What Difference Does Inner Work Make?
How Mysticism Transforms Our Lives and Our World
Discovering Your Mystical Body – Part 2
The world is transformed by transformed people.
This is no secret. If we think of the people who have made a major difference in our lives, of the people who have brought about loving evolutions in their parts of the world, we will see people with a radiance, an inner strength, an energy, and a presence of life.
Perhaps changing the world is a little too lofty for most of us. Maybe we simply want to try to become better people. More loving. More caring. We want to be that much more conscious and energetically present to those around us, so that we might be more of a life-giving presence as well.
This is so much more than just a likable personality or a magnetic charisma. This is a way of living with vitality, with heart, with wisdom, and with presence that can inhabit any disposition and natural bent. But it doesn’t come automatically or easily most of the time. It takes a conscious effort and attention toward growth and development, especially through spiritual practice.
This interior work is sometimes naysaid by the do-ers of the world as “navel-gazing.” And certainly there can be a danger of getting stuck inside or closing ourselves off from the world—especially for us more introverted types. But authentic and generative inner work will always lead us to more love, to making a difference in the world—even if just in the smallest ways with the people around us.
If it is holistic, our spiritual practice will not be self-absorbed. We can enjoy doing it, because if we’re engaged in the right kind of interior work then we’ll feel the thrill and exhilaration of discovering this expansion, integration, and freedom within and among us. And that will spill over into our lives. Though sometimes it is very hard work, and sometimes it will be the more difficult stripping, loss, and emptying of the via negativa—the path of release.
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.
While there are a number of mystical pathways and spiritual practices that can serve our transformation at various times in our lives, we believe, especially for this day and age now, that there is a vital need for our growth and evolution to be more embodied, more relational, and more generative.
Transformation through Integrated Awareness – Embodied Spiritual Knowing
In the mental structure of consciousness, we learn more about something by distancing ourselves from it, by object-ifying it so as to see it more clearly. Talking, reading, and learning about something so as to know it more fully. This is the basis not only for the scientific method, but for many of the approaches to spiritual growth and even quite a few practices these days.
This is helpful insofar as it takes us. Whether that be shelves of books or meditative practices of disidentification, this primarily distancing movement is at best only half of the story. To come into transformation requires as well a subject-ifying of the reality we are trying to become, an inhabiting or incarnating of these qualities, even these whole structures of consciousness in our very being.
Let’s say we want to become more loving. We all want to be more loving, right? But how do we actually begin to really do and be that way more in our lives? We know just studying and learning about love is not enough. So then is it simply a matter of will? Of deciding to do it? Or disidentifying from our lesser attachments? Partially. But these will not be enough in and of themselves.
What is necessary is a deeper inhabiting of the source of love within us—an integration of our awakened heart into our consciousness and being so that it becomes an ever-present lived experience and reality in our day-to-day lives.
This is, I think, what is behind the many movements toward embodiment that are so prevalent today—a desire to inhabit ourselves more fully, to not just be trapped all the time in the realm of the abstract. But more precisely, we need spiritual practices of “embodifulness” that do more than just include our body as an object, giving attention to and working on our physical body. The deeper and more holistic movement is to come into integrated awareness from our whole being. This is “making subject” our awareness as coming from our embodied structures of consciousness—our hearts, our spiritual wombs, our feet, our heads, and our whole-body being (more on these centers and their structures of consciousness in the weeks ahead).
We call this “spiritual knowing,” but really all that means is that we are learning to know more fully, more holistically from our entire being. From all of our structures of consciousness within. From our divine identity through our entire, incarnated/embodied self as sources of wisdom, understanding, energy, presence, and more.
This is coming into our mystical body not just through recognizing spiritual energy centers within, but as source points of awareness and wisdom that change the way we “think,” know, and perceive reality. This is deeply transformational—for it is our pathway into an integral consciousness that is a whole new way of being. Of embodied presence that is able to bear so much more, to transmit love and healing, and to become more than we can even imagine from our present vantage point.
Transformation through Holistic Presence – Relational Loving Connection
As we come more into our embodied knowing and inhabiting of all our structures of consciousness, we also will almost certainly feel, if not recognize that something is perhaps missing. That it could feel a little hollow or incomplete. That is, if we’ve come into this first transformation on our own.
Perhaps somewhat more likely—for we rarely get there alone—we will have a better chance of coming into our integrated awareness through and with the help of others. Rarely do we have all of the capacity and capabilities to awaken and integrate all of these structures of consciousness by ourselves, which is one reason why communities of practice, like our WeSpace groups, are so important. Not only do we benefit from the more-developed areas of others in the group, but practicing together in an open, shared energy field greatly expands our capacities and opens the channels wider for us to flow into these states of consciousness. In this way, we become portals for one another into experiences and expressions that take us beyond what we might be able to access “on our one.”
And it’s not just the benefit and effect on our individual, interior experiences. But as we welcome the relational field more directly into our practice, our experience and our awareness become less self-referential, less self-focused. It’s not all just about me and my perspective—but I become able to experientially step into the felt realities of interconnection, communion, and interbeing. This transforms our sense of “self” and our general orientation toward life’s events, no longer quite so centered on the inflow to me individually, but participating more subject-ly in a bigger reality.
The relational field also brings us more directly into the tangible and embodied practice of love. When we are given space and permission to engage in the flow of love and speak forth loving words of support, encouragement, and strength for one another as we do in Integral Prayer in a WeSpace group, we find ourselves more full of love in our day to day lives—our hearts more open and flowing with the divine love through this relational transformation.
The relational component to practice also helps keep us honest and authentic. As we deepen in relationship with one another, we’re able to mirror what we see, feel, and sense in each other that might be part of our unconscious shadow. This is a vital and necessary function for us to be transformed into people who aren’t just driven by our unconscious compulsions and unrecognized motivations. But not only the unseen areas of growth, we can also share into one another’s “golden shadow,” the areas of beauty, love, and goodness that don’t always see in ourselves either.
All of these elements and more transform us into living from a more holistic presence—which then in turn makes us a more loving, transformational portal for others. In a one-on-one relationship with this energetic dynamic, the pattern is reciprocal. In a larger generative relational field, it can become exponential.
Transformation through Divine Participation – Generative Co-Creation
As we integrate our growing embodied awareness into a more holistic consciousness, and as we come together with others doing the same into a field of communion and interconnection, we can then find ourselves more actively participating in the generative field of co-creation.
This possibility comes about through the synergetic experience of coherence, the experiential participation in the flow of the divine field together. This is something like the collective resonance of a symphony playing together, in tune and on the same page—but playing without any sheet music. Sound impossible? In our previous paradigms, it would be (Jazz excluded!).
But now we are tapping into the generative power of emergence, the collective arising from the divine source that can emerge in a co-creative field of discovery and open possibility. Some theorize that this is how evolution actually happens, but at the very least this movement allows us to shift in our spiritual practice from dwelling primarily in the inflow—the receiving of spiritual nurture, support, and care—with the interflow of one another, and into the generative outflow of loving regeneration and co-creation of a better world.
We become not just consumers in the world, but makers of the new reality that is so desperately needed today. We step into our role as enactors of evolution, co-creating with God in the divine unfolding of a better, more loving future for all.
This is how our inner work becomes the source of our transformed, living expression of “making a difference” in the world, in the lives of those around us (our neighbors), and in our own lives.
So How Does This Affect My Daily Life?
Profoundly!
All of these movements and practices should help us—through a transformed awareness, presence, and participation—move beyond any compartmentalizing of our spiritual life as separate from our everyday life.
When our inner work is too abstract, too self-oriented, and too insular, then it is all too easy to leave it in the box when we return back to “normal” life. When our spirituality is in the same vein as our predominant mode of everyday consciousness—the mental structure as primary and perhaps even the only option—then we won’t just fail to experience significant transformation in our own lives, but we won’t have anything of substance in our being to bring to the world for healing, liberation, and loving growth.
Ideas alone won’t be enough. Our inner work will have to be more than just staying in the realms of “about,” and must necessarily further inhabit and integrate through and with the reality of which we are immersed in and as. Our day and age is calling for more than perpetual disidentification and distancing. It is calling us to be more fully here and now.
Coming into these states of embodied mystical awareness has a much more lasting effect on our being because they are tapping into the felt-sense and deeper, embedded structures of consciousness within us. They are more literally awakening the latent structures of our being to arise and become part of our living and breathing experience in day-to-day reality.
We “concretize” or bring to bear this transformation specifically through the process of communing and creating community together. The relational field not only helps us enter more easily into these ways of being, but specifically makes possible the sustaining and ongoing coalescence of this transformation. We need the interwoven presence and support of one another to live this way—no longer “atomized” or siloed in individualized isolation, but dwelling in the nourishing and transfiguring relational field.
And from the relational field of loving connection and support, we are then able to access together the co-creative, generative field for the uprising of emergence—the new arisings of spirit at work. We can step into our participation in the loving evolution of our lives, our communities, our faith traditions, our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and the whole world.
Sounds like making a difference to me.
Maybe even changing the world.
Recently, we have experimented with a few gathering times called “Series Discussions” where we came together to converse around the larger themes of these articles. Over the last half a year or so, we have done one or two per series, about once a month or so.
Now, with a heart to bring forth more space for deeper exploration and generative co-creation in the relational field, we want to experiment with a new weekly gathering time. This will be a space for whoever would like to more deeply engage with how we integrate and apply these spiritual teachings, experiences, and practices into our lives.
How do we become dedicated mystical practitioners together?
What are the embodied qualities of loving mystics?
What does it look like for each of us, in our radical uniqueness, to integrate and live through each of the centers of spiritual knowing?
What new practices and possibilities might emerge from collective dreaming and discovery?
These questions and more will undergird our conversations and unfolding process in this new experiment, beginning next week on Thursday, November 18th at 1pm Central Standard Time. We’ll experiment with different days and times over these next few weeks and months to try to make it as accessible as possible for all who want to engage.
If you’re interested, click here to sign up and receive the zoom invite. And if you can’t make this day and time next week, let us know your preferred availabilities for the future.
(If you’ve signed up previously for series discussions, no need to sign up again)