Spiritual Knowing: Part Five — Mystical Awareness from Our Whole Body

“We cannot recognize God’s hand and voice in the world without a special sensitizing of the eyes and ears and of our soul (‘grace’) – that is, without a special sort of sense or super-sense.” —Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Last week, we talked about how mystical intelligence is something that we can develop and cultivate. We do this by undertaking practices that awaken and engage our centers of spiritual knowing. Based on research from transpersonal psychologists, we have identified four major body centers of spiritual knowing, each with their own ways of sensing. To develop your intelligence in each of these areas, you can practice Whole-Body Mystical Awakening either by yourself or together with a group.

There are certainly other practices that engage with some of these centers, but most traditional mediation and prayer forms stay in the head, or some may also include the heart. Other body-practices that may involve scanning or movement most often stay in the physical realm, or keep the seat of awareness in the mind, perceiving the body. Very few seek to listen and know, including our body and gut as places of spiritual knowing together with the heart and the head.

MysticismLuke Healy & Paul SmithJanuary 12, 2020 Comment

Mystical Intelligence

Spiritual Knowing: Part Four – Developmental Learning

When I was in school, I decided to try my hand at the drums. I say “hand” fairly literally, as I could never get myself to play two rhythms at once. I could hold a beat though—as long as it was just one beat. My band director mercifully put me on the big bass drum and I pounded away with the single count in my head. It’s the same reason I failed at the piano. Two hands doing different things at the same time? Not for me. Throw the feet in there as well on a drum set? Forget about it.

I would claim that I just wasn’t very musical. Until later in high school when I picked up a trumpet and found something I could do pretty well—after some practice naturally. With the encouragement of my friends and a kind teacher, I also discovered that I had a half-decent singing voice. My shower-voice had fooled me, for I was certainly not a soloist. Rather, I had a nice blending voice for duets and harmonies.

You may not think you’re a mystic because you don’t have visions or ecstatic trances. Maybe you think you’re just not a very mystical person because of your history of one-sided prayers. There’s a pretty good chance you’re probably not Mozart—or you would know by now. But you’ve almost certainly got a little music in you. . . .

MysticismLuke HealyJanuary 5, 2020spiritual knowing, developmentComment

Christianity Beyond Tribalism

Why We Still Need Christianity

If we adopt a posture of growth in our lives and seek to continue to evolve in learning, practicing, loving, and more, we will discover one of the core principles of development: evolution moves toward greater inclusivity and greater complexity.

Fortunately, this direction of evolution will ultimately be the end of tribal religion—religion that is defined by its hard boundaries of saved and unsaved, believer and nonbeliever, holy and heathen, sacred and secular. The fuel for religious wars will run dry. Persecution and ostracization will be replaced by harmony and welcome. The lion will lay down with the lamb.

This beautiful utopia of the future is possible (if we have enough time to get there as a species), but some people believe the way we arrive at such a place is through the conglomeration or unification of spirituality into a synchronized path for all. That dissolving the boundaries leads to not only no separation, but also no distinction.

But this homogenization is not in keeping with the principle of complexity. And sometimes our hopes . . . .

MysticismLuke HealyDecember 29, 2019evolution, Teilhard, Mystical, worship Comments

Transcendence

Part Two: Spiritual Knowing—Transcendence

Three primary outcomes of Whole Body Mystical Awakening are:

(1) Deep connections with God, Jesus, guides, and one another

(2) The emergence of our spiritual gifts

(3) Transcendent consciousness.

Transcendence is the loftiest and most difficult dimension to describe. It is, most simply . . . .

Practice, MysticismPaul SmithDecember 8, 2019transcendence Comment

Spiritual Knowing—Then and Now

Part One: Spiritual Gifts as Windows of Wisdom

What is the goal of the Whole Body Mystical Awakening practices that Integral Christian Network advocate? Is it just to have mystical experiences? Or feel peace and bliss? The reason to do Whole Body Mystical Awakening is far bigger than just these things. Any reading of the Bible and the foundational writings of many spiritual traditions will find a stream of mystical experiences providing unique knowing, guidance, encouragement, and transformative transcendence. As Paul describes in detail, these mystical experiences often happened with one another in the early gatherings of Christians. They have continued down through history in the writings of the mystics.

These mystical experiences seem to take the three primary forms of (1) personal presences or guides (including God and Jesus), (2) gifts, and (3) transcendence or union with God. We’ve written several articles about guides recently, which you can read here. Next week we will explore transcendence. This week, let’s look at spiritual gifts from the standpoint of their function back then in the Bible and how they are emerging in today’s understanding.

MysticismPaul SmithDecember 1, 2019spiritual knowing Comment

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 . . . .

Guides, MysticismPaul SmithOctober 6, 2019Jesus, 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.

Mysticism, PracticeLuke HealySeptember 15, 2019practice, 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?

MysticismLuke HealySeptember 8, 2019Mystical, practice, Heart Path, subtle realm Comments