Is it possible to have an unmediated experience of God? A direct encounter with the divine that transcends any use of the senses or even the intellect? The classical answer is – yes! And its pursuit is the goal of the mystic tradition (an element of the spiritual life that is accessible to us all,...
Tag: prayer and doubt
Loving God 401, Part 5: A Silent Retreat with a Good Book – or – Top 10 Signs You Might Be a Benedictine (i.e., Apophatic-Speculatives)
In this episode, we turn to the next of our spiritual “personality types” (i.e., attraits) – the apophatic-speculatives. What defines an apophatic is a basic desire to escape distraction. They are the ones who love the very idea of a silent retreat or the spiritual practice of “simplicity.” They are not anti-creation. Nor are they anti-social or...
Loving God 401, Part 4: Experiencing God in the World (i.e., Kataphatic-Affectives)
Just as some people need faith to make intellectual sense, so others need to feel it – to have the emotional experience of God’s presence, to know in the manner of the heart and not the head. These are the “affectives.” (And all of us are affective to a degree, some just more so than...