Practices for the non mystic: Don’t worry if you’re not a mystic. Or if you don’t want to be a mystic.

Mystic.

Dictionary.com defines a mystic as ” a person who claims to attain, or believes in the possibility of attaining, insight into mysteries transcending ordinary human knowledge, as by direct communication with the divine or immediate intuition in a state of spiritual ecstasy.”

After decades as a Christian and one who values and regularly engages in spiritual formation, this much is clear: I am not a mystic. This was somewhat disappointing.

When I was much younger, I thought that mysticism was the end goal for all Christians. We read or hear about the mystical experiences of others, it can seem like mysticism is an attainable goal- if we just spent more time in prayer, tried a little harder, focused a bit more.

I recently read the book Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age, by Dale C. Allison Jr. He recounts the experiences of people who have had some type of mystical or supernatural experience- including visits from angels, visions, encounters with the divine and near death experiences. He discusses some of the research that has been done about these experiences. His goal for the book is to encourage us to take these sorts of experiences seriously and not to dismiss them out of hand as we often do. He wants us to respect for people’s experiences and to keep an open mind about them.

For me though, one of the most interesting parts of the book were his discussions about how few people actually have this sort of experience and how brief they often are¹. People’s experiences are often one time events. If they do happen more than once, they may be decades apart in occurrence. Often these events are just a few seconds or minutes. These experiences happened to “regular” people of faith and atheists. In the experiences he recounts, people were not trying to have a mystical experience. The experience just happened. More gift than result.

If mysticism isn’t the end goal, what is?

I think there isn’t an end goal. We make a fundamental mistake when we set an end point, a goal to our practices of formation. Formation is never “done” and we are not in charge of the outcomes. And as Dale Allison points out, most of us don’t end up as mystics.

Most of us don’t end up with one clear and true result. We don’t enhabit one type of theology or one way of understanding our lives of faith. We don’t adhere to a single way of living out who we are created to be. Our lives as people of faith change over time. Sometimes we grow. Sometimes we barely hold onto faith. Sometimes we lose it. Sometimes we regain it.

When people write about spiritual practices, sometimes they make it daunting and rigorous- seemingly impossible to do. Other times people’s descriptions of spiritual practices are so nebulous and ethereal they also become impossible to do.

What I have tried to do with “The Practice of…” series is make spiritual formation more accessible². Less mystical and less daunting. I tried to find understandable language to talk about spiritual practices. Instead of “mindfulness” I talked about “noticing”. I’m not sure I can be mindful for very long or very often. I can, however, notice things.

Spiritual practices aren’t really difficult things to do. What they do require is some persistence. Consistency is good, if you can do it. LIfe happens and you may forget sometimes. You might skip some days or years. If you do, pick up a practice again. Don’t beat yourself up over what you haven’t done. Just begin again. And again. And even again and again.

That’s why we call them spiritual practices. We are all just practicing. Slowly and intermittently growing in faith. Step by step. There is no end point. There is just the journey. But you journey with God who walks alongside you.

1. This book is back at the library and so I apologize for not having the data and sources to cite. ↩︎
2. The Practice of Noticing, The Practice of Noticing, Part Two,The Practice of Appreciating, The Practice of Not Possessing ↩︎