Sunday, August 20, 2017

TALES OF THE MYSTIC JOURNEY - ABRAHAM - Part I


LIVING THE JOURNEY

The journey of life is a shared experience whether one is sitting alone in a lounger reading a book, sitting on the floor meditating, or marching for a cause. We share this journey, at this very moment, with every other living entity in the universe.   We are all spinning through time and space together and there's nothing we can do to stop it.  Even the universe imploding offers no guarantee that this journey would end. The end of physical existence does not negate the possibility or the probability that life goes on and that the journey continues in another dimension or realm of being.

Life hints at life yet to be. 

What that means remains a mystery to me.  Life is always an act of faith - a walk in the dark with the hope of seeing light at the end of the journey.  Life after life would by extension be an even a greater act of faith; as an act of God's faithfulness in the creative beingness that is God. 

Who can know the mind of God? 

Faith is the only path that leads to God - not what I know, not what I believe, but what I am willing to encounter in the hope of being loved beyond all belief and comprehension.

I see this life as a mystic journey full of awe and wonderment; that is, when I take the time to still and remind myself of it.  There is much though that can distract me - much that can anger me, sadden me, and make me despair.

A ZEITGEIST OUT-OF-SYNC WITH THE UNIVERSE

The zeitgeist we are living in seems suddenly out of sync with the universe and has opened a door through which has emerged a perennial presence that is small-minded, willfully ignorant, ridiculously violent, and ultimately self-destructive.

There.  I said it - The distress and unease I feel over what is happening in my country and around the world.  I started writing on the day when white supremacist groups and Neo-Nazis are marching in Charlottesville Virginia espousing hatred and fear on an unthinkable scale.   Since that event, I also can't help but think of oneness my wife and I feel with the victims of terrorism on the streets of Nice, France and Barcelona, Spain.  Like millions of others in the world, we strolled these same streets filled with the diverse beauty of humanity that is drawn to those beautiful, peaceful settings as we were when travelling in the Mediterranean two years ago.  My heart is simply sickened by such mindless carnage in all these places and all places throughout our world.  

It's a feeling that has prompted me to step back, take a deep breath, and recognize the obvious; that very little has changed with regard to human nature since the dawn of human history.  As much as I entertain hope for humanity (and I do) it is tempered by the sobering reality that we, as a whole, continue to rely on our  reptilian responses to any perceived threats to our survival, real or contrived. I am no exception to such impulses, which is another reason to write about them.   They must be recognized in one's self and fought daily.  This is especially difficult to do when reasoned intellect and civility is marketed as unfashionable, as it has from time to time throughout human history and as it is being marketed in the world, today. 

MIND THEORY AND MYSTIC CONSCIOUSNESS

The intellectual mind is readily subjugated by the instinctual/reptilian mind.  There is a safeguard for the intellectual mind which can give one pause before succumbing to one's instinctive inclinations. Reason invariably fails against an instinctive onslaught without the perspective of intuition (the broader picture).

The human mind is an exchange of three processes, but we tend to focus on the intellectual which makes us prone to ignore our instinctual impulses when they arise or the availability of intuition that can offer the intellect greater perspective by which to make rational decisions. I have written several posts about the reasoning (intellectual) and the instinctual mind, but very little about the intuitive mind.

In order to enter into a discussion of the mystical landscape we are traversing, requires one to take a closer look at the means by which we consciously perceive such a journey.  Mind theory is helpful in understanding mystic consciousness.  Mind theory, as I use it here, relates to our conscious perception that is the result of the intricate interplay between the instinctive, intellectual, and intuitive properties of the mind.  By themselves, instinct reacts to experience as it relates to one's sense of survival, and intellect defines experience as it relates to one's retained knowledge of experiences that came before.  It is intuition that distills these processed experiences into insight.

The capacity for mystic consciousness resides in all of us, but in an era in which we are blitzed by a variety of distracting sound bytes and video clips it can easily be ignored.  We need a transfigured perception of who we are in God and of the time and place in which we live to be at peace with where we're going.  We share this mystic journey with those who are present and  those yet to come. We also share it with those who have gone before.  Their stories have been handed to us as a guide to mystic path of faith we're on.

In pursuing this topic, I've chosen to reference the ancient scriptures I am familiar with; the Hebrew and Christian scriptures of the Bible.  To begin a conversation about the mystic journey, I  have chosen a wanderer who I consider to be the earliest recorded mystic in this tradition, Abraham.

BRIDGING THE MYTHIC TO THE MYSTIC

My reason in choosing Abraham as the starting place in biblical literature for a discussion on the mystical journey is that, although I consider the story of Abraham to fall into the biblical genre of legendary literature, Abraham personifies within this genre a simple man of extraordinary faith who seemingly has no desire to draw attention to himself. If anything he seems to avoid it.  He's is not a heroic figure in the traditional sense of heroic legends.   There is an everyday, everyman quality about Abraham that makes him a perfect example of a mystic traveler who becomes a bridge from the mythic to the mystic, from a general theistic perspective to a particular theistic perspective.

The clearest indication that one is dealing with a mystic in biblical literature is a noted change of a person's identity. Abraham begins this journey as Abram and his wife Sarah who starts out as Sarai.  The mystic invariably becomes a changed person who crosses a metaphorical step, crosses a bridge, or climbs a ladder that changes the person and that person's perspective of the world in which he or she lives.

In the Book of Genesis, the human story begins with our mythical first parents, Adam and Eve who experience an apophatic transfiguration from a vision of paradise ( oneness with God, with each other, and with all creation) into the vision of the our present differentiated and discriminating world, as destined to wander on a journey we recognize as mortal life.

I can't help but notice that almost every painting depicting Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden (the vision of Paradise) intuitively shows Adam covering his eyes - a vision lost to him.    In Masaccio's fresco, "The Expulsion," one is given a sense of disorientating despair that is depicted in Eve's face as the guiding voice of God becomes silent.  We will come back to the importance of God's silence in discussing the mystic journey.

Image result for masaccio fresco adam and eve

   
The Book of Genesis, however, keeps the hope of Paradise regained alive.  As Adam, Eve, and their immediate descendants venture further into the reality we now live, they retained the memory of what was lost in the form of a prophetic promise.  In discussing the mystic journey from the perspective of Abrahamic monotheism this prophetic promise is foundational; in that, it becomes an intuitive reference point that is experienced as a persistent sense of longing or beckoning the pulls one along the unitive path that is the mystic journey.

THE PROMISED LAND
We see this beckoning and longing for a "promised land"  as a promise out of reach in the life of Abraham, Sarah, and their immediate descendants.  They die before it is ever fully realized, and in many ways it remains unfilled promise.  There is something profound at play in the tale of Abraham, his descendants, and this foundational promise.  There are two tracks, two versions of this promised land: one that is fundamentally geographic and one that is mystically intuitive; one that is rooted in the mundane differentiated world and one that is rooted in a multidimensional universe that is paradoxically unitive in its multidimensionality - identified in scripture as paradise. 

In my next post, I will focus on the mystic vision offered in the story of Abraham.

Until then, stay faithful.

Thursday, August 10, 2017

TRANSFIGURATION

I started writing about transfiguration on the the Feast of the Transfiguration -August 6th. The story of Jesus being transfigured in front of his disciple, Peter, James, and John is found in all three synoptic gospels.  It is perhaps one of the strangest stories in the New Testament. According to the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the story of Jesus's transfiguration is told to the other disciples of Jesus only after Jesus' resurrection.  Until then, it was a kept secret by Peter, James,and John.

Another reason for its being unique is that it is explained in terms of a shared visionary experience by Peter, James, and John about the divine presence in Jesus.  For me, the unique feature of this story is not so much what it says about who Jesus is (the reason it is recorded in these  gospels) but rather the mystical attributes it reveals.

The account that captures its mystical aspect is the Gospel of Luke, perhaps the most mystical gospel of the four canonical gospels.  What lends it being a mystical experience is that it is told through Peter's account of it whose reaction typifies a mystical experience. One's attention is drawn to what Peter experiences.

That all three synoptic gospels record Peter's reaction is noteworthy.  Peter's response to "seeing" Moses and Elijah standing with Jesus strikes me as visionary intuition..  He never met Moses or Elijah before this experience and there are no introductions made by Jesus or God regarding who these other two men standing beside Jesus are.  Peter, James, and John "just" know.  

The delay in telling others about this experience also seems typical of those who have mystical experiences.  What seems so experientially certain at the time is hard to explain later, as there is no rationale one can provide for having such an experience, since even a basic sense time and place during such experiences can lose relevance.  It's only later, sometimes much later, that such experiences reveal their meanings and purpose and even then one tends towards describing the experience in what sounds to others as metaphors: "It was like... ."

In that sense, the story of the Transfiguration rings true as a mystical experience.  The Lucan account provides some significant clues to the event's mystical nature.   The context in which this experience occurs is during prayer.  Jesus takes these three disciples up mountain to pray, and Jesus is known for praying a long time to the extent that his disciples start falling asleep.  There is significance in this.  Both prayer and sleep can be considered liminal environments or moments.  They are thresholds between this time and place and another time and place, between the transient here and the eternal now.  It is in this liminal moment that Jesus is transfigured - seen and experienced differently - whose divinity (our) shines through.

MYSTICISM

Let's pause here to examine what is meant by mysticism.  I have been reluctant to talk about theism's mystical side, as it can be easily used to dismiss rational and reasoned explanations to various theistic theologies and dogmas which are themselves the products of rational reasoning and becomes an excuse for not explaining something with is touted as necessary to believe in order to be saved. In my opinion this is an abuse of what is meant by mysticism. Beliefs have very little to do with mysticism. In truth, belief is confounded by the mystical.

Mystery is a term that I use very carefully and would differentiate it from the mystical.  The term "mystery" undoubtedly gets wrapped into the mystical; as within the mystical there are things that are hard to explain in a purely rational or  intellectual manner, but I would caution that the mystical has its own explanations that proceed from experience and intuition; that are perceived as being mystical after the fact rather than before or at the time of the experience.

Like intuition, the mystical experience dawns on one.

This is the primary difference between intellect and intuition.  Intellect involves rational reasoning - figuring things out - knowing through reason whereas intuition is about knowing through experience and the imprinted feelings that result from such experience.   This is not to say that the intellect does not play a role in defining the mystical, it does.  The fact is intuition and intellect are in constant interplay with each other.

PROPHETIC PERCEPTION

Intuition is very much akin to the prophetic.  Intuition is a form of perception that awakens one's consciousness to something obvious once perceived that was not considered such in the  world of everydayness which appears mundane.  Intuition like prophecy grasps the ignored obvious, the multitude of meanings and applications that swirl in and around everyday situations that go largely ignored.  Once something is intuited it is hard to ignore its presence and application. One of the temptations that a mystical novice encounters is insisting that everyone needs to see and "feel" what he or she  experienced.  This is what prompts Jesus to say to his disciples on various occasions to tell no one.  They simply were not capable at the time to fully digest their experience. 

The mystical experience is largely a personal experience - a revealing of the divine presence in one's life. It only takes one such experience to be transformative.   That these moments are written about by a number of mystics occurs after they're digested and put it into language that can be grasped by the reader or the mystic's audience.

The Transfiguration of Jesus is one of several mystical experiences mentioned in the New Testament, Mary and Gabriel, Peter's dream  and Paul's vision on the road to Damascus are samples of other mystical stories.  The Hebrew Scriptures also contain references to the mystical experiences of Abraham, Sarah,  Jacob, Moses, Elijah and others.  Examining them, as such, is worthy endeavor as they provide a window into the intuitive nature of the mind in general and the theistic mind in particular.

In the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus we only hear of Peter's reaction to the experience.  We do not know what reaction James and John had, beyond one of fear/awe and silence. Peter wants to build three booths, reminiscent of Jewish Feast of Succoth, the feast of ingathering, which has apocalyptic overtones in this context.  In Matthew and Luke a cloud comes over them.  In Matthew the cloud is described as bright.  In Luke it overshadows them - hinting of them experiencing darkness and hearing a voice declaring Jesus to be the son of the voice, which we understand as being God.

When the cloud disappears, only Jesus is standing near them.  There is little doubt that if Jesus hadn't verified their experience they might have written it off as a dream, which mystic experience often feels like. The experience frequently leaves one with a sense of wonderment and questioning what just happened, "Is what I'm feeling now the point of the experience?"

The feeling in question frequently involves a sense of divine love,awe, guidance, and revelation. I suspect people have such experiences more than they let on, and most simply do not talk about them as they are hard to explain and don't make sense to someone who hasn't had the experience. They feel personal; an intuitive insight that is meant be played out rather than talked about.

In future posts, I will examine some of the mystical experiences talked about in scripture and attempt to relate them the mystical element expressed in the arts -  music, visual, dance, and poetry.

Until then, stay faithful.