If you’ve always trusted yourself, or if you’ve managed to slough off the social conditioning to ignore your inner voice that many of us are burdened with, it’s quite possible you’re a mystic.
Basically, a mystic is anyone who has experienced a one-on-one encounter with Cosmic Consciousness, the Divine, God, or whatever name you choose to give that mysterious energy that animates creation.
So, if you’ve had such an experience or many of them, and you trust the truth of it/them, well, you’re a mystic. (The label itself is unnecessary.)
What mystics know is this: If every book and every word written were destroyed and lost to us forever, Cosmic Consciousness, the Divine, God, or whatever name you choose to give that mysterious energy would not be destroyed in the conflagration.
Because, while all these texts document the esoteric encounters that humanity has preserved since the beginning of time concerning Cosmic Consciousness, the Divine, God, or whatever name you choose to give that mysterious energy, it seems to be a fact, that THAT THING must be rediscovered experientially by every individual who is born into this world. And that’s a personal thing, not a political or institutional one.
It’s popular to profess that there is nothing new under the sun. However, every child born is a unique configuration of DNA, never before seen on this planet. So, really, we are all something new under the sun. Subtle, but oh so powerful.
I just finished reading the biographies of Isabella I of Castile, the Queen of Spain from 1474 to 1504, and her granddaughter, Mary Tudor, the Queen of England from 1553 to 1558. It was discouraging and depressing to read about the religiously-motivated wars that characterized their reigns. I can’t speak to other religions, but before the Bible was translated from Latin into the languages spoken in those times, so that anyone could read it, you could actually be burned at the stake as a heretic for professing to have a one-on-one with the Creator of Life.
Why would any government be so oppressive about a person’s personal spiritual experience?
Well, having a direct line to the Creator could be quite empowering. You might start to question the legitimacy of a monarch’s claim to power. Or maybe you’d refuse to contribute financially to a religious institution. In fact you might see through all sorts of strange rituals and doctrines that were simply meant to keep your attention diverted.
It is curious how much humanity has invested in controlling personal beliefs about THAT THING. It makes you wonder, what will happen on the day when all that falls away and we are each free to have our own unobstructed experience of IT?
The mystic’s dream.
Because as much as mystics know or have learned to trust their own experiences of THAT THING, they are equally free to trust the individual experiences of others as well.
Thus mystics live as the peaceful rebels among us.
The other lovely thing about mysticism, is its transcendence of all the major religions. Every single one has a mystical lineage.
I’ll share a few of those fascinating figures with you in my next few posts.