illumination experience
An illumination experience is not the fruit of profound insight nor a glimpse of cosmic truth, but the fleeting moment one mistakes confusion for clarity. It resides in the slender gap between grandiose self-delusion and the humbling return to mundane reality. Participants often baptize ordinary embarrassment in the waters of transcendence, only to see the revelation vanish at the first request for practical application. This curious fiction gains value proportional to the mystifying jargon that floats around it.