How to Ascend Through the Inner Dimensions – A Journey From Survival to Coherence
- Brainz Magazine
- 2 days ago
- 11 min read
Updated: 12 hours ago
Larry Carroll Jr. is an author, publisher of Ryze, and CEO of Ryze Above Inc., a trauma-informed company dedicated to helping individuals transform adversity into purpose through wellness, education, and self-mastery.
What if healing isn’t about fixing yourself, but remembering who you were before survival took over? This article explores the inner dimensions of consciousness, tracing a deeply personal journey from trauma and fragmentation to integration, coherence, and peace, soundtracked by music that met the body before the mind could understand.
The spiritual dimension of the 8 dimensions of wellness
Spiritual wellness is often misunderstood as belief, faith, or ritual. In this series, it means something far more practical and far more demanding. Spiritual wellness is alignment. It is the process of bringing the body, mind, emotions, and identity into coherence after years of survival, fragmentation, and adaptation. It is not about escaping pain or transcending reality. It is about integrating lived experience into meaning so the self no longer feels divided. Ascending the inner dimensions marks the spiritual dimension of the 8D framework because ascension does not occur by bypassing the body or suppressing emotion. It occurs by moving through them. Healing, in this sense, is not a destination. It is a reorganization of the inner world where safety replaces hypervigilance, purpose replaces performance, and presence replaces constant striving.
For many adults, especially men over 30, life has been lived from the outside in. Achievement, responsibility, and resilience became identities long before alignment ever became an option. This article invites a different progression, from survival to coherence, from reaction to regulation, from fragmentation to wholeness. In the spiritual dimension, growth is no longer measured by how much one endures, but by how deeply one can listen to the body, to the nervous system, to the quiet signals that were once ignored in the name of strength. This is not a call to slow down. It is a call to move upward with intention. As the opening spiritual pillar of the 8 Dimensions of Wellness, Ascending the Inner Dimensions serves as an initiation into a larger truth. Healing is not about fixing what is broken. It is about remembering what was always whole. I invite you into the story of my ascension, not as a blueprint to copy, but as a mirror to reflect what may already be stirring within you. Ascension is never about becoming someone new. It is about reclaiming the parts of yourself that were left behind in the name of survival. Every ascent begins the same way, by turning inward. Welcome to the Ryze.
Around 2012, I walked into a store called For Your Entertainment, FYE. As soon as I stepped inside, I heard a raw, unapologetic story pressed into wax. The beat was hot, but it was the honesty that pierced my chest. The melody and lyrics felt like pages ripped straight out of my own story. I walked up to the clerk and asked who was playing. They replied, Soundtrack 2 My Life by Kid Cudi. At the time, this was my first real introduction to Kid Cudi. Looking back, that song would carry me through some of the darkest moments of my life. I could not articulate why it hit so deeply. I just knew it felt true. Beneath what sounded like intergalactic, hippie, mushroom-fueled abstraction was a man narrating his inner vulnerability for the world to see. Long before I had language for trauma, shadow work, or dimensions of consciousness, Kid Cudi was already mapping them out track by track. Unbeknownst to me, his music was doing something to me. Years later, through study and lived experience, I can now describe it more clearly. What did it do?
His music assisted my healing process through several dimensions, not just the ones I previously wrote about, but dimensions of consciousness themselves. What motivated me to write such an abstract and provocative essay? Since the beginning of time, humans have tried to understand and quantify the relationship between the physical and the metaphysical. My intention with this essay is to weave those threads together. Feelings, emotions, and nervous-system responses on one side. Quantum physics, consciousness, and vibration on the other. I connect them through my lived experience and my relationship with Kid Cudi’s music. This is where sound healing enters the conversation, how vibration, rhythm, and frequency can reverberate through the body and shape internal states. It is why we hear thinkers like Terrence Howard speaking about DNA having sound. Whether metaphorical or literal, the idea points to something ancient. Sound moves us before words are ever spoken. To understand how this music met me where I was, we must begin before awakening, in the dimensions we rarely talk about.
Related article: Terrence Howard lecture
Before the awakening, the dimensions we don’t talk about
First dimension, survival (existence consciousness)
“I’m super paranoid, like a sixth sense. Since my father died, I ain’t been right since.” “The moon will illuminate my room, and soon I’m consumed by my doom.” “I live in a cocoon, the dark side of the moon.”
Although my biological father was not deceased, I deeply related to these lyrics. What I heard was raw existence, no reflection yet, just coping and bracing. Loss. Hypervigilance. Isolation. This is life lived inside the nervous system. Before meaning, before identity, before awareness, there is only survival. Kid Cudi, like me, experienced early and profound trauma. Trauma does not live in thought alone. It also lives in the body. The body continues responding to danger long after the threat has passed because it never learned how to stop. This is the dimension of fight, flight, freeze, scarcity, hypervigilance, and emotional overwhelm.
Research shows that individuals with four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences, ACEs, are four to twelve times more likely to struggle with depression, addiction, and emotional dysregulation later in life. In this state, the nervous system dominates perception. I lived here as a child, often alone, trying to make sense of the chaos I had no choice but to endure. In this dimension, most people don’t ask why. We don’t have the capacity to. We simply survive. But survival alone is exhausting. Eventually, the body begins to feel before it can understand. That’s where the next dimension begins.
Related articles: About Adverse Childhood Experiences, The Body Keeps the Score
Second dimension, conditioning (emotional consciousness)
“I tried to piece the puzzle of the universe. Split an eighth of shrooms just so I could see the universe.”
The second dimension introduces feeling before understanding. We experience our emotions but don’t yet understand their root cause. Integration is limited, creating what feels like a temporary mental purgatory. This is where emotional memory forms, identity is shaped by experience, and patterns repeat without insight. Neuroscience confirms that emotional memory develops before rational cognition, which explains why people often know better yet continue repeating the same behaviors. This aligns with the triune brain model. Early in life, we predominantly cycle through the reptilian brain, survival instincts, and the limbic system, emotion. The final stage of the brain’s development will be addressed later in this article. At this stage, we are reacting more than reflecting. Kid Cudi occupied this dimension publicly, navigating addiction, fame, depression, and self-medication, documenting the confusion of feeling deeply without yet knowing how to integrate it. This is experience without reflection. Eventually, however, pain demands language. Awareness begins to stir.
Related article: What is the Triune Mind?
Third dimension, the awakening (duality consciousness)
“I’ve got some issues that nobody can see.” “I bring them to the light for you. It’s only right.”
In the third dimension, reality takes on weight and density. Life feels solid here, measured in time, effort, and consequence. Because of that density, movement often feels slow, heavy, and resistant. This is the realm where we first encounter duality, right and wrong, good and bad, success and failure. Because of this density, it becomes difficult to understand that thoughts themselves eventually take shape in lived experience. When you’re in this dimension, it can feel like there is no end in sight, like progress is crawling forward while life keeps piling on. Things feel delayed. Stagnant. Out of your control. We may also experience cognitive dissonance. Do you feel this way? This is where awareness begins to break through, even when it hurts. Ego forms. Judgment sharpens. Meaning-making begins.
Coming from a religious background, I lived in black and white. I judged people and situations harshly from a high moral ground, often overlooking deeper, universal truths. Over time, life taught me the lesson of dichotomy and that truth is rarely singular. Growth lives in the tension between opposites. According to trauma-informed psychology, awareness alone doesn’t heal trauma, but it initiates the healing process. This is the stage where you finally see yourself clearly, even if you don’t yet know what to do with what you see. Martial arts helped me understand this physically through concepts of yin and yang, hard and soft, balance through opposition. Kid Cudi helped me understand it emotionally. He showed the darkness without pretending it wasn’t there, while still holding a sliver of hope. This is awakening without integration, and awakening creates tension. Once you see yourself clearly, you can’t unsee it. That tension demands a choice, remain fragmented and reactive, or step forward into the work of integration.
Related article: Trauma-informed Care in Behavioral Health Sciences
Fourth dimension, the paradigm shift (integration consciousness)
“I tried to think about myself as a sacrifice. Just to show the kids they ain’t the only ones who up at night.” “I try to shed some light on a man. Not many people on this planet understand.”
The Fourth Dimension is the bridge. In this dimension, responsibility replaces blame. The heart begins to lead. The vibrations in this dimension resonate higher than the physical, dense world of matter as experienced in the third dimension. One begins craving a life guided by values rather than reaction, rather than earlier behaviors forced by the lower dimensions. Duality still exists, but we become aware that our perspective must change. Forgiveness becomes essential. Shadow work becomes unavoidable.
Writing my book, Ryze, was my shadow work. Research shows that expressive writing can reduce trauma symptoms by up to 30%, improve emotional regulation, and strengthen immune response. Without knowing the clinical language, Kid Cudi had already been doing this shadow work on wax. I followed that same format through journaling. My journal writings eventually became my book.
In my book, I wrote about one of my greatest lessons, the time when my electricity was shut off. By candlelight, I stared at my sneakers, not with pride, but with disdain. When I was up, I never prepared for being down. That moment stripped me and freed me. As I moved through the dimensions, I expanded beyond martial arts into yoga, breathwork, and somatic practices. These practices, now staples in trauma-informed care, have been shown to lower cortisol levels by 20 to 30%. They weren’t just practices. They were portals. This is healing through responsibility. As integration deepens, perception itself begins to change.
Related article: Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process, Yoga’s impact on stress reduction, and stress levels
Quantum physics, consciousness, and Kid Cudi’s abstraction
At some point, I realized the language of dimensions wasn’t just poetic. It was functional. Quantum physics doesn’t study meaning, but it reveals a universe where reality exists as probability until observed. Observation collapses potential into form. Trauma collapses possibility. Healing reopens it. As Kid Cudi’s artistry evolved, from raw confession to abstraction, many listeners checked out. But abstraction is often a sign of integration. After watching his movie Entergalactic, his music clicked differently for me. What once felt chaotic now felt intentional. Kid Cudi didn’t lose himself. He cohered. Coherence is the doorway to the final dimension.
Fifth dimension, the arrival (coherent consciousness)
“And I’m in a new mode. Been searching for so long now lately. Another level found some peace within. And I’m in a new mode. I prayed for so, so long now lately. Another level. Ooh, let’s begin.”
The Fifth Dimension isn’t perfection. It is a level of consciousness that brings emotional regulation. Emotions still arise, but they no longer rule you. Thoughts become intentional. Actions become heart-led. Manifestation through thought becomes possible because internal coherence has been established. You possess a form of mastery over yourself. The frequencies of the fifth dimension are higher than those of the physical, dense world of the earth. Frequencies vibrate at speeds faster than the speed of light. This makes manifestation and creation through thought possible. The heart is in charge. The higher self, your soul, is matched with the heart. Love prevails because our actions are made from the heart and no longer from the head. Thought becomes intentional. Action becomes heart-led. Neuroscience shows that consistent mindfulness and embodied practices increase activity in the prefrontal cortex, the region responsible for empathy, self-control, and conscious decision-making. This part of the brain has been hypothesized to fully develop last. Although there are critics of the triune brain model, its use in this article is intended to shift one’s lower consciousness to a higher one without overburdening the audience with overly complex concepts.
While the brain’s structure is set to mature around age 25, it wasn’t until age 36 that I felt mastery over my emotional responses. One morning after a difficult breakup, while brushing my teeth, I caught my reflection in the mirror. For the first time, I felt something unfamiliar, contentment. No resentment toward the past. No anxiety about the future. Just presence. That was my arrival in the fifth dimension. Kid Cudi reached this space long before I realized it, turning pain into art and chaos into coherence. I arrived later, with fewer words and quieter peace. I was no longer directed by my pain. I turned my pain into passion. For many years, the Fifth Dimension appeared to me in flashes, possibly due to a lack of tools and understanding of shadow work. After feeling a feeling I had never felt before, my coherence began. The fifth dimension is a dimension created for peace, a paradise for some, nirvana for others. Not the type of paradise described in the biblical sense, but one for the mind. If you’re not careful, you may miss it. As you and I know, matter and time are fleeting.
Related article: Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness, The brain is adaptive, not triune: How the brain responds to threat, challenge, and change
The soundtrack as a map
“This is the soundtrack to my life.”
In a short period of time, you and I are commissioned to experience life and live it to the best of our ability, no matter what religion or denomination. Cudi’s music didn’t save me. It walked with me to the fifth dimension, quietly and intentionally, into the present. I realized that every significant experience I faced, and every response to those experiences, led me here. From survival, to conditioning, to awakening, to integration, and finally to embodiment. His catalog mirrored my dimensional journey. What I have concluded in my journey is that the third and fourth dimensions are places you must pass through. You cannot skip to the fifth. The fifth is where you arrive only after completing the self-work necessary. The arrival is different for everyone. What I also found is that Cudi’s music wasn’t just his. It was yours. It was mine. It was for anyone trying to move from survival to coherence. I am optimistic for the future, not because I have everything figured out, but because I believe more people will reach this dimension and the world will be better for it. If this journey resonated, pause for a moment. Ask yourself, which dimension am I operating from right now, survival, awakening, or coherence? Wherever you are, honor it. That awareness is the beginning. If you’d like to continue the conversation, share your reflections, or explore tools for navigating these dimensions, you can connect with me directly:
No pressure, just an open door. Yours truly, the coolest author you know. Peace be upon you, family. Until the next time.
Read more from Larry Carroll Jr.
Larry Carroll Jr., Author, Wellness Entrepreneur, and Trauma-Informed Strategist
Larry Carroll Jr. is the author and publisher of the memoir Ryze and the CEO of Ryze Above Inc., a trauma-informed wellness company. His work bridges lived experience, behavioral insight, and holistic development to help individuals turn adversity into growth. Through writing, education, and coaching, he explores resilience, identity, and personal accountability. His articles invite readers to examine their inner world while building practical tools for lasting change.
