One of the problems of mystical experience is the interplay between the otherness, intensity, noetic quality, and ineffability of the experience. The highest religious experiences I know are so awesome. They transform everything for you. Life seems so significant, like everything is more real, sharper. It is like you took a little visit to Heaven and brought back a piece with you.
But mystical experiences in themselves are so strange. If you try to talk about them it all seems like babbling. You also know they are deeply personal. They are about intimacy between you and God. There are some things that you can talk to your spouse about that might seem silly or stupid or gross to other people, but with that person, it is beautiful and profound. Intimacy with God is like that. For me, it's the silliness of life, the way everything we do is so funny, but it is also the seriousness and sadness of suffering, the wonder of love, the oneness of all things, only really discovered by sharing our loneliness. It is comic books, and dungeons and dragons, and my favorite prayers....but it's all about Jesus. Christ is the Sun in the solar system of the mystical that is me.
GAH! See what I mean? It sounds like nonsense. But it makes perfect sense. It is the key to everything. Or at least the beginning of the road to what really matters. I really can't talk directly about it and make sense. I have to talk around it. I can't use language to say it, I can only start to show it. I have a good collection of books and media that can help me do that. Collectively than can help people see what Im getting at.
But some of these texts, while they get close at some points, are dangerously off the mark on others. There is a very fine line when it comes to my encounter with the divine. The line cannot be drawn perfectly so one has to overshoot the mark to make the point. One has to be "wrong" in a certain way in order to be "right" in another way. But this wrongness, taken at face value, can lead one far astray. So I'm wary of sharing these particular ideas with people. I can't get right at the truth so I need lies to point to the truth. But believe the lies, you are in trouble.
This is probably why some religious types have such a hard time talking about sex. Sex, properly understood, is a profoundly powerful spiritual tool. But it is hard to properly understand it. And misunderstood it can become satanic, very easily. The vocabulary needed to fully express the truth about the sexual experience may not really be available. So getting to the beautiful core truth of it is all but impossible. Talking around that truth can lead people to terrible error.
So what to do? Keep silent about the fire burning inside lest it burn too brightly and destroy? Or let it loose and risk anarchy? I try to toe the line as best I can. Of course when working with youth I err way more on the side of safety. But my general inclination is to be straight with people. A truth held inside is all but useless.
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