Sarah Clarkson's Reviews > Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness

This book really challenges me in a way I rarely experience in spiritual reading. I think there is such a strong idea of mystics being extreme hermits who live in caves, that the whole understanding of Christian Mysticism has been undermined. But really, what this book is helping me to grasp, is that mysticism is simply the concentrated focus of one's entire life upon the person of Christ. The mystics were people who chose to live in such a way as to powerfully encounter the reality, the living, true, real as my breath reality of God.

Encountering them through the scholarly, but poignant and passionate writing of Evelyn Underhill is a reading experience I am reluctant to leave (and I won't have to anytime soon since this is a 500 page book!).