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Originally Posted by Maisy
Your post reminded me of the ideas of contraction and expansion, of limited and unlimited, of the known and unknown. I think that's what mystical experiences are built of. Expansion, unlimited, and the unknown.
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The
Universal and the
Particular is another Binary set of terms that has been used to try to describe our experience. In terms of mindfulness the
Particular might be an object of meditation such as the breath or some part/parts of the body.
Higher and more subtle states of consciousness are often disrupted or as you say contracted by the 'world' conditioning and fear. We are brought back down to earth, probably partly the reason why people retreat into quieter places and hermitages. I think with mindfulness the miracle is that everything is a miracle, at it's core is a deep mystery therefore mystical reality of some sort, so problems of ordinary life often appear insoluble and bring us sometimes to a dead end, a cul de sac. Mindfulness says, no there is more to the picture.
I think it was Leonard Cohen who said he may have saved Kurt Cobain's life if he has got to him in time to speak to him. Cohen obviously being a long term meditator at the time and a Mystic. This is probably an example of the terrible tragedy of where the human mind can lead us but it also tells us of how that same 'Bind' that the human mind sometimes finds itself in can be transcended or dissolved etc. etc. or (extinguished) of course, the meaning of the word Nirvana. I think lots of folks find it hard to live with 'the Particular', in the world known through the senses and desires.
The poet WB Yeats describes a mystical experience he had in the poem, The Cold Heaven,
Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
Speaking about the inner light and mystical experiences. So it is a universal thing, Joe Bloggs can be waiting on a bus under a bus shelter and find himself in an expanded state of consciousness, in a transcendent, ecstatic reality, and he might never have heard of mindfulness let alone meditation. Anyway thanks again for the inspiration, just some food for thought.
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