Spiritual experiences offer an interesting window to deeply question our sense of reality and create an open door for debate about the validity of such experiences.
This topic has captivated me for as long as I can remember. I was very tempted to write an essay about this subject, sharing some of my experiences and thoughts around them, but my first concerns were: ”That is a delicate subject to write about. Have I the qualifications to transmit what I want to say on a piece of paper given that English is not my first language? Nooo I don’t think I can do that!” So I did not even bother to try and then a second email came out this morning reminding everyone about the online journal submissions for this month's topic! The inspirational pull to write came back strongly and I could not resist. I sat down thinking ”Oh what the heck, give it a try it will be what it will be!” So here I am … Before I continue, I must reveal something about myself: I am a person that has had many mystical experiences and has witnessed various paranormal phenomena! And I think I am not alone, right? I believe that if you are reading these lines, you also had such experiences. In fact, I believe that we all do. In this essay, I am not that interested in exploring only the experiences themselves but am also curious to explore how they occurred and how do we interpret them (i.e., how we relate to these experiences.) I am also not looking for clear-cut answers to these questions as I have been pondering this topic for 30 years now, and yet the questions remain.

Maybe, just like me, you have been grappling for many years with these questions: What does this experience mean for me and what does it want to teach me? What does this experience reveal and what should I do with it?

When I was a teenager (between 15 and 25 years old), I was seriously involved with sports and committed to my daily training. During that time, I was blessed with very profound mystical experiences. I did not understand much about them at the time, even though I was very curious and intrigued by them but I guess that's because I was more focused on my athletic achievements and did not have any close friends that could support me through such experiences. With the little time I had left outside of sports, I'd go to the library where I'd stumble upon some interesting historical figures such as the Spiritist Allan Kardec, Aleister Crowley, and where I would also play with a self-made Ouija board.

There was not that much to be found when it came to my spiritual experiences, especially in French, but still enough to keep my curiosity alive. I remember analyzing my spiritual experiences like I would dreams, by using a dream-analysis book I had. I don’t recall taking these analyses very seriously at the time but I was still curious about them. These analyses of my spiritual experiences would often be done after really exhausting training sessions or after weekend competitions. Despite my fatigue, I often felt deeply relaxed, energized, happy, and free afterwards. I liked that!

Interestingly, when I was a child, I did not place too much emphasis on understanding my spiritual experiences. I remember how sensing or conversing with a deceased person or animal, or having out-of-body experiences, was nothing special. These experiences seemed natural and very ordinary. I remember relating to them as playful moments. It did not really matter if I did not find any meaning to them. Later as I got older I found them, in fact, very profound and reveling more than what existed outside of my mind. I remember that these experiences, at that time, were just part of my daily life, and something that I kept secret for many years.

However, despite their ordinariness, some of these experiences made me anxious. I remember, one night before bed, I asked God to not let me see dead people or animals anymore; only asking to keep the ability of sensing, smelling, or hearing them. From that day, on I did not see them anymore but could use my other sense to detect them.

These last few years, I had the opportunity to revisit these experiences through exchanges with fellow companions of my spiritual community. Now that these topics are no longer taboo, it's very refreshing to explore different perspectives on these experiences, although there is still a part of me that does not seem too interested in knowing what they mean. I'd rather keep to my interpretation of these revelations being ‘a moment of clarity outside of time and space'.

Some of my experiences were quite profound and felt like waking up from a dream; those had a deep impact on my life and my relationship to life. Others were simply like a ”twinkle” or a ”flash” that dissolved very quickly with the next thought, and probably also had a more subtle impact on my life, even though I could not identify it. The most impactful and transformative experiences are those that touch my heart. Those that feel real and alive, and in which I am not acting as a witness.

I have example I want to share with you of one such experience that I still, 30 years later, cannot come to a definite interpretation of. This drawing below was created 30 years ago, during a spontaneous writing moment. At that time. I was part of a small group in Montreal that gathered around the writings of an elderly French Canadian women who channeled God or spirits. We would get together and recite specific phrases in different forms and rhythms with the use of a metronome, and with the intention to raise our consciousness. During these hours upon hours of reciting, we would have a blank piece of paper and hold a pen in our hand in case we'd receive messages. I never wrote words while channeling but I drew a lot. This is the only picture I have left of that time. As I mentioned earlier, I cannot find a definite meaning to it, apart from this sense of a deep love ”emerging” from within.

Moreover, what I have observed from the variety of spiritual experiences that I've had is that the disposition I am in at the moment of the experience plays a role in whether I become aware of it or not. Moreover, the environment in which the experience happens can act as a catalyst for more experiences to emerge.
For example, during a 3-month pilgrimage to St-James in Santiago, Spain, I was walking on a path where millions of people, over a thousand years, have walked with similar spiritual intention. This created an energetic momentum or ‘vortex' in which time and space seemed to dissolve, an experience that many others on this pilgrimage have also reported.

In addition, one of the most transformative and illuminating experiences I've had was a conversation with a ‘light being' or spirit in 2010. At that time, I was not involved at all with meditation or any spiritual community; I was into dancing or conscious movement. I was in my third year of movement training and writing a paper for my diploma experimenting with different perspectives on dancing. As I was taking a break in the garden, I was looking at the clear blue sky which had a few white clouds passing by when, for no particular reason, I started to ask myself: ”I know the sky is a sky because I name it sky. I know that the sky is the color blue, that clouds are clouds, and that clouds are white, because I define it that way. But what if the sky is really called an elephant and the color blue is now called yellow?.” I kept looking above forcing my eyes and mind to see a yellow elephant instead of a blue sky. I tried and I tried, again and again, mesmerized by these questions that had nothing to do with dance, until I heard a voice very close to me on my left. I turned but I was alone. I therefore continued my attempts to perceive the blue sky differently when I heard the voice again saying: ”you are getting closer”. I felt so annoyed by this voice that was disrupting my deep philosophical experiment and responded spontaneously: ‘”Getting close to what? What is it that I am getting closer to?” I turned and I still seemed to be alone but knew, in that moment, that I truly wasn't.

I therefore engaged in conversation with this being for quite a while. Two sentences from that conversation would become key to what would come later in my life: my dedication to meditation and awakening.

1. I define objects to make sense of them in my experience of time/space reality.
2. Everything is as it is.

This mystical experience had nothing to do with the training I was involved with at the time; it was as if a door had unlocked somehow. At that time, I did not know much about meditation and spiritual awakening, but my sky experiment and the encounter that followed set me on a path that was nowhere to be seen 12 years ago, although it makes perfect sense now.

Most of the experiences I had had one thing in common – the absence of self-awareness. I was completely absorbed in God transmission and it always happened when I expected it the least. Only after, when I started to reflect on what had just happened, was I able to put the ‘self' back in the picture. Often I believe that the experience might have nothing to do with the moment you find yourself in; something is simply unlocked or set in motion that is beyond your understanding and knowledge. When it comes to these experiences, I believe that trust and faith need to be cultivated more so than meaning-making.

Finally, to bring my essay to a close, while I was writing, earlier on, about mystical experiences being ‘natural' or even ‘ordinary' when I was a child, I felt something vividly exciting arise which seems so paradoxical to those words. Maybe there is a deeper ”knowing” to this feeling and it is the spark of the moment that recognizes it! Maybe when I experience such an extra-ordinary moment – and I SEE and Re-Cognize it for what it is without using my mind – my body, mind, soul, spirit come together in a single spark of now…

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to write these words.