Spiritual Experience vs. Realization: Broadening the Question

Lisa E. at MommyMystic has sometimes posted about what she calls the distinction between “spiritual experience” and “spiritual realization.” The distinction seems to have occurred to her (me too) from having known people who seemed to have authentic and powerful spiritual experiences that somehow failed to change their lives for the better – that made no difference in how they felt and functioned day to day or treated others.

Her recent post on this topic left me with a few added thoughts:

Lisa was looking at mystical experience – the kind of “one with the universe” or one with God experience that can happen during meditation or spontaneously – but there are a wide variety of other experiences that change some lives for the better but not others. So the broader question becomes: Why do experiences that change some of us for the better fail to realize change in others?

Additional Life Changing Experiences – or Not…

Non-mystical religious experiences: Included here would be regular participation in religious rituals, which has a positive effect on millions of lives around the world. For millions of others, ritual is meaningless. For a relatively small group, participation in religion helps fuel their violent egos.

Then there's the “born again Christian” phenomenon. While it frankly looks to me like some people fake it, huge numbers certainly do not. (Including, if I recall correctly, the founders of AA.) The classic born again paradigm is alcohol or substance abuse/casual sex/late nights/bad company followed by a sudden, emotionally charged acceptance of Christianity. And it started long before sex, drugs and rock n roll – consider, for example, John Bunyan’s autobiographical “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,” written in the 17th century.

Experiences with nature: “He was born in the summer of his 27th year, comin’ home to a place he’d never been before…” Country roads worked well for John Denver, but Ted Kaczynski not so much. Plenty of people have enjoyed standing on mountaintops and walking through forests without any positive change in their lives.

Psychological insight: While it’s a must on the path to positive change, there are people for whom it becomes stagnant and all in their heads. Insight can be mere intellectualization.

Love: If I had to guess, I’d guess that powerful experiences of love most reliably lead to positive life changes. Two popular Christian-based metaphors for this are “A Christmas Carol” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” But even here, I can well imagine someone having a powerful experience of love but in the end falling back on old patterns of behavior

A Question of Receptivity

Why do experiences that produce lasting, positive changes in some leave others no better off? It appears that some people are better able to receive and assimilate potentially transformative experiences than others – at least when they’re up to it. No one is by any means always receptive.

Apparently people have been giving thought to the matter of differences in receptivity for a long time:

"When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what is sown in the heart; this is what was sown on the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word, and it yields nothing. But as for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty." Matt 13:19-23