The Making of a Mystic: My Journey With Mushrooms, My Life as a Pastor, and Why It's Okay for Everyone to Relax

By Kevin Sweeney

There is an increasing interest in the mystics, contemplative faith, and what it feels like in real life. We have teachers who can explain the path and help us understand, but we need guides who have experienced the path and who can show us how it unfolds. This is what The Making of a Mystic is all about.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quoir
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781957007151

Book preview

PELOTON, CHEERLEADING FOR THE EGO, AND TRANSFORMATION

I recently overheard a phone conversation between my wife Christine and one of her best friends Kristin. I couldn’t hear everything they were saying, but from what I did hear, the conversation included how Peloton instructors are like pastors, marathon running, hustling, and conquering and overcoming pain.

Here’s something you need to know; my wife and Kristin have a similar flavor of personality and many shared traits—ambitious, hard working, determined, loving, and they both possess a seemingly endless inner supply of energy reserves.

If life was a game, then in every conversation they have, I think they beat it.

So as the original conversation was ending, the conversation approached an unexpected turn. After all of the talk about overcoming and conquering pain, Kristin asked my wife a question: With all of this, how does it translate into conquering anxiety?To which my wife replied, That one I haven’t completely figured out yet.

Now, my wife Christine is a Marriage and Family Therapist, a pastor, highly self aware, and a natural healer for people. Kristin has done social work, worked with people in suicide prevention, and understands much of the inner life. So, the ending of that conversation is in no way a slight to them, rather it is an expression of the different inner mechanics required for overcoming things with the strength of the ego, and overcoming the ego itself.

Soon after this conversation, my wife talked me into doing one guided twenty minute interval run with one of her and Kristin’s favorite Peloton instructors. In my defense, I live in Hawaii and it was disgustingly humid outside at the time. So by the time my run ended, I was lying down on the front lawn of an apartment tower that wasn’t my own. I wanted to give up multiple times, when I lied down in the grass at the end I could feel my heart beating in my face, and I had a head ache the rest of the day.

Did I mention I have a really low tolerance for physical pain?

What struck me the most about that Peloton run was the way the instructor spoke during the workout. She was energetic, encouraging, inspirational, wove in spiritual language seamlessly, and used every cliché imaginable.

Don’t think, just do.

You’re a part of my wolf pack. Wear your crown.

The hustle in me recognizes the hustle in you.

There were a lot more that are too much for me to even type.

Let’s just say the very comments that get my wife and Kristin all pumped up make me want to throw my phone at the wall.

This kind of communicating is powerful, inspirational, and people love it. I actually believe the same reasons why people love this kind of motivational workout talk is why people love the most famous Christian preachers as well.

As I was running, I kept thinking that if you sprinkle in a few Bible verses, this has the same feel of a lot of popular sermons.

This is about tapping into grit, accessing our tenacity, focusing our mind, maintaining a positive view of ourselves, and being able to push through barriers with our own strength and our own will.

This is the energy within the idea that we must refuse to lose.

This is what makes great athletes.

This is what fuels powerful CEOs.

This is what allows pastors to build empires.

Going back to the question about overcoming anxiety Kristin asked my wife, and looking at this kind of inspirational communication, we see that while this communication is valuable for certain dimensions of our life—namely anything that requires will power or ego strength—it is also extremely limited as well.

Why? Well…

You can’t grit your way out of heartbreak.

You can’t try your way out of trauma.

You can’t will your way past anxiety.

A refuse to lose mindset does not help when what is required for growth and movement are the acceptance of hurt and loss. If the only way to evolve through certain stages of our life is through our ability to embrace loss, then the refuse to lose mindset is the very thing that will keep you stuck.

When it comes to the ambitions of the ego, the need for will power, inspiration and motivation will help you work harder. But in the further journey of radical transformation and healing, motivation cannot guide you, and inspiration alone is unable to lead you.

A driven young woman telling me my hustle recognizes your hustle won’t help me when I need to grieve my greatest emotional wounds, or let go of my most cherished expectations on life.

So often, what we seek in inspiration is only going to be found through transformation.

+ + +

Our church Imagine, has always had different waves of athletes from the University of Hawaii come through and become a part of the church. A few years back, there were two quarterbacks from the football team who were part of Imagine at the same time, both of whom I was pretty close to.

One was on scholarship and a redshirt, who sat out his first year of eligibility, and was now the backup quarterback as a freshman. He had high expectations to become the starter, had the body type of a true NFL quarterback, and was young, hungry, and waiting for his chance to prove himself.

The other was a walk on who took four years off after High School before going to college, someone who had tried out for the team multiple times, never suited up for a game, and was now getting ready for his final year where he was finally going to have a spot on the roster. He had work ethic of Rudy, and with the compassion and wisdom he carried, and was happy to have a positive role in the lives of players on the team, even though it was possible he would never get in the game.

I remember how different the individual conversations I would have with each of them were that year.

As the younger one was waiting to get his chance to start, he would share his frustration, his eagerness to establish himself, and his insatiable desire to make a name for himself. Near the end of one particular conversation we were having on campus, I told him he needs to work harder than everyone else, be more hungry than anyone else, and not let anybody in college football train harder than him. I would remind him who he was, how capable he was, that I was with him no matter what, and that his time was coming.

The conversation was inspiration, encouragement, motivation, and support.

The nature of the conversations between the older quarterback and I were nothing like the conversations I was having with the younger one. He would ask questions about why a part of him needed to be on the team so bad, we would explore what it was that drove him so incessantly to succeed in sports, he would ask daring questions like: Who am I without sports? What does it mean to be grounded in an identity that is truly and only in Christ? Why do I need this?

The first conversation was encouraging, inspiring, and empowering the ego.

The second one was about questioning, recognizing, and overcoming the ego.

The first conversation was about maintaining a positive view the self on the way to success.

The second one was about dying to the self on the way to freedom.

Hustle and hard work can establish a positive social image for you, but they cannot help you touch the freedom that transcends any other person’s perspective of you. Determination and will can put you in a position of power, but they cannot help you experience the real power of not needing power at all. Tenacity, relentlessness, and drive can build empires, fulfill dreams, and make you powerful and famous, but they do not have the power to lead you to the radical liberation that only exists on the other side of the funeral for the false self.

Or, to put it another way.

Michael Jordan can show us the absolute commitment needed to win, but he can not show us the radical liberation that comes from relinquishing the ego need to win itself.

+ + +

Ken Wilber makes a distinction between translative spirituality and transformative spirituality.

Translative spirituality is usually where the journey begins. Here, the self is given an improved way of viewing reality, a healthier way of relating to God, a new way of seeing themselves, and a more compassionate way of looking at humanity.

So when the pastor or teacher says, God loves you, and God demonstrates this love in Jesus. You are worthy of good, capable of great of things, and every human being is your neighbor, that can be a powerful, even revolutionary experience. To believe we are loved by God, to start to trust that we are worthy and capable, and to be called to see every human being as a neighbor to care for, this can be a brand new way of translating and seeing the world.

The belief in a loving God can give us a positive sense of self, can ground our experience in a chaotic and uncertain world, can empower us to act, and can expand our view of inclusion and compassion.

The main task of translative spirituality is to provide a set of beliefs that creates a new lens to see God, your self, humanity, and our world in a positive