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