Inter-Spaces of Mystical Embodiment

Discovering Your Mystical Body – Part 7

So far, in describing our mystical body, we have focused on four centers of spiritual awareness within us: heart, womb, feet, and head. These particular centers are not a definitive list of our only centers of embodied knowing and being—but they are a very good starting point that seem to include the principal concentrations of awareness in our mystical inner being.

While we are differentiating each center in this series for better understanding, experientially we live in the midst of our whole body operating together in the flow of open inter-communication and participation among our entire being. Or at least, that’s what we’re seeking. As we become transparent to this more holistic way of being, we come into the integral whole, which we will explore next week.

This week, I want to first look at some of these “in-between” spaces. The dynamics and areas of our mystical body that operate in the thresholds, in the interflow, in the energetic expressions around the four centers.

“Lightworker” by Alex Grey

Mystical Body Spaces Beyond the Four Centers

There are many interior spaces of our mystical body, and as we saw in part one of this series, there is not just one definitive, objective “list” that applies to all. For example, different ancient systems often range from 5 to 28 chakras, not to mention all the various nadis, meridians, and other complex mystical physiologies that make up the intricate inner landscapes in our subtle body.

When coming into deeper awareness of our interior mystical body, we can be open to experiencing different sensations within—including both concentrations of energy and awareness in focal points we might call “centers.” And we might feel as well the movement, the vibration, the interconnection, the flow. This is experiencing into the “verb” nature of our mystical being, not just the spatial, material “noun” nature.  

Rather than try to list out many of these spaces and energies, I’ll name just a few that seem to bear correlation and connection to common outgrowth from our four-center awareness.  

For example, people often feel a common interior energy connected to their voice, often localized in the area of the “throat chakra.” This is less a center of awareness as it is an energetic space. It has its own distinct energy, but we do not perceive through it. We usually experience either its blockage open flow, like even a sort of swollen throat or open channel of resonance.

This is connected to our four centers—in that we “find our voice” by tapping further into our deep courage in the womb space and becoming heartened through loving support and relational receptivity. On the other end, if we have too much energy in this space, we may need more wisdom from our head center to better discern when not to speak. 

Another “space-between” is the area below the heart and above the womb. While this area is often felt in connection to the solar plexus chakra and its associated energies, it can also and at the same time bear direct relation to the interaction (or lack thereof) between the heart and womb.

One way that this comes to form is through a sensation I have felt many times when focusing on others during Integral Prayer in a WeSpace Group (My primary mystical language is to sense in my body some mystical dynamic, energy, or expression in the other person’s body). I call this “the pool of the heart.” It is a concentration of energy underneath the heart space that pools up and gathers, often dripping down from the heart. It appears almost like an underground reservoir, a storage of energy that builds up, usually because we don’t have the channels of release and interconnection needed to allow it to flow more freely.

This can be because of a blockage to the womb space, almost like a plug that seals off our heart from the deeper space within, which is sometimes connected to a lack of self-love and self-acceptance. Or it can be present because the heart is not able to give the love it desires to offer. The outflow is blocked or shut down.

This is not a fixed center or even an energetic reality that exists for everyone. So it is less a definitive structure of our mystical body, but it might be a common experience for many related to flow and blockage between and through our body and our primary centers.

Those are just two of the numerous spaces we might sense into, localizing spiritual energy and awareness within our body. We can even take this all the way down to the cellular level, sensing into the elemental sense of our body in specific parts or all throughout.

In a different sort of awareness, we may also come more into the inter-spaces through a greater sense of the entire flow in and through our body. If you’ve been in a WeSpace group, you may have already sensed this through the radiating heart energy that connects you to the others in the loving, relational space of interconnection. In a similar way, we might feel this energy of interconnection all throughout our own body—not just in a separate sensing into each of the spaces of our four centers and others in-between, but all throughout.

This can be felt through specific pathways, like a sort of circulatory system of the subtle body, which are sometimes referred to as nadis. If you like to have a physical organ to associate these realities, we can connect it to the recently discovered interstitium, which exists in “the contiguous space existing between a structural barrier.” We might feel this energy and movement in our mystical body all throughout or in specific areas of our body.

These sensations are not just nice feelings but could point to numerous different possibilities for growth, healing, integration, or presence. The wisdom of the body, in this way, is often much smarter than our mental awareness—certainly in our mystical body. Trying to “figure it out” or interpret these realities can sometimes be helpful. But feel free as well to just receive and flow in the body’s own wisdom, self-healing power, and innate movement toward wholeness.

This is the direction of the spirit of God-Being-Us flowing forth into being in our continual creation through the generative arisings of love, becoming through and as us, in our whole physical and mystical body.

What else have you discovered within your own mystical body?

What might be newly coming into awareness for you these days?

Transparency through our Structures of Consciousness

“Transparency (diaphaneity) is the form of manifestation (epiphany) of the spiritual.” – Jean Gebser

These spaces between and among our four centers, and four structures of consciousness, point to the dynamic reality of the inner collaboration that exists within us in any moment, at all times. The more we’re able to embody and live beyond just the mental structure, the more we come into and discover our whole-body being.

This starts with a new “emergent transparency,” an openness to participating in all of these structures (archaic, magic, mythic, mental) at once. They can all be “seen” now—not just as conceptual categories or even lenses of perception, but dynamics of consciousness that are now possible in our embodied being. 

To come to this, we need to resist the temptation to compartmentalize, to separate and isolate our parts in abstraction and classification. That may be, in some sense, just what I have been doing in the various parts of this series—sorry! And while differentiation precedes integration, the knowledge alone of these distinctions will not serve our evolution all that much. We have to practice embodying it, which is one of the main reasons why we practice Whole-Body Mystical Awakening—at first being guided, but with further clearing we find ourselves more naturally in the flow. We begin to be guided by our own body, by our innate consciousness and knowing, flowing to various centers and all throughout. It becomes more apparent in us through intention, effort, and grace.

The continued spiritual work is to come into the holistic participation in the personal and collective embodiment of these realities in and through us, where division fades away and we find ourselves dwelling in the open flow of transparent interplay through our whole being.

Practically, this might begin first in a practice/process of integrating awareness in two centers at the same time—“being aware” in multiple centers at once. In this way, we can cultivate our inner transparency. We can consciously open and reconnect the neural pathways of our body, in a sense, speaking the multiple interior languages of our mystical body.

“The magic, mythical, and mental structures may, in other words, become transparent, particularly in their ever-valid effectualities as our co-constituents. This is a beginning if only because the individual learns to see himself [sic] as a whole, as the interrelationship and interplay of magic unity, mythical complementarity, and mental conceptuality and purposefulness. Only as a whole man [sic] is in a position to perceive the whole.”

“To live these structures together, commensurate with their respective degrees of conscious awareness, is to approach an integrated, integral life.” – Jean Gebser

The Collective Mystical Body – Interbeing & Interflow Among Us

This is also not solely an individual affair. Far from it, actually. If we start there, our own, personal, interior process of transparency and integration will always lead us into the relational field—because the whole of our being is not contained solely within the physical confines of our own personal skin. What we call “relational” even begins to blur, because we are not just relating to another whole, self-contained individual (just as we are not that). The distinction of subject/object fades away as we blend, as we participate in the inter-spaces of being among us.

“Our” mystical body has its personal dynamics and elements certainly—most of us probably operate and live in the “I” space of being most of the time. But we are not confined to that. When we practice moving into the “We” space between us, we learn to feel into the shared connection and inter-reality more. We begin to learn the communal language, the shared interior space of collective consciousness.  

This is coming into the participation among our collective mystical body. We can experience a shared heart, a mutually enfolded womb, intertwined roots, and the noosphere of the mind.

And it too is filled with inter-spaces of our shared embodiment. This is beyond a symbiotic harmony of shared environment, but even a bodily experience of interbeing and interflow. Where the boundaries are not hard edges but permeable cell walls are encompassed within the same shared, larger organism. To think of it spatially isn’t quite fully right, as this collective mystical body shares “space” in another dimension. We can also try to conceive of it through other metaphors, like intertidal zones, shared atmospheres, or fungal mycelial networks.

But most importantly, more than understanding it, is the experiential participation in the real and mystical reality that we are not totally separate beings from one another. We can flow among and between, not just as a nice trippy experience, but as a vital re-identifying of the seat and base of our consciousness. This can then liberate from the self-referential egotism and narcissism that is so pervasive today.

“Increasing attention to interconnections is arational, making possible an integrating mode of realization and a liberation from mere systemization, as well as lending perceptibility to an ‘open’ world.” – Gebser

Integrating Parts and Whole

The body doesn’t know it’s been split into parts. The body operates as a whole. We exist as a lifeform made up of a giant matrix of inter-communication and flow. And that is not just speaking of the interior realities underneath our own skin, but so too the multiplicities of the “larger” whole of which we are a part.

Identification of the mystical elements and dynamics of which we are composed (and of which we contribute to composing) is only one part of a much more important process. Integrating the sense of our mystical body “self” is to not mechanize ourselves into parts, but to fold in the experiential reality of these dynamics into our daily felt reality and expression.   

Whether we consciously recognize these parts doesn’t matter nearly as much as if we live through them. Whether we can express or communicate with concepts these mysterious and complex inner realities is far less important than how well we live in this flow of love and inter-mutuality. Our non-verbal, bodily energetic participation and transmission of this inner sense will probably serve ourselves and others far better.  

We seek understanding in service to love. So how we understand and feel ourselves, our inner realities, and those inter-realities with our neighbors and the undivided world around us is in service to our transformation, our liberation, and our wholeness—which we will explore more next week.  

How do you experience the inter-spaces of your body? What areas are most alive or are asking to be heard and felt right now?

Answer in the comments below or set the intention to have a meaningful conversation about it with someone you trust, with your WeSpace group if you’re in one, or join us for deepening engagement and co-exploration around these interspaces this Monday at 2:30pm CT. Sign up here.