It was 1971 and I had just turned 18. It was a warm windy day in early Autumn. I sat by a small lake in St. Paul and looked out at the water. The sun was low in the morning sky, and the reflection of the sunlight off the water was dazzling. I sat and watched it sparkle. Then I got up and walked a little further along the lake, sat down again and watched the water some more.
I looked back to where I had previously been sitting. For a moment I felt like I was still sitting there, still watching the water sparkle. Then something incredible happened. It was like the heavens opened up and I was engulfed in a celestial light and music. I felt like I could fly. I felt ecstatic. I’m not sure how long this experience lasted, probably about 15 minutes, but it was the most incredible 15 minutes of my life.
Later I read a book about mystics and mystical experience. My experience was similar to many of those described in the book. Some of mystics felt they had been given some great insight that needed to be shared. Some were inspired to become teachers, spiritual leaders or saints.
The experience certainly felt “spiritual” to me. Prior to this experience, I had been practicing meditation for about six months. I was still not very good at it, but I was dedicated. I had also been reading about Zen Buddhism and contemplating a Zen koan. In the koan, a master holds out his staff and says to his students: “if you call this a stick, you affirm it; if not, you negate it.” Then he asks “beyond affirmation and negation, what would you call it?” Mystics generally interpret their experience through whatever religion or belief system they adhere to. I more or less interpreted mine in terms of Zen; the experience contained the answer to the monk’s question.
I can well understand how some people might interpret such an experience through supernatural terms. And given how subtly the ego can get boosted by spiritual experience, I could see how easily someone might think that they had been given some special calling by a god.
For me, the experience was an opening of my consciousness, nothing else. And yet so much else. I would now call it a revelation of the naturalistic sacred, naturalistic grace – the fact that there is something divine within our consciousness. (A naturalistic outlook might interpret my experience under the aspect of neurotransmitters and such, and I would be fine with that. But I would also point out how mysterious it is that the chemistry of the brain can generate such incredible experiences. If chemicals can generate sacred experience, perhaps it is because matter itself is sacred.)
For most of the mystics I read about, their experience was transformative. It was for me also, but the real transformations only came much later. There was, however, one transformative aspect to my experience that happened right away.
As stated earlier, I had started to practice meditation prior to the experience. Up until I had the experience, I found the practice of meditation somewhat of a struggle. But from that day forward, meditation became for me easy and joyful, which continues to this day.
Otherwise, I think my “mystical” experience was not so fortunate. I was too young, too raw, too unready for such a transformative experience. Rather than making me more saintly, it simply made me more earthy. Rather than giving me direction, it made me dedicated to living in the present moment. That would have been fine if I had been a monk in a monastery but I was a young man about to start college with important choices to make, which I simply neglected to make. I don’t even like to think about some of the stupid things I went on to do in the next few years…
…so I’ll jump forward fifteen years. Now, I am married with two children. I am working as the coordinator of faculty development at a private university. I have become thoroughly middle class, and I am happy to outwardly play that role. But inwardly I still hears something of the celestial music I had heard on that autumn morning. So as much as possible in my busy life, I spend time each morning in meditation.
My spiritual focus at this time is on developing the virtue of temperance, a virtue I sadly lacked at the age of 18. To use a Zen phrase, I am “polishing the mirror,” trying to make my mind a more suitable vehicle for truth.
To make a long story short, one morning as I was meditating, I again had an experience something like the one I’d had earlier, but tamer. Rather than a state of ecstasy, I would call this an experience of wholeness and even perfection. I was now ready for the experience. I was now ripe. And from this point on in my life, such an experience of wholeness and perfection often accompanied my meditation, and sometimes just the ordinary activities of my life. This, for me, is the lived fulfillment of a naturalistic spirituality. The writings I do here are my attempt to articulate this fulfillment and some of the ideas I have about it.
Two such articles that I particularly like are Bicycle Meditation and The Perfect View. I feel that these are very honest about “mystical experience” as lived in everyday modern life. So for anyone interested, I will let these two articles speak for what I am trying to say in this one.
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