Stage 4: Part 2: Mystical Union: Further Practices

Contemplative Reflection & Resources to Entering into the last Stage of the Contemplative and Missional Journey

Traditionally, the shift from the stage of illumination to that of union also marks a shift from cataphatic to apophatic spirituality. In all the previous stages, emphasis has been on the cataphatic and an array of spiritual experience which Heath has defined as ‘a path of spiritual advancement in which images, forms, subjective spiritual experience, creation, incarnation, and discursive thought all lead to union with God’. Continuing into the apophatic, the emphasis is on ‘unknowing’ or the limits of knowing, and the need for encounter of God beyond words as we seek to ‘see through a glass darkly’, where the new Christian seeks to encounter God beyond an approach solely based on God’s self-revelation.