What is Your Spiritual Inspiration?
Part Ten: WeCreating the Future of Christianity and the World
When was the last time you felt deeply inspired?
Sometimes we are inspired by others—what we see someone doing or a way they have overcome a great challenge to do something significant. This is something more like vicarious inspiration, which is not a bad thing at all, but not what I’m asking here.
How have you felt the divine sparks of creative inspiration illuminating and animating possibility in your life?
As we evolve in our spiritual journey, many of us undergo significant transformations in the nature of our will and the source of our motivation.
Traditional religion often speaks of the will of God. Most typically, this is held by the mythic God in the sky, anthropomorphized as an authoritative male figure who has a plan for your life. Your spiritual call is to surrender your will and agency, giving over to the (often singular) path God has for you. For many, it may not be quite so stark as this extreme framing, but the general orientation is somewhat similar. What is God’s will? is the question.
Even as this view of God evolves, we may still orient ourselves toward a sense of a “will greater than our own.” Perhaps we feel “the universe” guiding our way. We receive direction from spirit guides, signs from the heavens, or a “calling” received from higher wisdom. All of these point to a source of will and motivation external to us—at least in part. They come from “beyond” our own capacity and ability to know and control by ourselves alone.
On the other hand, modern life—especially in the United States—teaches us to find the source of our motivation in the seat of the self. Our will is determined by our desires, and we make it happen. We make the goals, set the intention, and pursue the path of our own accord and inclination. “Success” is defined by getting what we want. In the most extreme form, this manifests as narcissism—but it is also pervasive in more subtle (or not-so-subtle) ways in forms of spirituality oriented primarily toward self-improvement, prosperity, and even some forms focused on progress/evolution. What do I want? is the question.
Neither of these approaches is bad in and of itself. They are just insufficient as we continue to grow and evolve.
When we come to discover and begin to inhabit the presence of God as intimately interwoven with our very own being, we recognize that just as God is not separate, neither is our source of motivation. Our will, so long held in either surrender or independence (and the tension between the two), can come into a deeper and harmonious integration.
We experience a deeper source of will rooted in the depths of our soul. It arises with holy longings and sacred charges—not necessarily in the traditional sense of what is “holy” and “sacred,” as all of the earth and any of our actions can be spiritually inspired. Everything is sacred, and this is ever more apparent as we welcome divine presence into more conscious engagement with any and all settings and situations.
There are times we will surrender to something more. And there are times we will need to step into our personal agency with strength and passion. But we may find a greater inner and collective stimulus that deeply informs and motivates these choices around a different orientation than we used to have.
This is the spiritual inspiration that sparks our divine and human enlivenment, which vitalizes us to live in a new way. It motivates us to take up a task, role, or intention—though none of these alone will define our inspiration nor determine its value. Our spiritual inspiration energizes us to truly inhabit our creative essence—that we, in our divine participation, are the co-creators of our lives.
And not just our personal lives, but the shared life amongst our neighbors, our world, and even the cosmos itself.
We can be inspired to be a vital part of WeCreating what will become and who we will be.
“WeCreating the World”
Three Integrative Shifts of WeCreating from Divine Agency
Another way we could describe this deeper source of will that motivates and sparks our spiritual inspiration is to see it as our divine agency.
In taking up our divine agency, if we truly believe and experience ourselves as participants in the divine nature, then we will increasingly feel more and more compelled from our divine source to do what God does—create in love.
And the source of this capacity, the energy and spiritual power to do so, will flow from our divine vitality, and we will be inspired to engage in WeCreating a loving future for the world.
To move more fully in this way of being, we will need to embrace several essential shifts, integrating from some more typical orientations of motivation.
Integrating Insight with Inspiration
One thing that can actually get in the way of our inspiration is our “addiction to insight.”
Learning is a beautiful and crucial process in our lives. The experience of receiving insight into something that was previously unclear or unknown is a great gift. Knowing more gives us greater capacity to navigate this world and grow into better people.
And yet, in our mass-information age, “education” itself can become a consumptive product, feeding a sense of satisfaction to our hungry minds. We can get into a mode of perpetual accumulation, piling on top of itself more and more, amassing a hoard and wealth of knowledge. We can tell when this happens by attuning to our will, becoming more consciously aware of our motivation for seeking to know more. Are we addicted to the feeling that comes with insight and the power of knowledge?
If we feel into the energetic flow of this misalignment, we see how this can actually be a veiled self-serving, narcissistic tendency. It is taking in more and more, serving the growth of the self—even if it’s for good and focused on “spiritual” learning. Like a sermon more concerned with providing a titillating perception than an invitation to transformation and change.
Of course, we all need inflow and learning. The issue comes when we begin to seek insight after insight without integrating deeper inspiration, transformation, and enaction that comes when we truly embody and become what we learn. (This is why we have “becoming” offerings following each of our articles now, so we can more consciously and actively engage in the interflow together and cultivate the outflow in our lives.)
On the flip side, willful ignorance, misguided motivation, and unconscious action—no matter how inspired it feels—will be detrimental and destructive.
So as we integrate our insights with the energy of inspiration to arise and call us to action, to creation, we can make space for more conscious awareness and discernment. We will sense, from our divine agency, the true source of our motivation for learning and for inspired response, growing in our capacity to embrace and release as needed, discerning times for taking in and times for taking up our charge to WeCreate. Inflow, interflow, outflow. And the ongoing interplay and dance of these movements as they interweave personally and collectively.
Integrating Experience with Enaction
In a similar way, an over-focus on “experience” can also keep us from embracing our spiritual inspiration, which always invites some kind of enactive offering or generative outflow.
By “experience,” I mean again a sort of accumulation or addiction to a certain type of experience we might have alone or with other people that elicits a particular feeling or spiritual delight.
We see this sometimes in the desire to have “mystical experiences,” the allure to a certain state of consciousness or type of spiritual encounter. If we are overly seeking certain kinds of experiences themselves, then we crowd out the opening to responsive action that flows from inspiration, which invites us beyond the experience itself. Like the disciples wanting to put up tabernacles on the mount of transfiguration, rather than understanding the experience was a transformation for what was to come, down the mountain and in the midst of life.
There is nothing wrong with having great mystical experiences, but as we integrate these with the invitation to action, we embrace the spiritual inspiration that calls us to go beyond the experiences as an end in and of themselves. We become more and more motivated to WeCreate ways of bringing forth out of these mystical realities we experience. We seek and actively cultivate greater integration into everyday life, in our relationships, and in the world in new and generative ways.
Through this integration of experience and enaction, we bear the fruits of our experiences and offer them as an outpouring, an enactive engagement with the flow of loving contribution. They become sacred offerings, stemming from a will inspired to make a difference in the world and in how we live.
Integrating Ambitions with Aspirations
Many people find the drive of motivation through attaching it to particular ambitions. Seeing a possible outcome and desired objective sets the target, and the drive toward making that real energizes all the work and preparation necessary to accomplish the goal.
Ambition can sometimes have a bit of a negative connotation, especially in spiritual circles. Usually, ambitiousness is connected to a state or outcome related to oneself, but not all ambitions are selfish. In our divine becoming, we can desire a more holistic and fully realized way of living and being in the world. This is a holy ambition.
The helpful integration we might make is to hold our desired outcomes and projected content of realization with and through a bigger field, a wider channel of possibility than we might see from our current vantage point.
Along with the inner fire of inspiration, which originates from the source and starting point, we can welcome the aspirational, the external allure that comes from the beyond, the possible futures and dreamed realities further afield than we can yet see.
Rather than being rooted in our own personhood, where our ambitions generally arise, aspirations come from more than ourselves alone. Aspirations emerge and are given from a greater source. They are less fixed to a particular outcome, embracing the mystery while still striving toward the more. They are not goals we lock into but possible futures we help make real. Like a tree that sees the sky as it grows, yet each branch finds the right place not by a predetermined blueprint, but a living engagement with the environment as it unfolds. The growth adapts and shifts as the tree seeks the light, balances the whole, and breathes more life into the world.
Divine aspirations also emerge from communion, in the spirit’s call to evolution and the sacred arisings that come as we listen and attune together for God’s guidance. Rather than seeking to know what the future should be or might need from our singular vantage point, we need the collective not only to enact in WeCreating, but also to listen, sense, and discern the shape and direction of the aspirations which may be calling us.
We can embrace and integrate our holy ambitions, our great desires that are infused with hope and possibility for the divine becoming of ourselves, others, and the world. And we can hold them with the communal aspirations that arise and call us to an ongoing, unfolding process of seeking and creating, growing and evolving, serving and loving.
This is the sacred dance and interplay of inspiration and aspiration—which when done together with others we might call “conspiration.” Ok, that’s not a word. But conspire is, which literally means to “breathe together.” And our spiritual inspiration and divine aspirations just might include a little holy mischief.
WeCreating from Our Deepest Spiritual Inspiration
What inspires you?
or rather
What are you inspired to become and create in this precious life?
The days of religion serving spiritual consumers and passive recipients—the commerce model of church—are over. At least, they must be if we hope to see a world revitalized and transformed by loving evolution infused by divine will. The future of Christianity and the world will need to be WeCreated by spiritually inspired individuals and collectives who are deeply motivated by an inner force of divine vitality and enthralled by sacred aspirations leading toward a thriving future.
For too long we have been sold ambitions and outcomes for our lives that are much too small, that lack a true depth and spiritual significance so as to be holistically inspiring.
We are meant for more than accumulating insights and stores of knowledge. We are meant for more than collections of spiritual experience and mystical delights. We are meant for greater aspirations than we can even think to dream ourselves.
Can we dare to dream of such inspiration that enlivens and charges us with such meaning and purpose?
Can we cultivate such a possible way of being in the world and in community?
The call of WeCreating, which is simply another way of naming the spiritual charge to live and “work” from our deepest and most authentic spiritual being, from who we really truly are. Living fully into our divine vocation, which we will explore more in the next part of this series.
From the seedbed of spiritual inspiration come the conceptions of new life,
Germinated in community and quickened by spirit,
Gestated with holy longing and sacred possibility,
Opening to divine design and aspirational prospects,
Embraced with experimentation and discernment,
Welcoming mystical guidance and holy failures,
We live into WeCreating and generating,
The sacred, holy, and precious will of God.
And as we pray, “thy will be done” takes on a whole new meaning and inspiring possibility, not as a plea to a separate God or external deity, but a communal supplication filled with holy longing and empowered inspiration, for us all who live into and become the body of Christ in this day and age to take up the sacred, divine will—our holy motivation, our spiritual inspiration, our divine agency.
And to bring it about on earth as it is in heaven.
Whenever the word “heaven” comes up with my kiddos, I always ask them, “And where is heaven?”
To which one will say, “All around us.”
And the other adds, “In our hearts.”
“That’s right!” I say.
May it be so.
May we be the divine enactors of God’s holy will—which so too, is ours through divine participation—on earth as it is in heaven, as we are charged and enthralled by a force of spiritual inspiration beyond our wildest dreams.
All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN