God Consiousness and Mysticism

"I said the world was insane,  The world said I was insane.  Confound it they outvoted me!"  - the late James D. Strauss

The world is full of itself to where it has no room for God anymore.  When it comes to the great Christian mystical tradition, talk of God, ecstatic trances, contemplative experiences and heavenly visions, the scholars, the philosophers, and the psychologists say St. Paul was an epileptic, Saint Theresa "the patron saints of hysterics" and St. John the cross, Madam Guyon and people like Michael Molinos were kooks, extremists, heretics, and people who simply had bad mental health.  How far the mighty have fallen and how high we have arrived judging those who have paved the way before us.

The truth is many of these people lived long healthy lives.  They had the rare capacity to draw together a grand vision of the spiritual life bringing heart, reason, and will together.  Where most people go through life with both eyes wide shut, these lovers of God, poets, saints and mystics sucked the nectar of life to its fullest.  Their spiritual lamps were lit, their hearts wide awake, their consciousness was a singular focus on God.

I have these great spiritual mothers from Jesus' mother Mary, St. Theresa, Madam Guyon, Hildegard von Bingen, Julian of Norwich and Hannah Whittal Smith.  Then there are my spiritual fathers like Origen, Michael Molinos, Francois Fenelon, St. John, Maximus the Confessor, Meister Eckhart, St. Claude and St. Francis.  The list goes on and on with those who marched before them and those who have come after them.  A cosmic parade of a great cloud of witness who blazed trails that now so few follow today.

We are so comfortable on earth whereas the mystics were more comfortable in heaven than on earth.  They actually through the help of the Holy Spirit brought heaven to earth.  They experienced mystic love, joy, and soul piercing visions from God.  Probably the book of the Bible that best describes the mystic journey is the Song of Solomon with all of its intimate poetry and pregnant spiritual truths bursting forth and shining new light on our minds and hearts.

The mystic soul went through a series of adventures or discoveries that ended up in a rapturous union with God.  Whether one uses language of amazed, happy, joy unspeakable, ecstasy and delight where the annihilation of pride and self comes to fulfillment in God's perfecting and perfect love.  Language never did this justice but they called this spiritual purging or purifying love things like the cloud of unknowing, the darkness of God, the divine spark, the inward light.  No matter what the language, they all were trying to describe the ineffable and the same kind of spiritual encounters with the Divine mystery, God.

The ancient biblical tradition spoke of knowing God in many ways from the mind, to the heart, and the gut.  The gut was the place where holy fire filled one's belly.  We either take in the fire of the enemy which consumes and destroys or we take in the fire of God which purifies and restores.  I love the words by Frederick Buechner in his Wishful Thinking,

"When our faith is the strongest, we believe with hour hearts as well as our heads, but only in rare moments, I think, do we feel in our stomachs what it must be like to be engulfed in light" (p.23). 

These early Christian mystics not only understood this but they lived it.  Their lives were bright shining lights because they stayed engulfed in God's purifying light.  There is no other place I would rather be . . .