On Transformation’s Stages, Insight from Evelyn Underhill, and Living the Path Today
A Note from Me
Here was a myriad of Christian pilgrims—Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant—not consumed by their theological differences but centered on articulating a universal way of being with Christ in order to become like him.
Each of these saints lived in a unique time and place, and yet buried within their pages were striking similarities:
Many talked of purification, cleansing, shedding of sin, a kind of detachment from the distractions that hindered their relationship with Christ. Others described a process of illumination—a deepening of their awareness, a recognition of the Spirit’s transforming presence, marked by increasing clarity and growth in virtue. And it was impossible to miss their insistence on unity or oneness, as if they were arriving at a deeply intimate friendship with God.
The more I read, the more I realized that these weren’t just rare experiences unique to a few—they were developmental stages everyone encounters on the journey to becoming like Christ.
In other words, I was reading dispatches—firsthand reports from people who had actually been there. I was tracking footprints—these saints were sharing transformational terrain.*
*From Chapter 1 of my first book Dwelling in Christ: Discover the Threefold Path of Spiritual Transformation
A Voice from the Christian Tradition
“When by purgation the self has become detached from the ‘things of sense,’ and acquired those virtues which are the ‘ornaments of the spiritual marriage,’ its joyful consciousness of the transcendent order returns in an enhanced form ... Illumination brings a certain apprehension of the Absolute, a sense of the Divine Presence: but not true union with it. It is a state of happiness ... Union must be looked upon as the true goal of mystical growth; that permanent establishment of life upon transcendent levels of reality, of which ecstasies give a foretaste to the soul. Intense forms of it, described by individual mystics ... In the old, frank language of the mystics, it is the deified life.”
—Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism
A Question to Carry
Where have you already seen purgation, illumination, or union at work in your life?
On the journey with you,
—Jon
