Okay, I’ll try. But this is just me. I’m not speaking for anyone.
To me, the cheap sense of “mysticism” is about what amounts to magic. If you know the secret words or can assemble the arcane ingredients and so forth, then weird stuff happens.
As far as I’m concerned looking in the mirror is all the weird I need.
What I yearn for is to be good and to know, to know intimately, the Truth. That sort of thing is what I would call “real” mysticism is about.
That yearning is focussed in my relationship with Jesus.
Both in the broader sense and in the Christian sense, these yearnings imply something unattainable by the “self” of which I am more or less aware all the time. Some kind of loss of self, some transformation, some new self is required.
And I find that sort of language all over Paul. “Now I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me,” would be a good example. “Therefore you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God,” can be seen maybe as an example. I’m sure you can think of more.
It’s not just a theological presentation. It’s a life transformation and a change in the way we look at things.
And God makes the first moves, and all the moves are first. But the transformation, or some part of it takes place so deeply within us that we are scarcely aware. All I was aware of was deep amazement the day I realized that all that Bible stuff about forgiveness and love and putting away sins actually pertained to MOI! ->I<-was the sinner (I knew that) who was forgiven!
But death? Resurrection? Except as metaphor, I had no inkling. But now, 40 years later I can see not only how God led me to that day, but also somehow that the Holy Spirit has been burning the dead me away.
Sometimes it’s dreadful, almost bad enough to qualify as a hint of the cross. Other times, like the other night, it is all, “Could we just stop and bask in this gratitude for the rest of history?”
And it’s really not me. I still have plenty to confess “to you, my brothers and sisters.”
So if I stand back and think about it, I think that in the Gospel, in Jesus with the Holy Spirit we find the fulfillment of the “theophany” or “mystical union” (theosis, “being full of God”, the Orthodox call it) that all “mystics” long for.
It’s not the “cookbook” mysticism of “repeat the mantra,” though I sometimes find myself repeating the Holy Name. It is a slow change that seems to lead, with fits and starts, with long darknesses and sudden flashes of light, to death and resurrection not only as something in the past but as a fact of everyday life — His death and resurrection in which I am somehow involved.
And, I think if one, experiencing this, goes back to Paul, one finds him talking about it everywhere, and especially in that phrase “in Christ.”
I hope that wasn’t entirely unclear.
>> “Okay, I’ll try. But this is just me. I’m not speaking for anyone.
To me, the cheap sense of “mysticism” is about what amounts to magic. If you know the secret words or can assemble the arcane ingredients and so forth, then weird stuff happens.
As far as I’m concerned looking in the mirror is all the weird I need.
What I yearn for is to be good and to know, to know intimately, the Truth. That sort of thing is what I would call “real” mysticism is about.” <<
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Mad Dawg, we know that you’re for real.
What we wonder is how you are able to tolerate all the pagan mysticism in the RCC.
I'll get back with you...thanks, smvoice
It’s moving from Romans 7 to Romans 8.