The Conversion of Paul on the Way to Damascus

by Caravaggio

“Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed.”

-Moses 1:10

Paul had Christ visit him on the way to Damascus. Christ visited me on the way home from a basketball game.

And by Christ, I’m of course using Christian language to describe the common human experience of awe.

Zelph’s mound was the first spiritual experience I remember. Later, standing in front of that huge tree with its outstretched, naked branches a blanket of night above me--that would become the second spiritual experience that I could remember.

The whirling dervishes of Turkey

I was overwhelmed with how interconnected and massive everything was, how the Universe expanded out in all directions. 

The stars seemed to me at that moment to be pinholes of light revealing a heaven above the dark blue from which the most brilliant and holy light could be found if only we could tear down the shady veil of night. The sun must have been dimmed compared to that great source of light that was spilling out of the tears in the sky that we called stars. 

I got out a notebook, sitting on broken concrete, and began to write a poem. It wasn’t a very good poem, but my thirteen year old self was proud of it at the time. At least it was different than the angsty Eminem meets Lincoln Park poetry that I was writing at the time.

Persian miniature painting, from 1550 CE, 
depicting Muhammad ascending 
on the Buraq into the Heavens.

I would soon live for those spiritual encounters, those moments of connection with something bigger than myself. Chasing spiritual experiences would become my obsession. 

I’d find them in sacrament meeting, while praying, while reading Walt Whitman, while hiking, while performing theatre, while writing poetry, while doing sex, while smoking dope, while chanting to Krishna--if I thought it could lead to a new spiritual experience, I would want to try it.

Portrait of John of the Cross, 17th Century

These experiences often lead towards greater love and purpose in my life. But sometimes, like at Zelph, they left me wanting, wondering in the dark night of the soul.

Moses and the Burning Bush, 12th Century

They’re sometimes so fleeting, and growing up with Mormon guilt, I’d often blame myself if they weren’t occurring on demand. Chasing spiritual experiences can sometimes lead to euphoric heights only to come crashing down to hellish lows. 

But there is beauty in these experiences. And as I learn to ride the waves of the emotional ups and downs of my life, as I’ve learned to accept the lows when they come and the temporariness of the highs, my obsession for spiritual experiences has diminished, but my love for those same experiences has remained.

Buddha under the Bodhi Tree

I’m skeptical about a lot of things, but I believe that moments of spiritual intoxication have the ability to help me find some small amount of meaning and hope, strengthen me, and set me more firmly on a love filled, self-aware, creative, purposeful path while I am spiritually sober, maybe even when I am weak, sad, and in pain.

The Fool card from the Osho Zen Tarot

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

-Joseph Campbell

(The Power of Myth)

Zelph's Mound: My First Spiritual Experience

Often times we emphasize the positive effects of spiritual experiences, the feelings of love, peace, and fulfillment. We seem to ignore the negative ones. 

My first spiritual experience (or at least the first spiritual experience that I remember) made me cynical, overwhelmed with the futility of existence and the purposelessness of life. Not only did I feel so small and insignificant, God Himself seemed so small and insignificant as well, bound by laws greater than Himself. 

It was a beautiful day on Zelph's Mound, (a place many of us knew nothing about), as a group of us 11 year-old boys hiked up its subtle slope. The night before, we were reading the Book of Mormon over the campfire, trying to discuss and apply it to our personal lives.

We were laughing and joking together as we hiked up the trail, unaware of where we were going and why. When we got to the top, our church leaders told us to be silent for a moment. In the silence, I became aware of the words of Mother Teresa that I would read years later.

"God is the friend of silence." 

There was a peace in the silence, a silence you rarely find when you're a gabby 11 year-old from a Spanish-American family that would often talk over each other. At the dinner table, it was understood that the loudest person obviously had the most important thing to share.

In that moment of silence on Zelph's Mound surrounded by my 11 year-old comrades and our church leaders, a man came out from behind a tree on the small hill across from ours. He was dressed in garb from the 1800s, complete with suspenders and a wide-brimmed hat. He told us he was with Joseph Smith in Zion's Camp.

He said he was with them when they found the Native American burial ground that we were standing on and when Joseph Smith asked them to dig it up. (I would later question the ethics of such an act, but I'm sure it was considered disturbingly normal in that time period)

He told us about how he was present when Joseph Smith prophesied regarding the skeleton of a man they found buried there, saying it belonged to a Lamanite so righteous he turned white. The man dressed in 1800s garb bore his testimony to us of how he knew Joseph Smith's prophecy was true by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We left that hill in silence with a feeling as if God had descended and touched each of our hearts. I was the first to speak (of course) after what seemed like several minutes of hiking in silence. I wanted to discuss the many thoughts that were entering and overwhelming my mind.

"And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God.”-2 Nephi 2:13
(The Book of Mormon)

"But there is a law given, and a punishment affixed, and a repentance granted; which repentance, mercy claimeth; otherwise, justice claimeth the creature and executeth the law, and the law inflicteth the punishment; if not so, the works of justice would be destroyed, and God would cease to be God.”

-Alma 42:22

(The Book of Mormon) 

The thought that buzzed in my head like no other after that moment was the idea I was taught that even God had laws He needed to follow just to be God. There was something greater than Him, something without personality that governed even His existence. 

That Law He had to follow was to me this alien, uncontrollable, All-Powerful, Cthulhu-like thing, where God was but a pawn, doing what he had to in order to avoid utter destruction. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of free will being a real thing with such a cynical worldview taking over my thoughts, especially not as a child. 

I would do what I had to do in order to experience happiness, because that's all a human being would ever want anyway (obviously), but there was only one path towards that happiness, (i.e. following "the Law"), so of course I had to follow it just like God had to follow the path He was on or experience misery. This was what the Law was to me.  

For weeks, I pondered the purposelessness and inevitability of the Universe, of existence, of morality, of Godhood itself. 

The words of Queen made so much sense to me in that time:  

"Anyone can see nothing really matters." 

Although I had many other spiritual experiences after this one in and out of Mormonism that would help me to be more invested in life and that would guide me towards a greater sense of fulfillment and purpose, this one for one reason or another left me with nothing but apathy for many weeks.