-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
What Are the Most Pressing Problems Facing Mystics?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
mystic64
nolonger active
How to make a living?
That's a good one.
Orbit
I'm a planet
I think mystics face the same problems as everyone else, really.
What about persecution. Lots of mystics have been burnt at the stake by more than one religion. Is that still a problem?
Probably being misunderstood and casually dismissed by dogmatic theists and being marginalized and lumped in with dogmatic believers by atheists.
Covellite
Active Member
For me, it's a mystical experience.
It brings loneliness, no one is really interested what you've been through and it's almost impossible to describe. Mystical groups tend to give you interpretation of your experience, but actually, it's all wrong.
It also can change your belief system, too. So, mystical groups are on thin ice. After "experience" you can feel that you don't belong to that group any more.
Usually, normal people call "mystical experience" schizophrenia, so you have to learn to be silent.
It brings loneliness, no one is really interested what you've been through and it's almost impossible to describe. Mystical groups tend to give you interpretation of your experience, but actually, it's all wrong.
It also can change your belief system, too. So, mystical groups are on thin ice. After "experience" you can feel that you don't belong to that group any more.
Usually, normal people call "mystical experience" schizophrenia, so you have to learn to be silent.
Excellent post!
Covellite
Active Member
Thank you
Being a "cracked pot" doesn't necessarily mean you are a "crack pot."
Kintsugi is a Japanese art form whereby broken pottery is repaired by filling the cracks with gold:
Taking the metaphor a step further:
Orbit
I'm a planet
Well, I wouldn't want to be a Muslim mystic, but I haven't heard of any other contemporary persecutions. Maybe someone else has? Dunno.
I would say it's the same as in any generation. If you are part of a parent religion you run the risk of pushing the boundaries too far to where you move from being a curiosity to an outright threat to the them challenging their understandings they wish to impart to the masses. Many a mystic has been burned at the stake for taking the teachings too far for comfort.
Outside of that, I'd say finding others you can relate to, or those who can relate to you is few and far between. With the rise of the Internet and places like these it makes sharing thoughts and ideas much easier. But "groups" per se on any local level are not so common. If you live in a metropolitan area, you can find various groups, but what some people call mysticism is really more like fascinations in magical things, like crystals and pyramids and whatnot, or "secret teachings", fancy knotted underwear and special handshakes, and those sorts of things.
So I'd say if anything is a 'problem' it's the confusion of the pre-rational with the transrational in people's ideas of what qualifies as mysticism. Both by those who like the term mysticism, and those who as a result claiming rationality as their god see all of it as "woo".
I would say that mystics often face many of the same difficulties that artists do--except mystics generally have their creativity turned more inwardly than artists generally do. {There will probably more individual variance among these individuals, so this is a very broad brushed observation.}
BSM1
What? Me worry?
mystic64
nolonger active
And the Moderator begins to pull his hair and run screeming off into the sunset .
QUOTE=Covellite
"For me, it's a mystical experience.
It brings loneliness, no one is really interested what you've been through and it's almost impossible to describe. Mystical groups tend to give you interpretation of your experience, but actually, it's all wrong.
It also can change your belief system, too. So, mystical groups are on thin ice. After "experience" you can feel that you don't belong to that group any more.
Usually, normal people call "mystical experience" schizophrenia, so you have to learn to be silent."
I think that what Covellite has said really puts everything into a nut shell. Especially about changing your belief system and being lonely. And one of the problems is that you go through levels of experience and each level seems to be an absolute. So when mystics talk to each other they think that the level that they are on is the arrived level. Eventually you reach a point where it doesn't matter, but in the meantime it all matters very much because you are experiencing something of great magnitude and validity from others is important. But unless you encounter an advanced level mystic all you are going to get is argument and criticism with validity going pretty much out the window .
.QUOTE=Covellite
"For me, it's a mystical experience.
It brings loneliness, no one is really interested what you've been through and it's almost impossible to describe. Mystical groups tend to give you interpretation of your experience, but actually, it's all wrong.
It also can change your belief system, too. So, mystical groups are on thin ice. After "experience" you can feel that you don't belong to that group any more.
Usually, normal people call "mystical experience" schizophrenia, so you have to learn to be silent."
I think that what Covellite has said really puts everything into a nut shell. Especially about changing your belief system and being lonely. And one of the problems is that you go through levels of experience and each level seems to be an absolute. So when mystics talk to each other they think that the level that they are on is the arrived level. Eventually you reach a point where it doesn't matter, but in the meantime it all matters very much because you are experiencing something of great magnitude and validity from others is important. But unless you encounter an advanced level mystic all you are going to get is argument and criticism with validity going pretty much out the window
.
Last edited:
I would consider that if you see that, it's really more just simple immaturity in general in the area of growth and development, and not a characteristic of mystics in general. The mystical experience itself can be quite humbling, to say the least. As they say, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.
But to your point if someone is insecure in themselves on a personal level they may seek for validation from others, and if it's lacking they may overcompensate and think of themselves as more enlightened than other mystics, claiming they have the truth!, or that they are the grandmaster-level-10 black-belt mystic and all others are but junior mystics compared to them, and so forth. All that of course has to do with the ego and not how deep or how far someone goes in mystical states.
How far someone can go in mystical states is not the measure of their maturity as far as ego development, let alone "overcoming" the gravitational force of ego goes. It's kind of like saying that so and so is the greatest athlete in the world, therefore he's the most humble and wise person alive.
Does it really mean that? This is actually one of the sneaker and trickier parts of mystical experience you don't mention. The ability to deceive ourselves we have truly grown just because we can enter into the deepest states of meditation for prolonged and sustained periods.It becomes actually far more insidious, sneakier ego hiding out as we think our "achievements" in mystical experience translates into we have now truly arrived, that we've reached the final layer of that ego-onion we've finally 'overcome'. We confuse development in one area with development in another. In reality, each stage of our growth has its shadow. Each stage has it's potential pathology. To me, it's better to be aware that we never arrive, than to start imagining we are at some imagined level and assume everything else is somehow fixed, that we're now "beyond all that". That's where the beginning of Wisdom finally has a chance with us.