Christian Mysticism

 My apologies for always thinking of something else to add after thinking I was finished.  I had mentioned quite early in Sources a little book, "Common Mystic Prayer", which had a wonderful bibliography of largely forgotten classic references, well past St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Francis De Sales where we also find his spiritual daughter St. Jane Francis De Chantal, Abbot John Chapman in his "Spiritual Letters", Father Grou's "Manual for Interior Souls", as well as Father De Caussade's "L'Abandon/Self Abandonment To Divine Providence", and no few others. Before anyone rushes off to buy any/all of these, I would wish to point out a simple fact, in my opinion, at the least. "The Cloud of Unknowing" and it's sequel, "The Book of Privy Counsel", is a stand-alone wonderful manual on the interior life. The later writings of St. John of the Cross appear to be a detailed exposition on "Th...

Simply a final entry asking pardon for posts whipped out on only a little cell phone, the important ones done in only a handful of days, and no few posts might have been skipped entire, as well as assorted text actually edited, but will let it all stand, it is what it is. My only hope and prayer is that these entries prod any reader to discover for themselves the truth of, "And now there remain faith, hope and charity (love), these three: but the greatest of these is charity (love)".  

 After all the time that this blog has been up, perhaps I have been a bit too mysterious in of what this work/prayer consists. I hope any reader will forgive me for lack of clarity, as it due to me not considering myself qualified by any means as a spiritual director of other people, and knowing that a little bit of knowledge can be very dangerous in the wrong hands. I hope and pray any reader has taken all the cautions and warnings to heart in just how easily we can delude ourselves and lead our selves seriously astray, and THAT minus any external forces (which surely exist) desiring and attempting our straying from the true path. But, I have dropped enough hints throughout the various entries, where consolidating them, somewhat, so that a reader can get some small idea as to what is involved, without being put off due to book expense where they might live, might be a good thing.  They might be spurred to obtain one, two, or three of the recommended works, ....I hope....BUT, ...

 and the difficulties they can present to readers. Again, St. John of the Cross was a true spiritual master who dove deeply into the ways we delude ourselves and risk a false spirituality unless these falsehoods eliminated. The problem for readers is the archaic Spanish of florid style, including for modern native Spanish speakers. I recently had an internet discussion in a comment section with a seeker who gushed over a particular translation published by the Carmelite Studies house, so with great interest I looked into this translation. I already had a bad feeling about it, as the seeker praised how it lacked the cloying sweetness of so many translations....I was polite enough to only thank them for the resource while refraining from saying that Castilian Spanish WAS sickeningly sweet and flowery, IF accurately translated, and lacking that, it is not a translation but, instead, an edited rewrite. Looking up the information on the Carmelite translators (Fathers Kieran Kavanaugh an...

  and the chasing thereof...almost a year and half since last post, and really cannot add anything to the subject of the interior life and union with God not said far better by cited authors, nor can I add anything to the nature of the problems and solutions to what goes on in this always passing away world. But, we can have some fun with highly speculative talk as to the nature of eternity, and our place in it, whether for good or bad. The bad news first, as somewhat mentioned prior, is that if we cut ourselves off in this life from the love of the creator who upholds all of creation every nano-second through love for it and us, then we doom ourselves to an eternity cut off from God and creation, and exist in eternity same as this life, utterly fixated on self and its defects for all eternity, hating perfection since it is NOT us, and self-consuming for all eternity, and those are the happier aspects. We have from scripture that the self-sacrifice of the Christ is ever present bef...

  and a bit of a meander as to where things went wrong with institutional Christianity leading to "the culture wars"....but mainly, the redundant post on unusual experiences, because warnings against following such experience cannot be emphasized enough. What the world needs are more people united to God, and not more assumed messages from the great beyond. Firstly, without attempting to frighten away seekers, it is a known fact that in deep concentration/prayer/"meditation", the practitioner can experience some unusual things, as already mentioned. Whether one wishes to ascribe them to the "subconscious", or demonic influence, or divine intervention (always risky), the fact remains that strange things can happen, with those who are of long time, and disciplined, practice reporting any number of highly unusual things.  Martial artists of Eastern practice are known to achieve some amazing feats through their strength of concentration, while other people hav...

  A somewhat dated musing as this writer currently endures yet again another hyperactive, frenetic, angst and anger-ridden election season where each and every candidate and party promises salvation if we vote for them, and damnation if we do not, them believed with religious fervor by their fan clubs. Likewise we are promised utopia if particular religious institution factions are in power, and damnation if they are not, believed with political fervor by their fan clubs. Where even religion has become only politics with same mass media campaigns and propaganda, pundits on the internet spewing from left and right, and treated as if it a football game, helped along by religious news sources also covering deeply spiritual matters such as movie reviews....and all so very tiresome. Imagine if all that energy were put into a loving union with God, and all that money used to spread the word. It is simply mind numbing to see just how much is wasted on the silliest things. Our first respon...

  The modern phrase might be "root cause analysis" or "peeling back the layers of the onion" or simply "what went wrong".... no matter the expression, same as in the New Testament scriptural story of Jesus, Mary and Martha, all the human problems in the world are due to humans not doing "the best part" of Mary in uniting themselves totally in love to God, where nothing else truly matters past that loving contemplative gaze and union, which then in-forms everything else. Looking for a reason for the collapse of marriage? Where the purpose of marriage is that of two souls devoting themselves totally to doing what is best for each other (union with God always first on that list) and always putting self last, united in their search for, and union with, God, where the marriage physical union, same as the love between Father and Son eternally begetting the love-personified  Holy Spirit, results in new life and love to share, and where they devote thems...

  and proceeding from there, naturally... Again, this blog is simply being put out there (wherever "there" is) as food for thought on the validity/necessity of the contemplative prayer experience, and to provide a few resources for its practice. You may, and can, bulk out these resources near endlessly, but truly the resouces listed provide nearly all which is needed. There is the nice compact overview in "Common Mystic Prayer", the very concise and relatively short beginners-to-adept instructional work of "The Cloud Of Unknowing/Book Of Privy Counselling", and the incredibly detailed "Sancta Sophia/Holy Wisdom" which should handle any difficulties/sticking points encountered along the way. There are certainly other/numerous extremely fine works. Only recall that one never meets God by reading about it. Finding and experiencing God is not an intellectual pursuit, but rather, one of the "heart". One only does by doing, and you will never...

the meaning and nature of all things...or maybe not this last thing....where this author bites off more than he can chew in this next post or two, while savaging the modern idea of technology/science as Savior and Dispenser Of All Knowledge in showing it is actually quite silly, and while mentioning a book or two on Eastern mysticism/meditation and nature-of-reality world view, there being far more of that type thing out there than any such easily obtained regarding Western mysticism. The primary emphasis will be on Japanese Zen/Chinese Chan (Ch'an) Buddhism, them the most concise and bare bones expression of Buddhism without the stifling overlay of popular piety/superstition/practices of the majority, which same could be said for all the multifaceted splinters of Christianity. Historically, Buddhism began in the sub-continent we know as India, came to dominate there, and then spread to China at about the time of Jesus, and from there spread to Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc.. No slig...

  which is an apt description of this final cited instructional work, it likely THE finest one volume work written in English upon the subject of the spiritual life and practice thereof. It is exhaustive, exhausting, and most definitely not for everybody, unless reading the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence is something you do for light entertainment at breakfast. It is written in English, but composed by a man who went to his reward in 1641, his name is Father Augustin Baker O.S.B. (Benedictine), his credentials being he was the spiritual director of a large Benedictine abbey of nuns. He never exactly wrote a book, but the nuns were so enthused as to his teaching that, after his death and with the aid of another priest who was well acquainted with Father Baker, all Father Baker's papers and notes from which he taught were assembled into a book.  The book itself was received with wild acclaim by English Benedictine monasteries, and remained a staple of spiritual ...

  "and about time", any reader may justifiably be saying... As said earlier, all which came before can be skipped if only the reader finds this post and reads the few suggested following works. All which preceeded (past any polemical ranting of mine) was only an attempt to prepare the reader for the following works. There still is a bit of definition of terms which may be helpful for those readers from modern protestant backgrounds, as all these sources are old sources, the main one from before there ever was any such thing as protestantism, nor were there anything but Eastern and Western Churches, and even that division something fairly recent to that writer, and that division purely over papal supremecy and theological hair-splitting over ONE word in the Creed. To repeat from earlier, "meditation" or "mental prayer" in these writings will mean those operations of self and intellect, whereas the modern popular use of the word "meditation" has co...

 "normal" prayer. And which really is misleading, as each blends seamlessly with the other. There are active lives and there are contemplative lives, with infinite shades between them. The same goes for active prayer and contemplative mystic prayer. But, in a nutshell, active prayer ("normal" as most understand the word "prayer") is an action undertaken by the self and uses the intellect. Catholics would say there is mental/meditation prayer as opposed to contemplative prayer. In active prayer, there is a self who performs actions, an intellect which ruminates over meanings and feelings, or dutifully recites rote prayers or readings while reflecting upon their personal import, and reflects upon what God might mean or want us to know. If you think about it, it is rather hard to know what anybody at all wants, if you do not know them at all.  Contemplative/mystic prayer is the seeking of a direct experience of God without use of the discursive intellect. As ...

  you've hardly mentioned Jesus, the Christ?" A fair enough question, but this little blog is only a message in a bottle cast upon an electronic sea, in the hopes of aiding other seekers, and meant to be neither an exhaustive treatment of various methods of truly encountering the living God, nor is it a theological treatise. I will simply state the obvious. God created creation, to include us, so that God could lavish his love upon it and us, and it and us return that love and share it into all eternity. Our first parents failed in this simple thing, and we, their children, have continued the same broken and rough path ever since. God went out of his way to encounter us in his chosen people, and was generally ignored and rebuffed again and again, but still God reached out, providing sure stepping stones back to God, his laws and ordinances, if only the advice were taken....cue yawns and derisive laughter from most of humanity. As Christians, we believe there was one final, and...

Going back to the prior post comment as to magic and manipulation, let me be clear that authentic, orthodox, true mystic prayer is not some form of conjuring, where all one needs do is follow some formula/spell/method and TAH!DAH!, that you will experience God and know all the answers. Keep in mind we are talking here of God....all powerful and beyond space and time. Time and space, and all things, and all possibilities, exist within God, in whom we live, and move, and have our being. We, all alone, are helpless before God, who comes and goes as God wills, and who operates for our eternal betterment, on our loving God's schedule, and not ours.  This is a cautionary and most serious statement of concept, that we can NOT manipulate God, that we are NOT in charge, where our only power is to seek to return his unbounded love, and that even that ability comes directly from God, and that we must beg constantly for that meager ability to never utterly fail, although you surely will have y...

 The simple answer to the latter question of the title is that this is what we are created for, and to do. All human conflict arises from us not doing this very thing, as we go against our very nature and break ourselves and others, often irretrievably. It could be fairly said that the turmoil in the various churches, social structures, the institution of marriage, stewardship of resources, questioning of Commandments, any manner of greed and evil to include crime and war, etc etc etc, are all due to a failure to do this one most important thing. As to what this thing is, mystic means hidden...hidden inside, hidden from ability to describe since mere words utterly inadequate...if you think it means magic, or manipulation by any other name, you are already in danger of starting down a dark path leading to utter brokeness and loneliness for eternity. More specifically for the seeker, it is the positive experience of meeting and knowing God in one's depths, which is beyond description...