Receiving the Transmission of Waking Up
Spiritual transmission in Integral Prayer
Part Three
How do I receive a transmission of spiritual energy?
Transmission is the catalytic effect of sharing, passing on, and channeling spiritual energy and mystical consciousness through a flow of giving and receiving in the midst of a shared field. So how do we come into receiving such a transmission?
The first and most available step is to become aware of the sacred energy field already dwelling deep within your heart by virtue of being created in the likeness and image of God. But it doesn’t stop there. You can also become conscious of God’s heart itself dwelling in your heart, the divine image in your gut, and embodied Christ energy drawn with your grounded feet from the cosmos, mother earth, and your body itself. These are all forms of the Inner Face of God-Being-You. As you arouse the already buried spiritual energy inside you, it will begin to emerge in vital, transforming ways.
With your heart, gut, and feet energized, you will find your mind unusually still and ready to activate the mind of Christ in you. In the vibrant, awakened stillness, you can receive images and words of spiritual knowing meant for you and others. Moving up and out into the vast transcendence beyond you, you can rest in the renovating experience of the Infinite Face of God-Beyond-You.
Next, learn to receive increased spiritual energy from the Infinite Mystery in the personal, spiritual presence of God, Jesus, Mary, and other spirit guides along with your physical guides and companions in integral prayer. You can receive so much from these powerful spiritual friends that are loving with you as the face of God-Beside-You.
What role do I have in receiving?
Receiving a mystical transmission is not a spiritual shortcut but requires commitment to be in a state of receptivity and capacity.
Eric Klein in the Elephant Journal asks, “What’s the connection between commitment and transmission?’ I have adopted his answer to our setting:
The wisdom traditions suggest that there are four commitments that facilitate awakening. These four commitments establish the conditions that open you to the transmission that is ever-present when you are ready for it. You may still need to deconstruct, explore, and experiment. But at some point, you may be ready to take the deep dive of commitment. Here are the four commitments:
Practice.
Find a practice that fits and work with it. It won’t always fit, by the way. That’s okay. Stay with it through the ups and downs; the revelations and dry spots. Don’t dabble. When you are ready, COMMIT.
Teachings.
Study the teachings that go with the practice. They energize each other. The teachings won’t always make sense. Don’t believe them. Test them. Don’t just read an article or book or watch YouTube. If you’re ready, COMMIT.
Teachers.
This can be dicey. Be wary of seeking a perfect teacher (unless you are a perfect student!) Find someone who can help you stick with the practice and make sense of the teachings; someone who—when you’re with them physically or, just as effectively, on Zoom —reminds you of your own Radiance. Oh, and when you find this person, be real. Don’t hold back. If you’re ready, COMMIT.
Community.
This is huge. Find people who get what you’re up to spiritually. People who see you for who you are—radiance incarnate and a weirdo. People who are sincere but not overly serious. Give and get support. This includes those in the physical realm as well as your guides in the spiritual realm. Don’t just do lunch. When you are ready, COMMIT.
I would add a fifth commitment:
Growing detachment from ego
Osho (1931 – 1990) was an Indian mystic and controversial leader of the Rajneesh movement Osho was asked: “What is Shaktipat or Energy Transmission? And is it possible that someone can transmit Divine Energy?” He answered, “With ego one becomes a non-conductor of energy; divine energy cannot flow through him. So, if there is a person whose ego is completely wiped out, who is absolutely empty inside and is a total void, who is doing nothing for you, really who does not do a thing – then through their emptiness, through their void, which acts as a passage, God’s energy can certainly reach you. And its speed can be very fast.”
The less ego, the greater the transmission.
These five commitments establish conditions that open you to receiving as well as passing on spiritual transmission. Through these commitments, it becomes easier to recognize that your daily life is already and always has been sacred.
Where do I find it?
You don’t enter this mystical realm by mere belief in Jesus, being a good person, and going to church every Sunday. In the Christian path, you do it by finding Jesus’s transmission itself in whatever form you are open to and communing with it. As you move from tasting that communion to living it in more and more, you then yourself become a radiant communicator of it.
This can come in various, even non-religious forms. One person described a “transmission” that occurred spontaneously. She said that it did not have words. She was looking at the waves come in at a beach and observed how each wave made an interference pattern with other waves to create an infinite sea of change and organized motion. She began to walk away to get to an appointment. Suddenly, she was overcome with a sense of peace and profound connection to all things.
She received a transmission of spiritual clarity that was important for her at that time in her life, and was a nudge by the universe that her spiritual practices were taking her in the right direction. However, as soon as she tried to analyze the transmission with her egoic mind, the feeling of awe and bliss dissipated.
In general, hang around people who can act as companions of empowerment. These can be guides, facilitators, wise men or women, seers, prophets, teachers, and people who have experience in the Divine consciousness, who can help you come into that Presence for themselves. Sometimes the spiritual consciousness and presence in such people is very evident, to such a great degree that it seems to almost radiate from their countenance. Their faces seem to shine. Love seems to pour out of them. They are profoundly open, compassionate, and present to the immediate now. And even by the mere touch of such a person, people can sense profound changes and the melting away of resistance in them. This touch does not have to be physically present, only energetically present. A Zoom connection can work wonderfully well.
Unfortunately, the idea of hanging around genuinely awakened people has been overwhelmingly corrupted in many traditions. The transmission of spiritual power and mystical knowledge is now conceived of as going through an academic course of study and instruction and afterward receiving ordination upon graduation. Of course, the academy came from the scholastic tradition which emerged from the monasteries.
Many priests or teachers do not have any such direct experience themselves, as Richard Rohr notes with,
“It’s hard to get a feel for this until we’ve met a centered person, someone grounded and in union with God…Priests might talk of new realms but never lead us out of the old realm where we are still largely trapped and addicted; they have little personal knowledge of the further journey.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that we have to have met a saint. My definition of Christianity at one time was that a Christian is someone who’s met one, because this whole thing is contagious! When we meet a person of a certain quality of maturity, we too can become more mature. We meet a patient person and we learn how to be patient. We meet a loving person and we learn how to be loving. That’s the way human beings operate. When we meet a really grounded, happy, and free person, we become more like that because we’ll be satisfied with nothing less. This whole thing, our faith, spreads through and by the quality of our relationships.”
All the great religions have a transmission master as their source, but many, if not most people (even followers of that religion) are not aware of the religion’s founder function as a transmitter. Such beings have realized a higher, spiritual dimension of Reality. But more than that, they are also able to transmit the awareness of that dimension to others.
We see the Christian tradition beginning as Jesus transmitted the spirit-breath-consciousness radiating from him to others close to him. These then passed it on to others. Somewhere along the line that transmission stopped in the fourth century turning of Christianity from a diverse spiritual path to a unified state institution that enforced conformity to its beliefs and rules. There have been sporadic outbreaks of awakened-spirit-breath consciousness propelled by charismatic leaders, but they were often short-lived.
Today, the need for exceptional leaders is passing as we move into the power of exceptional communities to transmit spiritual energy.
How do I enter the field in a group?
Spiritual transmission is lighting up your soul in the company of others who are also radiating divine energy.
The biblical and traditional Eastern way of receiving transmission is usually through others. In past centuries this was through an awakened master. Now, in the integral stage, it is transitioning to the collective — through an awakened community.
This is not experienced just because there are other people around. We need to be in a setting that intentionally seeks to engage with the transmission of the spiritual energy among us in our shared collective field, such as we do in our WeSpace groups. I am always consciously transmitting when I am present with a group. And I’m receiving that energy from the group too!
If this is new for you, in the beginning, you can learn to rest in your own presence and allow yourself to be slowly receptive to the energy of others present physically and/or spiritually. Be in touch with your own energetic presence while breathing into any place where you are holding yourself in. Bring yourself to the edge where you begin to feel uncomfortable, then pull back where you feel safe. Next time, stay there longer. Eventually, you can soak it all in.
Words, physical gestures, facial expressions, and external body language from others can encourage us. These can all point the recipient in an authentic direction as people join with others in the collective that engages in mystical, spiritual practice.
Inner exercises, meditative prayer, and transmission belong to realms beyond sensory experience, beyond thought, and beyond the possibility of being well-defined or adequately described by words. Most of us need some instruction from those experienced in these practices. This can point us in the right way and give us a framework for a general understanding of our experiences and practice. This is what Luke and I try to do in our writings here. But it is the experience of being with others who are practicing and transmitting that brings it all home to our hearts, minds, gut, and grounding. The atmosphere and energy field of the group does its own deep teaching.
Find a group that transmits sprit-breath-awakening to you. It may be a local church, a meditative prayer group, or an online community such as ICN’s WeSpace groups. This will not be a group that only sits together in silence, siloed off from one another in our private, individualized internal spiritual worlds. It also won’t be a group that only studies awakened spirituality. We can learn endlessly about spiritual awakening, which for some is a way to avoid experiencing the reality of what they are studying. You probably don’t need another book, or course, or class. Most likely, what you need is a loving group of spiritual practitioners where you can, over the weeks and months, begin to find yourself waking up!
Join a WeSpace group to start experiencing this group transmission and collective awakening together with others! You can sign up for the waitlist to be notified when enrollment opens up (soon!) for the next round of groups. Click here to enroll.