Conscious Choice: A Monk in the City

December 2003

A Monk in the City

Brother Wayne Teasdale believes we are all on a road to Divine transformation

by Karyn Mistrik

As some people, when asked, might identify themselves as an accountant or writer or secretary, Wayne Teasdale identifies himself as a mystic. He says it matter of factly, as if it’s an everyday cocktail party response to, "and what do you do?"

Moreover, he points out, it’s what we all are: mystics by birthright — able to experience a direct connection to the absolute, however we may define that. "Birth is a baptism into the mystical life," he says, "our existence expresses God’s intention and relationship for us."

A Catholic lay monk and a teacher at DePaul University, Columbia College, and The Catholic Theological Union, Teasdale has written, A Monk in the World, a primer on how to develop and live by this mystic birthright. It breaks through our more typical vision of a mystic living in a monastery, or long ago or far away, and brings it right to our front doors, to our ordinary everyday lives and struggles. "The book is a practical vision of the spiritual life for people living in the world, written from my experiences living in Chicago," Teasdale explains.

"We’re all longing to know our roots, where we’re from and what we’re about; we’ve become disillusioned with the material level we’ve achieved, we know there’s more but it’s not being addressed in our culture. Mysticism is our nature, no matter what time or age we’re living in; but it’s particularly urgent in our time because our culture has denied it. The monk represents that part of us that is being neglected."

Hybrid Path

Teasdale’s awareness of his own longing for the Divine has been nearly lifelong, ignited by his early mystical experiences, the sense of union and transcendence he sometimes felt with nature as a young boy in Connecticut. Additionally, he was spurred on by a number of extraordinary mentors throughout his life, including his Uncle John, his birth mother’s brother who adopted and raised him; Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk who helped him to understand his later mystical experiences; and Bede Griffiths, an English Benedictine monk who lead an ashram in southern India until his death in 1993.

It was Father Bede who in 1985 drew Teasdale to India and to a dramatic shift in his relationship to the Divine. "What you go to India for and what you get are two different things," Teasdale says. What he went for was to have an extended stay at Father Bede’s ashram, hoping to survive the chaos and conditions of India that he had heard about from his uncle who had been there several times. "My prayer before going was‘God, please don’t let me freak out.’ I didn’t want to go for only five days and then come home."

On the contrary, despite his fear, what he received during the trip was transformational. "It was an idyllic period of my life. I became more trusting of my own inner experiences and was not so dependent on the religious institution as is typical in the West. These structures aren’t going to change us, we have to do the work; India — and Bede — authenticated that for me."

For Teasdale, who had trained in the seminary and always looked to Rome for leadership, this shift beyond the institutional hierarchy was profound. Why it happened through India, he says, is because spirituality in that country is an inherent part of everyday life and mystical and other intuitive ways of knowing are not only accepted, but also expected. This environment helped him, a philosopher by training, to step outside his own ingrained belief in the supremacy of the intellect and more completely accept his own mystical experiences.

"I spent years being afraid — with having mystical experiences a fundamental part of that is a fear of others and what they think of you."

Teasdale eventually took vows as a Christian Sannyasi, based on the Hindu tradition of wandering mystics who renounce their worldly concerns and possessions to devote themselves to the Divine. He considered staying in India, but then Father Bede spun him back westward, telling him his mission was back home.

Bringing it home

For the past eight years Teasdale has lived as a lay monk in Hyde Park. He works to pay bills, maintain friendships, mentor students, get along with neighbors, recover his health from a bout with cancer, and reconcile the gap between otherworldly experiences of divine union and everyday experiences of human separateness and fallibilities.

He maintains daily spiritual practices that draw on his experiences with Catholicism, Hinduism and Buddhism, including meditation, prayer and walking, and has a community rich with friends — both key ingredients, he says, for any of us to live as a monk in the world. "There are as many ways to practice as there are people," Teasdale says. "What’s necessary in all of them is consistency. You can’t start and stop, you have to set aside consistent time.

"Setting up a practice leads to breakthroughs. You surrender to the tedium and boredom of it. It allows you to transcend, and move beyond words and concepts. As you develop your mystical sensitivities you begin to become aware of the Divine — you can’t miss it. You move from faith to direct experience of it."

Underlying a spiritual life is a commitment to a contemplative attitude, one that looks for the divine in everything. "You see everything through this commitment," he says. "Everything becomes a spiritual practice and you commit to compassionate action. Everything is brought under grace, even the shadow, so there is nothing outside of it."

By doing this, we take responsibility for our own transformation, he says, instead of expecting it to happen through a source outside of us, though the sources we typically look to, religious institutions or other types of supportive communities, are still vital to this process. "This life requires us to be nourished by spiritual friendship. Our culture is not supportive of it, it’s an up-hill battle," says Teasdale. "But we can be the chief obstacle in our own development, humility makes that clear.

"Spirituality is a personal commitment to awareness of the divine — to the ultimate mystery however we may define it, and a commitment to our own transformation. Thomas Keating has said that the greatest accomplishment in life is to be who you are. A spiritual life is a way to awaken and become a full human being; you’re not a full human being if you don’t have a spiritual life. Transformation puts us on the path of surrender to being kind, loving and compassionate, to becoming love in action. Through transformation we remember — and become — who we are, Divine love."

Karyn Mistrik lives in suburban Chicago and writes on occasion — when the spirit moves her.

A Few Thoughts from A Monk in the World

The principles of sharing and simplicity are inspired by loving compassion, kindness, mercy, and a highly refined sensitivity that allows us to see their necessity. This sensitivity is the gift, indeed the grace, of the spiritual life. The more the six billion members of the human family now inhabiting the earth, like all who have preceded us and all who will come after, are part of an interdependent community of sentience and life. This reality cries out to our sense of justice, inspiring us to oppose poverty and homelessness.

....If we change the way we live, if we actually simplify our existence in our time and around the world, then it will be possible truly to share with one another. Sensitive sharing leads us to discern the needs of others whenever we encounter them. As higher sentient beings, we are meant to share with others. Although we may recognize our root biological tendency to horde and fight for out survival, that basic tendency is not what makes us human — overcoming that tendency is.

Unfortunately, most people don’t realize the truth simply because of their social conditioning, which blocks them from the awareness of their responsibility to act compassionately all the time, regardless of the situation. By sharing and by simplifying our lives we can restore balance to the system we inherited from our predecessors. We can replace our self-serving culture with a compassionate one that takes into account the interdependent reality of which we are all part.

A Monk in the World, by Wayne Teasdale, New World Library; $14.95, Trade Paperback. Order toll-free: 800-972-6657, ext. 52, or visit the Web site.

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