JULIAN OF NORWICH & MICHAEL HARNER Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

JULIAN OF NORWICH & MICHAEL HARNER - Assignment Example So while Julian talks about Christ being â€Å"the foundation, he is the substance, he is the teacher, he is the end†, Harner talks about the matter of fact aspects of the tsentsak and non-drug forms of shamanism in ordinary, factual language (Harner 57-68; Julian of Norwich 43). Both sources narrate forms of spiritual quests, and a common element in both is a sense that both are honest and sincere in their quests and in the way they tried to make sense of their experiences and visions. This is important because both are narrating extremely subjective experiences whose validity cannot be experienced or confirmed by an external party, but only felt as genuine and believable from an intuitive point of view. The integrity of the narrators can make or break the narratives. One gets a sense of the integrity of Harner’s narratives especially with regard to the subjective experience of ayahuasca, confirmed by a blind shaman for instance. For Julian, her reputation and the internal consistency of her message attest to the sincerity and the genuineness of her narratives and religious insights (Harner; Julian of Norwich). Julian contextualizes her sufferings in the context of Christ’s own suffering and death, couched in language tied to compassion and love. She learns from a desire to suffer the bodily pains and sufferings of Christ also of the internal reality of the compassion that exists in men as a spark too of the divine in men, of the Christ in men. Her key insights are with regard to the love of God shown through the Christ’s own passion, so that she and all who love God and desire to follow the will of God may experience that love as well (Julian of Norwich). The sacred drink ingested by Harner is ayahuasca. When he ingested this he had visions of another dimension, including that of a creature that is reptile-like, who reveals to him an inner reality tied to the nature of man’s past, of the way man had evolved