Saturday, November 2, 2013

Inward Mystical Journey


INWARD JOURNEY


Summer day – warm and humid
but not oppressive.
Clear sun brightens up the
yellow blooming black eyed Suzie’s in the garden.
I sit in the quiet – notice my heart beat –
my breathing in and out -
pointing to a presence within me –
my Beloved.
Total mystery – otherness – that
my quiet heart beats point to.
My Beloved covers me –
embraces me – my whole body feels the touch.
I sit in mystery – so deep within me.
I say nothing – I let
my breathing highlight the presence.
In the ebb and flow of my life –
 in the years gone by – in the moments now -
in the currents and undertows that almost
did me in –
Someone was there – never let me go.
I bath myself in this love –
because of it, I did not get lost
in the crossroads and curves of the years gone by.
There were no dead end streets
but always an exit.
How lucky I am that Someone loves me!
Robert Trabold
                                                             ---------------------------

MYSTICAL QUEST:

INWARD JOURNEY

Robert Trabold
           
            If we examine all religions of the world, we see that spiritual seekers make pilgrimages and trips to holy places in order to have a special encounter with the divine. They make a special effort to travel far to a holy place and/or at a special time of the year and often at a great expense on their part. These pilgrimages and quests are external to us. In the spiritual life, however, there is also an interior quest and journey to encounter the divine within us and this usually takes place in the cultivation of mystical prayer by sincere seekers. (Underhill 3-4) The great mystics were not content to live in the day to day world and be absorbed with all its pressing and not so pressing activities.  They stepped back, reassessed their life, tried to go beyond the changeable things of the world and their human life on earth and touch the ultimate reality which in the West we call God.  The mystics believed that they could not be happy with just possessing the every day things which we humans need but wanted to have a relationship with the divine, the ground of our being, who alone can make us happy and give us the real goal to living on earth. It is an inward journey into our center and still point to meet God within, leading us also to a discovery of our true selves.
            Despite the various differences among the religions of the world, the basic structure of the mystical path is the same in all of them. It is an inner journey to the deepest level of consciousness to have an experience of the most interior being, the highest reality, the truth – God. This dimension and experience cannot be grasped by the intellect because it is beyond rationality but nevertheless resides in each person. Mysticism then is a way of knowing, a particular type of experience and state of consciousness. The goal is to have immediate contact of the deepest level of being, the ground of all beings in the world, to have an experience of and a union with it. For the mystic, this is a transpersonal experience because he/she feels also the unity of all beings in this encounter with the divine.
            In this experience, the mystic has the certainty to have reached the place where the person has his/her origin, for which he/she has such a great yearning and receives the answer to the question of “Who am I?” Life then has a new meaning and depth. This mystical experience is beyond the intellect and rationality and it also breaks through the boundaries of normal spiritual experiences. The mystic pushes to an encounter with the absolute, God – TOTAL BEING. This experience cannot be directly shared; it is inexpressible in that it lies beyond the rational sphere to which language belongs. The desire to articulate it expresses itself in parables, symbols, poems, negation, that is, to say what it is not.  Words cannot grasp the mystical experience but only point to it.
            The method of the mystical path is the inner journey which has three levels: the purgative, illuminative and unitive ways. (Wehr 35-36) In the purgative way, the mystic sees that he/she cannot remain the same. Life has to be changed and God helps the person see his/her many bad habits and sins and actively aids the individual to become more God-like. In the illuminative way, the mystic sees the world and life in a new way – a waking up experience, that is, leaving behind an old way of life and having the freedom and liberty to see things differently. The third step in this journey is the unitive way in which the seeker achieves a union with the absolute and in spiritual literature, this act is expressed in the image of a mystical marriage. This is the peak of the inner journey. It should be understood that these steps need not follow this chronology but can have a different sequence and perhaps occur simultaneously depending on the disposition of the individual and the will of the divine. Underlying all these three steps, there is also the need to cultivate the discipline of silence so that the individual can encounter God whose language is silence and quiet. This means coming to grips with our daily schedule, take stock of our many activities and letting go some them in order to make our life less busy and create spaces to encounter the divine. In addition, to grow in meditation and contemplation, we have to become aware of our posture, breathing, use of mantras, time allotment, etc, so that we can experience the transcendent at our center and still point and grow in union with it. The many contemporary contemplative and mystical prayer movements in our country can help us in the practical steps so that we can grow in this discipline of silence and contemplation.
            In the whole above process, the mystic becomes the illumined one who breaks through the deepest level of consciousness and lives out his/her life on this level – in union with God. The person is walking in an endless horizon, in union with all beings and loving all creatures; this is done in the understanding and wisdom of this experience of union with the divine. The mystic is an ordinary human but also no longer one because he/she is detached from the things of this world. The mystic also helps others reach this deep level and consciousness of the divine and as such is a catalyst of human development in the world.
            In our inward journey and quest to encounter the presence of the transcendent within us, we will then know and discover our true selves. As human beings, we are in a constant process to grow and develop ourselves. All our activities and relationships in our family, work, education, etc. work to make us hopefully more mature and capable people. In mystical prayer, we grow in a relationship with God within us. It lets us know that we are beings that can encounter God and very important it takes place within us at our center and still point; at the deepest level of our consciousness, we meet the consciousness of the absolute.  This presence of the divine within us is not strange and unfriendly because it lies in the depths of our heart and we experience the absolute as the ground of our being. We discover ourselves as capable of having this relationship with the divine and since this is a relationship of love, we find our peace and fulfillment in human life in this union with God. No earthly thing can satisfy this yearning for the transcendent on our part. This bond with God puts all earthly things that we are involved with in perspective; we realize the many finite and contingent things of the world can never really fulfill us even though many are good things and necessary for our human life. Because we are human beings open to the transcendent and capable of experiencing its presence at our center and still point, this is the most important thing helping us put all things into focus and not letting the many contingent things of life pull us in many different directions and possibly inflict harm on ourselves and others. We find our happiness and peace in fulfilling our ability to be open to the transcendent; we rejoice that we have this capacity and this is our true self and nature we must grow in through our years on earth.
            As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are many kinds of pilgrimages and quests in life; many are to external things and places around us but an important one for religious seekers is the inward journey to meet the presence of the divine at our center and still point, at the deepest level of our consciousness. This has been a quest that the great mystics throughout the ages have made and their writings are a testimony to this. Interestingly, this inward journey to meet God at our center is the meeting of love involving deep intimacy. This inward quest is also a journey to discover our true selves. We as human beings are open to the transcendent and can have a relationship with it. It is the definitive relationship in our life giving us a sense of peace and security of finding the reality that fulfills us, loves us and calls us to reciprocate in the same way.

Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: A study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1967.

Wehr, Gerhard. Die Deutsche Mystik. Koeln: Anacona Verlag, 2006.


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