WeSpace Groups—Why We Need the “We”
For our weekly articles to start this new year, we’ll be sharing (slightly) revised chapters from our foundational ebook, “WeSpace & Whole-Body Mystical Awakening.” First written in 2019/2020, this ebook has served as the foundational and baseline teaching for the core practices of ICN. We revisit these writings as an opportunity to share with those who haven’t yet read them, to review “the basics” for those who have, and to revise and update slightly based on the years of learning and evolution that have happened in our community since first published.
If you’d like to engage in shared discussion and practice around the themes of these each week, we invite you to join our Sunday Gathering online, where we engage with the articles in communal meditation and contemplative conversation. For information on how to join, click here.
We begin this week with chapter one: “Why We Need the We.”
“WeSpace” - image by Dalmo Mendonça
I (Paul) was twenty years old and very much a devoted follower of Jesus when I first realized a striking thing about Jesus that I had not grasped before. The first action Jesus took in his public ministry to heal and change his world was to gather a few others willing to follow him. He spent an extraordinary amount of time together with them as they shared their lives in radical ways. From that humble but dynamic beginning, we now have a world in which one-third of its 7.7 billion people claim to be his followers. His life and message of love, although not always followed, have made a radical, worldwide impact.
I decided I needed such a group in my life and asked six of my closest Christian friends if they would be willing to meet weekly to share our lives and pray for each other. Since that time, over sixty years ago, I have always had such a group in my life. After seminary, I was called to pastor for almost half a century, the only church I would ever lead. The first thing I did was gather a few church members together in a small group that met weekly to share and pray. That multiplied until over 400 members of our congregation were meeting regularly in small groups, which became the dynamic relational and spiritual center for our life together.
My (Luke) long passion for gathering has taken many forms throughout my life. Early on in my church life I was asking why our gatherings looked the way they did. I explored new forms such as house churches, new monastic intentional community, contemplative gatherings, and other ways of gathering small groups together. While traditional churches are shrinking, Christians still very much need to gather together. The spaces and ways need to keep evolving to serve the Christianity of the future.
We are seeking to do just that with Integral Christian Network. This movement invites followers of Jesus from around the world to meet primarily on the Internet via Zoom, for now. More local groups may develop in the future. In what we call “WeSpace groups,” anywhere from four to eight participants share their lives with one another and practice a form of meditative prayer together we call Whole-Body Mystical Awakening.
Our groups take Jesus’ words seriously: “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them” (Matt 18:20). There we experience a heightened awareness of the presence of Jesus, God’s motherly-fatherly presence, as well as other beings in non-physical form. Our WeSpace gatherings are intentionally mystical, sharing in a deeply spiritual place together.
Given the state of the world, church, religion, and spirituality, we desperately need to access and activate the collective consciousness in just such a spiritual practice if we hope to see any kind of significant personal and global transformation. We need the vision and the means to call forth relational spirituality — a shift from “I to We” that can carry and expand consciousness to deep and compelling expressions with the power to transform us and the world on a global scale.
Our consciousness development throughout our spiritual life has almost certainly come from a starting assumption of individuality. So much so that perhaps even the idea of experiencing collective consciousness may sound unrealistic to you. We assure you it is not and is more and more recognized as the pathway ahead for humanity. Our WeSpace groups are invitations to come inside the spiritual energy and reality of “two or three gathered together in my name.”
All by Myself Alone
When you hear the words “spiritual practice,” what do you think of? Perhaps you picture someone meditating. Perhaps you picture a person doing yoga or tai chi. Perhaps you think of a rosary or prayer beads. Whatever it is you imagine, it is highly likely that your image is of a single, solitary figure at practice by himself/herself.
Even most of our experiences of group spiritual practice or spiritual community are themselves largely individual experiences. The rest of the group is also having individual experiences, mostly unconnected to the others. It’s shoulder-to-shoulder practice.
There is certainly value to this. There is a shared, mutual commitment. A sense of comradery. A side-by-side, working on this together. But there can also be a strong sense of loneliness. An isolation when things aren’t going quite right. An over-orientation on the teacher/authority. And quite often, a failure to bring about any kind of deep personal and social transformation.
Of course, we need to practice alone. Certainly, some spiritual practice must be tailored to our own individual needs and expressions at various points in our lives. But if this is the only or even primary form our spiritual practice takes, then we are missing the vital component of shared, heart-to-heart spiritual practice.
Many of us view our spiritual lives as something deeply personal and, in some sense, private. And so we follow our own individual path. This is the vital stage of differentiation and coming into our own. But if we keep going, we can start to discover that other paths are merging with ours. We find we are on the same path. We can then begin to discover a kinship with others who have all taken their own journey but are now coming together more and more.
We may find them in books. We may find them on the internet. If we’re very fortunate, we can find them in our cities and even in our churches. These people are out there. Whatever your path, you are not alone. Though the crowds thin, the further you go, the more like-hearted folks you can discover.
From Shoulder-to-Shoulder to Heart-to-Heart
Here is a simple picture. Imagine a group of people sitting in church. They are next to each other in chairs or pews, perhaps praying or listening to a sermon. As you picture this, what is the feel of the collective space? What energetic dynamic is enforced through this arrangement and posture? Where is the focus of attention of the participants?
Now, picture a circle of people facing one another. What difference do you feel? Where in your body do you feel it? Stay there for a moment. Then, picture a glowing heart radiating from each person in the circle. See the spiritual energy and love flowing out of them. As the waves expand out, everyone’s spiritual energy fields are overlapping and engaging with one another, creating a palpable collective field where love, wisdom, encouragement, and much more can emerge. That can be a spiritual reality in your life.
Even when people come together to practice, we still most often see a functional individualism. Many of our “group” practices have been framed to be experiences of being in the same physical space while we’re alone with God and our individual practice. We are taught to shut everything and everyone out, including all the others present. Our interior experiences are almost completely independent from anyone else in the room—even if we’re facing each other in a circle. We ignore the possibility that something is also happening in the space between us.
While there may be engagement with one another, it is often focused either on reflection about our individual experience or, more commonly, on mind-centered interactions such as learning new ideas, asking questions, and discussion. All of these forms almost always stay in the realm of the mind. That’s because the structure has been set up, consciously or unconsciously, to keep things primarily in a mental space. The space, format, and practice are set up from the beginning for the mind, not the heart with its natural, relational embrace of others present.
“WeSpace” is a new form of spiritual practice and community that is on the forefront of the evolving spiritual landscape of today. Recognizing the hyper-individualization of not only Western society and American culture but also the individualization of the interior experience of most forms of spiritual practice, many are seeing the need for a higher, more evolved “WE.”
WeSpace is at the heart of what we do. We have recognized some of the deep spiritual needs of evolving Christians that, for the most part, aren’t being addressed by the institutional church. These are the need for spaces of mystical practice and discovery, for safe communities of belonging for those who’ve outgrown traditional forms of church belief and practice, and for collective engagement with others that tap into the deeper spiritual realities between us.
Our WeSpace groups are focused on practice together more than discussion or solo practice because our heart consciousness often needs more development than our mind understanding. And the heart is inherently relational.
In the “We,” we start with the heart, which brings us to the shared, loving space of relationality and authentic connection. It also helps quiet our minds when we can learn to rest in the loving and trusting heart of God at the core of our own heart. From there, we can further deepen into embodying the whole of our being, including grounding through our feet and centering in our spiritual womb, which we’ll look at more directly in later chapters.
In the heart-to-heart WeSpace of deep connection and loving presence, we find sacred companionship and spiritual intimacy. We more deeply enter into the joy of shared spiritual experience and loving evolution together. We come to discover a larger container for a new way of being—a collective, divine consciousness participating in the mystical Body of Christ.
Questions for Reflection:
1. How have you shifted from “I” to “We” in your life? What effect has that had?
2. How would you describe your experience of the spiritual/mystical/energetic WeSpace?
3. If you have, how has experiencing sacred companionship and spiritual intimacy in your life changed you?