Reluctant Mystic

Kerry Walters notes in Soul Wilderness: A Desert Spirituality that a “Mystic yearns for an immediate encounter with the Divine, for an unfiltered experience of the replete nothingness of God.” This deep sense of an intimate need to know God without all of the layers and protections that shield our frail humanity from the dangers of direct encounter with God are both a gift and a curse. One’s yearning cannot be completely banished out of mind once its epiphany has been noted. Nor can it be put away without the soul noting its removal and recording its hiddenness. The yearning waits quietly and patiently, looking for the next opportunity to become known and to be acted upon.

When starting down the spiritual path, no one can provide a map that outlines the upcoming choices that must be faced. But the yearning keeps driving the seeker down the path, searching for a sense of God even though that sense is never found by one’s own volition. Yet, there is the continued hope for something will lead to deeper answers.

There is the need to understand more even as that which is being understood becomes incredibly more complex. As more is learned and comprehended by the soul, the difficulty of describing or explaining becomes logarithmically complex. One turns to poetry, paradox, and absurdity because language and description inevitably reduce the clarity of what is being described.

This sense of the inexpressible confronts an intellect that is trained to be articulate, to know and use the right words. If only that which is yearned for, that which is of God, were of this world. Then it would permit a clear, even scientific description of who and what it is. But the yearning pushes into the clouded, fog filled areas of seeing and understanding. The groping to understand cannot be gained through the five body senses. Those senses may begin to note some of the shape of that terrain, but it is unable to be described by sight, sound, taste, smell and touch.

In admitting that yearning, confessing the desire to be in a much deeper relationship with God, I must admit that I am becoming such a mystic. Yet I am reluctant both in allowing others to see it and in fully owning that label. What good is a mystic, so separated from the world with a head in the fog, with more questions than answers? Or, perhaps my feet are solidly standing on the ground and I am just seeing the world in a new way?