More Self-Realization

The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions

Wayne Teasdale

★★★★★

Back in December, I wrote this post about a spiritual blackness I was experiencing. While I still experience much of what I wrote today, I have a better handle on what this spiritual difficulty means thanks to what Wayne Teasdale wrote in the book The Mystic Heart.

Teasdale wrote:

John of the Cross also defines contemplation in terms of this hidden love: "Contemplation is nothing else than a secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God, which if not hampered, fires the soul in the spirit of love." Here he refers to infused contemplation, which is the beginning of the unitive life. It is very difficult to attain the spiritual or mystical marriage. Considerable suffering is endured, a suffering that purifies the self before a permanent state of union with God arrives. This suffering is what he calls the dark nights of sense and spirit, in which we are inwardly liberated by God from obtaining satisfaction from the sensory level of experience and our former self-preoccupation. Alluding to this suffering and the difficulty of achieving divine union, he says: "One cannot reach this union without remarkable purity, and this purity is unattainable without vigorous mortification and nakedness regarding all creatures." There must be total focus, a single-minded intention for the divine alone. That is purity of heart.

This helps to explain the spiritual darkness I am experiencing and what it means in the big picture. I am being prepared for something larger that I can imagine and I am going through a purification process that is shedding those elements of my spirituality that are impure. God is preparing me for my ultimate task, whatever that ends up being.

I do know that this ultimate task involves the interspirituality and intermysticism Teasdale spends the majority of his book talking about. Teasdale said:

Interspirituality honors all the experience and insight of each tradition, and gathers these experiences together into an organic synthesis. We awaken to this synthesis when we walk the intermystical path with an open heart and a capacity to be transformed in our understanding and in our being. When we do that, we can utter, like Raimon Panikkar: "I am a Hindu, Christian, Buddhist," and more, "I am a Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Moslem!"

As I look back on my formation to date, I can see God's hand in bringing about interspirituality and mysticism within my being. I was guided into studying the world's religions, learning from the Hindu people I work with, learning about Native American spirituality, and experiencing and ultimately rejecting Catholic fundamentalism. I can see God's influence in my being by installing a curiosity about other faiths and a desire to engage them both in word and practice.

Recently, I was privileged to find an old friend from high school who shares similar religious views as I do. When exchanging ideas and beliefs, we came to sharing our encounters with the divine. As I contemplated about my own experiences with God, I became aware that I was a mystic from the beginning. For example, the first time I took in Jesus' presence in the Eucharist, I felt enveloped by His presence filling my body (I spoke about this in the post I linked to above).

Here is a major mystical encounter I experienced:

Last April, I happened to be fortunate enough to experience a Native American sweat shop. Before we entered the sweat, we stood around the sacred fire to purify our thoughts and soul. It was at this time I felt something familiar: God's touch. I have felt this before in other encounters, so I was able to recognize it again. It was like having an old friend touch you on the shoulder, only from the inside of your body.

We entered the lodge and the rituals began. Imagine the environment: completely black from darkness and the steam being released from six red-hot rocks literally a couple of feet in front of your face. However, there was an aura of trust and serenity. I do not have the words to completely describe this encounter. However, I do believe I felt God's holy presence in that sweat lodge. This presence did not leave me for several days.

After it was over, we exited the lodge and enjoyed a feast. I had a difficult time walking, possibly due to a mixture of the experience and the loss of fluids. After the feast, my classmates, professor, and I gathered in a circle and my professor took out her eagle feather. She proceeded to pray with each student using the feather. After several motions around the head and body with the feather, she positioned the feather in front of each student, where we then mutually held the feather together. I remember holding the feather with her and being instantly connected with her soul. Again, words fail me in describing this encounter properly. Nevertheless, I felt it and it was wonderful.

There have been other experiences that rank with the intensity of this one (Last year's Palm Sunday Mass at the Cathedral of St. Paul is one). Usually, thought, the mystical encounters I feel are through dreams, shivers, deja vu, or connections with the natural world. I am drawn to nature, especially the ocean, mountains, and forests. I recall a drive in 2006 from Bozeman, Montana, to West Yellowstone, Montana, where I felt a deep connection.

These realizations are part of the journey that I find myself on. Teasdale offers a glimpse of what is to come for my through this quote from Thomas Merton:

Again, the state of insight which is final integration implies an "openness," a "poverty" similar to those described in such detail not only by the Rhenish mystics, by St. John of the Cross, by the early Franciscans, but also by the Sufis, the early Taoist masters and Zen Buddhists. Final integration implies the void, poverty and nonaction which leave one entirely docile to the "Spirit" and hence a potential instrument for unusual creativity. The person who has attained final integration is no longer limited by the culture in which he has grown up....He accepts not only his own community, his own society, his own friends, his own culture, but all humankind....He has a unified vision and experience of the one truth shining out in all its various manifestations, some clearer than others, some more definite and more certain than others. He does not set these partial views up in opposition to each other, but unifies them in a dialectic or an insight of complementarity.

This is a glimpse of the big picture for me. Although it is not specific, it suffices enough for me to endure the periods of spiritual darkness I endure between divine connections. As I become engaged with mysticism, I become less afraid to express who I really am spiritually, as a person that moves fluidly through the various religious traditions while still maintaining some footing in the Catholicism I deeply love. I am not afraid of carrying many labels: Catholic, Lutheran, mystic. I am not afraid of trying new things spiritually and embracing what I find. Books like this and conversations with people on this same path will be influential in cultivating the mystic within my soul.