Try this on for size

Here is a quote from a sufi master named al-Junayd from my Islamic Mysticism class. I just think it is pretty wild.

"Fear of God grips me. Hope unfolds me. Reality draws me together. The real sets me apart. When he seizes me with fear, he annihilates me from myself. When he unfolds me with hope, he returns me to myself. When he recollects me in reality, he makes me present. When he sets me apart through the real, he makes me witness the other-than-me, then veils me from himself. He is exaclted beyond all of that, transforming me rather than holding me secure, deolating me rather than granting me his intimacy. Through my being-present I taste the flavor of my existence. Would that he had annihilated me from myself and compensated me, or had absented me from myself and revived me."