Like all mystics, I acknowledge the presence of the divine and make space for it in my life.
Although I share my insights and discuss the tools I use, I don’t tell you what to believe or how to live your life. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll need to find someone else.
What I do is invite you to examine the way you live your life and question the beliefs you were taught. In other words, I invite you to awaken from the sleep of inculturation.
I call making space for the divine The Mystical Journey. St John of the Cross called it The Dark Night Of The Soul. The author of A Course In Miracles claims it’s a required course we all get to take, eventually.
There are days when I feel like a monk sitting in a cell in a monastery, because that’s how it works. Yes, modern mystics are called to engage with the world, but we also need to make space in our lives for being in the presence of the divine, and that requires time in silence, whether it’s sitting in your room or walking in nature.
I’ve reached that time in life where I can spend my day alone with God if I choose, but in the thirty plus years leading up to this point, I chose to make time for the divine every morning before engaging with the world to earn a living. These days, my engagement with the world is through my writing and my social life, and the occasional talk about my writing.
The mystical journey doesn’t require activism, even if it sometimes leads you there. It’s more about allowing the presence of the divine into your life and listening to your inner guidance before doing anything. I know I’m not going to solve the world’s problems by writing about them but there are times when I feel called to make a suggestion or to amplify the message of more informed activists.
But the mystical journey is not about escaping into some spiritual dimension and ignoring what’s going on in the world. We’re here in the flesh for a reason. If it was simply about being in the presence of the divine, we would have stayed in the Heart of God and not bothered with incarnating in a body to live a life on earth.
I think it’s safe to assume engaging with others in the world must be important in the greater scheme of things. Perhaps it’s about raising awareness.
It’s obvious from what’s going on in the world that not every soul on the planet is aware of itself or awake to the presence of the divine. There must be a reason why things are the way they are.
Perhaps there really is great joy in the return of the lost sheep.
Peter Mulraney is the author of Mystical Journey and My Life Is My Responsibility.
Image Credit: Photo by Ulysse Pointcheval on Unsplash