When I first joined the forum, someone (I can't remember whom, was it arbagyl?) recommended a book called The Opposite of Art, which I have been reading. It is absolutely fabulous. An INFJ must read.
A good writer shows rather than tells. For brevity's sake I'm going to tell rather than show. The author tries to show you the ecstatic mystic experience, by reshowing it over and over in a hundred different ways. We follow the protagonist around the world as he tries to recapture the experience he originally had during a near death event, which he calls "The Glory." He tries to paint it, but can't. In the process he meets ecstatic mystics in all sorts of different religious faiths, who all obviously share a common experience despite their theological differences.
Because I am an ecstatic mystic myself, twice now the book has triggered the experience again in me.
The first dime was when I followed the artist the Istanbul where he meets a Sufi (Muslim) mystic, who suggest that what he needs is WAJAD; I make the connection that what this whirling durvish is experiencing is identical to what I experience when I do my religious music, and BAM, I just KNOW what WAJAD is. Suddenly I'm teleported there, into the glory.
The second time is in Tel Aviv, during the first gulf war, when Saddam is sending his scuds into Israel. The artist looks out into the night from his balcony, watching the missiles fly by the moon. On the balconey across the square, he sees a mother and father and their two children with gas masks on, holding hand and DANCING, the noses of the masks eerily bobbing up and down to the rhythm of the music, which I recognize as HaTikva, our song of freedom, of defiance in the face of death, of hope in the face of insurmountable odds:
As long as deep in the heart
The soul of a Jew yearns,
And towards the East
An eye looks to Zion
Our hope is not yet lost
The hope of two thousand years.
To be a free people in our land
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
[video=youtube;_IuHgBQcbKs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IuHgBQcbKs[/video]
A good writer shows rather than tells. For brevity's sake I'm going to tell rather than show. The author tries to show you the ecstatic mystic experience, by reshowing it over and over in a hundred different ways. We follow the protagonist around the world as he tries to recapture the experience he originally had during a near death event, which he calls "The Glory." He tries to paint it, but can't. In the process he meets ecstatic mystics in all sorts of different religious faiths, who all obviously share a common experience despite their theological differences.
Because I am an ecstatic mystic myself, twice now the book has triggered the experience again in me.
The first dime was when I followed the artist the Istanbul where he meets a Sufi (Muslim) mystic, who suggest that what he needs is WAJAD; I make the connection that what this whirling durvish is experiencing is identical to what I experience when I do my religious music, and BAM, I just KNOW what WAJAD is. Suddenly I'm teleported there, into the glory.
The second time is in Tel Aviv, during the first gulf war, when Saddam is sending his scuds into Israel. The artist looks out into the night from his balcony, watching the missiles fly by the moon. On the balconey across the square, he sees a mother and father and their two children with gas masks on, holding hand and DANCING, the noses of the masks eerily bobbing up and down to the rhythm of the music, which I recognize as HaTikva, our song of freedom, of defiance in the face of death, of hope in the face of insurmountable odds:
As long as deep in the heart
The soul of a Jew yearns,
And towards the East
An eye looks to Zion
Our hope is not yet lost
The hope of two thousand years.
To be a free people in our land
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.
[video=youtube;_IuHgBQcbKs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IuHgBQcbKs[/video]
