A Gateway to the Mystical Tradition of the West
There is a still place within us that is who we really are
A secret sacred chamber
When was the last time you opened those doors and went inside?
How much is there you have forgotten?
Have you even forgotten who and what you truly are?
Down inside us are jeweled caverns waiting to be explored
Are you ready to pry open those locks?
An underground river of lost knowledge beckons
Calls to us
Can we quiet ourselves to head that voice?
Will we discover how much awaits us?
Can we regain the truth we once knew?
The holy light of divinity lives inside us
We can find it again
Don’t be shy or timid
Step boldly through these gates
Into depths beyond your imagining
Welcome back to all you truly are.
The miraculous
Awaits you.
The Mystic Path
Extending far back through human history in a large part of the world has been what we can call the “mystic tradition of the West”. Its teaching is that God, a kind of divine “being” of a magnitude we cannot even imagine, can be perceived tangibly as right here with us and inside us, that we and the universe we inhabit are, at their essence, nothing but God. For Jews who took their devotion seriously, like my Hasidic grandfather, reciting the Shema prayer multiple times each day was his affirmation that “I shall love the Lord my God with all my heart and all my soul.” This was no abstract, theoretical God but one whose presence was palpable. When, later, my mid-western Methodist in-laws thanked God with sincerity before every meal for the food, the “blessings”, they were about to receive, the sense they were actually communicating directly with God, that God was right there at the table with us, was just as real. Jesus himself had said, “You are God’s Temple, God’s spirit dwells within you.” It’s right there in Corinthians.
For thousands of years this personal communion with the divine, though also found in endless ordinary settings, has been at the heart of the “mystical path.” The sacred presence invoked in a Sufi prayer gathering can be not only tangible but overwhelming. The God we can sense right here, with us and inside us as well, whether in our homes, congregations or at our dining tables, is very different from the remote, authoritarian father-figure God that is a mere abstraction. This perceiving the divine in all creation and wanting to comprehend the emanation of our “world” from out of this unity inspired what became known as the original “Invisible College” of spiritual adepts and seekers dedicated to probing the secrets of “sacred geometry”, the visible manifestation of the invisible divine structure of the universe.
At present, however, outside of Islamic cultures, our sense of direct connection with the divine and even of this possibility are rapidly disappearing. Our precious human identity as emanations of divinity is at risk of being lost forever. Awareness of God within ourselves and the world around us has rarely been at a lower ebb. We have lost connection with our true wellsprings. We have arrived at a juncture where we need to remind ourselves it hasn’t always been like this. Our separation from the sacred and its centrality to human life is a relatively recent development.
For as far back as you can go in human history, the question of the ultimate inner nature of human beings, and of the universe itself occupied a vital place in our cultures. Such questions were seen as at the core of human existence. A primary focus was the relationship of human beings and the creation we inhabit to a holy, timeless, ineffable but pervasive underlying force and intelligence within all creation. Now, however, we turn our backs on the quest to understand what we really are and the divinity that still dwells deep within us.
The mystical faith has never, however, died out. Instead, it retreated underground where it became known as the secret “underground river” existing beneath more conventional forms of religious life. For the mystic, God is an all -encompassing mysterious divine energy present everywhere, including inside us. For the mystic, God is still very much alive.
(formerly NewInvisibleCollege.com / Chartres-sacred-geometry.com; now Chartres.GeometryCode.com)
Copyright 2022 Will Gold.