You Might be a Mystic If...

At one time you have experienced a familiar sense of non-being, a one-dimensional existence throughout the day that results in a collapse into bed at night wondering what the day really amounted to.  It is so uninspiring to wake up tomorrow just to stare at a seemingly unchanged ball-and-chain to laundry, spreadsheets,  Zoom calls, and groceries.

If the aversion to tedium, “rat race”, drudgery sort of occupation is something you experience as a bit familiar, you might be a mystic. Although the connection may not have gotten your attention just yet.  And so the solution remains out of reach. I want to connect with you around this hunger and unlock with you practices to diminish its effects on your spirit. 

Mystic and Profane

There are two types of people in the world:  the mystic and the profane.  When I hear the word profane, the concept I most quickly associate is “profanity”.  But in the dictionary, profane is defined as “relating or devoted to that which is not sacred or biblical; secular rather than religious.”  This is the context of the word in the following thoughts.  A reasoned, logical, and known preference toward the mental environment.   

Profane does not refer to a bad person in the least, but a person uncharmed by the unseen and mysterious. The nonreligious man is not drawn to supernatural or unfathomable.  In the end, his conviction is that man makes himself.  He is grounded in the seen and the logical.  

If we make this a continuum rather than a black and white concept, we could also create a category that some religious folks would find home within.  They prefer profane ways of being in the world.  They are oriented to the stream of our faith that leans toward study, logic, and known lines and boundaries. In my spiritual temperament course, these are the Thomas Aquinas ST’s.

The mystic seeks to experience the sacred as much as possible, experiencing it as reality saturated with being. The profane, for the mystic, feels unreal and leads to a feeling or a state of nonbeing.  She knows that there is more than meets the eye and peers through the content for the meaning behind it.  She uses her feelings, thoughts, and inclinations-yielded to the Lord- as a cipher to understand what is the next right thing.

“Christian mysticism is all about experience...but it’s also about a spiritual reality that undermines experience itself, deconstructing all your masks and self-defenses and leaving you spiritually naked and vulnerable before the silence of the Great Mystery.  It is the spirituality of bringing heaven to earth.” (McColman, 2010)

As mystics, we long for our every day to be transfigured into something charged with sacredness.  We tend to fixate on outcome, acquisition, and achievement. In doing so we lose the in the present moment state of being.  We struggle to meditate, to fix our eyes on the Author and Perfecter of our faith.  Stilling our minds seems impossible.  

Something is missing...the possibility for everything from laundry, emails, money, to talking, eating and sex to become a sacrament or communion with the Sacred  haunts and alludes us. 

“The Christian mystic therefore is one for whom God and Christ are not merely objects of belief, but living facts experientially known first hand; and mysticism for him becomes, insofar as he responds to its demands, a life based on this conscious communion with God.”  Evelyn Underhill 

To know love that surpasses knowledge

Ephesians 3: 17 -19 describes the ineffable, word-defying  mystery of God’s vast love: “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

How do you “know something that surpasses knowledge?”  It took me a while to roll that around in my mind until I cracked the code.  I believe you have to encounter an experience to know something to be true that surpasses knowledge and the limits of human vernacular. 

For example, something in worship might grasp you with the reality of God’s favor. You can’t explain it.  But you know it, because you encountered it, and it happened to you.  You felt it.  It was a reality that you can confirm by your witness.  What cannot be done very easily is explain to someone else how to intersect with the reality you just experienced. 

To know something that surpasses knowledge reminds me of a Bible study I did in college called Experiencing God.  I remember Blackabee describing God as a flowing river. We can’t redirect it or command it, all we can do is as intentionally as we can manage, put ourselves in the way of Him and His will. We can hope to be caught up in the experience of the Mystery when we show up and do the things we know to do to put ourselves in his way. That is what this post hopes to awaken in you.  To lead others to this river is one of the most moving calls on my life. 

This mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

My most favorite mystic of all mystic verses is in Colossians. The experience of having the privilege of a divine sense of knowing that He sees fit to reveal his treasures and counts us worthy of them is more moving than I can express.  I guess that is why it “surpasses knowledge”.  This mystery is at the heart of the contemplative life that mystics are drawn to.

Colossians 1:26 TPT  “There is a divine mystery—a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now it’s being revealed, unfolded and manifested for every holy believer to experience. 27 Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it!”

In recent blogs, we have talked about ritual, routine, and liturgy.  This involves consecrating a time and space to cultivate a reality “saturated with being”.  It is a staple in the life of a mystic Jesus lover.   It is to tune our inner ear and interior eyes to perceive the unseen as much as the seen.  

“When people engage in ritual activity, they separate themselves, partially if not totally, from the roles and statues they have in the workday world. There is a threshold in time and space or both, and certainly a demarcation of behavior over which people pass when entering into ritual.  The day-to-day world, with its social structure, is temporarily suspended.”  - Tom F. Driver

Temple Life as a Prism 

An essential component to mysticism is  an embodied, temple way of life. Rather than disconnecting from our physical body and world, understood accurately, mysticism anchors us in the temple of flesh and bone and breath.  We are incarnate, in the image of Jesus.  Christ’s body is essential in the Kingdom, and so is ours.  We are called to live and move and have our being in him.  And in this embodied, temple way of life, we find the space within that is knit up into our true selves. 

“When one enters a temple, one enters marked-off space in which, at least in principle, nothing is accidental; everything, at least potentially, is of significance.  The temple is a focusing lens, marking and revealing significance...The ordinary becomes significant, becomes sacred, simply by being there.  It becomes sacred by having our attention directed to it in a special way” (Smith, 2010).

When we truly enter our own container and arrive in our body in the present moment settled in the temple that God declares it to be, ordinary things become holy occupations.  The infusion of meaning makes them not only bearable, but satisfying acts of worship if  engaged with by a honed practice of mindful contemplative prayer. 

“There is no difference between a sacred vessel and an ordinary one.  By being used in a sacred place, space, or time, they are held to be open to the possibility of significance, to be seen as agents of meaning as well as utility. Wine is just wine until it is the Blood of Christ. A handshake is just a handshake until it is used to reveal secret truths.  Shoes are just shoes before you remove them to step on sacred ground” (Smith, 2010).

How to engage with the Mystery that 

longs to reveal himself to us

He LONGS to reveal himself to us. 

“For this reason the Lord is still waiting to show his favor to you so he can show you his marvelous love. He waits to be gracious to you. He sits on his throne ready to show mercy to you. For Yahweh is the Lord of justice, faithful to keep his promises. Overwhelmed with bliss are all who will entwine their hearts in him, waiting for him to help them.” Isaiah 30:18 

No matter whether you gravitate to mysticism or logic, similar to Blackabee’s river that is God’s will, approaching God’s presence looks like putting ourselves in the way of Him as simply as we can manage. Even if we have not discovered or fine-tuned it yet, we all have a series of steps we go through to do so.  EVERY spiritual temperament has a comfortable way to do so and it varies from type to type.

I have created an online course that has been an effort of compilation over the last 10 years.  I have taught it before in person, but this is way more.  Content and sources since then have bubbled up and added ingredient after ingredient into this spiritual formation course.  

This online course is not just for mystics. This course is for ALL SPIRITUAL TEMPERAMENTS! The point is that you name and learn your natural tendency to absorb spirituality, and then you balance your autopilot with practices from other spiritual temperament streams.

I would love for you to check it out because, whether you are a thinker or a mystic, there is a spiritual personality that is specific to you that will emerge from the course.  Resources for finding your way into the presence of the Mysterious are all throughout.  Even if you have taken this course with me before, consider dipping your attention in it again because you will find the years have added a lot of goodness!  

You. Are. Loved. 

Eliade, M. (1987). The sacred and the profane ; the nature of religion. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.

McColman, C. (2010). The big book of Christian mysticism: The essential guide to contemplative spirituality. Charlottesville, VA, VA: Hampton Roads Pub.

Smith, J. Z. (2010). To take place: Toward theory in ritual. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.