Posts tagged Heart Path
Our Vital Need for Spiritual Intimacy

Deep Relationality at the Heart of Evolution
Practicing Community – Part Nine

“You can go no further alone.”

This was the phrase I heard at a turning point of my spiritual journey, at the great shift from individuality into the call to deeper community.

The ironic thing is that I had been living in an intentional community and had long pursued various forms of church expressions, small groups, and spiritual friendships. “What do you mean?” I thought, “I have sought community my whole life!”

But I knew. It was the mystical journey that had reached the end of its isolation. The unfolding and awakening could no longer be something that only I experienced inside myself—for I had begun to come into the experiential knowing that these interior realities were not confined to my individual space. They could no longer be felt and engaged with apart from the dynamic and lively field of interbeing, of interconnection, of WeSpace.

A new intimacy was beckoning beyond the realm of myself, beyond the external forms of commonality that brought me together with others, beyond just the sharing of ideas and ideals.

It is the call of mystical love.

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Community, WeSpaceLuke HealyMystical Community, WeSpace, Heart PathComment
Cultivating Our Capacity for Connectedness

Heart Consciousness Growth
Practicing Community – Part Three

Once we have been unbound by the illusion of our separateness and individualism, we begin to recognize more and more how we are interconnected. We see the myriad ways we are not islands of Self, but members of a collective, divine body of Christ. That is to say—not “members” of a church or religion—but co-participants in the body of God on earth today.

And yet, we may also experience difficulties in actually living into and operating from this place of deep mutuality. While we may feel deep longings and have sincere intentions to engage more directly in our communal nature, it perhaps doesn’t come easily to us. Or we may not quite know how to do it. Though it is natural—in our deepest nature—it may often feel foreign at first. Or we may simply have to pace ourselves to rebuild the atrophied muscles of this under-utilized capacity.

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Community, PracticeLuke HealyMystical Community, practice, Heart PathComment
Gazing at Jesus in the Devotional Visionary Realm

Opening to your Spiritual Guides Part 2

The experience of devotion to Jesus in the mystical visionary realm is the doorway to accessing your own spiritual messengers. Others, such as Cynthia Bourgeault call the mystical visionary realm “the imaginal realm.” Ken Wilber calls it “subtle consciousness.” I prefer “visionary realm” because that is the language the New Testament uses, and the word “vision” is commonly understood today in the mystical sense of seeing things that are not in the physical realm.  

Visions include the sensed presence of another spiritual being, a picture, thought, feeling, bodily sensation, or an intuition that arises from your luminous interior. These can range from a fleeting moment to a dramatic journey in a deep trance state.

We find visions throughout the Bible and some specifically occurring in in what the New Testament refers three times to as a “trance” state. Christianity’s most vital originating moments occurred in a series of mystical visions by . . . .

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Guides, MysticismPaul SmithJesus, Heart Path, Mystical, subtle realm Comments
Participatory Mystical Awakening

Discovering and Practicing Mysticism – Part Two

So, how do we practice mysticism?  

Once we’ve cleared up some of the common misperceptions about mysticism, we find that we can approach mysticism from a trans-rational perspective, believing that it is real and something we participate in, experienced in connection to our Higher Self, and deeply connective to others. You can read more in depth about those distinctions in Part One.

Getting past some of those mental hurdles, we now can step into our participatory practice. This is a co-creative process that we engage in with our whole being. While mystical experience can be received in many different forms and ways, we can practice our active engagement into the process by cultivating mystical awareness, learning to sense emergent mystical realities, then interplay dynamically with them and one another in convergent communion.

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Mysticism, PracticeLuke Healypractice, Transmission, Prayer, Heart Path, Jesus, WeSpace, MysticalComment
Can Anyone Be a Mystic?

Discovering and Practicing Mysticism – Part One

Pew research from 2009 revealed that 49% of Americans say they have had a religious or mystical experience, defined as a “moment of sudden religious insight or awakening.” 10 years later, that number is most likely higher. It has been climbing up steadily from only 22% in 1962. The numbers may be even higher considering that many may have had such experiences but wouldn’t want to put the term “religious” on it for a variety of reasons.

Have you had a mystical experience?

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MysticismLuke HealyMystical, practice, Heart Path, subtle realm Comments
The Drama Triangle: When Groups Go Wrong

Getting Back to Heart Connections

Sometimes we shy away from group settings because they can be quite messy. Who hasn’t sat in a group and experienced it devolving into something painful? We’d like to believe that spiritual groups devoted to love and prayer don’t have this problem, but we all know that isn’t the case.

This quite often comes from a drama with three different roles that we and others tend to play. This is called the Drama Triangle which reveals dysfunctional interaction originally described by Stephen Karpman. I learned this from him in a workshop forty years ago. It has served me greatly to explain the cycles and patterns of behavior I saw unfold in so many groups and conversations. It also indicated what we should do to get off the Drama Triangle! There are more nuanced approaches for the professional, but I will give the basics here.

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WeSpacePaul Smithpractice, Heart Path, WeSpaceComment
Evolving Collective Spiritual Practice

Why We Need the “We” – Part Two

Last week we explored the shift from shoulder-to-shoulder to heart-to-heart, focusing specifically on practice with just one other person. This week we’re going to broaden that out to a community context. Not only do we need to expand our spiritual practice beyond the confines of individualism, but we desperately need to evolve how we gather and practice together.

We also emphasized the importance of the need to further reflect oneness in our spiritual practice. If we seek the experience of oneness with all, and with one other person, what would it look like to seek this experience in a group? And wouldn’t such a group practice be reflective of a more evolved approach to our spiritual gatherings?

How do we get there? 

Let’s start with a very simple picture. Imagine a group of people sitting in rows of chairs (or pews) looking up at a person on a stage. Now picture a circle of chairs with people sitting, facing one another. What difference do you feel? Where in your body do you feel it? Stay there for a moment.

Now picture a glowing heart radiating from each person in the circle. See the spiritual energy and love flowing out of them. As the waves expand out, everyone’s spiritual energy fields are overlapping and engaging with one other, creating a palpable collective field where love, wisdom, encouragement, and much more can emerge. Is this a spiritual reality?

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WeSpace, Evolution, PracticeLuke Healypractice, evolution, WeSpace, Mystical, Heart PathComment
From Shoulder-to-Shoulder to Heart-to-Heart

Why We Need the “We” – Part One

When you hear the words “spiritual practice,” what do you think of? Perhaps you picture someone meditating. Perhaps you picture a person doing yoga or tai chi. Perhaps you think of a rosary or prayer beads. Whatever it is you imagine, it is highly likely that your image is of a single, solitary figure at practice by himself/herself. If you pictured a group, kudos to you (although the title and picture in this post may have influenced you!).

Even so, the vast majority of our attention is still on the personal. In fact, most of our experiences of group spiritual practice or spiritual community are largely an individual experience. There are just other people around. It’s shoulder-to-shoulder practice.

There is certainly value to this. There is a sense of accountability. A sense of comradery. A side-by-side, working on this together comfort. But there can also be a strong sense of loneliness. An isolation when things aren’t going quite right. An over-orientation on the teacher/authority. A guilt and shame at not living up to the standard assumed by the group. And quite often, a failure to bring about any kind of social transformation. 

Of course we need to practice alone. And certainly some spiritual practice must be tailored to our own individual needs and expressions at various points in our lives. But if this is primarily the only form our spiritual practice takes, then we are missing the vital component of shared, heart-to-heart spiritual practice.

Is it really vital? Would we even know if we’ve never experienced it?

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WeSpaceLuke HealyWeSpace, Heart Path Comments