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Six Emerging Shifts on the Evolving Edge of Mystical Christianity
What does the Christianity of the future look like?
What can we be if we are able to not just get caught up in past teachings and previous forms, but actively step into evolving with the dynamic movement of the mystical Body of Christ?
Integral Christian Network seeks to be a place of gathering a community of those who are personally engaged in this work of spiritual development into what we call “WeSpace Groups.” These communities of practice are designed to help us collectively come more and more into a vibrant expression of our growing spirituality together. A spirituality that is interfused with the world and integrated into our lives, blossoming into generative presence and mystical action, leading to the loving evolution of Christianity and the world.
As we’ve gathered together nearly 50 groups in the past two years, and as we’ve surveyed the spiritual landscape on the evolving edge of Christian spirituality, evolutionary Interspirituality, and Integral mysticism, we’ve recognized some common movements and directions that seem to be emerging in this time.
These are some of the leading shifts of consciousness today and of the spiritual unfoldings of tomorrow that might bring us more deeply into the joy of participating and co-creating with the loving evolution and transformation of ourselves, our communities, and the world. With each shift, I’ll also share a quote from a WeSpace participant reflecting their experiences.
From Mental to Mystical Embodiment
I love to learn things. I’ve spent all of my life learning and seeking to understand more. But eventually I came to the end of my mind. I realized the search for more was never-ending. And whatever it was I was looking for wouldn’t be found in the next book, the next course, the next conference.
The moment came for Rumi on the day he first met his dear beloved Shams. Rumi was sitting around a fountain with his students, studying and discussing. Shams quickly walked through the group and pushed the books into the water. Rumi said, “Who are you and what are you doing?”
“You must now live what you’ve been reading about.” Rumi looked from the precious books to the face of the stranger. Shams lifted the diary of Rumi’s father from the water and held it forth, completely dry. “Leave them,” said Rumi. And with that, he would no longer live with borrowed awareness.
The shift is not that we stop learning, but rather a change in how, why, and what we’re learning. Not the accumulation of more information or mental titillation that just reinforces our unconscious subservience to the mental structure of consciousness. But learning that opens us up and creates pathways through the mental into a more integrated consciousness. Pathways of embodied knowing and generative presence. A deepening movement into a holistic, mystical attunement in our very way of being.
A shift from mental predominance to a way of living in our integrated, embodied mystical awareness. This is one of the primary aims of our Whole-Body Mystical Awakening practice.
“It is in spending time in this shared soul space, that we slowly build a love-relationship with all the centres of awareness. We are loving the quiet mind behind our eyes, loving the heart space, loving being in the womb space, loving the soles of our feet. And most of all loving being in the healing, enlivening field of WeSpace. And the more we love being there the more we seem to be able to receive and bring to the WeSpace. I think of it as the 'magnification effect!'” ~ Vivien Claire in McGregor, South Africa
From Shoulder-to-Shoulder to Heart-to-Heart
This is a shift into deeper spiritual communion with one another that is more in tune with our underlying unity and fundamental interconnectedness.
As these spiritual realities become more apparent to our awareness, we will become less and less satisfied with forms of community and relationship that stop short of reflecting this deeper connection. That merely rub shoulders with one another as we focus on some shared external object that is our mission of the moment—an idea, a situation, a text, a problem.
It’s good to have a common aim and shared projects, to learn about things together, to companion one another. Our shift here is doing that while also including a degree of spiritual intimacy that we have often avoided for various reasons—some of which are entirely understandable.
But our hearts know that this story of separation is not our ultimate reality. That our more whole and natural state of being is together with others in heart-to-heart soul intimacy and relationship. We often fear this even as we long for it.
We are not separate from one another. And to live and act as detached or isolated individuals is a dissonance from our actual state of being. It is to live in an illusion.
In consciously entering the WeSpace, we open up to the dynamic field of spiritual resonance and communion that is found in heart-to-heart connection. That is our truer state. Free to be in the fullness of our interbeing and loving kinship with one another.
“I love the posture we are encouraged to take in the group, not simply connecting with others 'shoulder to shoulder’ but presenting our hearts to one another. The immediate trust I experienced in the very first session of my WeSpace group was unusual and compelling, as we shared the space authentically and intentionally.”
- Des Figueiredo in London, UK
From Within to Among
“You can go no further alone.”
That was the voice I heard after many years of spiritual practice and study, after a long interior mystical journey that had brought me to the end of myself.
Of course, I was never alone. But my interior realities had largely stayed within my own private and individual experience. If I shared them with a few select others, I did so as a reflection afterwards. Relaying what had already happened within me in the past.
This is the case with many if not most spiritual practice and meditation. Even in a shared physical space, each participant is in their own silo of experience. There is no awareness nor intention to seek to connect with one another in the midst of our experiences. For many, there perhaps isn’t even any awareness that such a thing is possible.
Our own individual space has often become our own tribal boundary. Our barrier of participation in the nonphysical realities we encounter in this world. Unaware that there are worlds beyond the known confines of our every day, singular perception.
And yet, again, we are not so separate. So how do we learn to participate actively in our interconnectedness? Stepping into the collective interior realities of which we are a part is our conscious engagement into the WeSpace, opening up to so much more than just our own experience within.
Here we find, along with one another, the mystical forms of God-Beside-Us who have been with us all along. The spiritual guides and loving presences such as Jesus, Mary, ancestors, saints, or other forms in the communal field.
Drawn beyond ourselves, we discover a whole new horizon of consciousness among us.
Strongly introverted in nature, I was initially apprehensive as to what I had committed to but, as the weeks went by and so much was shared amongst the members of our group, I found myself relaxing more and more into the love and sense of wonder present in our meetings. Now, reflecting on this spiritual journey we are on, I am beginning to understand how powerful shared love, encouragement, compassion, and understanding can be, awakening the potential within us all and inspiring us to reach out and have the courage to listen to what our deepest self is whispering to us. My WeSpace group is my safe, sacred space and I treasure the relationships that have developed, relationships that continue across time and distance, a WeSpace that I can enter at will, connecting with the others in my group in my Heart space as often as I feel called. ~ Ann Michaud in Leeds, England
From Conceptual to Energetic
If we remain only in the realm of ideas, we will not experience transformation. Without integration into our embodied knowing and living, the conceptual just becomes another book on the shelf. Rather than further accumulation, we truly grow and develop spiritually through energetic absorption in our form and substance.
It’s why we’re always trying to point toward embodied practice and loving community in our writings, because we know the ideas alone aren’t enough. They become incorporated through integration with our deeper ways of engaging, through our mystical (read: undivided), energetic partaking. Taste and see.
Jesus lived a very mystical life, communing with Moses and Elijah, healing people, knowing details about people’s lives, and other miracles. Yes he taught—and we need good teaching/learning—but he always took it into embodied living and loving presence. He was deeply in tune with the energy of the spirit coming through him in somatic and visceral ways.
Many Christian expressions have given up on trying to live like Jesus in this way, focusing instead on learning more about him and his teachings rather than seeking to embody his mystical way of living. “Following Jesus” becomes some combination of adhering to his teachings and performing acts of service that often have very little spiritual power or dynamic energy within them.
We can still learn new concepts and enjoy the ongoing discovery of new ideas and further learning, but perhaps more crucially will be the schools of integration. In learning how to embody the energy necessary for ways of living that are more generative, creative, loving, and evolutionary. The shift to becoming channels of energetic transmission which foster holistic transformation.
“Last night, I felt energy in different ways than previously. I felt honored by not being made to feel something I didn’t and trusting when I did share, it was enough. This is huge for me!” -Karen in Bay Area, California
From What We Know to What We Are About to Know
I recently wrote a whole article about this, so I’ll be brief here. You can read that full article here.
This shift is the movement toward emergence, recognizing that the process of evolutionary unfolding is most characterized by the appearance of novelty through an open process of collective synergy. Coming together with others in “radial energy,” the energy of creative possibility.
This is how we become makers and co-generators of a better future. How we become greater than the sum of our parts. How we come into collective discovery with one another in ways that are nurturing and loving as well as creative and generative. This is participating in our divine nature as co-creators with God. Continuously creating more loving persons, communities, and the world.
“I am amazed how much we see, hear, feel, and connect with and know (as in gnosis) about each other at the subtle level. In fact my WeSpace family picks up on things (visions, feelings, messages) that we ourselves are unaware of. This interconnectedness is an expression of love. Or is it love, manifesting through the interconnectedness? Nay it’s both.” ~ Dana Weckesser in Baltimore, MD
From I to We
“The WeSpace is the only place I know where I feel and know the union of the divine with our humanity.”
-Annette H. in Chicago, IL
Present in nearly all of these shifts is the necessity to go beyond individualism in our spirituality. To broaden our subjective field. To move into forms and practices that more accurately reflect the spiritual reality of our interbeing, of our interconnectedness, of our underlying unity.
Some of us have forms of spiritual community in our lives. Some of us no longer feel resonant with our previous or current church experiences. Some of us feel alone and isolated in our spiritual journeys. Some of us have already begun to discover loving, generative community in the shift from I to We.
Wherever we’re at, we’re not alone. We can always tune into the deeper unity, into the unified field of our ever-present connection to all things. The presence of God in all things, very much including ourselves. Even if we don’t feel it, our awareness can at any time open to the expansive and immanent all.
And then too, we might also come into a deeper community of communion. Into the mystical, relational field together with others who seek to participate in these shifts, in these emerging unfoldings of evolution, in this movement of spirit through the dynamic becoming of the mystical body of Christ in this time.
Such communities are possible, as the testimonials throughout this writing and many more attest to. There are and will be more of these communities emerging as well, with other forms and focuses.
ICN WeSpace groups are loving communities of embodied, mystical practice that exist to support one another in our spiritual development, personally and collectively, as we co-create and co-generate into the loving evolution of Christianity and the world.
If that speaks to your soul, you’re welcome to join a WeSpace group. Enrollment for groups starting this fall has just opened. Sign up below: