Mystical Experience #2 - The Ridge Trigger
I was 20 yrs old and it was my first full day in New Zealand back packing / hitch hiking on my first adventure away from home. I found myself, alone, in the middle of nowhere ... no buildings, cars or people. It was sunny and peaceful. I had no idea where I would end up that day. I must have been a little nervous as I'd never hitch hiked before. But I don't remember being nervous ... just extremely calm.
I was concentrating on the horizontal lines circling the hills ahead of me and thinking about the generations of sheep that had created those indents grazing and walking around the hills .... and how these little trails had been there before I was born and would be there long after I was gone.
The experience I had that day was ... well, for just a few moments ... I WAS EVERYWHERE AND I KNEW EVERYTHING. It was not frightening. It felt natural and yet very, very different and more powerful than anything I'd ever known before. It was hugely satisfying. There was no sense of any supreme being ... just great peace and understanding.
I am convinced that Bruce Cockburn has had a similar experience as he writes:
"Thousand-year-old petroglyphs doing a double take
Pointing a finger at eternity
I'm sitting in the middle of this ecstasy ...
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me"
What I'm saying is ... ' thinking about eternity' seems to be one of the many triggers for such an experience. Some women giving birth report it too ... thinking about all the women before them and those who will come after them .... labouring.
But my main trigger, that day, would be the lines on the hill I was studying. It's as if that pattern does something to the brain. Japanese Zen practioners rake sand into similar patterns then sit and meditate on the design. And Roger Banister (the Miracle Mile) reported an experience he had running on a beach where the tide left ridges in the sand identical to my sheep lines and the Japanese raked sand.
The bottom image is the St James's labyrinth. It is said that walking a labyrinth is, itself, part of a mystical tradition.
Not my photos
Mystical Experience #2 - The Ridge Trigger
I was 20 yrs old and it was my first full day in New Zealand back packing / hitch hiking on my first adventure away from home. I found myself, alone, in the middle of nowhere ... no buildings, cars or people. It was sunny and peaceful. I had no idea where I would end up that day. I must have been a little nervous as I'd never hitch hiked before. But I don't remember being nervous ... just extremely calm.
I was concentrating on the horizontal lines circling the hills ahead of me and thinking about the generations of sheep that had created those indents grazing and walking around the hills .... and how these little trails had been there before I was born and would be there long after I was gone.
The experience I had that day was ... well, for just a few moments ... I WAS EVERYWHERE AND I KNEW EVERYTHING. It was not frightening. It felt natural and yet very, very different and more powerful than anything I'd ever known before. It was hugely satisfying. There was no sense of any supreme being ... just great peace and understanding.
I am convinced that Bruce Cockburn has had a similar experience as he writes:
"Thousand-year-old petroglyphs doing a double take
Pointing a finger at eternity
I'm sitting in the middle of this ecstasy ...
Some kind of ecstasy got a hold on me"
What I'm saying is ... ' thinking about eternity' seems to be one of the many triggers for such an experience. Some women giving birth report it too ... thinking about all the women before them and those who will come after them .... labouring.
But my main trigger, that day, would be the lines on the hill I was studying. It's as if that pattern does something to the brain. Japanese Zen practioners rake sand into similar patterns then sit and meditate on the design. And Roger Banister (the Miracle Mile) reported an experience he had running on a beach where the tide left ridges in the sand identical to my sheep lines and the Japanese raked sand.
The bottom image is the St James's labyrinth. It is said that walking a labyrinth is, itself, part of a mystical tradition.
Not my photos