Road Markers
The fundamental commitment to Truth as something separate and ineffably larger than yourself carries a raft of consequences. There is a sense in which it is all one thing, but we have a well established framework for examining elements within the whole. Bear in mind, we do this artificially for the sake of growth and clarification of expectations.
Commitment to truth makes you transparent because you realize your own insignificance. But it’s not a fearful nor insulting thing; you own your insignificance as good and right. You don’t take yourself too seriously. When things don’t go as you expect, you are surprised, but not angered. You don’t even feel inconvenienced and frustrated. You knew you never controlled the situation in the first place, so you aren’t rattled when circumstances make that obvious. It frees you to focus on the one thing for which you can genuinely be held accountable: your reaction.
You are accountable. There is no pretense of being or doing anything important, only those things you know a higher power has placed on you. The largest area of debate among Christians is over the contents of this question: What is your duty to God? Anything which smacks of objective performance measure is not eternal, but a mere indicator for a specific context. God proposed specifics, but only mankind in his fallen intellect is hidebound. Jesus made it clear your decision to devote yourself to the welfare of others is the whole of any Law or Laws as far as God is concerned.
It’s not so hard to love others when you aren’t focused on yourself. When you know nothing in objective reality matters that much, including your own existence in it, you aren’t buried under a burden of senseless care. Things you can sense in this world are only tools, nothing more. Broken, worn or inappropriate tools are discarded or set aside, and the job of loving continues apace. Expressing love is not merely a duty, but is the highest expression of Truth. Once you absorb revelation, it burns inside you as a bright flame and you can’t smother it, or hold it inside. So you let it out by loving and sacrificing stuff, including your own human existence, because Truth alive in you demands it.
In a sense, you work hard to destroy this world. You work hard to remove it as a blinder which obscures what really matters. The only way to do that is provide evidence there is something beyond this world. So-called “reality” is not real. This is the part where Eastern mystical assertions this world is an illusion are recognizable. You don’t respect property, but you respect people who hold that property, as potential spirit mates who can be courted to climb out of this pit. How that courtship manifests itself in this world varies by context and factors you don’t control. There are no objectives in this labor, only a hope, a commitment to something you can hardly name.
As a more concrete example, I would cite the most wearying argument I hear from Christian conservatives and evangelicals. “You have to take care of your family.” Yes, Paul wrote that. His comment was about lazy bums who weren’t willing to work at loving anyone, but trying to freeload on those who did. Your willing sacrifice to the imperatives of the Realm of the Spirit will provide what you and your family needs. If you feel led to work in corporate 9-5 life, do so with the complete expression of mysticism, even while you recognize fully few will join you. Losing your job is not failing your family, if you lose it because you did what was right. The most important provision you can make for your family is manifesting fully that Christian Mystical lack of fear and worry. If your actions serve to enslave them to the concerns of this world, you have failed them utterly.
There is a high risk of delusion. The false mysticism which tries to paint itself over mere fleshly concerns, the obsession with advantage and symbols themselves, versus the substance in the higher realm, is the number one problem faced by Christian Mystics. If you can see it, say it, or touch it — whatever it is, don’t call it “holy” as a statement about the thing itself. That label is reserved for those transient moments when, in the particular context, some collision of things and events grants us revelation, a glimpse of holiness, which is ineffable itself. Holiness is a living moment, not an objective fact. But because this is so hard to get across, we have literally millions of people who act crazy, do utterly stupid and senseless things which only harm and obscure the revelation of God.
No one on this earth can untangle that for you. You can sometimes get a word of wisdom from another who is more deeply rooted in Heaven, but in the end, Truth cuts His own path in your heart. Only you can teach yourself, in God’s presence, the difference between false guilt and genuine sorrow of the Spirit. But let it be said with all assurance, the vast majority of modern Western Christianity is off the path. Most of it is a confused and twisted blending of material and mystical, with a vast mixture of misapplication of principle to things because the proper discernment of what is and isn’t spiritul is missing. Even then, I’m only expressing my own personal evaluation. You dare not buy into my collection of religious perceptions, but may find them useful in discerning your own. If you find nothing to argue with, you aren’t paying attention.
The second marker of the Mystic is patience in all circumstances.
Because I fully expect your path will at some points diverge from mine, I have all the time in the world to wait for you. If those paths never cross again, that is no harm to me. The most I can do is apply myself to the necessary measures to insulate my work from yours, should I come to see it as a real problem. It is theoretically possible I would be forced to take harsh measures in this world to prevent harm to something for which it is my duty to protect. It is highly unlikely. Spanking a child may be the only way to stop them killing themselves, in particular, to break habits which lead to death. There comes a time when your authority over another reaches a limit, and you cannot act. But if they intrude themselves into your realm of authority, they have chosen to be under it. You must act as you best understand God’s revelation in the context. God can replace abundantly anything anyone else can take or destroy. But if you reach out your hand to harm those people whom God has called me to protect, you might draw back a stump. I won’t know until that moment comes, but the justifications for violence are extremely limited, and for some non-existent. Ultimately, no other human can decide for you.
I didn’t come to this place quickly. My duty to God is a struggle to remove obstacles to your progress and mine. I can do you no good by marking out a path and time line when by no means will God show me what he’s doing inside you. I might have some idea, but God has warned frequently in writing He reserves the right to keep His schedule from our eyes. Indeed, the whole of the Ancient Near Eastern culture of the Bible hardly bothers to measure or mark the time line for things. A concern for how long things are taking is not a gift from God, but a part of curse of the Fall. Mystics will use time as any other tool or resource, all of which we accept as it comes. Even my own son and daughter came into this world with some things already established, and it was for me to negotiate obstacles I could not remove in raising them. Indeed, it didn’t matter if I could theoretically fix this or that, but whether my duty to Truth required me to try. The highest duty of all was to set them free, by equipping them for freedom. If my daughter then chooses to be a dope-smoking hooker, it would break my heart, but I cannot allow that choice to be somehow a personal affront to which I must respond. She stands before God on her own. I can wait for her to ravage herself until she cries out for help, and I can wait for you, too. How long did God wait for me?
