No Mediation Needed

In each and every variety of formal Christianity there are certain adherents who are categorized as superiour. Within the Catholic and Orthodox traditions priests are held to be ideal prototypes. Indeed, they are formally doctrinally considered to be of a higher order of person than lay people. Within free church denominations it is those who are those who have more intellectual knowledge who are at the top of the pyramid and to whom others defer.

Anyone who has any experience with either system and is contemplative will eventually come to realize the pitfalls of each and why they do no fit within either.

In the case of the former any teaching about contemplative Christian experience will by necessity be limited and applied only to those who are male members of certain religious communities within the church, and as for the later, emphasis upon knowledge itself overshadows the actual experience that is ironically witnessed to by that knowledge.

Catholic teachings on the direct experience of God - while not explicitly excluding laypeople - are not directed at laypeople. And in spite of workshops and seminars designed for laypeople on the topic, these are never meant to validate a person's life other than one that is in some measure attached to the formal practises of the Church that are performed, moderated, and validated by priests. This makes it very difficult to find the necessary and life-giving practises and permissions that were experienced and witnessed to especially in the early church as well as that have erupted over the millennia ever since, and that are directly tied to God alone, and that continue to call to people today. Genuine contemplative experience is not about a diversity of graces or vocations that have been blessed by a system that is exclusive to begin with. These concepts (graces, vocations, and charisms) are unbecoming and detrimental to people who have a sensitivity to following Christ in the here and now.

The point is this: no one can live the direct experience of God in the world without a great deal of generosity, and honesty, and sacrifice - these are foreign to any religious system that is based on bias. And there is a heck of a lot of distraction thrown up by both sides - Catholic and Protestant - that needs to be simply and humbly lain aside and ignored in order to come to accept yourself as someone who, in being egoless and alert to life, can be validly indwelt by God.