Rooting into the Body of God with Your Feet
Discovering Your Mystical Body – Part 5
“Deep Meeting Deep” by Tim Weidman
“Every forest branch moves differently
in the breeze, but as they sway
they connect at the roots.”
– Rumi
Christianity is the religion of the incarnation. Sadly, throughout much of Christian history, instead of embracing the divine presence in all of material reality, Socratic dualism and Greek philosophy became more prominent in the tradition. Misreadings of the apostle Paul did not help in this respect either. Spirit was set apart from and even put in opposition to matter. Many other spiritual traditions, including Christian expressions, further continue to reinforce this immateriality of spirit and separation of mystical from the physical.
Thankfully, it is not only a resurgence of animist and shamanic spirituality that is reincorporating our spirituality with our bodies, but also science itself that is beginning to intimate that matter is far more energetic and dynamic than we once thought. This is, as well, in the roots of Christianity that saw God dwelling in flesh, not just in Jesus but in all matter and the whole of creation—which includes you and me.
While our mystical body certainly has non-physical dimensions, it is also very much infused and embodied in our material and physical being. This is a vital and necessary integration today, into living in mystical reality that is not divorced from the material world that is rousing and calling out to be felt, heard, healed, and loved.
Our feet center is our natural connection point for feeling and knowing from this earthy, natural awareness. Our feet bring us to both grounding and movement. Our feet lead us into the pathways of interconnection and entwinement. They bring us to where we are in the moment, into the physical place and space of our body in the here and now, in this shimmering present presence.
This center is also not limited to the physical feet themselves—for not all have feet and both our roots and movement are not confined to this space in our bodies. As the feet are not an organ, we might connect this center to our interstitium that flows through barriers and connects beyond separating limitations, our feet center opens us into our full somatic presence—not just as an individual body, but as a rhizomatic and mycelial network intertwining and interbeing. Our incarnated entanglement in the body of God.
Mystical States of the Feet
“The Diaphany of the Divine at the heart of a glowing universe, as I have experienced it through contact with the Earth – the Divine radiating from the depths of blazing Matter.” – Teilhard de Chardin
Since we’re so often in our heads or operating from a disembodied awareness, our entry state is to come into our grounded presence. Into the here and now in this place and time. As roots reach out from trees down into the earth, we find our embodied presence in the present by becoming more grounded through our feet and physical bodies.
Here we are not “imagining” in our heads what this might look like, picturing our roots with a mental paintbrush—though we may need to begin this way to get started. Rather we are seeking to touch into, with our bodies, the felt-sense of our embodied participation in and as the earth, in and as our physical being. Don’t think about your roots, feel your roots. Conjure them from your body. Perhaps go out barefoot among the trees to help get started if you find it difficult to begin.
After she came to me, one of the first things that my spirit guide Danu did was to put a blindfold over my “third eye,” covering my visionary sight of mystical knowing. The interior pictures were suddenly all gone. She was inviting me—well, forcing me really—into my body. Into feeling deeply within and through the felt awareness of my mystical participation in embodied, energetic knowing.
In our day and age of mental predominance, many experience this reinhabiting of our bodies as a sort of coming home. We do not have a body. Our body is who we are and a very natural state of our being. We are aching for healing in this way, for a reintegration to wholeness.
As we open in deeper energetic awareness and the felt-sense of our bodily knowing, we can come further into our awakened state of consciousness from our feet and body. Here, our spiritual knowing is done in a “bodily” sense—less conceptually and more somatically. It is the awakening to the Christ energy in your embodied being. You may begin to feel sensations and energy in your body in new ways. In a WeSpace group, I feel energetic sensations related and connected to others in the group.
The feet are also the natural center of movement, and so we may find our awareness in this way coming even more through motion. This could be walking, dancing, or really any physical movement where we enter into a flow state of natural participation in and as our bodies. Even just conscious standing can help. Doing so in nature amplifies and makes more accessible this awakened awareness as well—hug a tree, touch a plant lovingly, dig into the soil with your toes.
In the subtle body, the feet are a major center of meridians—channels of life energy—into the rest of the body. As such, much of our spiritual knowing here comes along these pathways into our interconnection through our whole body and our larger collective body. Just as roots interweave and intertwine through the earth, so too do the feet of our mystical body lead us into participation beyond our individual self, into the experience of the web of life in the most immanent awareness and knowing.
This is to begin to come into the unified state of awareness from this center. Our being of the body of God. This is not so much something that we see so much as feel, though it’s been pictured as the great web of life, Indra’s Net, or what Teilhard called “The Divine Milieu.” We sense into it on a cellular or even quantum-level, vibrating with the dance of our divine participation in the strata and substance of the entire cosmos. It quivers throughout our whole being, a body-bliss that reverberates and sings out through each of our particular, unique expression of sacred vivacity. Our incarnated entanglement with all things. Embodying all.
“But let us leave the surface, and, without leaving the world, plunge into God . . . In this place the least of our desires and efforts is harvested and tended and can at any moment cause the marrow of the universe to vibrate.” – Teilhard de Chardin
The Archaic Structure of Consciousness
“These ‘roots of the world,’ invisible to the mere eye, [are] ‘the secret structure of things.’” – Jean Gebser
The archaic structure of consciousness is our most basic, fundamental being-ness. It is closest to origin. It is very much like, if not identical to, the state of being in the garden of Eden.
It is pre-conceptual, pre-feeling, and pre-sensing. It is the underlying order, the hidden wholeness, the echo of the birth of the universe reverberating in the imperceptible ghost particles of dark matter. The specter of cosmic background radiation scintillating in the fibers of our own marrow.
Perhaps the only way for us to participate in this consciousness is through nature mysticism. Through getting dirty in the soil. Through immersing ourselves in sand or water. Sinking into the unknown but felt “membering” as a core element of our distant awareness in this center of consciousness. It can only reach us if we allow this knowing to not reach our thinking mind, for it cannot be held in mental awareness. As such, we are re-membering our most fundamental life, through our non-human ancestors and our ancient flowering, feasting, and filiating among and all throughout the great material body of God—the flesh of the world that has always been divine.
The “We” of the Feet
As we grow in our awareness of our roots reaching down into the earth, and if we’re practicing with a group in a WeSpace communal field, almost unwaveringly the first thing we experience is the interconnection and intertwinement of our roots. We are normally able to sense quite quickly that we are not alone down there, and our spatial bubbles of separation have all been popped.
What’s more, we usually don’t mind at all. For here we have no need for “personal space.” We naturally share the energy and nutrients of our one earth in conjunction with all. As Sophie Strand describes it,
“It was only in the underworld that plants learned how to make community. Community that bridges differences: in species, in age, in biosemiotic language. Fungi taught plants that survival isn’t about individuation. It’s about becoming radically involved. So involved that you let your friends into your very genetics, into your root systems.
(From her wonderful reflection, “What is the Underworld”)
We can also come into the WeSpace in this center through the mystical language of our somatic knowing. This is sensing in our bodies something that is related to another. It is an energetic participation in our interconnection—for we are not just our individual self. We are and we are not separate bodies. We have distinction but not division. And we can learn to become aware of our mystical mirror neurons that vibrate with energetic knowing in our communal co-participation of our bodies in the WeSpace.
This way of knowing offers potent possibilities for physical healing, experiential liberation from our sense of separation and isolation, and the joy of the mystical resonance of our radical mutuality. We can all learn to tap into this awareness, just as we learn to speak a new language—with practice, patience, and courage.
Integrating Your Mystical Body in Presence
Coming into the feet center in our daily lives is all about being where we have been planted. There are times for movement and change of course, but living into our embodied presence is firstly about dwelling in our particular place and time.
This might seem counterintuitive since our feet center deepens us into an expansive participation in the whole universe—but we live that out in the space and in the time that has been given to us. This is our mystical cosmo-localism. No longer confined by time and space, but joyfully immersed in our immanent presence in this great gift that is our life.
Here might also be a good space to talk about physical pain and other barriers of participation in our mystical body. Our mystical body goes through the physical—it is not separate but is distinct. As such, if we have physical pain or discomfort in our body, that doesn’t mean that we can’t access the deeper levels of awareness and participation in our mystical body.
But it can make it much more difficult for sure! If you’ve ever tried to meditate or engage in spiritual practice while you were sick, you know at least a small taste of how debilitating it can be. Dealing with pain, especially chronic pain, is an intense journey that is experienced differently for everyone. Additionally, if you’ve experienced physical trauma that relates to any of these centers, that can be another difficult barrier (in regards to emotional trauma, refer to part 3 of this series).
While it is possible to learn to tap into the deeper reality of the mystical body “underneath” the pain and wounding, you should feel free to pursue that awareness or not according to your own discernment and healing journey. Do not let any “shoulds” take the wheel. Follow where you need to go and where you need to be. Feel free to stay in the center that feels most comfortable and fitting for you now. And when and as you are drawn, then the time for further embodied integration will come.
What is blooming in you?
What is emerging from the soil of your life?
Where are you being invited to live out your flowering, to scatter your seeds, to give from as you have been given to?
The body of God, blessed and broken, given for the liberation and transformation of all.
How are you living into and from your feet and body in new ways these days?
Answer in the comments below or set the intention to have a meaningful conversation about it with someone you trust, with your WeSpace group if you’re in one.
"The worst thing we ever did
was put God in the sky
out of reach
pulling the divinity
from the leaf,
sifting out the holy from our bones,
insisting God isn’t bursting dazzlement
through everything we’ve made
a hard commitment to see as ordinary,
stripping the sacred from everywhere
to put in a cloud man elsewhere,
prying closeness from your heart.
The worst thing we ever did
was take the dance and the song
out of prayer
made it sit up straight
and cross its legs
removed it of rejoicing
wiped clean its hip sway,
its questions,
its ecstatic yowl,
its tears.
The worst thing we ever did is pretend
God isn’t the easiest thing
in this Universe
available to every soul
in every breath"
~ Chelan Harkin, in poetry book 'Susceptible to Light'