Mysticism-Intro

Gregg’s Reflection

Mysticism implies a deep, personal encounter with the holy. A direct experience of God is quite different from knowing about God. Dave Daubert, a Lutheran pastor friend, uses three questions printed each week in the bulletin to help his people notice God in the mundane of daily life. Each week, as worship begins, they project answers people wrote the week before and placed in the offering. He asks:

Where have you seen God at work in the world this week? How had God led you to bless someone this week? How has God led someone to bless you this week?

Another spiritual practice of recollection I learned from Richard Rohr. It’s called the Daily Examen of Consciousness: Reflect on moments in the last day when you were aware of God’s presence, and moments when you were distracted. It is a Jesuit Practice.

God is all around us if we have Eyes to See. Spending time in nature is another practice for experiencing God: Forest Bathing. All Contemplative Practices are a path to experiencing God. If you are new to the world of contemplation, take a look at these practices, and come along as we see what Scripture, the saints and mystics, ancient and modern, have to say. Blessings

Find the whole post, including a Timeline for Christian Mysticism, here.

Journaling Prompts

Howard Thurman tells us: Mysticism is the response of the individual to a personal encounter with God within his own spirit. How have you experienced the a personal encounter God in your life? It is gentle as a whisper, rising up from within. Does that sound familiar? What places or spaces lead you into a rendezvous with God? How have you habituated those practices?

Scripture

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Matthew 5:8

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”

John 3:3

I and the Father are one.

John 10:30. The mystical journey is a path towards union with God

I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me.

John 17:23

What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we have understand what God has freely given us. This what we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit; explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.

1 Corinthians 2:12-16

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

1 Peter 1:3

This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.

1 John 4:2

Ancient Writings

Humanity was given three sets of eyes. The first eye was the eye of the flesh (thought or sight), the second was the eye of reason (meditation or reflection), and the third eye was the eye of true understanding (contemplation).

Richard of St. Victor, Classics of Western Spirituality

The mystical life consists in understanding, then contemplation which finally leads to astonishment where the mystic silences the mind to receive ecstasy.

Richard of St. Victor, Carl McColman, Christian Mystics, p. 168

The prophet is the mystic in action.

William Hocking

It is an overwhelming experience to fall into the hands of the living God, to be invaded to the depths of one’s being by His presence, to be, without warning, wholly uprooted from all earth born securities and assurances, and to be blown by a tempest of unbelievable power, which leaves one’s old proud self utterly, utterly defenseless. Then is the soul swept into a Loving Center of ineffable sweetness, where calm and unspeakable peace and ravishing joy steal over me.

Thomas R. Kelley, A Testament of Devotion, p. 30

When I walk the fields, I am oppressed now and then with an innate feeling that everything I see has meaning, if I could but understand it. And this feeling of being surrounded with truths I cannot grasp amounts to indescribable awe sometimes.

Charles Kingsley, William James, Varieties of Religious Experiences, p. 385

Modern Writings

Mysticism is the response of the individual to a personal encounter with God within his own spirit.

Howard Thurman, Mysticism and the Experience of Love, p. 6

All religion derives from a mystical experience, transcending thought, and seeks to express this experience, to give it form, language, ritual, and social organization.

Bede Griffiths, Matthew Fox, Christian Mystics, p. 260

Whatever you do, don’t call yourself a mystic. Calling yourself a mystic would be like calling yourself a saint, or a shaman. If you really want to be such a thing, it’s far more important to live it than to just talk about it. If you are really a mystic, other people will see it. Let them call you a mystic; you don’t need to claim that name for yourself. A real saint doesn’t need PR. You simply live a saintly life.

Ken Leech

Mysticism involves not just intense forms of contact with God, but also a transformed life. It is meant to spill over into a new mode of living. The supreme form Christian contemplation is a fusion of contemplation and action on a higher level, where one could be active while in contemplation.

Bernard McGinn, Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, p. 520.

Mysticism brings about new ways of knowing and loving based on states of awareness in which God is present in our inner acts as the direct and transforming center of our lives.

Harvey Egan, Soundings in Mystical Tradition, p. 345, Christian Mystics, p. 148

The path of the mystics is not about isolation, but integration. It's seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary, the miracle in every mundane moment. Lean into the transformative power of everyday experiences of God.

James Finley

Everyone is a mystic, We may or may not realize it; we may not even like it. But whether we know it or not, whether we accept it or not, mystical experience is always there, inviting us on a journey of ultimate discovery.

Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart, p. 3

Far from being withdrawn from the world or indifferent to the suffering that goes on in it, the mystic is uniquely motivated and qualified to respond to social and economic injustices. Genuine mystics don’t renounce the world for the sake of a private spiritual illumination.

Rather, they use the enlightenment they’ve achieved to do something about the world’s ills. The genuine mystic understands that his or her connection with the divine is likewise a connection to all other humans and, indeed, to all of creation, a relationship that “borrows the eyes of God.”

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 7/16/20

It seems to me that a regular practice of contemplation makes it almost inevitable that our politics are going to change. The way we spend our time is going to be called into question. Our snug socioeconomic perspective will slowly be taken away from us. Whatever our calling on behalf of the world, it must proceed from a foundational “yes” to God, to life, to Reality. Our necessary “no” to injustice and all forms of un-love will actually become even clearer and more urgent in the silence. Now our work has a chance of being God’s pure healing instead of our impure anger and agenda.

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 7/17/20

If we want to go to the mature, mystical, and non-dual levels of spirituality, we must first deal with the often faulty, inadequate, and even toxic images of God with which most people are dealing before they have authentic God Experience. Trinity reveals that God is the Divine Flow under, around, and through things. Jesus tells us that God is like a loving parent who runs toward us while we are ‘still a long way off’ (Luke 15:20), then clasps and kisses us. Until this is experienced, most of Christianity does not work.

Richard Rohr, Yes, and, p. 65 

It is not enough to have wonderful theories about God. Authentic mystical encounters radically change us and our way of living. We are made for contemplation. It is the secret longing of your being. It is in the wilderness of your heart that you discover a reality beyond every religious form. We each have the capacity to touch and be touched by the source-to know the source through certitude too deep for words.

Beverly Lanzetta, The Monk Within, p. 49-50

God is the light by which all human wisdom is apprehended and understood. And yet, God remains mystically hidden beyond the limits of human wisdom.

Carl McColman, Christian Mystics, p. 147

The One can only be seen through a flash of mystical vision.

Paul Davis, The Mind of God, p. 519

Mystical consciousness emerges only out of deep silence, where human meanings fall away and we are immersed beyond thought, language and concept in the pure love of God.

Carl McColman, Christian Mystics, p. 150

Mystical Thinking, the Power of Metaphor

In the desert, men and women were counseled, “Go to your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” The cell was a sacred space, a place in which a woman could be with herself and the divine Presence and listen. The cell was a place of divine encounter and of ongoing, daily experience of being immersed in God’s presence.

The wisdom of the desert tempers our instinct to avoid boredom and discomfort: Amma Syncletica’s bird metaphor speaks directly to one of the dilemmas of the spiritual life that of coming to terms with the plain old ordinariness of spiritual practice and the life of prayer, of the whole of life becoming prayer. We are enticed by a variety of means to leave our “eggs” and simply move continually from one interest to another. The result is that we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to bring forth new life. The “eggs” die because they are not tended.

We miss the deeper life of the Spirit because we are constantly moving from one interest to another rather than focusing on one thing. Our ancient mothers knew that when boredom threatened, it could very well be the outward and visible sign of God’s secret, hidden, inner work within the human heart and soul.

Consequently, they emphasized staying in the cell, in the little room of daily living, and letting that cell be their teacher. Staying in the cell, or “sitting on the eggs,” means noticing our appetite for overstimulation. The cell teaches us to slow down, to notice what is right in front of us. The wisdom the desert mothers offer us is that by staying with ourselves, with our inner ups and downs, with our hurts and our fears, we will bring forth the new life that God is creating within us.

Mary Earle, The Desert Mothers: Spiritual Practices from the Women of the Wilderness p. 21-23