Nov 162012
 

The great mystic anchoress, Julian of Norwich, has said these two simple things:

Between God and the soul there is no between. (1)

The fullness of Joy is to behold God in everything. (2)

While these statements are short and plainly written, their implications for the mystical life are nonetheless profound.

First, let’s consider what is meant by ‘soul’. Today, as in Julian’s day, it is common for Christians to think of the soul as an immaterial thinking and feeling aspect of our being that occupies or animates the physical body. (Anima, the Greek root of ‘animate’, actually means soul.)  For some people, ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ are interchangeable, yet in Christianity there is an ancient tradition of considering the whole human being as a trinity – body, soul, and spirit – where spirit is the very essence of our being in its most transcendent state or level. The soul is therefore the immanent manifestation of spirit, taking on a particular identity through life in this world. In this context, we see that the soul of a human being, at least while living in this world, cannot be understood in its wholeness apart from the body. The importance of this wholeness to Christianity is reflected in the doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body.   In any case, all of our thoughts and feelings, our knowledge of self, of the world, and even of God, develop in conjunction with our bodily experiences in this world. Therefore, in reflecting upon the soul’s relationship with God, it makes sense to consider all the dimensions of human experience – physical, emotional, intellectual, and transcendental – as offering ways of knowing oneness with God or, as Julian says, beholding God in everything.

It is my observation that most people who are driven to experience greater communion with God tend to seek powerful emotional or intellectual experiences they take to be the preferred evidence of God’s presence in their lives. In fact, many people focus almost exclusively on a particular type of experience as the only one they consider truly valid, and so they might strive repeatedly to evoke such an experience through corresponding activities and ignore or negate the other possibilities. However, if Julian is right, and I believe she is, then limiting the ways we are open to knowing God is how we ourselves create an illusory “between” to separate us from God, and thereby we rob ourselves of the “fullness of joy” that is possible for us.

Opportunities to appreciate this fullness are constantly available.  It takes very little consideration to realize that these dimensions are intricately interconnected. Indeed it is arguably impossible to conceive of a physical, emotional, or intellectual experience that is not accompanied by experience in at least one of the other two dimensions.  Even dreams, visions, and hallucinations, which we might be tempted to deny any material reality, are nonetheless accompanied by electrochemical activity in our bodies, and they are experienced by the mind as having the sensory characteristics of physical objects and events. And while intuiting or contemplation in the transcendental dimension can occur apart from the other dimensions, it also immediately gives rise to reactions in one or more of them.

Finally, in playing on Julian’s words, I want to note that ‘the fullness of love is to behold the beloved in all ways’ – physical, emotional, intellectual, and transcendental.  In its various forms, prayer, being the intentional effort to commune with God,  also has the potential to reach across all four dimensions, if it does not always do so to some degree. These realizations, taken with Jesus’ teaching to love God with all that we are and our neighbors as ourselves, and all of it considered within the context of St. John’s assertion that God is Love, provides us with the richest, most promising, most accessible, and most whole model for what it can mean to be a Christian mystic.

Maranatha

Agape

 

 

1.Chapter 46, Revelations of Divine Love; another version reads, “For our soul is so fully oned to God of His own Goodness that between God and our soul may be right nought.”

2. Chapter 35; another version reads, “…for it is more worship to God to behold Him in all than in any special thing.”

Nov 202010
 

In my recent reading of The Good Heart, I came across this statement by Fr. Laurence Freeman:

…there are different forms of intolerance, some more political, others more psychological.  And they all have their root in the tyranny of the individual ego that clings to its obsession with being special yet shirks the challenge of accepting its uniqueness.

This statement was made, almost in passing, while reflecting on the importance of inter-religious dialogue, but it has profound significance for every aspect of spiritual practice.

One of the things common to many mystical traditions is language about a need for the “death of the ego”, or eliminating self-interest in some way.  There are corollaries in mainstream Christianity as well, where we hear testimony that we should sacrifice our wills to God.  We may have even been taught that our highest aspiration is to throw away all our personal desires except for the desire to fit ourselves into a particular mold for how a good Christian is supposed to look, sound, and act.  It’s not unusual for such teachings to be accompanied by the psychological insight that our desire for specialness, to be esteemed and admired as extraordinary in some way, even if only by oneself, is often the biggest single roadblock to living a more integrated and mature spirituality.

While that insight is valid, it is a mistake to take it as a doctrine that there is no spiritual value to the differences that naturally and necessarily make each of us unique human beings.  From a traditional Christian perspective, such a view is at odds with the realization that each soul is a singular and cherished creation of God, each with a one-of-a-kind combination of spiritual gifts, life experiences and perspectives.  It also places unnecessary, even unhealthy, limitations on our potential to enrich our relationships with God’s other children.

In the name of being more spiritual, enlightened, or pleasing to God, the denial of any value in uniqueness can lead to a game in which we puff ourselves up with rituals of self-flagellation, humility worn on our sleeves, suppression of our talents, and refusal to outwardly enjoy even the gift of gratitude from others.   In effect, it is saying to oneself, if not everyone else, including God, “See how special I am for denying my specialness?!”  So we develop a secret spiritual pride, and often simultaneously pile up secret shame, guilt and self-loathing in our semi-conscious awareness of the deceit we are perpetrating.

There are even greater tragedies connected with this vicious circle of seeming virtue.  To begin with, such false meekness makes it easier to bury our talents and sidestep the struggles (and the joys!) of serving the manifestation of Heaven on earth in the ways, times, places and lives of others that only we, each as unique souls, can do.  Beyond that, it can produce in us a sense of resentment and self-righteous judgment toward those people who aren’t strangling their own souls as we are, which is how, as noted by Fr. Freeman, intolerance begins to emerge.  In this mindset we begin to divide humanity into teams – “ours” and “theirs” – with a desperate sense of conviction that our team is good, right, true and blessed, while their team is bad, wrong, false and damned.  Rather than serve love more directly and freely, we externalize our own confused internal warfare and spread our suffering into the lives of others.

One of the potential blessings of mystical practice is that it welcomes the Holy Spirit to facilitate a more profound appreciation of the eternal spark within our souls as well as the impermanence of our personal existence.  We also come to the awareness that the same conditions are true for everyone else, which begets the further blessing of greater compassion for others.  We can come to know and accept that each of us is a unique flower of God’s love – our petals budding, blooming, fading and then falling to return to the soil within a very short span of time, yet contributing to the ongoing processes of creation, of life and love, in ways that we cannot even begin to fathom.  This is a significant development in the spiritual formation and self-actualization of a mystic.  We do not have the foresight to know the effects of all our choices but we can proceed with the faith that a life of uniquely loving attitudes and actions will contribute to a healthier, more diverse, and more beautiful garden.  In this vision it is sad to think of a flower choosing to keep itself wrapped up tight, as though there is some special merit in trying to remain a bud.  It is sad to imagine a lily trying to pretend it’s a rose, as though only a rose can be loved by the Gardener and other flowers.  Why would the Gardener, who is Love itself, expect us to torture ourselves so?

Your heart knows what kind of flower you are, even if your mind can’t clearly foresee it.  Just let it bloom.  You’ll love it!  Other flowers will love it too.  The Gardener already does, and there is no better way to surrender to the Gardener’s will.

Agape