Mysticism is the realm of human endeavor aimed at making direct contact with divine spiritual truths that are generally hidden from view. It has long been the bastion of men and women who could not be satisfied with the world as it is. These spiritual adventurers acquired an appetite for the miraculous that could only be satiated by authentic divinity. For thousands of years men and women of different spiritual traditions have followed mystical paths into the higher reaches of human potential. Those who had the courage and commitment to embody what they found there became harbingers of new ways of being human.
When we engage in the practice of Mutual Awakening, we see potentials for human relatedness that carry us beyond separation. These experiences often come to us as mystical visions and intuitions, which point toward heights of connection that capture our imagination and ignite our hearts.
The core work of the Evolutionary Collective shares many qualities often associated with traditional mystical paths, and in this chapter we will explore some of these and add some that are more specific to the particular mysticism of Mutual Awakening.
Mystics gaze into the deeper reality that lies hidden beneath our ordinary experience. They know that what we see on the surface, and much of what we have been told is true, is a very shallow view of what exists. Mystics see beyond consensus reality into a never-ending depth. Once they taste the mystical realm their hearts are blown open, and the flow of divine love overtakes them, and they cannot return to anything less.
The mystic travels beyond the ordinary, and because their destination is beyond what is known, they are forced to travel with nothing but the light of a passionate heart to guide them. Like the mystic, those of us who awaken to a new possibility for human relatedness must follow our heart’s longing and travel into unknown realms beyond our ordinary experience.
Many of us sense that there is a possibility for human relatedness that could radically change life as we know it. We have had moments when we have seen that possibility. Often it is triggered by a gesture of extraordinary honesty, intimacy, or kindness. In those moments we have a glimpse of how glorious human relatedness can be. The level of relationship that we normally experience pales in comparison. These moments are revelations of a higher order of human relatedness, and Mutual Awakening practice invites these glimpses and then expands and ultimately stabilizes them in our experience.
What is the possibility of human relatedness that is compelling you to read this book?
You probably have a sense of what has inspired you to this point. You know that a possibility of relatedness exists that is sacred, authentic, and demanding in the most splendid ways imaginable. You have tasted it even though it does not yet fully exist. You can point out examples of what it is not. You might also be able to give some account of what qualities such a relationship would have. At the same time you find it difficult to capture entirely in words. You feel the possibility of this relatedness in your heart, but you struggle to describe or explain it. The challenge of capturing these experiences in words is one of the qualities that our intuitions of higher relatedness share with all traditional mystical experiences. In fact, there are three characteristics traditionally associated with mystical experiences that we will recognize in our own intuitions of higher relatedness.
The first quality of mystical experiences is that they defy ordinary description or explanation. Those of us who have them find ourselves at a loss to effectively share them with others. The second is that such experiences, while frustrating our efforts to explain them, also contain an undeniable intuitive wisdom. Those who are blessed with them experience their profound meaning and significance even if we are unable to explain them fully. The last quality that clearly marks these experiences as mystical in nature is that they are transitory and often fleeting in nature. They arrive unexpectedly and depart in their own time. They cannot be controlled, and no amount of will power will ever tame them.
The great mystics through the ages have all discovered that mystical experiences cannot be approached as means to other ends. If we treat them as
such they will remain beyond our grasp. Our awakening is not in service of our agendas. The experiences we awaken to are in service of a new possibility for all of humanity. The true mystic knows this. They do not pursue the miraculous in order to discover something that they will use for themselves. They only want to experience that possibility directly. The mystic is in love—in love with what can be. And the path of mysticism is one of surrender and embrace of the ultimate emerging possibility.
If we want to fulfill our spiritual longings, we must come to terms with the nature and demands of the mystical path. The deeper doorways that can open in the practice of Mutual Awakening will remain closed as long as our motivation is primarily one of personal gain. To the degree that we are attempting to use this practice to gain insight and understanding that we believe will benefit us later, we will not be fully available; we will be holding back, saving ourselves for that time when we imagine we will use our experience to improve our lives. We will not be able to fully give ourselves to where the practice wants to take us until we are ready to let go. Until then the deeper mysteries will remain hidden.
The mystical revelation of a new possibility of relatedness is available as soon as we truly want it. That is the miracle. It is here already, waiting for us to want it on its terms. Many find this challenging to live up to. We want the miraculous, but we want to control its manifestation. What is illuminated in these realizations is too large to control.
Great saints and sages of every tradition have recognized their deepest spiritual revelations to be heralds of divine love. In profound moments of awakening we encounter the possibility of true connection with all of life and the promise of ultimate fulfillment. Revelation has its own agenda. It wants to rid us of the selfish constraints that displace the bounty of divine love. The sacred works mysteriously, in the way it wants, in its own time, not necessarily in the way we think it should to fit our timeframe. Before it will bestow its gifts, it waits until we are ready to allow them to unfold according to their own nature and not ours.
In earlier times when many great mystical traditions formed, the world was more brutal and chaotic. Mystics who longed to devote themselves to the divine felt the necessity to separate from the world and isolate themselves. They removed their attention from external reality so they could focus on the mysteries that lie within. But the world we live in today is more accommodating. We are not always forced to retreat from it in order to find solace of mind. The possibility of pursuing mystical depth in relationship is open like never before. In fact there are many today who are ready to embark on a path of higher relatedness.
The mysticism of Mutual Awakening is not a solo journey. It is an awakening that happens between people. The practice of Mutual Awakening involves putting our attention on an inner space that exists between us. It’s an inner space of relatedness, and when we give ourselves to this space and follow what emerges, we experience a simultaneous sense of being completely withdrawn from the ordinary world yet completely together in a world of mystical unfolding.
In the practice of Mutual Awakening we enter into a different mystical world, and new capacities in consciousness are born in the space between us. In this new paradigm of mystical experience “we” are transformed, and the field of relatedness we share bursts to new life. In this mutual transfiguration, new possibilities in relationship appear that were not there before. It isn’t relationship as we have known it. We find ourselves profoundly free of limiting ideas and cultural roles. We can do things now, say things now, and perceive things now—together—that simply were not possible before. New possibilities of love, creativity, and intelligence emerge. And as we surrender more and more to what is happening between us, our surrender opens us to ever-new possibilities of relatedness. In the Evolutionary Collective we call this new possibility we-mysticism, and it is a spiritual journey that can only be accomplished with at least one other.
The shared awakening of we-mysticism occurs when we come together not knowing who we are, who the other is, or what is possible between us. In this profoundly open and receptive state we engage together and allow an unfolding to begin. We have removed our attention from the familiar and entered into a state of mutually generated revelation. This revelation occurs in the inner space between us and can only be entered mutually.
The revelations of we-mysticism have two characteristics that differentiate them from more traditional forms of mysticism. These features are collective transparency and spiritual interdependency.
Initially when individuals come together they are opaque to each other. We see the outer surface of the other, but the inner workings of mind, heart, and soul remain hidden from view. In the we-mystical experience we enter into a state of collective transparency, and the surfaces that separate us fall away. We begin to see into and through each other. As the sense of separation falls away, we simultaneously become more aware of ourselves, more aware of the other and newly aware of a collective being that is independent from us and created by us at the same time.
The heights of awareness that open up in the we-mystical state are only revealed between individuals. The mutual nature of this experience awakens us to a shared sense of responsibility for the sacred consciousness we now hold in common. We realize that access to these deeper places in each other and the beautiful space of relatedness that is unfolding are being held between us. In this realization we feel a sense of sacred obligation and vulnerability. In this spiritual interdependency we are both responsible for the sacred portal that has opened up and reliant on each other to maintain it.
Earlier we said that mystical experiences defy description, but that isn’t entirely true. Great saints and sages have communicated the profound wisdom inherent in mystical states for millennia. Often this transmission is accomplished though the mere presence of a realizer. So deeply connected is he or she to the source of truth that merely by being in their close proximity we are lifted into the same state of being in which they abide.
It is also true that words can carry mystical transmission. Poets have long known that words can be used to move us beyond literal meaning into shared experiences of the ineffable that lie beyond all words. Great poets throughout the ages have used words to communicate profound emotion, sacred insight, and mystical vision. The poem takes language beyond the limits of literal communication and becomes an instrument of attunement that brings our awareness into direct contact with the experience the poet wants to share.
In Mutual Awakening practice language similarly becomes an instrument of conscious attunement that carries us into mutually shared revelations of new possibilities. This practice invites us to use language with a degree of flexibility and fluidity that allows our words to formulate spontaneously in direct response to experience as it arises. We let a poetic spirit overtake us. Our language becomes more imaginative, metaphorical, and beautiful as it unfolds. A space of limitless possibility opens up that allows the mystery of the unknown to come through us so that we move beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary.
We-mysticism demands a form of language that invites novelty. In the Evolutionary Collective we call this use of language Improvisational Transformative Poetics.
Our use of language is improvisational because it proceeds without preconception. We don’t know what we are going to say ahead of time. In Mutual Awakening practice we do not speak about our experience; we give our experience a voice. We are not looking at our experience and describing it. We are allowing that experience to take us over and speak through us so that even we are amazed at what comes out of our mouths. When this direct communication happens, a spontaneous process of divine discourse unfolds.
Our use of language is transformative when its aim is not to inform but to transform. Words have the power to change us, and in we-mysticism that power is harnessed to fuel profound spiritual awakening. When we allow our sublime experiences to have a voice, we speak with a sacred authority and authenticity. We enter into a communion in which our shared intention is to open ourselves to the full creative potential of relatedness. We serve this transformative function by surrendering our voice and giving it over to the vision and wisdom that is emerging between us.
Our use of language is poetic because it is aimed at that which lies beyond what words can express. We are giving voice to a level of consciousness that abides beyond what the mind can know and cannot be captured in ordinary terms. And so in this practice we give ourselves poetic license to be inventive with words, to allow meaning to spontaneously generate through us, anchored only in the truth that moves us, free from references to the past. Our words, liberated through the surrender of a mystical heart, are fueled by inspiration, not by understanding.
Improvisational Transformative Poetics is a fluid and free use of language that gives the Mutual Awakening practice the power to evoke the unexpected and the miraculous. It is one of the core practices of the Evolutionary Collective, and it does have the power to bring us into direct contact with a new world of relatedness.