Is the Hound of Heaven nipping at your heels?
Insofar as one can offer a HOWTO on Mysticism, this one assumes a Christian orientation. The threads of understanding will pull in all directions because the focus is on removing impediments to what should come naturally to the Christian -- an other-worldly viewpoint, pervasive and rooted in every assumption, showing in every action.
While this does in some ways mirror the non-Christian concept of "achieving enlightenment" you may have heard or read about, particularly in Buddhist and Hindu religions, it is built on a different foundation. It will cause you to come to many of the same philosophical positions as Eastern mystics, but for different reasons. The resulting changes in behavior will be somewhat different, too. Christian Mysticism in full flower will drive you into the streets to act upon a broke world, not pull you away from it.
Another difference is we are in the position to describe in more-or-less clinical terms some introductory description of what's involved. The phenomenon is established in scientific literature, even if that science can't pretend to explain it fully. Here is where we run into the greatest difficulty, in that far too many Western Christians are deeply suspicious of the whole thing. My apologetic for mysticism itself may help to explain why it's not only a valid approach, but the the valid approach to Christianity. But standard Western epistemology can be addressed usefully to help ease the crossing.
I can't sell you anything you don't already want. That's fundamental to mysticism. The whole concept in Western terms assumes cognitive intellect is not in the driver's seat. That's not to say we default to subjective emotion, which is a very real problem in itself, but there is an entirely other human faculty for arriving at conclusions. We have several different names for it, but you are probably most familiar with the concept of the subconscious mind. You've heard about "Freudian slips" where you accidentally say something which reveals a subconscious thought. More reliable, odd as it may seem, is the contents of your dreams. Dreams are most disturbing because they help you recognize something you may have been consciously avoiding. They are used in psychological treatment because, while the interpretation may be variable, your dreams remembered when awake do indicate something your subconscious mind wants to push out into the open. Mysticism seeks to tap into that subconscious, but the Christian part is avoiding pitfalls easily identified in the Bible as sin.
We assume man is fallen, through and through, and no portion of the fallen man is free from sin's perversions. There is no faculty you can tap into to climb out of the pit. Should you manage to develop a truly mystical capability, but lack the spiritual anchor of God's revelation, you will still be utterly fallen. We can't deny that many people outside Christ have something which surely serves to bring them into a far better understanding of the world via a non-intellectual capacity. The discernment point is not so much the words they choose, nor their specific conduct, because yours may be no better. The point is really not even knowing whether they have achieved enlightenment, as it were, but a common viewpoint about things in general. Mystical logic, if we can call it that, is not necessarily tied to a spiritual touch from God. Rather, that spiritual touch has not finished its work without including mysticism.
The only other issue related to other sources of mysticism is whether you can actually work with them on the ground. Indeed, this applies as the general principle for all our human associations. The point of Christian Mysticism is not what you know, nor precisely what you do or accomplish, but where your commitment stands. When working with another, whether professing Christ or not, the whole matter at hand is usefulness according to your calling.
The idea of grasping the nature of things, as in the sense of "being," is a Western materialist concept, and by itself leads to sin. It assumes you are capable of knowing things as God knows them. We drop all such pretense, and simply accept the whole of our factual knowledge will never be more than a tentative functional framework for guessing what part anything may play in our calling. That accords well with the standard scientific method, but we carry it farther, making it more universal. Not only do we never assume we can know the nature of anything we can observe, but we don't care. We aren't going to study anything too hard; we are too busy with other concerns. Specifically, we don't try to note whether a thing is good or bad, but whether it fits our calling at that moment.
The one and only thing about which you can be sure is the calling. Something active and living inside of you, which is not precisely you, is moving and drawing you. It will not let you be. At the bare minimum it plants a sense of imperative, whether or not you are able to recognize what is demanded. The only thing you know is where you are right now is not working, and you really must do something. If that won't go away, then you should think of it as the sense of calling. Christian Mysticism properly seeks to answer the need of obeying that calling which has no words. Christian Mysticism seeks to enter the Land Without Words, because that's where the answer lies.
There is nothing about mysticism which seeks information, nor a change of status. There is nothing static about it. You are entering a fluid and dynamic existence from which you can never depart again. You are entering upon a journey through that Land Without Words. Change will become the only constant. This fundamentally unsettled existence is disturbing and captivating, but requires a complete shift away from what we have been told by mainstream society is the best of all possible worlds. We learn to seek comfort in discomfort, peace in the storm, stability in the chaos -- not because we become something different, not because we become so adept at handling everything, but stop trying to handle anything. We seek no control over the reality around us, but seek merely to restrain our own fallen nature.
Rather than the nebulous loss of self into the nothingness of the Far Eastern mysticism, we lose ourselves into God Almighty. We have a distinct Person who is separate from His Creation, but surely available to us in all things. It's not because He declares to us the nature of anything, but reveals to us the place a thing holds in His calling of us. In a sense, we know all things only by their use in whatever world the Lord reveals to us. All revelation is an imperative.
By no means do we give priority to limiting pain, suffering or damage to our selves. It's human nature to avoid these things, and that in itself is not sinful, but becomes sin when that avoidance stands as the final point of decision. The body is merely the vehicle, but so is the intellect. Those things are fallen, untrustworthy, and we must escape their hold on us as much as God allows.
A critical element is grasping the parable of the stone foundation. Jesus spoke of building on the rock, a reference to Himself as God's revelation. Upon experiencing that call, that nipping of heels from the Hound of Heaven, we are confronted with a mass of confusion which obscures that Rock. God is One, and we all share in Him, but no two of us have the same calling, so no two of us can receive precisely the same revelation. The touchstone of our individual calling is that unshakable mass of imperative which God places in us unilaterally. Our awareness of it comes in the form of convictions. We all should have heard by now the old saw: Opinions you hold; convictions hold you. As you begin to explore this non-rational faculty, your most reliable foundation is your convictions. Every choice must be a stone which fits on that foundation.
Convictions are things from which you cannot walk away. More than any other thing you can identify, this is the substance of what you are, what makes you an individual, and what unites you with God. Your understanding of these imperatives will grow, changing often at times, but the substance of what they are, generally hard or impossible to put into words, are what God has made of you. Insofar as you can know your true self, it is by knowing your convictions. All the ways we might claim to know God or His will starts right here. The first and greatest task, and the one to which you must return every moment, is defining those imperatives in the context of that moment.
For the sake of a shared vision, the Lord did surely reveal the means for comparing notes. On a purely human level, we have the Covenant of Noah. This provides a cognitive frame of reference. It is not restrictive in the sense of demanding you obey it in detail, but as marking off general boundaries. It is designed to be handled deductively -- this is the given, and all other things are organized to fit this pattern. We note the Law of Moses was a specific implementation of it for a specific context, but Jesus said of both Law Covenants:
"Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?" Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (Matthew 22:36-40)
Paul echoes this in Romans 13:8 -- "he who loves another has fulfilled the law." If your commitment is loyal devotion to God, with the corollary of respect for your fellow humans, you will fulfill whatever the Laws intended.
Given we know the world of mysticism is filled with so many ungodly distractions, it pays well to shield yourself. It's not the place where God alone speaks, but where demons also roam. They can be found any place we can go. Our adherence to the Laws through sacrificial godly love is our defense. It's not a matter of secret phrases, incantations, declarations which quote English translations (or any other language) of the Bible, but your commitment constantly renewed. When you are obeying the Laws of God, the demons are impotent against you. That is, they can't do anything which God doesn't allow. The Land Without Words is your home, but you should expect to walk a few miles in the shoes of Job as you journey through it.
No living human can show you the gate. I can only tell you there is one. But we can paint the border in bold colors.
You can try to fake it. You can emulate all the subtle behavior clues, study and internalize the logic academically, but at some point you must inevitably betray yourself. For the Christian part of this, we recognize people fail, including the person in the mirror. For the Mystical part of this, faking it only goes so far, and failure itself -- how you fail -- gives you away. You cannot counterfeit transparency. People who have embraced mysticism fully can always be frighteningly transparent, even when they can't pretend the thing at issue will improve. They might evince a moral orientation contrary to Scripture, but they will accept and admit that, too.
Transparency remains today as the signal point of departure.
Transparency is a commitment to truth. For Christians, Truth is a Person -- God. There is no such thing as objective truth standing as a separate entity outside God. Something participates in truth only so far as it reflects God's revelation.
The gate is totally beyond control, and beggars description. You cannot find the gate if you look for it. Academic curiosity won't show it to you, regardless of intensity. Fascination and obsession are insufficient. The gate is a pre-existing commitment to enter. You can't simply decide on a cognitive basis you want it, because whatever you want will not be it. You will experience it as a sense of intensely personal calling.
Given that, you may be so very far removed from the gate you'll need some guidance. If you experience a powerful sense of pull, there are actions you can take which will help to clarify. Christians would hardly be surprised by the suggestion you get alone, either by hiding away ("prayer closet") or climbing the mountains of isolation. My personal preference is for the latter, typically by taking long walks in rural settings. Unlike other brands of mysticism, I recommend talking out loud, specifically to God.
However, the worst thing you can do is script the wording, because then it becomes mere ritual. Ritual is a hindrance until you have the thing ritual symbolizes. Ritual follows truth, arising from it; ritual cannot create truth in you. Too many rituals after the First Century arise from someone's personal experience, which may not coincide with yours. If you don't find it promoted directly in the Bible narrative, don't use it, because it will be one more roadblock you have to tear down. Genuine Christian Mysticism can be a shared experience, but cannot possibly be homogenized or commoditized; it is utterly unique with each individual.
The point is this: If you cannot find this thing already inside you, you cannot have it at all. Thus, much of the initial experience is immersion in introspection.
I do not for a second believe this is for everyone, or that all humans are fully capable of mysticism. There may be a thousand reasons why this or that person will never get there, but we know the vast majority of humanity won't. Nobody can tell you this is due to the nature of the thing, only that it works out that way. Frankly, any attempt to discuss "the nature of mysticism" is itself a purely cognitive exercise, and not a part of mysticism.
Thus, even in cultures where mysticism is taken for granted, a true mystic will stand out as atypical. Again, the primary mark to which we can give a name is transparency. There is nothing secret about mysticism. People who are genuine mystics will never hide any part of it from you, nor any part of themselves, so long as there is the slightest hope you actually want it. While a great many Eastern mystics withdraw so you have to struggle to get to them, as a symbol of struggling to get to mysticism, they won't deny the seeker so as to hoard it all to themselves. It is your own lack of the calling and drawing which will keep you out of it.
As noted previously, once you come through the gate, you can't go back. It's a one way gate, even as surely as it is your gate alone. Once this form of enlightenment has you, the change is permanent. You can try all you want to stop, and you may be able to stay in place. I've encountered a few folks who never seem to progress beyond bare entrance. But you cannot ever go back. Your own sanity demands you keep exploring, pressing in to discover the Land. You won't lose sight of all you knew before, but it will surely appear in a different light. In the long run, nothing -- no particle -- of your life will ever be the same.
The fundamental commitment to Truth as something separate and ineffably larger than yourself carries a raft of consequences. There is a sense in which it is all one thing, but we have a well established framework for examining elements within the whole. Bear in mind, we do this artificially for the sake of growth and clarification of expectations.
Commitment to truth makes you transparent because you realize your own insignificance. But it's not a fearful nor insulting thing; you own your insignificance as good and right. You don't take yourself too seriously. When things don't go as you expect, you are surprised, but not angered. You don't even feel inconvenienced and frustrated. You knew you never controlled the situation in the first place, so you aren't rattled when circumstances make that obvious. It frees you to focus on the one thing for which you can genuinely be held accountable: your reaction.
You are accountable. There is no pretense of being or doing anything important, only those things you know a higher power has placed on you. The largest area of debate among Christians is over the contents of this question: What is your duty to God? Anything which smacks of objective performance measure is not eternal, but a mere indicator for a specific context. God proposed specifics, but only mankind in his fallen intellect is hidebound. Jesus made it clear your decision to devote yourself to the welfare of others is the whole of any Law or Laws as far as God is concerned.
It's not so hard to love others when you aren't focused on yourself. When you know nothing in objective reality matters that much, including your own existence in it, you aren't buried under a burden of senseless care. Things you can sense in this world are only tools, nothing more. Broken, worn or inappropriate tools are discarded or set aside, and the job of loving continues apace. Expressing love is not merely a duty, but is the highest expression of Truth. Once you absorb revelation, it burns inside you as a bright flame and you can't smother it, or hold it inside. So you let it out by loving and sacrificing stuff, including your own human existence, because Truth alive in you demands it.
In a sense, you work hard to destroy this world. You work hard to remove it as a blinder which obscures what really matters. The only way to do that is provide evidence there is something beyond this world. So-called "reality" is not real. This is the part where Eastern mystical assertions this world is an illusion are recognizable. You don't respect property, but you respect people who hold that property, as potential spirit mates who can be courted to climb out of this pit. How that courtship manifests itself in this world varies by context and factors you don't control. There are no objectives in this labor, only a hope, a commitment to something you can hardly name.
As a more concrete example, I would cite the most wearying argument I hear from Christian conservatives and evangelicals. "You have to take care of your family." Yes, Paul wrote that. His comment was about lazy bums who weren't willing to work at loving anyone, but trying to freeload on those who did. Your willing sacrifice to the imperatives of the Realm of the Spirit will provide what you and your family needs. If you feel led to work in corporate 9-5 life, do so with the complete expression of mysticism, even while you recognize fully few will join you. Losing your job is not failing your family, if you lose it because you did what was right. The most important provision you can make for your family is manifesting fully that Christian Mystical lack of fear and worry. If your actions serve to enslave them to the concerns of this world, you have failed them utterly.
There is a high risk of delusion. The false mysticism which tries to paint itself over mere fleshly concerns, the obsession with advantage and symbols themselves, versus the substance in the higher realm, is the number one problem faced by Christian Mystics. If you can see it, say it, or touch it -- whatever it is, don't call it "holy" as a statement about the thing itself. That label is reserved for those transient moments when, in the particular context, some collision of things and events grants us revelation, a glimpse of holiness, which is ineffable itself. But because this is so hard to get across, we have literally millions of people who act crazy, do utterly stupid and senseless things which only harm and obscure the revelation of God.
No one on this earth can untangle that for you. You can sometimes get a word of wisdom from another who is more deeply rooted in Heaven, but in the end, Truth cuts His own path in your heart. Only you can teach yourself, in God's presence, the difference between false guilt and genuine sorrow of the Spirit. But let it be said with all assurance, the vast majority of modern Western Christianity is off the path. Most of it is a confused and twisted blending of material and mystical, with a vast mixture of misapplication of principle to things because the proper discernment of what is and isn't spiritual is missing. Even then, I'm only expressing my own personal evaluation. You dare not buy into my collection of religious perceptions, but may find them useful in discerning your own. If you find nothing to argue with, you aren't paying attention.
The second marker of the Mystic is patience in all circumstances.
Because I fully expect your path will at some points diverge from mine, I have all the time in the world to wait for you. If those paths never cross again, that is no harm to me. The most I can do is apply myself to the necessary measures to insulate my work from yours, should I come to see it as a real problem. It is theoretically possible I would be forced to take harsh measures in this world to prevent harm to something for which it is my duty to protect. It is highly unlikely. Spanking a child may be the only way to stop them killing themselves, in particular, to break habits which lead to death. There comes a time when your authority over another reaches a limit, and you cannot act. But if they intrude themselves into your realm of authority, they have chosen to be under it. You must act as you best understand God's revelation in the context. God can replace abundantly anything anyone else can take or destroy. But if you reach out your hand to harm those people whom God has called me to protect, you might draw back a stump. I won't know until that moment comes, but the justifications for violence are extremely limited, and for some non-existent. Ultimately, no other human can decide for you.
I didn't come to this place quickly. My duty to God is a struggle to remove obstacles to your progress and mine. I can do you no good by marking out a path and time line when by no means will God show me what he's doing inside you. I might have some idea, but God has warned frequently in writing He reserves the right to keep His schedule from our eyes. Indeed, the whole of the Ancient Near Eastern culture of the Bible hardly bothers to measure or mark the time line for things. A concern for how long things are taking is not a gift from God, but a part of the curse of the Fall. Mystics will use time as any other tool or resource, all of which we accept as it comes. Even my own son and daughter came into this world with some things already established, and it was for me to negotiate obstacles I could not remove in raising them. Indeed, it didn't matter if I could theoretically fix this or that, but whether my duty to Truth required me to try. The highest duty of all was to set them free, by equipping them for freedom. If my daughter then chooses to be a dope-smoking hooker, it would break my heart, but I cannot allow that choice to be somehow a personal affront to which I must respond. She stands before God on her own. I can wait for her to ravage herself until she cries out for help, and I can wait for you, too. How long did God wait for me?
So we are patient with others who don't yet understand, and that would be most of the world. You are never alone, but you will often feel lonely. Rare is the non-mystic who will accept your position on things; rarer still the fellow traveler. Most rare is a mystic with any significant overlapping vision. As a Christian Mystic, you are less likely to experience so much loneliness, simply because most Christians are forced to entertain a certain amount of mysticism, even if they denounce the term.
The degree to which you feel the full warmth of fellowship will often depend on how much you say. Mysticism is the unending process, and the anchor point remains God Himself. You are enlightened by the Spirit, but forced to drag around this fallen flesh, along with the broken intellect. At God's whim you will be released, but until then, it can't get any better than a full mystical awareness as a Christian. To all others, this will make you appear all too subjective, because no two fallen humans share precisely the same flaws, and thus, they don't share the same particular experience with Ultimate Truth.
You'll be torn by a burning desire to tell all you know, even as your seasoned wisdom warns you there are times when silence is better for everyone involved. If we understand this as a journey, for yourself and everyone around you, then you aren't in a hurry to drag everyone to the place you rest on the way. God isn't going to reveal to you every pertinent detail of any other person's life, only enough to act in the given context. If telling someone I am a Christian Mystic will only serve to hinder their growth, then I won't tell them. Commitment to the truth is a fragile knife edge stance, a moving target. We prefer sheer transparency, but we can't throw our pearls at the feet of those who can't value them. It's not a simple matter of deciding who is and isn't a pig in your world. There is no method at all; every step of the way, any choice is a risk. We don't want to upset or alienate anyone, and rightly so, but we don't get to choose how God uses us to help others along, or even them help us along. So we carry a fragile awareness that nothing is simple and do what our convictions demand from that moment, and sometimes we say nothing.
By now, it should be obvious transparency is not an absolute, nor is patience or any other marker of Christian Mystical maturity. How do we put it into words? Complex simplicity? Simple complexity? Paradox is the norm. Only those whose sole anchor is concrete objectivity can demand we divulge our entire being in terms they require. So let them choose their terms and play the game, because they aren't ready. Let them call you whatever it is makes them comfortable. We are called liberal, emotionalist, hippies, and sinners by those wedded to Aristotle's epistemology. True liberals will not understand our devotion to that small selection of eternal principles which seem reactionary to them, because we know some things are wrong in almost every context.
Learn the lesson of Joseph in Egypt. On the one hand, the religion was entirely pagan; on the other hand, he engaged the rituals required to serve on Pharaoh's staff. We know the strong centralized feudalism he created in Egypt is not healthy by the standards of Noah's Covenant, but it was God's wisdom for Joseph. We know the truth of God was rooted in his heart, but he didn't seem to evangelize at all. He was a slave, but he devoted himself to his master's welfare. He was in prison unjustly, but served with grace and dignity. He didn't shrink from telling the truth to a condemned man, and didn't harass the one who forgot him. The paradox of God's justice is our acceptance of injustice as the norm often serves to set things right. The ways of spiritual mysticism seem too much like wishful thinking, but we aren't in it to succeed, only to be faithful, so that God defines contextually what it means for Him to prosper the service of our hands.
Most of the people you meet will express impatience with you. They will unconsciously demand their answers be your answers, as if they have somehow latched onto some concrete foundation. But if the whole world comes apart, then that solid foundation floats free -- and then what? Christian Mysticism sees far beyond the immediate, but we see it best by looking within. Not at our fallen selves, but that treasure of Heaven resting in our broken vessel. The Spirit of God invades our being so as to provide the ultimate anchor, so in that sense, introspection is the ultimate source. We will seem to others self-absorbed, but that is what God-absorbed looks like in human terms. Because we know there is a mighty, constant war between God and our fallen nature, we know where the real action can be found. It's not in the world around us; God has that well in hand. For each of us, the answers are all found by starting with what's inside. For what's outside, we have nothing but questions.
Our motto: Question is the Answer. In other words: Apparent confusion is our peace and stability. It's not because we are internally confused, but we are able to realize the apparent solidity of reality is the ultimate delusion. To understand the universe, you have to step outside it, to the realm of One who made it. Since you can't leave this world alive, you have to meet your death face to face before any part of you can go outside. Mundane reality is a prison, and the only escape is to migrate our spirits through this one portal of sanity and freedom. No, it makes no sense in words, because the truth is in the Land Without Words. If we don't turn all reality inside out, we can't hope to see the path of escape, and we are stuck in the prison of blindness and death. The result is we perceive the most pragmatic path through the dead world around us, a path which makes no sense at all to those anchored here.
You are on your own, you and God. I've handed you nothing, really, though I probably broke plenty of your toys. And if you insist on keeping them, that's your choice; pretend nothing happened. But I would prefer you find it necessary to grow up. Only then will you be free to live as a Child of God.
Mysticism is not a religion, it is a method well established in Scripture and the means to embracing the things no one can say in words, but which your spirit will never forget.
By Ed Hurst
15 December 2009
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