FOLLOWING THE MYSTICS

After the first levels of enlargement, connection or union, and some degree of emancipation, mystical experiences lead to a kind of foundational optimism. You would usually call it hope. You wonder where it comes from, especially in the middle of all these terrible things that are happening in the world. Hope is not logical, but a "participation in the very life of God" (just like faith and love, which were called "the theological virtues”).

 The next descriptor I’d like to add is a sense of safety. Anybody who has ever loved you well or has felt loved by you always feels safe. If you can’t feel safe with a person, you can’t feel loved by them. You can’t trust their love. If, in the presence of God, you don’t feel safe, then I don’t think it is God—it’s something else. It’s the god that is not God. It’s probably what Meister Eckhart is referring to when he says, “I pray God to free me from God.” He means that the God we all begin with is necessarily a partial God, an imitation God, a word for God, a “try on” God. But as you go deeper into the journey, I promise you, it will always be more spacious and safer.