Mystical Feeling of Enlargement
Connecting to Something Deep and Basic
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding” — Kahlil Gibran
I have always been interested in people who may have had experiences of feeling a mystical union, feeling of enlargement, or merger, with something greater than themselves.
- This experience can often be challenging to put into words.
- It often can tap into something that feels deep and basic.
- People of all religious and non-religious affiliation have had these experiences.
They often appear to have some features in common.
Some Common Features of Mystical Experience
- I have found that people who have had these experiences have often been at a low point in their life at a point where they could describe themselves as suffering.
- They may feel a merger into where they feel at one with other living beings, or objects, or sometimes there is an enhancement of color. I have never used psychedelic drugs, but sometimes the experiences can be similar to what I have read people describe as an experience using LSD. However, the non-drug related experiences only usually last a few seconds.
- After having the experience people often say it was a point in their life where everything then changed. Things lifted.
- They felt hope.
- They did not feel so alone as they previously experienced.
- They sometimes believed after the experience that they understood that they were a part of something much bigger than themselves.
My Experience
Nearly twenty years ago a few months after the birth of my last child, a son whom I named Ethan, I had an experience that I still find quite hard to put into words.
It lasted probably less than a couple of seconds (maybe not even that long), but it has had a lasting effect on the rest of my life.
Ethan would have been approximately four months old. It was just on dawn one morning. I was laying in bed half awake. Ethan had woken, and I had just finished breastfeeding him. I was on my left side, and my left arm was resting just above his head. I could feel the warmth of his head tucked under my arm. I could feel the weight of his head against me and also was aware of his warm breath in rhythm with his breathing against my breast. I was conscious of my head laying against my arm as well. I was intently gazing at him sleeping next to me.
Suddenly, I was in the top right-hand corner of the bedroom, roof height, looking down on me.
I was confused. I could still feel the weight of Ethan’s head against me, but I was up in the corner watching myself and him in the bed. I could see our outlines and at the same time feel my head on my pillow and Ethan’s regular breathing against me.
At the same instance, that I felt frightened and confused I heard a voice (and the sound instantly was in my head as a thought) but it wasn’t a thought generated by my mind, and the voice said, “Don’t be afraid, I’ll be with him always.”
I knew without a shadow of a doubt, without question, it was the voice of God.
I felt a huge shock and fear go through me. Suddenly I heard a whooshing sound, and at the same time I physically felt a massive surge of energy back through into my head, and my awareness was back in my physical brain. I was no longer up at ceiling height looking down on us.
I immediately sat bolt upright in bed, waking up Ethan who started to whimper. My heart was pounding. I was wide awake at this stage, and I lay down and tried to assimilate what had just happened to me.
Background Information
I had just gotten divorced. Although it was at my instigation and I knew I was doing the right thing for my life and my children’s I was still intensely grieving the loss of my marriage (this had been unexpected).
I had experienced guilt over having an unexpected pregnancy at the time that my marriage was falling apart. I had some medical issues during the pregnancy that meant I had been scared to bond with Ethan in utero in case something went wrong.
I had left the religion of my childhood and was experiencing shunning. Estranged from my family, and all the friends I had previously known as they were avoiding me for rejecting the faith. However, I could not be a hypocrite and remain, living a lie, when I no longer believed the doctrines.
I had not yet made friends outside of that religion. I was very lonely.
I was suffering from significant depression and anxiety about making my way in the world, being able to deal with my emotional issues and still be available as a good enough mother for my children. I felt like a fish out of water trying to make my way in the world.
So this is my background immediately before what I experienced.
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit the very wood that was hollowed out with knives?” — Kahlil Gibran
Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese poet, philosopher, and artist. His words just quoted above, convey an understanding of the truth of opposites. How a pottery cup is fired in a fire to make a beautiful wine goblet, and a knife gouges out the wood to make a lute to play beautiful music. Things that burn and gouge can be the source and reason for beauty and enjoyment at a later time.
It is not black and white thinking. Either this or that. It is about opposites. It is about needing them both together.
Maybe, the reason why these experiences more commonly appear to happen to people experiencing suffering in their lives is that the experience of pain is in such stark contrast with the background, and the experience so uplifts one out of the misery, that the suffering and the experience complement each other. One lifts the other. Enhances. Elevates.
The pain of one is necessary to create the expansiveness. The pain allows the experience into conscious awareness.
My Understanding/Meaning
I was a bit confused at the message. The religion I had been brought up in as a child, and just left, had taught that God did not personally visit or give signals to individual people nowadays as he had to people recorded in the bible. Even though I had left that organized religion I had not replaced it with any other belief.
Having been taught in the past that demons pretended to be good and could give experiences that ones may think was from God made me scared.
Being told that I was no longer under God’s protection due to having left the religion meant that I would be open to Satan’s attacks. I went over all the old teachings in my mind.
The words had felt reassuring. Like it was God encouraging me.
Don’t worry. Your son will be okay. I will be with him. I am with him. You do not need to feel scared or concerned. It will all be okay.
That is the feeling from the message I had gotten, from the few words said to me.
The corresponding physical relocation of my center of awareness, consciousness, from my head to the top of the ceiling was the most bizarre aspect. It certainly got my attention.
I had left my body and had traveled a few meters and yet I was physically aware of the experience of my physical body at the same time my consciousness was away from it.
It was like part of me was in my body, at the same time that part of me was on the ceiling.
I initially felt relieved. Comforted.
Then I had the frightening thought that maybe God was warning me that Ethan was going to die and go to heaven to be with him. I thought, perhaps that is what God meant when he said he would be with Ethan.
I had been frightened after having been told when I left my religion:
I was an agitator like Eve, I was ‘like a dog “returning to its vomit” in God’s eyes’, Condemned, I was outcast, and the only way I could regain God’s favor would be to return to the religion of my childhood.
My logical brain had resisted the damning and judgemental words, but my emotional childlike self at times believed it all. Feared it was true. I was scared.
Over the coming weeks and months, I kept remembering this experience. It comforted me. It was something that led me to keep on spiritually seeking and searching for meaning in my life, and answers to more in-depth questions about my life. It helped sustain me.
It was like being given refreshing water when you are parched.
I did do some research as to whether there could be a medical explanation for the experience.
I discovered that patients who experience migraines could experience out of body experiences (OBE) and it can be due to interference with the temporoparietal junction, of the brain, which can occur for multiple medical reasons. I do regularly suffer from migraines, although I did not have one at the time of the experience. I have never had an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) or brain scan to rule out any physical, biological anomaly or causation.
The experience was something that felt otherworldly. It lifted me literally out of myself.
I felt part of something that was bigger than myself and greater than my understanding.
Overall, I felt reassured.
I felt comforted.
The message allowed me to feel not condemned.
I was accepted. The voice says I am.
I felt more empowered to cope and that I could make it.
It created a drive in me to pursue a more spiritual path and to try and find a way that made sense to me.
It still invigorates me.
Even knowing there are possible medical explanations does not take away from the message received. It still has helped me.
What experiences have you had?
Have you had a feeling of connection or merger with some force or thing greater than yourself? Or an OBE?
I would love to hear.
