In the Manifestation of Christ Revealed in Us
Epiphany Becoming in Us
Each week of Advent and into Epiphany, we’re offering practices and invitations of becoming.
you are invited, if you like, to read the article informing these practices for THE WEEK OF EPIPHANY:
God Giving Birth to You
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.
Journeying to the Christ-Light
–
Following the Star Within
From the womb of the divine mother, we emerge into the participatory birth of Christ in us, in the world, here and now. We live into the process of birth, which unfolds through these twelve days of Christmas and into the new year—growing up into our divine becoming of who we are made to be, who we have been born anew to be in this time now.
How will we know the way?
Born of the divine feminine and enfolded in the love of the divine masculine, we are held and we are guided holistically. In our divine upbringing into a new way of being, living from our Christ consciousness, we are invited on a journey.
In these times, we are called to a pilgrimage of the soul.
Where is the holy Bethlehem of today?
On January 6th, at the culmination of the twelve days of Christmas, we celebrate the feast of Epiphany. In many Christian traditions, Epiphany invites us to be with the arrival of the magi bringing gifts to the Christ child. While this is often depicted as happening at the time of Jesus’ birth, it was more likely up to two years after—given Herod’s decree and the fact that it probably took them a long time to get there. They were following that star for quite a while!
Where is the star now for us today?
If the manger of God is every heart that makes room, and as we have been welcoming the birth of Christ consciousness in us, then the guiding star shines within.
Our journey is to the heart of God, which beats in harmony with your very own heart. Which radiates with love from the core of your inner chambers. Which flows with divine life from the ever-present Source within.
Can you feel it?
The star in your chest.
Beckoning you to travel right where you are,
Further into the divine depths of your being
and further
from out of the truth of your God-being.
Arriving to yourself and to the world with the gifts and graces
needed to love and serve in this precious world,
to celebrate and grieve with joy and compassion
all that is being called into being
and all that is passing away
in this great evolution.
The presence of Christ
born anew
in your sacred life,
in our holy calling,
manifesting in this here and now.
For such a time as this.
We have arrived as divine light, made and revealed for these times.
Epiphany also marks the six-year anniversary of Integral Christian Network! We celebrate all the many ways we’ve journeyed over the years and the many manifestations that have been born and grown up in our midst.
Thank you all for being a part of this community and sacred work!
Perceptio Divina
—
A Whole-Body Mystical Practice of Inner Attunement
Throughout Advent and Christmas, we have invited a variety of “divina” practices, each encouraging intentional engagement with encountering the divine through various expressions, including imagery, music, the sacred earth, and healing with nature. As God is found in all things, there are countless ways we can integrate our prayer with all that we experience in life.
This week, as we look to the star within for guidance, we draw attention to the invitation to perceive God not in an external encounter, but from the very act of inner attunement to God-Being-Us.
Perceptio divina is translated as “divine perceiving.” It is a spiritual act, not just observing or noticing the divine, but feeling an inner sense of receptivity where our perception begins to gather and comprehend the divine expressions arising from within.
The more we come into this way of spiritual knowing and encountering the divine from within, the more we experience the reality of our Christ consciousness expressing and manifesting in our lives, day to day, moment to moment.
Perceptio divina is at the heart of mystical living. It is rooted in holistic participation of reality, where God is not only to be found in the transcendent beyond, but in our midst, in the immanent incarnation of our embodied being. Even in our very acts of living and breathing, learning and knowing.
While in ICN we haven’t used this term before, it is a key underlying spiritual practice to how we grow in Whole-Body Mystical Awakening, Whole-Body Mystical Presencing, and Resonating Prayer.
For this week, we invite you to practice Perceptio divina in a way that taps into inner guidance, attuning to divine wisdom arising from within.
Here are three ways you can approach this practice:
1. Divine Inquiry
Bring into your practice a question you wish to consider deeply in light of your inner spiritual knowing. You can bring any sort of question into Perceptio divina. For this week’s theme, you may consider an inquiry of discernment for direction in a new area of your life or what you’re being born into.
In the practice below, you can use the WBMA Discernment practice if you like to guide you with the questions, “What was I born to do, now in this moment?" and "Who was I born to be, now in this moment?"
2. Sacred engagement
Choose an area of your life you wish to bring into the light of deeper wisdom. It may be a relationship, an area of work, a dream or vision you’re holding, something you’re struggling with, or anything else you’d like to center in your divine attention. Rather than forming a question beforehand, let yourself be with this area of your life with openness to whatever might emerge in sacred response to your attentive care and focus.
3. Open attunement
Enter into the time with no preconceived ideas, areas of focus, or questions to hold. Let yourself be open to whatever might emerge regarding anything in your life. In entering a posture of open receptivity, we may be surprised by what emerges, not realizing it was something in our lives spirit was waiting to guide us in.
Here are steps you can take to enter into a practice of Perceptio divina:
1. Prepare yourself by setting an intention for this time, either with a divine inquiry, an area for sacred engagement, or in open attunement.
Close your eyes, breathe, clear your mind, and ask God/the Divine to enter into this time of contemplation.
2. Enter into your embodied consciousness, deeper than your everyday mind. Use a guided meditation practice of WBMA, or guide yourself into a state of awakened consciousness in your four centers of spiritual knowing and your whole being.
Here is a recorded practice of WBMA Discernment, if you want to use it to guide you:
3. When you feel present in your embodied being and attuned to your inner, holistic awakened consciousness, turn toward a state of perceiving. Either with your inquiry, area of engagement, or in open attunement, be receptive to whatever is arising in you as an inner response of spiritual wisdom.
This may feel like the arising of a thought or concept, though it may also be more subtle. Let there be a time of gathering up, of welcoming. Let yourself really feel into your body and the many ways Sophia, divine wisdom, speaks to/through/as us in our embodied knowing and response.
It may be a somatic sensation. Perhaps a concentration of energy or even discomfort in a part of our body. It may be a deep gut sense or wordless intuition. It may be a strong feeling or just a faint trace of emotion. It may be a single thought or an outpouring of mental activity.
4. As you perceive and receive, trust your inner guidance, the deep compass of your soul, to aid you in your discernment. Whatever comes up that doesn’t resonate and ring true, release it with easeful grace. Your act of divine response is to fully welcome what is arising that comes forth from the deeper source of wisdom within.
No one else can tell you definitively what is true or not true from our deep, inner spiritual knowing. We have to learn to trust ourselves. Yes, we can and should seek collective wisdom and mutual affirmation within our trusted community. Our personal identity is not the ultimate authority in our lives, and yet it is our unique divine personhood which God speaks through in the deepest and truest places of our soul.
5. To close your practice, let yourself rest in all that has been perceived and received. Simply absorb the whole experience deeply and gently in your soul. Remain in silent contemplation with what has emerged for as long as you like.
After, you can reflect on the process and any action or intention arising in you from the practice for today and into the future.
A Prayer for Epiphany
The following prayer is from If Darwin Prayed by Bruce Sanguin, where he says of the Christ light of Epiphany,
“Through the light of conscious awareness, we are able to see what had been shrouded in darkness, and therefore had power over the choices and the kind of life we could create. As a teacher of divine truths, Jesus shone the light of his consciousness onto the realm of the kin(g)dom of God, an interior, relational, and social realm. By bringing to bear his enlightened consciousness, he revealed dimensions to reality that were always present but not seen by those who dwelled in the darkness of unconsciousness.”
We invite you to take this prayer as an offering of your own throughout this week and especially on Epiphany, with whatever adaptations and expressions you find arising from your own prayer.
The Traveler’s Homage
Matthew 2:11-13
We open now
to the way of the magi,
wise ones not afraid to journey
across the borders and boundaries
that mark the territory of the tribe
to what Spirit is doing in another country,
another tradition, and with other people.
We learn to lay our gifts before the Gift of God,
to follow the bright and beckoning star of our future
across deserts of unknowing
mountainous obstacles,
and valleys of despair
to make an offering of our lives
to the “new thing” our God is birthing
in a land where we have never been.
And then, Holy One,
lead us back home on the path of the star-gazing sages,
choosing back roads and fresh vistas,
safe from Herod’s hoard and the passport-phobic.
Laden with spiritual gifts—new sounds, tastes, sights
of the star-blessed stable where you were born
and the beckoning mangers where you are still being born—
we discover that “home” is an expanding house,
as large as the cosmos,
as close as our hearts.
Amen.
Moving in our Lives from Divine Guidance
–
An Invitation to Being Present in our Spheres of Influence
So then how do we live?
The phrase “Spheres of Influence” refers to the areas of our life we may not have control over but nonetheless are able to make a difference and impact through our presence and actions.
As we seek for our spiritual practices and learnings to impact our lives and make a difference in the world, we can intentionally and consciously consider how we might integrate these lessons, practices, and ways of being in our everyday lives.
In this season of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, we’ll invite you to consider how you want to live out these practices of becoming in your daily lives, impacting others in your spheres of influence, whether they be in person locally, unbound by geographical space online, or throughout the mystical cosmos!
As we consider and welcome the arrival and manifestation of God in the whole world through Epiphany, we also seek to be the guiding star of divine light—to be bearers of the gifts of life and love for one another and for Christ among us.
What will this look like in our lives? In our day-to-day actions?
This week, with special attention on our inner guidance and divine purpose in our lives, you are invited to consider the following reflection questions:
1. Where are you being invited to journey deeper in your spheres of influence? Are there relationships, communities, or aspects of your life where your presence and light could grow and make a difference?
2. The magi journeyed together, each bringing unique gifts to offer. What gifts do you feel called to bring into your spheres of influence, and how might you collaborate with others to share those gifts more fully?
3. Where in your life do you sense an invitation to make space for new light, new growth, or new possibilities? How can you intentionally prepare to bring forth your gifts and graces in these new areas you’ve been guided into?
Join Us in Practice and Communion During Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany!
This Sunday at 11am Eastern, come partake in a time of shared engagement with these themes and practices:
All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN