The two stories & new eyes

What is a spiritual experience?

How do you recognize it happening? Do you realize it while you are in the experience, after, both, or it depends?

Is it a quick moment or revelation, a long lasting impression?

In any case, you are by necessity a changed or affect person because of it. You are not who you were before the experience. Would you agree?

What are the signs of a spiritual encounter? What is this sense of awe, wonder, or joy which you know is so overwhelming and powerful that you feel so full and yet so aware of your smallness?
How do you respond to it? How does it change your daily life?
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These have been questions about the good spiritual experiences...
but in life these are not the only ones we are destined to experience.
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What about the spiritual experiences that haunt us? Those experiences that make one aware of the pain and suffering beyond the physical?

How do you recognize these? Do you realize the impact on your soul? The hardening and quenching of the flame of passions, and the desire to show compassion? When do you realize this is occurring? Once experience how do you respond? Can you ever go back? How do you move forward? Hopelessness and despair combined with fear set in and cause you to feel as if you drowning in a sea that feels fathomless.

Spiritual good & spiritual evil, Ying and yang, light & dark, life and death;
two stories, two kingdoms, two realities;
both very real, both active, both shaping us

How do you respond and how does it affect you? What are your stories?

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The other day I had very wonderful and profound time here in Africa that change my perceptions and my soul in a way. A group of friends from work, 4 of us, went for a drive around the island. What we initially wanted to do was go to the top of the volcano, because we found out that we did not have the paperwork need to go up there. Instead we to a little mountain village where we had heard about a nature perserve/park. To get there we first drove over the the west side of the island rolling through the hot humid jungle and along the coast. The trees were massive and the undergrowth thick. You would definitely need a machete to hack your way through it. We arrived at a small port town on the west coast of the island with beautiful palm trees lining the road, and the beach front just beyond them with the waves coming crashing in from off the Atlantic. From here our driver turned up the paved road that would take yes up into the mountains.

On the way up our driver stopped off in a small village to visit someone briefly. So there are 4 of us westerners sitting in a car in a small African village. Some of the youth came over to talk with us. Mainly they wanted to talk with the two white women. Stopping in the village was certainly an interesting glimpse at life outside of the city.
 

After finishing his stop, our driver continued to drive. As we climbed up to around 5000 feet above mean sea level, the fungle Fauna and Flora very visibly changed as we went up. There was the hot lower elevations below the almost constant layer of clouds that cover the mountains. Then as we drove through the elevation where the clouds bottle up around the mountain on a daily bases the air became cooler and but still humid. The flowers in bloom were very stunning. Then we came out above the clouds and there were even more differences from the lower coastal region.

At the top of the rise or ridge of the Island there was a ruin of an old house. On a clear day it would have been a fantastic view of both east and west to the ocean and volcanic mountain sides to the north and south. What a breath taking location at the top of a jungle mountain pass.

After cresting the ridge we dropped down to around 4500 feet to the village we had been recommended to visit. The community is a small tropical mountain town above the normal cloud layer (It still rains regularly as the storms roll in off the Atlantic) and is know for its nature preserve and for the Coco trees that grow there. The village was very different then my limited experience previously in this country. People had small garden plots with plants I could not recognize. The flowers at this height were vividly bright and colorful. Thick "vines" with purple flowers the size of saucers growing up the 8 foot diameter trunk of a tree. Low bushes with massive white bell shaped flowers. Bright orange flowers that reminded me of daisies, and plenty of others for which I couldn't identify. It was also much cooler up there and while still like a jungle, wasn't as hot or humid but nice and temperate. Our driver had never been there before and even he was in awe of the beauty, "Man, this place is paradise!" Oh, and I almost forgot. The sound of the jungle is incredible. The birds calling, cicadas hum, and tons of other sounds foreign to my ears. It was a natural symphony.  

We had left the city late enough in the afternoon that it was evening and the sun was setting as we got to the village. Thus we did not have time to hike any of the local trails. The children in the town where starting to head inside from playing street football. You could here the roar of generators being fired up to provide power to the homes. It was decide that we would head back to the city for dinner. Driving back down you could feel the heat and mugginess returning.

Even with all this on the senses and on the soul, the day was not over. We then drove to another coastal town just outside of the main city to eat. After paying our driver for the afternoons adventure, the four of us enjoyed dinner at a Brazilian steak house with some Tinto Vino (I learned it is not Rojo Vino :D ). The steak house was located next to the beach and so a walk along it was certainly in order. Nearby there was a causeway out to a small island that we went out to. The island at night was crawling with crabs, their bodies about 6 inches long. In the trees you could here the call of birds, but even more impressively, the air too was full of hundreds of bats. Oh, and the causeway out to this small islet was lighted so you could see into the water at night and there were loads of fish. Schools of various types ranging from the shallow nearer the shore, and the deeper middle parts of the causeway. The jungle and the ocean never sleep.

Ya, A very cool day spent with really awesome people in a truly remarkable place. I have had some difficult hard days where I very much disliked this place. Sunday was like a breath of fresh air. At the end off it, I knew that there were spiritual aspects to the physical and emotional things I had experienced in the community of my SLB friends that day.