when the mundane usurps the mystic

I wanted to write a bit about the path of the mystic because I believe there are some misapprehensions and conflations in modern culture that it will be helpful to address. 

Classically defined, a mystic is someone who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths beyond the intellect and seeks absorption into the absolute or the Divine. 

As a base understanding, I will expand on this a bit. 

The average person, and by "average" I mean statistically average, not "mundane" or "not exceptional", I'm just talking numbers here - the average person who is a "seeker" is seeking to know who they are. The mystic is not seeking this. The mystic seeks to know what life is. 

The average seeker is pursuing a life that is fulfilling to them, to find their purpose, to live their potential. The mystic is not seeking this. The mystic seeks to get out of the way of the life that is in them, to allow it movement, to follow where it leads, even when this clashes with, or offends, the dominant culture in which they find themselves. 

The average person expects their life to serve them, to provide comfort and success in whatever way they define this, according to their preferences and desires. The mystic is not expecting this. The mystic comes to desire what is wanted of them by the deeper currents of life that speak to, that animate, that give meaning to, them. Indeed, the mystic does not find fulfillment and success in their own desires until their desires are irrevocably yoked to the currents of Intelligence that they serve. 

It has become increasingly common to conflate the path of the mystic with the ordinary. While it is absolutely possible to touch the numinous and be moved by it, thereby having a life infused with what we might call "spirituality", this does not mean these experiences make one a mystic. 

But because this conflation happens more and more, what a mystic is has been taken up into the dominant current and coupled to power, prestige, and other shiny things. The very real tumult the mystic experiences is overshadowed by perceptions that lack depth and gather evidence to claim "mystic" as an identity much the way one might call themselves a banker or a doctor or a coach. 

Mystic is not an identity. It is a living event. It is a total lack of self-identity-seeking because such seeking results in failure. It is seeking the self in the ways available in the culture until one realizes that those paths are not for the mystic's feet. Then the mystic begins seeking what is seeking them. 

Living as a mystic is a constant state of undoing. It is a state of being scrubbed free of anything in you that does not serve what the Deeper Intelligence wants with you. Because the mystic exists as a arising of that Intelligence in a web they cannot possibly understand but whose significance they constantly drown in. 

It takes many, many cycles of mystical and life experience to begin to have the kind of capacity and lack of fascination with the human-created to meet what is. 

In modern times, there is such a rush to be an expert, to be powerful, to be something that there is ofen little investigation into what primary motivation is at play. And little understanding of what forces are behind such motivation. This means discernment can be lacking and affiliation unquestioned. 

This is not because of some inherent flaw or falsehood in the person per se, but most commonly due to the fact that the pull of belonging in human society and having the protections and comforts this affords, is incredibly powerful. Especially as it carries an implicit threat that if you do not seek this you will not survive or your survival will be miserable. 

We do not grow up with the kind of in-built questioning that would allow us to wonder about our own perceptual abilities. We do, in fact, grow up in environments that presume that because we think we can access anything we choose. And that because we have experiences of the aliveness of the world that it serves as proof that we are mystics or monks or some other "special" creature. 

That "specialness" is an overlay of what humans do to things to take ownership of them in a way that obscures their true nature and erases inherent beingness and meaning and now lives to serve the upholding of what one might call the modern ego. 

The problem with this, besides the fact that this happening is ignorant and sacrilegious, is that is erases the gifts of the mystic. This is because people make the erroneous assumption that their access to the mystical is equivalent to the mystic's. They literally cannot feel the difference in what we might call "energetic signature" of where the information comes from. The ability to feel the textural difference between mystical wisdom and profound thought vanishes. 

The gifts of the mystic are not for the mystic. The gifts of the mystic are not about the mystic at all. The gifts of the mystic are the communication of the Primal Intelligence, what some might call Divinity, as it communicates through the mystic for the benefit of all. 

Each mystic is a kind of portal that streams the wisdom of the holy into ordinary reality so that the wisdom of the holy may touch, and transform, us. 

Not all wisdom is of this kind. Not all sparkly feeling is an arising from these depths. Not all insight and commentary is of this mystical layer. It does not mean it lacks benefit or potency. It simply means it is not woven through with the ancient Intelligence that comprehends the fabric of reality in ways a human being simply cannot. THIS is the nuance that is unfelt and hidden from the perceptual faculties of even the most brilliant of persons. 

Modern humans HATE that. And then argue and invalidate and rampage against what the mystic reveals because it is felt to be a power, or ego, trip and is not seen or felt for what it is - a gift to humankind. 

No mystic worth their salt is getting off on feeling "special" and using that to gain power in the world. Because the path of the mystic is fundamentally humbling, where you are reminded over and over and over that you are nothing without the function you provide to the Deeper Intelligence. 

Indeed, the path of the mystic is one where your own insignificance is firmly established and your only salvation and joy is in wanting what Life wants with you. 

The average person, even "spiritual" people, pivot around their own desires and the cultural rules and flavors of the cultures they are in. The mystic pivots around the invisible currents that possess them and reveal to them that their own attempts at being normal and having normal and participating in normal will be unfulfilling at best. Where any "reward" they receive from the human realm will not sate their hunger. 

Younger mystics will often try to do both because they have not yet been stripped bare enough times to release their grip on their human life and are not sufficiently rooted in the Primal Intelligence for the modern field to release its grip on them. There is nothing wrong with this, it is simply a part of the journey. But the modern constructs of power-seeking and prestige will feel this as offensive or diminishing in some way. 

Nowadays it seems the mystical has been taken up by the mundane and diluted with intellectualism, power trips, dominance, critique, and validation/invalidation by people who have not questioned their discernment, nor what they give authority to, nor what they are motivated by, nor their skillfulness with such things, nor with any context of where in their path they might be, but, instead, laden with assumptions of being perfectly equipped to feel a nuance that, in truth, takes many decades to develop and access. 

This happens to our detriment. Because there are mystics among us. Mystics who have matured and rooted and been battle-tested who have things to offer us, gifts from the Intelligence of Life itself. They lay these gifts at our feet and we have more access to them than ever before and they are, many of them, being collectively shat upon and their function being pushed to the corners so that something less wise can take center stage. 

It's something I think should be looked at. Not collectively, but you, in yourself, as an individual, to look at your motivations, maturity, discernment, to question your knowing, to ask "where am I asking from", to pay attention to your own intellectual and spiritual humility, or lack of, to simply allow yourself to wonder what opportunities and gifts are you missing because you are not receptive to the way Life is reaching for you and how you, instead, feel threatened by, or critical of, those who it works through? 

Even if you are a mystic, these are valuable questions to ask as they will aid your path and the requirement of maturity and humility embedded in it. 

There is no solution I am offering. Simply a stream to touch and allow in to feel how it might affect, alter, or otherwise caress your core.