The Long Way Home: Mystics & Mysticism
A Four-Night Olio Seminar
Wednesday Nights at The Lighthouse
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm // 603 Bergen St.

What if the deepest thing you’ve ever felt has been felt by others—but named differently? Beginning Wednesday, February 18th, Think Olio and Professor Michael Prettyman invite you into a four-part seminar exploring mysticism as a recurring dimension of human experience. Across cultures and centuries, mystical traditions converge on a shared insight: self-knowledge and knowledge of reality arise together.

Drawing on ancient wisdom traditions and contemporary theological frameworks, this seminar explores themes of inward attention, emptiness, doubt, love, and creativity—not as abstract ideas, but as lived experiences. Each evening pairs guided discussion with a simple experiential practice, grounding inquiry in direct encounter rather than belief.

No prior spiritual or religious background is required. The Long Way Home is for artists, thinkers, skeptics, and seekers—anyone curious about the deeper structures of human experience, and willing to take the inward journey seriously as a way of returning more fully to the world.

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Weekly Breakdown
Wednesday nights from 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Feb 18th, 25th, March 4th & March 11th
at The Olio Lighthouse in Prospect Heights

Night One serves as an orientation. We will define key terms, trace the historical emergence of mysticism as a category, and introduce the perennial philosophy as a way of recognizing shared structures of experience without erasing cultural difference. Ancient mystical traditions from India and Nepal provide early accounts of non-dual awareness, interior silence, and direct knowing beyond belief. This evening establishes the inward turn common to all mystical paths and prepares participants to experience directly rather than conceptually through guided attention and reflection.

Night Two centers on emptiness as a cross-traditional insight found in Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Taoist mystical thought. Emptiness is explored not as absence or negation, but as openness, capacity, and relational space—the condition that allows anything to appear at all. We will examine the role of attention and mindfulness in recognizing this openness, and how habitual distraction and mental grasping obscure what is already present. This evening focuses on how mystics learn to see.

Night Three — The Long Dark Night of the Soul — addresses what happens when clarity encounters the realities of lived experience. Doubt, dryness, fear, and the loss of certainty are explored not as failures, but as integral features of genuine transformation. Particular attention is given to the role of the other—how relationship, vulnerability, and love test and deepen openness over time. Love is approached not sentimentally, but as a sustained form of attention and courage that keeps the path alive when insight alone is not enough.

Night Four centers on the guiding statement: “Creativity is something sacred in and of itself.” The final evening explores how wisdom traditions function not as static doctrines, but as living methods designed to open the mind to new possibilities. Creativity is examined as a spiritual capacity through which new ways of seeing, making, and being can emerge. Mystical insight, in this view, is not an endpoint but an ongoing, creative engagement with life.

Each evening includes a simple experiential component designed to orient attention and illuminate what the traditions are pointing toward—an essential part of the seminar that grounds discussion in direct experience rather than abstraction.

No prior religious or spiritual background is required. The Long Way Home is intended for artists, thinkers, skeptics, and seekers—anyone curious about the deeper structures of human experience, and willing to take the inward journey seriously as a way of returning more fully to the world.

Our professor for this seminar:
Michael Prettyman is a contemporary artist and scholar of comparative religion whose work bridges painting, spirituality, and philosophy. Trained in classical drawing, painting, and sculpture in New York and Nepal, he combines representational art with insights from Tibetan Buddhist practice and esoteric traditions. His murals can be seen at the American Museum of Natural History, the New York Botanical Gardens, and the Bronx Zoo. Michael teaches Religion and the Visual Arts at Hunter College and lectures widely on creativity, mysticism, and the divine. He lives and works in New York City.

The Long Way Home: A Four-Night Seminar on Mystics & Mysticism

The Long Way Home: A Four-Night Seminar on Mystics & Mysticism