What orthodox Mysticism is, and is not.....(#2)

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 your ups and downs.

All of this is mentioned as there are any number of faddish appropriations of Eastern mystic/meditation techniques by Christian seekers and by leaders of religious communities, where seekers are essentially told that if you do this, this, and this, you will experience God/nirvana/kensho, if you try hard enough. Note the operative is all on self, which takes us back to the original temptation of "Ye shall be like gods." 

Even worse are those appropriations/confabulations of various attempts at manipulative magics stoking only greed for power, with its inevitable fall into darkness, no matter the wonderful starting intentions. The only person you could trust with magic would be the utterly perfected and selfless person totally united to God in love for God and his creation. Such a person would already have it ALL and be in no need of magic. Any lesser person, and all their acts, are tainted by greed, with feeding that greed leading only to a downward tightening spiral whose center is self or worse.

If you follow self, and its own conjurings, its own self-generated experiences, you likely are flirting with disaster, and would have been better off had you never tried at all.

There are many similarities in TECHNIQUE between authentic Christian mysticism and Eastern practices, but it all is differentiated by the Christian seeking the God who is Love thru love, and the Eastern seeking of experience beyond mind and its own conceptions, under own discipline and power.

Westerners trying the Eastern route will always be operating under the language/culture handicap of never truly comprehending the Eastern minus being raised in that culture and language. Meanwhile, Westerners normally are utterly dependent upon translations, where translations are always dependent upon the understanding/misunderstanding of the translators, most of whom are anything but religious spiritual adepts. (This language/culture barrier will also bear heavily on the small numbers of Christian sources I shall recommend later for the native English speaker, such as the ignoring of many "classics" written suchlike in florid poetic Castilian Spanish etc. etc.)

Back to the Westerner seeking to follow the Eastern, I will point out that those of us who followed the explosive adoption of Eastern mysticism in the 1950s/1960s/1970s in the USA are well aware of the scandals which arose in most of the largest such meditation/monastic/temple centers from east coast to west coast, often involving their original highly credentialed Eastern founders. Such things happen anywhere at any time, when wrong paths and understandings are followed.

So, orthodox Christian spiritual practice recognizes the utter powerlessness of the individual, and that God is the operative principle and not self, and that nothing happens unless God wills it, where we are invited as suppliants begging for even the desire to know God, and in all else awaiting God's good pleasure. 

We also recognize the fact that God IS Love, and only through returned love may we possess God. The intellect is utterly incapable of grasping the infinite. The ONLY power we have which is capable of uniting our selves to God, uniting us deeper and deeper until only God exists and we disappear, is love. 

Nor is this any method or aim of seeking extraordinary experiences, visions or powers, which the seeker must avoid at all costs, as this is spiritual greed with the grasping self in full control, leading only to mental aberration or worse.  

That the seeker will have unusual experiences in mystic/contemplative prayer is nearly a given, whether physical or auditory or olifactory, or perhaps visions....but to become attached to them is to detach yourself from God. Do NOT follow them, and neither seek to crush them with violence by your own power. The best way to deal with such is to say to self, "That's nice, but it is God that I seek, and nothing else", beg God to remove them, and simply return to loving God. All of this mentioned at this point, only to show proper disposition versus risky business practices from whatever source.

(above photo compliments of Jason Strull at Unsplash.com)