What is a Mystic? (12 Signs You’re One)
Article by Aletheia Luna from Loner Wolf
Copyright © 2012 - 2022 LonerWolf.com.
There is a certain mysterious, holy, and incandescent flame that burns at the center of every religion, spiritual path, and philosophy … and that is mysticism.
From Buddhism and Hinduism to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Taoism (and more), mysticism is the golden thread that connects all these religions together, despite how different each path’s dogmas may look on the surface.
For those who identify as ‘spiritual but not religious,’ mysticism is also at the heart of the spiritual journey for it is the very heart, lifeblood, and impulse we carry within to connect with the Divine.
Indeed, mysticism is at the very root of the spiritual awakening journey. Without mysticism, our lives feel dull, empty, directionless, and meaningless because there is no deeper impulse, no higher purpose.
However, when we awaken our inner mystic, we find joy, play, vibrancy, truth, love, peace, and freedom again. Connecting with our inner mystic and walking the mystical path, therefore is not just our basic human right, but our saving grace.
We’re living in a world now that is so divorced from mysticism – from the sacred, numinous, and holy – that we’re reaching record numbers of cases of what I call ‘Soul sickness’ or Soul Loss.
Soul Loss manifests as loneliness, depression, anxiety, paranoia, warmongering, chronic illnesses, violence of all kinds, and the desecration of our planet, our sacred Mother.
To reclaim your inner mystic is a radical act of love; one that is contrary to the savage consumerism, reductionistic scientism, and cold materialism that is running rampant in our world today.
To be a mystic in this day and age is to be a rebel: to side with love, not hatred; to honor peace, not war; to live from the Soul, not from the mind.
What is a Mystic?
A mystic is a person who seeks to awaken, glimpse, and reclaim the innate spiritual Oneness at the core of their being. In other words, a mystic is a spiritual seeker who is driven to surrender their ego orients their whole lives toward deeply integrating the primordial truth that they are an inseparable part of the Divine.
‘Mysticism,’ a word that became popular in the 18th century, stems from the Greek word mustēs which refers to someone who has been ‘initiated into the mysteries.’ But mysticism itself has been around since the dawn of time.
Some of the more famous mystics throughout history include Lao Tze, Gurdjieff, Pythagoras, Guatama Buddha, Julian of Norwich, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, St. Teresa of Avila, Ramana Maharshi, Dante, Saint John of the Cross, Anandamayi Ma, Jesus Christ, Carl Jung, and so many more.
There are numerous definitions of what a mystic is out there. But one that resonates strongly comes from author and translator of mystics, Mirabai Starr, who writes:
The way of the mystic is the way of surrender, of dying to the false self to be reborn as the true Self, the God Self, the radiant, divine being we actually are. It’s not that the old self—the personality, the ego, the stories we tell about our lives—is bad or wrong. It’s that when we recognise the essential emptiness of our individual identity in light of the glorious gift of our interconnectedness with the One, independence becomes much less compelling.
9 Signs of the Mystical Experience
At some point in life, the majority of us are bound to have at least one mystical experience. Such tastes of Self-Realization or what the Buddhists call ‘satori,’ can be so vivid and so acute, that they change our lives forever.