The start of Esoteric Explorations and what to expect

The unstructured restructuring of exegesis

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Esoteric Explorations

9 min readOct 17, 2023

I have a deep romance with mysticism and psychology.

It seems that whatever I do, I can never escape it. Someone or something always brings me back to this idea of The Beloved and how my mind experiences the incorporeal. Everything and everyone ends up becoming a big fat reminder to ponder over The Creator and absorb lessons abound.

Because of that, it’s given me the desire to read scripture and engage in an analytical and critical thinking exercise called exegesis.

What is exegesis

Exegesis is simply the critical interpretation and explanation of any text, especially of scripture.

It’s not something I’ve learned but adapted from a lesson in Bianca Pereira’s Prolific Researcher Mentorship Course and reading How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler. These gave me the skills to read and take notes of books, papers, essays, scripture, and even other forms of media.

My particular technique for doing exegesis is asking myself what the author, or God in the case of scripture, wants to tell me. I have to ask myself, where is the author/God coming from and how did they come to this conclusion in the shape of this succinct sentence? I do this by going line by line and interpreting what I read according to the best of my knowledge, critical thinking, and research skills.

People do exegesis for many reasons. I do it for only a few.

to deepen my relationship with The Divine
to understand ancient divine transmission
to connect human behavior to spiritual concepts

As for why I choose to go through scripture?

I did a presentation recently on my process of exegesis in 🌴 The Brainforest and I shared the exact reasons below. These are the exact things that draw me to it as a challenge and as catharsis. Weird how scripture could be cathartic, but when read with a mature mind it unlocks wonder and awe.

Scripture can unlock what you really believe and garner a love of knowing yourself—the bedrock of personal philosophy.

The ultimate boon with exegesis

So far, what I’ve gained by doing exegesis is a number of benefits.

I’ve been able to gain an understanding of myself and get to the bottom of why I believe certain things or why I don’t. I feel closer to being an actual believer in The Creator and wanting to do things in the love of The Beloved’s pleasure through living and embodying divine principles. And I’m seeing my nature, my habits, and my thinking soften in a way that’s attractive and prepares me for life ahead.

I’ve been exploring the themes, claims, arguments, and evidence on my own during my free time. But I think it’s high time I share what I call “exploratory essays” so that I can situate myself and dig into the line and just explore it until my heart’s content. Sometime later, I might come across more ideas, source notes, or perspectives to add to an essay, so in that way be sure to subscribe to my newsletter to get updates for essays.

What I hope to share in the following exploratory essays is the link between God’s word and what’s inevitably good or sane. We live in a polarizing world where not only our cultures are at war, but our nations. My hope is to bring some semblance of the divine to people who may not feel scripture is accessible, is hard to understand, or don’t find it relatable.

I hope that when I dig through these lines, we both begin to learn the weight that they hold and the power that words have on our minds.

I will not act like your average religious scholar—I’m not doing this for spiritual brownie points. I’m just a woman who thinks about things deeply and takes pleasure in contemplation and the joy of discovery. The process of meditative writing that flows through the connected archetypes, principles, and symbols that govern our human perception is a profound ecstasy to me.

And I just want to share ecstasy with you. I can’t guarantee I’ll always be good at it. But I can definitely guarantee I’ll dive as deep as I can as I share an ocean’s drop of insight with you.

How I will structure future exploratory essays

My essays won’t follow a format as much as they will focus on answering certain questions so that a scriptural verse becomes both accessible and relevant. I want to get to the bottom as to why certain verses sound harsh and others magnificent. I want to unveil them from both a human and divine standpoint.

What does this scriptural verse solve?

The idea that humanity needs God’s word to be moral harks back to the idea that Scripture solves mankind’s fundamental philosophical and life problems. Without them, mankind would be lost. Or worse, savages.

Each line will either make a claim on what mankind should do in any given situation or will give us a reason why things are the way they are.

The goal of understanding each verse is to ask oneself why God would say this in the first place. What does this line solve as it relates to humans now, the history of our condition, and where we’re going as a species? And as God says this, what is God telling us about the nature of God?

These kinds of questions will only get you closer to your goal of reading between the lines.

Can we make an argument for our interpretation?

Often, the solutions provided in the context of scripture are divine claims. Once we identify a problem that a scriptural verse solves, we have to take the time to carve out an argument based on human experience or scientific and behavioral theory. This is so we can truly understand the verse from a human standpoint.

When we look at a scriptural verse from a human standpoint, we can see many examples and crossovers from motifs that span cultures geographically. You can start to see how scripture is far more relevant than you would ever have given it credit for.

What are the opposing viewpoints?

We can’t take what God says at face value until we argue from both sides: those who are for it and those who oppose it. Once we delineate what their essence is, we can determine their line of reasoning.

When you back up your claims you need to have sound and cogent arguments. The goal of looking at different viewpoints and reasoning through them is to debunk any flawed reasoning and to choose the proper course of thinking. This question might trigger some with weak beliefs.

What are the implications and consequences of this line?

After looking at all the evidence and the reasoning, asking what this line implies we have to understand or accept for it to be true is something we have to do. Our goal isn’t to spend our time doing mental masturbation but to seek to apply principles deliberately and wholeheartedly to the best of our ability that match our circumstances. What may apply to me, may not apply to you—yet we must agree to decide with sound judgment.

I will be limited in discussing these ideas from a female, Western-born, Eastern-raised, mystical Islamic perspective because that’s just what I am. I may change my age and have more experiences, I may change my location or adopt a new cultural identity to explore it, and I may change my social and economic status that challenges previously held assumptions, but it’s still ONE perspective. What I will do my best to do the research and determine widely applicable consequences so that it’s not too far off from being applicable.

What is my own viewpoint from my experience?

Now comes the personal part.

I’m not always a fair bipartisan writer about anything. Even though I’ve experienced both sides of an argument in many cases, usually my personal experience tells me to lean in one way or the other. So when I do I’ll do my best to find solid arguments from both sides, but I will try to tell you what I’ve made my mind up about — feel free to critique or tell me if I’ve missed something in my thinking.

What does this line remind me of? Where have I experienced it? Does that make me take a side? Why or why not? What are my hesitations if I haven’t made up my mind yet? This is the line of inquiry you can guarantee I will test myself to answer.

What kind of evidence do I have to support my opinion?

There will be a list of sources I’ll include as evidence to why I’ve taken one opinion or another as “The Right Way” and I may even include evidence to support the example to make my claim more solid.

Here is a list of sources you can expect:

Source notes from the literature itself or from other reliable sources that dig into this line itself as a whole, parts of the line, or words in the line that need a deeper explanation.

Quotes from holy scriptures, books, essays, podcasts, and any other kind of media where I can hear experts or notable people saying something along the lines of this line or giving their opinion on it.

Media, art, and literature including film, fiction, music, animation, advertising, pop culture, or anything else that gives you a better idea of how cultural media or propaganda influences your thinking either towards or away from divine principle.

Supporting arguments, assumptions, or reasoning so that I can break down the divine concept even further and find a reliable conclusion to my opinion.

What leftover questions do I have?

Not every deep dive comes up with conclusive answers to everything. An exploratory essay is meant to dig and determine clear-headed thinking around a centered topic that scripture allows me to bring up.

I aim to leave no stone unturned, but likely what will happen is that I’ll miss something. I am human after all and while I am having a deep discussion with myself around something and sharing it here, I do need a productive discussion with you. Perhaps you have leftover questions, takeaways, or personal experiences that might lean towards one idea or another.

This is a journey I hope you’ll take with me.

What’s next

There are so many notes I already have in my arsenal to share here. I will spruce them up and do some deeper digging before publishing. I cannot guarantee a regular time when I will post, but it will be as often as I complete a deep dive into a line of scripture.

I will be starting out with The Holy Qur’an because I’ve wanted to revisit it since I’m rereading it with fresh eyes after my decision to walk the path to loving The Creator. I hope that I can feel compelled to read other forms of scripture in the middle—my intent is not to leave other religions out, but to take my time learning and flowing. I also may deep dive into one divine principle that spans many scriptures, but we’ll see how this process goes.

I hope that as I explore a piece of scripture, it unfolds a relationship with many others. I hope that I can find the answers to crystallize my personal philosophy and help you clarify yours. And I hope that we can walk hand-in-hand towards a greater understanding of our world and The Divine.

May peace and blessings be upon you.

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