Many of us today are on a quest for deeper meaning, for greater peace, and for a steady connection to a source of well-being. But we arent sure how to find these things. How do we know which path is right for us, or if were in the right place on the way? How do we assess our own progress, or know what next step to take? The Mystics Map is an outline for the spiritual journey. No matter where you are on your own spiritual questjust starting out, well on your way, or perhaps feeling stalled in your progressThe Mystics Map offers you insight and inspiration for charting your own unique course. Through the authors personal stories and stories from her clients and companions, you will be inspired to move forward. And through numerous practical exercises and bits of wisdom from many spiritual traditions, The Mystics Map gives you the tools you need to take the next step.

This work offers interdisciplinary perspectives by women scholars on the diverse cultural contributions of medieval women mystics.

Mystics are path-breaking religious practitioners who claim to have experience the infinite, word-defying Mystery that is God. Many have been gifted writers with an uncanny ability to communicate the great realities of life with both a theologian's precision and a poet's lyricism. They use words to jolt us into recognizing ineffable mysteries surging beneath the surface of our lives and within the depths of our hearts and, by their artistry, can awaken us to see and savor fugitive glimpses of a God-drenched world.In Mystics, William Harmless, S.J., introduces readers to the scholarly study of mysticism. He explores both mystics' extraordinary lives and their no-less-extraordinary writings using a unique case-study method centered on detailed examinations of six major Christian mystics: Thomas Merton, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildegard of Bingen, Bonaventure, Meister Eckhart, and Evagrius Ponticus. Rather than presenting mysticism as a subtle web of psychological or theological abstractions, Harmless's case-study approach brings things down to earth, restoring mystics to their historical context.Harmless highlights the pungent diversity of mystical experiences and mystical theologies. Stepping beyond Christianity, he also explores mystical elements within Islam and Buddhism, offering a chapter on the popular Sufi poet Rumi and one on the famous Japanese Zen master Dogen. Harmless concludes with an overview of the century-long scholarly conversation on mysticism and offers a unique, multifaceted optic for understanding mystics, their communities, and their writings. Geared toward a wide audience, Mystics balances state-of-the-art scholarship with accessible, lucid prose.

In this book, Conrad Rudolph studies and reconstructs Hugh of Saint Victor's forty-two-page written work, The Mystic Ark, which describes the medieval painting of the same name. In medieval written sources, works of art are not often referred to, let alone described in any detail. Almost completely ignored by art historians because of the immense difficulty of its text, Hugh of Saint Victor's Mystic Ark (c.1125–30) is among the most unusual sources we have for an understanding of medieval artistic culture. Depicting all time, all space, all matter, all human history and all spiritual striving, this highly polemical painting deals with a series of cultural issues crucial in the education of society's elite during one of the great periods of intellectual change in Western history.

In the captivating novel The Mystics of Reyesville, the first in a series celebrating the healing mysteries of Mexican culture, a displaced executive is called back to her hometown, where she must confront past relationships and haunting memories before moving forward with her life. After her godmother passes away, Marlena Rivera returns to Reyesville, Texas, a town she fled years ago. She reconnects with old friends, but Anna, her godmother's spiritual protégé, still bears a grudge against Marlena over their shattered romance. To make matters worse, Marlena's uncle is planning a new and unwanted career for her, and her father is turning over the family business to a cousin who may not be trustworthy. Marlena sees the connections between power, land, and money in this small Texas town, and she is tempted to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. But Reyesville is different-it's on the Map of Emotions, a world with its own rules and its own guides. Marlena never counted on the mystics of Reyesville-or the possibility that she might be one of them.