Originally Posted by islovin
This is exactly why the story or the journey is how I learn and grow...because on some level your story will "touch my heart"....and on some level....I am able to experience, to a certain degree, what you experienced.
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Here is where I think you're going to hit a wall. You cannot "learn" an experience. No one can. Either you have it yourself, or you don't.
Knowing "about" something, which is what the intellect lets us do, is night and day different from "knowing" that thing. You indicated that it's all just a bunch of words to you. Alright, fair enough. Let's perform a thought experiment that will hopefully make those words become meaningful to you.
Let us imagine that I do not come from your planet; that I come from a world vastly different from this one. On my world there is no such thing as the flavor of salt. We have the other three primary tastes: sweet, sour and bitter, but on my world salt has never existed. None of my people has ever tasted it before. I come to visit Earth and we meet.
"Irene," I say, "I've just been exploring this fascinating world of yours. Over and over I run into references about something your people call 'salt'. I cannot conceive of what this taste is like. Can you help me understand this unknown taste?"
"Sure I can," you say with some confidence.
"Wow," I say, "you sure sound confident. You must have a lot of experience with it."
"I've tasted it a million times or more," you say.
"That's great," I tell you, "because my people pride ourselves on being very precise. When I go back to my planet to make my report I'll need to be able to tell them exactly what this 'salt' stuff tastes like. You're sure you're up to it?"
"Of course," you assure me, "I've been eating things with salt in them since I was an infant. It's a very common, but distinctive taste. Trust me, I know exactly what salt tastes like."
"That's terrific," I say, "but I'd like to make certain. On my way to meet you I stopped at one of your roadside diners. They had little paper packets of salt at their tables and they gave me one. I opened it and looked but it seems they may have made a mistake and given me a packet of sugar by accident. I opened a packet marked as sugar and compared it to the salt they gave me. I have to say they really do look pretty much the same."
"Yes," you agree, "outwardly they do look a lot alike. But as far as taste goes, they're very different."
"So then, Irene, if I let you taste a little of this salt from the diner and a little of the sugar without telling you which was which, you could identify which one of them was the salt? You know the taste of salt that well?"
"Yes," you say, beginning to get a little bit annoyed by my skepticism, "I promise you, I KNOW WHAT SALT TASTES LIKE! I know it as well as I know my own name. I taste it every day and I've been tasting it since the time I was born. Trust me, I know the taste of salt."
Alright, Irene, I've set the stage for our little thought experiment. Here's my character. I'm not from this world and no one from my world has ever tasted salt before. Let's imagine that for reasons of safety I'm not at liberty to simply taste the salt myself, but I need to make a precise report back on my home world about what it tastes like.
On the other hand, you (or your character in this thought experiment at least) have very detailed and explicit experience tasting salt. In fact as you're reading this I'd bet serious money you can close your eyes and recall it so vividly that your mouth begins to water just from the memory. So here's your part in our experiment:
Explain to me (the extraterrestrial me) exactly what salt tastes like. Your description has to be so exact and detailed that when I think about your words it will start my own mouth watering as if recalling something I've tasted before. That's your challenge.
Now, let me save you a little bit of time and tell you what won't work. You can't compare it to something else because salt is one of the four primary tastes. It is qualitatively different than any of the other three and therefore it cannot be described as tasting "like" anything else.
Also, don't describe it to me in terms of what it doesn't taste like because that would be virtually anything else you might name. Simply telling me it doesn't taste like anything else does not give me any idea of what it DOES taste like, so don't try the process of elimination approach.
Just share your experience of salt with me in words so that I know it in the same way you do. You do that and then we'll go from there.
Incidentally, this is essentially what you suggest Tolle and other writers should be able to do with regard to spiritual experiences; to write in such a way so that you, who has never had their experiences, can read their words and will feel as though you have personally had them. In other words, they've tasted salt that you haven't, and you want them to describe it for you so that it will be as clear to you as if you had tasted it for yourself without actually ever tasting it.
