What Do We Hold Most Dear?
“The Light of Christ in the Heart of All”
Embodying Collective Values
As we’ve looked at our foundational identities that make up the centers of gravity for our community, there is another way we can consider the essence of who we are and how we are together. And that is through considering what it is we most deeply value.
While identities are somewhat fixed markers of anchoring in a center, values are the energy of movement among and between them. They are the why that moves us to make the choices we do, to take the actions we choose, and to stay with the actions we commit to.
Perhaps even more so than identity, our values are often deeply personal. While they do change over time and are often shaped by our family and environment, they belong solely to us. They make us who we are. They are the energy behind our will and our way of living.
If you are not already conscious of what your own personal values are, I invite you to reflect on what you would name for yourself. What do you hold most dear? How do you seek to live your life? What matters most to you? (If people keep coming to mind, that might reflect a value of family, community, connection, or something of the sort)
Collective values for a group or organization share the same tension as collective identities, in that we all personally hold our own values that won’t be likely to directly overlap with those of a larger group and collective organism. Rather than compare, we can see how ours flow with what we are sensing and how we experience the energy of movement among the community. Words on paper (or a screen!) don’t mean much if they don’t reflect the felt experience of what happens when we’re together.
That’s why we didn’t start ICN with a list of values. There has been no “Values” page on our website before. We had senses and ideas, sure. But we wanted to live them out and see what emerged from the community itself. To see what has evolved over these first few years together and how we could reflect what has become rather than just what we wanted it to be.
We’ve seen and identified numerous values, some related more to how we are as a community together, some connected to how we operate as an organization. But we landed on five foundational values that undergird just about everything we do and are together. It’s not a fixed and finalized set—for you might have experienced and sensed something we’re missing. If so, let us know! What do you feel are the values you feel in the energy of ICN?
ICN Foundational Values
These are the core values that permeate everything we do and seek to be in ICN. Primarily, we experientially live out all of these values through each of the Three Faces of God: Infinite God-Beyond-Us, Intimate God-Beside-Us, Inner God-Being-Us, integrating each of these in transparency toward the wholeness of divine/human/cosmic consciousness.
> Love – Keeping always before us the primacy of love, all that we do is from the deep heart of love.
> Mystical – Embodying our divine nature, as Jesus modeled and taught, all of our deeds and intentions come from our direct and unmediated divine connection and holistic consciousness.
> We – Practicing community, we meet one another with authenticity and loving receptivity, through the mutual field of mystical presence into communion and transformation, that we may be one.
> Uniqueness – Within loving community, we uphold the beautiful diversity and distinctiveness of each person in their expressions, giftings, and spiritual journey.
> Emergence– Opening to divine evolution, we co-create the awakening of ourselves, one another, and the world.
All of these values have been interfused throughout the previous writings on the central identities of who we are as a collective organism, as they are intricately connected to those centers. But these energies also infuse the identities—which can sometimes seem static and fixed—with movements of how we express who we are.
Most fundamental to this is the core of love at the heart of all we are and do. No matter who we claim to be or with what grandeur we manifest any gift or wisdom, if we have not love we are clanging cymbals.
But this isn’t just a platitude of Christian virtue as it sometimes can seem when we talk about love. Nor is it the ubiquitous way of holding it as the “love is all you need” of our culture. The English language lacks the diversity of expression of all that word can mean and contain, but at the same time the singularity of it holds together something of the power of what it is that withstands all of the cheapening and casual use of it. The deep longing for love within each one of us seems to still carry through.
Yet we must embody that energy in order to see it manifest in generative ways. We come into the mystical field of the relationality of we that connects the circuit of the love that we seek to be and become. It is through this deep communion of community that we can come into the consciousness of divine love and the evolution into who we might become together, into what might emerge for the sake of the world.
This is not a groupthink or amassing of conformity to a particular set of beliefs, an in-the-box program packaged up and ready to go, or a completed we-have-all-the-answers way of spiritual community. Rather, we celebrate the uniqueness of each of us who make up this collective life. This is made real by the encouragement and enacting of those particular giftings, passions, and expressions as generative arisings within and from the community. Open and evolving with where life is wanting to flow.
This is the emergence that comes when our unique vitality comes into deep, loving communion with others in a way that holds space for possibility. That creates the conditions for the sharing of energy which coalesces in the co-creative field to bring forth the new. This is the collective creativity that generates with exponential possibility beyond what we can do individually.
As much as can be contained in one statement, we have tried to convey the heart of all of this with our purpose statement:
“Gathering a global community of dedicated mystical practitioners for the loving evolution of Christianity and the world.”
These words are really just a gateway into the experience of how we are together and what we try to be and do with all that we are and seek to become as an organization.
No expression is perfect, and keeping to our values we hold this open for emergent evolution to continue speaking. To stay with the flow of Spirit and the movement of God becoming through us in fresh and new ways.
A WeSpace Practice of Encountering a Collective
I invite you, again, not to compare from a distance and hold these values as objects, as ideas to consider. But to experiential flow with these energies, trying them on in the way of welcoming them into your space of being. Of who you are and what matters most to you. With what you hold most dear.
Let that be a generative practice to see what emerges—not in order to relate to an organization, but more like a deep conversation with someone. Entering a WeSpace with a collective organism that has a life of its own. Can you feel into the body of ICN? Into the heart and flowing energies? How do you feel? Do any questions arise?
You may not be used to doing something like this, and you may not feel close enough to this community to be able to get a felt sense. If not, I invite you to try this exercise with another community that you feel close to. Encounter it less through the principles and ideas and come into the felt sense of the body of it.
You can do it now. Close your eyes and open your heart. Feel into this community or another. What do you sense? What arises in your consciousness? Write that down or share it with another. Give it a try!
Our Intrinsic Value
As we discuss values, I want to close with the deepest sense of value from which flows all of our values.
You are valuable. You are extremely valuable. You are valued because of who you are, not because of what you do. Not by what you accomplish or the legacy you create. Not by your intellect or your heart. Not by the meaning you find or don’t.
But by the very essence of your being. You are valued.
Our minds look for purpose to our lives. A reason for our actions and our work. Some way to make a difference and affect the world. This is important, but it does not give us our value.
Our hearts look for meaning in our lives and in the world. A sense of significance and way of living that matters. This is important too, but even meaning does not give us our value.
Our spiritual wombs hold our value in the deepest divine identity of who we are. Our innermost being is in its essence pure gift. It is the immortal diamond. The true self. None of these metaphors can really truly reflect the sheer beauty and goodness that is the core of who we are—always and forever before. No matter what we’ve done or haven’t done. No matter how much that has been seen by others or not. No matter what love we’ve received or lacked.
We are all, each of us, children of God. The divine spark lighting the flame of our being.
And nothing can take this away.
Personally and collectively, we will feel this and live from this the more that we are consciously living connected to Source. As we are grounded in this deepest being and welcoming the flow of new life from God-Being-Us. The fresh arisings from Origin as the life-force and vitality of how we in our uniqueness bring forth what becomes our life. What flows into the shape of what we care about—our values.
This fountain is spondic, that is, ever-flowing with no end. Always fresh and flowing forth with new life. It is the eternal point of creation that is always within each one of us. Our ultimate, intrinsic value of pure being.
Thank you for being.