cire perdue

Wow, what a concept that mysticism could be fun? Are they even in the same category? Is it possible? Without humor I think love is impossible. There may be attachment and caring, but is that love? When I had the stroke in the hospital my funny bone metasticized. Of course it did not help that I saw Abdul'baha that said true love is fun. So blame the Master if I get on your nerves. The word mysterious comes from the same root word, obviously, but as humility is not to be confused with humiliation and is done, neither should mysticism be thought of as mysterious. Mysticisim is simply having a personal relationship with God. It is simply stated in the Baha'i Faith, because God is our beloved. We have been set up. "Run, it's a set up." You have been given a mystical Faith that makes you a mystic. We have been "set up" to be mystics, all Baha'is can become mystics.

That may be disappointing if you want to be Saint Teresa 'a Bernini. His statue of her is considered x rated in some circles, but those circles could have included Nieztche and Kafka for instance. It is not inacurrate and is historical to use physical love and ardour to convey pure devotion to God. It is not my purpose to consider that issue directly. All I can tell you as GK Chesterton said that true religion/faith is not a carpe diem process per se, it is a long range goal and endeavor. St Teresa is depicted as an older woman, her robes are more voluptuous than her body. There is even a lesson for Baha'is in this sculpture. You may get even where she got or better, but it's gonna take a few years if ever. So?

It was very scary to face off a Buddhist/Baha'i here on this forum over achieving oneness with God as he had. He believed he had achieved "union" with God, an amorphous blindingly intoxicating state that I believe friends of mine obtained and I once witnessed using an LSD cocktail. Even this once Baha'i who had achieved union said that was not valid. The two people I know who clear lighted bore no fruit. This happened in the days of The Summer of Love. One was a sexual and intellectual predator, the other was following his lifestyle and died of AIDS in the earliest days of that era. We have extremely specific Writings for this issue, and he chose to disregard them.

I just talked to a friend who is a published Baha'i author and scholar whose mind is quite respectable. It turns out he thinks we have alread killed ourselves as a planet. He went on and on with all these details, I could not disagree with anything he said. For the first time in a long time I got his attention, because I told him he sounded terrified. He truly did. A terrified Baha'i is an oxymoron that is as severe in contradiction as "gay Baha'i", so all I can tell you is that fear is not an attribute of God, and we are correct to say that too much fear of God is not appropriate. "God" has been our parent, but in His newest manifestation He is our beloved. Are we to fear our lover or only their displeasure which is ever just?

On Pilgrimage one of the members of the House who spoke one evening, (I can't find my journal. KEEP A JOURNAL OF DAILY EVENTS WHEN YOU GO ON PILGRIMAGE!!!!! I would name him if I could find my journal), said in pilgrim's notes that someone reported we would lose a third of the earth's population. He said, "So? We are all going to die." It could only benefit this planet to drop 1/3. In THE PRICELESS PEARL Khanum says Shoghi Effendi said there would be terrible losses of great beauty or such. I thought he meant table settings and manners.

However FEAR of dying is not wrong. It shows how much one loves life. It means you love your children and their children. I suggest that Baha'is watch the movies "2012" and "Deep Impact" and other disaster movies that show the beautiful responses of people facing their deaths. (I love the Dennis Quaid one about NYC flooded and frozen where a father who has the resources goes for his son because he promisedLaugh in the face of death as Abdul'baha told me. A Baha'i conquers death just as the early Christians who did not fear nursing plague victims in Rome, pagan or not. It was their belief, their faith that caused them to die for what they knew was right. There were those Christians who sickened and died as well, but they feared not, and the love they received as they died was absolute confirmation that there was a better life after this one.

As Mary Magdalene said, and I say in her spirit, arise and go forth and teach for He is risen and we must rise from the very deaths of our selfs to simply love. I say teach, but it is not to teach that is our highest calling though that is the word used. Our HIGHEST CALLING IS TO LOVE ALL, THE UNLOVEABLE WHO NEED US THE MOST. You are dying moment to moment, you are aspiring to the next world with every breath. It's your choice to die resentfully with confirmation of your greatest fears as the spice in that bitter dish, or will you quaff the wine of astonishment, drink from the blood of Husayn, and smile as your beloved meets you when you step across the veil?

Does it matter that we may all be here after 2012? Is this all overreaction, guilt, projection of our fear? Are we externalizing/projecting? To not increase the ability to love in this world is the most devastating thing I know of. It is far, far more important than an outward acceptance of our Faith. If one has a child is smart and unkind, and a child of minor talents and low intellect who is courteous this latter child is preferable.

On this I will rest. I probably need to do a comedy rountine. I was thinking of being born from a rhinocerous, but that has probably been done, as obscure as it would seem. Hmmmmphhhhhhhhh!

Yeshua

Wow! That was incredible Cire When I get a free moment I will reflect more deeply over it!

I also love Bernini's "The Ecstasy of St Theresa". A lot of people are shocked to find it in the Vatican - as they are convinced that St Teresa is having an orgasm, and the arrow of the angel piercing her heart is deliberately phallic shaped, as it appeared in her vision. Jacques Lacan, for example, whilst discussing the female orgasm, said that "you only have to go and look at Bernini's statue in Rome to understand immediately that she's coming, there is no doubt about it." ("Encore," Sem. XX: 70-71)

Of course, Teresa was having an orgasm - but not a genital one, an orgasm of the soul, her heart having being pierced and completely overwhelmed by the love of God and the passion to be one with him.



"Beside me on the left appeared an angel in bodily form . . . He was not tall but short, and very beautiful; and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest ranks of angels, who seem to be all on fire . . . In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one can not possibly wish it to cease, nor is one's soul content with anything but God. This is not a physical but a spiritual pain, though the body has some share in it -- even a considerable share."

- St. Teresa of Avila (b. 1515) described the unio mystica in her spiritual memoirs


"When He touches me I clutch the sky’s sheets,

the way other lovers do

the earth’s weave of clay.


Any real ecstasy is a sign

you are moving in the right direction,

don’t let any prude tell you otherwise.


St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)

To the carnal mind this sounds like Teresa is having some really good sex with a man, but it isn't at all. She's describing one of her many spiritual encounters with the Lord. She was the mentor, friend and contemporary of St John of the Cross and was one of the most ecstatic lovers ever to have emerged from the Christian tradition. Her goal was spiritual marriage with God, the mere thought of which always made her faint in the heat of love. Her poems are vigorous, contemporary and in this particular case raunchily humorous. Teresa was a beautiful looking woman, but her pride was not in her physical prettiness but the beauty of her soul - which I assure you was utterly ravishingly beautiful! She was a woman of the world as well as a contemplative and so is known not only for her mystical visions, ecstasies and raptures but also her reforms of the Carmelite order, her courage and her humour in the face of corrupt clergy.

As you can see, Teresa envisions herself and God as marital lovers. Their bedsheets are the sky, the earth is their bed and in between the two lovers consummate their love.

Yeshua

The Catholic mystic St Catherine of Sienna also wrote much about her sensual experience of God:

"I won't take no for an answer," God began to say to me, when He opened His arms each night wanting me to dance...I first saw God when I was a child, six years of age. The cheeks of the sun were pale before Him, and the earth acted as a shy girl, like me. Divine light entered my heart from His love that did never fully wane, though indeed, dear, I can understand how a person’s faith can at times flicker, for what is the mind to do with something that becomes the mind’s ruin: a God that consumes us in His grace. I have seen what you want; it is there, a Beloved of infinite tenderness...He has never left you. It is just that your soul is so vast that just like the earth in its innocence, it may think, “I do not feel my lover’s warmth against my face right now.” But look, dear, is not the sun reaching down its arms and always holding a continent in its light? God cannot leave us. It is just that our soul is so vast, we do not always feel His lips upon the veil"

- St Catherine of Sienna

Catherine and many love poets and mystics have used dancing as a metaphor for their relationship with God.. She experiences God love’s as child and later as a kind of romantic love, and she often wrote of her love for God as a passionate love, like a sexual love between a bride and a bridegroom. She also depicts God, in literary symbolism, as a dashing romantic lover coming to her in the night and begging her to sneak out for a midnight dance and kiss, without her parents knowing.

St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380, Italian), began loving God at an early age.

“When Catherine was seven years old her longing to wed God became so intense she left home alone to find a cave in the forest of Leccto where a known settlements of hermits was said to live … During the night, while in prayer, Catherine felt a great uneasiness come over her body, and her limbs became numb. Feeling a little frightened, suddenly she heard a divine voice say, ‘How brave you are my child, but let our wedding be later.’ The next thing Catharine knew she was at home in her own bed, no one had missed her, and she was absolutely sure that what had happened was not a dream. The next day she took her brother to the cave and asked him to go inside and see if anything was there. He returned, carrying two sticks Catherine had bound together into a little cross with part of the hem torn from her dress and also the uneaten loaf of bread … [she had brought]. On seeing these, Catherine fell upon her knee with deep thanks and happiness and a faith in God.”

Yeshua

Read:

"...The remarkable insight which some mystics, both Christian and otherwise, have understood was that the face of God was in reality . . . their own face, their self-hood. Wade writes, "The same staggering realization reverberates throughout the reports of lovers during transcedent sex. . . . The moment of recognition for one man was ". . . the purest ecstasy and awakening." . . . "It's real he insisted ". . . I can embody all my spirit, and it is divine. . . . " "Was there a face to God? No. Or a presence? The presence was us. We were just there. It just was." (p. 189).

Like all mystical experiences, transcendent sex is not all thrills and fun. It has its darker side. The medieval mystics had their dark nights of the soul...."

cire perdue

NOPE, sorry is not in the Vatican. It has to be sought out to be found. I have not seen it, though it was tough not to have gone when I was in Rome in '05. I was based in Rome for almost 4 weeks after Pilgrimage. I researched my trip ahead of time, and for some reason did not see her. She is in a semi-obscure place. I have been friends with 3 art historians since 1971 and 76. 2 of them were on my first trip to Rome in '71. One has seen St Teresa. We were children of the 60's who saw only the sexual side of it. Another 40 years, the Baha'i Faith, and a TIA, and maybe an MRI have given me a new perspective on many things.

Hey, should I ask for my money back?

Okay, Yeshua, let me get ahead of you once in a while. I am an old man. I quake and quail to think what you will be at my age. Maybe on the Universal House of Justice as one of its youngest members. However I know at least one other young Baha'i that I think as highly of and I have thought that of him as well. Maybe the personality that loving and beautiful is becoming contagious. What a world we have to look forward to. I just hope the ICE AGE I.II, or III don't get here first.

cire perdue

Gimme a break here. Did you have to go and validate my thinking which I think validates my experience? Do you really want to unleasche moi? I mean really now................SOMEBODY STOP ME.....Jim Carey in "Mask".........

cire perdue

Ihave always believe in St Joan though it is ineplicable in many ways to do more than say, well, God wanted France to stay France which has been my explanation. I have not ever known that St Teresa was real. I feel fully that she is, but that by all means she was someone who was celibate by choice and that The Greatest Holy Leaf, the sister of Abdul'baha, also chose that life. THANK GOD that the Master was not alone in his terrible travails. Has she married how much more tragedy may have occurred at the passing of Baha'u'llah. To give willingly is so blessed.

Your posts are wonderful and humbling. Can I have a statue of me like that? I really, really like the fabric. I have been wanting one of those dark orange wool body covers that Buddhist monks wear in cold weather. There I go thinking about clothes, but it is so much fun to be as tall as I am and dress well.

aidan

CP,what is an intellectual predator?

cire perdue

Also spiritual. I remember going to the end of a symphony concert to pick up a musician in order to meet with my yoga teacher. We got together at his house and Emile (anon) proceeded to give the musician who practiced kundalini the dharma of enlightenment. He described being in the center of the sun that was beyond comprehension. He gave this long rap about it all that glorified and illumined his perfections. This was spiritual predation.

Intellectually he set people up to fall to his opinion and greater wisdom. Saying things like anytime priests got together they would always end up being scatological, since they could not be sexual. He said the Pope took on Roman imperial dress and titles. He always managed to come out on top intelectually or in religion, but then I guess he hung around 19-22 year olds because we were easily impressed. I could and have spent my life addressing probably all of his worthwhile arguments................ I could answer him now. Thank you for asking. I hope though this is through personal details of my life that it is never the less interesting. I presume it has use.

aidan

Thanks beloved brother.There are people like that in every corner of the world.Men and women who see themselves as being intellectually "high-brow".They deliberately target susceptible people whom they can impress and obtain their adoration.In common with all forms of abuse,power is the thrill.The perceived power that comes from being able to manipulate someone who appears weaker.

Yeshua

My apologies! I meant to say "Rome", but for some reason "Vatican" came out I've actually been to Rome and seen it, so that makes it even more daft of me

Its in a Church, and many are shocked to find it in a sacred area.

Sen McGlinn

This is in the Woolson pilgrim's notes of 1956:

don't know what he was smoking -- but I'm sure the Guardian did not say this, especially not in 1956. You can see why pilgrim's notes are not regarded as authentic sources of guidance in the Bahai community. Most people are not reliable witnesses of what they have seen and heard.

Yeshua

WHEN THE HOLY THAWS

A woman’s body, like the earth, has seasons;
when the mountain stream flows,
when the holy
thaws,

when I am most fragile and in need,
it was then, it seemed,
God came
closest.

God, like a medic on a field, is tending our souls.
Our horns get locked with desires, but don’t hold yourself
too accountable; for all desires are
really innocent. That is what
the compassion in His
eyes tell me.

Why this great war between the countries — the countries –
inside of us?

What are all these insane borders we protect?
What are all these different names for the same Church of Love
we kneel in together? For it is true, together we live; and only
at that shrine where all are welcome will God sing
loud enough to be heard.

Our horns got locked with the earth and sky in some odd
marriage ritual; so what, don’t worry. We should be proud of
ourselves for everything we helped create in this
magic world.

And God is always there, if you feel wounded. He kneels
over this earth like
a divine medic,

and His love thaws
the holy in us.

~ St. Teresa of Avila ~

Yeshua

They are like shy, young school kids -
time and space
before the woman and the man who are
intimate with God.
The realised soul can play with this universe
the way a child can a ball...

A chalice - the Grail - my body became, for it held the Christ
and he drank
from me.

Sanctified are our limbs,
for every heart has touched God,
though most with closed eyes.

A holy relic is each creature,
and beauty may worry
about its comeliness waning.

We fear dying 'til we know the truth of ourselves.

The seams on my body
are torn;

I have stepped from that region of me
that did not love
all the time.

There is a divine world of light
with many suns in the sky.

I slept with my Lord
one night,

now all that is luminous
I know we
conceived.


St Teresa of Avila (1515 - 1582)

Yeshua

Not Yet Tickled

How did those priests ever get so serious
and preach all that gloom?

I don't think God
tickled them
yet.

Beloved--hurry.

St Teresa of Avila (1515 - 1582)

Yes, you did read that - a female Catholic saint and mystic who is also a Doctor of the Church mocking priests who preach hell and damnation and denial of life's pleasures. Teresa says that they simply have not yet been "tickled" by God - and she then begs her "Beloved" (God) to come and tickle her!

aidan

Do you know anything of her background prior to entering the convent Sean?She semms to be a seasoned woman much experienced in life,a bit of a witty minx!!!

cire perdue

I AM SO JEALOUS. That is my best compliment. I for some reason could not fit it in.................. I love the church and museum that are in the Baths of Caracalla.

IF ONLY the ruins in Iran had been in such good shape, what could we have now!!!! Maybe we will have more, MORE Persian Art Deco style to behold in our lives.....

cire perdue

I have beenb told that when one is their most sexual it is an opportunity to reach more spirituality, and that does not necessary mean by total celibacy.

Yeshua

Oh she had a ferocious humour and had received many marriage proposals before joining the Convent.

"As a teenager, she cared only about boys and clothes and flirting and rebelling -- like other teenagers throughout the ages. When she was 16, her father decided she was out of control and sent her to a convent. At first she hated it but eventually she began to enjoy it -- partly because of her growing love for God, and partly because the convent was a lot less strict than her father.

Still, when the time came for her to choose between marriage and religious life, she had a tough time making the decision. She'd watched a difficult marriage ruin her mother. On the other hand being a nun didn't seem like much fun. When she finally chose religious life, she did so because she though that it was the only safe place."

- Catholic Online


"The town of Avila knew Teresa to be beautiful, an able chess-player, an accomplished horsewoman, and a fine dancer. Her teenage days in a convent-school left her thinking that she had been driven into a box that offered no escape. After all, marriage appeared loathsome in that it entailed, in 16th century Spain, a wife’s servile submission to a tyrant-husband. Convent life, on the other hand, required its own form of submission. Her independent spirit raged at the dilemma. She was helped past it through reading the letters of Jerome, a theologian and spiritual guide from the Patristic era. Her feistiness now tempered by her vocation, she entered the Carmelite Convent of the Incarnation. She was 21 years old"

- Victor Shepherd

I personally would have loved to meet her and receive tuition from her!

What an earthy, grounded, caring, wise and compassionate spiritual director she must have been!

She had such great life experience.

It is said that she used her sexuality even when preaching throughout Spain, attracting young men to her movement of renewal within the Catholic Church.

Yeshua

"...Constance Furey, associate professor of theology at Indiana University, focused on the role of sexual mystical texts in the history of European Christianity during a talk Thursday in Swift Hall.

Modern Americans have an “extremely limited notion of sexuality,” Furey said. “Mysticism can challenge those [notions].”

Her paper focused on several figures throughout Christian history whose writings were or are considered controversial in their sexual nature.

One such figure is Saint Teresa of Avila, a 16th-century mystic who described a vision she had of an angel repeatedly driving a golden arrow through her heart. Her description is inescapably suggestive, Furey said. For Teresa, sexual experiences were a way to escape loneliness and connect with God, Furey said, an example of how individuals can undergo spiritual experiences through sexual intercourse or sexual perspectives..."

- Claire B. Salling

cire perdue

Your grandfather, me, is so glad you are willing to be a straight man to my position. I suspect not laughing is the hardest thing about your job. You are priceless. Loving God transcends most boundaries. God was determined to keep true religion alive and thus brought us people like our St. Teresa. I think her choices allowed her to reach that state, but feel that God did it!

I am so glad for your contributions that are keeping me going right on in the same direction. You dog, you. They are going to virally nuke your PC, just after they assassinate moi.

Yeshua

"Scholars such as Jodi Bilinkoff, Gillian Ahlgren, Cathleen Medwick, Alison Weber, J. Mary Luti, and Antonio Perez-Romero, have established that Teresa of Avila was an independent, free-thinking, strong woman. Facing criticism and disapproval from both clergy and laypeople, Teresa created the Discalced Carmelites in hopes of returning the nuns of Europe to a purer form of Christianity. As the only female theologian to be published in sixteenth century Spain, Teresa defended the mystical experiences of herself and other women. Because of her charismatic personality and her ability to reform the church while acting within the political constraints of the clerical and patriarchal hierarchy, Teresa was able to keep from crossing the fine line...While in the past, scholars have chosen to write about her mysticism and her Carmelite reform efforts, these authors have written about her from a feminist angle, hoping to

"dispense once and for all with the prototype of the hysterical, emotional women writhing in a frenzy of morbid devotion at the foot of the Crucifix and replace her with the sane, vigorous, intelligent, humorous Spaniard who had a lot in common with the independent women of the midtwentieth
century” Medwick, xv..."


"...In a refreshing modern biography, St. Teresa of Avila: Progress of a Soul, Cathleen Medwick aims to portray Teresa just as she was: “a soul in progress toward God.” Medwick describes Teresa as both a sensuous, sexual woman and a spiritual leader, arguing that Teresa is a “feminist icon, not only because she came to represent the missing link between female sexuality and spirituality, but also because of her ability to function within a male dominated hierarchy.”..."

Yeshua

"...As my capacity for prayer developed, I found that in prayer my ordinary mental faculties fell asleep, and my senses grew dim. Then a new feeling, a new sensation, began to rise up through my body to my neck. I was powerless to control this experience: I could not hasten it nor prevent it. I was like a man on the point of dying the death he desires: in his final agony there is overwhelming joy. I was dying to the world, and discovering spiritual delights which I could not have imagined. I did not know what to do, whether to laugh or cry, whether to speak or be silent. It was a glorious confusion, a heavenly madness. I began to experience true ecstasy, which I believe to be the highest form of prayer.... I was overwhelmed with joy and sweetness. My body was still present, but was cold and lifeless, no longer animated by the soul. Yet the soul itself was totally and completely alive. There was no way I could resist what was happening. I had no choice but to submit myself to God. My soul was truly Christ's bride, and this was the ecstasy of the nuptial bed...I wanted to clasp him to my bosom, to embrace him and kiss him with my lips. But I was in such rapture that I could not move. I asked God why he was granting me this wonderful favour. And as I asked the question, I knew the answer. He was pandering to the weakness of my nature...Fondle me with your divine hands, cover me with divine kisses, that I may give to you the fullness of my love.... Clasp me to your bosom, hold me tightly to your body, that I may always be faithful and loyal in my love for you...Any real ecstasy is a sign you are moving in the right direction, don't let any prude tell you otherwise..."

- St Teresa of Avila

I know its quite "full-on", outrageous, sexually explicit, erotic - but that's what you get used too if you read Teresa's writings She wasn't exactly "conventional"...


Of St. Teresa, philosopher William James said:

"Her idea of religion seems to have been that of an endless amatory flirtation... between the devotee and the deity."

Yeshua

"All must be friends, all must love one another, all must be held dear and all must help one another to create a joyful atmosphere." (St Teresa, Way of Perfection)

"It is love alone that gives worth to all things" - St Teresa of Avila