The definition of "epinoia" and the goal of this site

Cynthia Bourgeault in her book The Wisdom Jesus: transforming heart and mind - a new perspective on Christ and his message wrote:

"Meditation is the universal and time-tested method for "putting the mind in the heart." It circumvents our preconceived expectations and mental agendas and opens up that place of immediate knowingness where we can directly experience the living Jesus. For the first four centuries of Christian experience, this was the way it was done. Christians connected with their living Master present in their hearts (the name of the practice was anamnesis or "living remembrance"). That's the skill set, if you want to put it in those terms, which meditation once again makes available to us. The early church fathers used to speak of a pathway of perception they called epinoia, which meant knowing (God) through intuition and direct revelation, not through the linear and didactic dianonia of logic and doctrine and dogma. Sixteen centuries later Christians are learning the process all over again."

This site while not denying the importance of logic and doctrine and dogma seeks to introduce those desiring a closer relationship with God to the way of epinoia, to knowing God and ourselves through intuition and direct revelation.

All will be mystics

Karl Rahner, a prophet of the twentieth century, said:

It has been said that the Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist at all. If by "mysticism" is meant not strange parapsychological phenomena but an authentic experience of God that emerges from the centre of our existence, then the statement is quite correct, and its truth and importance will become ever clearer in the spirituality of the future. For, according to the scriptures and the properly understood teaching of the Church, the final conviction and decision regarding faith come ultimately not simply from external didactic indoctrination that is supported by secular or ecclesial public opinion, nor simply from the rational arguments supplied by a fundamental theology, but from an experience of God, his Spirit, and his freedom that originates at the centre of human existence and can be authentic even though we are not capable of reflecting on it fully and expressing it in words.

Possession of the spirit is not the kind of thing the existence of which can be conveyed solely by external didactic indoctrination as though it were something existing independently of our existential consciousness... Rather it is experienced from within.

Solitary Christians in silent prayer... in the night of senses and spirit (to use the language of the mystics)... experience God and his liberating grace, provided only that they open themselves to the experiences I have been mentioning and do not flee from them in an anxiety that is in the final analysis culpable. They have this experience of God, even though they are unable to interpret it and put a theological label on it.

The exploration of what it means to be a mystic is what this site is about. While this site is Christian in its focus, much of what is contained here is true of all the world's great religions, especially in their mystical traditions.

Sorry but this site is still in an early stage of development!

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