We start with the heart because it is the core not only of our Whole-Body Mystical Awakening practice, but really the core of human beings and the Christian path. Unfortunately, that isn’t functionally always the case when it comes to much of modern, Western Christianity.

Since we are usually so mind-centric, we may need to give extra attention to the heart. That doesn’t mean we abandon our mind, just that we need more work on the other centers.

The Mystical Language of the Heart

Many most strongly associate their heart with their emotions. The mystical language of the heart includes the feelings of joy, bliss, love, warmth, and more, but stemming from the source rooted within, from the heart’s divine, radiant center. We find this deeper center is not dependent on our emotional state or external influences. It emanates an energy of love and bliss that is always accessible.

When we speak with the mystical language of the heart, we are engaging in the flow of loving energy from our heart into the hearts of others. We experience strong sensations of energy and sometimes even pressing within our chest. This love is transmitted through energy fields.

Research on Energy Fields

Tapping into this heart space generates a large energy field that influences both us and others. Research has shown that the electromagnetic field of the heart extends beyond the body. As yet, instruments can measure the heart’s field no more than eight to ten feet away from the body, but indications are that it’s also a nonlocal field that transcends time and space. Physicists have proposed models that connect electromagnetic theory with an inherently nonlinear, nonlocal multidimensional domain that operates under holographic principles. These models, although not yet scientifically proven, help explain how the heart’s field could extend for miles and possibly across the world. Recent research has also found that the human body can act as an aerial with the capability to send and receive energy to and from its environment. This also includes energy exchange to and from other people as well as non-physical spiritual entities.

Like music in the air coming within earshot, spiritual energy often reaches us when we’re not expecting it. In WeSpace groups, we’re bringing into our meditation practice the awareness of these realities, and participants regularly notice a palpable experience of shared energy.

We can use our senses to experience that feeling of energetically and emotionally synchronizing with others via our energy fields. When we are deeply in tune with our own heart space, we can often sense the aura or flow of energy in others. For some, this is visually experienced with colors and images. Other times it is just felt in a deeper sense.

Mystical States of the Heart

In moving from ordinary consciousness, we begin with an entry state that serves as the beginning step into mystical body awareness. For the heart, many will come to this through our emotions. We can “activate” our heart by bringing our attention to any sensation or energy in our heart that may be present already as feelings. Or we can “stir up” feelings by connecting to external sources of emotion, such as someone we love deeply. This can help begin the process of becoming more aware of our heart energy, of the kindling within. As we intentionally welcome and allow the free flow of awareness in our heart space, we gradually deepen in our heartfulness.

Any of these processes can lead us into the awakened state of spiritual knowing from our heart, most characterized by radiant love. The felt-sense of this love is deeper than our emotional experience of love—or rather, it takes our previous experience and capacity of love and connects it to a deeper source, making it more resilient, less conditional, and deeply interconnected.

While some have dramatic sudden experiences of awakening that make this mystical heart immediately available, most of us will find that over time and with practice, the “barrier of entry” will lessen. We will pass through this entry state more easily as our awakened heart becomes more readily apparent and accessible—that is one of the fruits of practice.

We can also enter into the unified state of the heart through the deep core of our heart and the heart of God within. This is the place of universal communion, of embracing all in the eternal flame of the sacred fire that has burned throughout all time and will always endure, that will never be consumed or extinguished.

As we go through the states in the heart and in all the centers, it’s important to understand that these states are not hierarchical. All are necessary in the complete, integrated human experience. The goal is not to reach a pinnacle and just try to keep getting back there. It can be just as helpful to dwell in a heart of gentle, glowing care as to be in the lofty state of universal communion. Indeed, we will probably live most of our lives in the former rather than the latter—and perhaps that is what is more natural and beneficial for us and the world.

The goal for us is not to occasionally move into our heart space, but rather, to live from there as much as we can, even to most of the time.

In the mystical awakened heart, you find you are less bound by your individual wants and desires, and so you are able to operate from your “bigger” heart. You can feel the bigger story and the wider field at play in all situations. Life becomes more about “We” and “All” than just about “me.”

Living from the mystical heart is dwelling in deep heart consciousness, not dependent on external impulses—but not detached from them either. It is living in the flow of love that exists between and among us all and acting out of that interconnection. Because the heart is relational, living in the mystical heart will often involve loving, energetic spiritual connections with others.

The Relational Heart

What is perhaps most dynamic in awakening to our mystical heart is entering the relational field with openness and trust. As the heart is the relational center, it most naturally comes alive through resonant connection. Just as fire burns stronger with more logs, so too our hearts when joined in an intentional field such as a WeSpace group.

During a WeSpace group meditative prayer time, the heart-sourced energy of the individuals in the group begins to form an energy field between the group members. This takes various forms such as deep, peaceful serenity, intense feelings of love, or a sense of being held by the group’s heart energy in healing, comforting embrace. Often the group will just sit in silence while soaking this in. In reflection and sharing afterward, we regularly hear most nearly everyone has been experiencing this energetic flow in some way.

In the awakened heart, we have the source of the deep surge of love that can propel us to open up, to come out from our fortresses and barriers and engage in the flow of loving connection. We can offer freely the flame of compassion and come more into a loving presence that manifests in how we treat others. Living from this awakened heart of love is to dwell in the divine-human realm of Christ consciousness—the mystical presence of embodied love incarnated in us.

In a full heart we can feel the love of closeness, gratefulness, and devotion not only to others and also to the motherly-fatherly presence of God, Jesus, and other icons or saintly spiritual presences such as Mary. Experiencing the direct and personal presence of the divine is a central element of the Christian meditative/prayer tradition and Whole-Body Mystical Awakening (more on this in chapter ten).

But there is even more than this communion with God. Paraphrasing Meister Eckhart, “The heart with which I love God is the same heart with which God loves me; my heart and God’s heart are one heart, one knowing, one love.” As our heart awakens to experience oneness with God, bliss arises and saturates all being and experience.

Amazingly, we experience both communion and union with God in the radiant heart.

WHOLE-BODY MYSTICAL AWAKENING HEART PRACTICE

1. Move your attention from your head down to your heart

Some find it helpful to tap on their head with their hand a few times until their attention is there. Then they tap on the way down their face and neck until they reach their heart. Continue tapping until your attention is fully there and you are no longer thinking about your heart, but being in your heart space and experiencing the world from there.

You can also place your hand or hands and arms on your chest. The contact of chest with your arms and hands can be focusing, energizing, and prompt spiritual heart-knowing to arise within you.

If you need more assistance to activate your heart’s inherent, radiating love, you can think of someone you love. Besides loved ones and friends, you can think of God or Jesus loving you until your heart warms and you find that you are now centered there.

At times your heart may begin to release long-stored feelings, memories, wishes, fears, and dreams. Welcome whatever arises, allowing it to speak and holding it in the larger and deeper flow of love. No need to do the often difficult effort of letting these feelings go as long as they are being held in love. We just leave them being held in love, wait for the healing to take place, and in the meantime, we go on with our meditation.

Eventually, when you move from your head into your heart space, your mind will be empty, and your heart will be full. You reach the goal of both paths! You will feel the divine warmth, gratitude, love, and bliss radiating from your deep heart center. This is where you can experience your spirit and God’s spirit already being One.

2. Entering the Relational Heart Space

When we open our hearts to the flow of love between us and others in a WeSpace, we are carried beyond our individual heart and into the larger heart in our midst. It can really feel like we are inside of one larger heart.

In our WeSpace groups, we actively cultivate this shared heart field of love that can be felt acutely, even through a screen when we are geographically far apart. This is one of the most accessible ways of tapping into our collective reality. Coming into this heart consciousness is a regular experience in our ICN gatherings.

3. Heart Flowing

“Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me and I felt the healing power go out of me’” (Luke 8:46).

Heart flowing is the giving and receiving of love and spiritual energy to and from those both physically present and those present in non-physical spiritual form. One can also transmit to others who are not present. Heart-focused transmission can be activated anytime and anywhere. If you are waiting in line somewhere, such as the grocery store, you can move down to your heart and begin sending a field of love energy to all those you see around you.

You can choose to send love and healing energy to others anytime and anywhere, but it’s especially potent in a WeSpace group with a reciprocal flow happening among the group. Begin by thinking of an individual or the group, or looking at them, and sense the energy from your heart flowing out to the others and the energetic space among.

If you haven’t already, allow your heart to love deeply. Drawing from the deep surge of love that comes from God, our shared divine identity, and our oneness that is our deepest reality. Feel that with one another. At times, it may even feel almost painful or like your heart is going to burst. Don’t worry. That is just your heart consciousness expanding.

4. Awakened Prayer from the Heart

WBMA is not just a form of meditation, but a meditative prayer practice. This is because we are inviting more than just sitting quietly—but also engaging from our heart in relational ways, with one another and with spirit in the form of God-Beside-Us.

Connecting and conversing with spiritual beings is usually referred to as prayer. In our case, we have called it Integral Prayer because it is quite different from traditional prayer in some crucial ways. No begging for forgiveness, pleading with God, focusing on sin, or asking God to do what we can do. Instead, prayer from our awakened heart is a mystical connection of energetic presence and even conversation with our friends in spiritual bodies.

The form these spiritual beings take may be simply an identifiable presence, a cloud of light and/or color, or a sensed personal presence, seen or unseen such as Jesus, Mary, and/or other saintly guides. We don’t experience these loving presences conceptually, but through moving into our heart sensations.

While in your heart space, become aware of the spiritual presence(s) with you. You can sit quietly soaking up the energy they are directing to you. And/or you can begin a conversation, both talking and listening for words, images, or intuitions that come back to you from them. You can talk with any of the presences, sharing feelings, asking questions, and listening for responses.

We can also pray in this awakened way with others through Resonating Prayer.

Engaging in collective heart practice on a mystical level is a sharing of our holistic selves—a fuller state of consciousness than our ordinary operating system. It’s tuning into the frequency of shared heart energy. It’s sensing deeper realities with one another, often through seeing inner pictures as metaphors for spiritual truth, or intuitions felt in our bodies or emotions. It’s strengthening, encouraging, and comforting one another. And it’s sometimes discovering the emergence of deeper truth, higher wisdom, and greater consciousness.

Questions for Reflection:

1. How do you experience your heart? How has it felt when you’ve tapped into your deeper mystical heart?

2. Have you felt the flow of an awakened relational energy field? What dynamics have you experienced? How do you find your own flow engaging and contributing?

3. What does prayer look like in your life? What aspects described here do you experience or long for?

All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN

The Radiant Heart of Love and Bliss