From Existentialism to Mysticism


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We cannot watch ourselves as we grow. What is true of the physical is also true of our mental, emotional and spiritual growth. The way pictures document the aging process, so that we can hold an old photo and marvel that we once looked like that, writing preserves our previous selves. This was the experience I had coming across some notes on mysticism from my existentialism days (aka daze). Below, is the progression of my thoughts on the mystical process, from my early doubting years (under the tyranny of the mind) to my more recent submission to the dictates of the spirit.
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Notes On Mysticism

Mysticism, as I understand it, is an act of desperation. Short of suicide, it is the strangulation of reason, reality, self and world. An insistence not to see, hear, or speak evil - a refusal to accept world as it is – a refuge into the realm of the fantastic. Only for those whom suffering is tremendous (& cannot be relieved) those who are wounded at every contact with the world … is it any solution at all. type must be emotional, idealistic, and mistrustful of own intellect.

Mysticism necessitates a certain mist, calls for a kind of fog, where it is impossible to make out with any certainty what one sees moving in the distance (where poetry passes for religion, and vice versa).

Mysticism is the belief in privileged moments, when one feels touched, or in the presence of something unknown/ unknowable, an increase in space (how else could one justify the existence of intuition & inspiration)? Something pre and post religions, altogether... a supra-religious ecstasy -- a sixth sense perhaps, that allows one to anticipate some things, perceive others, and to know without knowing.

Mysticism is a state, or region of the soul; another plane of existence, with its own sense of time and space (religion unhinged/unfettered). More an intimation really than anything else, a whispering of another world...

In a mystical moment, one's world view is transformed.



Religion: an unseeing faith in the written.
Spirituality: an unwritten faith in the unseen.

Miracles are proud creatures; they reveal themselves only to those who already Believe.

Spirituality is to religion what dreams are to reality: ethereal, and ungovernable by earthly laws.

Perhaps Spirituality is the reward for suffering, (superficiality the punishment for not).

To give birth to God, one must die in delivery room.

© Yahia Lababidi


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This is really deep. I am teaching world religion and beliefs and I admit I need more wisdom like this. I can't wait to share this to my students.

This is very encouraging to hear, thank you 🙏🏼

Here’s a bit of background and more spiritual aphorisms from my forthcoming book that I would love for you to also share with your students:

https://idriesshahfoundation.org/interview-with-yahia-lababidi/

Oh, thank you! Will check this out.

Interesting seeing how your thoughts have developed on this. Your journey seems much more meandering, less predestined, than I'd presumed from the writes you usually provide us.

At first I thought 'tyranny' seemed like a strong word for the mind but I can see from your earlier writings how it makes sense in this context. Perhaps a little distrustful and more polemic - I'll admit I can relate to it quite a lot!

I consider myself a 'structural realist', philosophically and metaphysically, which is to say I've decided to avoid the question of spirituality and arrived at more or less the exact same conclusion regardless ;)

O, I’m all over the place, lurching from one extreme to another. But, the funny thing is that I think this, too, is predestined — which is to say, I see my end in my beginning and vice versa...

(Do check out lyrics to Leonard Cohen song There For You, it speaks me better than I do myself.)

The mind is ‘a beautiful servant & dangerous master’ as maxim goes. But, I try not to pontificate too much, lately, since what’s in a name?

There is a season for this and that; as you point out, even though one may not subscribe to a title, in essence, they might live it 🙏🏼

Thanks for another thought provoking post. I am not convinced that religion and spirituality can be truly separated, they seem to me to be two lungs in the same chest. I think religion is not a category, as in dachsunds and terriers are dogs, but something qualitative. There is good religion and bad religion. A bad religion misses the mark, and should not really be given the name religion.
A religion without spirituality, or spirituality without religion seem to me incomplete.

Well stated, about religion and spirituality not being separable — two lungs in the same chest is a memorable way of putting it.

I am coming to this understanding, after decades of regarding mysticism as, somehow, not rooted in religion. Inexhaustible subject...

A thought provoking essay.

For me, “religion” is more about man imposing constraint over spirituality and the Divine – trying to conform and shrink the infinite to something man can comfortably control. “Faith” for me is embracing spirituality and recognizing the infinite “omni” of the Divine.

I personally think, perhaps, that “metaphysical” may be a more apt term because it encompasses mysticism and spirituality and the pursuit of understanding the Divine, as well as trying to understand our place in these concepts and the place of those concepts in the hard reality of our human existence and evolution.

Thanks, for sharing your thoughts. Such matters are so intimate, they hardly withstand debate (for example, in Islam, the Quran is considered the word of God, hardly the work of men). But, I think I understand what you mean. Peace 🙏🏼

Well ... I have to say I don't think I would have sought you out so much back then ... but hold on ... no I would have but to argue. LOL.

I prefer the term metaphysics to mysticism. To my mind it carries less of a woo-woo like stigma. Metaphysical also pertains to what is real and notable but not necessarily physical. For example we experience time and even measure it but it is experienced relatively. The study of thought and the human psyche fits nicely with the concept of metaphysics. And I have to say there are times when scientific principles also slide in there.

Hah! That’s what I did best back then is argue—primarily, with myself :p

There’s nothing woo-woo about mysticism to me, or the lives of mystics/saints and Divine Love and revelation it entails.

Metaphysics is too dry for me, frankly, still hedging—a reminder of philosophy & life of the mind that I’ve left behind...

It's only semantics:)

I'm very interested in reading your thoughts, Yahia

Thank you, hope they continue to keep you good company 🙏🏼

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