christianmystics.com

"Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down, along with all our busy thoughts about earth, sea, and air; if the very world should stop and the mind cease thinking about itself, go beyond itself, and be quite still; if all the fantasies that appear in dreams and imagination should cease, and there be no speech, no sign: Imagine if all things that are perishable grew still -- for if we listen they are saying, "We did not make ourselves; he made us who abides forever" -- imagine, then that they should say this and fall silent, listening to the very voice of him who made them and not to that of his creation; so that we should hear not His word through the tongues of men, nor the voice of angels, nor the clouds' thunder; nor any symbol, but the very Self which in these things we love, and go beyond ourselves to attain a flash of that eternal wisdom that abides above all things:

And imagine if that moment were to go on and on, leaving behind all other sights and sounds, but this one vision that ravishes and absorbs and fixes the beholder in joy; so that the rest of eternal life were like that moment of illumination, that leaves us breathless:

Would this not be what is bidden in scripture, Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

St. Augustine

Chuang Tzu, that great Taoist mystic, once said, "Rabbit traps are to catch rabbits -- once you have the rabbit, you can lose the trap. Nets are to catch fish. Once you have the fish, you can lose the net. Words are to catch meaning -- once you have the meaning, you can lose the words." He also added, slyly, "Where is the man who can do without words so that I may have a word with him?"

But we live in a time of words and information, not only the constant barrage of television and radio but the vast internet as well. Add to that the daily assault of noise -- especially if you happen to get a table in a restaurant next to a family with 3 unhappy kids.

If that wasn't enough, we have a constant running dialog within our heads about this or that person's driving habits, our problems with an outstanding bill, the name-calling we inflict upon ourselves and on and on.

Now, here's the opposite range. There was an article today in the newspaper about a man who, very late on a Friday afternoon, stepped into the elevator at his job. His intention was to go downstairs and smoke a cigarette and then come back up and finish for the night. The elevator door closed and, within a few seconds, the power failed, throwing the elevator into darkness. He reached for the telephone which, of course, didn't work. He pushed on the alarm bell which, of course, nobody heard.

For the next 40 hours, this man was trapped in a dark elevator. Now, I don't know about you, but this is a little more of my company than I (or anybody else!) might wish to have. Think of the contrast a moment between the world we experience day to day and the one this person was suddenly thrown into. It's small wonder that the paper also reports he hasn't quite made it back into work since then.

Somewhere between the noise of our times and the tomb silence of the elevator was St. Augustine's time, certainly different than ours in many ways. He actually spends quite a bit of ink recalling his wild youth in his writings and dwells extensively on his utter regrets over having stolen some peaches. Tame stuff for these times. But Augustine's world was, from his perspective, just as filled as ours. And yet underneath it all, he writes in the quote above, stop a moment and consider what would happen if everything were to fall silent -- although let us hope not in the situation of the man in the elevator!

Suppose, then, that the silence was not just of sounds and thoughts, but of notions and speculations and imagination. We would discover, as we do in contemplation, that beneath the constant churning of the world there is a small voice, a quiet moment within us broken only by the illumination of Divine Love.

The way of the Mystic is to develop discipline -- a word that has fallen out of favor, of course, but this is the spiritual version of pumping iron at the gym, not punishment. The discipline is to bring oneself to that silence and to search actively within it for the One who is searching for you.

I admit I love gadgets. One little item I always wanted to own looked like a small radio with a headset. When you turn it on, though, it samples the noises around you -- the crowd noises in a mall or the engine noise on a plane -- and produces a counter signal and masks the noise and brings you to silence. In that blissful moment, the racket that we have come to accept as part of life vanishes.

In the same way, the practice of contemplation and prayer is the gadget that produces a counter signal within. The world is quieter and calmer and in that you hear that which the ears have never heard and see what the eyes have never seen.

I honestly hope that God's face will shine upon you as you undertake this great journey. But let us agree that if God wants first things first, so be it. Especially if that first thing is a whispered warning to take the stairs this time.

By the way, in case anyone wonders if mystics such as St. Augustine have to write in long sentences, try this one on. The answer's apparently yes. Jacob Boehme saying somewhat the same thing as St. Augustine:

If thou desirest to see God's Light in thy Soul, and be divinely illuminated and conducted this is the short Way that thou art to take not to let the Eye of thy Spirit enter into Matter, or fill itself with any Thing whatever; either in Heaven or Earth; but to let it enter by a naked Faith into the Light of the Majesty; and so receive by pure Love the Light of God, and attract the Divine Power into itself, putting on the Divine Body, and growing up in it to the full Maturity of the Humanity of Christ.