The Charged Feet of Embodied & Enlivened Presence
“Every forest branch moves differently in the breeze, but as they sway they connect at the roots.”
Christianity is the religion of the incarnation. Sadly, throughout much of Christian history, instead of embracing the divine presence in all of material reality, Socratic dualism and Greek philosophy became more prominent in the tradition. Misreadings of the apostle Paul did not help in this respect either. Spirit was set apart from and even put in opposition to matter. Many other spiritual traditions, including Christian expressions, further continue to reinforce this immateriality of spirit and separation of the mystical from the physical.
Thankfully, it is not only a resurgence of animist and shamanic spirituality that is reincorporating our spirituality with our bodies, but also science itself that is beginning to intimate that matter is far more energetic and dynamic than we once thought. This is, as well, in the roots of Christianity that saw God dwelling in flesh, not just in Jesus but in all matter and the whole of creation—which includes you and me.
While our mystical body certainly has non-physical dimensions, it is also very much infused and embodied in our material and physical being. This is a vital and necessary integration today, into living in mystical reality that is not divorced from the material world. A world that is rousing and calling out to be felt, heard, healed, and loved.
Our feet center is our natural connection point for feeling and knowing from this earthy, natural awareness. Our feet bring us to both grounding and movement. Our feet lead us into the pathways of interconnection and entwinement. They bring us to where we are in the moment, into the physical place and space of our body in the here and now, in this shimmering present presence.
This center is also not limited to the physical feet themselves—for not all have feet and both our roots and movement are not confined to this space in our bodies. As the feet are not an organ, we might connect this center to our interstitium that flows through barriers and connects beyond separating limitations, our feet center opens us into our full somatic presence—not just as an individual body, but as a rhizomatic and mycelial network intertwining and interbeing. Our incarnated entanglement in the body of God.
The Mystical Language of the Feet
In spiritual practice, sometimes we can find ourselves off in the clouds. Returning to our feet helps reorient us to our immanent presence. In the practice of Whole-Body Mystical Awakening we find that grounding provides a steadying anchor as well as a conduit into charged cosmic energy. The primary way that we tap into this energy is through the conductors of our feet.
Grounding means that you are present in your body with a powerful energetic connection to the earth. This allows you to be centered and balanced no matter what's going on around you. If you aren't grounded, you're like a leaf blown about by the wind. But when you are well-grounded, you are like a strong tree with roots deep into the earth. This is especially important as we extend ourselves out through our hearts to others in WeSpace.
We can often feel the energy flowing up through our feet and legs into our bodies. We may experience movement in our feet or toes, a desire to walk or even dance. Often our feet speak through movement. Other times they keep us rooted to our present reality. When we feel scattered, grounding to the earth brings us back to the here-and-now.
When we are grounded, we sense that there is something more essentially authentic in our body. All of these centers of spiritual knowing evoke a deeper level of divine-human consciousness, existing prior to the forms themselves.
Awakened spiritual knowing in grounding is experiencing the biophysical and spiritual energy of the universe. This energizes the other three centers of spiritual knowing, especially bodily sensations. In the transcendent realm, we embrace and experience that we are One with all material reality, the body of God.
Mystical States of the Feet and Body
“The Diaphany of the Divine at the heart of a glowing universe, as I have experienced it through contact with the Earth – the Divine radiating from the depths of blazing Matter.
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Since we’re so often in our heads or operating from a disembodied awareness, our entry state is to come into our grounded presence. Into the here and now in this place and time. As roots reach out from trees down into the earth, we find our embodied presence in the present by becoming more grounded through our feet and physical bodies.
Here we are not “imagining” in our heads what this might look like, picturing our roots with a mental paintbrush—though we may need to begin this way to get started. Rather we are seeking to touch into, with our bodies, the felt-sense of our embodied participation in and as the earth, in and as our physical being. Don’t think about your roots, feel your roots. Conjure them from your body. Perhaps go out barefoot among the trees to help get started if you find it difficult to begin.
In our day and age of mental predominance, many experience this reinhabiting of our bodies as a sort of coming home. We do not have a body. Our body is who we are and a very natural state of our being. We are aching for healing in this way, for a reintegration to wholeness.
As we open in deeper energetic awareness and the felt-sense of our bodily knowing, we can come further into our awakened state of consciousness from our feet and body. Here, our spiritual knowing is done in a “bodily” sense—less conceptually and more somatically. It is the awakening to the Christ energy in your embodied being. You may begin to feel sensations and energy in your body in new ways. In a WeSpace group, I (Luke) feel energetic sensations related and connected to others in the group.
The feet are also the natural center of movement, and so we may find our awareness in this way coming even more through motion. This could be walking, dancing, or really any physical movement where we enter into a flow state of natural participation in and as our bodies. Even just conscious standing can help. Doing so in nature amplifies and makes more accessible this awakened awareness as well—hug a tree, touch a plant lovingly, dig into the soil with your toes.
In the subtle body, the feet are a major center of meridians—channels of life energy—into the rest of the body. As such, much of our spiritual knowing here comes along these pathways into our interconnection through our whole body and our larger collective body. The divine material reality of our incarnated body is charged with sub-atomic particles that do not operate according to the boundaries we normally ascribe to physical reality. Quantum mechanics and mystics alike imply that we are interconnected in ways we can’t quite comprehend yet.
We might envision this interconnection through the metaphor of each of our roots stretching into the shared soil of the earth and entangling, wrapping, and connecting with the roots of others. Just as roots interweave and intertwine through the earth, so too do the feet of our mystical body lead us into participation beyond our individual self, into the experience of the web of life in the most immanent awareness and knowing.
This is to begin to come into the unified state of awareness from this center. Our being of the body of God. This is not so much something that we see so much as feel, though it’s been pictured as the great web of life, Indra’s Net, or what Teilhard called “The Divine Milieu.” We sense into it on a cellular or even quantum-level, vibrating with the dance of our divine participation in the strata and substance of the entire cosmos. It quivers throughout our whole being, a body-bliss that reverberates and sings out through each of our particular, unique expression of sacred vivacity. Our incarnated entanglement with all things. Embodying all.
“But let us leave the surface, and, without leaving the world, plunge into God . . . In this place the least of our desires and efforts is harvested and tended and can at any moment cause the marrow of the universe to vibrate.”
The WeSpace of the Feet
As we grow in our awareness of our roots reaching down into the earth, and if we’re practicing with a group in a WeSpace communal field, almost unwaveringly the first thing we experience is the interconnection and intertwinement of our roots. We are normally able to sense quite quickly that we are not alone down there, and our spatial bubbles of separation have all been popped.
As humans we walk around and are not permanently attached to anything constantly. Touch is within our control and can be removed when we want to be “by ourselves” (though we are always touching something). In the intersubjective experience of our roots, we find we usually don’t mind at all. For here we have no need for “personal space.” We naturally share the energy and nutrients of our one earth in conjunction with all.
And our whole-body moves in this dynamic web of life and energy. While things may appear separate, quantum physics is revealing how things are constantly entangled and interrelated in ways that we do not perceive with our eyes. With increasing sensitivity and practice, we can begin to sense this through our “quantum roots.” We can, in the marrow of our bones, begin to feel the pulsing energy of interconnection and nonlocality. We can physically tap into the body of God in nature, in one another, in all things.
We can come into the communal WeSpace in this center through the mystical language of our somatic knowing. This is sensing in our bodies something that is related to another. It is an energetic participation in our interconnection—for we are not just our individual self. We are and we are not separate bodies. We have distinction but not division. And we can learn to become aware of our mystical mirror neurons that vibrate with energetic knowing in our communal co-participation of our bodies in the WeSpace.
In practice, this can look like sensing things in our personal bodies that are coming from another. This is more than just somatic empathy, but a tuning into the underlying energy and physical sensing of our interconnection.
This way of knowing offers potent possibilities for physical healing, experiential liberation from our sense of separation and isolation, and the joy of the mystical resonance of our radical mutuality. We can all learn to tap into this awareness with practice, patience, and courage.
Cultivating this consciousness is one way that we develop in our “feet center” of Whole-Body Mystical Awakening, in our somatic knowing and participation with the communal body.
WHOLE-BODY MYSTICAL AWAKENING
FEET PRACTICE
1. Let your awareness drop down to your feet.
Sit down in a comfortable chair, one where your feet reach the floor. Push or stamp your feet into the floor or ground and wiggle your toes, paying attention to the sensation.
2. Visualize roots growing from the bottom of your feet and down into the earth.
Imagine as they dig down, deep down, even to the center of the earth. These roots are holding you fast to the ground and not letting you float away. Like a tree drawing moisture and nutrients from the ground, see yourself drawing earth energy up into your feet and legs.
3. Look at or picture a tree.
“If you can’t see one, even looking at an indoor plant can help you. Even better, go outside and hug a tree that you are attracted to. As your body touches the tree from your head to feet, let the earth energy in the tree transfer to you.
When possible, walk barefooted in the grass or bare ground. The Earth has a giant electromagnetic field and humans also have a bioelectromagnetic field. Therefore, the human body has the capacity to connect profoundly with the earth. You recharge your body energetically and spiritually by grounding with the earthy, cosmic body of God accessed through your body.
4. Breathe earth-rooted energy up through your feet into your belly, heart, and head.
Body breathing up from our feet is a grounding meditation, grounding in the earth, in God, in Christ. If Christ is the Christian symbol for everything—divine, human, and physical, held in Oneness—then to be grounded in Christ is to be grounded in both Creator and Creation.
Integrating Your Mystical Body In Presence
Coming into the feet center in our daily lives is all about being where we have been planted. There are times for movement and change of course, but living into our embodied presence is firstly about dwelling in our particular place and time.
This might seem counterintuitive since our feet center deepens us into an expansive participation in the whole universe—but we live that out in the space and in the time that has been given to us. This is our mystical cosmo-localism. No longer confined by time and space, but joyfully immersed in our immanent presence in this great gift that is our life.
Here might also be a good space to talk about physical pain and other barriers of participation in our mystical body. Our mystical body goes through the physical—it is not separate but is distinct. As such, if we have physical pain or discomfort in our body, that doesn’t mean that we can’t access the deeper levels of awareness and participation in our mystical body.
But it can make it much more difficult for sure! If you’ve ever tried to meditate or engage in spiritual practice while you were sick, you know at least a small taste of how debilitating it can be. Dealing with pain, especially chronic pain, is an intense journey that is experienced differently for everyone. Additionally, if you’ve experienced physical trauma that relates to any of these centers, that can be another difficult barrier.
While it is possible to learn to tap into the deeper reality of the mystical body “underneath” the pain and wounding, you should feel free to pursue that awareness or not according to your own discernment and healing journey. Do not let any “shoulds” take the wheel. Follow where you need to go and where you need to be. Feel free to stay in the center that feels most comfortable and fitting for you now. And when and as you are drawn, then the time for further embodied integration will come.
Questions for Reflection:
1. Have you had experience in spiritual practice through your feet or movement? Would describe those practices as “mystical”?
2. How are you living into your feet and body in new ways?
3. What is blooming in you? What is emerging from the soil of your life? Where are you being invited to live out your flowering, to scatter your seeds, to give from as you have been given to?
All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN