Having, and Losing, a Moment of Pure Awareness

The quickest way to end a peak experience is to analyze it. Judging something of a spiritual experience as good or bad, right or wrong will take you right out of it because that which is pure spirit can only be experienced in the moment. When we start making judgments about what is happening, we bring it into the past. Our judgments are based on what we have experienced before or what we've been taught. The spiritual experience can no longer exist, if we reduce it to past conditioning.

Then there's the the mind wanting to categorize everything. During my last visit to paradise, my mind wanted to name and identify, to analyze everything. That's the quickest way to end the experience. That was a long time ago. I've tried to recall the experience without defining it, but have only enjoyed the briefest of moments. Sometimes, I think too much about how I'm going to explain things to others, how I can help them understand, and that gets in the way of the experiencing of it.

My thinking mind wants to say, "Oh, this is what's happening" or "This isn't the way I remember it." I finally recognized what I was doing. I can't explain anything if I don't first experience it, so I have to still my analysis and trust that I will remember. That trust can be a bit of a challenge, unless I understand that the experience itself creates its own memory. More than that, it becomes a part of me.