Personal Myths

...and this is precisely when troubles arise. Because for most people they start to dwell on the experience in such a way that instead of it simply remaining the essentially naked and direct, they begin to cultivate a systematic understanding of what is going on all of their own. And while they may have become quite adept at first in identifying and then in avoiding the cultural myths that initially had obfuscated the door to the direct contemplative life, they now begin to substitute their own myths, which is worse. Genuine contemplative experience is not simply a different kind of culture, a chosen alternate set of something or other.