Part 4: Ecstasy Deepening into Bliss

“Follow your bliss”

Joseph Campbell famously said, “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.” He went on to say, “People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

Nowadays many, maybe especially religious people, see this as a sort of new age platitude. Whether it’s seen as flippant hedonism or unrealistic idealism, bliss is often thought of as something outside of the normal experience of life. A moment here or there if you’re lucky. But to follow your bliss? That is selfish individualism and not really how life works, right?

But my own experience these last few decades has been one of bliss, one of “the rapture of being alive.” I believe it is possible for us to live everyday in this state. Let’s explore how that might actually be possible.

MysticismPaul SmithJune 14, 2020Ecstasy, Bliss Comments

Embodied Mystical Solidarity

Luke HealyJune 7, 2020 Comments

Crossing the Barriers to Ecstasy

Part Three: Cultivating Ecstatic Emergence

Today is Pentecost Sunday in the Christian Liturgical calendar, often called the birthday of the church. If there is one descriptive word we could give to the first Pentecost, it would be “ecstatic.” If the church was, indeed, born in an outpouring of ecstatic joy that looked to onlookers like drunken behavior — times have changed!

Sacred ecstasy has not only been dismissed in past centuries, it continues to be impeded by a number of barriers and hurdles in our culture and religious traditions. This presence of energetic ecstasy is not a pursuit of happy feelings or wild behavior, but a vital experience and aspect of consciousness necessary for our spiritual evolution into greater liberation and enlightenment.

But many of us may feel blocked or have a hard time moving into this experience. Why is that? Here are four of the ways that the sacred ecstatic is being minimized or dismissed today in many, if not most Christian circles.

MysticismPaul SmithMay 31, 2020Ecstasy Comments

Why So Glum?

Part Two: Christianity as an Ecstatic Tradition

In the last few decades, there have been thousands of studies and hundreds of books published with the goal of increasing happiness and helping people lead more satisfying lives. More people are in therapy, support groups, and mentoring relationships than ever before.

So why aren’t we happier? Self-reported measures of happiness have stayed stagnant for over the 40 years they have been researched. We don’t seem to be getting any happier, despite all our efforts. Most people would settle for just feeling a little better and don’t even consider the possibility of something even more significant such as ecstasy.

As Christians, do we think our Christianity makes us a lot happier? What about ecstatic? Unfortunately, most Christians will have a similar answer there. The author of Sacred Ecstasy, Bradford Keeney, says, “It is vitally important to acknowledge how spiritual ways too often and too quickly become emotion-less, motion-less, sense-less, heart-less, body-less, soul-less, spirit-less, mystery-less, and divine-less as they devolve from ecstatic embodiment to the abstract discourse of talking heads and the routines of ritual guardians.”

I want to focus on this deep, expansive, happiness and joy we call ecstasy, and how we might discover it once again in our Christian spirituality. Let’s begin by looking at how the Christian tradition began in riots of joy and mystical events of ecstasy—and then changed down through the centuries, sometimes evolving, sometimes regressing.

MysticismPaul SmithMay 24, 2020Ecstasy Comment

Taking the Lid Off God

Part One: Awakening Spiritual Energy and Ecstasy

As we have explored spiritual energy, it’s now time to consider the common outflow and experience of the presence of this energy: ecstasy. This powerful word often causes strong reactions in a variety of ways. Especially for us as respectable, well-mannered Westerners it might sound a little . . . extreme. It may arise apprehension, or maybe even discouragement as an unrealistic experience to hope for. Perhaps you feel perfectly satisfied with a quieter, more contemplative spirituality and ecstatic spiritual energy sounds a little too “out there.”

That may be your path and that’s ok. But it may also be only half of the story.

Spiritual practices of contemplative stillness are ultimately meant to bring us into a place of intimacy with the deep divine, into union with God, into a state of new life and being. The felt experience of this will often not be one of stillness, but be filled with energy, ecstasy, and bliss. We will find ourselves not just in the quiet, but in the experience, presence, and union with God beyond, beside, and being us.

Are experience, presence, and union with God the primary intentions of Christian spirituality? If so, is our spiritual practice leading us toward that realization? Could it be possible that our attachment to stillness is repressing the flow of spiritual energy which can be our awakening into the wholeness of integrated, embodied Christian mysticism?

MysticismLuke Healy & Paul SmithMay 17, 2020Ecstasy, spiritual energy Comment

Loving Evolution Together

Spiritual Energy Part 4

“Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other, so that the world may come to being. This is no metaphor; and it is much more than poetry.”
–Teilhard de Chardin

As we awaken to the spiritual energy within us, we find ourselves drawn more and more to the radial energetic dynamic, the drawing forward and further. This is no solo affair or hero’s journey. This radial energy “bundles.” It draws us together. It is the antithesis to the fragmentation, separation, and loneliness so pervasive today.

This attraction is not only for companionship but for the discovery and mutual expression of the evolving realities that are emerging in our midst. They more easily arise and can be discovered in a collective context. Even more, the community itself, the combining of energies, is instrumental to this movement forward.

The Social Action of Mysticism

Spiritual Energy Part 3

Mysticism is often seen in duality as an opposite to social action. There is the life of prayer and contemplation, alone in the closet, removed from the world. And then there are those who go out and get things done, help people, and change things.

Even if you don’t believe that harsh framing, perhaps you sometimes find yourself asking, “How can I navel gaze when the world is on fire? Shouldn’t I be doing something about it?”

So let’s consider it this way: How do you put out a fire?

Do you throw nearby cups of water onto the flames? No, you need more force than that, more resources. You need to connect down into the deeper source of continual water flow.

EvolutionLuke HealyMay 3, 2020spiritual energy, Teilhard Comment

Welcoming Embodied Christ Energy

Spiritual Energy Part 2

In part one, we explored living in the energy of Christ. Christ is the Christian symbol of the divine reality present in incarnation, in the whole of the material world. For us, this is an invitation to welcome a new reality of experiencing spiritual energy at the contact point between spirit and matter within ourselves. This is living in awakened consciousness in tune with the embodied presence of our physical being. This was the promise to the first followers of Jesus:

“You will receive energy when spirit (consciousness) comes upon you” (Acts 1:8).

And this is still something we can experience today, even more so! So how can we welcome this reality into our lives today?

Notice first the passive nature of this process at the start. It is primarily something we receive. It comes upon us by experiencing Christ in an inner experience or a personal transmission from another. After we welcome and receive it, then we begin to cultivate and share in it!

Practice, MysticismLuke HealyApril 26, 2020spiritual energy Comments

Living in the Energy of Christ

Spiritual Energy Part 1

“The energy of universal evolution, which, in the form of an innate pull toward being . . . an energy, the feeding and development of which is to some degree our responsibility.”
–Teilhard de Chardin

In our WeSpace groups, much of the focus of the practice is on the energetic dynamic of the experience. We talk about energy fields, the radiant heart center, strong feelings of love and bliss, the frequency and coherence of the group energy, and more. An unsuspecting participant might wonder how they got themselves into such a new age, woo woo experience. I thought these were Christian groups, after all!

In fact, dynamic energy is written all over the pages of the New Testament and seen in the life of Jesus and the early church. Actually, it’s not just seen, but in many ways is the central defining characteristic of what marked the early church gatherings and the ministry of Jesus: being in spirit (awakened consciousness).

MysticismLuke HealyApril 19, 2020spiritual energy Comments

The World in the Tomb

This is a strange Easter, no doubt about it. The day to celebrate resurrection this year is marked by separation, isolation, and underlying fear. People are dying, and the world as we knew it has gone underground. Some are mourning. Some are waiting with apprehension for what will come next. What will happen to our lives and to the way the world will be?

In many ways, this is not too different from the first the very first Easter morning for the followers of Jesus. While we generally try to celebrate the resurrection and get on to the part of the story where the tomb is empty and the Living Jesus has appeared, perhaps this Easter it makes sense to start as the disciples did. Let’s accept and the uncertainty of the moment.

PracticeLuke HealyApril 12, 2020Easter, evolution Comments