with—is this:

When you come back from your wake-up moments… who are you becoming?

What are the stories you’re stepping back into? What beliefs are you reinforcing? What stage of development is calling you forward?

It’s okay if you don’t have a neat answer. I don’t either. But I do know this:

Reality is pulsing through us, inviting us to evolve. And the real magic happens when we say yes—not just in peak moments, but in the ordinary ones too.

Want me to help shape this into a newsletter, social post, or spoken talk as well?

Ready to stabilize your waking up into a growing up? We're launching a 10-week course to help you, starting May 17th! Register now!

*"Wake up and grow up" is a phrase attributed to psychologist John Welwood, popularized by Ken Wilber, that we use in the Unique Self Emergence Process

**These patterns are organized into stages adapted from the Leadership Maturity Framework, by Suzanne Cooke-Greuter, and I've stylized the names to this context

Watch my impromptu video that inspired this blog post: