Sometimes I find spiritual experiences when I’m looking for them, but sometimes they sneak up on me and surprise me.¬† This morning I was in my coding ‘zone’ (I call it ‘being in the groove’), seriously sleep deprived (in my personal programming purgatory, indulgences are paid for with lost hours of sleep), and Girl by the Beatles starts playing:
When I think of all the times I’ve tried so hard to leave her
She will turn to me and start to cry;
And she promises the earth to me
And I believe her
After all this time I don’t know why.
Ah, girl! Girl!
Maybe it’s one of Paul’s (?) indrawn, reverse sighs that sets it off, but suddenly I feel that wash of the ineffable.¬† I stop in mid-line and sit back and lose myself wholly in the rest of this song and the next two: (Paperback¬† Writer and Eleanor Rigby).
I’m trying to describe the experience without interpreting, without assigning meaning (though part of me wants to call Girl a love song to the LDS Church).¬† Years ago I would’ve tried to turn this experience into a supporting block in my Mormon world view.¬† For the past year or two, I would’ve tried to analyzed it scientifically.¬† Today I’m just going to take it as it is.
Any of you have experiences like this?  If so, what do you do with them? Or rather, what do you do with them?
20 responses so far ↓
1 Jonathan // Sep 20, 2006 at 7:03 am
I can definately relate to this experience. A similar one happened to me 2 months ago with a song by Brian Adams called “Don’t Drop That Bomb On Me.” This was not the normal music I listen to, my wife had left it in my car’s CD player. I listed to it for just a bit and then I was very quickly taken away with the same sense of the ineffable — I could not even put words to it but it was very emotional and very intense.
What follows is just my humble guess about something complex and mysterious. Some things are almost impossible to describe using philosophical langage, and I know that by trying to do so I will ruin or cheapen the beauty this experience.
To me this is spiritual truth spoken through the form of myth coming to us by the vechicle of music. Myth is a story, image, or illustration that is a metaphoric representation of a spiritual truth that is brought to mind as soon as the myth is seen. This method of hearing truth is quite different than listening to someone speak or describe the same truth intellectually using words. This message is somehow delivered spiritually - you understand instantly. To understand this message the same way via someone explaining it might take 20 minutes or more or never, because it has to be filtered through the many gates we have constructed in our minds - does this line up with my worldview, my religion, my church, my intellectual prerequisites or presuppositions? A spiritual message speaks to our heart and bypasses everything else - it is instantaneous.
Another not-so-mystical example is when someone tells a joke, and you hear the punchline, and then laugh. You would not find it funny if the joke were explained to you. Somehow the “funny” is not conveyed in logical discussion.
There is something about the combination of music and myth that pierces us to our spirit - that cannot be described as well as intellectual beliefs can be, but can be understood far better than intellectually acquired beliefs can ever be. This is not to say that not being able to describe them makes them any less real or less legitamate. I believe this is how spirit speaks to spirit; how God speaks to us.
So what truth got conveyed though the myth? Well, I can only shed light on my case. I believed a lie up to this point that I was inherently an evil person. Somehow in this music and somewhere in the lyrics where evil and destruction was being talked about symbolically, a powerful message came across — that my heart (the true me) was not evil but good. Those words are very inadaquate and even sound cheesy in relation to the reality and the entirety of the message I recieved and the emotions I felt - most of it I simply cannot put into words. It would take a book to explain what I had learned in that one instant.
Just my perspective - probably could be said better or less mystical, but its my best shot.
2 Miko // Sep 20, 2006 at 8:03 am
What do I do with them? I let them. Music speaks a language that seems to bypass ears and brain and go straight to the soul. Sometimes the words make it through, sometimes they don’t. The song that always does that to me is Billy Ray Cyrus’ All Gave Some. There are others; sometimes a song I’ve heard hundreds of times will hit me as profound during one hearing of it, but the next time I hear it, it’s gone.
3 Matt Thurston // Sep 20, 2006 at 11:11 am
Excellent description, Jonathon.
I’ve had this experience dozens and dozens of times.
Before Stevie Wonder just called to say he loved you, he was cranking out some of the most transcendent music ever recorded. His 1976 double-album Songs in the Key of Life is a visionary masterpiece. It contains the familiar track “Isn’t She Lovely” about the birth of Stevie’s daughter. A year or so ago I was working on my computer and listening to this song with my two-month old son lying content in my lap. Something about Stevie’s simple love for his newborn daughter (Aisha) and his wife (Londie), and his gratitude to God for giving them to him, pierced the deepest region of my heart and sent me soaring to heights I’d rarely experienced. “Life and love are the same,” he sings. The part at the end where you hear Stevie giving his daughter a bath just about killed me.
Isn’t she lovely
Isn’t she wonderful
Isn’t she precious
Less than one minute old
I never thought through love we’d be
Making one as lovely as she
But isn’t she lovely made from love
Isn’t she pretty
Truly the angel’s best
Boy, I’m so happy
We have been heaven blessed
I can’t believe what God has done
through us he’s given life to one
But isn’t she lovely made from love
Isn’t she lovely
Life and love are the same
Life is Aisha
The meaning of her name
Londie, it could have not been done
Without you who conceived the one
That’s so very lovely made from love
4 Watt Mahoun // Sep 20, 2006 at 4:41 pm
I mostly can’t even listen to music while working, this happens to me so often. And I can be semi-lost for days after this kind of emotional episode. For example, I felt the need to immerse myself in Eminem after hearing Mosh in the run-up to the 2004 election … I had no idea I was so angry. The music and lyrics brought it all out and I’ve been operating at a different level ever since. The experience moved me and re-shaped me; my mind was retuned and I was born again.
Needless to say one cannot afford to have this happen too often, but one cannot afford to miss too many of such opportunities either.
5 Miko // Sep 20, 2006 at 8:56 pm
amusingly, my husband brought home a book about the effect of music on the fertile minds of teenagers: I Hate Myself & Want to Die: the 52 Most Depressing Songs You’ve Ever Heard. And being the closest of the MoF crowd to this side of teenagerhood, I will admit to being profoundly impressed that someone (frequently Phil Collins) knew what I was going through!! Perhaps less than a religious experience, but no less a formative one, neh?
6 Jonathan // Sep 21, 2006 at 5:40 am
Miko,
Funny you mention Phil Collins — I used to listen to him constantly all through my teenage years and well into college. Probably for similar reasons, although until now I never really though about it ’till now.
7 Johnny // Sep 21, 2006 at 5:55 am
I don’t have a lot to so, except that I have had similiar experiences. The first time I had a religious experience outside of the religious context was at an art meseum in L.A, the Getty. I had as powerful experience as I had ever had in any mormon context. I tried to interpret it, but nothing made sense. It was the first time I had to just “let it be” (which is another fav. beetles song of mine). Learning how to let go of the need to “make sense” of all my diverse religious experiences has freed me a great deal.
8 Elise // Sep 21, 2006 at 9:02 am
Miko - I was already thinking about music’s effect on teenagers before readying you’re reply. I absolutely agree! Being a fairly happy teenager, I got pretty wrapped up in the romantic, cheesy boy-meets-girl bubblegum-type pop music. Boyz II Men was my favorite when I was about 13. But on those moody-teenage days, Alanis Morissette and Lifehouse were at the top of my playlist.
Getting back to the subject at hand, Jonathan’s analysis of music’s power is incredible. One interesting addition to the discussion is distinguishing between lyrics and music. I find myself connecting to lyrics - sometimes I can’t remember the tune of a song that had a profound effect on me, but I can remember the lyrics word for word. My husband, on the other hand, gets lost in the actual music - the instruments, the beat, the intensity of the guitar/drum/etc performer in the case of live music - and often has no idea what the lyrics are or what the song is even about. His experience is no less profound than mine, its simply founded in the music itself.
The closest I’ve come to spiritual/profound experience relating to music (not lyrics) has been when I’ve been the one creating it. I spent a great deal of time with my violin growing up, all the way through high school and into my college days, and playing a Vivaldi concerto is the closest I’ve come to experiencing transcendence.
9 Chris Rusch // Sep 21, 2006 at 6:17 pm
Over the past couple of months I have been listening to an Indie rock band called Interpol. They had a couple of songs on the radio about a year ago. Their song c’mere (come here) I particulary like because of the words and how it makes me feel.
The singer laments how he is in love with someone who is in love with someone else, and wishes that they would be in love with him instead. Sort of a ballad of unrequited love. Sort of describes most of my dating experiences, in that I have cared for others deeply and have often not had that love recipricated.
I don’t do much with these experiences. I take them for what they are, and treasure them. Like you, I don’t try to interpret them or make them fit into my Mormon world view which is okay.
All of you should buy, or download, Interpol’s cds Antics and Turn on the Bright Lights. They are well with it.
10 John // Sep 22, 2006 at 11:46 pm
Some posts I think about for days before writing and rewriting and posting them. This one just spilled right out, and I wasn’t expecting the flood of responses. The discussion is wonderfully enlightening. Thank you everyone, especially Matt and Chris for your moving descriptions. Jonathan, wonderful exposition. I think that many rituals communicate in much the same way as music, jokes, myths. Jonathan also has more to say on this subject on his blog. I encourage you all to check it out.
I wish we could create simple (and legal) links to all of the songs you mentioned, so that we could hear them as we read each others’ responses. If any of you have a suggestion, please let me know.
The Phil Collins songs that moved me the most were “Take, Take me Home” and “Just another Day in Paradise.”
Johnny, the Getty is as beautiful as any temple!
Watt, I share a lot of my anger and passion with the punk rock band Bad Religion, and one of the most spiritual experiences I had was listening to a song called “Slumber” (and I was amazed when I heard that my friend Amber had a similar experience with the same song). Like Elise, I’m attracted to lyrics, and “Slumber” has some great ones.
11 Matt Thurston // Sep 24, 2006 at 1:45 pm
It’s not often I see a “mix tape” that features Billy Ray Cyrus, Phil Collins, Eminem, Bad Religion, Interpol, and Vivaldi. All that’s missing now is Weird Al Yankovic.
Love McLachlan’s version of “Dear God.” I loved the song as a teenager but always felt guilty listening to it. As a TBM I remember thinking, “If only Andy Partridge could hear the restored gospel then he wouldn’t harbor such negative opinions of God.” I thought the same thing about Depeche Mode’s “Blasphemous Rumours,” another song I liked. I understand the lyrics to Dear God in a completely different light today. To me its less a protest song against God, and more of a protest against the capricious and narrow God of Religion.
Speaking of hearing music in a completely different light… I grew up as a kind of music snob, thinking Top 40, Country, and a lot of Heavy Metal beneath contempt. I was a Smiths and Cure fanatic, among others. Stevie Wonder was just some cheesy blind guy on Top 40. “Isn’t She Lovely” was just some bland pop confection. I eventually grew out of it of course. As I said before, Stevie’s early 70s stuff is remarkable, both musically and lyrically. Just about every song on Songs in the Key of Life has been sampled by some Rapper today, and all of it feels “spiritual” to me and/or speaks “truth”.
I wrote a long journal entry the day of that “Isn’t She Lovely” experience with my son. For the first couple of pages I wax rhapsodic re the joys of fatherhood and the beautiful mysteries of life. Then my journal entry segues into my obsession of those days, my faith crisis. Throughout much of my life I’ve had to parse and filter everything through my Mormon lens, and the cognitive dissonance eventually became too great to resolve. So listening to Stevie sing so lovingly about his family was like accessing a momentary direct channel to some divine frequency, (accompanied, of course, by one of the longest, but most beautiful harmonica solos in music history).
Since I felt like I’d accessed some spiritual or divine frequencty, I then tried to frame the experience via a Mormon framework and it lost its “divine-ness,” disintegrating into a muddle of arbitrary doctrines and proofs. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m overly pessimistic, but the LDS view ultimately seemed to be this: “Yes, Stevie Wonder feels love for his family– his spiritual feeling is the light of Christ which we’re all born with… but (and there’s always a “but”) his love for his family would be even stronger if he had the Gospel, and he can’t be with his family in eternity unless he accepts the Gospel, etc.”
Introduce words and ideas like “priesthood” and “temple” and “covenants” into the picture and Stevie Wonder is neutered, reduced to a nodding clone in a plain grey suit. I’m not saying Mormonism does not have its share of beauty and truth; but I’m pretty sure God, if he exists, loves and accepts Stevie Wonder just the way he is. And I’m pretty sure Stevie can teach us Mormons as much about God/Love/Life as we can teach him.
Pretty basic stuff, I know… but it sometimes takes hundreds of simple experiences to break the ethnocentric shackles that often cloud our worldview.
12 Jonathan // Sep 24, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Matt - well said! You paint a good picture of an unsuccessful attempt of religious dogma to explain something so transcendent and beautiful. Your description is not at all different from one that most Christian churches (Baptist, Calvinist, etc.) I have attended would say.
I’m not sure how to say this well, but it seems to me that “religion” succeeds in sucking the beauty, wonder, and awe out of God and ourselves. When we really see glimpses into the spiritual world apart from the dogmatic lens we have grown up with, we are for a moment, overwelmed with its beauty and we see and are touched in the heart by the truer thing. With the sum total of these experiences in my life, I have come to believe that both God and people are so much more beautiful and alive than those feeble descriptions and dogmatic interpretations that religion gives us. I think of God as being someone beautiful, wild, filled with awe and excitement, and has designed us just like him. At our very best, we are like children.
I read a comment by Jana on the Sunstone blog where she said that if she could find anything in this world that was Divine to her, it would be her children, and I couldn’t agree more (paraphrasing… she said it better) My daughter is a wonderful picture of what I have come to believe in my heart that God is like. So filled with laughter and excitement and awe of their world and their unconditional love for us (their parents.) I have my own baby girl now, and this image clicks for me like only a parent would know. I have this picture in a photo album of her going down a slide - and her face is filled with such joy and laughter. The expression on her face is so beautiful and transcendent. It is burned forever in my mind as a picture of what God is like. Wild. Free. Filled with joy just to be with us and experience the world together. It simply brings me to tears. How did this picture of God get lost? Why is it just a ghost in the pews of our churches? Children are such a blessing - for they show us the Divine.
13 Miko // Sep 26, 2006 at 8:27 am
Matt, Jonathan, & Jana—Live’s song Heaven has a great line in it that speaks to this: “I don’t need no one to tell me about heaven/I look at my daughter, and I believe.”
14 Matt Thurston // Sep 26, 2006 at 3:48 pm
Cool Miko. I like Live’s first three albums. Ed Kowalczyk has always struck me as having a Bono-like messianic complex. I mean that as a compliment. I recently found out he was a follower of Ken Wilber. Explains some of the Zen symbolism I’ve seen in his lyrics and on their album art.
15 Miko // Sep 27, 2006 at 8:34 am
okay, this is a little belated, but I listen to my iTunes “least played” playlist in the mornings while I surf. “Oh! Holy Night” came on. this is my absolute favorite Christmas song. I will sit through church (midnight mass, even!) if it means I can sing this. Really, it’s only the bridge, when the music swells and you hear “fall on your knees!”. It always makes me get goosebumps. Sometimes it makes me cry. That’s the kind of faith I wish I had: the kind that makes me fall on my knees in awe. Awe of the world created, awe of the forgiveness of sins, awe of unconditional love…etc.
Here’s the kicker: the version which came on this morning was the Cartman version where Kyle gets to zap him with a cow prod whenever he forgets the words. Somehow the feeling of ineffability manages to make it through even this (extremely funny and) irreverent version.
16 Miko // Nov 20, 2006 at 11:14 am
Shawn Mullins\’ \”Shimmer\” just came on my playlist:
It may not be a great song, but the lyrics are certainly profound. At the end, he changes the \”he\’s\” to \”we\’re\” and the last line to \”We\’re born to never hate\”; and in the center, a prayer that reminds me of St. Francis\’:
Amen.
17 Miko // Nov 27, 2006 at 9:41 am
it may be a pat song, or unbearably saccharine, but Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance” is a great song about potential and one’s place in the world. I’d love to have a copy of it (sans irritatingly repetative refrain) to frame and hang in a spot to inspire me: “I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean, […] Never settle for the path of least resistence, […] If you come close to selling out, reconsider, […] and if you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.”
18 Jonathan // Nov 28, 2006 at 8:28 am
Miko,
That is such a great song! Sends shivers down my spine when I listen to it. It reminds me of a great play called “My Town” with some great music by Aaron Copland.
19 Miko // Jun 23, 2007 at 11:08 am
I recently remembered the first line of “Vincent” by Don McLean (of “American Pie” fame) & while listening to it & most of the rest of the album I realized that it affected me more than a normal song. So do some of the others from that album, including “Babylon”, “Empty Chairs”, “the Grave”, & “Sister Fatima”.
20 Elaine Frei // Jun 23, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I’ve often said, half-jokingly, that the closest thing to a religious experience I have ever had was when I was seven years old and I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show the first time they were on (yes, I am that old).
I’ve come to the conclusion, however, that this is probably the absolute truth. I’ve been through a lot of religious stuff since then, a lot of it Mormon-related, some of it not. But the love of music that grew out of that few minutes of hiding behind the piano (it was after my bedime and I wasn’t supposed to be up), listening to that beautiful noise, that ability to be transported by a melody or a lyric into another place and state of mind altogether, has stayed with me longer than any of the “real” religious stuff ever has.
There are songs that can pull me back to a specific place or time or feeling just by hearing a few notes, and I’m back there just as if I’d stepped into a time machine or had never left. It’s an uncanny feeling sometimes, and if my eyes happen to be closed at the time I sometimes get the distinct impression that if I open them at just the right instant I will be back there, not just in my mind but in reality. Sometimes it borders on the creepy, but other times it can be comforting, soothing beyond words.
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