Disciples, Prophets, and Mystics<\/p>\n
Inner Experience\nWednesday, March 18, 2020\n<\/iframe><br \/>\nWhile most Christians consider themselves disciples of Jesus and try to follow his teachings, a much smaller number move toward practical acts of service or solidarity. But I\u2019m afraid even fewer Christians have the courage to go on the much deeper mystical path. Both Catholics and Protestants have failed our people by mystifying the very notion of mysticism. The word itself has become relegated to a \u201cmisty\u201d and distant realm that implies it is only available to very few and something not to be trusted, much less attractive or desirable. For me, the word \u201cmysticism\u201d simply means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, as opposed to book knowledge, secondhand knowledge, or even church knowledge.<br \/>\nMost of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority\u2014in the form of Scripture, tradition, or various kinds of experts\u2014instead of telling us the value and importance of inner experience. (I call that trusting the \u201ccontainers\u201d instead of the \u201ccontents.\u201d) In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting ourselves, told that our personal experiences of the divine were unnecessary and possibly even dangerous.<br \/>\nDiscouraging or denying people\u2019s actual experiences of God often created passive people and, more sadly, a lot of people who concluded that there was no God to be experienced! We were taught to mistrust our own souls\u2014and thus the Holy Spirit within us. We can contrast that with Jesus\u2019 common phrase, \u201cGo in peace, your faith has made you whole!\u201d (as in Mark 5:34 and Luke 17:19). He said this to people who had made no dogmatic affirmations, did not think he was \u201cGod,\u201d did not pass any moral checklist, and often did not belong to the \u201ccorrect\u201d group. They were simply people who trustfully affirmed, with open hearts, the grace of their own hungry experience\u2014in that moment\u2014and that God could care about it.<br \/>\nThe irony in all of these attempts to over-rely on externals is that people end up relying upon their own experience anyway! Most of us\u2014by necessity\u2014see everything, mystical and otherwise, through the lens of our own temperament, early conditioning, brain function, role and place in society, education, our personal needs, and cultural biases and assumptions. Admittedly, personal experiences are easy to misinterpret, and we shouldn\u2019t universalize from our \u201cmoment\u201d to an expectation that everybody must have the same kind of \u201cmoment.\u201d We also can\u2019t assume that any experience is 100 percent from God. We must develop filters to clear away our own agenda and ego. Nothing beats a solid understanding of some theology, psychology, and sociology, along with good and wise counsel. We cannot forget Paul\u2019s reminder which was meant to keep us humble: \u201cWe know imperfectly and we prophesy imperfectly\u201d (1 Corinthians 13:9).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Disciples, Prophets, and Mystics Inner Experience Wednesday, March 18, 2020 While most Christians consider themselves disciples of Jesus and try to follow his teachings, a much smaller number move toward practical acts of service or solidarity. But I\u2019m afraid even fewer Christians have the courage to go on the much deeper mystical path. Both Catholics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18670"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18671,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18670\/revisions\/18671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}