I have a few Christian mystic teachers I listen to. Richard Rohr is the one who got me started on this path. I realized as I was getting older I needed a new thought pattern and a new approach at life. I didn't want to live the second half of my life using the methods and concepts of the first half. Frankly, it wasn't working. Some kind soul on Facebook directed me to Falling Upward, and that was my introduction to Rohr.
I have been going through all 70+ messages of Thomas Keating's "The Spiritual Journey" on YouTube. Rohr is a Franciscan friar while Keating is a Trappist. More recently I've discovered Cynthia Bourgeault, an Episcopal mystic teacher. And I've been slowly going through Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism.
About the same time I was reading Falling Upward I happened to find a YouTube channel about philosophy, Einzelgänger. At first I was listening to some thoughts on Stoicism, but then came around to his Daoist (or Taoist, depending on the writer) videos. I noticed that there were a lot of mystic teachings in Daoism. As I listened, I really was feeling awakened to a fresh perspective. This led me to eventually listen to Alan Watts, a famous mystic who speaks a lot on Daoism but also incorporates mystic ideas from many traditions. He is so entertaining and personable to listen to I find myself wishing I could have just had dinner with him one time to enjoy his company.
Interestingly enough my study of other religions began years ago. When I had very bad anxiety due to my condition I was instructed in meditation by my counselor. It was at that time that Shinzen Young's The Science of Enlightenment was recommended to me. Young speaks about all of the meditation traditions across all the world's religions, and finds that there are many common threads. He even looks into scientific research on brain wave patterns of experienced meditators. Shinzen Young teaches very powerful techniques of experiencing emotion and pain that allow you to move through and past them. They are based on Buddhist principles of not resisting suffering, but allowing it to flow through you and fully experiencing it so the emotion and pain become complete. I am only a novice it this but I practice it often, since I have regular experiences of extreme anxiety and pain.
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I have learned that every major religion has a mysticism practice, but in the Western Christian church the practice was mostly lost after the Reformation. However, there is a rich history of Christian mystics. I won't go into them right now. I really have so much to say but will try to get to my point.
Every once in a while in my readings online I'd see a wonderful quote from Ram Dass, another mystical teacher. I remembered someone about ten years ago had said I'd like him. He is definitely not in the Christian tradition, and believes and teaches some things that frankly, I don't understand. However, he sometimes says these beautiful, amazing things that really change my entire day. Recently he mentioned this:
We live as if things are not the way that they should be, and we have to do something about it.
It's a great burden to bear and makes us always walk around feeling like something is "wrong" and that things need to be "fixed." But truly, if God is everywhere, and involved in everything (as the mystic believes) then really there is nothing that is wrong. Everything is as it should be. This may seem difficult to understand or accept given all the pain and suffering in the world. However, as mystics we can live at a higher perspective where we see that all things are part of the great pattern and have purpose. Even the Bible says in Romans 8:28 that "all things work for the good."
One of my sayings I have on my fridge to see every day is: "Everything is and always will be well."
Traditional Christians will often say something like, "God is still on the throne," as a way to say he is still in power and in control. Power and control and a man sitting on the throne are pretty Western concepts of God that very much limit the full essence of the creator. They suggest a separateness of God as well as an ancient lawgiver and enforcer. If instead we realize that God is in everything and in fact everywhere that means surely, everything is fine and in fact is exactly as it should be.
One of the reasons I decided to no longer be involved in politics is that it perpetuates the worldview that the world is broken and we need to fix it. Indeed, there is suffering in the world. But as Alan Watts said we can spend our lives solving problems and never run out, and in fact the solutions to problems often create more problems than you started with. To use a Buddhist concept, living a life for the purpose of political change is like living on the wheel of Samsara, which can be defined as: "Samsara is life as we live it under the influence of ignorance, the subjective world each of us creates for ourselves." It is similar to Sisyphus, just rolling that boulder up the hill, over and over. We don't really get anywhere. The world will continue to have suffering and pain in this incarnation.
Does that mean we turn a blind eye to suffering of others?
Not at all. But we can change our perspective on it. I remember I was speaking to my pastor recently about these things, and about being apolitical. I started a sentence saying "We can be stuck living a life trying to solve an endless cycle of problems, but that isn't satisfying and certainly is not our purpose..."
...and then for a moment I was like... what am I going to say? How can I finish this sentence? I was about to fumble out something inadequate when I believe the Spirit gave me the answer. "But instead we can view the suffering in front of us as an invitation and an opportunity to participate in the divine experience of God." Not because we can "change the world," but because we are all called to do something and each of us will and shall. But if we see the something as the purpose we miss it. The purpose is the participation and the experience of working with God, the divine, and growing the intimacy with the Source so we may truly learn to be One.
