Walking into Interbeing with Our Feet
“Feet Center of Spiritual Being” – 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 Charged Feet of Embodied & Enlivened Presence”
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.
Regeneration of the Divine Earth
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Integrating Our Mystical Participation as Nature
“Prayer Transforms the Universe” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
Regeneration is taking the step from seeing the earth as an object and into experiencing it through our interbeing. Into “humans doing things as nature.”
The incarnation of Christ in the cosmos is the divine interfused in all things, very much including the earth. And so our living into and as the Body of Christ will also be through the divine earth.
We must reimagine and reconfigure our relationship with the earth and the orientation of our consciousness. We cannot and must not “sustain” the way things currently are, but rather we can come into our generative participation in loving service and care for our larger body.
In deepening practice, we can learn to flow more into our mutual indwelling with the earth—becoming expressions of the divine, mystical earth expressing and even seeking to save herself (ourselves) in the world.
Awakened to our divine participation as the sacred earth, part of the body of God, we live in a new love. An earthy love, flourishing and teeming with beauty, sweat, and abundance.
Yes, we will be angry at the injustices assaulting our body. We will have moments of fear and despair. But our message will not be laced with vitriolic disdain—for we are not preaching on the street corner with bullhorns. Rather, we are compelled by deep care and compassion for the healing of the earth, of ourselves, and one another. In this way, we are loving our enemies.
To live in such a way is to embrace our own personal regeneration even as we live more into our cosmic body. Our presence becomes more and more generative as it is transparent and porous to Christ becoming in the continual creation of evolving life. Everywhere and right here. Anynow and right this moment. Our mystical cosmo-localism expressing through our very presence.
A new world is possible. It will not come into being by the old methods.
We are being drawn by the world soul, the mystical body of the earth, Gaia, the Cosmic Christ, the body of God. The calling is to a transformed and regenerative presence not just as humans on earth, but as divine, conscious expressions of the earth, of the universe.
In this truly universalizing movement, we are not expanding outward in distancing “freedom.” But rather, we are intentionally absorbing and moving more deeply into our most complete and holistically present being. We are, in a sense, intensifying immanent presence into our spirit, into our bodies.
You are invited to reflect on the following questions, perhaps with a direct, “next-step” intention for your life:
As we welcome the whole of the earth into our experience of being, what do we feel?
Where is the earth—our body—moving and at work? Where is it flowing? Where are we growing? Adapting? Evolving?
And most essentially, where are we becoming?
“Grounded at Last” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
Entering the Feet Center
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A Short, Guided Meditation to Help You Come into Bodyful Presence with Christ & the Earth
The following new meditation from Martha O’Hehir is a guided practice to help you enter into your feet space. If you’re new to moving into this awareness, or you would like to cultivate a greater ease in presencing through your feet throughout your day, this practice will help you do so more easily:
“Paradise Within” – image by Dalmo Mendonça
Poems of the Earth
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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, magic, and even archaic structures of consciousness.
The following poem by ICNer Pete Armstrong is offered as an invitation to guide you into deeper engagement with the feet center and the earth.
I wandered in your woods drenched in autumn colour
I wandered in your woods drenched in autumn colour.
I walked a long way then found your door open to me.
I recognised your voice of welcome
calling me in, calling me in.
In your oratory of simplicity and rounded walls
I was bathed in the sweet voices of your Sisters
devoted to you, devoted to you.
I recognised your voice of wisdom and was at home.
I sat within your peace, within your peace.
When your bowl of mystery came round
I ate your bread and tasted the sharp tang of your wine.
I took them into my body and my blood.
I know nothing about you, nothing about you.
I wander in your woods drenched in love.
I give myself to your embrace, your embrace.
I wander in your woods drenched in love.
I give myself to your embrace, your embrace.
From: The Words on my Face
To hear this poem read aloud, along with several more poems on the feet, 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