Becoming Wombful
“In My Womb” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
Transformation happens when our learning is infused with intentional processes of becoming.
Each week, following an ICN article, we share invitations into deeper becoming. These may be spiritual practices, ways of deeper engagement, and opportunities for life integration. Our becoming happens personally, communally, and globally as we cultivate transformation through the I, the We, and the All.
Our intention with this 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.
IF YOU MISSED IT LAST WEEK, WE ENCOURAGE YOU TO FIRST READ THE ARTICLE INFORMING THESE PROCESSES: “The Vitalized Spiritual Womb of Intuition and Creativity”
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.
Practicing Wombfulness Now
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A 5-Minute Meditation to Enter into Our Womb Space
The following new meditation from Martha O’Hehir is a guided practice to help you enter into your womb space. If you’re new to moving into this awareness, or you would like to cultivate a greater ease in presencing through your womb space throughout your day, this practice will give you five steps in five minutes to help you do so more easily:
The Wombful WeSpace of Generativity
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Integrating the Heart and Womb in Communal Becoming
“With one hand on the heart and the other gently covering the pelvic area we have a simple physical gesture for tuning into a quite distinctive kind of spiritual intelligence. This ‘heart-womb’ spiritual intelligence comes alive when we become aware of the womb centre in relation to the heart centre - two connecting nodes. Or to say it another way – when the deepest source of love in us is connected to the deepest source of fertility and creativity in us womb wisdom comes to life. Many healing gifts begin to rise spontaneously into our awareness.”
In our WeSpace groups in ICN, we most often and naturally experience the shared space among us primarily from our heart center. As the heart is our center of relationality, that makes sense.
The womb center also has a powerful capacity for collective awareness. The WeSpace of the womb is of a different nature, and for many, can be difficult to experience—especially if our attention is caught up in the strength of our heartful connection of love and relationality.
What would it look like to set the intention to directly explore the shared womb space in integration with our heartful connection?
In a WeSpace group, with a close partner, or in another intimate setting of spiritual practice with a spirit guide such as Jesus, you might try the following:
Entering through the heart of love into the place of trust together, commit to the focus of your collective awareness speaking to you from the womb space. Of course, this is challenging because womb awareness is often pre-verbal. So you might want to welcome more silence intentionally, to relieve any pressure anyone might feel to need to speak.
What will you experience in the shared womb space?
You can welcome the flow of creative energy, surges of vitality, healing balms, mysterious enfolding, reservoirs of courage, intuitive intention, allures of eros for mystical consummation in oneness and spiritual fertility (which we can welcome as a vital spiritual gift from our womb center that goes beyond human sexuality), and much more.
But don’t try to direct your experience with expectation. Let your wombful arisings interflow in the generative enclosure of the sacred womb of God, nurturing and gestating you together in your divine becoming together in the mystical body of Christ.
We may simply treasure what is here in our heart. Or, as collective awareness grows, we can welcome sharing from this place together (or if silence is most present, reflective experience looking back afterwards). Speak in the present tense. Share what you’re sensing and experiencing from the WeSpace of the womb together.
Afterwards, if you would feel comfortable doing so, we invite you to share your experiences with others in the ICN community. In this way, we interweave and encourage others in deepening our practice in new ways.
Wombful Creativity
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Poetry as a Spiritual Portal
Poetry and the arts can be wonderful portals to help us enter into the felt awareness and experience of our embodied centers. They help us integrate our participation and understanding through engaging our mythic and magic structures of consciousness.
The following poem by ICNer Pete Armstrong is offered as an invitation to guide you into deeper womb engagement.
The touchings of butterflies
We sat in a bower.
We were together, open.
We were blessed with being alive
and knowing we were alive
knowing the humming of bees
and the unfelt settlings of butterflies
on a shoulder.
As we separated I saw we had
no need to struggle into the depths
to find the light, the truth.
At this moment I knew fundamentally
Light just is
Love just is
God just is
bubbling away like a spring
rising up through
the layers of our beings
so subtle, then ever denser, more material,
shaped by our common mistakes
and our individual structures
condensing as words, actions, paintings,
manifesting as life.
From: The Words on my Face
To hear this poem read aloud, along with several more poems on the womb, click here, where you can also download a pdf with 10 poems from Pete and learn more about him.
All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN