From Matthew Fox’s The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (1988):

By exposure to each of these “definitions” the reader will begin to feel and make connections with his or her own mysticism, for the purpose of defining mysticism here is to elicit the mystic within each person…

1. Experience: a trust of the universe, a trust of what is and what occurs to us, yes, a trust of oneself
2. Non dualism: the end of alienation and the beginning of communion, the end of either/or relationships and the beginning of unity
3. Compassion: “the keen awareness of the interdependence of all living things which are all part of one another and involved in one another” (Thomas Merton)
4. Connection Making:  by symbols, stories, myths, music and colors, form and ritual–we connect with one another’s deep and often unspoken experiences of life’s mysteries
5. Radical Amazement: awe is the opposite of taking life for granted
6. Affirmation of the World as a Whole:  neither neutral nor bitter or cynical
7. Right-Brain: synthesis over analysis and verbalization

Continue reading “21 Running, Working, Experiential Definitions of Mysticism” →