Posts in Practice
Seeing the Divine Through Icons, Art, and One Another

Integral Christian Devotional Practices: Gazing Part 2

David, king, poet, and prophet, revealed his deepest longings when he wrote: “One thing have I asked of God, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the presence of God all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of God” (Psalm 27:4).

Previously I said that the heart of spiritual devotion to God comes alive by gazing into the visionary or symbolic eyes of personal forms of God’s divine friendship. These can include God’s motherly-fatherly presence, the Living Jesus, Mary, other spiritual companions, physically present friends, and the beauty of creation itself whose cosmic eyes do indeed gaze back at us. We continue here to explore that theme.

Gazing upon the beauty of God in its many forms—deep, attentive looking—can be integrated into our lives as a spiritual practice.

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Finding Freedom in Devotion for Cultural Creatives

Integral Christian Devotional Practices: Part 1 – Gazing

While cultural creatives often have mixed feelings about worship, many of them still long for something they can truly open up their hearts to. Many feel wonder at the vast, cosmic Mystery but perhaps have a desire (sometimes unconscious) to still connect personally to it in some way, to devote themselves to something—someone—beyond just than themselves.

The heart of devotion comes alive by gazing into visionary or symbolic eyes of God. This is the personal, 2nd person presence of the divine as expressed in the tangible other. While experiencing God as 1st person spirit is a vital part of our journey, devotion is awakened through “seeing” such personal forms of the Divine Mystery as God’s motherly-fatherly presence, the presence of the Living Jesus, the spiritual and physical beings around us, and the beautiful presence of creation itself whose cosmic eyes do indeed gaze back at us.

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Taking Christianity back from Institutional Religion

Why Christian Worship Doesn’t Work for Many Cultural Creatives—and What Might - Part Two

The challenge today for culturally creative followers of Jesus is to wrestle the heart of Christianity from the powerful grip of institutional religion. We need to take Christianity back from the theology and practices of institutional religion including what is commonly referred to as “worship.” 

Many postmodern or integral “post” Christians no longer identify or connect with a religious group or church. Many also have mixed feelings about using the word “Christian.” For some it can carry too much baggage. However, they may not yet have given up on Jesus or a core reality of deep spirituality experienced in their native tongue of Christianity. But often the traditional churches no longer tap into that reality for them.

What do they do with what today we traditionally refer to as “worship”? Where do they go to experience this? They may have even given up on the whole idea, since the very word “’worship” may also carry cultural baggage and bad memories. For many, it may even be too difficult to think in those terms. Underneath the baggage, worship is a deep human longing for something transcendent, something worth devoting ourselves to. Everyone has this need in some way or another.

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Why Christian Worship Doesn’t Work for Many Cultural Creatives —and What Might - Part One

WHAT IS A CULTURAL CREATIVE?

In The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World by sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson, the authors introduce the term "Cultural Creatives" to describe a large segment in Western society who since about 1985 have developed beyond the standard paradigm of progressives versus conservatives. In 2001, Ray and Anderson claimed to have found 50 million adult Americans (slightly over one quarter of the adult population) who could be identified as belonging to this group. They estimated an additional 80–90 million “cultural creatives” exist in Europe. Those numbers have almost certainly increased since then. 

The Awakening by Kimberly Kirk

Here are some of the characteristics Ray and Sherry Anderson found in cultural creatives:

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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
Everything That Rises Must Converge

Why We Need the “We” – Part Three

We are experiencing a great convergence in humanity today. As the world evolves further and further technologically and scientifically, the space is shrinking. Globalization is bringing people together in new ways both profound and troubling. This external convergence is absolutely heightening the need for greater evolution and convergence in our interior spaces: our morality, our values, our education, our empathy, and certainly our spirituality.

When there is a strong convergence, two ranges of outcome are possible: A horrible crash or a beautiful communion.

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WeSpace, Evolution, PracticeLuke Healyevolution, WeSpace, TeilhardComment
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
The Flow of Being the Universal Christ

Whole-Body Awakening in Six Practices – Part Two

Theologian Ramone Panikkar says that Christ is “the Christian symbol for the whole of reality.” Panikkar further points out that the “whole of reality” consists of three seamlessly connected dimensions: (1) the divine (2) the human, and (3) the material. Last week we presented the first three of the six Whole-Body Awakening practices, the personal, individual experience of the Universal Christ. This week we integrate these centers into the outward flow of being the Universal Christ in the world.

PRACTICE FOUR: GROUNDING IN THE MATERIAL UNIVERSE

MEET YOUR FEET

1.    Let your awareness move down to your feet. Stand on grass, stone, sand, or dirt if you can, even occasionally. If sitting inside, place your feet on the floor, if possible, near a window where you can see trees or even an indoor plant.

2.    See your feet spreading roots like a tree into the ground. If outside, hug a tree and feel its amazing energy coming into you. Become aware of a felt sense of being directly connected to the earth and beyond into the cosmos.

3.    Sense the energy of the earth . . . .

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How to Experience the Universal Christ – Part One

Whole-Body Awakening in Six Practices

Theologian Ramone Panikkar, says that Christ is “the Christian symbol for the whole of reality.” Panikkar further points out that the “whole of reality” consists of three seamlessly connected dimensions: (1) the divine (2) the human, and (3) the material. Here is a basic set of six Whole-Body Awakening practices leading to the immediate experience of all three dimensions of the Universal Christ. This week and next we present six practices to awaken the divinity, humanity, and materiality of the Universal Christ in us. The first three this week will focus on each center of our personal, individual movements, while next week will integrate these into our outward, communal movements.

Practice One: The direct experience of
the human dimension of the Universal Christ

START WITH YOUR HEART

Start with the heart because the heart leads. It holds the power to heal our self-centeredness—to open us to all people, our sisters and brothers in humanity. The heart is our body’s most powerful source of divine/human love, and the easiest to access. Here are the steps: 

1.    Drop down from your head space to your heart space. Most of us begin by thinking, just like you are doing in reading this. Therefore we must consciously move our awareness from head to heart. You can place your hand on your heart to help you aim for the target. If you need more help, you can tap on your head on down to your jaw, and then to your heart. Tap there until you sense you have moved to knowing from your heart felt-sense rather than your conceptual head thinking. This is not thinking about your heart, but dropping the awareness that was previously in your head down to your heart.

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PracticePaul SmithUniversal Christ, practice, Prayer, Jesus, Contemplation, Rohr Comments