The Spiral Path

Wonder, Science, and Faith

Archive for the tag “cataphatic mysticism”

02 Sep 2012

RS28: For Now We See in a Mirror, Brightly

A:  Okay.  To sum up so far, you rejected traditional and cultural beliefs about illness and healing, left the major urban centres, moved to a small town in Galilee — Capernaum . . .?

J:  Capernaum.

A: . . . broke countless religious rules about healing, didn’t use magic, ritual, or even prayer during your healing sessions, insisted on using observable science, insisted on building relationships of compassion with your patients, insisted on the power of faith, insisted on examining patients directly instead of using proxies, and rarely asked for anything in return.  Many patients with neurological, psychiatric, endocrine, and autoimmune disorders suddenly got better.  People thought you were a miracle worker.  You didn’t believe you were the prophesied Messiah, but many other people did.

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“Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but just grew worse. She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.’ Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, “Who touched me?”‘ He looked all around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease'” (Mark 5:25-34). Photo credit Hemera Technologies 2001 – 2003.

From today’s perspective, you don’t look like a religious teacher or wandering philosopher sage at all.  You look like a really gifted doctor.  In fact, you look to me like a really gifted psychiatrist.  And I ought to know what a psychiatrist looks like, since I was married to one for twenty years.

J:  I don’t deny what you’re saying.  A psychiatrist’s job, after all, is to help patients examine the parts of their biology that are interfering with their ability to think, feel, and choose in balanced, holistic ways.  It’s probably the most important field of medicine, though it’s usually the specialty that receives the least respect and the least funding.

A:  You were a physician.  A pioneering spirit in the as-yet unknown discipline of psychiatry.  Yet a religious movement sprang up around you.  Why?

J:  Because I was a man of deep faith.  I wasn’t afraid to trust God, to love God as they really are.  I wasn’t afraid to open my heart to the wonder of healing.  More important, I had a radically different idea of what illness and healing meant.  For me, illness didn’t mean “lack of perfection.”  And healing didn’t mean “acquisition of perfection.”  I had an entirely different understanding of our lives as human beings, an understanding based on my observation of the natural world.  For me, pain and death were not the enemy.  Death was obviously unavoidable.  Pain was a language, a language that spoke the truth about a person’s relationships with himself, with others, with the world around him, and with God.  I saw the loss of love and trust in God as a major source of pain and suffering in the people around me.  Their souls weren’t happy with the loss of relationship with God.  Their bodies mirrored this lack of happiness, this spiritual pain.

The truth is that all souls need God.  They need relationship with God.  They need to feel that connection, that bond of love and trust.  They also need to feel the same kind of love and trust in their relationships with their families and friends and community.  They need to feel safe — emotionally, physically, intellectually, and spiritually safe.

The world I grew up in didn’t teach anyone to feel safe in their relationship with God, or, for that matter, safe within their own families.  No community can be safe when it preaches the inferiority of women and the right to own slaves.  Second Temple Judaism was no different in this regard from the Hellenistic world around us.  Women had few rights.  And seriously ill or disabled women had even fewer.

My daughter was born with Down Syndrome.  She died at age 3 of respiratory failure.  It was probably pneumonia.  But she died in terrible emotional pain, terrible emotional suffering, because her own mother believed she was a curse.  A curse!

Her body got sick and died, but the pain of her physical suffering was small in comparison to her emotional and spiritual suffering.  She was horribly abused by her mother and her mother’s family.  Not because she deserved it but because Jewish magicians said she deserved it.  And I did nothing to protect her.

After she died — and there’s no doubt her mother and her mother’s mother were complicit in her death — I had to look at myself in the mirror and be honest about what I’d done — or rather, what I hadn’t done.  I had to own up to my complete and utter lack of courage.  And I had to deal with the constant memory of her face and her trusting smile.

I have no respect for the constant preaching from Christian theologians about the lofty preeminence of my suffering and death and resurrection.  Fuck that.  My contribution wasn’t my own death.  My contribution was to see meaning and life in the face of death, to see transformation and forgiveness in the face of death, and to really mean it.  My contribution was to find the courage to remember my daughter’s trusting smile and try to do something useful with the gift of her love.  Her love — the memory and the ongoing presence of her love in my heart — was a constant source of wonder and healing for me.

Apparently my guardian angels approved of this attitude because after I spent years learning how to forgive and learning how to listen to God’s voice and learning how to follow my own inborn talent as a physician, really weird shit started to happen around me.   I mean, really weird shit.  Healings that were more than placebo effect (which I had started to get used to by then).  I mean sudden, miraculous healings that only God can do.  I was as shocked as many of my patients.  But I understood in a logical, rational way what was happening.  So I wasn’t afraid.  I was just . . .  non-plussed.

A:  Why weren’t you afraid?

J:  Because I trusted God.  Because I could hear the voice of my own guardian angels.  Because I could feel the comfort and safety of these “events” deep in my gut.  Because people around me were crying in relief and gratitude.  Because good things were happening to regular people.  Because some of the people I helped heal began to believe in a loving God instead of a cruel, vengeful God.  Because God was obviously present in small huts and green fields and all the places where God wasn’t supposed to be present.  Because the only contribution we humans needed to bring to the table of healing was our kindness — our true kindness towards ourselves, towards each other, and towards God.  Not many people then or now have been willing to show kindness towards God.

A:  Did you understand the science of the miracle healings?

J:  You mean the quantum physics of it?  Hell, no.  I’m an angel on the Other Side and I still barely grasp the quantum physics of it!  But the science of it is there.  The truthful and logical reality of the healings is there.  Just because humans — and many angels! — don’t fully understand the science doesn’t mean it’s not science.  It’s just a really, really advanced science.

A:  A science which obviously circumvents the linear “cause and effect” of classical, Newtonian physics.

J:  Divine Love and forgiveness feel like emotional gifts, but at a quantum level, they’re both related to non-locality or, as some prefer to call it today, quantum entanglement.  Love and forgiveness also tie in with the soul’s sense of time and timing.

If you have no sense of time — no personal relationship with past, present, and future — it’s impossible for you, as a human being, to give and receive either Divine Love or forgiveness.

Trying to live in the moment — in other words, living in a state of denial about your own pain or somebody else’s pain — destroys the biological brain’s ability to process pain and turn it into something else, something much deeper and more proactive in the world, like, oh, say, like courage.

A:  So you’d define courage, then, as the ability to shift pain into some form of healing action or choice.  The ability to take action and help make the world a better place, even if it’s an emotional action, like choosing to love and forgive and trust, as opposed to a physical action, like joining the Peace Corps.

J:  Yes.  Courage is the choice to help God “build an ark.”

A:  There’s no doubt about the amount of pain that exists in the world.  So if pain is the raw material — the wooden planks — that can be turned into something deeper and more proactive, that’s one helluv’an ark we’re gonna be building.

 

 

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Posted in healing miracles, historical Jesus, Jesus' teachings, quantum theory, Realspiritik, relationship with God, sense of time & timing, theodicy and tagged , | Leave a Comment
24 Mar 2012

TBM31: Miracles: Big Love in Small Places

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(c) Image*After

A while back I talked about intuition and how it works during a crisis.* Today I’d like to try to describe what it feels like when you use intuition as a normal part of your everyday life.

I suspect that if you gathered a group of, say, 100 people and asked each one to speak in private about an experience of Divine presence during an emergency, you’d get about 20 who’ve had a deeply personal experience of a comforting presence, and another 25 who know they got out of a scrape but aren’t sure how, and slightly more than half who attribute their escape to their own personal brilliance.

Still, there are a lot of people out there who’ve gone through something very scary and have felt, without even asking, the presence of a wise and loving angel, if only for a few life-changing moments.

We’ve been conditioned in our culture to accept that maybe — just maybe — God and God’s angels will “be there” for us during an acute emergency. So we pay attention to news stories about people who’ve defied incredible odds and somehow managed to survive. These are the events we call “miracles.” If you’re a person with an open heart, you can feel the reality of the miracle even if you can’t understand it with your logical mind. You can feel the reality of the miracle even if the Church dismisses it because no saints were invoked. You can feel the miracle even if the atheists insist you’re a gullible, superstitious fool.

It’s not easy in this culture to believe in miracles or in God’s loving intervention when you’re being attacked from all sides (including attacks from conservative Christianity). So it’s understandable that a person of faith might be pretty nervous about widening the net of miracles to include everyday activities rather than just emergency situations.

This is why I think this post may be more difficult for many readers to process than anything I’ve written so far — because this post is about everyday miracles, the miracles nobody wants to talk about and nobody wants to acknowledge because the implications are so darned real.

Human beings have a knack for shifting their own thoughts and feelings to every place except the place where they’re standing right now. Psychotherapists have accurate labels for these destructive psychological habits. Among these habits are projection, denial, reaction formation, fantasy, displacement, suppression, intellectualization, and rationalization. These strategies are used by individuals to help them avoid being honest with themselves about their own thoughts, feelings, needs, and inner wisdom. In one way or another, each of these strategies is a form of lying — a form of lying to oneself.

On the surface, it seems a person who’s using projection or denial is lying to other people — and, of course, such a person is lying to other people. But before she can lie with malicious intent to other people, she has to be lying to herself with malicious intent. She has to be trying with all her might to ignore the inner wisdom of her own soul (which has no malicious intent).

Meanwhile, a person who’s trying to balance the complex needs of the 4D soul and the 3D body, who uses all parts of his or her brain instead of only some parts, who has a well-developed sense of intuition and timing, has no need to lie to him/herself. Why would he/she? The whole point of being a Whole Brain Thinker is that you can consistently weave the needs of heart, mind, body, and talent into a tapestry of courage, devotion, trust, and gratitude. Therefore there’s no need to engage in energy-wasting psychological defences such as projection, denial, etc. There’s no need to waste precious biological brain resources on building and maintaining a collection of lies. The brain therefore has more time and energy to spend on more important matters — matters such as improving your health by learning to pay attention to cues from your guardian angels.

I’ve had many years of practice in working with these cues. These cues don’t come into the brain and central nervous system the way you might imagine. The authors of many, many TV shows and films and books and religious myths have attempted to describe how these cues are experienced by “the chosen ones.” I’ve seen few authors who get it right, and those who do are usually writing about some other aspect of the human condition and stumble accidentally on the experience of intuition as it actually exists in us poor ol’ non-chosen slobs.

One of the few dramatic series to get it right is the recent 5-year story arc of Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not the old one). One of the few written pieces to get it right is the 1989 novella The Last of the Winnebagos by science fiction author Connie Willis. These stories pursue the very ordinariness of intuition, and the great transformative power of it, wrapped together within the borderlands of love that exist where two or more people open their hearts to each other.

It’s the ordinariness of intuition and the ordinariness of Divine intervention that most people just don’t want to hear about. They don’t want to hear about the “quantum Post-It notes” your guardian angels can attach to a bag of oranges at the grocery store so you pick up the bag that’s best suited to your own health needs. They don’t want to hear about angels helping you find a pair of shoes that fit. Or a shampoo that’s on sale. Or a newspaper that has an article you really need to read that day. But, in fact, this is the way intuition is supposed to work.

When I say, “quantum Post-It notes,” I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean that literally. I mean that when I pass my hand slowly over the pile of bagged oranges at the grocery store, I can feel the one my angels want me to pick up. I feel it as a faint “aha” feeling. More like a creative impulse than anything else — a sense of knowing something is right. That’s it.

It’s NOT (as you might suppose) an experience of hearing voices or “seeing things” or feeling detached or “floaty” or “blissed-out” or “connected to all Creation” (as so many authors have speculated). I mean, I’m at the grocery store, for heaven’s sake! It’s not like I’m ascending on clouds of ecstasy or anything. I’m just buying groceries!

At a neurophysiological level, I suspect the brief “aha” feeling would show up (if it could be studied in me or others) as spikes of gamma brainwave synchronization. But neurophysiology aside, these intuitive cues from my angels are also accompanied by feelings of calmness, compassion, and trust (so oxytocin is probably also involved in the “aha” experience).

Weird, eh?

Weird it may be, but I can’t imagine my life without these daily intuitive experiences. Those who are close to me are used to me and my weird way of doing things. They just kind of roll their eyes when I say my angels pointed out a gorgeous $495 Anne Klein size 6 summer weight wool blazer marked down to $5 that fits me perfectly. (Don’t worry — I kept the sale tags in case anybody wants me to prove it.) I feel fantastic when I wear this blazer, as my angels knew I would.

I wear a size 6, and sometimes a size 4, not because I starve myself (I’ve never dieted — never once in my life) but because I listen carefully to what my guardian angels suggest for me and my own body’s needs. My food regimen probably wouldn’t be the same as yours, because each person’s body is unique. But my food regimen works for me. So I put cream in my coffee. And I eat cheese and butter every day. And I bake (and eat) chocolate chip cookies. And I drink lots of fruit juice that contains Vitamin C, Vitamin D, and calcium. And I never count calories. The only thing I pay attention to is the quantum Post-It notes that appear on specific food items at each meal.

My approach to healthy eating isn’t something you’d want to rush out and try without first being sure your own intuitive circuitry is working properly. It’s a lot smarter to practice your intuitive skills on something with fewer possible health consequences — something like shampoo brands (because not every shampoo is right for every person).

Believe it or not, your guardian angel would be thrilled to help you find the right shampoo for you. No, I’m not kidding. Guardian angels don’t EVER want you to practise using your intuitive circuitry on “the big stuff.” It’s too risky for you and your loved ones. It’s too easy to “mix up your signals” and assume you’re getting an intuitive cue when you’re not. (God gets blamed all the time when religious folk try to overextend their intuitive circuitry and end up causing great harm because they don’t understand their own limits).

So start small. And be grateful for these ordinary, everyday miracles. These are the stuff of everyday relationship with God and God’s angels, unless you happen to be an astronaut on the International Space Station or a regular feature on the slopes of Mount Everest. Maybe you think it would be boring for your angels to help you find shampoos and oranges, but trust me — they never find it boring to help you be as healthy and as happy as it’s possible for you to be on Planet Earth.

Divine love is so big it fits in the smallest of places. That’s why it’s Divine love!

* Please see Guys, Intuition, and the Gut  from April 2, 2011.

 

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Posted in angels (i.e. persons-of-soul), building your intuition, cataphatic mysticism, Divine Love, miracles, spiritual practices, The Blonde Mystic, theodicy, Whole Brain Thinking and tagged , | Leave a Comment
08 Nov 2010

CC39: Confessions of a Blonde Mystic

When I was growing up, I had no inkling that one day I’d become a mystic.

I was pretty geeky, but not that geeky. When I was 10, I wanted to become an archaeologist. By the time I was 12, I was sure I was going to be a writer. By age 18, I wanted more than anything to fall madly in love and focus my whole being on the love of my life (whoever the heck that was!). By age 22, I was married and enrolled in graduate studies in art conservation. By age 25, I had settled down as a stay-at-home mom.

Nothing very mystical about that.

Where there hints about my mysticism-to-be? Did I have unexplained episodes of “transcendence” as a child? Did I “see” things that weren’t there? Or “hear” things that weren’t there?

Nope. I was a normal kid. I was a bookworm, and I wasn’t good at sports, and I was way too mouthy for my own good. (Still am.) But I didn’t have any unusual “episodes” when I was growing up; nor would I have received any encouragement for such from my famil. There was no enthusiasm in my family for religiosity. My family were nominal Christians, which meant we went to United Church services at Christmas and Easter. Sometimes my sister and I were sent to Sunday School, but these church experiences left little impression on me. The word “spirituality” was never mentioned.

Both my parents were eminently practical (having grown up during the Great Depression) and quite liberal and inclusive in terms of their values. So there was no talk around the dinner table about God’s true nature, or salvation, or apocalypticism. Acceptable topics of discussion included business and politics and law-abiding citizenship. I was a teenager in the early 1970’s, so, of course, there were numerous lectures about staying away from drugs, lectures which I took very seriously. To this day, I’ve never used street drugs, and I’m one of the few people I know who’s never tried pot. Not even once.

Yup. Still a geek, and proud of it.

The thing about genuine mysticism — the Real McCoy, as opposed to verifiable states of psychiatric dysfunction — is that genuine mysticism is not about random and unpredictable “transcendent episodes” sprinkled like chili peppers into an everyday bowl of bland and tasteless cream of potato soup. A genuine mystic (and frankly there aren’t a whole lot of them out there) is somebody who’s hardwired with a particular package of traits, learning styles, and talents. When these particular traits, learning styles, and talents are examined as a whole, a discernible pattern emerges, and if this pattern can be shown to be consistent over many years, then, and only then, can you say that a particular man or woman is a true mystic.

In other words, you can’t call somebody a mystic because he or she reports one or two unusual “episodes” of seeing or hearing or feeling the presence of the Divine.

This is just common sense. You wouldn’t call someone a professional artist on the basis of one or two beginner’s paintings. You wouldn’t call someone a professional mechanic on the basis of one flat tire correctly changed. Similarly, you shouldn’t call someone a mystic on the basis of one or two self-reported “events.” There should be a long track record of professional development and committed endeavour for practising mystics, as in any other field. This is the only way to prevent charlatans and fraud artists from ruining other people’s lives with their “predictions” and “divine assurances.”

What makes me a mystic (or a contemporary channeller, as I sometimes call myself), as opposed to a spiritual person or a person of deep faith?

Well, to turn it around a bit, is it possible for a spiritual person or a person of deep faith to also be a professional artist? Or a mechanic? Or a farmer? Or a teacher?

Of course! In fact, many people would suggest that if you hope to be a really gifted teacher (or mechanic or whatever), you need to bring all your faith and all your spirituality into your calling in a holistic way so you’ll be able to teach (or fix engines) from the heart. This, too, is just common sense.

For me, it’s the same thing. I’m a spiritual person and a person of deep faith, which makes me no different than the mechanic who starts and ends his day as a spiritual person and a person of deep faith. But where the mechanic delights in working on engines, and the teacher delights in guiding the minds of growing children, I delight in the work of a mystic, which is so philosophical and intellectual and esoteric that it would bore the living crap out of 99.9% of the people I know.

It’s my passion to delve each and every day into the deepest mysteries of Creation — questions about God, about the soul, about quantum biology, about who we are at both the quantum level and the emotional/creative level. My passion is to ask annoying questions, and my skill is to be able to hear the answers when they come down the quantum pipeline from God the Mother and God the Father. (And from Jesus, but that’s another story.)

Make no mistake — I both see and hear God. But it’s not random, and it’s not occasional. It’s an everyday part of my life as a mystic. It’s an everyday part of my life because I practised and practised and practised until I’d fully developed the talent I was born with. Through a combination of natural soul hardwiring plus committed human effort, I gradually “came into” my calling. It’s an unusual calling, to be sure, but it’s a genuine calling.

Everyone is born with natural intuition. I’m NOT saying I’m one of the few people who has intuition. Just the opposite, in fact. I think everyone can more fully develop their intuitive faculties and incorporate that aspect of their being into their daily lives. But intuition isn’t the same thing as mysticism. I want to be clear on that point. Like everybody else, I have normal intuition. But alongside that normal intuition I have another skill, a different skill, that not everyone is born with. I have what might be called, for lack of better terminology, an ability to accurately and consistently tap into the space-time continuum while in a fully conscious non-hypnotic non-drug-induced mystical state of connection to God.

One way to find a true mystic is to ask about favourite stories and films. True mystics always a special fondness for speculative fiction. Solar Sailor (c) Jamie MacDonald 2013. Used with permission of the artist.

One way to find a true mystic is to ask about favourite stories and films. True mystics always have a special fondness for well-crafted speculative fiction. Painting “Solar Sailor” (c) Jamie MacDonald 2013. Used with permission of the artist.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Space-time continuum . . . it sounds like something you’d hear on Star Trek. The original Star Trek. And you’d be right. You’re going to have to forgive me, though, because I can’t think of any other way to describe it. And besides, where would the Blackberry be today if not for the inspiration of Captain Kirk’s flip-phone communicator to urge inventors onward?

Did I mention I love the original Star Trek series? And TNG ain’t half bad, either? (I may like designer clothes, but, as you can tell, I’m still a geek at heart.)

P.S. I’m not a medium or a psychic, and I don’t believe in ghosts. So don’t ask me if my life is like “Medium” or “Ghost Whisperer” or “The Listener” or “Rescue Mediums” on TV, because the answer is NO.

My life is way more exciting than that.

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Posted in apophatic mysticism, brain-soul connection, building your intuition, Concinnate Christianity, ethical mysticism, faith, Mother God, My Spiral Path, mystic, mysticism, relationship with God, religion and mental Illness and tagged , | Leave a Comment
09 Jun 2010

CC19: The Life of a Mystic: Welcome to Groundhog Day!

In 1993, Columbia Pictures released a modest film billed as a “romantic comedy fantasy” that stars Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. “Groundhog Day” continues to be a favourite for many people. It’s a feel-good movie, a tale of redemption. Bill Murray is in top form as TV weatherman Phil Connors, a man who starts out arrogant, nasty, judgmental, angry, impatient, and not especially talented or competent (although he thinks he’s quite brilliant). In short, he’s a typical middle-aged North American. By the end of the movie, he’s kind, empathetic, polite, patient, and very talented. At the beginning, he has no heart. At the end, he finds his true heart. Only then does the universe consent to release him from the time warp he’s caught in.

The film Groundhog Day is set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on Groundhog Day (February 2). Photo credit: "Marmota monax UL 04" by Cephas - Own work, Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The film Groundhog Day is set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania on Groundhog Day (February 2). Photo credit: “Marmota monax UL 04” by Cephas – Own work, Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

This film is about the the universe’s refusal to accept Phil Connor’s excuses for his nasty behaviour. As Phil gradually comes to understand he’s part of a bizarre karmic “catch and release” program, it’s apparent the universe also refuses to accept his initial handling of the situation. The universe steadfastly ignores his denial stage, his angry stage, and his depressed stage. Only when Phil decides he wants to be a kind, empathetic, polite, patient, talented person, and only when he decides that he likes being such a person, does time start to move forward again. The message is clear: Phil can’t control the environment the universe has chosen for him — the time warp reality of Groundhog Day — but he can control his own thoughts and feelings about the situation.

This film is the best representation I’ve seen of what it feels like to have a mystical connection with God.

That’s why I put it at the top of my list of “best spiritual films.” By way of contrast, I don’t have a spot for Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” on my list of helpful spiritual films. To my way of thinking, “The Passion of the Christ” is a propaganda film, not a spiritual film.

“Groundhog Day” makes a number of powerful claims:

  1. The universe (God) pulls out all the stops for everyone, not just for specially chosen Messiahs or the specially chosen sons of kings, presidents, and CEO’s. Phil Connors is a regular guy with a regular job, not a person at the top of the fame chart.
  2. The universe (God) knows Phil isn’t choosing to be the best person he’s capable of being. The universe has an opinion on this.
  3. The universe (God) never gives up on Phil. Despite Phil’s initial resistance, and despite the length of time it takes for Phil to decide he wants to be his best self, the universe is consistent and steadfast towards him. (This can be called God’s Tough Love.)
  4. The universe (God) sets up the painful learning environment. God is in charge of this part, and no human can control it.
  5. The universe (God) gives each person free will.
  6. People can change.
  7. People won’t change unless they want to (free will).
  8. People are capable of amazing transformation once they decide they want to change.
  9. It takes lots of time for changes to unfold. Redemption isn’t an instant process!
  10. It takes lots of sincerity for changes to become permanent. You can fake out your neighbours, but you can’t fake out the universe. The universe (G0d) always knows your true intent, so you have to mean it when you say you want to change.
  11. It takes hard work and consistent effort on the part of a person who wants to find redemption.
  12. People need help from others as they struggle to change! They can’t do it on their own. They need help from people who care about them.
  13. People make mistakes on the journey of change and redemption. That’s okay!
  14. Engaging in active learning helps the process of change. (In the film, Phil starts to take courses — piano lessons and medical training, for example.)
  15. Engaging in active service in the community helps the process of change. (Phil develops a Good Samaritan routine in the timeloop community where he’s living.)
  16. The more Phil learns and the more genuinely empathetic he becomes, the more humble he becomes.
  17. The more Phil learns and the more genuinely empathetic he becomes, the more dedicated he becomes to serving his community . . . and bonus — the help he offers is actually needed!
  18. Phil finds his heart when he finds himself.
  19. Once he’s found his heart, he’s still a regular guy. But now he’s able to trust himself. And he’s finally able to like himself. He feels inner peace at last.

This is the process I had to go through, so I can really relate to it. My “Groundhog Day” initiation into the journey of redemption lasted for years. I had no idea at first what I was trying to do, and I made the same mistakes over and over again, but — thank goodness for me and my family — my angelic guide refused to give up on me.

And the 19 point summary I’ve posted here is the work I had to complete BEFORE I could begin to call myself a practising mystic!

I tell ya’ — those angelic guides are tough sons of bitches. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Posted in cataphatic mysticism, Concinnate Christianity, free will, healing, humbleness, My Spiral Path, mystic, Peace Sequence, redemption, trust and tagged | Leave a Comment
14 Mar 2010

CC4: The Blonde Mystic

June 2014

June 2014

Okay, so I’m a blonde mystic. What’s the big deal about that?

It’s not a big deal at all if you believe, as I do, that the call to be a mystic is no better than — and no more extraordinary than — the call to be a teacher or a police officer or a nurse or whatever. I have a job to do, and I try to do the best job I can. I’m no different than anybody else who feels drawn to a particular path. My path is a bit uncommon, but I take it seriously, just as teachers and police officers and nurses take their paths seriously.

I do not subscribe to the orthodox Christian view that says contemplatives and mystics have a “higher calling” than other Christians. This is the view that puts monks and nuns in a special category compared to other people.* It says this select group of people is closer to God, higher on the ladder of ascent, or chosen — take your pick. I think this traditional view of “spiritual ascent” is a big part of the problem with orthodox Christianity.

I usually don’t tell educated Christians about my daily mystical practice. I keep my practice to myself because I’m kind of tired of having other Christians make the false assumption that I think I’m better than they are. I don’t think that. I think we’re all in this life together, walking side by side, rather than trying to scramble up some sort of spiritual ladder (and mashing each other’s spiritual fingers in the process.) “Different” shouldn’t be a synonym for “better,” although the history of Christianity is in some ways the history of certain groups of people believing they are both different and better than everybody else.

Police officers have a different path from nurses, but police officers aren’t “better” than nurses. Same thing with mystics. Mystics have a different path from most people, but they aren’t “better” than other people. I just want to be clear about that.

I am no longer a natural blond. I was blond as a child, but later my hair darkened, and after that my hair turned grey. I am a blond thanks to chemical intervention from L’Oreal. I am a blond because I’m not an ascetic.

I’m not an ascetic because I live according to a “mystical rule” of moderation, balance, common sense, and brain health.

These four “rules,”especially the rule about brain health, put me far outside the traditional understanding of how Christian mystics live. But I’m a person of science as well as a person of mystical inclination, and recent advances in neurophysiology have convinced me that many traditional mystical practices are dangerous and have no place whatsoever in the modern church.

This is why I don’t fast as part of my spiritual practice. Intentional, long-term fasting for “spiritual” reasons will damage anyone’s brain. (Naturally, I’m not talking about short-term occasions of fasting that may arise, which your body can handle.) I’m a mystic who believes in eating balanced foods in moderation because God seems to have designed the brain with a balanced lifestyle in mind for everyone, including mystics.

Crazy ol’ me, thinkin’ my brain and body are a natural, beautiful part of God’s creation!

As I said above, I am NOT a Gnostic. I’m a mystic who thinks we should be listening more to what God is saying through science, and less to what Christian tradition is saying through, well, tradition, when it comes to healthy spiritual practices.

I’m a fully practising mystic who thinks it is irresponsible and naive for church leaders to ignore the serious health risks that arise when traditional ascetic practices are embraced.

If I didn’t know better, I might think the church was more interested in preserving its traditions than in protecting and enhancing the mental, physical, and spiritual health of its congregants!

Gosh . . . where would I get such an idea?

* If you want to read more about this tradition, you can check out the chapter called “The Monk Who Rules the World” in Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1985).

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