One of the great things about our mystical body is that we are able to tap into reality that is beyond the usual confines of “ordinary” experience. This includes not only accessing our deeper knowing and wisdom, but also experiential participation in spiritual dynamics that aren’t entirely bound to our physical body—such as our collective body in WeSpace and spiritual realities beyond our biological and physical limitations.

The mystical body can include but is not limited by gender, race, sexual orientation, or any other category of personal identification.

As two biologically males, we don’t have physical wombs. But that doesn’t mean we can’t experience the spiritual realities of this center in profound and powerful ways. This center and its particular feminine qualities offer a healing and liberating embodiment that can transcend categorical identifications that limit the common human experience.

The feminine is not bound to the spiritual womb of course, nor does the womb center only have qualities that are typically understood as feminine. Sometimes we use the word “gut” to convey other elements and qualities of this center, but there is also something healing and necessary in centering the feminine aspect of this center—especially in counter-balance to all the masculine language and male-dominated religious frameworks and teachings that have predominated Christianity for so long.

Ultimately, we seek a healthy integration and complementation between our otherwise polarizing differences. We can and do seek to hold this in our whole body, among all of the centers and everything in between, and we can also hold the seeming opposites in each center: love and suffering in the heart, being and emptiness in the womb, knowing and mystery in the head, and movement and stillness in the feet—to name just a few.

The Mystical Language of Our Deepest Being

The spiritual womb is home to both the core of our constructed self and our divine self. Our constructed self is our individual, separate identity. We grasp onto our constructed identity because we think losing it means death and not existing. When we become aware of this mistaken identity and release it, our deepest divine identity is revealed.

Underneath our limited identity is our deepest and most authentic core Self, our True Self. Our True Self is beyond our individuality but includes our uniqueness. Jesus identified it in his graphic image of living waters flowing from our “belly” or “innermost being.” (John 7:37-39). The word κοιλίας in Greek is actually the word “womb,” which is how it is translated every other time it is used in the New Testament.

He explained this was spirit or the mystical consciousness that awakens to and holds our divine identity. The living waters do not come from the outside. They flow from deep within us, having always been there even if not in our awareness. Mystical awakened consciousness releases this inexhaustible flow from deep within us to manifest openly in our lives. Jesus’ courageous actions flowed from his knowing he was in God’s hands and one with God. His creativity also manifested in many ways.

We can think about our divine identity also in our head and feel it in our heart. However, we intuit it most deeply from the mystical knowing of our spiritual womb.

Mystical States of the Spiritual Womb

For those without a biological womb, it may be easier at first to connect to this area as “gut” or perhaps “hara” (a Japanese terminology for this area), though we do very much encourage the integration of embracing the feminine aspect of this center when ready. For those who’ve experienced trauma in this area, healing will most likely be a part of opening to this spiritual center—enter carefully and consciously, with the aid of professional help as needed. And if you’ve worked with chakras, there is some overlap here with the sacral chakra, but the spiritual womb is a more encompassing center of consciousness that operates on multiple energetic and spiritual levels.

In our entry state, we are centering our attention in this deep belly. Here, we are not searching for feelings, energy, or even really any sensations yet. We are just opening to this inner holding, this space of being where we simply feel ourselves resting in inner presence. This can often feel like a sort of gradual sinking into deeper waters.

As we settle into our spiritual womb center, our awareness can begin to open to our awakened state knowing. This is sometimes felt like an arising flow, a subtle upspringing from our deep source. These “rivers of living water” come from the divine wellspring deep within, flowing with generative vitality. This is the life force within, coming up to propel us into becoming more alive. These arisings might take on specific qualities like creativity, courage, healing energy, or intuitive knowing. Sometimes it feels like a surge.

Plenty of other experiences are also possible in this generative, awakened space. Because of its core creative nature, we will especially infuse our sensation in this area with our unique expressiveness and felt-sense.

Also, as the womb space is mostly wordless and non-conceptual, we can welcome the deep silence of our awakened presence in this space. When senses come in the form of images, senses, or sometimes a single word, the possibilities for experience in this center will be numerous. How we perceive and experience all of these realities will nearly always be impacted by our own lenses of identification and experience—and that is just the natural part of our side of the co-creative element of our participation in the mystery of the mystical realm.

Coming into the unified state in our womb is to move from the arisings to the source. Into the unified wholeness of being. Of being all in the primordial inbreath of all creation. This is a place that is no-place, and a being that is the totality of emptiness and fullness. It is origin, the divine cosmic source that is actually within you, in the deepest divine identity of who you are, who we are, who everything is—and isn’t.

The WeSpace of the Womb

We come into the shared womb a little differently than the shared heart space. Less of a spatial, energetic field of connection, here we experience more of a deep collective enfolding. It may at first be harder to sense and seem a little less dynamic. It might feel a little more “submerged” with a denser, watery enveloping. Like a shared gestation, being nurtured together, we will sense it the more this space is shared among us.

As we flow forth in our uniqueness, we are not alone. The womb space also helps us sense, through a sort of umbilical knowing, our fundamental kinship with others. This is the shared womb of mystical, familial relationality—our soul family.

While this does particularize with a select few in our lives, we can also find this experience of our “extended family” together in the womb of God. We are all enfolded and nurtured in this same creative enclosure, maturing together in the creative generativity of life coming to emergence through our relationships and communities.

In our wombs, we may experience this as a warm embrace. As being held in a safe and healing vessel. Like a collective soak in a hot spring pool!

It can also be quite powerful, with our closeness to the arisings of vitality and generativity from our common Source. We may feel more directly the surges of life coming forth among us. Again, as the womb is such a creative space, the lagoon we swim in together is full of potential for unique and generative expressions.

This deep WeSpace of wombful belonging with one another takes time, and is a fruit of intentional and regular practice with others in intimate community. The soul nourishment of resting in the divine womb with others is rejuvenating and inspiring. And it is a representation of the space of our ultimate receiving, our being continuously created within the larger collective body.

Vivian Claire, a WeSpace group member and friend writes,

“Where we experience for ourselves mystical communion in the mystical body of Christ, we try to find words – even though what we experience words cannot express. So gradually a shared vocabulary of love and communion and new life grows as we evolve and grow.
Spiritual womb language is much loved by spiritual masters because it helps them speak of the changing states of mind and soul. St. Augustine says, ‘What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me is what matters.’ Spiritual masters speak of a sense of ‘virginal’ ripeness in a soul, of periods of fertility and othertimes of barrenness, of a state of being consumed by sweetly piercing spiritual longing. They speak of devotion and prayer as an infusion of spirit penetrating the core of our being, of an inner ‘marriage’ between masculine and feminine. Womb language is helpful archetypal language of hiddenness - a hidden conceiving, of periods of womb-like darkness and expectant waiting, of dying being a birth. It is also a language for spiritual evolution speaking of the long labour of love and being spiritually mid-wifed into a new humanity.”

WHOLE-BODY MYSTICAL AWAKENING WOMB PRACTICE

1. Drop down to your spiritual womb

Place your hands in the middle of your abdomen, right below your navel. As you settle down into this space, let your attention come to rest deep within. Just like moving down into the heart, this is not thinking about your womb space—this is being aware from your womb space.

Notice how this center feels differently from your mind and heart centers. Studies of the human body suggest that our sensitivity to flux in electromagnetic fields largely contributes to the gut aspect of awareness which we call intuition.

2. Breathe from your abdomen

If your belly, not your chest, is moving up and down, you are doing it right.

Awareness of the belly is blocked for many people in the American culture because it’s shamed. We don’t want our bellies to show. And if we do show them, we want them to be flat, hard, or toned. Some look like that. Then there’s most of us! The shape of our belly shouldn’t cut ourselves off from our spiritual womb and from our intuitive self, losing touch with sensing our deep, inner Divine Self.

Our gut, behind our belly button, produces over ninety percent of the serotonin in our body and about fifty percent of the dopamine. These two hormones are responsible for keeping us satisfied and happy, among other things. Belly-button breathing is good for us!

Biblically, breath is a single word (rûach in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek) that also means life-force, and both God’s spirit and the human spirit. Translators try to guess which one is meant by the context. Perhaps a more integral and biblical way is to assume it means all of those! The one word today that comes closest to this is “consciousness.” This means you can think of energizing your divine/human consciousness in your body by breathing in the spirit (consciousness) of God! If we stop breathing, our consciousness leaves our body behind and goes on to the “many rooms in my Abba’s house” that Jesus talked about (John 14:2-3).

3. Ask yourself a powerful question, “Who am I?”

As you keep your hands on your tummy and letting yourself sink into your spiritual womb through deep breathing, welcome whatever comes up. The more you welcome your inner divine being, the more you will intuitively get in touch with your spiritual origin. You bear the divine identity of the one who created you.

When you feel ready, ask yourself, “Who am I?”

Don’t let yourself answer that question because the deepest answer is not in words or thoughts. Let the answer arise through a deep sense, an intuition of spiritual knowing, an inner form of awareness of your divine identity.

4. Rest in the divine embrace, the gutsy, creative courage and healing of your spiritual womb

Welcome sensing that you are made in the very likeness and image of God, loving and creating from the depths of your being.

Inadequate religious/spiritual teaching (to say it kindly) hinders our acceptance of sensing our own divinity. Many have heard again and again that God is a jealous, judging, angry God and the gulf between sinful humanity and holy God is immense. But THAT’S NOT TRUE according to Jesus!

God is right now BEING-YOU deep within you. You are the light of the world. We have only to remove all the wrong beliefs and self-shaming, and sink down into our deepest self, to uncover the brilliance of Divine Self-awareness.

5. Place your dominant hand on your gut and your other hand on your heart

Then let the rivers of living (creative, healing) water that reside in your spiritual womb flow up to your heart, throughout your body. This is God-Being-You, the One Consciousness that is the Mind, Heart, Identity, and Body of God embodied as us.

This is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Co. 1:27). The word “Christ” is the Christian symbol for all of reality. It feels like love and gutsy courage—and looks like creative action in a needy world.

Never ignore a gut feeling, but never believe it is enough. If we listen to the intuitions of our spiritual womb, energized by the grounding energy from our feet, we can draw them up through our loving heart, and run them past a healthy, integrated mind. It is then we have the integrated guidance of these four centers of spiritual knowing.

Let the healing living water from your womb spread into all your body and out to those you direct it to and to the world.

Those who wake up spiritually continue the divine flow of love, healing, and light to the world.

There is a woman in our community who shared once about when she was pregnant with triplets. She said she loved the experience, and every time she walked into a room her huge belly (her words!) would announce her arrival like a clarion call. It was definitely the first thing everyone noticed about her all the time.

She then pondered, what would it be like to be so wombful that we entered every situation leading with our wombs?

Our first step to integrating the womb space into our lives may be just a simple allowing. Are we ready to open to this center as a way of being and living? Many spiritual expressions and traditions—including much of Christianity—remain “heart-up” in their practice and focus. Culturally as well, we are often blocked or totally disconnected from this center of awareness.

Opening to and embracing this center may be a new experience and it may take time. That’s ok. Allow yourself the freedom to be a beginner, to discover something new within yourself. You might even begin by invoking this experienced reality through a prayer of conception.

We can live into our wombfulness in so many ways, and over time these will emerge in how it looks for you. It may be the quality of patient gestation, of holding something that is growing within you—some new life or offering to the world, some expression of creativity that needs time to grow rather than quickly “producing” something. It may be time for an “emptying,” a sending out into the world something you’ve carried for a long time. Time for birth.

Through deeper awareness from our womb center, we can welcome more of our intuitive knowing and sensing, bringing that into our life with wisdom for ourselves and others. We also may discover a source of truly invigorating energy—a powerful vitality arising into our being as we are more open and connected to the divine source at the deep core of our identity.

Questions for Reflection:

1. Have you had experience with your womb space or gut area in spiritual practice? What has that looked like? Or if not, what curiosities do you have about it?

2. What is stirring deep within you now from your belly after reading this chapter?

3. Do you trust your core, divine identity? Do you know it from deep within?

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

The Vitalized Spiritual Womb of Intuition and Creativity