(48) Peak Experience

"...looking back I will so admit that at the moment of my Peak
Experience I was more truly and more fully myself than at any
other time. And so I find myself confronted with the strange
paradox that I am more truly myself when I forget myself. When
I lose myself, I find my Self."
[David Steindl-Rast, A LISTENING HEART: THE ART OF
CONTEMPLATIVE LIVING, Crossroad, 1984, p. 60.]

Comment: Br. David is a Benedictine monk, affiliated with
Mount Saviour Monastery in New York. He was also trained
in art, anthropology, and psychology. And need I note that
he is a famous monk, who has been on lecture circuits,
leading seminars, on-line, as well as writing other books.

I met him years ago during a day when he gave a speech.
Quite frankly I cannot remember what he discussed; but I do
remember that upon my mentioning being a Benedictine
oblate, he bowed and kissed my hand--like the true European
gentleman that he is! (Getting one's hand kissed can go a long
way for a woman.)

As for the Peak Experience, I've read lots about it from other
sources. It seems like a connection with All that surrounds you.
You become a part of the landscape or the sunset or the music.
You are no longer your little ego-self, but rather are part of the
Greater Environ in which you have become. Maybe just for
a split second, this happens,

It's evidently a special experience, which I have yet to experience.
I sometimes wish for this Peak Experience, but wishing doesn't
prompt it. I've read that some people feel that they can "prep" it
by following certain rituals or observances. But that doesn't
seem to prompt it either. From my studies, interviewing some
people who have had a Peak Experience, it just happens. You
can slip into it unawares, but it is boggling when it occurs.
I've also discovered that one doesn't necessarily need to be
"spiritual" either. And it can include all ages, young and old
alike, immature or mature.

From my interviews, too, some emerge a little more enlightened.
Others can be disturbed. And worst of all, some shrug off and
completely ignore the Peak Experience.

Br. David does reflect upon this special experience--as he puts:
"It matters little whether the experience...took place on a lonely
mountain, or, say, in the midst of a crowded concert hall. At the
peak moment you were alone in a deep sense. Not that you
were reflecting on it then and there, but reflecting on it later you
find that the word *alone* applies, even though there may have
been a crowd around you. You were in some sense 'the only
one.' You were, and this is even more important, not only
singled out but of a single mind and so you were 'alone' also in
the sense of being altogether with yourself, all of one piece,
'all one.'" [Ibid, pp. 60-61.]

Besides Br. David's reflection on the Peak Experience, long ago
I found yet another who somehow connects with me. In his last
treatise, THE BOOK, Alan Watts carries forth that in "immediate
contrast to the old feeling, there is indeed a certain passivity to the
sensation, as if you were a leaf blown along by the wind, until you
realize that you are both the leaf and the wind. The world outside
your skin is just as much you as the world inside...they move together
inseparably. Your body is no longer a corpse which the ego has to
animate and lug around. There is a feeling of the ground holding
you up, and of hills lifting you when you climb them. Air breathes
itself in and out of your lungs, and instead of looking and listening,
light and sound comes to you on their own. Eyes see and ears hear
as wind blows and water flows. Time carries you along like a river,
but never flows out of the present; the more it goes, the more it
stays...[and] all space becomes your mind."

My reflection: we are far more than we know.