Connection Content
Connection Content refers to the conceptual, intellectual, and emotional content of a Connection Experience. Connection Content is one of five Connection Axes which can be used to examine Connection Experience.
Connection Axis
Connection Axes > Connection Content, Connection Duration, Connection Intensity, Connection Outcome, Connection Quality
Notes
Carl Keller[1] notes in order to study mystical (read connection) experience (the content of mystical experience), one studies the language and writings. Keller identifies eight genres of writing where one can examine the content of mystical experience, including aphorisms, biographies, reports on visions, commentaries, dialogues, instructions, prayers, religious poetry, and fiction. Keller notes there is a problematic relationship between the actual experience and accounts of it. In particular, the experience is always mediated by the language and the "religious and intellectual tradition of the community within which he [sic] lives and works..." [2]
Connection content
"The content of mystical experiences can range from observing a birth to believing one has encountered alien creatures; and the intensity can range from a few moments of rapture to several hours of shattering psychological experience. [3]
Content is "big" and challenging and creative and expressive
Bender recounts the mystical experience of Eric who connected with a "channeled entity" by the name of Lazaris. Eric points to increasing amounts of "energy" and coordinated "inspiration" that he had difficulty expressing: It "fizzled out. It just didn’t ground itself, I had quit my job and tried to write a book,[exploring] all this weird, prophetic, cosmic overview energy, but I couldn’t express it so I went back to work."[4]. Eric had another experience in 1997 characterized by an extended period of creativity, and efforts to express the information which he characterized as better grounded, but still abortive because he was missing something.
Footnotes
- ↑ Keller, Carl A. “Mystical Literature.” In Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, edited by Steven T. Katz, 75–100. London: Sheldon Press, 1978.
- ↑ Keller, Carl A. “Mystical Literature.” In Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, edited by Steven T. Katz, 75–100. London: Sheldon Press, 1978. p. 84
- ↑ Allman, Lorraine S., Olivia de la Rocha, David N. Elkins, and Robert S. Weathers. “Psychotherapists’ Attitudes toward Clients Reporting Mystical Experiences.” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training 29, no. 4 (Win 1992): 565.
- ↑ Bender, Courtney. The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
