To be a mystic means to want One Thing more than any other of the things. Mystics have an intense and unyielding desire to know and unite with the divine, god, love, beauty, soul, truth, the core of all cores in this life, not in any other life or time. And so, they willingly burn through the fire of any moment to find it.
Hello friends. Thank you for tuning into the Falling Into Soul podcast. I’m McCall Erickson, a lifelong idiot eh hem, I mean Mystic and alchemist with one burning desire that has taken over my whole life no matter what else I have wanted along the way, and that is the desire to unite with the core of my being. The core of my being that roots in with the great mystery and all of life.
I mean, mystics are fucked. The mystic heart can't settle for anything less than what it knows it's here to be and do--what can't be said in words or seen in ways the world immediately understands. And it won't stop until you've given your whole life to find it.
Does this sound familiar? Do you ever feel like you’re being pulled by some strange thread deep within your being that doesn’t care one fuck about what you immediately want to be doing with your life? Like no matter what else happens, there’s some strange thread of longing within that survives every fire, every flood, every darkness, every death and rebirth and keeps pulling you along, like a river that won’t stop twisting and turning around every bend until it reaches and *ah* finally dissolves into the sea.
As one of my favorite modern-day mystics Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee puts it: longing is the golden thread that takes us home. Longing is the golden thread that takes us home.
But what is “home” to the mystic? If you’re anything like me, at some point you’ve wanted “home” to be an easier, more identifiable thing or place in this world. No matter how much we might long to set up camp at some cozy spot along the way, the mystic cannot stop short of going all the way. All the way to the center of being, which usually means complete obliteration of life as we know it so we can belong to whatever it is that sources all of life.
Let’s explore the characteristic desires of a mystic (the desires that eclipse all other desires). Oh, and also, what’s alchemy got to do with the mystic’s journey home?
First of all,
Desire of the Mystic #1 To unite with god or the divine or heaven in this life, not any other life or time
- When I use the word God, I mean love (with a capital L) or the mystery, I mean the unsayable, the all encompassing energy of life. I don’t mean god as the western patriarchal father figure, the white beard in the sky guy. No No. It took me a long time to even use the word God again after leaving religion because that particular patriarchal and colonized idea of god was so ingrained in my conditioning that I couldn’t even hear or use the word god without thinking about that. So I don’t mean that version of god. I mean god as the mystery, the unsayable, the infinite, the divine, the Love that encompasses all love. Use whatever word you want for it. And if god doesn’t work for you, I hope you will look beyond my usage of it. No word can mean what I mean when I say god.
- Anyway, to merge with and know god in THIS life, not any other life is the mystic’s one true desire. This is why I personally failed at religion. It seemed so ridiculous to me to spend my whole life living in such a way that I could maybe possibly have the chance to know god or heaven in the next life. Why the fuck would I want to wait? What’s the point of life if you have to sacrifice and suffer through just for the chance to maybe know god in the afterlife only IF you did everything right and good enough in this life? Why the delay? That always seemed so absurd to me. I’m very grateful my mystic heart was blasphemous enough to reject that notion of separation and pull me all the way through to union in this life and time. If I couldn’t merge with god and the divine in this life, then I didn’t want life!
- I’m remembering what Hellen Keller said once, something along the lines that she feared that much of religion was man’s despair at not finding god.
- Merging with God or the divine in this life removes the need for the middle man or woman. The mystic heart yearns for this deep and direct intimacy with nothing and noone in between themselves and sheer being with life itself.
- And if you’ve listened to me talk about alchemy before, you might have caught the drift that this IS what the Great Work of alchemy is all about. The procedures of alchemy help us get the conditioning, the learned patterning and behaviors, the fear and separation programming out of the way so we can be in direct relationship with life, god, the mystery in this life, in this now moment, and the next now and the next. This is where mysticism and alchemy intersect beautifully. The Philosopher’s Stone is the alchemized heart that can hold the abiding union between soul and spirit, between human and divine. It IS the gateway and the portal. Alchemy is a willing (or at times not-so-willing but inescapable and necessary) walk through hell in order to actualize the heaven within it.
Desire of the Mystic #2 To Align The inner With The Outer World
- When we start on the path of alchemy or the mystic’s journey home, most of us are living a self in the world that doesn’t really reflect our true inner being. We are disjointed. We’re living to meet the demands of the outer world, what we’re conditioned to be, what we’re expected to be, but then we tend to the inner world in our spare time. But the mystic can only be okay with this arrangement for a short time. Sooner or later, the golden thread of longing pulls us through every unconscious (as well as every carefully constructed) version of our false selves. Through much distress and upheaval, and sometimes even quietly and unknowingly, the golden thread of longing pulls us through all our posturing and posing and into the root of our sheer being. And then our task is to live that root being in all walks of life to which we are called.
- This is not an easy process. Most of us go through many iterations of trying to change or adjust our outer world and inner being in order to get them to match until we are utterly exasperated at trying to get them to match.
- The hard thing is that this kind of congruency with our inner and outer worlds is born through much much alchemy, many many rounds of it. There are many times we think we’ve got it only to realize we have totally not gotten it. It takes what it takes. But, when you finally congeal and meld permanently with the root of your being (which yes, is a real and actual thing that happens on the far end of the alchemical journey), it doesn’t matter what you do in the outer world, your true inner self shines through. And you begin to realize that the outer form doesn’t matter nearly as much as you thought it did. This is one of the trickiest distractions of spiritual awakening culture. Take note. This is one of the trickiest conditionings and lies to overcome. Many of us can get caught up in the idea that we can only be evolved and enlightened and aligned if our life looks a certain way on the outside, if we’re engaged in certain spiritual activities, certain service, or certain work. We can get caught up in believing that some jobs are more important or evolved than others and that we can’t possibly live our true and mystic selves by doing mundane or nonspiritual jobs, but that’s a tricky play of the ego. The only thing the mystic heart needs in order to align with source and be that source in all of outer life is to be stripped of conditioning, stripped of concepts, stripped of ideas that get in the way of that alignment. And thinking you can only be your true self if your life or work looks a certain way is one of the trickiest ways to sabotage this alignment. Mystics exist in many walks of life.
- Really, only YOU can know if your inner and outer worlds are aligning. There is no one right way to be. Mystics exist in all capacities. There are Catholic Mystics, Sufi Mystics, Real Estate Mystics, Mystics who work in the political or corporate world (I know some of us may not like that truth, but it’s still true) There are Musician Mystics, Health Care Mystics, Mama Mystics, Restaurant Industry Mystics. There is no life too mundane or unenlightened or unevolved for the mystic to inhabit, for god to shine through. That is the whole point.
Desire of the Mystic #3 To Be A Gateway Between The Worlds
- No matter what you do, you are sharing the secrets of the god world, the invisible world, the unseeable and unsayable through your every action, every being, through every hat you wear, every suit or outfit you wear in the outer world. You are the gateway. Through the processes of alchemy, you become the portal.
- The difficult thing about this is that In order to be the permanent window or gateway or liaison between the worlds, is that you have to pass through the narrow gate yourself. You have to walk through every hell to actualize heaven within your earth life. You have to die before you die. It’s one of the hardest treks to make because it strips you of all identifications with material and spiritual things first. It delivers you to the infinite. It’s utter surrender and death that leads to this utter freedom. And the mystic cannot be satisfied with less.
So these are the three desires that eclipse all other desires:
1) To unite with the divine and actualize heaven in this life now
2) To align the inner with the outer
3) To be a gateway between the worlds.
To the mystic, every moment in time contains the timeless. There is no separation. The mystic is in touch with what is real no matter how much gets built up around the physical form. The mystic sees the form and sees what’s real and infinite within the form. The mystic knows that every form is a temporary container for what never dies, but that the form matters too for it is the clay that the breath of god can breathe life into and the breath of god longs to know itself through the form. So YES the form matters too. The mystic lives this reality in every ecstatic breath of life. There is no waiting. God is actualized in every moment, every breath. Love is actualized in every moment. This is ecstatic existence. And no one conveys this ecstatic existence and way of being better than the mystic poets like Rumi and Hafiz. And in more modern times the poets like Rilke, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver.
Mystics have always existed throughout history in all cultures and times. Walking the razor’s edge and bridging the worlds. Visionaries and seers tapping into some universal and perennial consciousness. Krishna, Jesus of Nazareth, Buddha, Socrates, St. Francis of Assisi, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Jiddu Krishnamurti, St. Hildegard of Bingen, Ruth King, Carl Jung. And most importantly, the mystic in me, the mystic in you. Mystics of many trades, all pointing to the universal truths of the heart. Some ultimate reality of consciousness we can only know by shedding the small realities our false selves become too easily invested in.
And this is why mystics are so fucked and so blessed. The mystic heart will continually shed everything to know itself, it willingly gives up all small notions of life and love to become life and love. The mystic will not stop short of what it knows it's here to be and do. There is no greater pain and no greater gift than to have this mystic heart. To be a human mystic. To live as truly as we can to the truth that can’t be pinned down or named. To burn through the falsities of any moment to reveal what’s real underneath. To pay for your life with your whole life. To know love in every moment. To know eternity in every moment. This is the mystic’s way
In closing, I’d like to share a poem I wrote one morning in my bedside notebook. Eyes still blurry from sleep, still in the liminal space between wake and dream, which is where so much of mystical knowing occurs. Perhaps as mystics, we are that liminal space.
In my dreams
the fire is
burning
everything.
The lava takes out
what we’ve built
and thought
we owned.
We’re pushed to
the edge of the sea
but we know it will
overtake us too.
We look in
each other’s eyes.
There’s nothing
to say and
nowhere
left to hide.
We know we’re
going to the stars,
and all that’s left
can only be felt
with the heart.
When I wake up,
I carry the feeling
of “the end” with me
and I live from
that place
because, to me,
what matters most
in the end
is what matters
most now.
Hey. Wow. You’re still listening. Thank you. If you know someone who values keeping it real on the spiritual path, consider sharing this podcast with them. Until next time, be well in soul.