Do You Resonate When You Pray for Others?

A Prayer that Resonates

One of our core mystical practices in our WeSpace Groups is something we have called "Integral Prayer." That is admittedly a name that does not say much about what it actually is. We have had to keep putting a lot of energy into helping others understand what we mean by that terminology. In a long, wonderful conversation Luke and I had about this, Luke came up with a much more lively and descriptive name to help with that understanding — Resonating Prayer.

We can pray predictably, saying the routine words or affirmations of a religious ritual. Or we can pray in a resonating way. One of the dictionary meanings of "resonate" is "to affect or appeal in a personal or emotional way." Or "to strike a chord with." So we might say this is prayer that comes from deeply personal and vibrating, felt resonance within that seeks to strike a chord in another.

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PracticePaul SmithIntegral Prayer, practice, Transmission Comments
How to Awake to Oneness

Part Five: Waking Up to Oneness

In his book, Working with Oneness, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee Ph.D. and Sufi mystic, writes, "Oneness is very simple: everything is included and allowed to live according to its true nature. This is the secret that is being revealed, the opportunity that is offered. How we make use of this opportunity depends upon the degree of our participation, how much we are prepared to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done, to the freedom that needs to be lived."

This is our call at ICN – "to give ourselves to the work that needs to be done."

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Mysticism, PracticePaul SmithOneness, Embodiment, ConsciousnessComment
Finding Oneness in Science

Part Three: Waking Up to Oneness

Nothing in the science of quantum physics proves a spiritual worldview of Oneness. However, when outstanding physicists and other scientists make comparable statements about the unity of creation, I believe that we should at least take note of these statements and seriously consider them. Let’s look at some of them.

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Paul SmithOneness, Science Comments
Other Traditions and Oneness

William James (1985 - 1910), founder of American psychology, in his classic text, The Varieties of Religious Experience, described Oneness and its relationship to mystical experiences in the following way:

“This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states, we both become one with the Absolute, and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, we find the same recurring note.”

The idea of Oneness, that the self is inextricably intertwined with the rest of the universe, can be found in many of the world's philosophical and religious traditions. Oneness provides ways to inwardly sense the self as fundamentally connected with other people, creatures, things, and spiritual realities. This is a challenge to Western hyper-individualism and its tendency toward self-centered behavior.

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MysticismPaul SmithOneness, Union, transcendence Comment
Waking Up to Oneness

May they all be one, as you, Abba God, are in me, and I am in you, may they also be in us.
John 17: 21

Jesus said, "When you make the two one, you will become like the sons of man, and when you say, 'Mountain, move away,' it will move away."
 Gospel of Thomas, Saying 106 

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me;
my eye and God's eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
Meister Eckhart

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MysticismPaul SmithOneness, Union, transcendence Comments
Living in Our Communal Body

The Body of Christ Becoming
Practicing Community – Part Ten

As we begin to awaken to the experience of our shared interiors, of the we-space that constitutes communal energy, mutual knowing, and interbeing on a mystical and very real level—that which is “in here” together—we expand beyond this limited story of individualism. We come into the experience of our intersubjective reality. This is where the subject of the sentence becomes plural: from I to We. Not just as a collection of separate parts, but a real and dynamic collective. How do we experience this?

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Community, PracticeLuke HealyMystical Community, WeSpace, EmbodimentComment
Our Vital Need for Spiritual Intimacy

Deep Relationality at the Heart of Evolution
Practicing Community – Part Nine

“You can go no further alone.”

This was the phrase I heard at a turning point of my spiritual journey, at the great shift from individuality into the call to deeper community.

The ironic thing is that I had been living in an intentional community and had long pursued various forms of church expressions, small groups, and spiritual friendships. “What do you mean?” I thought, “I have sought community my whole life!”

But I knew. It was the mystical journey that had reached the end of its isolation. The unfolding and awakening could no longer be something that only I experienced inside myself—for I had begun to come into the experiential knowing that these interior realities were not confined to my individual space. They could no longer be felt and engaged with apart from the dynamic and lively field of interbeing, of interconnection, of WeSpace.

A new intimacy was beckoning beyond the realm of myself, beyond the external forms of commonality that brought me together with others, beyond just the sharing of ideas and ideals.

It is the call of mystical love.

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Community, WeSpaceLuke HealyMystical Community, WeSpace, Heart PathComment
God Giving Birth to You
God Giving Birth to You

Growing Up into Our Christ-Being this Christmas

“In my soul, God not only gives birth to me as a son or daughter, God gives birth to me as Godself, and Godself as me . . . our truest I is God.”
—Meister Eckhart 

Throughout advent, we have been exploring how we are all mothers of God. This week, we might now come to see how we are also the children. You are the birther, and you are the born. Even, in many ways, what we are birthing is us! So, what does it mean that we too are the begotten of God?

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Jesus, MysticismLuke HealyAdvent, Incarnation, Vocation, ChristComment