Beyond the edge of sanity

A recent article by Deepak Chopra, Crossing a spiritual divide, mentions that Americans are experiencing a spiritual awakening. For the first time in 47 years, more than 50% of respondents to a pole admit to a "moment of sudden religious insight or awakening". What I'm thinking is when is the wave going to hit us in South Africa, or has it just begun to do so?

Ever heard of Mighty Men? (No, not the cartoon superhero, or you and your dad.) Mighty Men is the most recent South African flavor of religious fervor, and the man with the cross is Angus Buchan, who professes nothing but a simple message of love and prayer and good Christian values, and he does so to men.

Mighty Men is only one of a whole range of flow experiences that are currently being triggered all over the world. Another excellent example can be found in the "gift" that the Black Eyed Peas gave to Oprah on her birthday. Not only does it perfectly illustrate the nature and occurrence of spiritual fervor, it also bears the ecstatic verbal testament of Oprah, and the thousands of participants that still proclaim how the staged event changed their lives forever.

In reply to those I hear protesting logic, and saying things like I'm comparing apples with pears, let me remind you that flow has found religious expression for thousands of years. Just because the way we enter flow seem different between Negro Spirituals like Swing Low Sweet Chariot and whirling Dervishes, or Christian madrigal like Oh Happy Day. Once flow has been entered our actual experience of it, just like the collective memory we share in flow, seem to be most uncharacteristic, and in highly irregular fashion we find that individual recollection of flow experiences share remarkable similarities.

Flow is an unmistakable universal experience of unity, and can be triggered by any of a variety of experiences. Not with standing it's diverse origin, flow feels the same whether you find it at a drumming circle, a revival rally, the Burning Man or a Mighty Men Crusade. It is found in the two thousand year old rituals maintained by the Catholic Church, the Jewish rituals that have their origin way before those, all forms of tribal worship and most ritual practices, and you get it in fire walking, hypnotic entrancing, musically enhanced forms of tripping, just the same as you'll find in the flow of a Shamans dance.

From this perspective it is easy to see what slave songs and 'gum boot' dancing have in common, and from there it is just a hop, skip and a quantum leap to love and peace and happiness. Beyond the edge of sanity...