The great mystics speak about the indescribable with different words describing the same event. It's called by many names like the beatific vision, the Divine dark, the cloud of unknowing, the portal of heaven to name a few. The mystic more describes how he feels than what he knows. Knowing is swallowed up in unknowing. What is unknown to the intellect is taken hold of by the heart. What is darkness to the intellect is radiant and bright to the heart.
God enlarges the heart by deepening the soul. Some people call this spiritual ecstasy, heavenly raptures, trances, out of body experiences, heavenly visions and transports. What I call it is being overcome by the Spirit. None of the categories of the intellect apply to what I refer to as mystic love or Divine love. This spiritual union of the soul to God will not be known to the heart until we acknowledge that it is unknown to the intellect.
One day when I was in the Spirit, I fully understood what was happening in my mind which continued to reflect, judge, and evaluate everything that was happening. My body was possessed by another power or force which I had no control over. My mind could tell my arm or hand to move but it could not respond. There was a man praying over me who said he could see the Holy Spirit glowing over my whole body except for my mind which was like a dark area.
I originally understood this all to mean that my mind simply could not fathom what was going on spiritually by the natural faculties of the mind. Although there is truth in this, there was so much more going on than that I now realize. There is a spiritual darkness to our fallen minds which are so attached to the world that the mind struggles to believe much less interpret correctly the ways of the Spirit and heavenly realities.
God is absolute reality and is ultimately unknowable to our finite minds. Our intellect is dark in understanding the deepness and depths of the presence of God. Here was a divine moment and span of time where God anointed and supercharged my body spiritually as God's divine temple. It was in events like this I encountered God's presence in dimensions I had never experienced before. It was here God began a new work in me that is only now many years later starting to come to fruition.
It was here I felt God's indescribable peace and wild delight. It was here God stamped on my life, "I am with you always, even to the end of time." It was here God forever showed me that I am His and I am utterly lost without Him. It was here God started a new work within me and God always finishes was God starts.
No comments:
Post a Comment