Meister Eckhart radically revises the whole notion of spiritual programs. He says that there is no such thing as a spiritual journey. If a little shocking, this is refreshing. If there were a spiritual journey, it would be only a quarter inch long, though many miles deep. It would be a swerve into rhythm with your deeper nature and presence. — John O’Donohue
Irish poet and mystic John O’Donohue (1955-2008) wrote what may arguably be the single most eloquent and essential book of Celtic mystical spirituality for our time, Anam Ċara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (the domain name for this newsletter, www.anamchara.net, reflects the Scottish spelling of this beautiful Gaelic word). Steeped in Irish folklore and myth but also shimmering with an appreciation of both philosophy and mystical theology, O’Donohue’s expression of Celtic wisdom is both ancient and timeless and yet very much au Courant.
And perhaps it is a bit Ironic for a newsletter called “Mystical Journey” to feature today’s quote, where O’Donohue invokes the German Dominican mystic Meister Eckhart to challenge the very notion of a spiritual journey. But mysticism is nothing if not paradoxical, and so any notion of a mystical journey (or “program”) must begin with a recognition that this is, perhaps, a journeyless journey following a “pathless path” (as I describe it in The New Big Book of Christian Mysticism).
As T. S. Eliot once noted in his poem “Little Gidding”:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Here, again the paradox. We continue to explore only to arrive where we began, and yet we will see that point of origination with entirely new eyes.
But O’Donohue ultimately refuses to insist that there cannot be a spiritual journey, recognizing that such a definitive statement would be its own kind of dogmatic trap. But he offers that such a journey, if it exists, is only “only a quarter inch long, though many miles deep.” We do not have to travel far to “know the place (i.e., our heart and soul) for the first time” but that short trip back to ourselves can only be taken if we truly go deep: if we open the murky depths of our hidden soul to the illuminating and cleansing light of the Spirit. Without plumbing that depth, the spiritual journey is no journey at all, no matter how short or long the passage might be.
Perhaps this is how the paradox of the journey is resolved: we are called onto an adventure, but it is measured not in miles or days, but in self-awareness and recognition. We find the map in the mirror. The map is not the territory, for it is the “territory” that stares into the mirror.
Quotation source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom (pp. 89-90). Kindle Edition.