For me as a Christian Mystic, I seek direct experience with God. I draw from the rich Christian contemplative tradition. I also, like all mystics, value personal experience and revelation. The Bible for example, is sacred and valuable but it also is something in between me and God. Not obstructing, but a source of instruction and correction. But ultimately it must be set aside at times for seeking within, lest it become an idol. Also as a Christian Mystic, the concept of imitating and becoming one with Christ (“I am the vine you are the branches, I abide in you and you in me.”) is also a unique and critical part of the Christian Mystical path. 

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I think of a mystic simply as someone who is having direct personal experiences with the Divine. A mystic thus comes to realize how “the kingdom of God” is not out there somewhere in some other time or place, but rather is within.

So too, I would suggest that a mystic is one who learns how to break open “the honey from the Rock”. By this I mean that one learns how to see beyond the external symbol system to the Divine Substance to which those symbols point. For instance, to recognize how we are the Burning Bush in whom the Divine dwells, and yet we are not consumed. Here the outer story becomes the inner realization.

Also at the heart of every mature mystic is the experience of Unity with the Divine, which tends to become all encompassing, as one learns how to see the Divine in all things. And thus the boundaries and definitions that guide one in one’s immaturity tend to be but rafts of understanding that lead to the vast Cloud of Unknowing.

This has led various mystics to develop an apophatic way of speaking of God, through negation rather than affirmation. Here even the line between theism and its opposite begin to meld. In Christian language this is sometimes known as the “via negativa”. And interestingly in Jewish mysticism the term Ein Sof is often used, which I like to interpret sometimes as the Boundless One, for Whom no description, definition, or category is sufficient.

Thank you for linking- Friendly Fire is fantastic and I only wish the author went more into detail about the experience