A mystic is someone who has a personal, unmediated, felt sense of God. It’s not a set of ideas or beliefs, and it is not a hopefulness or even a general openness. It is deep experience that cannot be explained through reference to thought or emotion, and it is almost always unexplainable through language. But it comes with an utter certainty that a direct connection to spirit has been formed. No one can truly share it, but nothing can take it away. I think William James came very close in categorizing it as ineffable, noetic, transient, and passive (explanations of those terms are here: http://www.bodysoulandspirit.net/mystical_experiences/learn/experts_define/james.shtml). Those are the conditions that surround it, though they do not capture the nature of the mystical experience itself, which feels as if it comes from a different realm, one which cannot be explained by reference to anything else we know. In my experience, people who truly live in the mystic realm very rarely share their specific experiences, and they almost never try to generalize them.

Denise Wilbur

A mystic is someone who values experience over words, mystery over conclusions and listening over talking. A mystic uses words only when necessary and refuses to use them as the hitching-post for all experience and truth. They understand that words must become flesh or they are just words. That’s why Jesus told his disciples “tell no one what you have seen.” He didn’t want them to dumb-down their experience into words. If your experience is allowed to live through you, you won’t have to use words to convince others you actually had one. Your testimony is what God looks like through you, not what you use words to describe in front of a group.

Inside such a broad and deep awareness, paradoxes are easily accepted and mental contradictions seem to fade. That’s why mystics can forgive, show mercy and love enemies so easily. They are not irritatingly always trying to convince others of “the truth.” (Evangelize). They understand they are the word made flesh and they don’t have to add anything to it to make it more true. They are free to be light, salt and leaven which makes things tastier and more visible while working out of sight, from the inside out. The ego hates not being seen or heard. BTW, salt is only visible when it’s huddled together in a container. Sound familiar? 😉 Once it’s sprinkled into life, its presence is tasted but not seen. People around you can then “taste and see that the Lord, He is good.”

Jesus used parables to turn our unconscious view of God and reality upside-down and expose its illusions to us and for us individually. Parables should make us a bit uncomfortable if we are really “hearing” them. If we fit them neatly inside our belief-system-as-usual world, they have not served their purpose and have no transformational power. Parables should unlock your view of life from the inside. What the church has done for centuries is give people moral and doctrinal teaching without rearranging their entire worldview. It does not work. It creates legalist, ritualist, minimalist, and literalist who kill the spirit of everyone and everything.

A parable confronts our world, our entire belief system and subverts it. It doesn’t call for discussion,debate, or question, for its not God as information. Rather, it’s God as invitation. It invites us out of blindness and into insight (in-to-sight). It’s not an invitation to endless analysis or Bible study. It’s either a flashing insight or it’s nothing. It’s not like a joke that you “get.” A parable gets you. You don’t Unlock it, it unlocks you.
~ Stan Tyra

I feel like Simon Peter all the time: where would I be without the Christ! I believe it takes a great deal of concerted effort over a long period of time to start to really know the Christ, but once started, it’s an unspeakably glorious journey.

John 6:48-68 KJV
I am that bread of life. [49] Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. [50] This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. [51] I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world. [52] The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? [53] Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. [54] Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. [55] For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. [56] He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. [57] As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. [58] This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever. [59] These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum. [60] Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this , said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? [61] When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? [62] What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? [63] It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. [64] But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. [65] And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. [66] From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. [67] Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? [68] Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.

A little girl asked her brother, “what is love”?

The big brother replied;

Love is when you steal my chocolate everyday from my bag and I still hide it in the same place…
~Isaac Oforah

QQQ: That encourages the girl to steal….

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LITERAL versus SPIRITUAL interpretation is like comparing apples and oranges. (That’s why spiritual interpretations always have to be protected by a shroud of mysticism.)
RJS

Floria, Thank you. In my younger days, I read many of the Catholic Mystics (because that’s where the primary Christian material is found). (They often speak from their religious tradition, which you overlook.) St. Teresa’s works, John of the Cross, Catherine of Genoa, and Catherine of Siena, Padre Pio, Francis of Assisi, etc. The writings of Jeanne Guyon, the works of Meister Eckhart and Evelyn Underhill. Read “The Power of Now”. Then, don’t forget all the writings of the Buddhist mystics. There is so much available. Usually one thing leads to another. <3

A mystic is one who has moved from mere belief “systems” or belonging systems to actual inner experiences.
Without a vital spiritual experience ~ we are left with mere “head knowledge”.
This mystery of transformation involves surrendering ~ a yielding of our selves and all we Think we know..because our preconceived ideas, doctrines & theologies won’t fit into the amazing experiences of actually encountering the Divine..
~Kathleen DesVoigne