Describing Mysticism
Recently, a good friend stayed over with me and remarked at the various quirks at my home. I had a wall of post-its filled with affirmations. I had a caricature of myself facing outside. I also had a bunch of "Thank you" notes stuck to objects all around the house. I wasn't sure how to start explaining, so went on at least an hour trying to speak to this marvelous experience I've been going through, which is mysticism. This is an attempt to describe that experience, structured as Frequently Asked Questions, because why not!
What are these post-its on the wall?
They are post-its of positive affirmations that I use to remind myself of and put myself in positive states of mind, which make all the difference in my day-to-day. They help me identify opportunities because I am open and receptive to them, and they help me move towards the life I envision for myself, which is really cool.
Why do you have a caricature of yourself facing outwards?
I got this caricature of myself at a company holiday party last year. The artist took a long time drawing it and I thought it was pretty awesome. It's facing outwards because I don't want energy of my past self limiting my present. So, right now it's constantly gazing out into the horizon and into outer space, which is really cool.
Why are there a bunch of "Thank you" notes in the house?
Everything has energy. We know this at a physical level, and there's energy beyond the "physical dimensions" too. It's useful to surround yourself with items that are high-energy, because that helps you move into a higher-energy consciousness and state of being, which ultimately creates a life of more ease and joy. I mean, when I see or spot these "Thank you" notes, i feel pretty delighted, and I'm grateful to be surrounded by gratitude. I'd think the food items are also joyfully receiving my joy and gratitude, since joy is infectious, isn't it?
What got you into meditation?
I've been meditating for a while, maybe a month, on Headspace, as my company provided a free subscription, and after some time I started having this yearning for something more—specifically, more understanding. I was happy to do the daily meditations with Headspace, but I wasn't sure what it was for and what exactly I was doing. (It felt like eating a fruit without knowing its roots.) I was able to get many questions answered when I went to a Buddhist monastery, rather serendipitously, where I learnt of meditation as way to habituate the brain to higher states of mind and gain higher knowledge. I think I still did not fully understand what I was doing until I met my teacher, Michele Blood. I also learnt a lot from reading and learning from Sadhguru and Paramahansa Yogananda.
Sincerely, I meditate now to connect with the Divine. There is a Divine presence always within us and with us. You've connected with this Divine presence before when you were in a "zone," your mind quietened down, and everything fell into place. Sitting meditation is a way to connect to that. At an ideal level, I meditate to gain Enlightenment, but I think it's also useful to ground myself in the practical truth that I meditate to habituate my mind to more positive or higher states of mind, which are so incredibly beautiful, joyful, and helpful, at whatever level I can reach (More and more, and beyond!).
What is mysticism?
The way I experience mysticism is to experience spirituality in an inclusive, non-sectarian, direct way. I know there are many forms of spirituality these days, religion being a primary form of them. I love it for people who find religious joy and peace, but personally it's hard for me to silo myself into just one school of thought when I grew up in a culture of multiculturalism. So, I want to see what all the religions have to say, and find the common threads between them. It saddens my heart that religions that are so closely related start wars between them just because of single points of differences.
The way I see it is this: All spirituality practices come from the same Source. I used to agonize about this, because even within Hinduism and Buddhism, which are fairly inclusive forms of religions, there are "lineages" which seemed somewhat exclusive to each other. It troubled me, because I wasn't sure if I was messing up by subscribing to two different living gurus (Michele Blood and Sadhguru) since some of Sadhguru's practices required "initiation." What did initiation mean? What was I getting myself into? Michele seemed to consider me her "student," is that okay if I'm also initiated into Sadhguru's Kriya practices? By the way, both gurus practice a form of non-sectarian mysticism. And then, one day, it just came to me that even if there are many different lineages, there is only one root, there is one Source, which is God. There is only One Source, which is an all-inclusive Source. That's why there's only one. Because, it's all-inclusive, all-comprehending, has no boundaries, is Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. So, there is only one guru, which is God. There are many lineages and many religions, and even many religions with many gods within them, but these are just multi-faceted expressions of the same God. And why should it surprise us that God reveals itself to us in myriad ways? There are so many different cultures in so many different parts of the world. And yet we experience the same reality—which is God1234.
Footnotes:
Some contemplations here: I understand God as the ultimate thing after all possible abstractions—which is no-thing, ha! For example, we understand equality even though we have never ever seen two absolutely two equal lengths in our lives. We understand mathematical truths, which are abstracted of time. These facts stay as truth, no matter the time, even though we have only ever perceived timed experiences in this life. So, God is what's "leftover" after removing all extraneous layers or appendages, or it's the ultimate thing or ultimate level we reach after the ultimate level of abstraction. For example, one way people understood God was as the laws of Nature such as the laws of physics. Physics could be a limited way to understand God because God is not bound by the physical (because physical qualities can also be abstracted away), but it is a thing that is applied to all things. Consider this: "Three" is a quality inherent to both "three apples" and "three kangaroos." Say, "twenty-one" is a quality inherent to both "twenty-one guns" and "twenty-one songs." Well, "number" is a quality that is inherent in "three" in "three apples" and "three kangaroos," and "twenty-one" in "twenty-one guns" and "twenty-one songs." So, "number" is a quality that's inherent in "three apples," "three kangaroos," "twenty-one guns," and "twenty-one songs." There are more and more layers of abstraction we can do that allows us to find something that's inherent in more and more things, i.e. include more and more things. Now, God, is that ultimate thing.↩
Then, to deny a Single God is to assert that, "combing through every single thing that constitutes as you, there is no thing within you that's in common with me." Alternatively, to claim that there are two things where there is no operation of abstraction that can be applied so that they reach a common thing. (I'm reminded that a mathematics professor once told me that such negative statements are particularly harder to prove, or something like that. Most importantly, it's just not true!) If we just look at anything in our lives though, we cannot help but be directly confronted by the connection between all things. The air we breathe is the same air that the plant breathes. We are constantly in exchange with the world. Our cells are constantly turned over and made from the same substance of the earth. Everything is made of protons, electrons, and neutrons now, we learn in school.↩
But actually, let's do an argument by reductio ad absurdum. Suppose there are such two things where no operation of abstraction can be applied that they reach a common thing. Then, isn't that something common between them, that these are two things that, after going through any and all combinations of the operations of abstraction, still remain distinct? Isn't that something common between them (which is not common between "three apples" and "three kangaroos")? We have a contradiction.↩
So, let the case rest, once and for all, that there is One Source, that is God. God smiles at us in different faces (sometimes faces we might not perceive as "smiles") but it's still the one no-thing thing, God.↩