There's an old idea — Zen, I think, though probably older — that the word is just a finger pointing at the moon. Look at the finger too long and you miss what it's pointing at.
I wonder if that's what happens when experiences like the ones on this forum get labelled too fast. Someone feels something extraordinary at 3 a.m., or notices a striking coincidence at a funeral, and within seconds they're arguing with themselves or others about whether it was God, the universe, mere chance, or something the brain manufactures under stress. The label arrives, the conversation closes.
What if we compared notes on the actual texture of the experiences first — what was seen, heard, felt, and when — and left the label for later, or never?
I'm genuinely curious whether the categories we bring help us understand what happened, or whether they sometimes replace it. What do you think?