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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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What mysticism is
    #5524398 -

There have been a lot of attacks lately on "mysticism," many of which really have little to do with actual mystical traditions. So I thought I'd take a moment to clarify what mysticism means. It can mean a lot of things, but within the religious context, it refers to a tradition of direct connection to the divine. In the west, mystical traditions include Gnosticism, Sufism, and the Kabbalah. They are generally taught as a sort of secret inner knowledge within the larger context of their religion. Western mysticism has often been seen as a threat by its mainstream, literalist counterparts, and especially in the case of Gnosticism, has been violently suppressed. This is why I find it ironic when people here blame mysticism for such things as the burning of witches, or the suppression of native peoples, or any number of other atrocities. If you're going to attack mysticism, attack it on its own merits, rather than based on the actions of its opponents.


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Re: What mysticism is [Re: Silversoul]
    #5524543 -

Great post.


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"Religion without science is blind, Science without religion is lame." Albert Einstein

"peace is not maintained through force it is acheived through intelligence." Albert Einstein

"Those who desire to give up Freedom in order to gain Security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one."
Thomas Jefferson

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." --Thomas Jefferson

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Re: What mysticism is [Re: Silversoul]
    #5525055 -

the mystake with mysticism is to view it as other than another lens.

it can be a handy tool for discerning alternate associative pathways and alternate logics - especially when the mind and body become bogged down in habits and unthinking approaches to human life.

it helps also to combat racism and nationalism since underlying simmilarities in various schools of mystical thought have so much in common.

mysticism gets bad when it is used directly as the most important thing rather than as a proxy for achiving connection with (or a clearer view of) the most important thing;
and that most important thing is usually healing human suffering, or raising the human spirit in one way or another.

in a sense each great work of art is in itself a complete mystical school of thought.
often it is even better, since, with a single glance, a great painting can uplift the human spirit - going beyond language, and appealing to some underlying common force within us all.


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:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: What mysticism is [Re: redgreenvines]
    #5525598 -

redgreenvines said:
going beyond language, and appealing to some underlying common force within us all.


The simple fact that we are all of awareness. :wink:

:headbang: :headbang: :headbang: :satansmoking:
Peace. :mushroom2:


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:redpanda:
If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
:heartpump: :bunnyhug: :yinyang:

:yinyang: :levitate: :earth: :levitate: :yinyang:

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Re: What mysticism is [Re: Silversoul]
    #5529985 -

It can mean a lot of things

See, that's the problem with made up things that don't exist (mysticism). Everyone has their own version and nobody is ever wrong because there's nothing outside the believer's head that can be examined.

On this basis alone, the entire concept of mysticism is wide open to attack by critical thought, and THAT'S what's been happening here lately.


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Republican Values:

1) You can't get married to your spouse who is the same sex as you.
2) You can't have an abortion no matter how much you don't want a child.
3) You can't have a certain plant in your possession or you'll get locked up with a rapist and a murderer.

4) We need a smaller, less-intrusive government.

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Re: What mysticism is [Re: Diploid]
    #5530224 -

i zoned out when i read that

guess its programming in the opposite direction from what they push in my face...?

either way sounds good to me


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"It is easier to teach a computer to play chess than to build a mudpie."Sherry Turkle Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet
"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"-Einstein
:mrt: I pity the fool who break traffic laws with $870,000 of drugs in the car.      -mo0nlite_sonata
Psythos

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Re: What mysticism is [Re: Silversoul]
    #5530493 -

"Here is the definition: -
    Mysticism is the art of union with Reality. The mystic is a person who has attained that union in greater or less degree; or who aims at and believes in such attainment.
        It is not expected that the inquirer will find great comfort in this sentence when first it meets his eye. The ultimate question, 'What is Reality?' - a question, perhaps, which never occurred to him before - is already forming in his mind; and he knows it will cause him infinite distress. Only a mystic can answer it: and he, in terms which other mystics alone will understand. Therefore, for the time being, the practical man may put it on one side....[W]e see that the distinction between the mystic and the non-mystic is not merely that between the rationalist and the dreamer, between intellect and intuition. The question which divides them is really this: What, out of the mass of material offered to it, shall consciousness seize upon - with what aspects of the universe shall it 'unite?'"

- Practical Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill, pp. 3-5, 1915

It is obvious that critics of mysticism, at least at this forum, have no experience which can be deemed mystical. Further, without such a radical intrusion into ordinary consciousness, there is no motivation to acquire knowledge 'about' mysticism either. This is one good reason why phenomena that constitute non-physical representations in consciousness (like psychic or Psi phenomena, televangelism, divination of various types and forms of magical practice) are all lumped together by those critics who are ignorant of the more accurate meanings of mysticism.

Underhill states that "mysticism is the art of union with Reality," and this is a something that happens at various levels, from the 'nature mystic' who may have a particular 'green thumb' and a 'way with animals' to the 'religious mystics' who oftentimes manifest excessive synchronistic phenomena to other observers. The Taoist mystic, for example, described by Sinologist Richard Wilhelm in some of C.G. Jung's works, http://www.ralphmag.org/BN/why.html, is a further development, somewhere on a continuum between the nature mystic and a religious mystic such as Neem Karoli Baba as described by Ram Dass in BE HERE NOW. Of course, there are copious writings of religious mystics in all the religious traditions of the world, from the ancient Hindu Upanishads to the Greek Plato to the Neoplatonists Plotinus, Philo of Alexandria (a contemporary of Jesus), and Dionysus the Areopagite - Pagan, Jewish and Christian, respectively.

It is the unfortunate plight of the rationalist, trapped in linear thought as it were, between two points - sort of like being a two dimensional creature living in Flatland, unable to comprehend a third dimension of up-down. For those unfamiliar with the book Flatland, the effect on a two dimensional being whose world is intruded upon by a third dimension human who inserts a fingertip in the two dimensional plane, is to see a point appear in thin air which broadens across his entire field of vision as a flesh-colored light. The two dimensional plane has been rent by a higher dimension and manifests in a unique phenomena. Thus the mystic, encountering a higher dimension in consciousness, can elicit the Intuition of successive, even Infinite dimensions which merge into a Oneness of consciousness. It is not an idea, it is not a fantasy, it is the Mystic Experience, and it is ineffable.

Those who have tasted the Absolute in some measure need have Compassion for the individual who is so uncompreheding that even the description of a model for approaching the Mystic Experience is lacking.  :confused: Pity is reserved for the individual who is so egocentric that [s]he denies the existence of a Reality simply because [s]he has not experienced it him/herself, and is so fearful or close-mindedly linear that there is not even a possibility of considering the Mystic Experience as a possibility.  :sad:


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γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself

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Re: What mysticism is [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #5530561 -

excelent post markos

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Re: What mysticism is [Re: Deviate]
    #5530682 -

Thanks Deviate.

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Re: What mysticism is [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #5532142 -

:thumbup:


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Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'

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Re: What mysticism is [Re: MarkostheGnostic]
    #5532402 -

with plenty of experience, I am indeed critical and skeptical yet immersed.

IMHO
no direction is a guaranteed safe one, especially mysticism, however defined, accredited, lauded, etc.

each moment is a new cosmos, what do you seek now?


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:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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