Part One – A Divine Birthing Journey

Growing up in church, advent was my favorite time of the year. I loved the music, the pageantry, the decorations, the candles, and the sense of waiting and preparing for something wonderful.

Looking back, I think to a large degree what made it so special was that it tapped into the quiet longing I had deep within me. Not just for Christmas Day, which, while always a delight, did not fulfill the longing with material gifts and family time. I craved a deeper communion. It was more truly a longing for a real experience of Emmanuel, God-With-Us.

It wasn’t until many years later I learned “advent” did not mean “to wait.” As I evolved through the early stages of my faith, I have had many of these somewhat embarrassing “epiphanies.” I have called them “fundie moments,” when I suddenly realize what I was taught isn’t true at all but was a subtle or not-so-subtle indoctrination to particular (usually limiting) teaching or belief.

Of course, “advent” actually means “arrival.” We only come to think it’s about waiting if we don’t believe the arrival has occurred yet. Sure, Jesus came 2000 years ago, but much of traditional Christianity is still waiting for Christ to come again. For their longings to be met in thee tonight. To know and see God here and now. And still so many wait.

In years past, we have entered this season in ICN as a time of being mystical mothers, bearing the divine and growing up into our Christ-being.

What would it look like to truly live into the arrival? If we turn advent into an action rather than a season. This year, how about we advent Christ on earth today?

This still might involve waiting and bearing, gestating and expecting in mystery. But it is a participatory process—one that we are intentionally engaged with—in ways we’ll consider throughout this series.

And we can live in the arrival that has already come. We are adventing Christ at any and all times because Christ is born through our mystical becoming, our divine participation incarnated in our very being. We bring this to bear more fully through awakening into our Christ consciousness, which is the embodiment of God, the divine spirit dwelling among us, the marrying of heaven and earth.

This year, let’s go on a birthing journey into Christ consciousness.

Who Is Christ?

*“Christ Consciousness” – image by Paul Fryer*

In the time of Jesus, the word “Christ” referred to “the anointed one” or “the Messiah.” It was widely seen then more with a temporal and political understanding. But Jesus brought forth a much more cosmic and universal comprehension, as the apostle Paul explained in many of his letters.

More recently, Teilhard de Chardin has illuminated the evolutionary and cosmic implications of this expansive understanding of Christ, present in all matter and consciousness. Richard Rohr has also greatly helped elucidate this Universal Christ, alive in all things.

Christ is drawing forward the universe, and it is still unfolding, still being born forth continuously. As Teilhard put it, “Of the cosmic Christ, we may say both that he is and that he is still growing.”

Where is this Christ growing? In everything and everyone. Christ is the divine principle that exists within us all, and in our mystical participation—our embracing and cultivating of this way of being—we are continuously bearing and becoming Christ. Christ in you, the hope of glory.

As humans, we can actively partake in this wombful conception of Christ in us, growing in our conscious divine capacity, awareness, and participation.

*“Life Within” – image by Dalmo Mendonça*

Christ Grows Inside Me?

“Christ Consciousness” is a term that often gets used without much specific description or clear definition. Some refer to it as a deep knowledge of the teachings of Jesus or the embodiment of his values and qualities. Often, it is used to represent a transcendent, cosmic capacity that elevates us beyond the limitations of human knowing and physical existence—which is almost the exact opposite of how I am using the term here.

“Christ” represents the incarnated divine. The Word made flesh. Fully divine and fully human in spirit and body. This is not limited to Jesus alone but is our birthright as well. Our calling to divine participation is not by escaping this physical world, but by deeply embracing and imbuing our human materiality in and through the energy and element of God.

To come into Christ Consciousness therefore is to more deeply embrace and enhance the substance of our physical being, our embodied human consciousness, with the divine.

We cannot do this through mental consciousness alone—learning more or transcending beyond the mind. Rather, we awaken through deepening into our living, immanent consciousness and incarnated being embodied in this now.

To bear and bring this forth, we need to go deeper within. Into the heart, the body, and into our spiritual womb. This is the work of our Whole-Body Mystical Awakening practice, and in this particular adventing, we are being invited into a deeper wombfulness.

Welcoming the Divine Mother

“God is our Mother as truly as he [sic] is our Father; and he showed this in everything, and especially, in the sweet words where he says, ‘It is I,’ that is to say, ‘It is I: the power and goodness of fatherhood. It is I: the wisdom of motherhood. It is I: the light and grace which is all blessed love. It is I: the unity. I am the sovereign goodness of all manner of things. It is I that make you love. It is I that make you long. It is I: the eternal fulfillment of all true desires.”
– Julian of Norwich

Every birthing journey requires a mother. It is one of the unique gifts of womanhood—though spiritual birthing is not bound by gender.

However, for centuries upon centuries we have been given mostly male and masculine images of God, especially within Christianity. Couple that with patriarchal systems all around us, including the institutional church, and the sense of the divinity and sacredness of the feminine has suffered greatly. It has not been snuffed out. Far from it. But it is often unseen and unacknowledged if not explicitly suppressed.

God is not a man. We know this. And ultimately, God is not a woman either. The transcendent God-Beyond-Us is not confined to gender. But as the divine dances in form, incarnating in and through matter, and as God appears to us in a personal way, she interweaves within the elements of creation—physical and subtle. Not bound to human form either, we also find her in the life force energy of all materiality.

As we meet God-Beside-Us in many shapes, we welcome not only the central figure of Jesus in Christianity in male form but also those female forms such as Mary the mother of Jesus, Christ Sophia, Mary Magdalene, or simply Mother God. We can also experience her in numerous forms given to us from other spiritual traditions, like Guanyin, Gaia, Brigid, and many, many more.

And we also recognize and honor the feminine and masculine in both male and female forms, across the spectrum and beyond. While most often linked and associated, the energies and qualities of the feminine and masculine are not the same as nor bound to biological sex and gender identity.

Today, we need to expressly emphasize the feminine—especially in an evolving Christianity—because of the great imbalance and oppression that has been ongoing for centuries. Only with this rebalancing and healthy integration can we inhabit a holistic divine being, a Christ consciousness that is incarnated through matter in particular forms.

Spirit has been speaking this need more directly to us in the ICN community, with the emergence of this affirmation which we declare:

ICN embraces and celebrates the Divine Feminine

Without the Mother, we will not be able to go on this birthing journey. We need the masculine as well, certainly, but this process especially will primarily be a feminine rite of passage—which can be undertaken by us all.

Conceiving Christ in Us

A birthing journey has different elements and periods along the way. We are all at various points along the journey, so you may find yourself somewhere already in one of these terms. Even if you have birthed forms of Christ many times already, there might be a new allure calling to you again in this season. A new form or integration of Christ consciousness beckoning.

This rite begins with the call of mystical eros, the attraction and cojoining of spirit and matter in blissful devotion and embodied becoming. Eros is the passion that draws us together and is the force of connective and creative love. Spiritually, it is the energy that draws us into union with God, from which, if we are willing, divine life can be conceived in us.

We may even be drawn into a mystical encounter in this way. A ritual of saying yes and taking our active part in this formation—which is not done in the mind alone or simply through conceptual knowledge. Only an intimate knowing in the biblical sense. It may not be a literal, physical consummation, but birth does not happen without conception.

To do so, we choose to “let it be done” to us in sacred FIAT. A holy receptivity that is greater than our own personal agenda. But so too is there a participatory call of engagement, bringing our unique human manifestation into the equation.

This is what it means to receive the call to be a mystical mother of God, as Meister Eckhart tells us we are all meant to be. For us to be full of grace too and carry the divine in this fullness of time.

As this receiving takes root in us, then we begin to experience the quickening of Christ consciousness coming to life in us in new ways.

Gestating Christ (Consciousness)

Here, our spiritual womb center will play a vital role. For many new to ICN or not familiar with this space of their mystical body, I recommend reading more about it here.

Much of Christian history and Western thought has predominantly focused on the head and heart as our prime areas of mind and consciousness—if not altogether separating mind and body. Other traditions welcome this space more actively, whether through energetic chakra centers, the three cauldrons of Celtic shamanism, or more specifically the Hara in Japanese culture. More recently, scientific studies have also confirmed our “three brains,” which include the gut area.

In naming this center of spiritual knowing for the Whole-Body Mystical Awakening practice, Paul and I specifically chose the term “spiritual womb” because it honored the feminine language, metaphor, and embodiment that has often been so lacking in Christianity. We also wanted to center the creative potential and generative possibility to bring forth life that we all have inside of us. We all have a spiritual womb, whether we have a physical one or not.

Owning and embracing our spiritual womb opens up in us a consciousness capacity that has many facets and elements to it. Here, in this birthing journey, we can embrace our inner power to create and hold life within us. To see it nurtured and grown from our very own vitality. Our spiritual body and creative energy have the capability to nourish and feed the divine life growing in us. What we bear is not a separate spirit from the outside, but a comingled and co-joined human/divine becoming.

In this advent season, we can embrace the action of adventing Christ first in the depths of our own being. To enfold the Mystery within, gathering up and pondering this unseen and unknown potential.

How will this life grow and become in us?

What will it manifest as? And when?

Birth comes when it comes—when it is time. We cannot rush the process. As we wait, we dream and we nourish the life within, feeding ourselves with the extra sustenance we need to grow something new.

We live not in a longing for a distant hope but in the ever-present expectant participation in the divine becoming now. God-with-us, Emmanuel, alive and growing even today.

May this advent season be a time of dynamic gestation and cultivation as we intentionally bear and actively bring forth God in our midst. As we advent Christ Consciousness within and among us.

Adventing Christ Consciousness