Five Ways to Encounter the Mystery

Mysticism might not be definable... but at least it is experienceable.

For the past couple of months, my friends on Patreon and I have been exploring the question “What is mysticism?” by drawing on the wisdom of Evelyn Underhill and Bernard McGinn. While I believe it is impossible to ever nail down a topic as nuanced as mysticism in a single definition, I think we can explore a variety of ways to at least approach the topic, if not definitively define it. This post is a compendium of five shorter posts originally published on Mystical Journey, where I offer brief invitations for some of the different ways people like you and I might be able to encounter the mystery at the heart of mysticism: a mystery that can never be fully captured in words or earthly ideas.

A First Way to Encounter the Mystery: Desire

Often when I am speaking with someone who has asked me for some insight into contemplative or mystical spirituality, I’ll begin with a deceptively simple question: “What do you want?”

Sometimes people have no idea how to answer this question. I don’t blame them: we have all been conditioned to think that desire has no place in the spiritual life. Even if we’re not Buddhists, we understand that the Buddha linked desire to the root cause of suffering. However, the New Testament can seem just as dour on the subject of desire. “One is tempted by one’s own desire, being lured and enticed by it,” warns James, who goes on to say, “it gives birth to sin, and that sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death.” Who wouldn’t want to avoid desire, if that’s where it leads?

But more than once, when Jesus was interacting with his followers, he would bluntly ask someone some variation of “What do you want?” Such a question is hardly answerable if we dare not trust or even acknowledge our desires! Meanwhile, a Trappist monk’s solemn vows often begin with his abbot asking some variation of this question, “What do you seek from God and from the church?” Once again, it assumes that there is some degree of desire: certainly enough for someone to pledge their entire life to a specific spiritual community.

Maybe desire, in itself, is not a problem, although the object of one’s desire might determine whether it is spiritually beneficial or not. Desiring sensual indulgence, especially at the expense of another, is hardly commendable; but if our desire calibrates our lives toward intimacy with God, toward compassionate service and toward personal growth, perhaps it is a desire worth fostering.

Mysticism, it seems to me, often begins with some sort of desire: a desire for God, a desire for spiritual growth and contemplative living, a desire for an experience of union or divine intimacy. These desires may need to be refined or matured over the course of a dedicated lifetime. But just because a desire is limited at first does not make it worthless. The solution to an immature desire is taking the time to nurture a more integrated yearning.

If you want to live a mystical life, get to know your desires. Be prepared to surrender, or at least transform, the ones that appear to get in the way of your longing for God. But also, be prepared to nurture the desires that invite you into intimacy and love: walking the mystical path means letting desires like those, under the guidance of the Spirit, truly lead the way.

Quotation sources: James 1:14-15; John 1:38; Mark 10:51.

Another Way to Encounter the Mystery: Delight

“Take delight in Yahweh, who will grant you the desire of your heart.” This is a bold declaration, found in Psalm 37. Not only does it challenge the common stereotype that desire is somehow unspiritual, but it also links the deepest and most intimate kind of desire (“of your heart”) with another quality that is often overlooked in spiritual circles: delight.

The Hebrew word in this verse that gets rendered in English as “delight” is עָנַג or anag, literally meaning “to be soft” or “to take exquisite pleasure in.” It’s a rich, sensual word that loses a lot in translation. It has a lot of overtones that are “feminine”—or if you prefer to avoid traditional gender coding, we can say it is deeply receptive, luxuriating, embodied, and almost indulgent. This is not a command to obey an authoritarian, patriarchal God; it is more of an alluring proposal to savor the joy and deliciousness of a divine lover.

Forget the rules and regulations of Leviticus; this is an invitation into a relationship with God that is closest in quality and feel to the delectable love found in that most beautiful of Biblical poems: the Song of Songs.

Can you imagine a relationship with the divine where you are loved so fully that God simply wants to pamper you? Where you are invited into a soft, dainty, exquisite interaction, like an attentive lover enticing you to take a long, slow bath before… well, you get even closer?

If this scandalizes you, all I can say is I hope you’ll take some time to get to know the great mystics of the past, many of whom drew inspiration from the Song of Songs (the Song of Solomon or the Canticle of Canticles) more than any other book in the Bible. Their understanding of divine intimacy was never crude or vulgar, but sacred even as it is voluptuous, sensitive, amorous, and tender. This is an invitation that dares to suggest that a relationship with God invites us into a spiritual pleasure beyond our wildest dreams.

So how do we take delight in God, in such a nuanced and rich way? My purpose is to offer you an invitation, not a step-by-step program. Just as a teenager can never learn how to kiss from a book, so you and I cannot learn how to take delight in the divine from anything so coarse as the written word. But I can say this: mysticism is an invitation to let go of all the duty-bound, legalistic, overly formal ways of thinking about a relationship with God. This invitation into a deeper, contemplative, even mystical spirituality is no legal contract; it is a love letter. May we read it fully, and respond wholeheartedly.

Quotation sources: Psalm 37:4.

A Classic Mystical “Location” for Encountering the Mystery: Darkness

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night,”

even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you. (Psalm 139)

One of the most powerful images for God is that of light. “Let there be light” was one of the initial creative acts expressed by the Holy One at the beginning of the Genesis creation myth; ages later, Jesus of Nazareth would proclaim, “I am the light of the world.” So powerful is the bond between the supreme being and the splendor of luminosity, that we run the risk of falling into a dualistic understanding of light: in other words, of seeing darkness as somehow opposed to the divine. In this oppositional way of seeing things, light is good, and therefore darkness is not-so-good.

Thankfully, many of the mystics can help us to see that, no matter how sacred and spiritual light might be, the absence of light should not be understood to signify the absence of God.

There’s a reason why two of the greatest mystical classics in the Western contemplative tradition are The Cloud of Unknowing and The Dark Night of the Soul. Even in the earliest centuries of the Christian era, great mystics like Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote beautifully about encountering the Creator in the hidden and benighted places of our lives— a recognition that began with Moses’s encounter with the Holy in the midst of a cloud atop Mount Sinai.

What are the implications here? We all have times of darkness, of uncertainty, of loss and suffering and even betrayal. If we assume that only light brings us to heaven, then we will either judge or reject the shadowy places that life invites us into. Such shadowy places include the “darknesses” of depression and other mental health challenges, of grieving, of fear, of suffering whether our own or that of those we love… I’m sure the list could go on. These may represent times or seasons of our lives that we do not relish, that seem traumatizing or pointlessly painful. But when we simply give ourselves over to these most difficult moments, they can also surprise us as portals into a rich and meaningful experience of the divine presence.

I don’t think any of the classical mystics would have counseled us to seek out suffering for its own sake, but neither would they have ever suggested that the dark places are to be avoided. When we allow ourselves to meet the unfathomable dark places on their own terms, they can be sacred indeed, and teach us wisdom, and sometimes even introduce us to the one who comes to us veiled in mystery.

Quotation sources: Psalm 139:11-12; Genesis 1:3; John 8:12.

Still Another Way to Encounter the Mystery: Discipline

Train yourself for a holy life. — I Timothy 4:7

I love—and often quote—a line that seems to have originated as a paraphrase of the wisdom of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and author of the contemporary classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind:

Gaining enlightenment is an accident. Spiritual practice simply makes us accident-prone.

I first heard this from a dharma teacher in Atlanta, who framed it as “enlightenment is an accident, meditation makes us accident prone.” While its origin may be Buddhist, it pairs quite well with Western forms of mysticism. One could just as easily say, “Union with God is an accident; spiritual discipline makes us accident prone.”

In old school Catholic spirituality, there was a difference between mystical theology and ascetical theology. Mysticism covers the attempt to understand (and make ourselves available for) the action of the Spirit in our hearts and lives: action that fills us with transforming grace, but that we ourselves have no control over. By contrast, asceticism (which comes from the same Greek root—askēsis—that gives us ‘athlete and ‘athletics’) covers the practice of spiritual disciplines and exercises that we human beings do to make ourselves available for the Spirit’s work within and among us. Like an athlete, an ascetic trains and practices, rigorously and without compromise, to be prepared—not for competitive sports, but for complete self-giving to the Spirit of love.

Mysticism is an accident; asceticism makes us accident-prone.

The problem is that over the centuries asceticism get fouled up with the body/spirit dualism that has bedeviled Christianity since its entanglement with Greek philosophy. So asceticism became linked not to discipline, but to punishment: punishing the human body with self-flagellation, horsehair shirts, excessive fasting, and other practices that seem oriented not toward the love of God, but toward a dysfunctional hatred of the self. No wonder asceticism became a dirty word.

Thankfully, we live in an age where more and more people are reclaiming positive, nurturing practices like Centering Prayer or Ignatian spirituality to anchor and shape their spiritual lives. Building on the “accident” motif, it seems to be a misunderstanding to suggest that such disciplines can guarantee us a felt experience of the Divine. But if we make the effort to be mystical-prone, who knows how the Spirit of Love might surprise us—in an amazing moment, or even just gradually over time?

Quotation source: I Timothy 4:7 (Common English Bible); for more on the “accident-prone” principle, check out Enlightenment is an Accident: Ancient Wisdom and Simple Practices to Make You Accident Prone by Tim Burkett.

Perhaps the Ultimate Way to Encounter the Mystery: Deification

Christ has given us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become participants of the divine nature. — II Peter 1:4

Christian life consists not so much in being good as in becoming God. — Michael Casey, OCSO

In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey suggests that influential business leaders “begin with the end in mind” — that one of the keys to professional success is having a sense of where you want your career to take you. There are probably as many possible ends or goals for our professional lives as there are people — some of us want financial success, a sense of personal accomplishment, a legacy to hand on to our children, and so forth. Covey’s point is simple: know what you want, for that knowledge will help to guide you to the kind of success that matters to you.

What is true for our working lives is, I believe, also true for anyone seeking to live a mystical life—and seeking to encounter the divine. We, too, are wise to begin with the end in mind.

What mystics from generation to generation have reported to us, is that the “end” of mysticism is nothing less than the unitive life: divine union, or becoming one with God. Indeed, this “end” of mystical spirituality is so essential that it has its own theological terminology: in Greek, theosis; in Latin, deification: these words basically mean “to be made God” or, more gently stated, to become one with God.

And unless you think this is just some strange idea from ancient times, Trappist monk Michael Casey bluntly said, “Christian life consists not so much in being good as in becoming God” — writing in the early 2000s!

Many people drawn to contemplative or mystical spirituality are inspired by their own heartfelt desire for an experience of God, or an experiential relationship with God, or, in the end, an experience of such complete, nondual identification with God that we can only speak of this using language of oneness and of union. In words from the Bible attributed to St. Peter, our “end” as contemplatives is nothing less than partaking in the divine nature (of God).

Is it being too obvious to suggest that the experience of oneness with God, however that may come about, is yet one more way for us to understand mysticism, to “encounter the mystery”?

Granted, many people, perhaps most, have not experienced such nondual union, regardless of whether they have wanted it (or even conceived that such an end is possible). Even when people do have some sort of extraordinary, unitive encounter with the mystery we call God, they often don’t know how to put it into words, so it in essence remains unspoken, and therefore perhaps unrealized.

Perhaps we need to consider that the desire for union with God may be, in a surprising way, a sign that God is already present in our lives and hearts, even if we don’t feel that presence at all. Which, of course, brings us right back to the beginning of this series. Perhaps deification is the ultimate encounter with God, but perhaps most of us only find deification through the mysteries of desire, delight, darkness and discipline.

Shunry Suzuki once wrote, “Enlightenment is not some good feeling or some particular state of mind. The state of mind that exists when you sit in the right posture is, itself, enlightenment.” It’s a provocative statement: to meditate is to beenlightened. One does not meditate to attain enlightenment; one meditates to remember or realize what one already is.

In other words, to walk a mystical path is to be immersed in divine union. Our desire, discipline, darkness and delight are all opportunities for us to realize, or remember, who we truly and already are: ones who are one with Love.

No matter how we comes to this, may we receive this encounter with consciousness and compassion. Amen.

Quotation sources: II Peter 1:4; Michael Casey, OCSO. Fully Human, Fully Divine: An Interactive Christology; Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: Informal Talks on Zen Meditation and Practice (Kindle Editions).

These five invitations into the encounter with the divine mystery are hardly exhaustive, but they do represent evidence that, in the words of Ignatius of Loyola, we can “find God in all things.” Whether through desire, delight, darkness, discipline, divinization, or other graces in our lives, the mystery is never more than a breath or a heartbeat away. Let’s explore… let’s play… or in the words of Star Trek’s Michael Burnham: “Let’s fly!”

These posts originally appeared on the Mystical Journey newsletter; click on the link to subscribe if you haven’t already done so. If you’d like to join this conversation with me in monthly Zoom meetings, either become a paid subscriber to this newsletter or join Patreon by clicking here.