Gathered to the Transforming Heart of Jesus
Devotion for Cultural Creatives Part Four: Together
This is the final section of this six-part series that began with Why Christian Worship Doesn’t Work for Many Cultural Creatives—and What Might. We begin with a reminder about who cultural creatives are.
Paul Ray is co-author of The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. He has been researching their values, lifestyles and beliefs for 25 years. He says that Cultural Creatives are the carrier population for the emerging wisdom culture:
Across the planet, they are innovators for the culture, not so much in technologies as in beliefs, worldviews, values and ways of life. They are the opinion leaders, and the participants in all the new social movements of the past 60 years who have time and again shaped others’ views, practices and adoptions of these new ways. Their Green values and lifestyles and their values of inner development both psychological and spiritual are the key to the emerging new culture. New Cultural Creatives surveys in Europe, Japan and the US all show the same trends.
The Cultural Creatives care deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about relationships, peace, social justice, and about authenticity, self-actualization, spirituality, and self-expression.
Ray says that Cultural Creatives need to be contrasted to Traditionals and Moderns who are busy having a culture war. This 35% of US population is attempting to transcend that culture war.
Americans who see themselves as Traditional are largely in reaction against the modern culture of today’s world. The 40% of U.S. population considered to be Modern tend to see the world through a filter of personal success and financial gain, with an acceptance of “things as they are” in big cities, big organizations, the latest technologies, mass media, and a “modern” life rewarded by material consumption.
Ray argues that we are now in a period of history that can best be described as an era of a cascade of planetary crises. There is the climate crisis, food and drinking water crises; droughts, floods and extreme weather; rising sea levels, drowning most seaports and coastal areas; peak oil; melting arctic permafrost, releasing huge amounts of methane and accelerating climate change; massive climate refugee problems; a very unstable global financial system; religious terrorism and ethnic conflicts worsening; and likely climate-caused wars from all the above. All of which are worse that we ever expected.
However, Ray also concludes that there is now a “bright new answer emerging from the gloom.” Integral Christian Network sees this as the power of cultural creatives to move the entire world to the higher stages of growing up and waking up that are necessary to solve the “cascade of planetary crisis.”
The Cultural Creatives on the Jesus path are behind in the kind of gathering together Jesus was talking about
Those of us who are emerging cultural creatives and integralists, the carrier population for the emerging wisdom culture, are working together more and more. However, those of us whose intention it is to follow the spiritual path of Jesus are desperately behind in coming together in the way that Jesus meant. Christians’ usual form of togetherness is not working well for them —institutional churches. It is not a problem of gathering—it is a problem of what happens when we gather! For most of us, if we haven’t given up on “church” entirely, we are still gathering just like the traditionalists and moderns do!
“Gathered Together” in Devotion
Traditional and contemporary worship gatherings can often be mere shallow sentimentality. Sentimentality does not transform us. Devotion is what transforms us because it reaches to the depth our hearts. In opening our hearts to God’s heart with others on the Jesus path, we find ourselves opening our hearts to the others present, too. This collective practice is enriched and vastly expanded in the powerful heart-sourced energy field shared with those on the same spiritual journey. Integral Christian Network seeks to do this in our WeSpace groups.
Jesus said, “Where two or three of my followers are gathered together in my name, I am there with them” (Mat. 18:20). He was speaking of a kind of spiritual intimacy which allows us to become aware of being gathered together in a new way, something rarely found in large assemblies.
This new/old kind of intimate gathering has a rather unique feature. It is also gathering with entities and presences that are not in the physical realm, but exist in the energetic dimension that is only accessible by waking up to their reality. Jesus was clear—he would be there, meaning we would know it. His life also demonstrated that he would not be the only spiritual being present. His Abba Imma father/mother would be there. Other friends in the spiritual realms often called spiritual guides would be there too. Spiritual guides include the ones the Bible calls “messengers” (or “angels” in most biblical translations since the 4th century’s unfortunate translation of the Greek angelos in the Latin Vulgate). Spiritual guides also include such saintly helpers such as the kind Jesus needed—Moses and Elijah in his case. History has seen Mary, Jesus’ mother, and others appear to the awake in order to comfort, strengthen, and guide them.
Abba Father is also present wherever Jesus is present. I deliberately use Jesus’ personal naming of God-Beside-Him because it was his heart-centered naming of God. This is with the recognition that others may use other personal, heart-centered namings of God. What is important is not the particular name for God we use for God in devotion, but that it comes from our heart.
Transfiguration by Carl Bloch
Mystical Gathering
Most neglected in practice if not in theory, is this model Jesus gave of mystical group devotion. We see him connecting with God in the presence of his physical friends, Peter, James, and John, and his non-physical friends, Moses and Elijah ((Matt. 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36). In these three beautiful and most certainly condensed descriptions, Integral Christian Network sees a model of the first fully operational WeSpace group—three friends with Jesus physically present, Abba Father spiritually present, and two spiritual friends of Jesus in conversation with him about his most pressing life issue at the time, his upcoming death in Jerusalem. These mystical experiences were followed by much conversation among Jesus, Peter, James, and John.
Wouldn’t you like to be in a group of friends who are followers of Jesus, along with the presence of God, the Living Jesus, and everyone’s spiritual guides – all gathered to strengthen, encourage, and comfort one another personally in your journey to heal the world?
Keep this picture in mind when you think of what a WeSpace group is all about.
The two goals of mystical consciousness
The aim of Whole Body Mystical Awareness practice is not merely to enter a mystical or transcendent state of consciousness. The goal is twofold:
1. One goal of WeSpace mysticism is to connect with the presence of spiritual beings and entities who desire to help us in our journey. We are meant to journey not only in the company of friends who are physically present but also with the spiritual friends who are present with us in a non-physical way.
2. The other goal is to be present to the vast field of wisdom available to us in mystical and transcendent states. This field is filled with vibrant healing and transforming information such as:
Blissful love that makes all things okay because we feel deeply in every part of our body and being that no one and nothing is separate from God.
Emotional information that comes only from the peace that by-passes our normal way of understanding
New and enlarged perspectives on everything from world peace and environmental healing to how to be closer to those closest to us.
Profoundly wise guidance that benefits us, the group, and the world.
Awareness of information directed to and shared with others that can be encouraging, strengthening, and comforting for them.
Jesus was the intended beneficiary for such information in this gathering, but we can be sure Peter, James, and John pondered it and gleaned much from it over the years as they were also touched by the power of this original WeSpace mystical gathering. It was almost certainly influential in the early church gatherings filled with mystical expression.
What would it be like if we tried to gather together in this way once again? Our WeSpace groups are one expression of seeking to experience the answer that question together.