Pregnant with the I AM Life
Bearing & Birthing Wisdom during Advent
It is time to enter into the natal season of the soul! Advent is the time in the liturgical cycle that invites us to actively nurture the birth of new life – in us. It is the ripe time, the Kairos moment for consciously opening as much as we are able our inner faculties that are capable of life-bearing and life-giving wisdom that we long for. Advent is a time for spiritual midwifery.
In a past Nurturing Wombfulness exploration, we made it our practice to share our soul questions for enquiry that seem to rise up from our WeSpace. We did not share them for discussion or for someone to answer, but to have them witnessed and held in our shared inner womb space and feel how living with our questions takes us deeper into our practice.
I have a wonderfully ripe Advent question to share. How do we become wisdom bearers? How do we, in this time, carry forward the life-giving wisdom that Jesus passed on to his intimate followers?
There is, for me, a powerful and inviting possibility that our WeSpace mystical body practices prepare us to receive and embody mystical wisdom teaching more deeply, more directly, more creatively, more urgently, more intimately. In our WeSpace practices, many of us are experiencing an awakening of our latent spiritual capacities for intuitive perception, for spiritual intimacy, for somatic knowing, symbolic speech, and implicit spiritual memory. The energy of these practices is gathering force – and the more we give of ourselves to our practices, the more we open we are to receive the gifts of wisdom. The gentle process of awakening prompts me to ask this 2022 Advent if these mystical body practices we are engaged in are a helpful means for opening to Jesus’ life-altering wisdom teachings, how can we intentionally encourage this?
One possibility is to combine our WeSpace practices with an oral practice of reciting a wisdom teaching. In other words, to choose to include what could be named a ‘Recitatio Divino’ – a process of creative and intuitive reciting into our practice. We can include in our practice a period where we introduce a meditation of a saying of Jesus, drawing on the treasury of wisdom sayings that are distillations of his teachings. My spiritual hunch is that Advent is a particularly potent time for contemplating the I AM sayings that we find in the gospel of John.
These I AM sayings come in the form of short, pithy sentences, using mystical language that Jesus, as a wisdom master, would have consciously and intentionally spoken. He would have recited these densely formulated teachings to transmit mystical wisdom to his intimate companions. Each saying follows a sequence: invoking the holy name of I AM, followed by an image (like bread) that speaks of this divine name, and then a sentence that speaks of a transforming consequence of being joined in this I AM – or I AM that I AM.
In this Advent of 2022, what may emerge in our shared heart space from saying and hearing these I AM sayings – as if we are hearing them afresh for this time in history?
Listening with Wisdom Sayings
Before exploring this inviting possibility, some of us may need to pause and acknowledge that we may have some resistance or struggle around I AM teachings, especially if we have heard them being used in divisive and sectarian ways. We may have experienced them as dogmatic statements of belief, rather than wisdom saying precisely articulated for many layers of meaning being spoken from a master of the unitive mind. All the more reason perhaps for us to rediscover the I AM sayings as transcendent language and spiritual resource for our ongoing formation in the I AM life!
Over the years, I have participated in many deeply creative listening processes with wisdom sayings, poetry, and parables. Drawing on those experiences, I offer some notes on the I AM sayings to open possibilities of listening with all our spiritual antennae alive and attuned. In general, it is an experiential practice that highlights the oral nature of wisdom transmission, and the way hearing and receiving wisdom is registered in our bodies. I have named below seven characteristics of the I AM sayings that I enliven and inform our contemplative work.
The I AM sayings use mystical language to wake us up
I AM – or I AM THAT I AM is mystical language. It is not designed to appeal to systematic thinking. It is the kind of language used for speaking divine names which, in truth, is beyond language. This language that we “give sound to” points towards spiritual experience utterly beyond words of explanation or definition. And yet, we can feel the impact of that I AM saying and hearing this language in a very visceral way. We may feel awake and alive. Our capacities for knowing light up. Life flows. Then and now, Jesus, as master of spiritual wisdom, wants to arouse and enliven us as his hearers with living words.
The I AM sayings use resonant speech
Wisdom teachers intoned wisdom sayings for an oral transmission which we sometimes lose out on in the age of text and image. Each I Am saying is like a tuning fork being sounded in the depths of our being. The wisdom being sounded reverberates in such a way that our disturbed and turbulent frequencies and energies begin to attune to their frequency. Each I AM saying has a unique resonance, a truthfulness that physically rings true in us, independent and prior to language. With repetition of a saying, we start responding intuitively to their harmonizing effect in us. We need to remember also that Jesus used the highly resonant language of Aramaic, which lends itself for establishing a kind of sonic field for listening with the “ears” of our heart.
The I AM sayings feed wisdom
Jesus, as a master of wisdom, utters distilled or pithy portions of teaching as necessary food for his hearers. There is that truism that reminds us – we are what we eat – and we could say that yes, our sense of being joined in a mystical body needs constant feeding! As Jesus’ first hearers did, and all those who went before, we can continue to eat nutritious words in the belly of the mystical body. In our recitations of I AM sayings, we repeat them slowly to savour them slowly, phrase by phrase, as intense, tasty morsels of soul food, inwardly relishing each saying’s distinctive qualities of goodness. This was the ancient way of letting wisdom infuse our being and nourish our sense of the living presence of Sophia, of Hochma, and many other names for wisdom being embodied in and through us.
The I AM Sayings show a healing principle
The I AM sayings remind us of a mystical healing principle, healing from a spiritual source. They remind us that this is not problem-centered healing, but a healing process that rises from the core experience of I AM. Healing flows from there, and all our human faculties and selves come home to this archetypal core of Being. The I AM sayings are like mystical body healing chiropract – we get re-aligned to centre.
The I AM sayings are intimate communication
We can say and hear the I AM sayings as a practice of intimate and direct communication. We listen to the sayings as a way of communicating in intimate communion with our spiritual master and each other. We speak in our WeSpace, trusting that it is the Holy One who is continually saying healing words in and through us.
The I AM sayings are ecstatic sayings
Their purpose is to take us out of ourselves and our mental processes with which we create our many versions of self and identity. As ecstatic wisdom sayings, they are not appealing to our mental processes. In contemplating the I AM THAT I AM, we may for a moment fall into the hidden and unifying reality of love that connects to and draws in all our mental constructions of self and identity. We may, for a life-changing moment, be taken up or fall into this reality that heals our sense of separateness. We may experience the wisdom to lose ourselves in order to be found.
The I AM sayings are portals in time and space
Part of the purpose of contemplating wisdom sayings is to create a threshold in our consciousness where our ordinary sense of chronological time and boundaried space may open up. In listening with I AM sayings, our higher memory may begin to open up, so we feel moments of boundless spaciousness and timelessness. When this faculty of spiritual remembering comes to life, for these moments, we intuitively “hear” the historical Jesus speaking from his I AM and “hear” the implicit memory of the Moses encounter. And simultaneously, moment by moment, we “hear” echoes of God’s future for our existence. What an extraordinary possibility it may be that in tuning into I AM, uttering them in imitation of Jesus as our master of wisdom, we, in some way, participate in speaking timeless and universal words of wisdom. And that in doing so, we continue manifesting those qualities that are most timeless: hope, faith, and love.
An Advent blessing for 2023
May we become pregnant again,
bearers of hope and faith and love.
May we, for Christ’s sake, midwife the I AM life
returning constantly to our source of being
for our faithful turning to our world.
An Advent Practice – A Recitatio Divino within Mystical Body Practice
Without being prescriptive or offering formulas, I suggest four stages for a guided group process and offer some facilitating prompts. You can use the following, recorded guided meditation to practice with:
Recitation meditations can, with practice and confidence, become a creative and intuitive process that may flow spontaneously. Choose one I AM saying for contemplation and as your facilitator.
1. Connecting in shared heart space.
‘We begin by dropping awareness into our heart centre – we sink our awareness deeper to connect with this radiating heart energy – and then from this inner core we move our attention outwards to connect in a shared field of awareness, heart-to-heart in our shared heart space.’
2. Speaking and hearing in shared heart space.
‘Now we prepare to hear words of wisdom – open the ear of our heart to hear. As I say aloud, each phrase of the saying, I will leave a pause so you can immediately say it back, echoing the tone and following the flow. We will consciously recite phrases one at a time, pausing in-between, often repeating them, until the whole saying has time to settle and sinks into our heart awareness.’
I AM. (group responds ) I AM. (a pause )
I AM the bread. I AM the bread;
I AM the bread of life. I AM the bread of life;
the bread of life, the bread of life;
of life, of life;
Whoever comes to me. Whoever comes to me
shall not hunger, shall not hunger;
I AM the bread of life. I AM the bread of life;
Whoever comes to me shall not hunger. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger.
(Repeat and say words in any way they spontaneously flow.)
3. Silently invoking the I AM in shared womb space.
Now we drop our awareness, sinking down into the abdomen area, anchoring in our inner womb. We stay here – centred in our source of being – and from here connected intimately with others’ interbeing in our shared womb space.
In a time of silence, we invoke the presence of holy wisdom with the words, I AM THAT I AM. Or listen quietly for how the I AM as a name is already resonating.
4. Saying what is emerging from WeSpace
Now we all have an opportunity to name the feeling qualities and impressions of what rises in our awareness for the whole group or individuals.
5. Turning loving awareness toward each person
Now we can each, in turn, receive the gifts of insight and intuitions from the group.
THE I AM SAYINGS
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger.” John 6:35
“I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in the darkness but will have the light of life.” John 8:12
“I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. They will come in and go out and find pasture.” John 10:9
“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” John 10:11
“I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in me will live, even though they die.” John 11:25
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.” John 14:6
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.” John 15:1
Vivien Claire has immersed herself in the writings and prayerful practices of Christian mysticism for most of her life - and drinks freely from other streams of wisdom. She loves the way poetry, storytelling, sacred rites and icons can be transformative art forms that are ever new. She lives in a rural village in the Little Karoo of the Western Cape - and is the creator of Magdala - a home for heart to heart conversation and community (www.magdala.space). She is harvesting fruit from her experience of being present and listening creatively in many roles – as a poet, hospital chaplain, spiritual director; a retreat leader and Focusing trainer both in the UK and in South Africa. Nowadays she leans towards becoming a wisdom keeper and elder planting seeds for the future.