A wise blog reader turned me back onto the worlds of the excellent spiritual writer Evelyn Underhill, who I read obsessively when I ran to the mountain in 2000 and never returned. Underhill and the mystics who wrote the Kabalah, the excellent and mysterious writing of ancient mystic Judaism, woke me up to the idea that I was, in some ways. I am also a mystic,  and the idea has deepened and expanded as my spiritual work has continued.

This (below) is from Underhill’s book Essential Writings. She and Merton are two spiritual writers who most affected me. Both Underhill and Merton were mystics. I’m beginning to emerge as a mystic and to understand myself in that way, and so is Maria. I’ll be writing more about this.

From Underhill’s book: “True mysticism is active and practical, not passive and theoretical. It is an organic life process, something which the whole self does, not something to which its intellect holds an opinion. Its aims are wholly transcendental and spiritual. It is not concerned with adding to, exploring, rearranging, or improving anything in the visible universe. The mystic brushes aside that universe, even in its supernatural manifestations. Though he does not, as his enemies might declare, neglect his duty to the many, his heart is always set upon the changeless One.”

We all have a “Changeless One,” often in our way. I don’t follow or worship labels or dogma.