All mystical traditions are one.
They are the seed of all religions.Tao. Zen. Tantra. Yoga. Kabbalah. Sufi. Mystic Christianity. Shamanism. And so many more secretly treasured by their adherents. These all share the same mystical sense of communion with the divine. Meditation is not something peculiar to one culture.
All cultures know a mystical core that emphasizes continuing refinement, meditation, and unification with the greater cosmos. I call that greater order Tao. They call it by different names. What does it matter what people call it? When they discovered what was holy, they uttered different sounds according to their history and culture, but they all discovered the same thing. There is only one divine source in life.
For generations, mystics of all traditions have plunged into Tao. When they meet on the unutterable levels, they know without words that they have reached the same core of spirituality. No matter where in the world you are, there are traditions with the purity to lead you to Tao.
“The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write. . . .” — William Butler Yeats
“This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.” — William James
“We follow the mystics. They know where they are going. They, too, go astray, but when they go astray they do so in a way that is mystical, dark, and mysterious.” — Ryszard Kapuscinski
“The greatest religious problem today is how to be both a mystic and a militant; in other words how to combine the search for an expansion of inner awareness with effective social action, and how to feel one’s true identity in both” — Ursula K. LeGuin
“The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It’s close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically.” — Elie Wiesel
“The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization.” — Otto Rank
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.
The named is the mother of ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.
— Tao Te Ching, 1
Mysticism can get a pretty bad rap, if people don’t really understand it. To me, what I gain from the Tao is a conscious awareness of life, of what is going on around me, of what is going on inside of me. It gives me a greater control over what I choose to react to or ignore, and a greater understanding of what is really important in life. I gain the ability to appreciate the beauty of a single leaf or flower, yet not lose sight of the entire plant, even its roots in the soil. It is a connection to the feeling of life itself, not only what it means to me, but to any thing that is alive, plant or animal or person, and how we relate to each other.
I’ve gained patience and calmness, a detachment from expectation and results and an awareness of process, how things happen rather than merely what happens. I’ve learned to attend to small matters before they become large problems. I’ve learned to not merely accept what happens but to affect the way things happen. I’ve learned how to increase my own awareness and begin to advance the awareness of others as well. It’s not about all the things people associate with mysticism – it is about getting to the heart of yourself and from there, being able to get to the heart of anything or anyone. You end up not beling capable of being fooled or tricked by anyone, even yourself, because you have met and conquered the ultimate trickster. You know the trickster will win the final meeting, but until then, you’ve got him beat.
So what’s the secret? That there is no secret – this is what is – as long as we believe it should be this way. When we begin to believe something else, things change. “It is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.” What mysticism teaches is that if you are unhappy with how things are, you must change yourself – “be the change you want to see in the world.” The connection with the divine is the realization that you are the divine – that you control your own fate. This is a dangerous position since others can no longer control you, and society is based on controlling the actions of others. See why mystical traditions are put down by society?
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