Posts in Practice
Beyond Mindfulness – Embodying Holistic Presence

Whole-Body Mystical Presencing: Part Nine

Mindfulness has become one of the most prevalent spiritual practices in the modern world today. It’s now being taught and applied in businesses and schools, reaching beyond the usual confines of religious and spiritual settings. 

There is so much of current society that thrives on distraction, entertainment, and other forms of numbing consciousness. And we don’t want to live mindless lives. We are craving a more substantive experience of everyday life and reality. In response to pervasive anxiety, detachment, and anger, we want to be more calm, engaged, and peaceful. We want to be able to be more fully present in who we truly are throughout the moments of our days.

Mindfulness is a wonderful practice that can help us greatly in this regard. While there are many forms of the practice, most teach a process of conscious observing, noticing, and focused attention. It is a practice of self-regulation that helps us cultivate an orientation of curiosity, openness, acceptance toward life. And it is great, insofar as it goes. 

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Integrating Presence Into Life in Action

Part Eight: Whole-Body Mystical Presencing

“Oh God, how can I help? What can we do?”

From the common prayer of “God, help me” we started with in last week’s article, we move from focus on ourselves into care and attention on the world, with our neighbors, in the moment right before us now.

From our inquiries of how we might live in resonance and wisdom from divine presence, we then respond to act with/in spirit consciousness. 

For Whole-Body Mystical Presencing is not just about sensing or feeling divine spirit alive in us at any and all times. It is also about transforming how we live in each and every moment.

"My being is God, not by some simple participation but by a true transformation of my being." – Catherine of Genoa

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Presence in Prayer of Divine Inquiry

Presence in Prayer of Divine Inquiry

Part Seven: Whole-Body Mystical Presencing

“God, help me!”

This might be the most common prayer there is and has been. I would guess most everyone reading this has prayed it at some point. Perhaps in a moment of desperation, perhaps in a time of childlike simplicity, perhaps this morning. Sometimes it’s not even said in words, but just a silent reaching out to the beyond. Even those who don’t believe in God have still been found to offer up this prayer in their darkest moments. 

Asking for help is one of the most fundamentally human things we can do. And asking God for help is when we reach beyond what we are capable of, beyond what anyone else can do for us, beyond what would seem in the scope of possibility.

Some don’t believe in an interventionist God. And if we’re talking about Zeus casting lightning bolts down to smite the wicked, we have enough evidence to probably agree. 

As we practice Whole-Body Mystical Presencing—which is a practice to enter the everyday reality of Christ consciousness, a moment-to-moment permeation of divine spirit—God is already here in our midst and within us at any and all times. Intervention is most often what we do as God’s presence in action, which will be the focus of next week’s article. 

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Presencing Oneness in Our Lives

Part Six: Whole-Body Mystical Presencing

"For this is the truth in nature, that this ego which thinks itself a separate independent being and claims to live for itself, is not and cannot be independent nor separate, nor can it live to itself even if it would, but rather all are linked together by a secret Oneness." – Sri Aurobindo

“May they all be one, as you, Abba God, are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us.” – Jesus

Whether it’s Jesus, other spiritual teachers, and now many scientists as well, the world is waking up more and more to an understanding and participation in the reality of Oneness, as Paul recently detailed thoroughly in a six-part series

In spiritual practice, we can move into deep states of experiencing our Oneness. While it is sometimes bestowed upon us as a grace, it is a consciousness we can intentionally cultivate and develop with regular practice. Whole-Body Mystical Awakening can lead us into ways of experiencing this Oneness in our hearts and minds, in our spiritual womb, feet, and whole body. In meditation, we can consciously practice moving into unified reality holistically.

In Whole-Body Mystical Presencing—which is a practice to enter the everyday reality of Christ consciousness, a moment-to-moment permeation of divine spirit—we can live from Oneness while we’re having lunch, walking the dog, working, playing, talking, and resting. 

Do you believe that’s possible? 

Can we engage a universal sense of presencing Oneness in our daily lives, in our embodied mystical being at any moment?

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Becoming More Than Myself

Part Five: Whole-Body Mystical Presencing

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion.   – Albert Einstein

The mystics throughout the ages have attested to the illusion of separateness and the fundamental interconnectedness of life, that we are more than just separate individuals. Scientists are now saying the same thing, as our awareness of quantum reality has broken us out of the boxes of physical materialism and a Newtonian view of the world and universe.

More and more are waking up not only to this knowledge, but also to the experience of this freedom.

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Everyday Consciousness Beyond the Ordinary

Part Three: Whole-Body Mystical Presencing

We have our everyday “ordinary” consciousness, and then we have times when we move into other states of elevated or “more spiritual” consciousness.

Whole-Body Mystical Presencing is a practice to help us to shift from having these peak/peek experiences of mystical awareness we remember or look forward to, and create a new everyday/every moment experience of enlivened consciousness. This “continuously renewed immediacy” is a regular attunement that begins to move our everyday consciousness, our “default” state of being, into a new reality. Into a new way of being.

But it doesn’t happen just by realizing this or learning this concept. We have to re-train and re-pattern our “ordinary” consciousness.

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Is It Possible to Pray Continuously?

Part Two: Whole-Body Mystical Presencing

Whole-Body Mystical Presencing is a practice to enter into the everyday, every moment reality of Christ consciousness. It is a way to welcome and invoke holistic presence at all times, not just in “spiritual” settings or “sacred” places and times. All of life and every moment is sacred. We can presence into this way of being at any time.

Before we get into the specifics of this practice, I want to draw upon some of the Christian heritage for this way of being, along with sharing some of my own story coming to this practice.

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Can I Get (More Than) a Witness?

Part One: Whole-Body Mystical Presencing

You are not a spectator.

One of the great spiritual evolutions today is the rise of the mystic. And by that I don’t mean an increasing number of spiritual superheroes. The mystic is rising in us all. It is the longing for more than we have been given, and coming to embrace the spiritual power that is naturally within us. It is moving from the spiritual sidelines and into the joy of the action.

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Navigating Natural Rhythms of Community

Phases of Group Development
Practicing Community – Part Thirteen

It is the nature of life to grow and evolve. So too, every group and community that is alive will go through change and growth. Unfortunately, many spiritual communities instead take a static approach to community life. They try to keep things the way they are, reinforcing the traditional patterns and set processes that bind the members to a repetitive cycle.

But if the spiritual community continues to evolve, it can be a synergistic process of personal growth and communal evolution working in tandem.

Let’s look at some natural phases of the process of community life and where that can lead us if we navigate them with wisdom and grace.

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