Mystics Without Monasteries

Excerpted from "Entering the Castle" by Caroline Myss. Copyright (c) 2007 by Caroline Myss. Reprinted by permission from Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

 

You never know how God is going to get you. What is God asking of you? What is your soul calling you to do or to be in your life now? What purpose is your life’s journey? When you enter the Castle, you will find some answers. Seeing your soul as a Castle and yourself as a mystic is like having a new lens through which to look at your life. You can see more clearly, notice the shapes of events and patterns more sharply. You don’t want to use an old paradigm or an old pair of glasses to find a new path for your soul. And you don’t want to use a new pair of glasses in the wrong way.

 

This morning, for instance, I was having trouble with the clasp on my necklace. I kept fiddling with it at the back of my neck but I just couldn’t make it work. So I put on my glasses...as if that could let me see behind myself.

 

You want a new, deeper view of yourself and your life that sees through the visible, ordinary reality and into mystical truth. You don’t want to try to look backward. St. Paul wrote that the invisible must be understood by the visible, and that is what a mystic pursues—knowledge of the divine, the absolute. Most people living ordinary lives would not consider themselves mystics, because they don’t understand what a mystic is or they think mystics reside only in monasteries pursuing absurd compulsions to starve themselves. This is an outdated view.

 

These days, many people—no doubt you, too—are being called into a deeper experience of God in many ways. That is what a mystic is—someone who wants to engage in direct dialogue with God. That desire ignites an interior flame that burns for the rest of your life, lighting your way. “Great fire can follow a small spark,” wrote Dante. Perhaps you feel a mysterious stirring deep within you, a restlessness or anticipation that you don’t understand. Perhaps you have a sense that you need to get in harmony with an unseen order—it could be the beginnings of your mystical birth. For some people, a soul calling reveals itself in an instant. But most of us have to contemplate the guidance we receive in order to understand and respond to it. To help us read God’s symbols and mysteries, we turn to the spiritual masters—the mystics.

 

The fairly recent availability of sacred literature and spiritual teachings from all world traditions has brought the experience of the mystic out of the monastery and into our contemporary culture. Sacred literature stirs the soul. Vessels of divine guidance, many mystical texts were long guarded from the general public. Even some ordained brothers and sisters did not work with them because they were not prepared, and one does not toy with the sacred.

 

The anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing warns readers not to talk lightly of its contents or to give the book to anyone who is not prepared to spend some time in sincerely trying to understand it because of the unexpected effects its contents could have. Before opening Loyola’s Personal Writings, or The Dark Night of the Soul, or The Interior Castle, a monk would pray to enter a field of grace because he knew his soul would be aroused by the spiritual truths within them and compelled to explore the mysteries they contain. Teresa of Ávila, for instance, had her first mystical experience after reading St. Augustine’s Confessions.

 

Today, however, we read these texts in coffee shops and our homes, often oblivious to the fact that we may be awakening something deeper as we read. Arousing the soul has profound consequences, for once it announces itself it requires attention, prayer, spiritual direction; it wants to express itself through acts of compassion and service. Your soul is your connection with eternity, your intermediary between Earth and heaven, between your everyday physical life and a higher reality. It is your calm eye in the hurricane of a chaotic world—yet, it burns to realize its purpose: to communicate with God. It waits impatiently for the opportunity and avenue to unveil itself to you—your own divinity, the God within you.