Some of the most profound shifts in my spiritual life haven’t come from reading or teaching, but from direct encounters with my inner world. I am someone who happens to have vivid symbolic visions while meditating. These are brief moments when something unexplainable pierces through and rearranges my understanding. What follows is one such experience. I share it here not to suggest that all spiritual experiences look like this, but to show how, for me, meaning often emerges through metaphor.

This particular experience unfolded during a time of intense inner work. I had just completed an eight-week compassion training at a Tibetan Buddhist temple that involved daily meditation and weekly workshops. At the same time, I was navigating the emotional fallout of leaving an abusive relationship. I was raw, devoted, and open. It was a fertile and painful time.

One evening, I watched a video on autism, monotropism, and psychosis that shook something loose in me. It hit close to home. My former partner was autistic, a disabled veteran with a traumatic brain injury, and struggled with complex mental health challenges. A comment in the video struck me: that the military often over-recruits undiagnosed neurodivergent individuals, contributing to the high rate of homelessness among veterans. The weight of that reality overwhelmed me with grief and helpless compassion. I had to close my eyes.

I entered meditation instinctively. A familiar buzzing sensation spread through my body, one I often feel after deep yoga or somatic release. I focused on Thupten Jinpa’s definition of compassion: a movement from awareness of suffering, to connection, to the desire to help, and finally, to believing one can make a difference.

But I realized something painful: I was stuck. I could feel the suffering and feel connected to it, but I didn’t believe I could do anything to help. Not really. I couldn’t act from where I was. That powerlessness was unbearable.

Then another question rose in me, darker and harder to face: What if some people, those who cause harm, don’t actually suffer? What if they feel fulfilled in their cruelty? But something deeper pushed back. No. That can’t be true. Just like me, they suffer. And with that thought, something split open.

Behind my closed eyes, I saw a black screen shatter into jewel-toned shards: ruby, emerald, sapphire, amethyst. They radiated out like broken stained glass from a single pierced point. The moment was visceral. The insight came all at once, with the force of a blade:

You cannot act your way out of suffering.

I saw how I had been living as though being “good” could shield me. I had been operating under the unconscious belief that if I just performed life correctly, through discipline, therapy, relationships, and stability, I could be spared. But that isn’t how suffering works. Suffering is not a punishment. It is not a measure of morality. It is universal. Even Jesus suffered.

Later, I brought this experience to my own spiritual director. We reflected on how many of my deepest insights often arise through relationships, especially painful ones. I wondered aloud if that could be a path toward greater self-compassion. I half-joked that I’d been “using perfectionism as a hedge against suffering.” This vision had cracked through a fundamental belief in moral dualism, in earning safety through righteousness.

What emerged in its place was the beginning of a more non-dual awareness. All suffering is equal. My striving to be good was, in its own way, a desire to control the uncontrollable. I don’t think enlightenment has much to do with becoming a better person. Growth, kindness, and healing may come, but they’re not the point. Enlightenment, if it means anything, might be about seeing truly.

I don’t yet fully understand how to live out what I glimpsed. But I trust it gave me something... maybe not clarity, but a kind of peace. A softening. A step toward forgiving others. And a step toward forgiving myself.

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