From Experience to Story to Integration: Encouraging Creative Expressive Practices in Exceptional Experiences

Anastasia Wasko
Planet Dust Enterprises

We live multivalent inner lives. One phenomenon—hearing voices—is also multivalent. Voices can arise from inner experiences and can be perceived internally while arising from external sources. The voices can be indicative of inner growth or disease/disorder. Hearing voices is a phenomenon also associated with dissociative identity disorders and schizophrenia. If a person were to report hearing voices, the mental health practitioner has established protocols to catalog hearing those voices. A pathologized experience can be terrifying for the person or liberating. The phenomenon is an entry point for exploration in parapsychology, especially if the voices are interpreted as clairaudience (an inner phenomenon). Care must be taken not to exploit the experience for the sake of investigation; rather, supportive, recovery-oriented inquiry will uphold the experiencer’s dignity and allow them to assign meaning autonomously.

This talk will present a short case study. The person had experienced voices and splits as part of a diagnosed dissociative identity disorder. Through consistent “sitting with” and meditation practice, the person experienced a voice-free visual phenomenon. What emerged was a marker of inner growth and change in relationship to the disorder.  

During a guided meditation with Anastasia Wasko in an online Homa Fire Ceremony on 08.03.2026, I had a profound and beautiful experience. … I see me as a new-born being carried by my 7-year-old inner child, with many others in between, to my most recent personality-split who still doesn’t have a name. I look at all of these different versions of myself walking hand in hand and I realise that I see the evolution of me, like you would on one of those nerdy human evolution T-shirts. We all acknowledge one another and thank one another for the journey we have travelled together, and in that moment we unlink the evolutionary chain to form agroup of best friends skipping and dancing down the forest path to the ocean…

The person recounted this experience immediately after the meditation and was encouraged to write it down. When the experience is explored through a therapeutic lens, the dissociation and reduction of personality into “parts” convey a significant rift in the inner world. But through an inquisitive lens, the transliminality of the experience emerges. The fluid boundaries of self and environment emerge. It was a profoundly moving experience for the person, one that was confirmed through the creative writing process. The voice-less, visual experience emerged holistically. There was no prompting or clinical setting. It could be that the casual environment allowed this particular experience to happen. It is also key to note that there was no overtone of stress; the vision emerged against a backdrop of quiet meditation. A cognitive and emotional shift (a feeling of accomplishment and release) was conveyed by the client; this shift can be viewed as part of the integration process. 

Essentially, as parapsychological researchers, we should allow the phenomenon to emerge and invite the story as a record of what happened. It didn’t happen to us, so the analysis is secondary to the witness of integration.