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To: Salvation
Generally, and traditionally, mystics are people involved with mysticism, which has (aagain, traditionally) overtones of the occult.

Anyhow, that's my impression and feeling when I hear the term mystic, as opposed to a "saint" who is definitely aligned with God in Heaven.

As to what I know regarding Mother Tereasa, I do not know for a surety, and never said I did...I simply said my faith and common sense tells me different.

"By their fruit ye shall know them".

7 posted on 09/17/2007 6:02:36 PM PDT by Jeff Head (Freedom is not free...never has been, never will be. (www.dragonsfuryseries.com))
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To: Jeff Head

If you read the article again, it identifies the word “mystic” with those people who suffer this absense of God or Dark Night of their soul.

I do appreciate your interpretation of the word, but I do not think it is the only definition.


9 posted on 09/17/2007 6:04:59 PM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: Jeff Head

Here is what my thesaurus brought up;

Mystic: spiritualist, medium, shaman, sage

Mysticism: religion, theology, religious studies, spirituality, holiness

You are choosing the medium, shaman part and igmoring the spirtualist,

plus you are ignoring all the difnitions of mysticism — none of which have to do with the ococult.


11 posted on 09/17/2007 6:10:49 PM PDT by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: Jeff Head
Generally, and traditionally, mystics are people involved with mysticism, which has (aagain, traditionally) overtones of the occult. This is a completely ridiculous assertion. Mysticism has to do with various profound interior experiences of God. Sometimes these are ecstatic experiences, sometimes they are periods of spiritual dryness. But the word has nothing to do with the occult. You need to do some reading in the long traditions of Western civilization because your grasp of basic terminology is severely lacking.
16 posted on 09/17/2007 6:57:24 PM PDT by jacero10 (Non nobis domine, sed nomine tuo da gloriam.)
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To: Jeff Head
If I may say so, the usage of "mystic" which you note is a corruption, IMHO. If we're going to talk about tradition, there are ample traditions in eastern and western Xty which pertain to the vision of God and or to union with God. There is material in the Epistles (caught up to the third heaven whether in the body or out of the body ....?) which deals with mysticism.

There is a prudential reason for the "occultness" (in the strict sense of "hiddenness" rather than the conventional sense of all spooky and weird and certainly UNXtian) of this sort of thing. Here's a major seedbed for heresy, deadly spiritual pride, madness, and destruction. And the pursuit of "experiences" for their own sake is, strictly speaking, perverse. But when the conversation focuses too much on weird stuff that happened when so and so was praying, you're going to get people praying NOT because prayer is one of the things we owe God, but for the sake of experiences. And those the roaring lion is always ready to provide.

For me it's important not to let popular and conventional perversions of terms dominate. Let the Gentiles change THEIR vocabulary, for crying out loud! Why should we agree to let them trash our language and take over our "terms of art"? Mother Theresa prayed. Stuff happened. There's nothing to see here. Rather than look for something, let us all to OUR prayers! What we see is not as important as Him who always sees us.

40 posted on 09/18/2007 7:13:58 AM PDT by Mad Dawg (Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.)
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