Digital Mysticism

Have you ever hacked into the core of your normal everyday affairs in order to insert a
page break in the web of your life? Have you ever stopped and allowed yourself the
space to just feel the ecstatic sensory data as it filters into the artificial space called
your life. This is what creates your individual conscious experience of the world around
you, why shouldnt you pause and bask in the sea of ecstatic bliss that the feeling of
being alive brings to both your body and your mind? The conscious experience is
difficult to put into words because its bigger than words. In fact, consciousness itself is
the container from which words bubble up. Sounds like an acid trip right? But its ok
because theres nothing wrong with getting high off of life. And guess what, youre not
alone!
Right now, in the place where you are sitting, eating, laughing, and making love, you are
on a vast tour of the solar system as the beautiful rock that we are living on called Earth,
is dancing in its orbit around the sun (3 rd in line to be exact). Our sun (which is a star of
course) is in turn, dancing to its own groove around our Milky Way galaxy. Life is so
much bigger than we can ever know, and our perception of the worlds around us will
never allow us to taste the vastness of what it has to offer unless we learn to stop and
engage its mysticism.
For me, waking up was never just a one-time experience; its a continuous time-loop
that I voluntarily choose to relive every day, thats just as real to me as my experience of
physically arising from sleep on a daily basis. And there are three things that I remind

myself of everyday so that I can continue to allow my own experience of the world
around me to be open and fluid:
1. The suction power of the black hole experience that we call individual
consciousness, pulls us so deep into it that if Im not careful, it can cause myself
to become lost to the bigger possibilities that exist outside of what I can see,
taste, hear, feel, touch and imagine.
2. If I cave under its weight, I will allow the gravitational pull of my individual life to
crush myself as Im being sucked in by the vortex of choices, responsibilities and
demands that my life brings to me.
3. Or I can learn to skirt along the horizon of the theoretical black hole I call my
individual conscious experience and allow time to stand still for me every now
and then so that I can refresh my soul.
During the times of mystics such as St. Theresa of Avila, St. Francis of Assisi and
modern life hackers like Howard Thurmond and many others, our ability to pause and
give time for deep exploration of the inner life is the formula that brings hue into our own
lives. And for the sake of this article, I refer this particular group of teachers as life
hackers because they demonstrated what it is like to hack into lifes source code which
is found at the heart of the inner subjective experience! This is the magical elixir that
transforms a life of black and white into one filled with rich color. In fact, our ability over
centuries to engage with this space has given rise to a new form of mysticism that Id
like to call digital mysticism or cyber mysticism.
Digital mystics or Cyber mystics are evolutions way of bottling the teachings of ancient
wisdom traditions and fleshing them out in the 21 st century as what we call futurists,

artificial intelligence fanatics, and digital explorers. Both you and I are digital/cyber
explorers and mystics, whether we consider ourselves to be or not. One thing that is
certain is that we are definitely digital/cyber citizens. And based on the nature of that
surface level of digital existence, there must be an inner/mystical compatibility that
matches the experience of the ordinary within that environment. When Jesus said that
the kingdom or expansion of what we call God was within, he was actually attempting
to rewrite the source code of his 1st century generation by informing them that the
possibility for a greater experience of life or transcendence wouldnt be found in solar
space but in a deeper, evolutionary form of inner space.
Today, I believe that inner space, in addition to residing within our own souls, is also the
realm of cyber space. In this digital world, you are transported through worm holes
called search engines that catapult you to dimensions that could only physically exist in
theoretical possibilities; where planets are called social media networks, (Facebook,
YouTube and others), populated by thousands of people who interact via sensory
experiences. And lets not forget that cyber black hole called the internet, which if you
dance along its edge, time disappears into eternity.
Rev. Jesse Herriott, M.A. is a Writer, Teacher, & Spirituality Scholar whose work
explores the nature of the soul. He is an ordained priest and classically trained
"Teacher" with graduate degrees in both the Social Sciences and Humanities. He
lectures frequently within churches, spiritual centers, and career colleges throughout the
southeastern United States. He's also a frequent contributor to unity.org, elephant
journal magazine, and a host of other online publications. In 2015, he was inducted into
the Martin Luther King Jr. Board of Preachers and Scholars in the historic Martin Luther
King Jr. Chapel, at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Jesse's radio show "Living
on Purpose" is archived on Unity Online Radio at:
www.unity.fm/program/livingonpurpose Find out more at www.jessherriott.com