Bliss and ecstasy.

We use the words interchangeably. But they are not the same thing.

For most of human history, ecstasy wasn’t something that just simply happened to you. It was a technology.

The Pythia at Delphi entered trance to retrieve information kings couldn’t access any other way. The Sufi whirling dervish engineered dissolution as a method of union. The shaman crossed into altered states not for transcendence — but to bring something back.

But ecstasy visits. Bliss abides.

One is a flash — sudden, relational, self-dissolving, temporary. The other is the field in which the flash occurs. Prior. Spacious. Already present.

What we’ve lost isn’t the capacity for ecstasy. It’s the understanding that altered states were once considered the most reliable way to know.

New essay up on Substack — The Flash and the Field — I ask about what these two states actually are & how to differentiate the two.