A Mystic in Our Midst

Mysticism is intriguing to me. I am not religious and I don’t believe in a god. I grew up quite religious and pursued it with true conviction, to the denial of reality. Where the hammer didn’t hammer the nail and 2 plus 2 did not equal 4.

Even though I have pivoted, I find myself feeling connected to mystic qualities, as though I was experiencing something other worldly. So what is this? Is it transcendence? What does transcendence say about our lived experience? What is consciousness? And do any of these unanswered mysteries change the way we engage with the world?

Should we reduce the world down to its most elemental features? Is that true reality? Or are we missing the bigger picture by not stepping back to see the way it takes shape, the story that’s being told?

We miss the beauty of a Klimt painting if we simply focus on the strokes and techniques of the artist. Both minute details and the whole piece are valuable to understanding the beauty of his work. The great and the small. But there is a danger in reducing life and forgetting to step back again. We forget there is more than just one plane of existence. There is the underlying and possibly the overarching story at play.

When I step back and look at The Beethoven Frieze,

I am transformed.