My book “In Love With Everything” describes a practice called apophatic mysticism.  The aim of this practice is to achieve an optimal satisfaction with life.  I am a practitioner of this art and begin the book by telling the reader that the practice is based on the mysticism of two ancient Chinese daoists who were known as Laozi and Zhuangzi.  The apophatic process purges the mind of the notion that the human psyche can possess any information that can be asserted to be unquestionably true.  Apophatic mysticism takes knowledge to be a plastic entity, continually subject to change.  In this view one can never be sure that one knows how to verify what is right and wrong, what is good or bad.  Things that are right and good from one perspective might be wrong and bad from another.  Success at the practice depends on this foundation of fundamental ignorance as to “what and how things really are;” this ignorance about the essence of things encompasses all objects and phenomena.

  I further define this practice as being pragmatic and thus call it “pragmatic apophatic mysticism.”  This is to contrast it with the way of most other apophatic mystics; these others are typically oriented toward what they believe to be “the Absolute” and are convinced that personal immortality is achievable.   The pragmatic apophaticist refrains from claiming that her practice is oriented toward anything absolute, and does not claim to know whether personal immortality is achievable or not.  The apophaticist seeks immediacy and finds ecstasy in that immediacy; she has no answers for solving the unknowns of her future, and no interest in finding any.

  From her base of fundamental ignorance, which is her provisional approach to life, the apophaticist discovers that something astonishing may occur: a generation of spontaneous and comprehensive fondness for all other beings, and of all Being.  If this happens, she ecstatically falls in love with everything, the entire world of her experience.  However the practice is not without grave risks.  The state of fundamental ignorance can be dangerously destabilizing leading to a spiritual vertigo which might in turn bring on a despair that can be lethal.  But I also go on to describe how this despair can be paradoxically useful; it can be harnessed to produce an even more intense sense of mystical ecstasy.

  Mystical ecstasy consists of unconditional love.  I describe the nature of this love which has brought me so much satisfaction with life.  Being unconditional, it does not have to depend on possessing the knowledge of any metaphysical truth, or on the discovery of any other reasonable cause.  As I plunge right now at this moment into the apophatic mystery, I don’t expect to encounter an all-saving God who will finally make sense of the ambiguities of human life.  On the contrary, the intensity and endurance of the ecstasy appears to be the result of the very fact that I have surrendered to a “love for no reason.”

(The book is available on Amazon and from Infinity Publishing Company, the best way to search for it is to put my name in the search box at either site)

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    Self-judgment as to the quality and endurance of one’s meditation is to be avoided at all cost.  In regard to how effectively one is meditating, one is best to only do noticing.    I am okay to notice what seems to be the quality of my meditation.  But I am not being at all helpful when I tell myself, "I should be doing better." 

  There is a subtle paradox at play here: my description of how effectively I am meditating might be useful; my prescription of how I think that I should be doing is not.  Wanting to be better at it is okay; needing to be better at it is not.

The purpose of meditation is to “be delivered” from the conventional ways of judging our world, its values, and the quality of a person’s life.  Meditation helps us increasingly realize that each of us (and everyone else) is already perfectly okay; our fundamental value is immutable.  Our intrinsic worth is not subject to change.  And of course we cannot realize that if we judge ourselves to be failing to meditate as well as we think we should be.

  This principle is found in Laozi and in St. Paul 's "Faith, not works."  According to Paul (and Laozi under a different metaphysical system) there is nothing God wants us to do except show up and have (at least a tentative) faith that He will do everything else. 

  By the way, for agnostics and atheists, the characterization of the process is different, but the dynamics are exactly the same.  This sense of impeccability is the heart of mystical ecstasy: a love for the world “as is,” and the embrace of all beings in this world.  I am best to remember that I am one of those beings.

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  A significant word in daoism is 解 (jie); this term can be translated as “liberation,” “freedom,”  “deliverance,” or “release.”  Daoist ecstasy (樂 le) is based on this ability to break free.  解 includes the capacity to be often happy, but more importantly it expresses a freedom to explore all affective conditions: happiness, unhappiness, rapture, terror, serenity, suicidality, etc.   解 is the freedom to capriciously alter one’s mood.  It is the liberty to creatively employ external circumstances to explore and reconfigure internal moods.  It is to have a wide variety of choices with which to react to any particular event.  One moment a delivered person might want to escape her depression, the next moment she might choose to self-indulgently wallow in it.  Faced with death she is equally able to chuckle or wail.  解 is the splendid freedom from the notion that there are internal behavior norms, it is freedom from the idea that there are right and wrong moods to be in.  Riffing off Ecclesiastes— 解 is a dance of all seasons.  Kick off your shoes and indulge yourself.

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   A central theme in Marguerite Porete is the surrender of her will.  What is most difficult for her to let go of is her will to have God be what she expects it to be, and behave as she expects it to behave.  We can sense the pain in her words as she struggles to surrender her will:

    “Then in my meditation I considered how it would be if he might ask me how I would fare if I knew that he could be better pleased that I should love another better than him.  At this my mind failed me, and I did not know how to answer, nor what to will nor what to deny; but I answered that I would ponder it.
   And then he asked me how I would fare if it could be that he could love another better than me.  And at this my mind failed me, and I know not what to answer, or will or deny.
   Yet again, he asked me what I would do and how I would fare if it could be that he would will that another love me better than he.  And in the same way, my mind failed, and I did not know what to answer, and more than before, but again I said that I would ponder it.” 

(Translation by Amy Hollywood in “the Soul as Virgin Wife” page 115-116)

So to me, the question for her seems to be, “Can I completely give over my will to God, no matter what God turns out to be.”  To take that line of thought to its ultimate conclusion, the question becomes, “Can I love God even if God declines to exist?”  That kind of devotion to God would amount to a complete surrendering of her will and her thus unconditionally loving God.

(By the way, Amy Hollywood’s book on Porete is exquisite, as is her other book: “Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, And The Demands Of History.”)

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  “Pragmatic apophatic mysticism” is a practical empirically based mysticism, not a metaphysically based one.   In other words, the question of this mysticism is what works, not why it works.   This is a “know-how,” not a “knowing why.”

  Pragmatic apophatic mysticism follows in the pattern of the ancient daoist Zhuangzi: it is the art of being content with life without needing an explainable reason for the manifestation of this contentment.  The deep sense of auto-generated satisfaction (自樂 zi le) apparently results through the catalyzation of a natural internal psychic dynamic.  The catalyst for自樂 is the following: a psycho-visceral disposition of alertness and openness, openness to the possibility that any imaginable characterization of the perceived world might be an authentic representation of what is now being perceived.

  The pragmatic apophatic realization is not a “realiziation that everything is okay.”  It is the discovery that I am perfectly free to be okay with everything that is, as it is.  It might not be the case that “it is all good.”   But I can realize a way (道 dao) to be good with whatever is, okay with anything that happens.  I can find within myself an innate ability to maintain a deep sense of well-being, no matter what.  And to maintain this sense, I don’t need to make any sense out of, or excuses for, the disturbing amount of suffering and disaster that regularly occur in this world of mine.  I can love being in this world and love everyone in it without any need for a reasonable explanation; I can love being here simply because loving it is enjoyable.

  It turns out that the human being can enjoy life without needing to contrive any meaning for it, without needing to think everything is ultimately fair, without needing any certainty, without coming up with any excuses for the way the world behaves, without any belief that there is a good God behind it all, and without needing to deny that there are any God or gods.

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  I have a plum-sized plastic religious shrine from Mexico ; its appearance would be called kitsch by some.  The shrine expresses a religious sentiment of the Catholic tradition which is particularly popular among Mexican Catholics.  These Catholics pray to Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ.  Inside this small clear plastic shrine is the figure of Mary.  On the outside is written “¿No estoy yo aqui que soy tu madre?” This translates as “Am I not right here, the one who is your mother?”  It reminds the devotee that their protector Mary is immediately present at all times.  We might say that it expresses a realization that is phenomenologically of the same mystical genre as the timely reminder found in the Book of Jacob: “Certainly, the Lord is in this place, and I didn't know it!"

  The experience expresses an archetypal mystical realization that occurs in the hearts of mystics from every traditions; even atheistic mystics experience the phenomenon.  The experience is very similar for all, even though the object of the experience is expressed very differently: it is the sense of a continuous and immediate availability of the mystical experience and of the presence of its ultimately unknowable agent.

  The “mother” aspect of this phenomenon is interesting wherever this is given as the identity of the archetypal experience of presence.  Even in the largely non-theistic writing of Laozi we find, “I go to the mother.”  In this case the mother is the “dao,” a “way” of being in the world.  Imagine what it is like to have the entire world of your experience respond to your needs like a mother. 

  What great comfort mystical practitioners receive after they realize that there is an existential dynamic present in the world around them that is always ready to assist them to cope with any crisis!  This has been an “amazing grace” for those of us who have experienced it, believers and unbelievers alike, an unearned deliverance from human angst.

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  Almost all mystics insist on the truth/authenticity of their path.  Many would be offended by the suggestion that they might be fooling themselves with a mere dream or illusion. 

  But the apophatic mystic—one example would be Zhuangzi—is not interested in authenticating her practice.  She is interested in gaining a know-how, not in obtaining knowledge as to what is and is not ultimately true.  She is only interested in le 樂, that beautiful feeling which results in her falling in love with every being and all of being.  (容 rong the all-embracing)  If you tell her that she is fooling herself, this will not bother her in the least.

   She is interested in the know-how that will allow this deep feeling of well-being (樂) to become non-contingent on any material event.  Non-contingent le is called zile: 自樂.    Zhuangzi: “When she was successful she was content; and when she miserably failed she was content.” ( 窮亦樂，通亦樂 . )

  This does not mean that mystics like Zhuangzi are never sad, nor are they never tearful.  Indeed we find out that Zhuangzi cried when his wife died.  Zile indicates that there is a deep sense of well-being no matter what happens.

   The apophaticist has freed (jie 解) herself of all attachments.  This includes any attachment to a claim of knowing ultimate truth.  She is only interested in practical truth—whatever truly lets her enjoy life at this moment.

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      San Juan de la Cruz ( Saint John of the Cross) is perhaps the first person ever to write systematically about a phenomenon which he called “the dark night of the soul.”  I contend that this so-called “dark night” is a natural archetypal spiritual phenomenon which appears in a number of spiritual traditions in one form or another.

      In this essay I am immodestly taking issue with the great San Juan . I will claim that for the reasons I give, he may have failed to describe how to make use of the complete potential inherent in this archetypal spiritual treasure.

      San Juan very effectively presents the psychological brutality of the Dark Night, but notably he also gives the reader the assurance that final salvation from the Dark Night, and final salvation after life, can both be finally obtained. These two natural human desires, wanting to escape death and meaninglessness, are closely related psychologically. 

      The archetypal Night is a common experience for the mystic of any authentic tradition; it results after attaining freedom from the conventional and restrictive ways which human beings normally employ to give meaning to their lives and cope with fear of death. Radically freed from the limitations of these mental devices, the mystic’s cognitive and emotional defenses crumble, and she     obtains a raw experience of the death fear and the consequent fear of meaninglessness.  The Night is an undiluted experience of disabling terror before these daunting foes.  In the night the mystic fears that her existence and her world have become completely absent of meaning and all is unsavable.  According to Juan, true deliverance and mystical ecstasy come after experiencing and surviving the night.  His work ingeniously and clearly details the process that occurs and the mystical know-how needed to deal with the dark night.

      But with Juan’s inclusion of a firm assurance of an ultimate deliverance from the Night, that is to say the existence of a hereafter¹, the mystic who is experiencing the Night may say to herself: “Well, Juan went through this horror; he felt as hopeless as I do now, and he successfully was delivered from it by a Supreme Force.  So even though I cannot completely believe it now while I am enduring this exquisitely painful suffering, there is ultimately assurance of a final escape for me.  I have hope here now, because Juan who speaks with the authority of someone who has been in this very same emotionally distraught condition, assures me that if I maintain fortitude, the night will pass and I will be finally delivered.”

Problem number one:

      The potential problem for the hope-retaining mystic is that she might indefinitely fail to achieve her aim; she might indeed not experience ecstatic deliverance during her life, or for that matter ever.  She may get stuck endlessly patiently waiting in the Night because of being attached to the hope of ultimate escape; the problem here is that this "patience" actually amounts to a refusal to surrender and completely let go of all hope.  In my experience the devastating power of the Night is most effectively reigned in only after one has undergone a complete lack of hope, a full letting go of any faith that there is a means of escape.  It seems that one cannot fully climb out with a sense of spiritual wholeness until one holds nothing back, and is purged of the idea that one can be certain of finally getting out. 

      If one simply waits hopefully during the dark suffering, hopeful that one will get out some day, that one will ultimately be saved, this continual not yet fulfilled hope may endure to the extent that one ends up spending one’s entire life in misery.  The misery results from not fully believing, on a subconscious level, that one will be saved, but yet consciously attempting to assure oneself that one will. In this case we could say that one is punished (punished by oneself) for not allowing oneself to consciously have honest doubts.

Problem number two:

      By religiously adhering to San Juan ’s paradigm, retaining hope in a hereafter, a mystic might fail to notice an alternative path, one that might prove to be more auspicious.  This alternative way is to provisionally assume that it is quite possible that there will never be an escape from what will be ultimate doom.  In other terms, the provisional assumption made in this case is that there might not exist a “finally saving God.”

      Strangely enough, even with this gloomy possibility kept in mind, despite the quite reasonable assessment of hopelessness, one is able to discover that one can, profitably surrender to an encounter with something one discovers in the ground of our being.  This discovery is love.  In Book Two, Chapter 24, section 3 of “Dark Night of the Soul,” San Juan tells us the when the desires and natural faculties (domésticos de potencias) have been put to sleep (poniéndolos en sueño) the soul experiences an ecstatic possession by love (posesión de amor).  I submit that the natural existential desire to live forever is one of the most important desires to put to sleep.

    One might call this archetypal phenomenon the love dynamic.  A person can decide to surrender to this love without needing to count on any kind of future benefit for so doing; one can surrender to it and experience the profound immediate joy of it, joy for no provably rational reason.  In this case one is surrendering to unconditional love, not out of hope, but purely for the intense pleasure derived from the immediacy of the experience.  It is hard to surrender everything which I had willed my future to be, most importantly my own continuing existence; but if I choose to, the immediate reward is an astonishingly compelling sense of ecstasy.  It is compelling enough to keep many of us quite satisfied with our lives.

      This unreasonable surrender to love appears to be a more profound surrender than a surrender that retains a degree of future oriented hope.  And perhaps this comprehensive surrender is the reason it turns out to be a more intensely ecstatic experience for some of us.  Having the threat of meaninglessness and doom constantly available appears to paradoxically increase the endurance and intensity of ecstasy. 

      The intensity of mystical ecstasy seems to be more effectively prolonged to the extent that the mystic stays always near the threat of the Dark Night, continually remaining an inch away from the hell of nihilism  With the constant threat of damnation available, some of us inexplicably do quite well, or at least have done so far.  We tend to fall in love with everyone and everything we meet.  Amazing grace!  By the way, I am not claiming that there is no afterlife, only that for the time being none is apparently needed for those of us who radically surrender.

1. San Juan de la Cruz, The Dark Night (La Noche Oscura) Book Two, chapter 23, section 10:  “…; Because these spiritual visions more often are those of the other life than this one, when they are seen they prepare one for the one to come (the life hereafter) (“…; porque estas visiones espirituales más son de la otra vida que de ésta, y, cuando se ve una, dispone para otra.) 

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     When I begin to discuss Zhuangzi, the first thing I am compelled to say is that I can’t be certain that there will be any value or accuracy in what I will present here.  This estimate of mine follows the position taken by Zhuangzi in chapter two: “How can I know that what I speak of as knowing is not actually not knowing? How can I know that what I speak of as not knowing is actually knowing?”  庸詎知吾所謂知之非 不知邪？ 庸詎知吾所謂不知之非知邪？

     Here is something quite unusual, nearly unheard of in the rest of the history of the world’s wisdom literature:  Zhuangzi’s (or at least that of the author of the second chapter of the book that bears this name¹) tentative assumption of fundamental ignorance forms the basic foundation of his way (dao 道) of interacting with his world.  It is the root of his openness to the possible truth of almost anything imaginable.  It is the genesis of his mystical ability to embrace all beings and all of Being.

     And what does this author intend to accomplish with his radical openness?  His aim is the psychological/existential disposition he calls “le” (樂). I interpret this disposition as “a profound sense of well-being.”  I would not generally follow the example of most translators who translate it as “happiness” or “contentment.”  I believe that when Zhuangzi speaks of 樂 he is talking about a disposition that persists during both euphoria and dysphoria.

     Besides 樂, there is another significant related term in Zhuangzi; that is “jie” (解). 解 means “liberation.”  Or if you like: “deliverance.”  It indicates the continuously ongoing sense of well-being is largely (but not completely) non-contingent on the occurrence of material events.  This means that the daoist adept is relatively free from the experience of resentment no matter what material gains or losses she experiences. “Concerns with the issue of life and death do not cause any alterations within him, much less the matters of benefit and harm.” 死生無 變於己而況利害之端乎！ (chapter 2)

     Liberation 解 indicates that the adept’s sense of well-being is no longer dependent on what turn of events occurs: “Failing miserably he was well; successful he was well.”  窮亦樂，通亦樂. (chapter 28)  Part of Zhuangzi’s unshakable equanimity is based on his philosophy of life.  He has discovered that beneficial material events often result in subsequent events which are materially harmful, and vise versa: “Disaster and fortune give birth to each other.”  禍福相生. (chapter 25)  

     But more importantly, there is another, a non-philosophical dynamic operating at the root of his irrepressible sense of well-being, and that dynamic power will remain a mystery.  There are no words to explain this “dark power:” xuan de 玄德 (chapter 12).  “It is as though you were stupid and confused: this is called the mysterious power, it integrates you within the cosmic flow.”  若愚若昏，是謂玄德，同乎大順. (chapter 12) 

     The adept’s integration within this flow is auspicious.  The way that this cosmic flow is patterned is called the “dao” 道: “The dao is compelling and it evidences its actuality, but it produces no observable actions and is without an observable form.  It can be transmitted but it cannot be substantially received. You can realize it, but you can’t see it.  It is its own root, its own origin.” 夫道，有情有信，無為無形； 可傳而不可受，可得 而不可見；自本自根. (chapter 6) 

     The mysterious functioning of Zhuangzi’s dao might lead some to interpret it as being undoubtedly a religious phenomenon.  But this conclusion would be inconsistent with the Zhuangzi’s insistence on his comprehensive ignorance regarding the true essence of the phenomena in the world of his experience.  For example, by his account, one day he had had a dream of being a butterfly and when he woke up he was not sure whether he actually had been, and continued to be that butterfly.  Was he still the butterfly, now dreaming that he was human?  Or was he a human being who had just had a dream of being a butterfly.  With this level of skepticism toward his own ability to know if there were any phenomenon which he would be able to truthfully characterize, we can safely assume Zhuangzi would be neither a theist nor an atheist.

     Not knowing anything for certain, Zhuangzi is forced to rely on his state of ignorance: in order to realize a practical (not metaphysical) transcendence of the everyday world’s material effects on him, he has to “depend on what he does not know.” 恃其所不知. (chapter 24) It is through this carefully maintained ignorance that he arrives at his ultimate aim— an optimal sense of well being.   “The person of de (德) lives within a mind free of rumination, moves without anxiety, accumulates no ideas of right and wrong, beauty and ugliness.” 德人者，居無思， 行無慮， 不藏是非美惡.  (chapter 12) Such an adept finally realizes the experience of a psychological/existential transcendence and in this condition “rests in the well-being of heaven and earth as all the worries of the world’s affairs vanish.” 天地樂而 萬事銷亡. (chapter 12) At this level of equanimity the adept spontaneously becomes one with the nature of the dao:  “So vast that there is nothing which it does not embrace.” 廣廣乎其無不容也. (chapter 13)

1.  Chinese scholars point to the probability of a multiple authorship in the writing of the book “Zhuangzi.”  There do appear to be a number of inconsistencies in the text.  And so that complicates any interpretation of the text.  However, I am only interested in the book’s usefulness in the cultivation of my mystical practice, and so I am providing a personal interpretation, not a scholarly one.  I am not a Chinese scholar, and therefore I can loosely interpret and then pick and choose those parts of the text which seem to present a coherent pattern for my sensibility.  It is my hope that practitioners of various traditions might obtain something useful from my interpretations even if mine are not authoritative translations. 

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I think it is spiritually authentic to react to death with an attenuated mixture of raw horror and an unshakable sense of transcendent serenity.  I think it is appropriate to see death as being both irredeemably unacceptable and also a sublime aspect of this word’s spiritual architecture. My friend Maria Martinez says, “There is evil, and there is not evil.” Mother Kali is both sacred and evil, awful and beloved.

You must escape without employing an intelligible method in order to successfully escape. You need to simply give up and wait with curiousity but no faith or hope of escaping.

The dysphoria of the dark night could not have more precisely designed to be inescapable.  There is no way to escape other than by grace.  The good news is that if you do escape, you can intuitively remember what led to that arrival of grace. You can now repeat what you did to finesse grace.

7/24/2010

When I become angry I have 3 choices: I can display my anger, inflicting it on others. Or I can hide and cover my anger by repressing it under denial. Or lastly I can fully recognize and yet contain my anger, pouring it into the alchemical processes of my soul. I get no lasting benefit from the first two choices. The last choice produces more transformation than hours of peaceful meditation.

7/24/2010

Welcome, come on in here, inhabit the intensity of this common moment. Sense the glory of life which is here, the unspeakable joy, the astonishing quality of just being alive. And yes, the regularly appearing disturbing sense of banality as well. Strangely enough, it is often that sense of life's questionable significance that cleans out the pretensions of the mind, an emptying that allows enough space for the inflow of grace. By grace we effortlessly realize a love for all beings and all of being. Blessed purgation! When there is nothing left to lose I am able to gain more than I could have imagined.