Mysticism and the Nightmare Before Christmas
Have you seen The Nightmare Before Christmas? Ya’know, the Tim Burton film where Jack Skellington discovers a doorway out of the Halloween Town where he lives that leads to Christmas Land? This world is utterly unlike anything he has encountered before, and he tries to explain it to the people of Halloween Town in an attempt to get them to celebrate Christmas. Of course without the direct experience, the folks of Halloween Land interpret it all within the context of what they already know. Even though he knows its not quite right even Jack starts to lose his grip on what Christmas was like and ends up just making a Halloween Parody of Christmas that utterly misses what Christmas is all about.
This is the perfect analogy of the mystical experience and what happens when people rush to share it to quickly in order to make a new religion, new path, new tradition or whatever.
Having a Mystical Experience is not the end result of the work, but the beginning of it.
Whether it is a vision, illumination, ego-transcendence, or union it is an experience that takes time to deepen and understand. One of the mistakes that people make when they have authentic spirit contact or mystical experience is thinking that they have received a final truth and then running with it. Innovation is good. Gnosis is good. But so is taking your time and deepening your experience. If you grab at the first mystical experience you have, you become Jack Skellington trying to replicate Christmas. You lose track of the thing as it becomes just another version of everything else.
