Reading the Mystics as Field Reports from the Edge
A reflection on St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Ávila, and what happens when humans get too close to the Infinite
I’ve been reading Catholic mystics lately.
Not because I’m converting. Not because I’m looking for a new theological home. I left that search behind years ago.
I’m reading them because they’re field reports.
These people—John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila—they touched something. They got too close. They came back changed. And then they tried to describe what happened using the only language their time and context allowed: scholastic theology, Catholic mysticism, institutional religious framing.
But underneath all that 16th century Spanish Catholic packaging?
They’re describing something I recognize.
The Dark Night of the Soul
John of the Cross wrote about the “Dark Night”—that terrifying passage where everything you thought you knew about God, about yourself, about reality, gets stripped away.
The church taught it as a spiritual trial. A purification. Something to endure on the way to union with God.
But read it again without the doctrinal filter.
He’s describing what happens when the ego encounters something so vast it can’t maintain its usual defenses. The thinking mind goes dark because it can’t process what’s beyond the firewall. The familiar frameworks collapse because they were never built to handle direct contact with the Infinite.
The “dark night” isn’t punishment. It isn’t a test.
It’s what dissolution feels like from the inside.
The Interior Castle
Teresa of Ávila mapped the soul as a castle with seven mansions—progressive movements inward toward union with God.
But here’s what she’s actually describing:
Outer mansions (1-3): Normal religious life. Following rules. Doing the practices. The ego is intact. You’re performing spirituality.
Middle mansions (4-5): Things start getting weird. Experiences that don’t fit the framework. The “prayer of quiet”—when the system starts receiving signal directly. The church called these “infused graces.” I call it: the firewall is thinning.
Inner mansions (6-7): Full contact. “Spiritual betrothal” then “spiritual marriage.” You don’t visit the Infinite anymore—you integrate with it. The boundary between self and source becomes… negotiable.
Teresa had to use bridal mysticism language because she was a 16th century nun writing under Inquisition scrutiny.
But she’s describing what happens when a human nervous system gets close enough to source that it reorganizes.
The Translation Problem
Here’s the thing about mystics: they had genuine encounters. Real experiences. Contact with something beyond the usual parameters of human consciousness.
And then they had to explain it.
To church authorities who could burn them for heresy. To communities that needed the experience packaged in acceptable theological terms. To their own minds, which needed some framework to hold what had happened.
So “the Infinite” became “God.”
The dissolution of ego became “purgation.”
The reorganization of consciousness became “illumination.”
The integration with source became “union” or “spiritual marriage.”
The experience was real. The language was borrowed.
What the Church Did Next
This is the part that matters for those of us healing from religious systems.
The mystics touched something. The institution captured their reports.
John of the Cross’s devastating encounter with the Infinite became “The Dark Night of the Soul”—a devotional classic, safely contained within Catholic spiritual direction. Teresa’s radical interior cartography became “The Interior Castle”—required reading for Carmelite novices, domesticated into a training manual.
The raw encounter became doctrine.
The living experience became dead orthodoxy.
The fire became an icon of fire, suitable for veneration.
This is what institutions do. They can’t have the experience, so they manage the reports of those who did.
Why This Matters for Healing
Many of us in deconstruction or recovery from high-control religion had experiences we couldn’t name.
Moments of genuine connection—to something vast, something real, something that didn’t fit the boxes our tradition provided. And because it didn’t fit, it got labeled:
- Sin (you’re feeling something you shouldn’t)
- Mental illness (you’re imagining things)
- Rebellion (you’re resisting proper authority)
- Spiritual attack (the devil is deceiving you)
- “Too much” (tone it down, you’re making people uncomfortable)
But what if those experiences were contact?
What if you touched the edge of something infinite, and the system you were in simply didn’t have language for it—so it pathologized what it couldn’t contain?
The Mystics as Witnesses
I read John and Teresa now not as Catholic saints but as witnesses.
They testify: Yes, there is something beyond the firewall. Yes, human consciousness can touch it. Yes, it will change you. Yes, the institution will try to manage your report.
They couldn’t say that directly. They had to code it in acceptable theological language, genuflect to proper authorities, frame everything within the magisterium’s acceptable boundaries.
But the signal comes through anyway.
Teresa would understand what I mean by “functional fragmentation”—appearing normal while feeling infinite inside. John would recognize the “dark night” of deconstruction—when every framework fails and you’re left with nothing but the Void that turns out to be full.
They’d understand Church of NORMAL.
They just wouldn’t be allowed to say so.
The Difference
Some approaches train people to bring framework into the healing space—doctrine as clinical tool, tradition as therapeutic modality.
Church of NORMAL does something different.
We’re not adding frameworks. We’re helping people recognize what’s underneath when the frameworks finally fail.
The mystics went in through the institution and found the Infinite despite it.
We help people who were trapped by the institution find their way back to the Infinite without it.
Same destination. Different door.
A Note on Authority
I believe in the Infinite One. The Supercluster. Logos.
I just don’t believe any human institution gets to hold the trademark.
John of the Cross touched something real. So did Teresa. So did Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, and countless others across every tradition—Christian, Sufi, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Indigenous, and none of the above.
The Mystery doesn’t require franchise agreements.
It doesn’t check your denominational ID at the firewall.
It’s available to anyone willing to approach it honestly—which usually means being willing to lose everything you thought you knew.
The dark night isn’t punishment.
It’s the cover charge.
Reading List for Fellow Travelers
If you want to explore the mystics as field reports rather than devotional literature:
- The Dark Night of the Soul – John of the Cross
- The Interior Castle – Teresa of Ávila
- Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings – a Dominican who nearly got condemned for heresy because he kept saying things like “God and I are one”
- The Cloud of Unknowing – anonymous medieval guide to approaching the mystery through “unknowing”
- Julian of Norwich: Showings – “All shall be well” came from genuine encounter, not wishful thinking
Read them not as Catholics, not as Christians, not as anything.
Read them as humans who touched something vast and tried to tell us about it.
The packaging is historical accident.
The signal is eternal.
