[[[ This page or set of pages, not for immediate publication, at least not like this.  Might become something on the order of a 'food 4 thot' item. Just going to let it collect dust for a while.]]]

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ANTI-CRISIS EHEs

Crisis EHEs are very common.  In this case, they are anything but consciously generated.  Even fervent prayer in a bad moment/situation is offered without any expectation as to how or even if the prayer may be answered, such as a protective intercessory event by a nonphysical being or force.

EHEs as a result of devoted, persistent discipline, fairly common, if I can put it that way.  OBEs, lucid dreaming, Tibetan dream and sleep yogas; Kundalini yoga; sufi dancing; various shamanic rituals/practices.  In other words, the practice is vested in a particular type of experiential outcome.  This is not the same as a general practice of daily meditation or prayer or hatha yoga or pranayama [breathing exercises] for which there is no particular sought outcome other than greater peace of mind, etc.

This may become just a fresh languaging attempt, or worse, the ol' re-invention of the wheel.  Maybe something on the order of Transpersonal psychology has all these answers already [e.g., Maslow's "peak experiences"].  Has anyone already methodically studied systematically the what/how of types of experience 

• that are not grounded in long years of discipline
• that are divorced from crisis EHEs
• that are generated perhaps from a certain 'mood' or disposition or predisposition.

below:  sort of mumbling on ... may be something useful ...

yet another option:  has to do with actually a number of 'old' options for the most part but presented within the context of current societal constraints, one of the biggest limitations being lack of conscious awareness.

Have you ever noticed that a significant portion of d-t EHEs [the majority??] people describe [specifically in cultures where there is no daily discipline or nurturance toward manifesting non-crisis EHEs] stem from intense crises, such as NDEs, OBEs [at first OBEs are frequently experienced as crises as people become conscious of moving into them or waking in this state, or contend with the preliminary characteristics that feel so frightening when they're not understood].  Other examples: some types of mystical experiences, sought-after possession [such as typifies Vodou and similar religions].  Or they're related to crises, woundings from which people are regaining their equanimity, such as after-death communications, which are apparently more common than OBEs [is this true?].

But some d-t EHEs derive from sustaining the positive, sometimes due to well-developed spiritual disciplines, sometimes not.  Sometimes, without such discipline, these events appear to grow out of a 'glorious mood', such as B

certain contemporary needs/objectives:

with conscious awareness being one of the objectives

old patterns of experience/effort:  

Perhaps it's easier to get at this by talking about personal experience first.  Here are some cursory conclusions derived from experience, albeit, not consciously, especially initially:

Just going to a favorite temple/church/mosque/..., daily prayer [the little I ever did consistently], reading favorite inspirational/religious texts, though it may have given me pleasure and insight, rarely if ever took me into actual EHE-type transformative events.  Years of meditation and hatha yoga resulted in some telling benefits, that tended to be more developmental rather than the direct path [thus far] to such revelatory experiences.  

Most of  the EHEs that have graced me were the direct result of crises of some sort, ones that psychologically bordered on felt do-or-die situations.  Only these many years into my life have I realized that I have often unconsciously sought out pressing difficulties with all the attendant drama and an on-the-edge emotional pitch that always played a critical part in the precipitation of the more extraordinary d-t EHEs.  For me this was usually the culmination of bouts of depression, great angst at always feeling to be 'the outsider', the strong sense I don't 'belong' here [does anyone? don't we all?], and a terrible restlessness, lack of genuine self esteem, a sense of being a failure, etc., etc.  Well into adulthood, all of this gnawed at my innards without any personal understanding of what this was all about, without any awareness of healthy ways to get a grip on this and to channel this self-destructive energy into a positive approach toward psycho-spiritual development.  As this pattern evolved, and only as I began developing some comprehension and coping strategies did it begin to dawn on me that on some level, I craved these waaay-out-on-a-limb moments because they were by far the best "ticket" I'd discovered thus far toward precipitating the extraordinary anomalous events that would sometimes happen as a result.

One of the most common, if not the most common, of situations resulting in death-transcendent EHEs is psychological, physical, and/or spiritual crisis, and it almost always has that do-or-die element in it.  I think this is particularly true in westernized cultures that either [1] do not share ritualistic/spiritual events/practices that are conducive to these extraordinary moments of experience and insight, or [2] have for the moment lost their grip on the incalculable value of the daily, moment-to-moment cultivation of an Inner Life within which to live and move through the 'daily grind' decade after decade.  We are so pushed for time, so pushed, period, by the whirlwinds of daily needs and preoccupations, most of us are lucky if we get a moment of peace and quiet, much less have any sustained attraction toward things spiritual.  

Since we are indeed made of Stuff far Deeper and Other than the personality or the little, driven ego, and since many of us just 'haven't a clue' about this, and many even disdain such a thought, that Most-Alive-Something-Deeper, from which we can never be entirely divorced, even through adamant nonbelief, must find ways to get through to us that must take us out of our normal, full-tilt-harry, spiritually empty lives.  How else can this be experienced except as shocking, disorienting, 'pathological', frightening, destructive, debilitating, disabling -- near-death experiences, out-of-body experiences [usually frightening at first], [seeming or actual?] psychoses and hallucinations.  In fact we are so pervasively ignorant regarding our spiritual lives [that may develop, intercede in spite of any lack of conscious interest or belief], we as a culture have no referent, no discriminatory diagnostic precept for acknowledging variable spiritual crises as anything other than pathological [psychosis, schizophrenia, etc.].

There are quite other ways we may experience the transcendent directly, certainly, and anything but negative, which is the point I'm leading to, but our expectations are so often predisposed toward the negative, or we are so perversely attracted by the negative in all the media -- and it's a constant barrage!  Violence and sex for the sake of violence and sex, oh, and entertainment.  Oppression, submission, obsession, possession, paralyzing fear.  Wonder if all this is a matter of being stuck in something primally subconscious, such as the violence of birth [not for all, but still it is very stressful and we certainly must pick up the fear, the sense of drama from our mothers and those in her vacinity at birth] and just after, a situation in which we are totally at the mercy of those circumstances and those involved with us.

Then there's the hiding between dramas.  Sometimes for whole lives.

You know the old joke about good news and bad news; if there's a choice between two newspapers, one offering only the bad, the sensational [assumed as 'bad'] vs. one that offers only positive news stories [and the sensationally WONDERFUL!], we'll reach for the negative almost without pause; it's hardly even a choice for most of us most of the time.  And of course many people actually seek out the negative as entertainment, the more spectacularly awful, the better.  

We are so practiced at imagining great negatives but not at  imaging/imagineering great powerful good -- personal or global.  Maybe our lifelong practice of self doubt and fear just take up too much space; they are like the dark matter in our psyches -- their 86% to the 'light' creative 14%.

Unconsciously and in our surely overwhelming hunger for this connective Awareness most of us are missing profoundly, we seek out experiences that bring us out of this life-engulfed malaise, sans meaning or purpose, and into Contact with this Other.  We have grown into sharing a world in which it is hard not to imagine the negative impinging on our lives.  We want to 'be prepared' for it by imagining how we might deal with it when/if it comes for a personal visit; we want to know, to see, to experience vicariously how others have dealt with it.  The more dramatic the circumstances, the better.  

But this is definitely not limited to contemporary Western Europe and North America.  Native Americans, the Lakota Sioux, for example utilized terribly painful rituals to purify and prepare themselves for vision quests.  One that stands out is puncturing and tying [needle-and-thread-style] the soft flesh [e.g., chest, arms] in such a way that they literally hung by this until the weight tore them loose or they fainted from the pain.  Some orders of western monastics routinely flagellated themselves with barbed switches until they drew blood in order to purge themselves of sin or to re-enact Christ's suffering.  I wonder if it was to push themselves sometimes to the very limits of their endurance in order to have mystical visions.  

This may be something almost innate to our psyches.  Most people can name moments and situations in which they have become self-destructive.  Some small children will bang their heads over and over when stressed out.  We have many ways of saying and experiencing this one, even as adults:  s/he's begging to be punished.  Maybe we do this out of guilt or pent-up frustration from not knowing what we want or need in more openly communicative and less painful ways.  

The bottom line seems to be that many of us, from babyhood up feel deep, deep down we must benefit from suffering, whether it's to allay guilt and to get punishment we feel we deserve, or to earn status in this world or the next or to see visions; Joseph Campbell speaks of "purgatorial thoughts."  Much of this sort of thing is unconscious--the blind expression of deep need; we can see this in individuals and in societies as well [Japanese hari kari, for example].  But many cultures have brought this into conscious expression as well, such as the sun dance ritual among the Lakota, a Native American nation.  A number of religions grew out of someone who was martyred or who suffered greatly ultimately that others may benefit, such as Jesus, Moses, Osiris.  Of course the glory of martyrdom wasn't limited to religion.  Socrates, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy.  The whole concept of hero/heroine is based on suffering to earn the "right" to joy and fulfillment.  Think of Tristan and Isolde, the medieval Crusades in general [Sir Lancelot and Guinevere; Parzival and Condwiramurs].  [How about other cultures??]

For most of us most of the time, it is difficult if not impossible to imagine great, much less spectacular GOOD coming to us.  And we tell ourselves, that should that happen, it would be just 'natural' to us insofar as how we would deal with that!  But really, is this true?  How much to we consciously practice the possibility of being visited by magnificent, dramatic, soul-searing GOOD?  If this is not part of our consciousness, how can we think we would possible know how we would accept it 'naturally' or not? 

This reminds me of just such a telling moment I experienced many years ago.  I was going through a period of  almost unendurable depression and was walking down an empty street in the middle of a dazzling, cloudless Arizona day.  Suddenly I was aware of two invisible beings of great loving majesty and light walking on either side of me.  I tried to ignore them, thinking it had to be my imagination, but they would not go away.  I felt them as strongly as you might feel a physical companion walking beside you in the most ordinary of circumstances; without even looking, you know they are beside you.  I could not see them, but if it is possible, I FELT them even more strongly than we would normally be aware of someone walking by our side; I was hyper-aware, perhaps because the situation was so astounding and unexpected and because their delightful, loving presences so stunningly contrasted with my mood at the time.  

You think you would be prepared 'always' to receive any GOOD that comes into your life, right?  Well, that day, after several times trying to ignore them or imagine them [smile] as merely imagination, and still finding them moving with me down the road, I was totally confused.  I didn't know what to say or how to interact with them, or maybe just how to let their wonderful, healing energies obliterate my own terrible angst.  It was like meeting a physical person in whose presence you suddenly feel shy or awed or speechless; they say something to you and if you can get the words out you stammer some nonsense in reply, having let your normal wits somewhere-you-know-not for the instant.  It was just like that.  

You know what I did?  I did something I have deeply, deeply regretted ever since:  I stopped in the middle of that deserted road in a very empty Casa Grande and told them to GO AWAY!  I told them what was most familiar to me then to imagine, so strong was the feeling, I couldn't NOT imagine it:  I told these exquisite beings of light that I didn't deserve their loving kindness!   Then I turned and kept walking.  After a few steps, I felt I was leaving them behind me, as if they were still standing in the road.  Then I didn't feel them anymore.  [Ah.  And for those who have eyes to see, put this little event into perspective with the Tibetan Bardo of the Dead.  Reciting the Tibetan Book of the Dead aloud to someone who is dying or dead, according to those who cherish this practice, is to guide hir to recognize and to go to 

do this through drugs, alcohol, sex, extreme sports, even violence.  In the English-lit. style of Walter Mitty [remember him?] we vicariously hide in the many worlds of TV, movies, books, and other escapes.  Sometimes we seek to experience this Otherness by generating a vicious cycle of dramas that lead to extreme feelings, emotions -- a 'high' or a 'low', a violent surge, in our misguided quest to feel alive, if not Connected.  The dramas are interspersed with the need to hide, to jump in our dark holes and pull them in after us, for periods of time.  Then we get bored or restless or forgetful and seek to repeat the pattern.  

We sometimes draw to us terrible things, playing the part of either predator or victim, so we may feel alive again and again, so we may feel Something, if not THAT Something that may take us out, into that cherished, elusive Awareness of Other being aware of us in some direct way -- abuse [received or given], depression, sexual liaisons that merely relieve stress or take us into risky situations and undermine the close relationships we really want and need. We create situations where we must make desperate choices within the context of our daily lives and relationships -- divorce, quitting or being fired from our jobs, parent-child conflagrations, or we nurture resentments, animosities, some kind of personal or societal discrimination [against this race or that sexual orientation or that religion].  

We do this even in seemingly positive ways, too, but again in part due to a lack of that Inner Awareness, Conscious Connectedness.  This can be felt as a sense of drivenness, restlessness, emptiness that needs filling, psychological pain or anger for which we do not have a clear origin; it has an extra edge to it that has to do with a personal running-away-from-something, or the "good works" serve as a means to channel our anger, our woundedness that has yet to be faced, acknowledged, resolved.  Some people [many?] work for the highest good causes as environmental or social activists.  Always deepest down, if we really STOP! and pay attention and are honest with ourselves -- we recognize we are mourning that Something-Missing in an immediately connective, personally-aware sense.  On some level under these conditions, I feel we are always pushing toward, longing for Just Anything, even the worst-imaginable crises to put us directly into a state of Knowing, direct experience of the d-t EHE variety. 

Things I've noticed through personal experience and observation/study: 

I am neither a human-nature-sage nor social scientist.  Maybe those of you who are more focused in this direction can catch my drift enough here to open this up more fully for the rest of us to conceptualize and language this better. 

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more:

a life of meaning and purpose sourced by More/All That Is/Other

as a finger of consciousness touches the surface of life -- AT THAT INSTANT -- is the LIGHT one with the 'finger' and the action -- the slightest touch, as on a still pond touches the whole through the ripples sent out.

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