Its a constant practice, like anything. Part of you is changed forever when you go through something like this, the awareness part mostley, you can never go back to normality even when something like that wears off.

I know from experience because I survived a brain hemorrhage. I had a state where I experienced the world differently for many years. I still do. Something cracked open in me and it has stayed that way, other aspects of my physiology are returning to a baseline state, like my nervous system changes which damped my fear responses.

In Happiness Hypothesis Jonathan Haidt talks about how we all have a basic setting for these kind of things.

We can move the bar around but it always tends back toward that default.

He uses the example of this being why people who read self help book always seem to be reading a new self help book.

That little euphoric moment of clarity and fresh outlook only last a few months or so until you’re back at your regular old self and need a new epiphany.

Different traditions have been systematically iterating on techniques to do exactly this for thousands of years.

Surviving something like that (a much less serious adenoma near the brain) is neat because I can mentally use the memory to alter my current state of mind.

I can't recreate the exact feeling, obviously. Just remembering waking up in the world of the living is still powerful enough to improve my mood and put problems into perspective, even after more than a decade. The old me has a new mental tool, forever.

At the same time, I'm not walking around like an enlightened monk either. Whether something counts as life-changing must depend on perspective and personality.

> Has anyone here had a life-changing moment and actually managed to stay changed?

A life-changing moment changes one's life by definition. Each time a person experiences one, they are changed in a way where who they were before they can remember, perhaps even look fondly upon, but know they are not that person anymore.

> Powerful story. But let's be real: after the "survivor's euphoria" fades, how do you actually keep that level of consciousness?

By living in the moment and remembering how you got there.

You typically don’t go back to the daily grind, as this kind of event often substantially changes your priorities.

I speak for myself, although I know I am not alone in my trajectory. About a decade ago I was ill enough for long enough with an uncertain enough prognosis that I was getting my affairs in order. At the same time a close friend died of an agressivo cancer, aged 32.

I decided to choose quality over quantity. Fuck my business, fuck my career, fuck stupid status games and absolutely fuck climbing the infinite pile of skulls.

Sold up. Put everything on 00 and gave the wheel a spin.

It’s been almost a decade. I still live in the woods, start my days with a coffee and birdsong and “ein heiliges ‘ja!’”, still have zero temptation to return to my life before.

I think one of the big bummers about this kind of thing is that it’s not really something that could be planned or chosen for. We tend to change slowly and subconsciously through the things we prioritize and routinely practice, our brains and bodies adapt to our “normal”.

The times we tend to adopt changes quickly and consciously are most often with circumstance and external pressures, and the shortcomings implicit with such rapid adaptations can manifest as neuroses/complexes. In traumatic scenarios this might be something like PTSD, but it isn’t necessarily all downsides, either. People taking therapeutic amounts of MDMA or psilocybin (as in, occasionally, not “micro dosing” or whatever Elon Musk seems to be doing) might experience a durable improvement in subjective happiness and optimism.

Disclaimer: this is my own intuitive and wholly unqualified understanding of this, which was arrived at via discussions with behavioral therapists, but I’m an IT consultant, wtf do I really know about it?

I will say that I’ve found mindful meditation highly effective for treating mild to moderate PTSD. It isn’t fast to get started, but after a few weeks of training, you can deploy your own chemical Xanax directly within your own brain using breathing patterns. It really worked for me. I used the app “Headspace” to start out.