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Description
Into the Mystic is a spiritual memoir that focuses on the author's spiritual mentor, Olga Park (1891-1985). The book consists of a series of vignettes and poems written by the author and by Park as well as some illustrations of Olga's own spiritually-inspired artistic creations. It explores the relation of the female spiritual seeker to her wisdom teacher, guru, and spiritual mentor, and addresses timeless questions about the relation of time to eternity, the nature and emergence of consciousness, direct mystical experience etc. in a contemporary Canadian context. The book synthesizes memoir, spiritual autobiography, biography, personal narrative, and poetry in an innovative way. Olga self-published a number of books exploring a lifetime of direct mystical experiences grounded in and moving out from the Christian tradition with which she was most familiar. Her books attracted a number of seekers who came to learn from her. Although the author privileges her mentor's teachings, she does so by relating them to her own spiritual development and to non-Christian spiritual traditions. Thus she provides the reader with much of Olga's life story as well as some of her own. By integrating her knowledge of global spiritual practices, she broadens the audience as well as the appeal of her teacher's spiritual journey.
Contributor Notes
Susan McCaslin is an award-winning Canadian poet and Faculty Emerita of Douglas College in Westminster, BC where she taught English and Creative Writing for twenty-three years. She is the author of eleven volumes of poetry, including her most recent, The Disarmed Heart (May 2014). Her previous volume of poetry, Demeter Goes Skydiving (2012) was short-listed for the BC Book Prize (Dorothy Livesay Award) and the first-place winner of the Alberta Book Publishing Award (Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award) in 2012. Susan has published a volume of essays, Arousing the Spirit: Provocative Writings (2011) and edited two anthologies on poetry and spiritual practice. In addition, she is on the editorial board of Event: the Douglas College Review and is an editorial assistant for The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Harvard Divinity School). Susan is nourished by wilderness and by the world's global mystics and contemplatives of various spiritual traditions. Freed to be a full-time writer since retiring from teaching, she lives in Fort Langley, British Columbia with her husband. Recently, she initiated the Han Shan Poetry Project as part of a successful campaign to protect an endangered rainforest along the Fraser River in British Columbia.
Editorial Review
"Into the Mystic: My Years with Olga reveals Susan McCaslin's transformational and endearingly human journey with English born, Canadian Olga Park, integrative creative and mystic. McCaslin interweaves her poems, prose, photos, art, visions and struggles with those of Olga Park. Their polyphonic insights assure this reader that raised consciousness is accessible and joyful, not a hallucinogenic state. McCaslin, a gifted poet and visionary herself, illuminates Park's interior knowing, synthesizing myriad systems or spiritual stepping stones, drawing on her own deep knowledge of many wisdom traditions. McCaslin's book is wise, humble, and courageous. Her lyrical, receptivity entices this reader into a more loving, honest dasein or being in the world. May this treasure, organized in numinous vignettes, touch many souls."--Katerina Fretwell, poet and author of Class Acts and Angelic Scintillations"Not all of us who aspire to a mystical life are fortunate enough to have such a teacher as Olga Park, whom BC writer and poet Susan McCaslin studied with for decades. In this spiritual memoir, McCaslin shares her experience of the Canadian mystic who so inspired and encouraged her. McCaslin acts as guide to Olga Park's writings as well as her own, drawing on a broad reading into mystical tradition.McCaslin offers the reader a place to stand, a sense of deep interconnectivity which Olga Parks describes as "between time and eternity." McCaslin has the ability to articulate ineffable experience with the well-thought-out clarity of a philosopher and the felt acuity of a poet. We are drawn into the mystic's "depth of field," the wider ecology that bridges an inclusive continuum of matter and spirit. Let Into the Mystic lead you to explore hitherto untranslated dimensions. Let this book lead you home."--Penn Kemp, poet and playwright, editor of Jack Layton: Art in Action
