I asked Bing’s AI ‘What are mystics for?’ It didn’t answer my question. But it did describe mysticism and its effect on me, as follows:
“Mystics are spiritual seekers who seek to awaken, glimpse, and reclaim the innate spiritual Oneness at the core of their being.
True! But I didn’t seek. I didn’t have any idea mysticism existed when I had the first of many yearly revelations. My experiences were unknown, uncalled, spontaneous.
“They have a direct experience of the sacred, unmediated by conventional religious rituals or intermediaries.
Yes!
“Achieving that sacred experience requires transcending established belief systems, bypassing the intellect, and dissolving identification with the ‘ego’ self.
Yes! But in my case Reality transcended me. I didn’t transcend anything. This is a continuing process in my case. But ‘I’ never comes into it.
“Mystics feel a connection to every living thing and are guided by their experience, rather than leaders or society.
The experiences were of the oneness of all things, not just the living – everything known and unknown.
That might explain why Reality is now the only thing guiding this ‘me’.
Consequentually, mere humanity with its historic paucity of spiritual knowledge of itself is of little interest, a distracting impediment if anything …
There is nothing Real to be gained by studying humanity.
“They open their soul to the divine in complete surrender, knowing that God is ultimately in control.
Yes!
“Mystics may also have naturally occurring psychic abilities, such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, or claircognizance.
I haven’t noticed! These seem to be human words, mere mind stuff from the negative rather than the positive side of the mind, (bearing in mind that in the mystic tradition mind is the source of all repetitive human evil …).
“Mysticism is the practice of religious ecstasies (religious experiences during alternate states of consciousness), together with whatever ideologies, ethics, rites, myths, legends, and magic may be related to them.”
No!! Absolutely not. Mysticism is not a practice. It is a condition.
“Ideologies” etc. are primitive human mind stuff – ‘mysticism’ itself is just a human word for the historic revelations of Reality that only come to individuals.
Reality decides everything known and unknown, even human existence, ignoring any human thought, want or interpretation, help or interference …
All Is Well.
Mystical Experiences of Reality 
Superb. I feel the deep truth of all of this. As to religion, while all of the dogma is man made nonsence, the deep thinkers of all religions have plumbed the depths of truth. And as you have often noted, established “religion” has then inevitably been seized by the worldly who have built empires of power, greed and oppression around them.
But I feel the deep truths of this post and each day inch further away from the world humanity has created for itself.
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Anthony, I find the more we rid ourselves of the defaulting human bonds we inherited the lighter we feel. Nietzsche and Novelist Milan Kundera apparently wrote about “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” according to Fox Focus but there’s nothing unbearable about the lightness of just being oneself in Reality I’m suggesting … just the very opposite!!
As ever,
Keith
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