Mysticism is often misunderstood but is in fact very simple, whatever faith a person follows – a mystical believer is one who emphasises the experience of the divine. There are mystics in every faith but, as a Christian, my mystical experience is of Jesus. My faith journey began with a divine encounter and over the years, bathing in the divine presence became the heart and soul of my practice.
Despite the satisfaction of spiritual experience, I still felt like something was missing, because the idea of the ‘presence of God’ implies that there is such a thing as the ‘absence of God’. I knew this wasn’t true, but still felt a degree of separation. Longing and hungering after God can only spring from a sense of lack, after all.
The day I grasped the heart of mysticism was in the summer of 1997. I was praying in the greasy storage hold of a ship, which was my home at the time, trying to identify the sense of lack I was feeling. I prayed for hours, determined to bridge the gap, when all of a sudden my greatest desire issued from my mouth like a trumpet blast:
“Let us be one!”
Oneness was what I was looking for, rather than contrasting presence and absence. I wanted to breathe the same breath as the divine and revel in our union, as Jesus prayed we would. John 17:21,
“I pray that they will all be one, just as you and I are one—as you are in me, Father, and I am in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me.”
In that moment, I became aware of God all around my like a cloak, and within me like energy. It’s been over 25 years since that day, and that awareness of union has never faltered, even for a second. Even in the depths of the hardest, darkest times, that tangible awareness of union with the divine has not faded.
That said, a lot of folk seem to think that knowing it’s all about union is the same as deep awareness of union. Being aware that ‘it’s all about awareness of union’ is only intellectual knowledge. It’s an idea rather than heartfelt knowledge. True awareness of union with God is discovered and celebrated through spiritual practice – not to gain something we don’t have, but to embrace that which has already been given to us.
Mystics are not passive; they are adventurers and explorers. We are not asked to simply acknowledge the gift of union, like a present sitting unopened and unused; we’re invited to unpack it.
I was invited by Glenn Siepert of the What If Project to discuss mysticism on a recent podcast. For those interested in understanding more about this fascinating topic, here’s the link to the talk.
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