Bringing Mystical Experience to Spiritual Direction

I have been having several conversations lately about mystical experience. For the first time in a long time I launched right into a few of my own stories and experiences with someone who I thought was a safe person. She told me about a Jesuit friend of hers who says, “When someone tells me about something like that, I ask them if they had enough sleep, if they had eaten and if they had a good bowel movement”. I have been processing ever since. If I was with that Jesuit and brought something that I experienced as holy and an encounter with the Mystery to Spiritual Direction and I got that response, I would go underground with it and feel the beauty of it discounted. For all of human history we have tried to alter our consciousness to be directly connected with the Source of being…we meditate, we fast, we dance, we sing. Can we have a “real” embodied experience of God? I have. Maybe the Jesuit hasn’t. We do occasionally experience that connection…beyond words, beyond rational and cognitive thought, beyond feeling. Where is the space to witness, behold and integrate that experience if we can’t bring it into Direction? I am so grateful for those who walk with me into the bewildering Mystery. I’m so grateful for those who trust me with their holy encounters with Love.