Into Luminosity — A Spiritual Journey

The Evolution of the Integral Church
Part Four
Luke’s Journey toward ICN

We all have unique journeys and stories of how we’ve traveled down the spiritual path to arrive where we are now. I’ve had the privilege of hearing a couple hundred of yours over the last years in WeSpace groups, and I’m so often struck by the resonances and similarities—yet also the precious distinctiveness of each one.

I’ve seen the smiles on the faces of those recognizing parts of themselves as another is sharing. It is the relief and the gift to know that we are not alone on this path, that we are not crazy, not heretical (ok maybe a little, but in the good way!), not going off the deep end—but diving deep. The evolving unfoldings toward a more Integral church have many overlapping pathways. We are following the leading of spirit, the call of the beyond, dedicated to the deep intuition that there is more to the story than we’ve known, that there is more up ahead than we now know.

This is the ability to release what no longer serves us, to let go of what we have outgrown, to welcome—sometimes even reluctantly—the invitation to always keep going, to keep evolving, to keep discovering along the way.

And so today I’ll share some of my discoveries on the journey, in hope that they’ll serve perhaps a few knowing smiles, a bit of encouragement, and maybe even something of a picture of what it can look like along the path to a more loving, inclusive, and integrated Christianity.

My First Mystical Experience

I had my first powerful divine experience at a young age. I only recently began to recognize it as a mystical experience, probably because of how trapped in my mind I was for so long—I could only see it for the conceptual knowing that came with the experience.

I was in the car, waiting to pull up to the front door of school to be dropped off. A children’s Christian music tape was playing, singing out the words of Romans 8:38-39: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

My parents had divorced a few years earlier, and the wound of my father’s separation was still fresh. But in that moment, I knew that God’s love could never be separated from me. It was a thought, but it was also a profound knowing that I can now see went deep into my heart and spiritual womb. I was given the gift of loving union with God, in a child’s way of knowing, a child’s way of receiving unconditional love. This became a foundational truth that has served as an anchor point for my soul throughout my life.

My Journey through Forms

When you experientially know that God is not separate from you, it can make participation in traditional religion a little challenging. At least in the churches I experienced, so many of the structures and forms are set up around granting access to something that is actually already ever-present. We all need our forms and vehicles for moving into that deeper awareness, yet I felt like I wasn’t seeing that happening around me all that often.

Since I knew my experience and inner reality, I figured the problem must be with the outer structures and collective forms. If we could just figure out how to do this “church” thing better, then people would see it. Then they would really wake up to God’s love and presence.

And so, I began experimenting through various forms. I participated in the house church movement, the missional church movement, lifegroups, charismatic expressions, and more, and then into starting a New Monastic intentional community. This to me was the peak of form, the ultimate expression of what the Christian church was supposed to be, modeled after the early church as described in the book of Acts.

My spiritual ego was quite self-satisfied, even though we were mostly failing at what we were trying to do and be. I was trying to live in a structure created by an outward, idealized picture of what it all should be like. It was not coming from my own depth of being and heart passion, and it wasn’t in resonance with my own inner life. I was actually in a dark night period in my interior mystical journey. After five years of stubborn clutching, it finally broke within me, and my wife and I left the community.

I see now how my inclinations as an optimizer and reformer were at play, but also how I held the truth of my divine experiences over and against the contradictions in the church and the theology I was being given. I’m grateful for that gift of deep trust in the truth of my experience, and that I could always hold onto that despite what I saw being displayed by “the church” and the often harmful or misguided expressions. I never conflated those with the God I had experienced so deeply, so lovingly.

To me, this is the power and importance of mystical experience in our spiritual journey. And by that I simply mean direct, personal encounter with God, unmediated and uncontrolled. It is the reason why authoritative, hierarchical ecclesiastics fear mysticism—because it sets you free from needing the institution to be able to access the divine.

And it is, I believe, one of the absolute keys to stage development. To be able to let go of the religious structures and belief systems so defined by a particular stage of development, you almost need to have the deeper anchoring of experience that can carry you through. Otherwise, if you don’t have that, the system and forms are all you have, and to release them is to release everything.

You deconstruct your house without any inner shelter and find yourself out in the cold.

Many find that they need to do this, as it’s the only option to keep going, to escape the increasingly insufficient and dangerous dwelling. Others, in fear of that cold, choose to remain in the house that is falling down around them, remembering the former warmth it once offered.

But that house is not your ultimate home.

And our deepest experiences of the divine give us the courage, strength, and freedom to be carried through lower stage religion and all its trappings. Even if we’ve experienced mostly healthy forms, we still eventually outgrow most all of them. We can let go of old systems, beliefs, and ideas because we know they are just conceptions and forms, not the Ultimate Reality itself.

Awakening to a New Consciousness

After the intentional community, I spent a few years in the final depth of the interior cave of my dark night. I was adrift in the great river of formlessness. Any boat I swam toward was pulled away from me. Any branch of the shore I tried to grip, I could not hold for long. The current kept drawing me onward. But to where?

I didn’t know how to be in this river. Should I swim? Should I float? Should I let myself sink?

And then one day, or rather, in one timeless moment, I became the river.

I was the water. I was the mountain stream. I was the depth of the ocean. I was the rain. I was the tear.

A new energy released from deep within, a kundalini awakening could be one way to understand it. I was filled with an energetic bliss that brought me into a new way of being from the radiant center of my heart, after much processing and integrating.

My mystical journey has continued in new unfoldings and developments, leading me further into manifesting more of a life in congruence with my own interior reality.

Significantly, it wasn’t long before I realized that I couldn’t go any further by myself. What was next would necessitate more than I could do and be alone.

Gathering and Community in The New Church

I have thought that the toxic individuality of our culture and society has so seeped into our Christian religious and spiritual consumerism that we have largely divorced our own spiritual journey from community and shared growth and development.

For example, in searching for all of these beautiful images we use alongside our writings, it is so much harder to find groups of people. The vast majority portray individuals alone in their spiritual experience.

I wonder now if we are in some ways just awakening to a new sense of our collective being. A new consciousness evolving into awareness of our interbeing in the space between and among us—what we call the “WeSpace.” An emerging reality experienced in an entirely new way.

It’s probably some of both. Older cultures and religious expressions were much more community-oriented, but their shared interior realities were born out of different values and experiences, some of which need to be reintegrated, and others probably best left behind. Others had more of an underlying sense of the connectedness of all things, but perhaps less of what could be brought forth into further outward manifestation of that reality. Technology alone greatly enhances our comingling and interspersion between invisible and visible realities.

We are discovering new arisings and coherings from this emerging “we.” Though we are scattered all over the world, the digital age has given us a new gift, new means for finding one another and re-connecting (the root of the word religion) at the deeper levels. We can join with those others all around the world who have found themselves carried along into broader being, into this new “we,” this new mysticism.

One of my archetypes is that of the gatherer. I can see it in my whole story, especially in the focus on forms. From my new state of being, with a new interior reality both individually and collectively, I can return to the art of discovering new designs and structures in service to a greater communal awakening. Hopefully this time with less ego and more integration and awareness.

This new church has digital and mystical architecture.

This new church is not gathered according to geographical proximity, but by a closeness of the heart and spiritual resonance.

It doesn’t just meet at scheduled times, but also congregates in the transcendent reality of our incarnated entanglement beyond space and time.

It is not centered on any one pastor or leader, but an empowerment of the whole, a living network sprouting forth vines and branches in our collective growth, further bearing forth the loving evolution of Christianity into a sacred offering of transformation, liberation, healing, and life.

What will this look like? What will be the fragrance of the bloom? What will be the taste of the budding fruit?

Come, let’s find out together.

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