"The simplicity of God is greater than the complexity of man"
In my reading many of the great Christian mystics, two that show some interesting parallels and contrasts are Evagrius and Maximus and Confessor. Evagrius wants to purify the mind and Maximus wants to purify the heart. Prayer for Evagrius is a great spiritual battle against demons. Evagrius looks on the negative side which we all must face. Maximus on the other hand looks on the positive side. It's about God's love shaping everything we do. Maximus focus is on a deeper pure love that conquers the enemies from within us.
Evagrius and Maximus both speak of contemplation but for Evagrius, it is where we escape idle thoughts whereas for Maximus it's where we rest in the perfection of God's love. Although both of these saints would say that one does not approach God by reason alone, Evagrious speaks more about the battle of the mind and Maximus of the battle for your heart.
In the end, there is a kind of movement in Maximus the Confessor's contemplation that takes us to the transfiguration of Christ. This is not so much a linear movement as it is a lateral one, moving sideways in a kind of a spiral way to grasp the spiritual significance of our own transfiguration. I was first introduced to this idea of a kind of spiritual spiral in the academy by Grant Osborne when it came to understanding the Bible. His classic work The Hermeneutical Spiral became a classic explaining how the horizon of the text and the reader spiral towards each other over a sequence of events engaged together.
What I am just beginning to grasp is a kind of spirituality where either the Trinity is like three spirals (Celtic Trinity) or prayer flows in a spiral pattern like Angela of Foligno or Theresa of Avila seven mansions is a kind of lateral movement of spirals all converging into the center where the soul ascends to God. Maybe my heart simply needs to receive this revelation for my mind cannot grasp it at this time. I pray that a transformation of my heart by God's love would renew my mind as well. I suspect the image or picture of a spiral in the spiritual realm is more a picture of how it appears to our spirit and not necessarily what it really looks like in its essence?
I know there is a danger here of so many pagan religious ideas that speak of a spiral or labyrinth of the soul or our psyche. Satan always tries to counterfeit the real so I suspect there is a lot more to this perception of a spiral when it comes to the developing our mystical mind and faith. Although this is beyond my comprehension in so many ways at the moment, I hope the Lord will give me more light and revelation on this issue in the future. Maranatha!
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