Knowing Jesus from personal experience - how is it done?

Meeting Jesus in a dream...

What does it mean, how should we understand it? 

I suppose that - for a Christian to have strong faith - he needs to know Jesus from personal experience. 

But what does this actually mean, in practice? - and in a world where there is an apparently infinite amount of conflicting advice concerning how to do it. 

Where should one even begin to look? 

Most sources of advice on how to know Jesus will direct us at specific secondary and second-hand sources, that need first to be discerned and recognized as true (among a mass majority of other sources of information that are required to be rejected), and then the information provided about Jesus needs to be understood. 

This will not suffice for obvious reasons; including failure to locate, failure to evaluate correctly, failure to comprehend correctly. 

And it observably does not suffice for most people most of the time - who never get to know Jesus.  

To know Jesus, indeed to know anything, we need to know it directly, unmediated. 

Know from inner contact, yes; but specifically the contact of Love. 

This knowing is and must be simple; because it must be comprehended by a single mental "moment".

With Jesus; the need and purpose is to have a clear and simple apprehension by which we know a few things (whether separately or perhaps all-at-once); such as what he offers us, that this offer is real, and what to do if we want to accept his offer. 

This experience of direct-knowing is what matters - but it does Not matter how this experience is achieved...

Possible examples of "how" people get to know Jesus include the usual religious activities: scripture, ritual, symbolism, churches, prayer, meditation, spiritual and physical disciplines...

It may included divinely-purposed experiences in this mortal life: such as miracles, answered prayers. 

Or it may include dreams, near-death, or post-mortal encounters (e.g. meeting Jesus, meeting a beloved resurrected person). 

But in practice; how we get to know Jesus may also include many negative experiences; such as realization of death, rock-bottom despair, extreme fear, sin, loneliness... 

Therefore; in principle, almost anything that induces a turning-away which becomes a turning-toward may lead a person to experience Jesus directly and personally. 

So much for the direct experience; but this is useless unless recognized as such! If we insist on rendering the clarity and simplicity of direct knowing into indirect forms - by translating into words, concepts, pictures - then we have made it into something abstract, complex, ambiguous... 

Into something that requires theoretical interpretation. 

Consider the example of a dream. 

In a dream we may meet Jesus in visual or audial imagery - and there is a strong tendency to focus on dream content: what Jesus looked-like, what did did, what he taught us...

Thus we get misleadingly caught-up by trying to interpret the meaning, decode the message, understand the implications... 

But the proper way to understand this kind of dream - or any other experience of Jesus - is to disregard specific content; and instead reflect on what we know experientially in consequence; and know so simply and so clearly that we can grasp it whole. 

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NOTE ADDED: The above came from my reflecting upon how it is that the Fourth Gospel ("John") had become so important to me over the past years - its simple and clear "message" hitting me with the force of revelation; but that I would not expect other people to learn from reading it in the same way. 

For me, that particular means worked towards the desired end. But for other people, a very wide range of means might lead to the same end. 

In sum: the means to the end are personal, contextual - hence idiosyncratic. 

The problem is that - for too many people - being given the right answer is insufficient, because they are set-up to reject any answer when that answer is simple. 

Furthermore (as I said in a comment over at Francis Berger's place) It is a huge change of attitude required, from people assuming that reality is going to be something forced-upon them (almost irresistibly) by external power -- to recognizing that (as of here-and-now) people who want to know reality must make an explicit choice and pursue reality actively - and as an individual. 

That people do not do this is partly from psychological factors such as laziness and wrong priorities; but also most people assume that any belief or knowledge that is actively-chosen on the basis of inner-conviction (no matter how solidly-affirmed that conviction), must be just engaged in a wishful-thinking fantasy.