Taking the mystique out of everyday mystic practice may not be the easiest of tasks, but it is a necessary one. The mystic descriptor tends to lend itself to remote images of wacky out-there folk, doing their decidedly odd spiritual thing, far removed from the rest of us mere mortals.
The mystic goes to the spiritual mountain, to get more active down on the plains.
Perhaps a half-naked Swami comes to mind, or maybe one of the no-less intriguing, host of Christian or Jewish mystics from times past.
Actually, my own daily meditation practice emanates from one of these historical mystic misfits. A little spanish fella called Ignatius Loyola, who got, you know, all spiritual while living in a cave five hundred years ago.
Mercifully not too many mystics in our time, have to, you know, get naked or become cave dwellers, to take hold of the mantel of mystic. They are in fact all around us; you’ll find them wearing hard hats on construction sites or amongst high flying female executive folk. If you’re giving some form of meditation a red hot go, you’re already in the mystic game.
Ultimately, like most titles the moniker means little, it rather all about the practice. In this regard, the mystic certainly does go to the spiritual mountain, but the purpose is to become ever-more active down on the plains.
It seems to me that the post-modern mystic steeped in the spirituality of our time, is not so much concerned with esoteric visions, although if they happen that’s a mighty fine thing. Rather, the practice is to become ever-more attuned to the whispers of the ‘Unseen Compassionate One’ in the heart, and thus to the true purpose and meaning of our lives.
We are all inherently born as mystics.
Beatrice Bruteau makes the salient point that we are all inherently born as mystics, it’s just that for many, this innate urge remains unrealized. However, when it manifests, with it, comes an unequivocal ethical obligation to pursue a radically different and better world for all.1
This is not an optional extra, it is a mystical imperative! The mystic that claims God-consciousness and spiritual experience, which does not translate into concrete action for the ‘Other’ has probably been hanging out on the wrong mountain.
The authentic spiritual path, the mystical endeavor, as Wayne Teasdale makes clear, can and must result in, “acts of compassion that seek to heal others, contributing to the transformation of the world and the building of a nonviolent, peace-loving culture that includes everyone.”2
Perhaps a forerunner to the two mystics just cited, and one who came to remarkably similar conclusions about the mystic path, was Thomas Merton.
William Harmless, in writing an in-depth account of Merton’s mysticism, says that, “for him, the mystical is not about visions; it is not seeing another world or an inner world. The mystical is seeing this world in a God-given light. And in this seeing, in Merton’s words the gate of heaven is everywhere.”3
The mystic, takes a constant mingle with the divine and thus becomes ever-more human in solidarity with all. It’s all about awareness of the potential for heaven on earth in the now. This is the ultimate mystical vision, intensely practical and requiring affirmative action. It’s a doing thing! Not just a vision thing. As Merton wrote, “Thank God, thank God that I am like other men, that I am only a man among others.”4 Now that’s mystical.
- Beatrice Bruteau, ‘Preface,’ in The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001), xvii-xvi. [↩]
- Wayne Teasdale, The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World’s Religions (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001), 239. [↩]
- William Harmless, Mystics (New York: Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2007), 32. [↩]
- Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 156. [↩]