Dear Atheists

[Crossless2.0]

If the fruits of meditation and prayer are subjective experiences that defy expression or explanation (which I don't doubt), then how can any mystic justify adopting any label -- Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Taoist, etc. -- rather than simply adopting Wittgenstein's maxim: Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. It seems like the only truly honest approach.

It seems to me that you are arbitrarily shoe-horning Jesus into a situation that doesn't require him at all.

I practice Theistic Mysticism, I see and imagine Jesus as imagery and he is incarnate in my mind and experience. You might see this as communication not meant to be literary taken or a stylistic device. The experience is so strong that one walks away taking it literally and not for granted. Not unless of course you are aware that's it's not literal. (Some people don't know the difference or make a distinction.)

In Theistic mysticism God is not creation, he is the opposite. He is not created , this is why Christians believe there is no infinite regress, ergo; who created God.
This is why experience is so important it has the power to convert. And i don't mean convert your religion, I mean just change your mind about experience and what you used to think it was is now radically different. There's different kinds of mysticism and you can be creative and see which one works for you.

You see and imagine Jesus. Interesting. What does your image of him look like? By chance, does it resemble a figure in a Renaissance painting? Did you pick his face out of some news footage of Palestinian protesters? Does he resemble Judd Hirsch? I like to imagine Jesus looking like Lenny Bruce. What does it even mean to "see and imagine" Jesus, since we don't know what the guy actually looked like (one of those unimportant and uninteresting things the Gospel writers didn't bother to mention)?

I buy the idea that meditation and prayer can lead to altered states of consciousness that can feel intrinsically valuable to the practitioner. But it still sounds to me like you're illegitimately shoe-horning Jesus into your experiences, rather than "Jesus" being the driver of the experiences and their contents.