Meditations on the Soul’s Ascent: A Mystic’s Journal Entry June 2, 2005
Thursday, June 2
11 p.m.
We are still reading The Book of Mystical Chapters (trans. John A. McGuckin, Shambhala, 2003) in meditation class. This week I only had one strong whiff of heavenly perfume, before class began. Only Pam & Serge were there, the others were out of town or busy. M. was teaching a class.
Before meditation Pam & Serge & I put together a new rose archway for next door, so that climbing roses can adorn the path to the downstairs apartment. It took all our mystic skills to untangle the directions, and we stayed quite calm and cheerful. Which tells me that we are far along the spiritual path. I have decided to dedicate the roses to Our Lady and St. Teresa of Lisieux. May all who walk under the archway and all those who pass by, which is a considerable number of beings, human, animal & insect - be blessed. I also add a prayer for all my plant friends.
Our first quote of the night was given to us by the Desert Father Makarios the Great. It began “Sometimes the soul finds rest/ in the deepest quietness/”. This, we all agreed, referred to meditation or contemplation. We continued reading: “At other times the soul is stirred up by grace/ and taught lessons in ineffable wisdom ... In ways that pass beyond all our ability/ to speak about them...” We agreed that “At other times the soul is stirred up by grace” implied action, and that when we first heard that sentence read aloud - our understanding was that the soul was sometimes stirred to action in the world. However, by the end of the sentence, I felt the passage could be referring to high mystical states while within contemplation. Makarios, in this poem, is perhaps telling us that action of the soul is not always action in the world. That the activity of the soul includes prayer, meditation and the mystical states they can bring.
Certainly that has been my experience.
When one meditates, to others it appears as though the meditation is actionless. But to the meditator, this is not so. It is only because we identify more with the physical body than the soul that meditation can seem, from the outside - without value or movement.
In the higher mystical states, such as ecstacy, the outer appearance & the inner experience are even more extreme in their difference. To the world, the person in ecstacy is physically motionless, deathly pale, and can appear to have no heartbeat or breath. I myself was once mistaken for dead, and would have been rushed to the nearest hospital if a friend had not intervened. Inwardly, in those times, I had never felt as alive, as true to my own true Nature and Self. Truth. The Truth that we are not the body, nor the personality. The world outside of us ceases to exist in those experiences, and we realize that nothing physical in that world has the meaning or value we ordinary assign them. The meaning and value lies elsewhere: in the Divinity and Light that is their very essence ... This is not realized during ecstasy, the world has absolutely no meaning or existence for us in those times. It is only afterwards that we know this to be true.
“In ways that pass beyond all our ability/ to speak about them...” I also cannot find words to describe the experience - even as a writer and all the words I have patiently used throughout my life here on earth. Encouraged by the poems of the Desert Fathers, I will try once again. It is a Clarity and a Knowing unattainable in any other way, an engulfment of Light that does not exist on earth, not even in the full sun. The Light does not hurt us in any way, not even in its extreme Brightness & Radiance- for the simple reason that the Light is also our very Being. And in the experience, we also know this to be true. We are somehow standing in the soul and have brought our usual awareness with us. We do not forget who we are - we are using the same mind, even though now it is entirely emptied of thought. If a thought should arise, for whatever reason, it comes from an uncountable distance and intrudes with the force of a small brick against the Mind, yet is immediately rejected, bounces away once again. The Light Itself repels it.
Can these mystical experiences be given to us if we do not deeply pray for long periods each day & also meditate? Unless one has a very special Destiny, such as Paul on the route to Damascus - no, I do not think so. In this I agree with St. Teresa of Avila. In her opinion, one cannot achieve mystical union without the practice of mental prayer. In other words, meditation or contemplation.
Friday, June 3
The lines: “Manifold are the patterns of grace,/ and most varied are the ways it leads the soul.” we agreed were complicated and very beautiful. “The patterns of grace” mystified us, and we finally decided to think of it as “the ways of grace” rather than “patterns”. Although I could almost inwardly visualize these “patterns” of grace, and the word itself implies order and structure. And the ways of God certainly are orderly - even in our physical reality, if we consider the atomic ordering that goes into making a crystal or a drop of water, or the order within the solar system itself. Our physical universe is so dependable that we humans have clocks and calendars to chart the days and astronomical maps of the heavens we can consult to find the furthest star. What would it be to live in a world where one day the ceiling was on the floor and the next day the sun never rose? Imagine then the care taken in the ordering of the soul and its life, its universe ...
By the end of our discussion, we decided that this activity of the soul could also represent our activity in the world. That Grace would lead the soul in our everyday lives if we devoted ourselves to God, and that without Grace our lives would be meaningless.
Saturday, June 4
The next poem we read in class was also written by Makarios the Great: “The eyes of the body can see/ all things with perfect lucidity./ So it is with the saints,/ for to them all the beauties of the Godhead/ are clearly visible.”
I asked why Markarios had written that it was the saints who saw the beauties of the Godhead, and Pam answered it was because the saints lived closer to the soul. By this time a new student had joined us, I had agreed to teach her how to meditate at the end of our meditation class. I asked what a saint was and the answers given by the small class of three meditation students were: that they were pure; they did not have negative thoughts; that they were not perfect, but had learned to master their lower nature through prayer, meditation and constant communion with God; they did nothing evil; they came from their hearts; they were those who had devoted their life to God; the human part of them is so pure that God is able to work perfectly through them. Serge added that saints are on earth to set an example for the rest of us, and in that sense they are messengers of God, like the angels - and that they are here on earth to bring Light to our planet. I was pleased with these answers, and then we entered a discussion on the three stages of the interior life as described by Saint Teresa of Avila, for the sake of the new student.
We briefly discussed the three stages, which are separated by a Dark Night of the spirit or of the soul. That if one managed to make it through to the other side of the first Dark Night, one then entered the Illuminative stage. If one was fortunate enough to pass safely through the second Dark Night then one achieved the third stage, that of mystical union. I explained that each stage of the Interior life contained three parts. And that the saints had reached the third and highest section of the third stage, which was called perfection.
We then discussed the Dark Night of the spirit, only briefly. That many people would have the opportunity to pass through it and reach the Illuminative period. Generally the Dark Night comes in the form of a difficult divorce, a terrible injury or illness or the painful loss of someone we love - i.e. some tragedy in the world, or the loss of something we greatly value. But that most people react with bitterness or anger or blame God for their problems, and so must return to the first stage and go through the Dark Night again later. That during the two Dark Nights, we must make God the center of our lives, put Him before all else.
Then I asked why the saints could see the beauties of the Godhead. We decided that Makarios was mainly speaking of high mystical experience, when the soul and the Divine regarded each other during contemplation or ecstasy, and this was then witnessed or experienced by the saint. I mentioned that in my experience, even though I am not a saint, that Beauty was clearly and lucidly seen and experienced. In fact one sees more clearly and lucidly in those experiences than in our normal life, than with our physical vision. Then we discussed that the saint was aware of the Beauty of God at all times: both because the saint looked for that Beauty in all things and all beings, and also because the saint possesses a certain clairvoyance that shows them the Divinity that underlies all materiality. Pam said it was because we see the world with our physical eyes, but the saint saw the world with the soul, with the eyes of the soul. I asked why, and she answered because they are so pure and so devoted to God.
I asked why Makarios had written “the beauties” of the Godhead, instead of some other quality, such as Justice or Wisdom. No one had thoughts, so I said that in those High Mystical states, God is experienced as Beauty Itself. That in my mind, all the qualities of the soul, and all the virtues stemmed from that Beauty. And that once, when I in the Confessional with Father C., a Divine Presence was revealed to me of such Beauty that I began to inwardly cry. It was clairvoyantly seen as white Light - but not of the sort I usually see. This Light seemed and felt Infinite. Infinite and Timeless, and of the most incredible Beauty that my very soul knelt and cringed before it. Cringed, because in that Light I saw all my faults and flaws. This has only happened to me once, and once was more than enough. My heart could not take this experience often, for in it we feel lost. Not abandoned, but so lacking before that Beauty and Divinity - that we wish to perish, die - at yet we love that Light more than anything or anyone we have ever met or known on earth, and desperately would love to join with it.
I was shaken and wondered about this experience until I read a saint describe the same - I think it was St. Teresa of Avila, either in The Interior Castle or her Autobiography.
After class I taught the new student to meditate and afterwards she cried many tears. She said it was something she had always dreamed of experiencing, but did not know how to find it. I told her that my first experience of meditation had been similar, and that as a child I had often meditated, naturally - not knowing that it was the practice of meditation.
Meditations on the Soul’s Ascent: A Mystic’s Journal June 2
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