I have to send you a thank-you note after your posts of mystical experiences this morning — in 2019, you posted a quote about the mystic experience of nature from a website, and in exploring that website I discovered my first resources in mysticism and finally an explanation of what I’d been experiencing my entire life. Following that little thread lead me to the remarkable place my life is now, but it began with a clicking a link on a post of yours, so I am profoundly grateful for your presence here.
(Also, I live an hour or so north of you in PA, so appreciate your photography of our landscape as well!)
Peace and blessings to you this day and always.
Thank you for this, very much. I had to wait a while to answer because I had to let my thoughts process. This is such a good example of the kind of random effects and coincidences that have happened to me in connection with these childhood moments, the post you saw being just a link in the golden thread that was leading you to some part of your journey. The ways I came to think and write about those experiences were full of little threads leading from one thing to another, sometimes almost sideways or something catching my attention as it was barely brushing by, other times being beaten over the head until it got through my thick skull, oh! I guess I'd better look into this. The childhood moments, when you have them, come with the vision or conviction that you're a part of everything and it's all connected and then it goes on through your life demonstrating that in subtle and not so subtle ways. And each time it happens we have the choice to brush them off or else to allow our version of the world to include that bit of magic, to keep an awareness that something bigger and more wonderful is going on here even when we can't see it. I was fortunate to have spent time with descendants of indigenous people here, the Lenape people for whom this was a sacred homeland and spending time on the landscape with them permanently changed the way I understand it, in ways that would be hard to put into words but it has affected what I notice. I think all along I have been, not altogether on purpose, trying to take pictures that show the potential of the landscape as a source of mystical experience, to show places as having a hint of mind and spirit as well as celebrating the beauty and life I see. This blog started as a place to store my quotations and then the pictures followed sort of as illustrations to go with them, as if to say "This is the land that can give you an otherworldly experience, no chemicals necessary." Sorry! I have wandered far afield from your message! Thank you for writing. 💚
