Of visions and starlight

I've been feeling kinda mystical for a few years now. Maybe accessing a more intuitive dreamy head space than before. Sometimes, life brings shifts, changes, lessons and we're no longer the same people we were before. I'm not the same person I was five years ago. Most of us aren't. We keep learning, changing, refining like the Japanese philosophy called Kaizen, small improvements, fine tuning every few months. Perhaps I've learned to be more curious than judgmental, especially about things related to spiritual or mystical experiences. 

Albert Einstein with his pioneering, open minded, seeking approach said, “A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.” 

Guess he was open to understanding whatever there could be out there even if established thought said otherwise. 

Spiritual experiences are perhaps something that should be approached with some caution. One doesn't want to become delusional.

But it's important to stay grounded and maybe, hopefully, I've found a balance i.e. turn the intuitive, dreamy stuff into creative output.

I've often wondered about people like Julian of Norwich, the famous medieval anchorite, and her visions. I've been trying to read her book “Revelations of Divine Love”. It's slow going because the language and expressions of that time are very different from modern day language even with the modern translation. Perhaps what she had were something like NDEs because she was physically in that state. This is a book I want to read slowly this year. I've also thought about reading St Teresa of Avila’s writings because she had visions too but somehow that doesn't intrigue me as much as Julian.

I wonder why we get these curious impulses, to know certain things that don't entirely make sense from a purely materialistic point of view. These sudden intuitions and knowings that come and settle in one's mind. 

Sometimes creative ideas are like that too. Something drifts in without conscious reasoning, without a clearly defined thought process. And it's a fully formed idea or thought that didn't go through the logical process. But it makes sense.

Dreams are like that too. Sometimes they can be prophetic. The ones that convey some meaning are symbolic or filled with metaphors. This is different from meaningless dreams which might just be about random ordinary things that happened and these lack that vivid symbolism or metaphoric imagery.

Lent is here and this is usually a good time to cultivate specific disciplines. Spending more time in prayer enhances these mystical experiences. These knowings, dreams, visions, strange inexplicable things… Random events, coincidences, sudden awakenings of awareness… I'm curious to know more but unfortunately, these cannot be forced or manipulated into happening. There's a certain patience one cultivates to let it flow as and when it will.

I want to fine tune my creative work time and process and also spend more time in prayer as a spiritual discipline this Lent. I think staying offline and working only offline for a specific time slot every day will really help. That's my sacrificial theme for this year's days of Lent.

Focusing on spiritual discipline and dedicating time to pray through the day seems to thin the veil between the material and spiritual realms and I'm looking forward to what I emerge with after Easter this year.