It is important for me to say, since I have not said it before, that Paul Moshimer’s death hurt me deeply and touched me even deeper. That was the gift of it. Men often need to be shocked into opening up. I just needed to say that, I am not a sorrow thief, this is not my tragedy, that belongs to Pamela and his children.

But it is my loss and, I see this week,  the loss of many others who knew him, loved him, depended on him.

Every man or woman has the right to their own life, no one can take it from them or live it for them, yet there is something profoundly wrenching about suicide, because it does not seem like chance or fate, but a conscious act of the human spirit. It is easy to see suicide as a profound act of selfishness. Any of us can fall it, be struck by lightning,  hit by a car. Few of us can take our own lives.

Yet it cannot really be true that Paul was selfish, because  Paul was as selfless a human as one will ever meet. If anything,  he thought of others to a fault, he thought of Pamela, his many friends, his daughters, the horses every minute of every day.

Reading Thomas Merton and the Kabbalah and the writings of the prophets these past few years, I have come to understand that mysticism is a part of me, it weaves through my life, my work, my photography, my consciousness. I suppose I deny and suppress it, as I do most emotion.

Mysticism connects with me more than any other idea or tradition, that is why I am drawn so much to Blue Star, it is stunning to find a mystical place in our greedy, angry,  and distracted world.

Mysticism is a part of my love for Maria, it shapes my pictures and words, it connects me to the dogs and the horses, to my farm. It was my connection to Paul.

Mysticism is a galaxy, a constellation of practices, connections, discourses, traditions, institutions and experiences aimed at human transformation. This transformation is sought by almost every tradition on the planet, defined differently by many of them. Blue Star is a place of human transformation. People come from everywhere to be transformed by the horses, to experience what we have forgotten, but which every ancient culture in the world knew: the animals are essential to human existence and to the future of Mother Earth, man cannot live in healthy ways or in harmony without them.

Paul was a mystic. I almost called the Fabulous Old Men’s Club the Fabulous Old Mystic’s Club, but I was afraid that might make the others nervous.

I knew Paul was a mystic the first time I saw him and spoke with him, all you had to do was look at Pamela and at his life.  I told him that, and he smiled, and said it was a compliment, he mumbled something humble and glancing. I think it might have embarrassed  him, which a good thing to do to a friend sometimes. But then he wrote me about mysticism, he said we needed to talk more about it, he asked to read what I had written about it, which was almost nothing. No one has ever asked me to talk about mysticism that I can recall. Paul and I never got the chance to talk about it, at least not in this world.

In Paul’s kind messages to me, I often heard the voice of Rumi:

“I will soothe you and heal you,
I will bring you roses.
I too have been covered with thorns.”

What is a mystic?

I believe a mystic is a person who seeks transformation. A human being who searches  by contemplation and self-surrender to find unity with his or her Deity, or with the universe, or with the animals, or with the absolute. A mystic is a man or woman who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the human intellect, beyond casual conversation, beyond the news of the day or the interests of political leaders and business.

A mystic lives outside of the normal boundaries of life, he or she is neither better or worse than anyone else, he is just different, his mind works in a different way. He or she can never really fit in, except perhaps in the company of their tribe, the other mystics. More than anything, the mystic seeks human transformation, which is the essence both of mysticism and spirituality. Mysticism is, in fact, the art of the spiritual life. But transformation is personal and individual. Some seek God, others resurrection, some are looking for wisdom or truth or revelation.

I think Paul was looking for redemption, as I am, but he never said.

If you go to Blue Star Equiculture, your mystical radar will hum, as mine does, they are everywhere there, people and animals, poets and painters, lost and found souls,  in the barns, the kitchen, out in the pasture. More than any other animal, the horses are believed by spiritualists to be mystical, to connect most deeply with the human spirit. I think it’s strange that the horses talk to me, the Native-Americans laugh at me and at the shallowness of Western culture. Their faith is full of mysticism, they talk with horses, their long-time partners,  all the time.

This, perhaps, is why Paul was so drawn to them, as Pamela is, it was something they shared together. It was something I shared with both of them.

The Kabbalah says that mystics search for human transformation all of their lives and rarely, if every find it. The life of the mystic is in the search, not the resolution. Mystics are always searching in contemplation.

This was Paul, in my mind, what made him special. He was almost continuously surrendering himself to seek unity with other beings,  and especially the horses. He sought the absolute, he believed in the apprehension of truths and sought them every day. He searched for answers that were so often beyond human intellect and conversation, beyond the news of the day.  This, I think, was a sad and difficult thing for him, as it is for mystics.

I’ve written a lot about Paul this week, more than I intended, and it surprises me, what has come pouring out of me. I am grateful for my writing, for this blog, because I think I otherwise would have gone mad long ago, my head spinning right off of my body. It just needed to come out, it is a buried part of me.

How do you make sense of it when a friend leaves without saying goodbye? I believe when Paul chose to leave the world that he had embarked on a great transformation, in search of the absolute, something beyond the intellect of people like me. That is a good place to go with it, I think, a place that makes sense to me, and explains what might otherwise seem to be an irrational, even unfathomable, journey.

“The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me,” wrote Meister Eckhart,  (the Sermons Of Meister Eckhart,) ” my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.”

I think that’s what Paul was looking for. I hope he found it.