The following excerpt is from the Introduction..."What Is Christian Mysticism."  (Pages xvi - xx) I don't know if I've seen it stated so darn WELL!!  Google Books didn't have the whole thing...and I HAD to have this for reading.  I have this now (and I'm so glad that I do!) so I typed it out. 

 

PLEASE check out the rest of the book HERE as you can.  ALL KINDS of mystics...East AND West!!

 

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What is Christian Mysticism?

 

Christian mysticism is a way of life that involves the perfect fulfillment of loving God, neighbor, all God’s creation, and oneself.  It is the fundamental human process through which one becomes fully authentic by responding throughout life to a God who gives himself unconditionally as love and as the ultimate destiny of every person.  It is an ordered movement toward ever higher levels of reality by which the self awakens to, is purified and illuminated by, and is eventually fully united with the God of love.

 

Under God’s palpable initiative and direction, mystics fall in love with God—at times abruptly, at times gradually.  Through God’s special activity, they realize that God is in love with them, and therefore we are all, at least secretly, in love with God and each other.  The explicit awareness of God’s burning love at the very roots of their being causes mystics an immense longing that allows them no peace until they are irrevocably united to God and transformed into God’s very own life.

 

Awakened by God to holiness, mystics are sensitized to their own sinfulness and vileness.  Past sins arise and torture them in a purifying way.  Like the physical eye, their spirit’s eye becomes extremely sensitive to a speck of dust.  They may even experience themselves as a “lump of sin,” wholly undeserving of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and love.  Yet this holy love purifies them by removing almost all traces of disorder and sin.

 

Mystics also experience the vast distance between themselves and their Creator.  Steeped in their own terrifying nothingness, they wonder why they are not simply annihilated in the presence of this all-powerful and all-consuming God.  Perhaps such experiences give rise to Meister Eckhart’s unorthodox statement: “All creatures are a pure nothing; I do not say they are a bit or that that they are something, but that they are a pure nothing.”

 

At this stage, mystics love God to some degree, but their quest is more self-seeking than God-seeking.  They taste something of God’s goodness and love, but the consciousness of their own sinfulness, creaturehood, and seemingly unbridgeable separation from God predominates.  Hence, authentic mystics feel a deep need of penance and purification.  In addition to long house of prayer, one finds in the lives of most great mystics “holy follies,” or great penances to atone for past sins or for the sins of the world.

 

As they are purged of sensuality and self-love, mystics grow in virtue and in ability to surrender to healing and transforming love.  Having stilled the surface mind, they are better able to turn inward, find interior stillness, forget the self, and attend to god’s loving self-communication.  A deep, joyful sense of being united with God permeates their consciousness.

 

Gradually, the living flame of God’s love is experienced more as illumination than as purgation.  It instills a sacramental expansion of consciousness, that is, a loving knowledge that enables mystics to find God in all things and all things in God.  Now they have less need to forsake the world to find God.  Yet no matter how intimate the mystics’ relationship to God may seem, the concomitant experience of separation remains.  They may be betrothed to God, but they are not yet married.

 

When the illuminative aspect of mysticism dominates, mystics discover a deeper sense of theism enhanced, transformed self and God’s intimacy.  Visions, locutions, and a variety of secondary phenomena often occur.  Some phenomena come from psychological dysfunction or even the demonic.  Others, however, are the psychosomatic reverberations of God’s self-communication taking hold of the entire person.  God communicates himself to the mystic’s spirit, soul, psyche, emotions, and body through these well-known mystical experiences to enhance the mystic’s life and encourage even deeper surrender to and communion with God.

 

The illuminative aspect of God’s mystical self-communication has its dark and purgative side, too.  During the “dark night of the soul,” emotional boredom, aridity, ennui, even near-despair are common.  The mystic has an acute sense of sin.  God’s absence predominates, having, it seems, justifiably abandoned the contemplative.  Immense longing for God, incredible loneliness, the feeling of utter impotence and isolation take over.  Exterior trials in social, political and ecclesiastical situations often accompany great interior trials.

 

Finally, the mystic realizes that the earlier phases of ascent were trite.  The haunting presence of past sins, of the distance from God, being unable to love as much as one is loved are concerns that become almost overpowering.  Mystics speak of this phase as a cruel spiritual death, like “going down to hell alive” (St. John of the Cross).  Nonetheless, mystical death is God’s gift to the mystic, the dark side of God’s loving, transforming self-communication.  Mystical purgation, especially in this radical form, is totally God’s doing.  Human efforts cannot bring it about.

 

Although God, through great consolations, prepares the mystic beforehand for this mystical death, they mystic must possess the requisite psychological makeup to endure this stage.  Mysticism in the strict sense requires extraordinary moral and psychological tenacity, as well as heroic concentration.  The authentic mystics are definitely the pioneers, heroes, and geniuses of the spiritual life.  There may be something in common between a Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart and any lover of music, but few music aficionados are musical geniuses.  This analogy likewise holds in the spiritual life.

 

The unitive life is the last stage of mystical ascent.  The mystic becomes as closely united to God through God’s love as God is unified to his own being by nature.  Mystically married to God, the mystic becomes “God by participation.”  Nonetheless, this union remains differentiated, that is, God and the mystic become one while remaining distinctly two.  The mystic’s person does not dissolve into God.  In fact, the more deeply united to God the mystic becomes, the more the mystic’s individuality is confirmed and enhanced.

 

Mystical marriage bestows the conscious sharing in God’s own life and power and almost complete self-forgetfulness.  The mystic now seeks only God’s will and honor and desires to serve God totally.  Although external trials may continue, absolutely nothing can touch the peace and freedom at the deepest core of the mystic’s being.  The transformed mystic desires greatly to suffer, but in no way does this suffering disturb the peace that flows from the ever present, explicit awareness of living God’s very own life.  In fact, the only thing separating the mystic from the beatific vision is this life itself.

 

The mystic is experientially united to a love that communicates itself to all persons and to all things.  Therefore, the more deeply the mystic experiences union with God, the more deeply union with God’s creation is experienced.  Transformed by and into Love itself, the mystic becomes creative, totally self-giving, radically concerned about others—in short, spiritually fecund.

 

Hence, mystics heal in their own persons and through apostolic service the fragmentation found in so much of human life.  They become an even deeper part of the great process of life.  Wholly in God, yet totally in the world, they experience both absolute peace and a holy anxiety to serve God and God’s world.

 

The mystics insist, however, that the mystical life is more than heroic virtue or service to the world.  These are the outward expressions of their union with God, the sacramental expression of their mystical lives.  They are socially and often politically active because they seek God and God alone.  Only this—not “experiences,” not a transformed personality, not serving the world—gives the mystical life its ultimate value.

 

Nonetheless, the mystics are the most impressive servants of humanity the world has ever seen.  These deified, christified, spirit-filled persons are the amplifiers of every person’s more hidden life of faith, hope, and love.  Their lives help us bear the interior whispers and see the faint flickers of divine truth and love in ourselves and others.  The Christian mystics point the way to fully authentic human life by illustrating what it means to be a human being, what life means: eternal union (which begins here) with the God of love.

 

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I truly can't say it any better! 

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Post Edited (Shekinah) : 6/23/2008 2:21:16 PM (GMT-5)

 

Loder.   The Transforming Moment.  106-107.  Talking about "I, not I, but Christ" idea...

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Post Edited (Shekinah) : 6/23/2008 2:17:25 PM (GMT-5)

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

"Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them."

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God."

 

 

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

Though fascinated by the natural world and appreciating its great beauty, the Fathers clearly understood that if the mind were to be distracted by the puzzles of nature and to consider them as ends in themselves, then the knowledge of nature would itself become an obstacle in trying to know God. Thus a tension was created between the appreciation of nature and the danger of being trapped by its investigation. On the one hand, the natural world is accepted and affirmed, while, on the other, it is renounced as having no meaning without its spiritual ground. The necessity to rise above nature in order to find God was always experienced as the difficulty of being detached from a natural world that at the same time was highly appreciated.

In the contemplation of the logoi of creation (Maximus), the Greek Fathers found an ingenious way of resolving this tension, freeing themselves from the demands of nature, on the one hand, while enjoying nature, on the other. They never experienced any fear of nature, which was the creation of a God "who loves mankind." Their detachment from the material world provided a paradoxical freedom to treat this world in a way that never subverted their spiritual vision of reality, that is, their faith. The secret of the Greek Fathers' freedom to enjoy nature was their detachment from it. Their spiritual vision of nature freed them to love and appreciate nature without condemning its created origin and without fearing its demands, for the natural world, like all of creation, is good because everything done by God through his Word (Logos) is good.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

 

Beyond vision, in the fourth and final phase of the journey of intensification, is the numinous, imageless passage into the absolute unity of all things. Here no-thingness (cf. Eckhart's Ohne bild) is experienced as more real that than the reality of the ordinary state, even after self-consciousness returns to phase 1. Although imageless, its impact most often leaves the after-image of radiant white light, so vivid it cannot be described except perhaps by a kind of via negativa. For this phase there is no language, only silence--favete linguis (hold your tongue), says Kierkegaard. For this phase there is still differentiated self-consciousness (Tom!), but beyond that only a reaction of awe as before the Holy who both fascinates and overpowers at the same time. This corresponds to the vision of God in Augustine, Hildegaard, Teresa (of Avila), Eckhart, and several others.

 

 

The benevolent detachment from the world which is the consequence of this experience has the effect of making the world becomes a matter of choice rather than one of defensive survival.  All that is needed for ultimate survival has been given and far more, so engagement with the world are a matter of decision in what can only be called a state of blessedness.

 

 

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

Pages 44-48

Some quotes by Nesteruk...

"...the eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology; between personal experience of the divine mysteries and the dogma affirmed by the Church...Far from being mutually opposed, theology and mysticism support and complete each other. One is impossible without the other. If the mystical experience is a personal working out of the content of the common faith, theology is an expression, for the profit of all, of that which can be experienced by everyone...There is, therefore, no Christian mysticism without theology; but above all, there is no theology without mysticism. Mysticism is...the perfecting and crown of all theology: as theology par excellence.
Vladimir Lossky

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"Just as mysticism divorced from theology becomes subjective and heretical, so theology when it is not mystical, degenerates into an arid scholasticism, 'academic' in the bad sense of the word."
Kallistos Ware

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Nesteruk himself...

"If teaching in words is possible in principle, how then can we teach (as we do with different university subjects) the experience of ecclesial life, the experience of knowing God through personal participation? This probably can be done through learning about and teaching the experience of saints, who are, according to Gregory Palamas, the only true theologians and who must be trusted. Not everyone can be a theologian, not everyone can teach theology, and theology cannot be taught to everyone, every subject. The trust in saints assumes two things: asceticism and education. A person who learns theology must be educated, tested, and involved in purification."

ESSENTIAL. 

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

 

Over time, wouldn't it be harder and harder to tell when the human mind "ends" and the Divine mind "begins"...especially if the human mind is being tranformed into a created analogy of the Uncreated Divine mind, by the Uncreated Spirit of God?  

In other words, is THIS what Paul was talking about with the ideas of "putting on Christ", taking on the "mind of Christ", "taking every thought captive to Christ"...and, of course the, "I, not I, but Christ" identity Paul took on?

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am."