Whole-Body Mystical Presencing: Part Nine

Mindfulness has become one of the most prevalent spiritual practices in the modern world today. It’s now being taught and applied in businesses and schools, reaching beyond the usual confines of religious and spiritual settings.

So much of current society thrives on distraction, entertainment, and other forms of numbing consciousness. And we don’t want to live mindless lives. We are craving a more substantive experience of everyday life and reality. In response to pervasive anxiety, detachment, and anger, we want to be more calm, engaged, and peaceful. We want to be able to be more fully present in who we truly are throughout the moments of our days.

Mindfulness is a wonderful practice that can help us greatly in this regard. While there are many forms of the practice, most teach a process of conscious observing, noticing, and focused attention. It is a practice of self-regulation that helps us cultivate an orientation of curiosity, openness, and acceptance toward life. And it is great insofar as it goes.

The limitation of mindfulness is that it is a mind-oriented way of encountering reality. And while our mind is a crucial and essential aspect of our being, it is not the direct experience of life. In fact, it is often quite removed from the present moment. We can focus our attention more actively in the here and now, but as long as we stay in the mind-space, we are at least one step removed from immediate experience.

In mindfulness, it is usually taught to notice the body and attend to it based on what is observed from the seat of the mind. Body-scan practices are quite common and, while useful in their own way, can also reinforce a separation between what we are noticing in our body and what we are aware of in our mind.

And we need this distinction, this space between—but it is not the full story. It is not enough. If we stop here, we will continually reinforce the sense of space and distance between our immediate experience and our thoughts and reactions to that experience.

We’ve all had experiences where this separation fades away. Where we are caught up in the rapture of the moment in such a way that it all comes together. We don’t lose our mind, but it is engaged in the flow of being naturally participating with our body, our heart, our desires, and our will. It usually occurs in the midst of some enjoyable action, creative flow, or loving experience.

We are more than our set-apart mental self, even in its healthiest, mindful form. We don’t have a body. We are our body. Our consciousness is not a disembodied ghost that resides somewhere in the brain but a permeated spirit consciousness of integrated wholeness that resides all throughout our energetic field of being, personally, collectively, and beyond.

Reflective consciousness is a great gift, but it can become a curse when we totalize this aspect of our being to such an extent that we become cut off from our other structures of consciousness—to the point we almost don’t even remember how to engage them. We have become trapped, unable to live in a more fully embodied consciousness, holistically present to the fullness of life.

And so rather than remaining mindfully imprisoned, we can integrate healthy mindfulness with a more complete fullness, a holistic presencing.

Presencing – A Holistic Integration of Showing Up in Our Lives

“The nature of wholeness, reality, and your true being all suggest your personal wholeness is found in your attunement to the Present.” – Philip Shepherd

One very helpful aspect of mindfulness is the orientation toward how we show up in every moment of our lives. It’s not just about set apart times of meditation but how we live continuously.

In the same way, Whole-Body Mystical Awakening is a meditative prayer practice that is a concentrated time of deeply experiencing our embodied awareness and holistic consciousness. Focused, engaged times of practice help cultivate a greater inner capacity to move more naturally into this way of being, this sensing and attunement in the rest of our lives, which is what we practice in Whole-Body Mystical Presencing.

The combination has a similar effect to meditation in conjunction with mindfulness, remodeling the neural pathways not only of our brain but the dexterity of our whole-body consciousness. I have called this “embodied neuroplasticity.”

In WBMP, we are praying continuously through showing up in any/every moment in greater participation with our awakened consciousness, our incarnated, divine being. The inner/incarnate face of God-Being-Us present in/through/from us.

We are evolving in our way of spiritual practice through this sort of life integration, actively countering the sacred-profane divide. We are showing up in “holy” spirit—which is not sequestered off in the churches but deeply interwoven in the fabric of everyday life, everywhere, at any and all times.

We are meeting life with this greater presence to hold our inquiries and inspire our action, guided by more than our mental strategies and accumulated information, but through integrated spirit, alive with intuition, love, and interconnection—both within us and beside us, in participation with the greater wisdom we receive from our spirit guides and mystical community.

We are enlivened with greater attunement and conscious engagement, bringing to bear not just mindfulness, but heartfulness, wombfulness, and bodyfulness that integrates into wholeness through a total embodifulness—a fullness of presence from the greater I Am We are in All.

This is what I am calling the practice of “presencing.”

For this final part of the series, I offer some reflections and practices in relation to the component parts of our embodied centers, before returning to the integrated whole to conclude.

Heartfulness

“The heart is like an instrument whose strings steal magic music from Life’s mystic frets.” – Gerald Massey

As we cultivate our heart consciousness, we come alive to the energetic presence of love and connection through our hearts. In heartful attunement, we can sense with our relational enlivenment in the dynamic field of the heart, which extends out beyond our physical bodies.

In any moment, we can experience openness of heart with others, with nature, and even in the bliss of universal embrace. In the sensitivity of our tender heart, we can be conscious with our personal needs and healthy boundaries. And in the strength of our divine heart, we have the fortitude to bear and bless any and all things, for the source of love is inexhaustible and surges forth with every swell we draw upon and presence in our lives for this moment.

As your heart pulses steady, so may your heartful presence beat with the rhythm of unending strength and steadfastness.

Wombfulness

“From your innermost being (womb) will flow rivers of living water.” – Jesus

As we come into our wombfulness, the deep awareness of being cradled in the present, we are held in the divine embrace of holy nurturing. The more we center down into this space of deep being, the more we live tapped into the Eternal Source within.

At any moment, you can come home to yourself in this deep way. You can find rest within, anchoring into your deepest being. Here, you are rooted in the intrinsic value of the very essence of your being. The immortal diamond of your divine identity. The more you sink into this, the more you will be able to keenly feel this deep being as a living dynamic of your presence.

From this connection, the wellspring flows forth with the fresh arisings of your ever-present becoming in uniqueness. Your deepest understandings, your most resonant truth, your creative impulse, your intuitive knowing, your courageous vigor, your living vitality. The current of new life at any and all times, ever-flowing with no end, rising up with fresh life energy for this moment.

As the waves reach the shore and return to the deep, may the flow of your being be held in ease and power.

Bodyfulness

“Your body, immaculate and divine,
Is all radiant with the fire of your divinity.”
– Symeon the New Theologian

As we welcome our bodyfulness, we are embracing the fullness of our material being, our holy incarnation as matter, as flesh. No longer a separate object to notice, attend to, control, and care for—but a living and pulsing consciousness of being through which we experience all of life.

At any moment, we can feel into our material participation with nature, with energy, with life. We choose to “touch” life, to be directly engaged with the here and now, this time and place, joyfully immersed in the immanent present. Not standing back but rooted and grounded in the beautiful particular of our situated, sacred presence.

In this immediacy, we move and flow in the mutual indwelling of Christ presence, which is a larger “body” than our individual permutation. We can presence through the porosity of being, through the permeation of matter that is intricately connected and divinely entangled. Our greater embodiment manifest in interrelated divine consciousness, which is a radical mutuality and mystical entwining of bodily presence beyond our singular body.

As the pulsing energy of life vibrates with immediate potency, may the living soil of your body be fertile and lush, sprouting and blooming forth into this beautiful now.

Mindfulness

“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything” – Julian of Norwich

As we practice mindfulness in integration with the rest of our body, we actively presence our mind—our knowing—beyond the brain and the head, holistically embracing the neural pathways throughout our entire being.

At any moment, we can open our mind into the posture of receptivity and lucidity to the wider field beyond our usual thinking. We can gather up and bring forth from all our ways of knowing, surveying and integrating through our embodied structures of consciousness. This is not so much a filtering as a welcoming and sharing. A breathing spaciousness in the freedom of integrated knowing.

It is not passive, but receptive. It is more than focused attention, but also conscious engagement through the knowing of our hearts, our wombs, our feet and body. We are not trapped in reactivity or regulation, enacting compulsive protective ego patterns, nor detaching as we search our knowledge for the right answers, trying to figure it out. Our head comes alongside, serving as an integrated participant in holistic knowing and embodied mindful presence.

As the wind blows and breezes as it will, may you breathe in and out through spirit in each moment, receiving and giving in wholeness, full of wisdom, divine insight, and joyful delight.

The Integral Embodifulness of Whole-Body Mystical Presencing

"My me is God, nor do I recognize any other Me except my God Himself [sic]" – Catherine of Genoa

Presence comes into fullness when we are wholly present. We are wholly present when we are living in the flow of integrated aliveness. All of our ways of being and knowing, our various structures of consciousness, are “online” and contributing.

Consciousness is not a simple on/off switch. It is not static and unchanging. Our consciousness can grow and develop through deeper, more holistic engagement and attunement. It can expand beyond the predominant mental structure, reawakening the often-latent structures of consciousness deeper within.

In Whole-Body Mystical Presencing—which is a practice to enter the everyday reality of Christ consciousness, a moment-to-moment permeation of divine spirit—we practice the any/every moment participation in holistic presence.

Not our ideas about the present moment, but the embodied partaking of the here and now, through conscious participation in Embodifulness—heartfulness, wombfulness, bodyfulness, and mindfulness altogether.

As we live and move and have our being in divine wholeness, permeated and intertwined throughout our entire being: personal, collective, and universal, may we presence in fullness with our whole-body being at any and all times, with whatever life brings to this now.

In this series, we have explored a number of practices and ways to bring forth greater attunement and conscious engagement in our holistic presence at any moment of our lives.

For our final practice of WBMP, I invite you to feast in the delight of the everyday ordinary. To find your holistic presence in each instant, participating in the great web of life through the mundane and the commonplace—for this is where life happens at any and all times. The sacredness of all things and every moment.

“Spiritual practice is not just sitting and meditation. Practice is looking, thinking, touching, drinking, eating, and talking. Every act, every breath, and every step can be practice and can help us to become more ourselves.” – Thich Nhat Hanh

Beyond Mindfulness – Embodying Holistic Presence