What do you do when you are a young mystic in our American culture, where do you learn what you are?
One of the dictionary definitions of a mystic –
“A person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect.”
You grow up aware, hyper-sensitive, turn inward as your intricate inner world of divine sensations is seemingly yours alone. No one has guided you through the ultimate reality of inter-connectivity. No one has taught you that you are one of the guide mirrors placed in our human reality, meant to reflect that we are all together in this, that no one is alone. We are forever with everything around us. But no one has taught us our purpose, no one has said,
“Hey you! You are a guide! I will help you enter into your power so that you in turn can witness and teach the spirit wisdom and its woven reality to form.”
And so the average American mystic is left up to her own devices and feels utterly isolated and alone and becomes sad a lot of the times in that sensation of aloneness. So alien though, this solitary experience when her purpose to be is the connective force. The mystic does have a purpose in being and if that imperative is not identified, what do you do with the blindness to the true self? The endless restless sensations of almost there, almost can see around the corner, almost can catch It behind you or from the corner of the eye.
What Is It?
The truth of ones power and that you know you are different from everyone around you. So, you have nightmares and visions growing up. Omens and mythology comes naturally to you, they resonate as a sensible form of communication. Supernatural is something you innately recognize as your working reality and wish you could confide about in and be taken seriously.
The wind speaks across the desert and the windmills turn and answer and the mountain sits and listens and the hot dry sun beckons and silences simultaneously. It wasn’t until you were a little older that you realized that you were the only one, the only human one that was taking part in that conversation.
But you are not the only one, just one of a small group in the midst of millions.
In feeling extraordinary emotion not only emanating from yourself, but all the living beings around you, how do you protect yourself, why do you need to protect yourself? Because no one was there to teach you how to enter into that flow gracefully and take on the role of conduit without drowning in sensation. How do you teach yourself that as a child and is it inevitable that you just surrender to drowning?
Visions of ravens and seeing far into the desert horizons, wild young thing and your cellular understanding of true freedom. Buy the motorcycle, take the wind by the teeth and fly.
The young are obsessed with Why? Why? Why? Everything must have purpose and meaning and explanation to prove its valid existence, more wild appetite and consumption of information – tell me! Couple this with the widest net of collecting sensation that the mystic comes into the world with, you’ve got a rich nervous stew of perception that trembles in raw awareness.
Where is the mentor, the teacher at this precipice of coming of age?
Its not until you are older that you understand that it is predominately Is Is Is with life and all its experiences, the why not so important for justification, the why more of a rich delight of exploration and possibility. Not mandatory to define ones sensory experience by, but a rich reward of intelligence and consciousness. The why because more sophisticated in its less hurried exploration.
It’s a hard way to learn, seemingly alone to come into ones purpose to teach the singular human that her sense of self will not be lost in connectivity but amplified in a chorus of the universe’s delight in itself. How does the young American mystic survive the sensation of strange isolation to mature into becoming a teacher of connection?
Depression, anxiety, drugs, sex, adventure.
All quite dramatic and full of sensation that the mystic can and does amplify without most of time, knowing that she is turning something already quite intense up to 11. All that latent power and nothing seemingly on the surface to do with it. These all are valid teachers yes, but hard ones, suffering seems to be the natural outcome and with suffering if she survives it, often comes wisdom and self awareness. Then the awareness of her true nature and power will also hopefully blossom and come to fruition. Is usually takes some pretty hard knocks to open one’s eyes to the truth about one’s mystic self.
The Hero’s Journey, The Alchemist.
Please watch Stephanie’s full interview here http://vimeo.com/264531226
There is a danger though as a woman mystic in navigating all this in a male dominated culture. When she is seeking, when she is alone with her eyes still closed, the mystic is desperate for help and justification of feeling so lost. We live in a world that is deeply fearful of the power and magic of women, men have created millennia of myths turned into religion that always tells of the evil stain of a woman’s integral power. With a female mystic having innate understanding of the rhythm of myth’s language coupled with the heightened power she has come into the world with, a man’s religion may seem the answer. Men love absolutes and having only two options; success or failure, reward and punishment, do or die. Be careful of creationism and the myths that justify the punishment of women. We suffer more than men not because we deserve it, but because men are frightened of us and our power and punish us for their reactive fear. Take it all with a grain of salt and continue to listen to what resonates with you.
Interconnectivity is your safe harbor and cultivating your relationship with your power to conduct pure energy and give it definition is your home. To hold that power loosely and with love, with your very existence and ability to communicate your extra sensory experience to others with clarity and conviction, that is your safety net.
The very thing that frightens you as no one has been able to help shape it and give it form – as there is no mystic school in our country – is the very thing that is your bedrock of faith. You are allowed and encouraged to create your own language with and through it and then share it, plant those seeds and watch them grow. Grow strong alongside those seeds in your ability to communicate the reality of Mystery in our human experience coupled with practical reality, its the paradox of existence and it is juicy.
Young American Mystic, you are real and you are safe in your becoming, in owning your own wonderful, strange self.
This is the nature of refuge.
