Dear Common Awakening Community, 

As a child, I remember seeing the auras and light around people’s bodies as I sat in my church pew on Sunday and listened to sermons about how spiritual experience couldn’t be trusted. I would blink my eyes a few times and pray that I would be saved from hell because I was seeing what wasn’t there. Even as a child, though, it didn’t make sense to me how seeing the light of God in someone could be so evil and punishable. However, I internalized this teaching into the longtime belief that my spirituality was wrong. I now know a different way.

You have your own beliefs from your faith traditions that run deep in you but may no longer fit the same way. I cherish my faith tradition of origin, and I equally celebrate and honor the expanded ways of knowing that have pushed my mind, heart, and soul to go to the edge. You may know the fear and risk of leaning beyond the edges of tradition (without just reacting or rejecting what has formed us) and developing a fresh spiritual narrative. 

Leaning into the edges of spiritual traditions has a name. It’s called mysticism. Before you equate it with a crystal ball and cards, I invite you to consider perennial, classical mysticism for its true spirit and essential roots. Mystical experience, like me seeing auras as a child, has a purpose in our spiritual journey. It invites us to experience God/Divine/Source that is alive in everyone and everything in the following ways:

• Union –direct and intimate connection with the Divine or Source that is in each of us
• Surrender –letting go and embracing the Fullness of life that is in the present moment
• Numinous –experiencing the awe and wonder of the Divine that is all around us
• Ineffable –connection with the Divine that cannot be contained by word or concept
• Noetic –insights and awareness that drop in and are received suddenly
• Transient –time and space are temporary and ever-changing, and the present is now 

Leaning into the risky edge of our spiritual traditions gives us an alive relationship with the Divine in you that goes beyond ourselves and gives us a bigger, broader, better view of what life is really all about. For me, as a little girl sitting in the pew, my mystical experience showed me that there was light and radiance that was enduringly present in my conservative church that went beyond the words of a sermon. I saw in living color the union, released, numinous, ineffable, noetic, transient qualities of spiritual Fullness, and this experience invited me to seek the edges of my faith. I say with conviction, “How ‘wrong’ can that be?”

We invite you to join us in an alive, expansive, extraordinary spiritual experience that leans you beyond your faith tradition in a supportive, loving, safe environment. Join our upcoming retreat November 3-5 and experience the power of mysticism directly. We have a few spots left. Join us!

With love,

Annie

P.S. Many of you may not know that my experience as a little girl paved the way for me to develop a capacity to read and connect with spirit guides. In our retreat, I’m brushing off my mystical capacities and offering mini-sessions as a way to directly experience the presence of the cloud of witnesses who accompany you. Plus, I’ll be giving a little lecture about how to connect with guides and some tips you may not know…like your companions change! As we grow spiritually, the communion of saints around us will do a changing of the guard to give us what we most need when we most need it. They change as a way of inviting us to the spiritual edge where we accelerate our soul growth and maintain transformation!