maps, manuals, and pith instructions used in Christian mystical traditions?

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Jano Pavuk, modified 3 Years ago at 9/25/20 5:01 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 9/23/20 2:51 AM

maps, manuals, and pith instructions used in Christian mystical traditions?

Posts: 53 Join Date: 11/6/17 Recent Posts
How about making a little collection of these for the sake of giving seekers more options? Maybe some of these options can be found closer to one's home, and are being overlooked just because they are never looked for in those places.

Hopefully it will entertain, or even be useful to, some : )


"Threefold is the way to God:
The first is the way of purification, in which mind is inclined to learn true wisdom.

The second is the way of illumination, in which the mind by contemplation is kindled to the buring of love.

The third is the way of union, in which mind by understanding, reason and spirit, is led up by God alone."

- Dionysius the Areopagite

(quoted according to Evelyn Underhill - Essentials of Mysticism)
Derek2, modified 3 Years ago at 9/23/20 9:16 AM
Created 3 Years ago at 9/23/20 9:16 AM

RE: maps and models used in Christian mystical traditions

Posts: 231 Join Date: 9/21/16 Recent Posts
Well I don't know how much practical help these models really are, but there's the ladder of Guigo II, the four means of watering a garden of early Teresa of Avila, the seven mansions of later Teresa of Avila, the map of Mount Carmel by John of the Cross, and the stage theory of Bernadette Roberts.
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Jano Pavuk, modified 3 Years ago at 9/23/20 4:20 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 9/23/20 12:17 PM

RE: maps and models used in Christian mystical traditions

Posts: 53 Join Date: 11/6/17 Recent Posts
Thank you for pointing of Guido II, Derek.

I do not know how much practical help these models really are either : ) I certainly did not use them before. I guess I am just a little disappointed in myself that I did not discover them earlier. I feel like pointing them out to an assumed somebody out there who feels like there is only one particular tradition that figured out how  to "get enlightened".

That this particular tradition figured it all out and other mystics from other traditions were just crazies without insight deluding themselves with an old full-bearded semi-white man sitting on a cloud : ))

3 heavens of Jacopone da Todi (an Italian Franciscan friar in the 13th century)

First, when the mind has achieved self conquest, the "starry haeven" of multiplicity is revealed to it.

Next, it achieves the "crystalline heaven" of lucid contemplation, where the soul is conformed to the rhythm of the divine
life, and by it's loving intuition apprehends God under veils.

Last, in ecstasy it may be lifted to that ineffeble state which is called "hidden heaven" where it enjoys a "vision of imageless reality" and enters into "possesion of all that is God".
A discussion on similarities of "a vision of imageless reality" and cessations, anybody? : )
Olivier S, modified 3 Years ago at 9/23/20 4:16 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 9/23/20 4:16 PM

RE: maps and models used in Christian mystical traditions

Posts: 872 Join Date: 4/27/19 Recent Posts
Very interesting Jano. Is there more from Jacopo ?
Cheers
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Jano Pavuk, modified 3 Years ago at 9/23/20 4:49 PM
Created 3 Years ago at 9/23/20 4:46 PM

RE: maps and models used in Christian mystical traditions

Posts: 53 Join Date: 11/6/17 Recent Posts
...thus Jacopone at first uses the strongest unitive language to describe the rapturous and emotional intercourse with Divine Love which characterized his middle period, but when he at last achieves the vision of the Absolute, he confeses that he was in error in supposing that it was indeed the Truth whom he thus saw and worshiped under veils...

...thus Jacopone da Todi - exact and orthodox Catholic though he was - when he reached the "hidden" heaven" discovered and boldly declared the approximate character of all his previous conceptions of, and communion with, God; the great extent to which subjective elements has entered into his experience. In the great ode which celebrates his ecstatic vision of Truth, when "ineffable love, imageless goodness, measureless light" at last shone in his heart, he says:

"I thought I knew Thee in Thy completness, I was filled with delight and immeasurable love. But now I see I was mistaken - Thou art not as I thought and firmly held."
I am quoting from Evelyn Underhill's essey Essentials of Mysticism. She also wrote a full book on Jacopo which is now - 100 years later - available for free here

Jacopone da Todi, poet and mystic--1228-1306, a spiritual biography
https://archive.org/stream/jacoponedatodipo00underich

Hope its useful somehow Olivier : )
Rousseau Matt, modified 1 Year ago at 1/8/23 4:54 PM
Created 1 Year ago at 10/28/22 5:18 PM

RE: maps, manuals, and pith instructions used in Christian mystical traditi

Posts: 136 Join Date: 5/1/22 Recent Posts
Spot on with Dionysious . Also Google  centering prayer. . It is a modern catholic version of the old desert fathers tradition. They might have retreats in certain parts of the USA 

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