The Mystic Way

Peter of Celles, a Benedictine of the Middle Ages, once said this very profound statement, “God works in us while we rest in him.”

A Profound Truth

This is a very profound truth. It is a paradox of the spiritual realm. God works in us while we rest in him. The opposite would also be true, God doesn’t work in us when we don’t rest in him.

Contemplation and Hesychasm

Of course, the idea of resting in God is not known among all Christians. It is called by different names, but it is the same reality. It is called contemplation in the Roman Catholic Church, and is called hesychasm in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Both of these refer to a rest in God that is beyond thoughts and images. It is the being still in the presence of God, talked about in the Psalms. And it is transformative.

Spiritual Transformation

I Can only describe it by saying that it is like the rays of the sun that warms an object, and in the process of warming it, expand it. During this stillness and rest in God, one’s awareness of spiritual reality deepens and expands. Once consciousness is transformed, leaving lasting effect.

Distractions and Entertainment

One can see from this that the best way to keep someone from being transformed is to make sure they never rest in God. The modern world is filled with distractions, entertainment, and constant barrage of images and sounds. We are too distracted to rest in God.

Solitude and Silence

This is why solitude and silence is so important for the spiritual life. Without it, we can never get away from the distractions. Without it, we can never learn to rest in God. Without it, we never actually move into an actual encounter with the living God.

This is why the spiritual teachers of today need to teach this great truth, “God works in us while we rest in him.” And then we need yo teach people how to rest in God. This is the great need for the church today.

If you don’t know God by personal experience, you have a hand-me-down religion. You have a second-hand religion, not a first-person encounter. You are missing the boat.

The good news is that God wants you to know him personally. That means to actually experience a sense of oneness with him. This isn’t just reserved for mystics and saints, it is for all believers.

Conversion

And there’s a pathway to this. It begins with conversion. A real conversion, not just saying some prayer. Saying a sinner’s prayer does not make you a Christian. And many have been deceived into believing they’re Christians, when they are not.

True conversion is turning from a self-centered life to a God-centered life. It means making Jesus Lord and Savior. You make him Lord by changing your heart from serving yourself to serving God, and you make Jesus Savior by believing in his death and resurrection for your sins.

The Three-fold Way

Then you enter into the three-fold way, which is purgation, illumination, and union with God. Purgation deals with habits of mind and body. Illumination deals with false beliefs and illusions. And union deals with entering into oneness with God in conscious awareness.

Many people misunderstand asceticism and its relationship with mysticism. Asceticism is self-discipline. It deals with the spiritual practices that we use in order to open ourselves to the presence of God.

Mysticism is the experience of God. It’s the experience of oneness with God. This is both a gift of God and something we prepare ourselves for. But even in the spiritual disciplines we need grace.

It is not mysticism or asceticism, but rather it is both. We need to do the spiritual practices to prepare our heart, to deny ourselves, and to die to self. It is through this death to self that we move into oneness with God.

Both the spiritual disciplines and the experience of God are given by grace. It is God working in us both to do and to will for his good purpose (Phil. 2:13). We would not seek God unless God had first sought us. We love him because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).

Miguel de Molinos rightly explained, “There were three kinds of silence; the first is of words, the second of desires, the third of thoughts.”

Absence of Words

The silence of words is the one that most likely comes to mind when we think of the word silence. In this context, is the absence of talking.

Absence of Desires

The second kind of silence is a silence of desires. Desires speak to us in impulses rather than words. Just like words, they push and pull on our mind. They redirect and distract our mind from more important things.

Absence of Thoughts

The third kind of silence is the silence of thoughts, thoughts can be words or images in the mind. And just like desires. These redirect and distract us are more important things.

Spiritual Discipline of Silence

Silence is a spiritual discipline that moves us from the mundane distracted world into the inner world of Divine reality. Silence removes the hindrances to hearing and knowing God.

Talking is a hindrance to listening to God. Desires are a hindrance to sensing the movings of the Spirit. And thoughts are hindrances to being aware of the presence of God within.