Hi Friend,

A few weeks ago, I was asked to give a talk on Quakerism and mysticism and activism, which I'm doing this weekend (tomorrow, to be precise). Whilst contemplating this, I realized how rarely I talk explicitly about mystical experiences, even though they are at the heart of both why I do what I do and what/how I work with my clients. As well as how I understand ReMembering and ReEnchanting.

And so, in the quiet brought by nearly two feet of winter snow outside my window, it feels entirely right to offer you a few thoughts about mystical experiences. Which, for some of you, will serve as a reminder of what you've known - maybe what you've always known - about how life is and this sacred mystery of living that we get to participate in. Regardless, I hope you find something helpful here.

It happens that I've been musing over this topic at the same time as the latest federal murder in Minneapolis. Headlines and pundits with far more reach than myself have denounced - with outrage, with sharp analysis, with comedic wit (I appreciated Stephen Colbert's take; Jimmy Stewart was so upset he couldn't make a joke about it); with grief; with open-hearted outreach to family and community and mutual aid.

Here's one set for financial donations to support a variety of on-the-ground mutual aid.

In the stories and images I see echoes of other images: of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis; of the decades of violence against Civil Rights protestors (including children); of the 1862 execution of 38 Dakota men in Minnesota followed by, a few months later in 1863, the forced march of surviving Dakota peoples away from their homelands to various prison camps, such as the newly created Crow Creek reservation. The 2025 created ICE facility in Fort Snelling is the very same grounds where some Dakota peoples were held captive in 1862.

The way that history rhymes can be sickening.

There are those who would say that to talk about the mystical during these times is some kind of a 'spiritual bypass,' ignoring the realities all around us.

Sometimes those voices are absolutely correct.

Most certainly, there are ways of talking about all sorts of spiritual and religious things - philosophies, rituals, experiences, communities - that can take us away from the needs of our neighbors and even of ourselves. I'd dare say that religious institutions and communities have even been amongst those who most strongly developed effective patterns of enacting delusion and greed instead of engendering kindness and compassion. They are amongst those most to blame for the vast distances between espoused vision and lived values - for all that the creeds of every major religion points their adherents towards some version of compassion.

And yet it is also through people’s experiences of the mystical that so much - innovation, strength, inner peace, courage, compassion, right-action, right-livelihoods, power, possibilities, new opportunities for previously unimaginable actions - can and regularly does emerge.

Many of the most well-known world-changers (amongst whom activists are only some) have found the cultivation of the inner life and deepening into that surprisingly fluid space between one's personal interiority and the expansiveness of the web of interconnected relationality to be where Truth has and can be found.

So at its best, it’s not separate… It’s part of the way we tap into the Source of life.

So - what do I mean by mystical experiences?

A subsection of spiritual experiences/journeys, the mystical includes those moments where we directly experience - where we deeply know - ourselves as part of the interconnected web of life. It is an experience - embodied, spiritual, heart-orientated, intimate, transcendent, mysterious, above ourselves, within ourselves - in which we encounter that which is Beyond our ego; that part of ourselves which is more than our (small) self. It is a direct encounter of God/Oneness (though not everyone experiences it as one-ness, and you don’t have to believe in God, and it is far beyond religious boundaries). It entails an experience of time that is extra-ordinary: often past and future and present blur and eternity holds hands with the present and the shape of both seems to echo one another. It can entail experiences where the language of ritual and bird song and baby babble are not quite as hard to understand as in ‘normal times.’

It is amazingly difficult - no, it is actually impossible - to talk about it. Still we try.

I very much appreciate this reflection from German Lutheran liberation theologian Dorothee Soelle (in her book, The Silent Cry): "the history of mysticism is a history of the love for God. I cannot conceive of this without political and praxis-oriented actualization that is directed toward the world. (In other words) the point of knowing God is to know what we are called to do."

In other words, it is a critical dimension of discernment.

She also says: "Mystical love for God makes us open to God's absence: the senseless, spiritless suffering that separates humans from all that makes for life....silence creates a calm leading into an emptiness into which the strength that is not one's own can enter."

Mysticism can inspire and sustain activism. But it is not *for* activism, or any other kind of outcome. Success is not, actually, one of the names of God.

Mystical experiences are ‘for’ the thing itself: a life that is living.

Too often the mystical is seen as a kind of Mountain Top experience - a grand retreat, the meeting of a guru, Moses receiving the commandments - and it feels far away. But the eco-spiritual lineage that I practice and that guides my teachings draws our attention to the potency in the everyday. In everyday life, the ordinary becomes a portal to the extra-ordinary. Life, filled with mess and mishaps and adventures and exquisite beauty and rigor and the hum-drum, is brimming with possibilities to be aware of that Beingness which is always right there.

I am of the ilk of those who recognize power and even a type of mastery in a village woman who moves in tune with the orchestra of teeming life around her as she makes her daily bread/tortillas/chipatis squatting next to a three-stone fire; of the traditional spinner of yarn and the weaver of cloth who creates meaningful material clothing, the stuff of survival and every day necessity that is also the stuff of story and myth and exquisite beauty and everyday meditation; of the way fires speak to their fire-keepers, joining conversations in such a way that, if you pay enough attention, you wonder what mystery flickers therein; of the transfixing power of moonlight on clouds passing over forests and birds who come and visit after a loved one passes over. Of serendipity and synchronicities. Of thousands of ordinary people marching in the streets, crying out for justice. Of the people who stay home, tending the home fire, ensuring there is hot soup ready for when their friends and family return. Whose every act is akin to a continual whisper of prayer: keep them safe.

I’ve had mystical experiences since I was a wee girl. Which doesn't make me particularly special. From what I can tell, mystical experiences are quite common, especially amongst children, who have not yet been taught to discount their own experiences.

I was fortunate, not so much in the experiences that I had, but that I had people around me - my grandmother in particular - who took my experiences seriously and encouraged me to keep tending to them. No one laughed or scoffed. Most of my life has been about deepening my own capacity of discernment - including a fair amount of unlearning - and I am very grateful that I learned early on that I could trust that which was both Within And Beyond, and that I could lean into that which shimmered and danced in my hands and the edges of my vision and in all sorts of conversations and in the quiet well of contemplation.

As a spiritual director, I get to hear people's experiences of the spiritual (which includes but is a bigger category than the mystical) all the time. Many of these experiences happen in nature. This resonates with the great religious traditions. In the Christian tradition, Jesus experienced the Dove while in a river during his baptism; he later spent forty days in the wilderness; many saints across Christian and Indic traditions regularly speak to birds and animals and snakes and trees.

I’ve heard people relate experiencing mystical moments when they encounter their spouse. Or a teacher. Not just meeting someone, but that feeling of encountering and being moved by someone's presence. Experiences of homecoming, belonging, and safety are common themes; so is being able to extend ourselves across ourselves towards another, perhaps intentionally, perhaps unbidden, we find ourselves experiencing ... love/agape. Sometimes such experiences can be filled with awe. There are transcendent, star-filled experiences and very quiet ones.

Such experiences all by themselves do not prevent violence. It does not prevent abuse. I wish it did. It can enable integration. It can support peace. It can be very erotic.

A corporate group of people can experience it as well as individuals. Quakers often refer to this as the experience of a "covered meeting" - when I have experienced this, it is as if great big bird-wings are surrounding the entire body of those who are gathered, and there is both a one-ness with one another as well as a clear sense of particularities.

I've come to distinguish between the mystical experiences that happen to us without us explicitly asking for them - when you are just doing something 'normal', such as driving through the night amidst the stars and you hear a voice speaking something simple and profound and maybe you have to stop driving or maybe you keep on going but you know that whatever just happened was more true and more real than your whole day.

And then there are those experiences wherein we are cultivating the potential for the mystical to emerge: this might be in regular worship or tai chi or prayer or meditation or mindfulness or ceremony or just paying attention with a certain part of yourself that you might not have a good name for.

Looking at the last day or two: where did life shimmer? Where did you feel a certain bright joy, or a certainty of action, that was beyond just the ups and downs of thoughts and feelings, the great tidal wave of existence?

I, being of the eco-spiritual lineage that I am, invite you into the sensuality that can awaken the mystical and the magical; the pleasure of winter sunsets and simmering soup and (at least in our house) the making of dough for bread and stewed meat and the lingering scent of fresh rosemary and the web of relationships that calls you into a wide variety of roles and responsibilities. The wells of grief and sorrow; a well that may be within your body as well as at the well at the fork in the road in the myth of old.

And, since Imbolc is sometimes remembered as that moment when the seed, planted before the snow fell, turns itself, perhaps ever so slightly, to be able to grow, I might remind us (including myself) that the mystical is the nature of existence, seeds and stars alike, dancing together, and that to turn towards the light is also to nestle into the darkness; for we need roots and shoots, both.

To rise, we must rise rooted.

Blessings of warmth amidst the cold to you and yours -

Sara Jolena