The Way of Mystical Quest

(Note: For each of the Six Ways of Being Religious, Dale Cannon lists key ways that they can be performed skillfully or unskillfully. Thus, for each path, we will be exploring competence, incompetence and the shadow side of competence; the balance of finitude and infinitude; and the balance of selflessness and egoism.)

Competence

Inwardly self-mastered, at one with one’s self, profoundly acquainted with the deeper truths of which one’s tradition testifies on the basis of personal contemplative experience; master of a path that leads to their personal realization; skillful in the path of its ascetic and meditative disciplines; master in guiding others along the path.

In modern Paganism, when I’ve seen people talking about becoming acquainted with their tradition’s truths through personal contemplative experience, the overwhelming majority come back to being in Nature, usually out in the “wild” to some degree, and quieting their mind enough that they find themselves in a profound oneness with the natural world and everything in it. Some folks who write about this do relate encounters with deities in more internal settings, but the “Nature oneness” is enough of a widespread experience that many Pagans will nod enthusiastically when they hear it mentioned. The issue is that this deeper truth is not attached in any way to a tradition of meditation or mind-cleansing.

“An awenydd walks the deep ways of the world, seeing the land through layers of history, its shape created by ancestors of various origins and ethnicities in successive waves of movement, bequeathing to us the legacy of their experience. To walk the deep ways is to acknowledge and respond to the spirits of the land directly as they are perceived now, giving them their due and keeping a sense of the land as a living web of being which contains us … To walk the land in this way is to seek awen: to discover a living presence, from the land spirits, from the gods, from the ancestors. It is to see them as they see us. To bridge the gulf that has grown between us. To listen to an awakened land and to shape a response that opens a conversation.”

– The awenyddion, of the Awen ac Awenydd website.

Whereas the Way of Devotion uses the heart as a tool, and thus part of its price is the reshaping and cleansing of the heart, the equivalent for the Way of Mystical Quest could be said to be the consciousness – or, at any rate, the non-intellectual part of the Mind. Mastering one’s consciousness has not been a terribly high priority in modern Pagan worship and practice, or at least not in mainstream groups. Some small exclusive coven-based groups teach it to those who have passed to the inner circle, but it isn’t part of the average Pagan religious group’s doctrine. Similarly, while most Pagans are at least theoretically fine with some form of meditation, most are very uncomfortable with anything remotely in the category of asceticism. The sole exception to this may be the ideal of the Native American “vision quest”, which is generally only accepted because 1) it’s done out in Nature, and Nature provides the ordeal, and 2) Native American spirituality is revered – or in some cases, fetishized – by many American Pagans.

This leaves our greater faith-context without any indigenous tradition of practice for this path. In ancient times, the city-based European Pagan religions certainly had orders of renunciates, but little is left in writing about their beliefs or practices. The occasional scrap can be rescued – the Pagan Book of Hours bases its “hours” on the Roman Horae, or sacred hourly discipline kept by some Roman temples, on which the Catholic monastic hours were eventually based. However, as this path is by definition one of quietness and internality, most of the experiences of ancient urban renunciates were lost to the mists of history, and there is nothing beyond occasional mentions when it comes to the anchorites of more rurally-based cultures. This creates a hole in our traditions that needs to be noted and not dismissed as “Our religion doesn’t do that sort of thing.” Truly, it seems like Christianity’s ambivalence about the Way of Shamanic Mediation – the only reason that our religion doesn’t do that is because we decided that it doesn’t, and discouraged seekers in that direction. Fortunately, some of the seekers stayed, and continue to explore on their own, if not publicly.

“People won’t get it. That’s not a reason not to be a monastic, but after the 43rd time you’ve had someone ask, “A what?” or blink at you while saying, “But I thought only Christians had nuns,” you will be heartily sick of explaining yourself. You don’t have to, of course, but be prepared for most people – even most fellow Pagans – to not understand that yes, you really are living a life of monastic dedication to the gods, and have renounced certain things (what, exactly, depends on you) and are, in fact, serious about all this suspiciously un-Pagan-sounding stuff.”

– Elizabeth Vongvisith, Northern Tradition Pagan

Incompetence

Not inwardly in touch with one’s self; inexperienced; reckless and naively venturesome in tackling ascetic disciplines and meditative practices that are inappropriate for one’s present stage of development; offering spiritual advice at second or third hand; lacking in empathy toward others’ spiritual growth and ignorant of what is appropriate for them.

Most modern Pagans tend to make their reckless errors in areas of magical practice rather than spiritual adventurism, with the exception of some who play with plant entheogens. While the sacred hallucinogens are generally associated with the Way of Shamanic Mediation, most of the Pagans who use them incautiously (assuming they are looking for more than just a fun evening of watching the ceiling fan dance) aren’t looking to interact with spirits so much as they are seeking a personal spiritual experience to change their worlds. Hallucinogens, however, are not the right tool for this path, as any reader of Ram Dass’s Be Here Now would discover. (Ram Dass took LSD, had a spiritual experience, couldn’t recreate it properly, and went to India to see guru Neem Karoli Baba. The guru took a large dose of the drug and sat for a while with no observable effect, eventually commenting that meditation is better, as the drug takes you there but then you have to leave, and don’t really stay long enough to gain any understanding.)

It’s also very seductive to believe that whatever your brain churned out while on those mushrooms is the Ultimate Message from the All That Is, instead of just the equivalent of a dream or mental static. It’s not that the sacred plants can’t bring spiritual experiences; it’s just that recklessly taking them without any of the protocols worked out by the ancients and tribal peoples who worked with them is unlikely to yield anything particularly spiritually useful – except perhaps for some hard lessons if things go very wrong.

Shadow Side of Competence

(Note: This is not the same as incompetence, which is listed above. It is when a person who is otherwise competent in their chosen path becomes blinded to any other options than that path, not only for themselves but for anyone else in the world.)

Ready to treat all problems as solvable through mystical spiritual disciplines; quietistic; apathetic toward what lies beyond or outside of the mystical quest.

Because there is so little of this path in Paganism, one doesn’t often run into too many people who are telling everyone else that they ought to follow it. They exist, but they’re rare, and as one correspondent pointed out, “Most of those people defect to Buddhism.”

Balance of Finitude and Infinitude

(Note: These words are Professor Cannon’s chosen terminology for the balance of the practical details with the numinous energy we are opening to experience.)

Passionately in pursuit of enlightenment (a direct seeing into, and union with, “ultimate reality” that will enable all things to be seen for what they really are and related to in their integrity) by way of practices that anticipate it; diligent in the practice of the relevant disciplines but never confusing the means with the goal; possessed of quiet centeredness and inner simplicity coupled with practical realism; attentive to what is going on both within and without; dispassionate and detached (i.e. free from this-worldly passions and attachments) while still appreciating finite goods in their place; living a life centered on what is essential, with all else held lightly.

This is a path of paring down everything that is not essential, so that the bare bones of universal existence can be clearly seen. At the same time, since we have few Pagan monasteries and no communities willing to support Pagan mystics, our mystical practitioners still have to pay the rent in some way. Some find their way to this path after disabilities curtailed their jobs and they ended up on a state stipend (and a few confided that they felt the disabilities were left-handed gifts from the Gods that enabled them to have at least a subsistence living while concentrating full-time on their anchorite path, sort of a “state-sponsored medicant”). Others juggle their practice with jobs and households, seeing no other way out of the bind; some have children or elderly parents who cannot just be abandoned for mystical questing.

“It’s very hard to balance the ideals of a monastic or at least a simple contemplative life while managing a household full of children, and a mate who has no interest in such a lifestyle. For my husband’s sake, I’m glad that being a Pagan monastic doesn’t necessarily require celibacy, but my attempts to simplify my own possessions, schedule, and daily activities seem like they are always being thwarted by the necessities of my lifestyle. How I’ve adapted is to make my monasticism internal rather than external. I deliberately build the extra minutes into my life so that everything I do can be part of a discipline. Those extra minutes, short as they are, become the way I can breathe, center, check myself for any negative ‘stories’ I’m telling myself about what I’m about to do, mentally replace those ‘stories’ with a firm focus on the sacredness of the act, say a short line of personal prayer, and then breathe again and perform the action. When I’m getting into the car to pick up my children at school, when I’m about to take a bath, when I’m about to do household cleaning, when I’m in the act of sitting down at my desk at work, when I’m waking up or going to sleep – everything I do is in the process of becoming part of my discipline. It’s hard, much harder than doing it with other people who are doing the same thing, and I often fail, but each month it grows and colors a little more of my life. Each year I’ll be growing into my practice until I no longer miss having a monastery … or, possibly, until I can find or create one with other like-minded people.”

– Vesta Killand, Pagan monastic

“It is within the rhythm of discipline that monastics describe their liberation.  In acting in a disciplined way, arising from devotion to the spirit they serve, they provide consistent doorways throughout every day through which the divine can enter.  In that constant offering of the most precious things that humans have – our time, bodies, and attention – there is the essence of the true sacrifice, the sublimation of the small-self to the higher-self, the divine-self, the soul’s work.  This routine is usually combined with certain vows, which usually serve to generate a simple, conflict-free life.  In my own experience, discipline is by far the most difficult ideal to uphold.  Life likes to intrude, and our minds like to resist our spiritual work by inserting what feels like pressing worldly concerns.  For a householder (married, with a job and responsibilities) like myself, it is infinitely challenging to maintain discipline.  At the same time, it is infinitely rewarding.  Not only does some success yield greater results than no success (so it’s worth the effort), but by living life in this way, I am called to extend myself compassion, over and over, for falling short of meeting the Spirits I Serve in Their full vision for my life.  Learning to be compassionate with oneself, to accept failure with equanimity and resilience, to maintain effort even when one doesn’t feel like practicing – this builds a deep wellspring from which monastics ripple into the world.”

– Kimberly Kirner, Pagan monastic.

Imbalance: Loss of Finitude

(Loss of a realistic understanding of the practical details of the path.)

Wholly otherworldly in outlook; disposed to extreme self-mortification; disdainful of mundane concerns and the welfare of others; tending to confuse the means, or a certain stage of development, with the goal; overly serious (possessing no sense of humor); impatient with things beyond one’s control.

When I read this part to a Pagan friend who had lived for a time in a Buddhist monastery (and left because Pagan Gods began to talk to him and disrupt his meditations), he laughed and said, “The monks everybody hated!” Like the Way of Right Action, a sense of humor is crucial to keeping one’s perspective on one’s path, and especially the ability to laugh at one’s self, ideally every time one makes an error. Being able to say, “Wow, look at me being silly!” cuts down on arrogance, detachment from the rest of the world, and frustration with anything that is the least bit disruptive.

Because the Way of Mystical Quest works well as a solitary spiritual activity, it can encourage someone to wall themselves up in a little world where their ideas are never challenged by anyone or anything else, and thus they don’t have to grow and change. Being able to achieve inner peace while sitting along in a calm room with the phone unplugged is one thing. Being able to achieve it while sick, in pain, in a noisy crowded public place, or when facing unpleasant people doing unpleasant things is something else entirely, and one can’t master the second without repeatedly facing those situations. Exposing one’s self to situations where one doesn’t have external control gives the best practice in mastering inner control.  

“For me, Paganism has got to matter in the real world, too. It can’t just be about our personal spiritual practices, it has got to have positive effects on the world around us. If we want to see Paganism grow, be accepted by society as a legitimate religious option and, importantly, be able to challenge those aspects of society which need changing, then a Pagan Monasticism can’t be about withdrawing from the world, it needs to be about engaging with it, showing the world a better way of life, and making it a better place. This means a Pagan Monasticism needs both elements of the vision – the disciplined contemplative spiritual practice and the radical service to the poor and needy. This is why Pagan monasteries should not be out in the countryside but should be deliberately placed in run down urban areas and communities. And if we want access to greenery, then maybe teaching local people guerilla gardening might be a way forward.” .

– Matthew, UK Anglo-Saxon Druid

Imbalance: Loss of Infinitude

(Loss of a real connection to the Divine/Universe/All That Is, however you see that.)

Characterized by spiritual adventurism and mystical dilettantism – seeking “Mystical Experiences” – with little if any commitment to personal transformation or sincere pursuit of at-onement with “ultimate reality”; preoccupied with correct method (the outer forms) of mystical quest at the expense of  its substance; characterized by acedia (spiritual boredom, loss of passion for what it higher).

Another fringe area of modern Paganism that can sometimes be a forum for foolishness and naivete is Pagans who work with physical ordeal – often hook pulls or hangs, cuttings or brandings, or other controlled ritual disciplines of pain, endurance, and the body’s own chemicals. Usually these practices are at least loosely based on indigenous sacred ordeal practices, such as the Lakota Sun Dance, the Hindu Kavandi ceremony, the Indonesian ball dances, etc. Sacred ordeal work spans multiple paths – it is used by some spirit-workers on the Way of Shamanic Mediation to achieve altered states, and also by some devotees on the Way of Devotion as a gift to some of the more bloodthirsty Gods in our pantheons – and many practitioners have had powerful experiences with it. However, like all disciplines that use the resources of the body and mind in an extreme way, it must be approached humbly, with proper training and assistance from knowledgeable people, and without any sense of needing to prove something. Jason, a Pagan ordeal master, commented that, “It’s the ones who are trying to prove how tough they are who end up crying like a baby, and bailing out quickly. That’s because Spirit kicks them in the knees and takes them down, shows them how tough they aren’t. You can’t go into this practice with ego, or not knowing yourself well.”

While sacred ordeal work does take some ideas from the ascetic aspects of more transcendent – and body-negative – religions, it is telling that its practice in modern Paganism is often used to reclaim a violated body, or bring one’s self back into a spiritually whole place with one’s flesh. Ascetic practices can all too often become a sanctified outlet for body hatred, or self-hatred in general, and many Pagans have veered away from them at least partly for those reasons. Reclaiming such practices in body-loving and Earth-loving ways – whether something as simple as a more restricted natural diet or an ecological discipline that prevents one from collecting the detritus of materialism – will be a powerful gift that modern Paganism has the chance to recreate for the world, if we can put our egos aside long enough to learn.

“At the heart of monastic discipline is periods of silence and contemplation.  The core of monastic life is in listening to the divine, not reaching outward toward it.  We seek to open for the divine touch, regardless of our mood, our circumstances, or our sense of inspiration.  It is practicing hospitality to the spirit that called us.  Maintaining long stretches of silence heightens one’s sensitivity to divine wisdom.  Offering periods of contemplative prayer or sitting meditation is an invitation to the divine, both immanent and transcendent, to be with us.  In my experience, there is no greater gift we can give to any spirit-being than the offering of our silence and time.  Other offerings are relatively easy and cheap: it takes little to pour out some whisky or light a candle.  It takes a lot of effort to consistently overcome our internal resistance and sit in silence before the spirit world.  Sometimes, this is rewarded with a feeling of union and ecstasy, or a key message of wisdom, or a feeling of deep well-being and peace.  But sometimes, we sit and nothing happens.  Our mind wanders, we bring it back.  The moments tick by.  We squirm and realign ourselves.  And this is fine.  It is actually that squirmy, uncomfortable silent period that is the greatest offering we can give to the spirits.  Because it is the most arduous and it requires the most altruistic effort.  If we open the doorway to the spirit world but then slam it when they do not come bearing gifts, we are not being truly hospitable in the first place.  Contemplation, if done out of devotion for one or more spirits, is much more than seeking wisdom or self-knowledge – it is a sacrificial act.  Doing it many times each day for long periods, as monastic life ideally demands, is an incredible challenge that integrates devotion and discipline into periods of being rather than doing, so that Being – the Divine Mystery – might be realized.”

– Kimberly Kirner, Pagan monastic.

Humility is also necessary to the people who choose to teach these mysteries to others, or who facilitate the entry of others into those spiritually powerful spaces. Empathy is important; there’s arrogance in the attitude of “I jumped in and screwed up and fell on my head; why should you get off easily?” that lacks a compassionate connection to the future, and the students that are that future. Ascetic practices are all, in the end, attempts to quiet, cleanse, and focus the spirit, not to show off what a hardcore badass you are. A lack of meditative reverence in a teacher or facilitator when working with these tools is a red flag.

In contrast – but presenting its own kind of spiritual danger – we also have the practitioner who focuses on the method but doesn’t get anywhere. No spiritual connection is made, even when they do marathon meditating. Sometimes this is someone who should be seeking a different path; other times the individual is subconsciously blocking themselves from moving forward. This may be because moving forward will mean facing down their own repressed issues and motivations, which is part of cleaning out and purifying the consciousness. At this point, the methods become the point, rather than where they will eventually take you, and soon “acedia” sets in. Acedia is the kind of spiritual boredom where nothing seems worth doing, where one relapses into apathy or drags one’s self through one’s practice with no enthusiasm for it or for anything else. As Kathleen Norris writes in her book Acedia & me, “…The boundaries between depression and acedia are notoriously fluid; at the risk of oversimplifying, I would suggest that while depression is an illness treatable by counseling and medication, acedia is a vice that is best countered by spiritual practice and the discipline of prayer.”

Selflessness

(Note: This is not suggesting we should always be selfless, but that there will be times on each path when we need to give of ourselves freely and generously.)

Free of self-preoccupation, pretentiousness, and the distortions of consciousness that arise from the unenlightened self; committed to ongoing spiritual transformation and willing to take on spiritual discipline for its sake when appropriate (i.e. freedom from the presumption of “having arrived”); boundless and compassionate in hospitality of spirit; affirming of each person’s need to find and follow his own path at his own pace.

May we all, regardless of our paths, be free from the presumption of “having arrived”! It’s especially important here, though, because this path requires that one be at home with humility, and sees it as a positive state as opposed to conflating it with the negativity of humiliation.

“Think about that moment when someone points out something you’ve done that is particularly problematic behavior, something you wish you hadn’t done, something it’s hard to look at. Especially if you’ve done it before and haven’t been able to stop yet. Especially if the person pointing it out is someone you’re not happy with, and you wish it hadn’t come from them. Think about your usual reaction in that state. What if you could replace that reaction with joy? Joy that some darkness in you has been uncovered and exposed to the light, joy that you have been given the next step on the quest toward self-awareness and self-improvement. Imagine what it would be like to be a person who had that reaction in that situation. Imagine what it would take to become that person. If the idea appeals to you, maybe this is your road.”

– Ben Collier, solitary Pagan monastic.

Egoism

Spiritually elitist (disdain for persons who lack spiritual enlightenment); escapist (pursuit of mystical quest as a way to escape from outward problems; exploitative of mystical experiences, lore, or status in service of egoistic motives or material advantage.

When our church put up the Pagan Book of Hours, with some addendums about Pagan monasticism and its current issues, we were bombarded with emails from people who wanted to join a purported Pagan monastery. Without exception, every email that came in over the next year on that subject came from a Pagan who admitted to suffering from mental illness, and wanted desperately to find a monastery where they could “get away from the pain of surviving in the outside world”. Every email contained the hope of pure escapism. However, the reality of group monastic living (or for that matter, any sincere and effective work on this path) is that you don’t leave your internal demons behind when you walk in the door. Instead, they are enhanced by the narrow focus of that life, and you have a more direct opportunity to face them down and deal with them. Many Catholic monasteries inform the interested up front that they require potential novices to be screened by Church psychiatrists in order to weed out the sort of people who were writing emails to the Order of the Horae.

“This is not a road that will take you painlessly away from your mental problems. It’s not about running away from anything, it’s about running toward something – on a road whose first few miles will continue to get harder until, finally, something gives out. That could be you, or it could be your demons. You have to outlast them while running through thorns.”

– Vesta Killand, Pagan monastic.

Escapist would-be mystics ironically often end up in groups with the contrasting offender – the spiritual leader who flaunts their knowledge of mysticism in order to exploit their followers and gain material advantage or flattery, but who is in no way actually committed to self-knowledge and self-improvement. Spiritual elitism is a common “tell” of this individual, who may constantly criticize those who evidence “unenlightened” behavior. It is by no means limited to exploitative leaders, however; well-meaning people can suffer from that vice as well. As we mentioned earlier in this section, the best weapon against this tendency is a good sense of humor that one isn’t afraid to direct as one’s self as well.

“You’re going to have doubts and make mistakes. That’s okay. That’s part of learning how to open yourself fully to the divine, my friend. Nobody lands in a monastery or a hermit’s cave knowing everything there is to know, or what would be the point? You’ll have to find a balance between not giving up or giving in too soon, and knowing what methods of practice do or don’t work to get you closer to the gods, nearer to the Mysteries, and which will help make you one with everything, as the old hot dog/Dalai Lama joke goes (personally, I prefer plain old mustard, which is pretty ascetic, I guess). Anyway, you aren’t a bad monastic or a failure if you don’t do everything “right” or stumble a bit on the way. You’re human, and you’re going to screw up from time to time. As for having doubts, that’s what faith is for – the belief that the gods will act according to their nature, and that nature will run its course, and that you can and will find a way to align with those energies and thus deepen your connections to both. Faith is like a crumbling wall, I once wrote in a fanfic long ago, and every day you’re going to struggle to climb to the top. And it’s the climbing that matters most.”

– Elizabeth Vongvisith, Northern Tradition Pagan.

Resources for the Way of Mystical Quest

• Pagan Contemplative Prayer blog post by Yvonne Aburrow
• Polytheist Monasticism Resources from the Black Stone Hermitage
• Pagan Book of Hours