Contemplation By
  • Mysticism is a special consciousness of the presence of God that by definition exceeds description and results in a transformation

—Bernard McGinn

 

  • Authentic mystical encounter radically changes us and our way of living
  • experiential knowledge of spiritual things.
  • is about connection not perfection.
  • sees things in their wholeness, connection, and union, not only their particularity.

—Richard Rohr

 

  • you are made both of and for contemplation.
  • mysticism is variously described as an experience of Divine Presence that is accessible to us in the fully actualized depths of consciousness itself.
  • spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life and
  • the infused presence of Mystery in one’s inner depth.
  • the intrinsic capacity of each self to touch and be touched by the Source—to know the Source through certitude too deep for words or images. [an intimate knowing, an embodied knowing, a cellular knowing]
  • a universal and unifying view of the world.
  • insights … that the entire cosmos is intersubjective—all beings are embedded in webs of relationship that are interconnected, interdependent, and constantly being co-created and reinvented. [#Interbeing]
  • incorporate our relationships, and also our collective religious and spiritual inheritance, the whole of humanity, creation, and the cosmos.
  • opening the heart to the Divine Presence in all realities.
  • the power that un-forms and then reforms knowledge, love, and perception.

—Beverly Lanzetta, The Monk Within, 49-50.

 

  • the Christian of the future will be a mystic or . . . will not exist at all.
  • the mysticism of everyday life
  • the unreserved love for another.
  • results in a different theology of sanctity.
  • the idea that we weave the fabric of our eternal lives out of our humdrum daily lives.

—Karl Rahner

 

  • the mystic is not a special kind of person; each person is a special kind of mystic.
  • mysticism is not something we achieve; it is something we receive.

—William McNamara

 

  • the spiritual encounter with a sacred mystery that cannot be put into words, and may be embodied through feelings, conscious awareness, experience, or intuition — and even through darkness or unknowing.
  • recognizes that spiritual reality cannot ever be fully comprehended by the limitations of human thought, language or logic.
  • helps recover the presence of God in the world and in everyday life
  • makes intelligible the personal experience with God
  • unmasks false God experiences
  • allows God’s presence to emerge where one might have overlooked or ignored it.
  • transforms consciousness, and a transformed consciousness transforms life.
  • invites us into hope, promise, and possibility.
  • sharing the fruit of the Spirit with the world at large.

—Carl McColman

 

  • the art of union with Reality.

—Evelyn Underhill

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I lost myself. Forgot myself.

I lay my face against the Beloved’s face.

Everything fell away and I left myself behind,

Abandoning my cares

among the lilies, forgotten.

—St John of the Cross