Originally Published Under The Title:"
Christian Mysticism lessons ,How to see, hear and feel the Holy Spirit" By L M Richardson
THE SPIRITUAL PROCESS
Jesus said this about what the nature of the spiritual process would be after he had left this world:
But
the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name,
will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said
to you. John 14:26 (New International Version)
The
apostle Paul said this: But as it is written, ‘Eye hath not seen, nor
ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which
God hath prepared for them that love him.’ But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” (1 Cor. 2:6-10)
The
Holy Spirit does not require that we believe in just the right way for
it to reveal its truths or that any of us understand the end before it
takes us to the end. As Christians, all that is necessary is that we
open our hearts each day so that the Holy Spirit can take us to the deep
things of God culminating in the direct experience of the soul’s true nature in God, what the bible calls born again and the earliest Christians called to state of perfection.
FINDING THE HOLY SPIRIT WITHIN, a personal experience
When
I was five, my aunt and uncle had asked their friend, a locally famous
psychic in Las Vegas about their sister and her family. They were told
that two of her sister’s children were going to grow up to be normal
people but the middle one, me, was different and would have a different
view and experience of life. That’s fine; that pretty well nails who I
am but what’s odd to me is that when they told my parents about the
prediction they also said they could not tell them the whole of the
prediction and they couldn’t tell them why they couldn’t tell them the
whole of the prediction.
Since
it was about me, I have wondered, what could be, in the future for a
five year old child, so dramatic that you can’t tell the parents the
whole of the prediction. Different is the only word my mother had. Over
the years of my childhood, my mother said that she had asked my aunt and
uncle about the prediction several times but was always given the same
answer: We can’t tell you the whole of it and we can’t tell you why we
can’t tell you the whole of it.
I
don’t really think it was that I was going to be a terrible person
because it was quite evident that I was well liked by my aunt and uncle,
even spending a couple of my whole summer vacations from school with
them. And I do take bugs out of the house instead of killing them.
Except roaches. I hate roaches. But anything grand, I can’t even relate.
I don’t guess I will ever know the truth of it. Both my aunt and uncle
had passed away before my mother even told me about the prediction.
My
father had recently passed and I was trying to give my mother some bit
of comfort by telling her of an experience with my consciousness outside
of my body: That I felt as a matter of fact that consciousness extends
beyond the physical and that by personal experience I believed we were
not just lumps of clay: That the soul had a body and lived after the
body was gone. This led into a brief discussion of my experiences with
the Holy Spirit, intuitive consciousness and visions of the nature of
existence. Not that my mother (an atheist like my father) understood or
believed anything that I had to say but only then did she tell me about
the prediction.
Parents
are wonderful like that. Here’s a prediction about me so dramatic that
the whole of it can’t be told to my parents and I’m not told about it
until it is impossible for me to find out what it was for myself. Talk
about adding a little mystery into one’s life. I know that I was born
with a natural inclination to experience the Holy Spirit but as for the
rest of the prediction, I will probably never know.
When
a young man, one afternoon, I felt drawn to look within; I don’t know
why. Without really knowing what I was doing, I simply closed my eyes
and was drawn to look behind the darkness of my mind. It just felt like
something was in there waiting for me. Go figure. With each exhalation I
imagined that I was falling deeper and deeper into the ocean of
darkness before me. Suddenly I seemed to fall inside myself and as this
happened, a stillness, a quietness of mind began to creep over me. My
face began to feel wooden; my body lost all physical sensation and
became numb; My consciousness became lifted, with my mind becoming still
and crisp and light and so much more aware than normal and as this
happened the beautiful golden light of the Holy Spirit wrapped itself
around me, filled my awareness and brought a comfort and peace I had
never known in life. It seemed to fill just absolutely everything,
permeating the very essence of my being, lifting me above my normal
intelligence and awareness.
It
is difficult to explain. But if you can imagine the difference between
normal thinking awareness and the fog that a person might wake up in
when they have not had enough sleep, it would seem the same distance
between this still, crisp, light expanded awareness I was experiencing
and what now seemed the heavy normal thinking awareness I had always
known. The cognitive ability of this new expanded awareness coupled with
the peace and joy brought by the light of the Holy Spirit was simply
incredible to me.
I
rested for a short while, absorbed in the golden light of the Holy
Spirit but as soon as I started to mentally analyze the Holy Spirit, you
know, trying to be absolutely rational about the whole thing, I dropped
out of the intuitive awareness and the Holy Spirit mysteriously faded
away. As I left the intuitive awareness and dropped back into my normal
thinking awareness, it felt just like the description I had read of the
process a few years later: “As if putting on soiled clothes.”
I
had just had the most wonderful experience of my life: AND I WANTED IT
BACK! The next day, trying to experience the same golden light of the
Holy Spirit and intuitive awareness that I rested in the day before, I
again looked behind the darkness of my mind for the Holy Spirit. With
each exhalation I again imagined that I was falling through the darkness
of my mind into it. For the second time my body went numb, my mind
became still, I became lifted into the light, crisp mental state that I
later learned was the intuitive awareness that the prophets and early
Christians experienced when having prophecies and visions. And the
golden light of the Holy Spirit wrapped itself around me again and
filled my mind with the same peace and joy I had felt the day before.
Before this, I had never read a single book on meditation, knew nothing
of Christian mysticism, mysticism in general or that states of
consciousness existed beyond the mind’s thinking processes.
So
this is how my journey to find the deep things of God began;
spontaneously being lifted into the intuitive mind, wrapped in the Holy
Spirit’s arms, not understanding anything but the wonder of it all.
There
is a wonderful thing about the Holy Spirit and its bringing of the
intuitive awareness that takes us to the deep things of God. This part
of the mind is further away from the subconscious than normal thinking
awareness is from it. This is why, when experiencing intuitive
awareness, everything feels so light and crisp and clear. When you
considered that intuitive awareness is the platform upon which the Holy
Spirit takes us to the deep things of God, this light, crisp, more fully
aware state is really a blessing. As I said earlier, fully developed,
intuitive awareness is the platform for the Holy Spirit revealing the
visions and prophecies and such of the prophets and early Christians.
When praying from our hearts, the Holy Spirit lifts our consciousness
further away from outside and subconscious influences. It’s the only way
to directly and consciously experience God’s presence. We cannot
experience God’s presence through the thinking processes of the mind. We
have to become like and empty vessel to become filled with the Holy
Spirit and allow it to fill us with experiences of the deep things of
God.
In
those early days with the Holy Spirit, I soon learned that when my mind
was actively thinking about God, actively thinking about experiences,
actively thinking about scripture, actively thinking about thinking or
anything else, the intuitive awareness that opens one to the Holy Spirit
would and could not happen. I soon learned that it was only when I
would became like an empty vessel and I would stop thinking and just sit
silently looking behind the darkness of my mind and longing for and
imagining that I was falling into the Holy Spirit’s arms that an
intuitive calmness would envelop me which would allow me to experience
the Holy Spirit. It is the only way that I know of to get far enough
away from the subconscious and outside influences (that will not allow
and do not want us the experience the Holy Spirit) for us to experience
the Holy Spirit’s presence. The thinking mind just hates being calm,
loves going from one obsession to the next and subconscious and outside
influences; well, I am not even going to go there.
What
I found that worked best for me in quieting my mind and focusing my
attention on God is the prayer form used within Christianity from the
beginning. For me, when my mind would not still, using the simple
devotional word, “Father” was as if all of my longing for God was summed
up in that very simple word. I noticed how much more quickly I dropped
into the intuitive calm when using this method than others. At the
beginning of each devotional I would slowly and heartfeltly repeat
“Father” while I looked behind the darkness of my mind, with each
exhalation imagining that I was falling into the Holy Spirit’s arms. In
short time I would drop into an intuitive calmness. When my mind started
to become active I would return to repeating “Father” with each
exhalation, again imagining that I was falling deeper into the Holy
Spirit’s arms. It’s not the word; it’s the devotional feeling behind the
word. Often there is no word but just that feeling of devotion that I
would bring up again and again into my awareness. The reason the process
is called the prayer of the heart is because we are literally praying
through our hearts and not from the thinking processes of our minds. For
me this method has been the most natural thing to do and so I have
stayed with it to this day, now 40 yrs later.
THE WINGS OF ANGELS
A
short while after becoming open to the Holy Spirit, I began to hear the
creative power of it within. There is a vibration within the light of
the Holy Spirit. I did not know it was going to be there. I just began
to hear inner sounds and they eventually led to the pure vibration of
the Holy Spirit. In Revelations the sound of the Holy Spirit is
described as the sound of many trumpets, in Ezekiel the vibration of the
Spirit is described as the sound of the wings of angels. Both accounts
are descriptions of what the Spirit sounds like when we are totally
absorbed in it.
After
a few yrs of steady practice, I began to feel the Holy Spirit flowing
throughout my nervous system, first with sensations of electrical type
feelings and eventually the heat, the fire of the Holy Spirit that is
created from the flowing of the Holy Spirit up from the bottom of the
spine.
I
guess the main and first thing I want to stress in the lessons is that
Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit to us is not an abstract concept. The
Holy Spirit can be seen, heard and the flowing and heat of it can be
felt within all of good heart, no matter their religious affiliation or
none.
THE PRAYER OF THE HEART ( a History)
Jesus said: “Whenever you pray, go to your room, close the door and pray to your Father in private.” (Matt. 6:6)
One of the Desert Fathers, the 3rd century monk Abba Isaac, wrote this commentary on the tradition spoken of at Matt. 6:6:
“We
need to be especially careful to follow the Gospel precept which
instructs us to go into our inner room, and shut the door so that we may
pray to our Father. And this is how we can do it.” “We pray in our room
whenever we withdraw our hearts completely from the tumult and noise of
our thoughts and our worries and when secretly and intimately, we offer
our prayers to the Lord.” “We pray with the door shut when, without
opening our mouths, and in perfect silence, we offer our petitions to
the one who pays not attention to words but looks hard at our hearts.”
“We pray in secret when in our hearts alone and in our recollected
spirits, we address God and reveal our wishes only to him in such a way
that the hostile powers themselves have no inkling of their nature.
Hence, we must pray in utter silence to insure that the thrust of our
pleading be hidden from our enemies who are especially lying in wait to
attack us during prayer. In this way, we shall fulfill the command of
the prophet Micah, ‘keep your mouth shut from the one who sleeps on your
breast.’”
A text used in many monasteries in the 5th century, written by Dionysisus the Areopagite and called THE HIDDEN KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, counsels:
“in
the earnest exercise of mystical contemplation, you leave the senses
and the operations of reason and all things that the senses or reason
can perceive, to the end that you raise yourself by this unknowing to
union with Him who is above all being and all knowledge,”
We
can call the methodology what we will but the truth is that
experiencing the deep things of God is as simple as being quiet (for
enough time each day and enough years) and following the natural impulse
of the soul to know it’s true Self as what it truly is.
“We are not forced to take wings to find Him, but only to seek solitude and to look within ourselves.”
(St. Teresa of Avilla, 1515-1582)
The catholic monk Thomas Keating (born 1923) writes:
“Let
thoughts come, let them go. No annoyance, no expectation. This is a
very delicate kind of self-denial, but it is more valuable than bodily
austerities, which tend to fix one’s attention on oneself. Waiting for
God without going away, giving the usual time to prayer, and putting up
with what goes on in the imagination are the most effective practices
for acquiring true devotion. The observance of them will lead to a
complete change of heart.”
Evagrios the Solitary (born 345), in On Prayer writes:
"When
your intellect in its great longing for God gradually withdraws from
the flesh and turns away from all thoughts that have their source in
your sense-perception, memory or soul-body temperament, and when it
becomes full of reverence and joy, then you may conclude that you are
close to the frontiers of prayer." "Stand on guard and protect your
intellect from thoughts while you pray. Then your intellect will
complete its prayer and continue in the tranquility that is natural to
it. In this way He who has compassion on the ignorant will come to you,
and you will receive the blessed gift of prayer." "You cannot attain
pure prayer while entangled in material things and agitated by constant
cares. For prayer means the shedding of thoughts."
St. Hesychios the 5th century monk, in On Watchfulness and Holiness writes:
"...
When there are no fantasies or mental images in the heart, the
intellect is established in its true nature, ready to contemplate
whatever is full of delight, spiritual and close to God."
"We
should strive to preserve the precious gifts which preserve us from all
evil... These gifts are the guarding of the intellect with the
invocation of Jesus Christ, continuous insight into the heart's depths,
stillness of mind unbroken even by thoughts which appear to be good, and
the capacity to be empty of all thought."
"Because
every thought enters the heart in the form of a mental image of some
sensible object, the blessed light of the Divinity will illumine the
heart only when the heart is completely empty of everything and so free
from all form. Indeed, this light reveals itself to the pure intellect
in the measure to which the intellect is purged of all concepts."
"To
human beings it seems hard and difficult to still the mind so that it
rests from all thoughts. Indeed, to enclose what is bodiless within the
limits of the body does demand toil and struggle, not only from the
uninitiated but also from those experienced in inner immaterial warfare.
But he who through unceasing prayer holds the Lord Jesus within his
breast will not tire in following Him, as the Prophet says (cf. Jer.
17:16.LXX). Because of Jesus' beauty and sweetness he will not desire
what is merely mortal..."
"...
the delighted intellect delights in the light of the Lord when, free
from concepts, it enters into the dawn of spiritual knowledge. By
continually denying itself, it advances from the wisdom necessary for
the practice of the virtues to an ineffable vision in which it
contemplates holy and ineffable things. Then the heart is filled with
perceptions of infinite and divine realities and sees the God of gods in
its own depths, so far as this is possible. Astounded, the intellect
lovingly glorifies God, the Seer and the Seen, and the Saviour of those
who contemplate Him in this way."
The Desert Father, Abba Cronius writes:
"If
the soul is vigilant and withdraws from all distraction and abandons
its own will, then the spirit of God invades it and it can conceive
because it is free to do so"
All
of these quotes are from different monks, from different monasteries,
in different centuries, describing the same two thousand year old
tradition of the prayer of the heart. The
prayer of the heart is not something from outside the Christian faith
but the very prayer form by which the first Christians ready for the
deeper teachings and those later mystic Christians who have followed
could open themselves to the Holy Spirit and have it take them to an
understanding and experience of the deep things of God, culminating in
directly experiencing the presence of God in and as the true nature of
the soul. It has never been practiced by the mainstream Christian and
probably never will be but for those who wish to experience the Holy
Spirit in their lives, to directly experience the true nature of the
soul in God, it is and has been the traditional Way of our faith.
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