Going to Where All Is Well
Devotion to God in the Integral Christian Community
Part Five
My theme in this five-part series on devotion in the Integral Community has been that our devotion to God is only aroused from its slumber deep within us by first experiencing God’s devotion to us. There is one other form of feeling God’s devotion to us that we have not yet explored here. Ken Wilber introduces it in an enigmatic way.
Wilber on the paradoxical of social justice
Ken Wilber is a visionary thinker and the developer of an integral “theory of everything” that embraces the truths of all the world’s great spiritual, scientific, and philosophical traditions. He is the most widely translated academic writer in America, with 25 books translated into 30 foreign languages. Here is an edited interview about the paradox of social justice:
“Social justice is very necessary for the awakened person. However, the first step is to get in touch with the ground of all being. [or Spirit or God by whatever name]. Once we’ve gotten in touch with that, then in the relative world, we do specific work to make things better.
So many human beings are not awakened to fundamental ground of being. What we find, in part, because of the loving pressure that this fundamental ground exerts, we go out and try to make things better. The more you are in touch with that loving ground of being, the more you go out into the world to make things better.
There is always a role for Christian love. For Buddhis bodhisattvas. Even though you have realized 100 percent awakening, there is always something for you go out and do to make it better.
You have to commit yourself to good acts of love and kindness. If you are not willing to promise that, you will not see the awakening that is your birthright. Spiritual justice is incredibly important. Be careful of people who are doing spiritual justice without the spiritual realization of the ground of being.
I once heard Gary Schneider, a famous poet and Zen student, and avid environmentalist. He said, “The only people who should be allowed to work on ecological problems are those who realize it’s not necessary to do so.” He was getting in touch with the awakened reality that everything is okay. There is always some sort of paradox with spirituality. As soon as you think of something that embraces everything, you think of something that’s not right. Yes, it is. It is part of spirit.
Realize everything is ultimately fine — then you go out to make it fine. Work as hard as you can to do what doesn’t need to be done. Get in touch with ground of being first, before you go out and do social justice.”
Where All Is Well
What is this “ground of being” experience, or what is often called transcendence? This is the “peace that passes all understanding” (Phil 4:6) of God’s mystical love. In our ICN framework, this means there are varied forms of transcendence for heart, mind, gut, and feet. In each of these differently shaped forms of transcendence, we can experience God’s devotion and love for us.
Jesus and Ken agree — inward first, then outward.
Jesus told the disciples, “I am sending you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). Like Ken, Jesus said we should not go out to others with the Good News until you yourself have inwardly experienced that Good News.
When the friends of Jesus gathered for this initiation into waking up spiritually, God did not give them a lecture on how they should love God with their whole heart, mind, soul, and strength and others as themselves. Instead, God gave them a glimpse, a taste of transcendence. They were suddenly so overwhelmed with the transcendent love of God (or “ground of being,” as Ken would call it) that they erupted into wild praise and joy (Acts 2:14-16).
The early Christian leaders knew that whenever folks became friends of Jesus, they needed this same transcendent, initiating experience. We see it detailed in the book of Acts again and again (Acts 8:14-17; 9:17; 10:44-46; 19:1-7). This was not to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Rather this was what the friends of Jesus experienced every time they came together! The Corinthian house church meetings were so eruptively joyous that Paul had to tell them to tame it down. And keep the transcendent “tongues” (how to pour out your love and gratitude to God when understandable words won’t do) for their own private prayer life (Acts 14:14-18).
God’s transcendent loving us with everything God’s got is sometimes almost too much to bear. My hope in formulating Whole-Body Mystical Awakening is that, among other things, we practitioners would experience as much of this divine transcendence as we are each ready for.
Transcendence can be defined as something that surpasses the bounds of everyday experience. A transcendent experience goes above and beyond our normal, ordinary lives. Spiritual transcendence is a spiritual or sacred experience that changes how you perceive yourself. This type of experience can happen anywhere, at home, in meditative prayer, out in nature.
Spiritual transcendence offers us a glimpse of something beyond — something intangible but very real that urges us to drastically alter our perception of the world. It alters the way we experience the world in our heart, mind, gut, and body. We come out of our ordinary hearts, minds, guts, and bodies and find the boundaries dissolving between us and everything else.
“We can experience union with something larger than ourselves,” wrote pioneering psychologist and philosopher William James, “and in that union find our greatest peace.”
Heart Transcendence
A heart where we feel all is well
There can be a transcendence when two (or more) people come into deep devotion, harmony, and union, whether in the physical or spiritual realm. With family, think of a genuinely loving family member and you connecting at Christmas, just sitting together, full of gratitude for one another. With a friend, think of your best friend and those moments of intimate connection that transcend time. With a lover, think of the ecstatic union during lovemaking.
With the personal presence of God, think of those times of blissful love flowing between the two of you. Jesus called this intimate presence of God Abba (Papa or Daddy). You may also call this dynamic presence by the name of Jesus, the central figure in Christianity. Or the motherly face of God as Imma, Sophia, Mary, or many other namings. By whatever name, devotional love finds a home in the second-person, Intimate Face of God-Beside-Us language and metaphors of family, friends, and lovers. It becomes transcendent when we come together in love so deep it is beyond what we can contain inside.
The transcendent heart - a stream of elevated emotions
The deep bliss of the presence of God takes my breath away. In my deep times of devotion, I laugh and cry. I sing out loud the hymns of praise I sang for the first sixty years of my life, bad metaphors and all. “My Jesus, I love you, I know you art mine.” “He walks with me, and he talks with me.” “What a friend we have in Jesus.” “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, Oh what a foretaste of glory divine.”
For those of us raised in traditional church life, these are glorious phrases from hymns that emerge in our memories steeped in their singing over and over again. I have a friend in my WeSpace group who wakes up every morning with one of these hymns running through his mind. The best of these hymns take us out of our small world into God’s big world.
States of natural bliss, ecstasy, and existential awe are usually found within self-transcended people. They may just smile at what seems like the incredibly mundane and understand the inherent complexity within the simplest of things.
Mind Transcendence
A mind where we know all is well
Reading, listening, watching, reflecting, and discussing vital topics can be a marvelous way to let God love you with your mind. Read about spirituality and theology and other subject that may interest you. My favorites are Richard Rohr, Ramon Panikkar, Teilhard de Chardin, Cynthia Bourgeault, David Hart Bentley, along with philosophers such as Ken Wilber and Jean Gebser (or Jeremy Johnson for easier reading.) Of course, I also recommend the sometimes more straightforward writing of my two most recent books, Integral Christianity — The Spirit’s Call to Evolve and Is Your God Big Enough? Close Enough? You Enough? Jesus and the Three Faces of God.
You can read social justice, ecology, liberation subjects that interest you. Read and listen to talks about almost anything to understand how God fits in with the subject. After you find a subject that you are drawn to, you may want to be involved in a cause or action group that fosters justice for the oppressed, healing of the earth, or any other healing action in the world.
Exploring these mysteries with our minds can expand us in wondrous ways. So too can experiences that take us beyond our mind in a transcendent expanse into the infinite face of God-Beyond-Us. We can find ourselves elevated into these states of mind through all sorts of means.
Grand Teton National Park, Oxbow Bend, Wyoming
Encounters with the beauty of nature often prompt transcendent experiences. In transcendence, we become receptive to the inherent beauty in the world.
Mountains and forests, in particular, can remind us of our own insignificance while also making us feel like part of something much greater. In the early 19th century, the magic of nature helped inspire transcendentalism, a philosophical school primarily based on the idea that nature is sacred – and that studying it deeply holds the key to understanding human life.
One of the more recent famous types of Earth-induced transcendent experience is the Overview Effect, the sense of enhanced purpose and meaning experienced by astronauts who see the Earth from above. Scientists explain that “earth-gazing” (or seeing the planet from above) can trigger psychological phenomena like self-transcendent experiences and awe, both of which are powerful and sometimes life-changing.
In addition to Whole-Body Mystical Awakening, you may want to adopt a mind-centered practice that focuses entirely on transcendence, such as Transcendental Meditation or some approaches to Centering Prayer.
Soul Transcendence
A soul-centered gut where we sense that all is well
Our gut or spiritual womb offers divine identity, gutsy courage, creativity, and erotic passion as a spiritual resource.
What do you say to your lover? What do you say in the midst of lovemaking? The Bible gives us the erotic language of the Song of Songs. Dare you use that, too? In the climax of making love, there is a loss of identity in the rapture of transcendent pleasure.
When lovers come to each other, intending to give and receive the gift of Christ’s embodied love, sacred erotic moments are experienced that far exceed the eruptive sexual experience of the body alone. An ongoing thin space is created. This has and continues to be true for saints, monastics, and singles who bring their body, mind, soul, and spirit in sacred erotic offering to their beloved God.
Transcendence is the experience of being so immersed in your divine identity that your identity as a separate self lessens or disappears.
Feet Transcendence
Grounding our embodied self through our feet in Mother Earth and the material cosmos where we are anchored in the healing energy of the Earth and Cosmos
Devotion through our feet is found through living where we’re planted, being present to our loved ones, friends, and the world. We can express this through many ways of action, depending upon our gifts and calling.
In The Sacred Heart of the World: Restoring Mystical Devotion to Our Spiritual Life, David Richo says, “There are a variety of Christian callings, based on our temperaments. We can take action in a countercultural way, or we can be the silent leaven of love in society— or anything in between. We are not all called to protest loudly. We also serve who pray quietly.”
The transcendent experience through our feet roots and connects to a much bigger field where God is always and constantly at work. We are led into the deeper, underlying energy of healing that is Christ coming to bear in the world. We can be anchored in this deeper force, especially when we are caught in the muck, surrounded by the struggle and feelings of despair at the state of things.
When we can experience the “all is well” of transcendence, we are energized and informed with wisdom to know where our place is in the world where all is not well. Marcus Borg said, “The point is not that Jesus was a good guy who accepted everybody, and thus we should do the same (though that would be good). Rather, his teaching and behavior reflect an alternative social vision. Jesus was not talking about how to be good and how to behave within the framework of a domination system. He was a critic of the domination system itself.”
Martin Luther King Jr said, “Only through an inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit.”
To Adore
From modern Christian mystic and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, speaking to Jesus:
“Sometimes people think that they can increase Your attraction in my eyes by stressing almost exclusively the charm and goodness of Your human life in the past. But… why should we turn to Judea two thousand years ago? No, what I cry out for, like every being, with my whole life and all my earthly passion, is something very different from an equal to cherish: it is a God to adore.
To adore … that means to lose oneself in the unfathomable, to plunge into the inexhaustible, to find peace in the incorruptible, to be absorbed in defined immensity, to offer oneself to the fire and the transparency, to annihilate oneself in proportion as one becomes more deliberately conscious of oneself, and to give of one’s deepest to that whose depth has no end. Whom, then, can we adore?
The more Man becomes Man [sic], the more will he become prey to a need, a need that is always more explicit, more subtle and more magnificent, the need to adore. (Le Milieu Divin. Collins: London 1957, p117f)
May we adore the God who adores us.
Practice now into this embodied transcendence with a guided meditation with Julian of Norwich.
Going to where all is well through the four centers of our body:
Words by Luke Healy
Recorded by Luke Healy and Martha O'Hehir (quotes from Julian throughout the meditation)