Mystically Speaking
This essay speaks of the purpose of mystical experience and writing, and offers insights into the inner dynamics of how mysticism works to serve our awakening and inner transformation.
The purpose of mystical experience, and mystical writing that records such experience, is to activate and effect awakening or transformation of consciousness in the individual mystic and her or his readers. In the monastery of Helfta, in 13th Century Saxony (now Germany), the community of nuns would sit to listen as someone read the texts being written by one of their three known mystics. Mysticism was understood as a communal experience and that one woman's transformative experience was transmitted to the whole community.
Equally, when we read mystical texts today, the sacredness of the original experiences communicates itself directly to us as we read, and is precisely designed to do so. The invitation is to read the words as if being spoken directly into our heart. Or to experience the vision as if participating in the original unfolding. The awe we feel, the tears that spontaneously fall, the fire we feel burning in our own bodies as we read their experiences testifies to the living reality of that mystical affect and effect in us. The sacredness of their experiences ignites the same transformative energies in us and beyond us.
The mystic must not identify with the contents of her visions or locutions. Rather, it's to interpret the experiences at the symbolic level or beyond. Mystical experience has its own intelligent purpose and function in us and beyond us. The singular and sole purpose of mystical experience is inner transformation. So, when I share what I am asked to share with someone for whom the text resonates, that allows the energy of awakening and transformation to flow further afield. It's made available to anyone who wants to awaken to their true self and their inner divinity.
Dr Jim Finley, who has been a wondrous mystical teacher to me often says, ‘I am not God but also, I am not different to God.’ I like his way of phrasing it. We are being divinised but at the same time we don’t make any claim to ‘be’ God. In the locution that I share today, (29th August 2025) Christ said to me,
‘The whole of my divinity is in your humanity as the whole of your humanity is in my divinity. You carry my divine heart and I carry your human heart. You are a living vessel of the living light. You have been fashioned in eternity to be ready to carry the light of my love to the world at this time.’
Beautiful as this was to hear, and later to re-read, I am not identified with it. The risk of identifying with any mystical experience is that we may become ‘inflated’, as the psychological language puts it, and think we are ‘God’. The other risk is a psychotic break with reality. However, the middle ground that mystics have walked throughout history is the path of inner transformation that lets the experiences act on us to transform us. Sharing allows the sacred energies to flow where they will.
Importantly, mystical texts and language are not trying to speak to the rational mind. Mystical language is of a whole different order to the everyday language of the everyday world. It is living, alive, and intelligently operating according to its own inner laws. To try to analyse, understand, or explain mystical writing with the rational, scientific mind is what philosophers calls a ‘category mistake.’ The rational mind and the mystically awakened mind are quite simply not using language in the same way. The rational mind and everyday language is not designed to understand mysticism. A different way of understanding needs to arise in us.
It has taken me ten years to stabilise sufficiently to share my mystical experiences without overwhelm, and ten years of reflection, study, and integration to understand the inner dynamics, the point, and purpose of mysticism. I hope my insights are helpful to readers walking the path towards their inner divinity. Thanks for reading.
Photo, Carrowniskey beach, Clew Bay. Josephine Doyle, Síoraí Photography.