Posts in Practice
Bringing About an Enchanted World
Bringing About an Enchanted World

Can Praying Change the World?
Mystical Activism: Part Five


I use the word “enchanted” in this title deliberately. In a weary, disenchanted world, the breaking in of spiritual reality can be seen and experienced as enchanting. When we leave behind the magical fantasies of an earlier structure of humankind, we do better to include the mystical enchantment of the spiritual world that Jesus introduced us to. Science itself has newly discovered the quantum world, which is a part of a truly enchanting reality.

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PracticePaul SmithMystical ActivismComment
Mystical Practices to Heal and Transform the World
Mystical Practices to Heal and Transform the World

Can Praying Change the World?
Mystical Activism: Part Four

To heal and change and the world through mystical activism, we need ways to purposefully and directly move from our ordinary consciousness to non-ordinary mystical consciousness. This includes the awakened state in harmonic cocreation and wisdom and the unitive state of oneness that was Jesus’ plan for transforming the world. 

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PracticePaul SmithMystical ActivismComment
The *Whole-Body* in Whole-Body Mystical Awakening
The *Whole-Body* in Whole-Body Mystical Awakening

Thinking alone does not connect us to God. It takes feelings, intuitive sensing, and grounding to the material cosmos.

Whole Body Mystical Awakening practice is not being aware of your body but being aware as the body. Here we learn to “soak” in the bliss, love, sensations, feelings, images, colors, words, sounds, intuitions that arise from deep within—as well as from the spiritual field between us and the other physical and non-physical beings present.

This is the shift from “ordinary consciousness” into a fuller, more integrated consciousness.

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PracticePaul Smith & Luke HealyWBMA, Embodiment, practice, Four Centers Comment
Why We Practice WeSpace & Whole-Body Mystical Awakening
Why We Practice WeSpace & Whole-Body Mystical Awakening

What is the purpose of our WeSpace groups? Why do we advocate Whole-Body Mystical Awakening practices?

At ICN, our stated purpose is “Gathering a global community of dedicated mystical practitioners for the loving evolution of Christianity and the world.”

We dedicate ourselves to our mystical practice because it takes us into the pathways of inhabiting and becoming this transformative presence in the world. Because it is how we become conscious participants in the divine, creative work of loving evolution.

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WeSpace, Practice, MysticismPaul Smith & Luke HealyWBMA, WeSpace, ValuesComment
Whole-Body Mystical Awakening
Whole-Body Mystical Awakening

If I asked you to think about your body, what comes to mind?

How you look from the outside? What amount of weight we’d like to lose? Our skin and bones. Organs and tissues. Muscle and fat. Cells and neurons.

This is the body from an exterior, objective material perspective. It is true, but it is partial.

Unfortunately, so much of Christian history propagated and reinforced a division of the material and the spiritual. Body and soul apart, despite being the religion of the incarnation, of God made flesh. Combine that with a Western materialism that also tends toward disembodiment, and here we are—many of us disconnected and disassociated from our body as a true aspect of our being, not just an object.

There has been pushback of course. More yoga and tai chi, dance and movement. Perhaps we’ve learned some about our emotional body, our pain body. And perhaps, you’ve already begun to come more into your subtle body—your mystical body. 

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PracticePaul Smith & Luke HealyWBMAComment
WeSpace Groups—Why We Need the “We”
WeSpace Groups—Why We Need the “We”

I (Paul) was twenty years old and very much a devoted follower of Jesus when I first realized a striking thing about Jesus that I had not grasped before. The first action Jesus took in his public ministry to heal and change his world was to gather a few others willing to follow him. He spent an extraordinary amount of time together with them as they shared their lives in radical ways. From that humble but dynamic beginning, we now have a world in which one-third of its 7.7 billion people claim to be his followers. His life and message of love, although not always followed, have made a radical, worldwide impact.

I decided I needed such a group in my life and asked six of my closest Christian friends if they would be willing to meet weekly to share our lives and pray for each other. Since that time over sixty years ago, I have always had such a group in my life. After seminary, I was called to pastor, for almost half a century the only church I would ever lead. The first thing I did was gather a few church members together in a small group that met weekly to share and pray. That multiplied until over 400 members of our congregation were meeting regularly in small groups which became the dynamic relational and spiritual center for our life together.

My (Luke) long passion for gathering has taken many forms throughout my life. Early on in my church life I was asking why our gatherings looked the way they did. I explored new forms such as house churches, new monastic intentional community, contemplative gatherings, and other ways of gathering small groups together. While traditional churches are shrinking, Christians still very much need to gather together. The spaces and ways need to keep evolving to serve the Christianity of the future.

We are seeking to do just that with Integral Christian Network. This movement invites followers of Jesus from around the world to meet primarily on the Internet via Zoom, for now. More local groups may develop in the future. In what we call “WeSpace groups,” anywhere from four to eight participants share their lives with one another and practice a form of meditative prayer together we call Whole-Body Mystical Awakening.

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WeSpace, Practice, CommunityPaul Smith & Luke HealyWeSpace, Mystical Community Comment
Christ Sophia Dances in Her Many Forms
Christ Sophia Dances in Her Many Forms

Adventing Christ Consciousness – Part Two

This advent season, we are not waiting for Christ’s birth 2000 years ago. We are adventing Christ today through owning our own birthing journey as a rite of passage into our divine participation. 

Giving birth is a feminine process, though it is not limited only to females or those physically capable. It is a mystical process we are all capable of in our spiritual womb. To do so, we embrace the Great Mother and receive our own impregnation with new life. 

In this mystical journey, the new life growing is our own divine becoming—Christ Consciousness within and among us—expressed in many forms

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Practice, MysticismLuke HealyAdvent, Christ Consciousness, Sophia, Divine Feminine Comment
Adventing Christ Consciousness
Adventing Christ Consciousness

Part One – A Divine Birthing Journey

Growing up in church, advent was my favorite time of the year. I loved the music, the pageantry, the decorations, the candles, and the sense of waiting and preparing for something wonderful.

Looking back, I think to a large degree what made it so special was that it tapped into the quiet longing I had deep within me. Not just for Christmas Day, which, while always a delight, did not fulfil the longing with material gifts and family time. I craved a deeper communion. It was more truly a longing for a real experience of Emmanuel, God-With-Us. 

It wasn’t until many years later I learned “advent” did not mean “to wait.” As I evolved through the early stages of my faith, I have had many of these somewhat embarrassing “epiphanies.” I have called them “fundie moments,” when I suddenly realize what I was taught isn’t true at all, but was a subtle or not-so-subtle indoctrination to particular (usually limiting) teaching or belief. 

Of course, “advent” actually means “arrival.” We only come to think it’s about waiting if we don’t believe the arrival has occurred yet. Sure, Jesus came 2000 years ago, but much of traditional Christianity is still waiting for Christ to come again. For their longings to be met in thee tonight. To know and see God here and now. And still so many wait. 

In years past, we have entered this season in ICN as a time of being mystical mothers, bearing the divine and growing up into our Christ-being. 

What would it look like to truly live into the arrival? If we turn advent into an action rather than a season. This year, how about we advent Christ on earth today?

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Practice, MysticismLuke HealyAdvent, Christ Consciousness, Divine Feminine Comments