Mystics

Recently, the poet Mark Nepo did an online poetry reading to support Spirituality and Practice. He quoted that a mystic is anyone who believes there is something beyond themselves.

Another quote on mysticism: “A mystic is a person who has a direct experience of the sacred, unmediated by conventional religious rituals or intermediaries,” Mirabai Starr, author of Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, tells OprahMag.com.

I have so appreciated Nepo’s Book of Awakenings, which is a day-by-day meditation and action book. For me, each day encourages me to look beyond myself and be in connection with the world, which I term mysticism. One of the quotes I particularly like for spiritual direction:

“Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we’ve spun, the tasks we’ve assumed, the problems we have to solve. They’ll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.”