[Shaahayda Rizvi]

Hello Lee,

What a powerful mystical experience! I love your narration, you’ve penned your thoughts, emotions, actions, and reactions just perfectly.  I was going to write a few paragraphs on my view of your experience with the homeless man on a SF – street, without a blanket and there you were debating whether or not to part with your one blanket and then you wondered as to what others would say. But then came along a perfect youtube video of a Joe Campbell talk on mystical experience and “joyful participation with the sorrows of the world”. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Ah, that ‘what others would say‘ is such a dragon, and by now you might know what Joe Campbell said about ‘what others would say’. According to Joe, ‘what others would say‘ is their problem not yours. You just follow your bliss. When you follow your bliss, doors open where there were no doors.

Your particular adventure ties really well with Joe’s explanation of a mystical experience. Joe says, in a mystical experience the individual no longer identifies with the body but with the consciousness …..the bondage of the body has nothing to do with the bondage of  your consciousness. You write, “Then, out of the blue, a wave of sadness too descended over me and my heart opened. In that holy moment, I felt compassion, and I found myself not just caring for this man but all the homeless in the city and I started crying because I knew that there are probably hundreds of other homeless “brothers” in the city and there was nothing at that moment that I could do for them. ” Mythologically, the shackles fell without leaving your wrists, and you participated joyfully with the sorrows of the world.

Here is that Joe Campbell clip: https://youtu.be/Zzj8aE1KPPQ

Hope you will write and share some more, Lee.

Shaahayda