Mystics have listened to and expounded their spiritual experiences. They are not alone in treasuring a few peak moments in which one feels transported to another reality. Eva Hoffman, in her book, Lost In Translation: A Life in a New Language, describes an experience that many people would recognize in variant forms. These experiences are often triggered in nature and inspire a sense of oneness with Other or other. They usually involve heightened awareness, vibrancy, and a capacity to know more than we otherwise know. This is how Hoffman describes one of her experiences:
“I pick up a reddish brown chestnut, and suddenly, through its warm skin, I feel the beat as if of a heart. But the beat is also in everything around me, and everything pulsates and shimmers as if it were coursing with the blood of life. Stooping under the tree, I’m holding life in my hand, and I am in the center of a harmonious, vibrating transparency. For that moment, I know everything there is to know. I have stumbled into the very center of plentitude, and I hold myself still with fulfillment, before the knowledge of my knowledge escapes me.”
Perhaps you remember an unusual experience such as this. In my counseling practice I have learned that people share this kind of experience and talk about the meaning they associate with their unusual transport to another reality.
Some see their experience as divine intervention, making them aware they must use this revelation in their lives. Some believe they have a profound connection to nature and can sometimes feel especially uplifted by being in its presence. Some find comfort in the connection they feel with the substance of the universe in its many forms. Some revel in the expansiveness of knowing more.
Some recognize a memorial process in their experience that harkens back to preverbal knowing; to a connectedness with a heartbeat that represented the world to them, when their life was held in a hand, and their being was patted and cooed into complete awareness of eyes that see and hold the whole.
