You are correct in saying that Christian mysticism is all about the union with the divine, but how does it happen? The awareness of the self is the displacement of the self into God, whose Will Is Done.
AMC, I think you've overlayed your personal dogma and methods to reconstruct and reinterpret what others attempt and perceive. I think it unlikely that the people you're talking about would always see it or describe in the terms that you've used. I was very careful in my last post to use the word 'perceive' in describing mysticsm because I think it is very perceptual and open to multiple interpretations. Just as you can apply your perceptions to every mystical action you see, others can too.
You work through your own mind and body to understand its nature in relationship to the rest of the universe. Once you realize that "there is nothing new under the sun," that nothing is "yours" because "your" "self" doesn't actually exist, then you have achieved "self" knowledge.
This position is familiar territory to me. It occurs in Buddhist and Hindu thought. I think that you've tacked the "self knowledge" bit on the end though (or adopted it from someone who did); other practitioners prefer to describe it differently.
I'll return to an earlier point: I think that some practices are very good for producing calmness, peace and creativity. But I don't see them as mystical practices. I also don't believe that they have anything to do with the Universe in any physical sense. I think that it's just an aesthetic sense.
I have also observed that practitioners who drive these practices too hard lose awareness, compassion and competence in key social and personal areas. My conclusion? That emptying our minds once in a while is good mental hygeine, that getting past our neuroses is a good thing, but that our minds are not well designed for being empty
all the time. If you'll forgive some frankness, all the practitioners I've met personally who think they are literally one with the universe have been universally psychotic.
These people all point to the same thing: the most observable thing is our own mind and body. Even if we observe things we believe to be external, what we are really receiving is how the mind and the body reacts to the external. How it categorizes it. Finds meaning in it. So in understanding the self, you understand the supposed Other.
There's a lot written around solipsism and connectedness. Ken Wilber likes to write on this topic. You can drown reading it all. I can see the appeal: if it worked, you wouldn't have to worry about conflict any more. But I think it's a form of denial.
I believe that conflicts arise from any of three reasons: insufficient resources and opportunities, poor understanding of our natures, and poor morality. Any one of these is enough to create conflict.
There are people strong-minded enough to decide that starving and marginalisation doesn't matter to them, but realistically in a competitive and ruthless world, those people die out pretty quickly. The survivors are the ones who realise that they don't have equity and act on that. In practice, none of the "We are One" practitioners I know personally would go gently into that good night... they rage against inequity when pushed, same as everyone else. There are a few, very few rare exceptions. They set fire to themselves or let tanks roll over them to protest wars, or donate a kidney to a stranger. The rest I feel, are just poseurs.
There are plenty of greedy people acting from emotional deficit, and here almost any form of calming, reflection and realignment with reality helps. Meditation helps. Prayer helps. Exercise and sports help. Massage helps. Sitting in a quiet room with aromatherapy helps. Anything that brings people out of their past into their present is beneficial.
Morality requires us to recognise difference and individuality. If you do that then you're not
really subscribing to the "One Self/No Self" view of the world. That's merely an aesthetic, not a decision-making framework. It's a very soothing aesthetic, but just one of many self-rationalising narratives we can tell ourselves while we do whatever we were disposed to do anyway.
But you are right. I am a mix of ever-thing.
