The Spiritual Practice of Permeability
Integral Consciousness – Part 8
Cultivating Participation in our Mystical Interconnectedness
We are not separate.
We know this. Or at least we do if we’ve ever had a mystical experience or a movement of our awareness beyond the confines of our usual, egoic self. A hike in nature might have whispered it to us once. Even if just a glimpse, or an intimation, many of us have had some sense that being is not a solo, individualized affair.
Fortunately, if we are looking, we are likely discovering more sources that are assuaging our mental, rational skepticism of such experiences pointing to a deeper nature of reality. Quantum mechanics, postmodern philosophy, systems theory, and more have all been bringing forth various ways of showing dynamics of our interconnectedness. That the boundaries we generally operate by are not quite what they seem.
All of these are (mostly) helpful ways of opening our minds up to at least think about this being the case, to begin to believe that we are much more connected to a fuller reality than the individual self. But these thoughts alone will do little to actually experientially introduce us to and cultivate a way of being that actively lives and participates in this reality of mutuality.
It’s not simply a matter of seeing or recognizing it. As if a mental assent will be enough. Rather, we need to actively engage in practices and ways of being that reflect our interconnection, that are born out of an understanding of mutuality, that open us up to becoming more permeable and porous—exfoliating the encrustation of the separate self. Becoming aware of and making breathable any isolating barriers we have around us.
To enter more fully and more deeply into a way of living that is no longer trapped in the myth of separation will require embodied experiences and practices that move us toward and cultivate our permeability.
Permeability is the capacity of a boundary to allow for certain substances—not all—to pass through it, often vital elements like air or water. Spiritually, cultivating a sense of permeability is to experientially open up to the vital flow of energy and unseen reality that is always in movement in and around us.
This is not simply an opening of our minds to the transcendent spiritual realm beyond our physical self or temporary incarnation. It is an embodied posture that creates the potential for us to more fully enter into the interflow of spiritual energy and immanent presence of unified reality into our body and being.
This is a crucial spiritual movement to learn and cultivate beyond our own personal growth, but for the continued unfolding of evolution. Or as Jorge Ferrer puts it, “One’s sense of identity becomes permeable to not only transcendent but also immanent spiritual sources, turning body and world into sacred realities that can be appreciated as fundamental for human and perhaps even cosmic spiritual evolution.”
So how do we become more permeable?
Before we get to that and what it can look like, we need first to talk a little about boundaries.
Healthy Boundaries and Isolating Individualism
Cultivating permeability is the active process of creating openings in our boundaries and allowing a greater awareness and experience of our inter-subjectivity and mutuality of being.
This does not mean that we no longer have boundaries. Boundaries are an important part of thriving life, existing for protection, differentiation, and healthy wellbeing.
They are also vital for a healthy spirituality. Opening to radical mutuality and mystical interbeing is not a total dissolving of our boundaries. That may happen temporarily during a mystical experience, but then we integrate that reality back into our sense of personal identity and presence in the world. No longer bound by what we once thought were our definitive edges, or totally identified within them. We stay open and connected to the larger reality, while also operating from and living within our generative enclosure of our personal being.
A helpful image from the natural world is that of a permeable membrane. There is still differentiation, but also the ability and necessity of an interflow between and among the parts of the greater whole—often with a kind of filtering effect. Or, if you’d prefer, from the concepts of quantum nonlocality or entanglement, that the deepest parts of our physical being are existing at any and all times in locations not confined to the space of our bodies.
The problem comes when our personal boundaries turn into barricades. When there is no interflow. When any space of mutual connection is heavily guarded and highly controlled, usually by mental regulation, or also potentially stemming from trauma, wounding, or other forms of damaging separation.
Boundaries are enormously important, especially when healing—but so too are healthy and loving experiences of truly being heard and seen, being witnessed deeply within, not from a detached observer, but from a caring and loving engagement in the dynamic space between, when that shared space can be met in mutuality and trust.
For it’s not that we’re naturally divided, but rather over the years we find ourselves further encrusted and encased in a barrier of separation, an insulating enclosure of protection with walls that thicken with each brick of estrangement. Sealed off from the natural way of things, our permeable membrane replaced with suffocating and encumbering armor. We have become trapped inside our isolation.
And so we must learn to engage in ways of taking off the armor, poking holes in the bricks, creating openings in the walls, exfoliating the rock-hard ground to allow the soil to open and breathe again, growing life once more.
In doing so, we are rescued from the isolation of extreme individualism. Not from losing all sense of self by melting, amalgamating into the undifferentiated collective, but coming into a healthy and integrated relationship of being between our own individuated person with our community and the world.
“Whereas the disembodied modern self is plagued by alienation, dissociation, and narcissism, a spiritually individuated person has an embodied, integrated, connected, and permeable identity whose high degree of differentiation, far from being isolating, actually allows him or her to enter into a deeply conscious communion with others, nature, and the multidimensional cosmos. A key difference between modern individualism and spiritual individuation is thus the integration of radical relatedness in the later.”
—Jorge Ferrer
Are We Ready?
Like a child hiding under the covers with their feet sticking out, declaring that they cannot be seen, so are we when we try to enclose ourselves in self-barricading boundaries. It’s simply a self-illusion to think that we are keeping ourselves separate.
This interconnected reality is already all around us and affecting our lives. The question is if we are ready to more actively step into our participation in that reality.
And it is a true question.
Because it takes vulnerability. We might be afraid of what’s “out there.” We may truly actually in some ways be safer “inside here.” It may be extremely hampering or even suffocating, but at least it’s secure.
We may especially feel the fear in our heart, which has been wounded before.
There are times we need to go to the tornado shelter. And there are times for covering over wounds with bandages for healing. But this is not where or how we are meant to live.
It’s helpful to remember as well that we are not throwing open the gates—we are still keeping a healthy and generative boundary—but just beginning to let our skin breathe a little.
And so it might make sense to start somewhere that feels safe for you. A beloved pet. A tree. A forest. The soil.
Whatever or whoever it is, let yourself come close to them—physically if possible—and open. Put yourself in a posture of receptivity and giving. Feel the subtle energy moving between and among you. Let your boundaries breathe a little. See what happens.
When open, our heart and body work together to become more porous.
What Are We Opening Up To?
In our head, permeability may help us become more receptive to new ideas or thoughts from beyond ourselves. In our hearts, it may begin with a softening toward a situation or with someone relationally. While we certainly can be closed off in these centers, we’re probably a little more familiar with the shared space in these lighter, less-dense energetic centers.
Cultivating permeability in our bodies is to also open ourselves to the energetic interflow of the divine energy of the universe, the body of God. This is a greater interconnection with material reality, not as a static and lifeless mass of matter, but as participants in and among the vibrant geosphere, the teeming biosphere, the living and breathing organism of Gaia—and its interfusion with the divine Christ energy in and through all things.
Not just among and between physical objects and concrete “things,” but into and with the more subtle, underlying energetic or spirit-ual life that is in the midst of all things always and already.
We are also seeking to cultivate permeability in our boundaries both seen and unseen. This includes our physical perimeter as a sort of “outer wall,” but also might entail interior, energetic boundaries around parts of ourselves or our centers within. There may also be non-spatial boundaries we encounter, such as emotional, spiritual, or conceptual walls that have been built up within us.
(Also a note that there may be those who need to practice permeability through boundary fortification. Those who are too wide open. Permeability requires a membrane, and the flip side of exfoliation is the necessary work of substantiating, of cultivating a healthy generative enclosure.)
We can interflow with material reality, human reality, and divine reality. With the immanent and the transcendent—cultivating our permeability into the divine indwelling. More on that in a later writing in this series.
Beginning Methods & Processes of Permeation
“The permeability of the body to spiritual consciousness and immanent life leads to its gradual awakening.”
—Jorge Ferrer
Let’s look at a few particular starting points to begin. A few methods and processes that can develop and further cultivate this sense of permeability.
While we can cultivate greater permeability in each of our centers of spiritual knowing, it’s usually best to focus first on the feet and the body—the physical boundaries where we most often hold our strongest sense of separation.
The more tense the body is, the more constricted and tighter we will be. This creates a boundary firmness around and within us. So we might begin with practices of physical stretching or bodily extensions—reaching and spreading. The breath too is a natural opener, so breathing deep and into parts of the body can be very helpful. Not just breathing from your mouth, but breathing from your feet or other parts of the body as well. It may sound funny, but give it a try. It can help us orient toward a greater porousness in our skin and whole body.
Of course, yoga asanas (physical poses) and pranayama (breathing) techniques are great ways of doing this, especially when serving as a precursor, a beginning to the opening of the subtle body and the vital/energetic flow beyond our individual boundaries.
Physical pleasure can also be a natural release and opening, dissolving tension and boundary firmness. Sexual or nonsexual, we don’t need to let any religious stigma keep us bound and uptight when it comes to pleasure. While a womb is more naturally a firm, generative enclosure, eros energy from our spiritual womb center is naturally relational and intertwining in powerful ways. Or we may simply begin with a gentle caress on the skin to stimulate softening and opening.
These physical practices, along with others, can serve as the beginning posture, the exfoliating, the preparation of the “soil” to receive and give, to open up to the energetic interflow among and between, through and throughout. The felt sense of our permeability will include the physical sense, but also bring forth deeper somatic, energetic, and vital perceptions in our integrated, embodifulness with the WE and the ALL.
And finally, here is a guided meditation you can follow to move directly into this energetic practice of permeability right now:
“Our way of perceiving the world depends entirely on the nature of our consciousness, for it establishes the boundaries and temporal limits of our world. To the degree that we are able to integrate these boundaries and limits with the help of an intensification (and not an expansion) of consciousness, we presentiate the itself. This means at the same time that our entire constitution becomes proportionately transparent; and not merely the ‘part’ that is already manifest . . . but also the ‘part’ that is still latent in us which, together with the part already manifest, becomes accessible to integration.”
—Jean Gebser
To "presentiate the itself" is to bring forth the unfolding in the present, to participate in the divine wellspring flowing forth into new life. This integration in transparency will be our subject of exploration next week.