Bringing About an Enchanted World
Can Praying Change the World?
Mystical Activism: Part Five
I use the word “enchanted” in this title deliberately. In a weary, disenchanted world, the breaking in of spiritual reality can be seen and experienced as enchanting. When we leave behind the magical fantasies of an earlier structure of humankind, we do better to include the mystical enchantment of the spiritual world that Jesus introduced us to. Science itself has newly discovered the quantum world, which is a part of a truly enchanting reality.
Integral’s preeminent scholar, Ken Wilber, says, “We don’t need a new religion. We just need a new version of our old religion.” The new version must go beyond ordinary consciousness to non-ordinary mystical consciousness. We transcend the myth and fantasy of the old religion while we newly embrace the mystical, which has been too easily discarded in the lopsided rationality of some progressive circles. We find that the mystical is enchanting in an even more intense way. It is then that we, according to Jesus, hold the potential to unite the world, rather than divide it. This is what we are offering at ICN and in this series. I continue here sharing some of our integral meditative prayer practices that move us into mystical activism.
Grounding and Embodying through our Feet
After we wake up our hearts to spiritual knowing in our WeSpace practice, as I shared last week, we usually move to the knowing center in our feet. From there, we can be present in our body as well as connected to the earth and the material cosmos. We begin by wiggling our toes and shifting our feet around on the floor or ground. We become aware of the energy flow from the earth into our feet and up into our legs.
You can have spiritual experiences without being grounded. However, it can be challenging to keep those experiences and integrate them into your day to day life without being grounded. Grounding anchors us to the physical reality of the universe. This is the enchanted reality of what influential cultural historian Jean Gebser calls “intensified consciousness.” It is the nondual reality that we are not separate from anything—including the awesome and wondrous material cosmos itself.
At some point in our practice, we reverse that flow of grounding from ground to us. Instead, we move the flow of our embodied heart energy back down into the earth and up to all the people connected to the earth. In a WeSpace group online, though we may be from different parts of the world, we often feel an embodied connection and entangling of our roots together.
Or we might feel that movement on out into the material universe through the depths of our cells, moving into the web of life through our incarnated entanglement in the cosmic body of God. Through this embodied oneness, this is perhaps one way that we participate with Jesus in giving our body for the sake of the world.
This giving can lead to the people of earth viewing and treating this earth differently. Author Jason Crawford writes, "Something called “enchantment” can help us to cultivate renewed forms of ecological habitation, of sacramental communion, of epistemic humility and wonder, of ethical attachment and care.
Vitality and Energy through our Spiritual Womb
When we move to our spiritual womb, we may place our hand or hands on our abdomen. We may also take some belly breaths so our abdomen, not our chest, is moving up and down.
This can help us become aware of the tremendous vitality flowing there which Jesus described as “From your innermost being will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38). In the New Testament, “innermost being” is most often translated as “womb.” We combine the two and call it “spiritual womb.”
These living waters contain our divine identity, effortless being, gutsy courage, and creative action. This is where we are being continuously created in the image and likeness of God. This is our core identity.
As we sink into the simplicity of being, we let go of our story, our constructed self, our expectations, obligations, agenda, and anything else we attached to. This is the last stronghold of our ego. We value our ego as it serves to help us navigate life. However, we don’t want to be attached to it or see it as our identity. As we stop clutching at our limited ego, our true divine identity is more and more able to surface.
Eros energy
In our spiritual womb, we can experience what Vivien Claire, WeSpacer, and master teacher, writes about so insightfully:
“Eros energy has particular qualities of tenderness, of intensity, of beauty, devotion, and wholesome delight. Eros energy is drawn from the womb center up into the heart center to nourish and intensify the spiritual heart of perception. Eros energy moves not only within us but between us and beyond us, radiating out into the world. The divine eros in the deeper self attracts human eros infusing and aligning the powerful sexual instincts for its own purposes. This is vitalizing for healthy bodies, for bringing a quality of devotion to all kinds of intimacy. And it is eros longing that is our fuel for devotion and prayer.”
Into the world
Our womb is a center of beingness that extends outward in infinite space. There is an inner sphere and an outer sphere where we sense our unbounded body. We sense our womb as a central point of a vast space of cosmic awareness around our body. We move from there, out to connect with that same center in all people. We let ourselves resonate with the deep womb beingness of all other sentient beings. This is the time-free past, present, and future oneness of being all.
As we anchor into this holding, we can intentionally outflow the divine, sourcing energy from our womb center into the world to nurture divine restoration and wholeness there. Our womb is a powerful source of vitality, healing, and deep care. Our reaching out to the world through our womb is a warm divine embrace, welcoming all into the divine flow of pure being.
That sounds healing and transformative to me!
“Mind Freedom” - art by Chris Powers
Wisdom and Freedom from our Head
We move into our headspace last because carrying the energy of the previous three centers there allows us to immediately experience a beautiful vibrant stillness. This stillness alone is a healing respite from our usual, constant, and unrelenting thoughts. Being in our minds beyond simple thought is in itself quite transforming! We are welcome to stay in this stillness as long as we need.
While there, we can also be open to becoming aware of images, words, sensations, intuitions that may emerge from our awakened or witnessing mind. These do not come from our ordinary consciousness but from our deeper awareness. As we often experience in our WeSpace groups, knowing in this way from our awakened consciousness opens channels of healing and wisdom for one another that we wouldn’t have access to in our everyday awareness.
Writing about an ecstatic and mystical experience as an archetypal need in The Reenchantment of Art, the artist and cultural critic Suzi Gablik has written, “Enchantment has much to teach us about hidden wonders blocked by our over-analytical minds. Enchantment asks to release us into a world beyond thought in which new perceptions and sensations lead the way to awe. Right now, let yourself muse on the possibility of enchantment. In the words of French poet Paul Éluard: “There is another world, but it is in this one.”
In our headspace, we may also move on up and out the front and top of our head into the vast space surrounding us. This can be helpful to our own wellbeing, freeing us from the constrictions of present reality for a time. Not as an ultimate avoidance or escape, but a freedom of greater perspective and larger wisdom.
In this transcendent space, we can connect with all the other minds in the universe, which make up the one mind that is I AM. This is knowing from the collective wisdom beyond all, full of gifts and guidance far beyond what we would be capable of “figuring out” on our own.
The world-transforming power of WeSpace gatherings
A crucial turn of mystical practice in the New Testament was when it moved from Jesus’ solitary experience to the shared and even more dynamic experience of a group in “one accord” with one another at Pentecost and the early church worship.
This is what Jesus was talking about when he predicted the world would become united when Christians would become mystically one. When Jesus said, “Where two are gathered together in my name, I am there,” he was saying one plus one equals at least three! That is, the spiritual power of the group is not just addition but multiplication. When more collectives move into mystical practice, the more the world moves toward the potential of unity. In mystical activism, we plunge ourselves in intensified consciousness, becoming divine humans in a divine world, bringing global peace.
Wilber’s “Tipping Point”
Jesus’ saying that when his followers become one, the world will be united, reminds me of one of Ken Wilber’s more famous predictions called the “10% tipping point.” From observing major historical changes in the consciousness of an entire culture, he says that profound changes occur when a newly evolved set of visions, views, and values reaches a 10% tipping point of a culture’s population. Jesus, like Wilber, is not saying the whole world must become Christian (or integral). Only that Christians must become Christian!
We often experience an energy surge when we get in touch with the energy field of our global network of WeSpace groups. And then we increase that by adding other evolving and growing spiritual groups intent on changing the world by their mystical collective. How about you? Don’t you want to be a part of the mystical activism that has the potential to bring unity to the world?
Perhaps, you ask, “Can we actually change the whole world?” My answer is that we don’t need to know. We don’t need to put that pressure on ourselves. All we need to do is joyously radiate harmony and oneness as followers of Jesus. As in any mystical endeavor, we let go of outcomes. And in the meantime, we soak up the love and harmony of an ever-increasing band of spiritual pioneers.
White Eagle is the mystical symbol of the writer to whom the Gospel of John is attributed. In Native American spirituality, the title “White Eagle” denotes a wise teacher who is quoted below. He, quite amazingly, seems to sum up our practice, saying: