Oct. 21, 2009The other day, a man I’d never met before asked me what my book was about.
“It’s supernatural; it’s spiritual—about a mystical experience I had in the middle of a concert that changed my life. It also involves a famous rock star…” I started to say.
As I spoke, I noticed that the man, an older gentleman dressed in a biker’s vest with the word “VET” sewn onto it, was attempting to disguise the look of disappointment spreading across his face.
“Supernatural is different than spiritual,” he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets and backing off a bit.
“No, I had an out of body experience…” I continued, and this time as I tried to explain it to him, I used the word “God.”
His eyes lit up and he moved closer. “God isn’t supernatural; God is natural. He is everything.”
“Oh yes! It’s everything!” I grinned, feeling joy moving into all my internal organs.
The man went on to tell me that he too, had had an out of body experience. “The Holy Spirit came to me as I lay dying in a hospital bed.”
“How did you know it was the Holy Spirit?” I asked him. “Did you see it?”
He gestured an arc around himself. “No, I felt it all around me.”
He explained that the Holy Spirit told him it wasn’t his time to die yet and it would show him what to do to keep on living. “I was completely at peace and felt the presence of God,” he said. And the more he talked, the more I realized that that was exactly what had happened to me six years ago in Cabo.
When I told him the details of my experience, he suddenly became very excited about my book and wanted to know more.
What had initially misled him was my use of the word “supernatural,” which obviously had a different meaning to him than it does to me.
Semantics.
Merriam-webster.com defines “semantics” as: “the language used to achieve a desired effect on an audience, especially through the use of words with novel or dual meanings.”
How then, do I get past semantics so as not to mislead or confuse people? According to the experts, I’m supposed to be able to describe my book in one or two sentences. Yeah, right. It takes me a paragraph at best. Maybe I just haven’t found the right words yet, or maybe it’s just the nature of my subject, I don’t know.
If I say my book is spiritual, or that it involves God, it gives the connotation that it’s religious and some may be turned off by this, as rock ‘n’ roll and religion don’t necessarily blend well.
If I use the words “supernatural,” “paranormal,” “mystical,” “metaphysical,” or “psychic,” some may immediately assume that my book is occult in nature and look at me as if I’ve lost my marbles.
If I say it’s about a famous rock star, people might think it’s a shallow account of a fan gushing over a celebrity. Even I wouldn’t read a book like that!
So how do I describe ecstasy in God, a supernatural force, psychic experiences, out-of-body realms, otherworldly connections, rock stars, self-realization and the utmost joy, in one or two sentences in order to convey the fact that I am describing one thing that encompasses all of these? These components are the means that led me to my personal definition of what God is—the realization of the ultimate perfection, the ultimate everything. It also matters not if one believes in God—self-realization is available to everyone.
Since my experience, I’ve met several people, the Veteran included, who have told me that they too, have had experiences similar to mine. And I’ve read a lot of books that say this too: “Conversations with God” by Neale Donald Walsch, “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle to name a few.
These people all describe the same feelings and emotions involved in their mystical moment and many say it changed their lives.
Author Maxwell Steer writes:
“Mystical experience may be defined as being an ‘infinite intimacy’, a sense of fulfilment in which the subject is simultaneously aware of the limitless nature of the Universe and yet of hir (sic) intimate relationship to a force sensible as an identifiable personality. It is simultaneously the experience of everything and nothing, of knowing all yet being empty, of hearing within silence all sound. Different religious traditions identify this state individually – nirvana, mushín, Shambhala, Buddhahood, mystical union, alchemical marriage, shekinah – yet it can be seen as a common goal of all esoteric teaching, an experience of oneness beyond the world of duality. It need not even occur in a religious context. To me those very rare moments of total understanding that can arise in connection with works of art are clearly in the same category – that clarity of vision and sense of contact with some archetypal personality… some archetypal source of consciousness that transcends rational knowledge.”
And while we report similar experiences, each person’s manner of expressing what happened to them is slightly different, because each person is unique in their perception of the world around them. It’s like describing the color purple—one person might call it “lilac,” while another says “lavender,” and another expresses it using the word “plum” or “violet.”
But it’s still the same color.
I have never been what you would call of fan of Jackson’s. I don’t even own any of his albums, and as my husband and I walked out of the theater the other night, I realized why. It’s because Michael was like my brother. I didn’t need to buy his music, he was just always there; I grew up with him. He and I were about the same age and I distinctly remember seeing him on TV way back in the ‘70s, wowing audiences as he outshined his brothers as lead singer of The Jackson 5—with their loud, striped, bellbottom pants, puffy ‘fros and all. I was rooting for him way back then, like a sister on the sidelines.