Books like The Mystic Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the World's Religions

This book is both a summary of various mystic traditions and practices, as well as a guidebook to a life in mystic spirituality. It is well-written, well-researched, with a style and tone equally balanced between scholarly neutrality and personal conviction. It is a book worthy of re-reading.Compared with other developed countries, US is highly religious measured by statistics of surveys and church membership. Yet our psychological life is hoisted mostly by our concerns of personal wealth, consumerism, media and entertainment. Religion is a mixture of social obligation and a moment's respite from the fears and desires that afflict our daily lives. How much the religious life relates to the spirituality? And why does mystic matter to our modern life?The first order is to define "religion", "spirituality", and "mysticism". On page 17, the author made this issue clear: being religious is to practice a religious tradition (i.e., belonging and attending a church); being spiritual is to commit a personal engagement to a process of inner development; mysticism is a particular form of spirituality where there is "direct, immediate experience of ultimate reality". Can spiritual life without being mystic? Yes, such as the liturgical spirituality (public pray, and rivals), but these rituals are not the goals in themselves. The goal is to go from a "mediated form" (liturgy, for example) to the direct relationship with divine. Can we measure the stages of awareness in our spiritual growth? Page 68 starts the discussion of the stages of development for human consciousness. Infancy and childhood: little self-consciousness, no actual reflection.Adolescence: increasingly self-conscious, peer group relationship becomes dominant reference.Young adult: self-conscious awareness. becoming philosophical, but at risk of solipsism -- mistaken one as the center of existence. Adult: developing "other-centered" consciousness through relationships with others such as marriage and family.*** this is where most people rest: knowledge, compassion and love are limited by egoic fixation --"my work, my family, my preference". This is the shell that most people are encapsulated in. ****The next three stages of enlighten awareness are: partial, complete and total. One starts on the awareness of transcendental experience, persistent in spiritual practices, to experience the gradual integration of one's heart with the divine. "Not to know about, but to be", the definition by Evelyn Underhill for the true mystic initiate. The book followed by various approaches in Christian, Hinduism, Buddha, Zen, Natural mystic traditions. From practices as old as Jewish Kabbalah to the modern experimental mysticism using psychoactive agents, the author gives a fairly good summary for each tradition. It is quite understandable that the author gives more attention to his own practice tradition of Christian Sannyasa, a hybrid of Christian and Hinduism; yet the author is admirable to offer much encouragement to practice in other tradition as well. This sentiment is echoed in the Preface of Dalai Lama indicating that people have different background and preferences, as long as the essence of mystic spirituality achieves the same goal to enrich our human life, there is little to quibble about any particular label. In the end, the author told us, to be spiritually engaged, one must take on the journey individually. It is not something to "talk about" only, but a life to "be".