Practice
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Historically, Christian mysticism has taught that for Christians the major emphasis of mysticism concerns a spiritual transformation of the egoic self, the following of a path designed to produce more fully realized human persons, "created in the Image and Likeness of God" and as such, living in harmonious communion with God, the Church, the rest of world, and all creation, including oneself. For Christians, this human potential is realized most perfectly in Jesus, precisely because he is both God and human, and is manifested in others through their association with him, whether conscious, as in the case of Christian mystics, or unconscious, with regard to spiritual persons who follow other traditions, such as Gandhi. The Eastern Christian tradition speaks of this transformation in terms of theosis or divinization, perhaps best summed up by an ancient aphorism usually attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria: "God became human so that man might become god."
Read more about this topic: Christian Mystics
Famous quotes containing the word practice:
“Nonwhite and working-class women, if they are ever to identify with the organized women’s movement, must see their own diverse experiences reflected in the practice and policy statements of these predominantly white middle-class groups.”
—Kimberly Crenshaw (b. 1959)
“In a sense that I am unable to explicate further, the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds.”
—Thomas S. Kuhn (1922)
“Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)