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Prestile Stream
Easton, ME; Aroostook County
Saying: A humbling lesson for all in the Way is... No one is entitled to have spiritual experiences.
Note: It is a challenge to write about spiritual experiences. For, in one sense, we can have spiritual experiences. Yet, experience is already spiritual - we just do know it until we know it. How can something become what it is? Still, we will have what we call spiritual experiences until we do not need them.
* * *
She rushed over to see the Sage. She asked, aglow with gladness, "You know what?" "What?" "I just had the most amazing spiritual experience during meditation!" She was sure he would want to hear about it, but he showed no interest. So, she inquired, "Don't you want to know about it?" "No," he said, "just remember, it will soon pass."
* * *
Since everything changes, everything in the Way changes too, like the shifting weather. All the change is the Way.
Spiritual maturity manifests in equanimity amid the changes. We welcome the ups; we remain grateful during the downs. Having an up does not mean you are more spiritual, and having a down does not mean you are less spiritual, anymore than a cloudy day is less a day than a sunny day.
So, we need to learn to be with the ups and downs. Meditation invites us to sit with these shifts in the inner and outer, growing in stability whatever is happening outside or inside.
* * *
We can contemplate a lesson on this same subject of spiritual experience by listening to another meeting with the Sage...
He talked on and on of a spiritual experience, enthusiasm gushing out on each word. The Sage halted him, saying, "What makes you think it was a spiritual experience?" The man replied, "I could feel it. It felt spiritual." "Well," said the Sage, "having a spiritual feeling doesn't mean the experience was spiritual." "What do you mean?" asked the man. "A spiritual experience is a spiritual experience with or without a spiritual feeling. And an unspiritual experience is an unspiritual experience with or without an unspiritual feeling."
* * *
I used to pursue one spiritual high after another. I was a spiritual experience chaser. Through the futility of this pursuit, I learned how blessed are those times when everything spiritual seems quiet. One senses the spiritual in the absence, like hearing the Word without anything being spoken. The place and time of "absence" and "without" are filled with Life and Grace - we know this by relaxing in an inner posture of wakefulness and welcome.
* * *
*© Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*The above story is part of a collection of stories by Brian called "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
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