/lit/ - Literature

Anyway, has anyone here actually read any texts of mysticism? I read Saint Teresa of Avila's "The Interior Castle" years ago as an undergrad, but I'd like to revisit it soon.

OP, read Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and other mystics, and realize that even if you believe in Christ you're still under the spell of materialist conceptions of the world. You must learn that to be a real, true Christian is to treat material reality as a thing of lesser importance.

Remember, "My kingdom is not of this world."

>>11791287
>>11791484
Yeah, I feel like we need to distinguish between philosophers and mystics in Christianity. You can find treatises of both Christian philosophy and Christian mysticism, but they both are ultimately seeking after different things. Or, rather, they're both approaching the same thing from different ways.

And it can be a little confusing because the Catholic Church lists both philosophers and mystics as Doctors of the Church, so they can tend to get lumped together.

>>11781456
Ironically, Teresa of Avila is a pretty lucid writer when you actually read her stuff. "The Interior Castle" is a great treatise of mysticism and a good guide for purging the soul of sin. There's a reason she's a Doctor of the Church.

What is some great Christian mysticism? I've read St. Teresa of Avlia's "The Interior Castle," what else exists in that vein?

>>10751495
Spain doesn't have philosophers, it has mystics.

The saints teach us that devotion to God is the highest and most profound pleasure.

Christian mysticism is good stuff. Read up on the various saints that have written down their mystical visions and miraculous experiences, it's very interesting.

Anything by a Christian mystic, because of course their whole thing is that there's more to reality than the physical/material.

>>9448496
It reminds us that Christianity has a supernatural component that can't be ignored. Union with God on the spiritual, metaphysical level is arguably the primary goal of Christianity, but in our daily lives we can lose sight of that. Mysticism brings it back to the forefront of things. It causes us to seek after union with God in ways that transcend the normal operations of human life.

>>9154358
But he also tells us to pray, which creates the same effect. A superior effect, in fact.

Does anyone else find that the best way to approach the internet, and web culture, is from a vaguely mystical, magical perspective?

It is kind of an 'otherworld.' It bears some resemblance to the 'real' world, and some connection to it, but it's also fundamentally unreal, unmoored by the weights which bear down on reality. It's a strange, unreal place, where almost anything can happen. It's almost Wonderland-esque.

>>8938313
The teachings of Christ are actually easier to find, they're just what's in the Gospels, and the New Testament more broadly, since that's where Jesus' stuff is recorded.

Church doctrine is what happens when you take the teachings of Christ, and all of Scripture, really, and use reason and logic to extrapolate additional teachings from them. For example, the doctrine of the Trinity was formed by logically considering the three "entities" that seem to appear in Scripture, all claiming to be God, but also logically considering that according to Judaism, and Christianity, there is only one God.

In theory, there IS no difference between a saint and a good Catholic. All Catholics are called to be saints, whether they are lay people or clergy, married or single. And anyone can be a saint if they live according to the teachings of Christ and the Church. However, frankly, some people just don't. A lot of people don't. Some do, but not as well as others. The ones that live as good Catholics the best of all eventually become saints, and are acknowledged as such after their deaths.

Does Teresa of Avila count? She is a Doctor of the Church, after all.

Embrace mysticism, OP. Walk by faith, and not by sight!