Mystics have listened to and expounded their spiritual experiences. They are not alone in treasuring a few peak moments in which one feels transported to another reality. Eva Hoffman, in her book, Lost In Translation: A Life in a New Language, describes an experience that many people would recognize in variant forms. These experiences are often triggered in nature and inspire a sense of oneness with Other or other. They usually involve heightened awareness, vibrancy, and a capacity to know more than we otherwise know. This is how Hoffman describes one of her experiences:

“I pick up a reddish brown chestnut, and suddenly, through its warm skin, I feel the beat as if of a heart. But the beat is also in everything around me, and everything pulsates and shimmers as if it were coursing with the blood of life. Stooping under the tree, I’m holding life in my hand, and I am in the center of a harmonious, vibrating transparency. For that moment, I know everything there is to know. I have stumbled into the very center of plentitude, and I hold myself still with fulfillment, before the knowledge of my knowledge escapes me.”

Achievement dreams are as natural as hero worship.

I remember when Nick, my then four year old grandson, spent hours, days, years, pretending to be a Ninja Turtle. He made decisive moves, saving the day against the bad guys. In each encounter he led the winning team. When down for the count, his bulging arms reached for glistening weapons at his side. He hit his mark. No matter what the odds, he arose and conquered.

Though no one told me, a girl, I could be or do anything significant, I invented a few dreams for myself. Some day, after disking the wheat field, I would leave the Minneapolis-Moline behind, disappear into the house and, like Cowgirl Kate, emerge again as a ravishing beauty in a subtly seductive pink dress filled out with a can-can and a well endowed chest. A few years later I regularly metamorphosed into a new Janice Joplin. Still later I secretly transformed into a female William Faulkner.