Waiting on God. On the nature of Christian spirituality.

How kan I encounter and experience God? It is a question that still keeps people busy. It represents our deepest yearning and desire, to be with the Divine in peace and in fullness.

The question is often answered by focussing on discipline, concentration and hard work. What is needed, we are told, is to apply some techniques to transcend ourselves. Through meditation techniques one can break through all earthly, suffocating limitations and transcend oneself. One then shares, for example, in a divine spirit that restores humanity to its full potential. One moves beyond one’s own limitations, one evolves and grows into greater personhood. In this way one fulfills one’s full potential and becomes what one is supposed to be. In some cases, people use drugs to induce this experience. They claim that incredible religious experiences can be found through, for example, the use of LSD and that such experiences make them into peace-loving people.

This may be true. By training one’s body and mind, it is possible to develop a feeling of well-being and become a better, mature person. A positive outlook on life, an appreciation of other people, care and love for our world, a healthy body and concentration techniques can do wonders. I would not want to vouch for LSD. My spirituality tells me that the use of drugs is dangerous and stupid.

In Christian spirituality something more is at stake. Concentration, meditation, focus, retreat in silence and application of techniques prepares one for something deeper than a self-fulfiling experience.

These dimensions lead one to a place of holiness. It is a space where one lives in love.

This is mystical: in this space of holiness, the divine encounters a human being. This is the place where God reaches out, where we become aware of the Other presence in our lives which transforms us completely. We meet Love, we are liberated from our pre-occupation with ourselves. In Christian mysticism what matters is not so much what we do or how we prepare ourselves, but that ultimately we are touched by the Mystery, by the Other, by transcendent Love – and this Love purifies us.

All this has profound implications for our spiritual journey. If we prepare ourselves in loneliness and in retreat for God’s encounter with us, it brings us in an intimate, close relationship with the Other. We no longer live for ourselves. In Christian mysticism, other than in Eastern mysticism, this implies that I sacrifice myself for the Other. It is better to give than to receive, said the One who lived in an intimate, close relationship with his Father. His way to God, his longing for God – in the desert, on the mountain of transfiguration, in the garden of Gethsemane and on the cross happened on our behalf – so that we may receive the Holy Spirit of love and so that we can reach out to others in power. The end of our spiritual journey is not about ourselves, but about God, about the Other who liberates us, thankfully, from ourselves, our all too human love for ourselves. We experience a divine relationship.

What is mystical about this, according to Christian mystical authors, is that we have no power over this process. We cannot manipulate God’s encounter with us. Not technique, no drugs, no concentration will generate or bring about this encounter. We can only wait on it. We have to be ready for it, await it, yearn for it, desire it.

We are on holy ground here. We have moved out of our own space, out of our own world, in the divine sphere where we are touched and transformed so that we can experience our world and space in a new, transformed way. We discover something bigger than ourselves, Someone more important than we are.