Practices of Prayer that Change the World
Transformation happens when our learning is infused with intentional processes of becoming.
The new ICN rhythm of Saturday emails has shifted to sharing an article for learning one week, followed the next week by invitations into deeper becoming through spiritual practicing, intentional forms of engaging, and opportunities for integrating into our daily lives.
Our becoming happens personally, communally, and globally as we cultivate transformation through the I, the We, and the All.
Our intention with this new rhythm is to foster an intensification of our mystical practice, deepen our embodied engagement, and support the enactment of life integration for the transformation of ourselves, our neighbors, and the world.
We invite you to consciously and intentionally engage in the following processes for your personal lives, WeSpace groups or other spiritual communities, and global participation.
If you missed it last week, we encourage you to first read the article informing these processes: “Can Praying Change the World?”
Here are three movements of practicing, engaging, and integrating in this week’s becoming invitation:
Join a Practice of Global Mystical Activism
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Prayers with the Earth
Would you like to join in harmony with others to create new grooves of consciousness and healing to be sent toward people, plants, creatures, lands, waters and skies throughout the earth?
Join us us for healing prayers for the earth the day after Earth Day and Passover, on April 23rd, at 7:30 Central Time.
The session will use the beautiful Spiral Process from The Work That Reconnects and ICN's newly received template for engaging in mystical activism through prayer.
Facilitated by Martha O'Hehir, Chris Chandler, Raynah Braganza Passanha, and Luke Healy.
Choosing to Personally Engage
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Opening Up to the World
As we have begun this five-part series on Mystical Activism, we will be engaging with a variety of practices and processes of global prayer over the next few months. We’ll move into various ways we can actively participate in co-creating greater healing, peace, enchantment, and transformation in the world.
In order to do this, though, we each must personally decide to open up to the earth in this way. To not shut ourselves off from the circumstances and conditions of the wider world. We have to choose to participate actively in global consciousness.
It can often be overwhelming or intimidating. We may wish to remain in our bubble and cocoon in the safety of familiar places. This is the shadow side of “tribal” belonging, where we form spiritual “gated communities” of awareness and inclusion.
We belong to the whole world. So what does it mean to open up to engaging more deeply in our global consciousness?
As Paul put it in the article last week,
“Integral Christian mystical activism is prayer, meditation, ritual, or any other kind of spiritual or subtle and transcendent consciousness practice within a network of practitioners in the Christian tradition with the intention of moving “out” in social engagement.”
For our personal process this week, we make the choice to “move out” in our awareness and engagement.
You are invited to personally set the intention for this season ahead to be open to new ways of practice, process, and prayer with the world. To dedicate time and energy toward extending out further into broader and deeper fields of social engagement.
When we do this, as Paul described it,
“We are actively influencing the collective mind, which is entangled at subtle levels of consciousness in the non-local field in which all humans are embedded.”
Write your own intention of personal engagement in how you want to practice mystical activism in the weeks and months ahead.
Communal Integrating in Harmony for the World
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A WeSpace Practice of Mystical Intercessory Prayer
“Take this seriously:
If two of you come into harmony on earth about any matter,
you shall pray together,
and it shall come into existence with you,
along with my Abba,
who dwells in the infinite consciousness of spirit.”
(Matt 18:19)
Drawing upon Paul’s translation, we can move into a collective process of coming into harmony with one another as a form of communal intercessory prayer in a mystical way.
In your WeSpace groups (or other communal settings), you can move into a time of Resonating Prayer with the World. As you open your attunement to be with the whole of the earth—placing the globe in the center of the WeSpace—you may feel yourself drawn to particular places or situations.
As they come to heart and mind, you can offer the following words as an invitation to harmonious prayer together:
"Who will join me with an awakened heart and harmony of consciousness,
along with our Abba/Amma who dwells with us in infinite consciousness,
to cut a new cosmic groove together on behalf of ____________?”
Fill in the last part with a location, a situation, a condition, or other concern to hold together.
After someone shares, stay with that together in a mystical field of harmony in prayer. You can simply engage in the flow silently, holding the situation. You might raise your hands or feel drawn to a particular posture or gesture. And you can be open to receiving any impressions or sensations for what has been named, and you can give voice to sharing in spiritual knowing together.
When that harmonious holding feels complete, another person can return to the prayer of invitation, naming another place, people-group, issue, or area of focus.
As always, conclude with the geyser of love—you may find it has even more energy after sharing in such a global practice. Like water carving through the canyon, we are co-creating new cosmic grooves of healing, transformation, and love!
“In mystical subtle activism, we connect with whatever collective we are part of to co-create a much more vital, larger, powerful field of consciousness with the intention of changing the world.
We can feel this in our WeSpace groups when we begin meditative prayer. The atmosphere becomes enlivened in a felt way. These collectives can be socially transforming, even affecting the entire cosmos, cutting deeper and new cosmic groves. They can affect the collective psyche, out of which new ways of thinking, decision making, and actions emerge.”
—Paul Smith
If you’d like to do this in your next WeSpace group, you might begin with the following invitation: This week, let’s ponder this how we, as this particular Christ-Sophia collective, called together in the world now, might answer this call to mystical activism.
What world situations can we come into harmony about?
Special thanks to Martha O’Hehir for co-creating these communal forms of practices.
Images by Paul Fryer & Dalmo Mendonça