The mystic is not a special kind of person; every person is a special kind of mystic.
– Father William McNamara
I love this quote. It turns the “mystics are special” idea on its head, and there is a lot of truth to it.
Mystics are not a special kind of people. They are human beings like you and me, with all the universal human experiences and all the universal human psychological parts. The only difference is that they have had some opening to the divine, as many have, or they have an intuition about it and are drawn to it, as many are.
Every person is a special kind of mystic. Our relationship with the divine is colored by our personality, experiences, and culture. Our perception of the divine is colored by the same. As is how we live and express it. The universal is expressed in unique ways.
From a bigger perspective, we can say that mystics are the divine locally and in human form rediscovering itself and expressing and living it through and as that human form.
From this bigger perspective, what’s astonishing isn’t that humans discover the divine, although from a human perspective it can look that way. What’s astonishing is that the divine temporarily and locally has taken the form of a human being in the world, and then takes itself as just that and separated from the rest of existence.
The infinite wishes to experience itself as finite. The one as parts. Oneness as separation. Love as a lack of love or hatred. And so on.