The mystics were not the exception. They were the point.

Meister Eckhart. Brother Lawrence. The Desert Fathers. Origen. Julian of Norwich. Thomas à Kempis.

These are not curiosities at the edge of the tradition. They are the living center of it — people who actually found what the institution claimed to be selling.

Most of them were suppressed, condemned, or simply ignored by the institution they lived within.

That tells you something about the institution. It tells you something about what they found.