To your second question, our host is quite right that what you describe is quite normal for mystics, or for anyone with a gift for the path of the mystic. You seem to me to have this gift, and it is a blessing to have it. You're flat-out wrong to think that "I won't make a very good mystic if I can't stop crying."
What I would add is that there is no reason why you can't be both a mystic and a magician at once, though it is not a usual combination. Here is how that works, IMHO.
There are two quite distinct approaches to mystic practice, which some writers call kataphatic and apophatic.
Kataphatic mystics proceed by way of their thoughts and their sensations, which they enhance and elevate toward an apprehension of Ultimate Reality. But this Ultimate Reality is so far beyond the reach of our sensations and our thoughts that no matter how high you elevate and refine them, It still escapes your best efforts in the end. If you are so rash as to suppose you have grasped Ultimate Reality, you have deluded yourself.
The apophatic mystic proceeds otherwise. He realizes at the outset that human thoughts and feelings always fall short, and knows that each human thought or feeling, however elevated, is an illusion that keeps him from encountering Ultimate Reality on its own terms, as it really is. Therefore he denies and rejects each of them as it occurs to him. Eventually he is left with nothing, a featureless blank. But this, too, is the final illusion, and he also denies and rejects that, too.
Then, if he is graced with the gift, his entire self suddenly becomes an organ not of thought and sensation, but an organ that experiences what is beyond all human experience, that perceives what is beyond all human perception: it experiences and perceives everything as a whole --everything that is and that is not as a single whole, without any limitation of time (now or elsewhen) and space (here or elsewhere). This is sometimes called, by Hindus, "Indra's Web" -- yet it is no earthly web of matter and energy. Rather, this Web itself is not wholly unlike a sentient earthly being, not wholly unlike a living earthly being, not wholly unlike an earthly fire that warms and loves and consumes.
And wih this grace comes the ability to change things within the realm of time and space, of matter and energy: one simply extends something that is like a limb, yet is not a limb, and very gently -- ever so gently -- "tugs" at an appropriate strand of the Web, thereby effecting change. But also with this grace must come the vision to know all the unforeseen consequences of that tug (however slight it may be) and the wisdom to weigh all the consequences of that tug against one another. More often that not, the result of such weighing is against tugging at all on the Web. But sometimes the balance may favor the tug.
As with the mystic, so with the magician. What we have been discussing from day #1 on our host's blogs is kataphatic magic, magic worked by thought, word and deed, by symbolic and patterned behavior, and by other such means within our familiar universe of matter and energy constrained within time and space. In contrast, the ability to effect changes by directly tugging on the Web may be called apophatic magic, and it is the magic of the mystic -- or is it the mystic's miracle-working rather than his magic?
It does not seem good to say very much about this sort of magic, and I hesitated whether to respond at all to Magenta Befuddled Dragon in public. I hope I have managed to do so in terms that will make sense to her(?), but not bring harm to others.
(Note for further reading: the best sources I have found on this are Eastern Orthodox Christan ones, and they do not call it magic at all:
no subject
What I would add is that there is no reason why you can't be both a mystic and a magician at once, though it is not a usual combination. Here is how that works, IMHO.
There are two quite distinct approaches to mystic practice, which some writers call kataphatic and apophatic.
Kataphatic mystics proceed by way of their thoughts and their sensations, which they enhance and elevate toward an apprehension of Ultimate Reality. But this Ultimate Reality is so far beyond the reach of our sensations and our thoughts that no matter how high you elevate and refine them, It still escapes your best efforts in the end. If you are so rash as to suppose you have grasped Ultimate Reality, you have deluded yourself.
The apophatic mystic proceeds otherwise. He realizes at the outset that human thoughts and feelings always fall short, and knows that each human thought or feeling, however elevated, is an illusion that keeps him from encountering Ultimate Reality on its own terms, as it really is. Therefore he denies and rejects each of them as it occurs to him. Eventually he is left with nothing, a featureless blank. But this, too, is the final illusion, and he also denies and rejects that, too.
Then, if he is graced with the gift, his entire self suddenly becomes an organ not of thought and sensation, but an organ that experiences what is beyond all human experience, that perceives what is beyond all human perception: it experiences and perceives everything as a whole --everything that is and that is not as a single whole, without any limitation of time (now or elsewhen) and space (here or elsewhere). This is sometimes called, by Hindus, "Indra's Web" -- yet it is no earthly web of matter and energy. Rather, this Web itself is not wholly unlike a sentient earthly being, not wholly unlike a living earthly being, not wholly unlike an earthly fire that warms and loves and consumes.
And wih this grace comes the ability to change things within the realm of time and space, of matter and energy: one simply extends something that is like a limb, yet is not a limb, and very gently -- ever so gently -- "tugs" at an appropriate strand of the Web, thereby effecting change. But also with this grace must come the vision to know all the unforeseen consequences of that tug (however slight it may be) and the wisdom to weigh all the consequences of that tug against one another. More often that not, the result of such weighing is against tugging at all on the Web. But sometimes the balance may favor the tug.
As with the mystic, so with the magician. What we have been discussing from day #1 on our host's blogs is kataphatic magic, magic worked by thought, word and deed, by symbolic and patterned behavior, and by other such means within our familiar universe of matter and energy constrained within time and space. In contrast, the ability to effect changes by directly tugging on the Web may be called apophatic magic, and it is the magic of the mystic -- or is it the mystic's miracle-working rather than his magic?
It does not seem good to say very much about this sort of magic, and I hesitated whether to respond at all to Magenta Befuddled Dragon in public. I hope I have managed to do so in terms that will make sense to her(?), but not bring harm to others.
(Note for further reading: the best sources I have found on this are Eastern Orthodox Christan ones, and they do not call it magic at all:
Two early ones are both anonymous, and each is very brief, mere pages long: [1] The Mystical Theology by an author who lived around 500 CE and used the pseudonym Dionysius the Areopagite; and [2] "On the Three Methods of Prayer," preserved in The Philokalia, and usually (wrongly?) attributed to Simeon the New Theologian, who lived around the year 1000. Online English transaltions can be read at [1] http://esoteric.msu.edu/VolumeII/MysticalTheology.html
and at [2] https://orthodoxchurchfathers.com/fathers/philokalia/symeon-the-new-theologian-the-three-methods-of-prayer.html
An excellent modern source is Vladimir Lossky's The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, which can be read online in English at https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Vladimir_Losskij/the-mystical-theology-of-the-eastern-church/