When you have an experience that is out of the normal bounds, one that "touches your soul", one that makes you realise that there is much outside the ordinary world that matters, it is important to understand what to do with it. One must not succumb to the temptation to try to trap it or define it, to try to repeat it by holding on to the events surrounding it in the "real world." If some person touches you in this way, is it not tempting to try to hold on to them, to keep them near, to feed off this disruption, this portal, through which you feel a greater sense of life? Tempting, yes, but all this will do is destroy them if they let you do it, leaving you wondering how they could be so flawed, how they could lose such a beautiful thing they had. You might even blame them for its loss. No, this is not what we must do. What matters is to notice that we have been touched! To notice how it felt, to notice how it was that we felt it, what part of ourselves was engaged in the process, what parts seemed to dissolve into the background noise while it was happening. This is the lesson. To foster this aspect of ourselves, to let the part that was most real in us at that time grow and be allowed room to breathe, to discard the parts of ourselves that were superfluous at that time no matter how important they might seem in our day to day life. To aspire to our own mysticism, not to feed off the mystic in others, to make a special place of anywhere we are, not to feel the need to make pilgrimages, to build our lives with tools that are real and alive, rather than prefabricated and sterile. A continued dedication to this task will result in the slow growth and strengthening of that part of us that enables us to see the world in its wholeness, in its beauty, and in its terror. We will come to know easily when a path will destroy or weaken us, and when a path will be fortuitous to our spirit. We will come to know love not as something to "fall into" but as something that flows through us in all its power. 7/31/00 
© Huw Powell
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