I’ve had many spiritual experiences, but there’s only one that came instantly to mind upon reading this question. I’m not sure how it changed my life. I kind of think it gave me a focus for everything since then. A loose focus, but still, a focus. It has been frustrating, to say the least, that I have not been able to…. I don’t know how to say this—the words that come to mind are “fulfill the mandate of that awareness,” but there was no mandate to fulfill.
It was an awareness, though, that suggested (demanded?) that I spend my life do work that focuses on making everyone’s life better, not just focusing on myself. Perhaps I took that push a little too seriously, because no one can single-handedly make the kind of difference I felt pushed towards. But then, that idea that I have that I need to do it all runs counter to the awareness, anyway. So perhaps I’ve lost sight of my understanding of what I felt.
It was a funny thing, that summer night on a playground in town. The sky was perfectly clear and there was no moon and there were a gazillion stars up there. It’s the kind of sight us city dwellers never see any more. I was looking up and I felt like I was falling into the stars. Somehow, I made the connection that these weren’t stars, but they were all people, and that, just as the stars are all connected by being a part of that tapestry of the night sky, so are all humans connected in a tapestry of our own.
The words don’t do it justice, of course. Such visions or awarenesses can never be described in a way that conveys the emotions and the wonder experienced at the time. It was just a very powerful thing for me—my first mystical experience. I was a teenager at the time.
In any case, ever since then, I felt that my work had to do with bringing people together—in so many ways: political and social and spiritual. It’s been work that frustrated me because I never felt like I was making a difference. Worse than frustration was the despair that would occasionally appear. It makes me lose perspective, because nothing I do in my daily life, interacting with people I love or care about seems to count. It always feels like it has to be more, greater. Like I have to prove something.
I know I’ve lost my way on that one. I know that the work I do with my family or for my family or with friends or in my community counts. I don’t know if it makes much of a difference. I’d like to think so, but how could I know? Then again, why should I be any different from anyone else? Isn’t that what my sense of the stars was telling me? Yes, we are all the same in some essential human way. We are all connected. No one is any more or less than any other. Why should I feel immune from that idea?
I don’t know. Or rather, I think I know where it might come from. But it isn’t helping me give it up. I also feel like I have to do it all myself or it doesn’t count, and I tell everyone else that we are all part of the same fabric. We work together. We are all responsible. No one is more responsible than anyone else. I wish I could take my own advice.
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